



Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









Transcriber's notes:

(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally
      printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an
      underscore, like C_n.

(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.

(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective
      paragraphs.

(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not
      inserted.

(5) The following typographical errors have been corrected:

    ARTICLE France: "The importance of their commercial relations was
      brought into relief as though it were a new fact." 'commercial'
      amended from 'commerical'.

    ARTICLE France: "The revenues of the Carolingian monarch (which are
      no longer identical with the finances of the state) consisted
      chiefly in the produce of the royal lands (villae), ..."
      'identical' amended from 'indentical'.

    ARTICLE France: "The most salient features of feudal succession
      were the right of primogeniture and the preference given to
      heirs-male ..." 'preference' amended from 'perference'.

    ARTICLE France: "The law of the 15th of March 1850 established the
      liberty of secondary education, but it conferred certain privileges
      on the Catholic clergy, a clear sign of the spirit of social
      conservatism which was the leading motive for its enactment." 'The'
      amended from 'Thd'.

    ARTICLE France: "... on which occasion he exercised his right of
      dissolution against a chamber, the moderate but decidedly
      republican majority in which he was re-elected by the country."
      added 'he'.




          ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA

  A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE
           AND GENERAL INFORMATION

              ELEVENTH EDITION


            VOLUME X, SLICE VIII

         France to Francis Joseph I.




ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:


  FRANCE (part)                     FRANCIS I. (king of France)
  FRANCESCHI, JEAN BAPTISTE         FRANCIS II. (king of France)
  FRANCESCHI, PIERO DE'             FRANCIS I. (king of Sicily)
  FRANCESCHINI, BALDASSARE          FRANCIS II. (king of Sicily)
  FRANCHE-COMTE                     FRANCIS IV.
  FRANCHISE                         FRANCIS V.
  FRANCIA                           FRANCIS OF ASSISI, ST.
  FRANCIA, JOSE GASPAR RODRIGUEZ    FRANCIS OF MAYRONE
  FRANCIABIGIO                      FRANCIS OF PAOLA, ST
  FRANCIS                           FRANCIS OF SALES, ST
  FRANCIS I. (Roman emperor)        FRANCIS, SIR PHILIP
  FRANCIS II. (Roman emperor)       FRANCIS JOSEPH I.




FRANCE (Continued from Volume 10 slice 7).


EXTERIOR POLICY 1870-1909

  The new epoch.

The Franco-German War marks a turning-point in the history of the
exterior policy of France as distinct as does the fall of the ancient
monarchy or the end of the Napoleonic epoch. With the disappearance of
the Second Empire, by its own fault, on the field of Sedan in September
1870, followed in the early months of 1871 by the proclamation of the
German empire at Versailles and the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine
under the treaty of peace of Frankfort, France descended from its
primacy among the nations of continental Europe, which it had gradually
acquired in the half-century subsequent to Waterloo. It was the design
of Bismarck that united Germany, which had been finally established
under his direction by the war of 1870, should take the place hitherto
occupied by France in Europe. The situation of France in 1871 in no wise
resembled that after the French defeat of 1815, when the First Empire,
issue of the Revolution, had been upset by a coalition of the European
monarchies which brought back and supported on his restored throne the
legitimate heir to the French crown. In 1871 the Republic was founded in
isolation. France was without allies, and outside its frontiers the form
of its executive government was a matter of interest only to its German
conquerors. Bismarck desired that France should remain isolated in
Europe and divided at home. He thought that the Republican form of
government would best serve these ends. The revolutionary tradition of
France would, under a Republic, keep aloof the monarchies of Europe,
whereas, in the words of the German ambassador at Paris, Prince
Hohenlohe, a "monarchy would strengthen France and place her in a better
position to make alliances and would threaten our alliances." At the
same time Bismarck counted on governmental instability under a Republic
to bring about domestic disorganization which would so disintegrate the
French nation as to render it unformidable as a foe and ineffective as
an ally. The Franco-German War thus produced a situation unprecedented
in the mutual relations of two great European powers. From that
situation resulted all the exterior policy of France, for a whole
generation, colonial as well as foreign.

In 1875 Germany saw France in possession of a constitution which gave
promise of durability if not of permanence. German opinion had already
been perturbed by the facility and speed with which France had paid off
the colossal war indemnity exacted by the conqueror, thus giving proof
of the inexhaustible resources of the country and of its powers of
recuperation. The successful reorganization of the French army under the
military law of 1872 caused further alarm when there appeared to be some
possibility of the withdrawal of Russia from the Dreikaiserbund, which
had set the seal on Germany's triumph and France's abasement in Europe.
It seemed, therefore, as though it might be expedient for Germany to
make a sudden aggression upon France before that country was adequately
prepared for war, in order to crush the nation irreparably and to remove
it from among the great powers of Europe.

The constitution of the Third Republic was voted by the National
Assembly on the 25th of February 1875. The new constitution had to be
completed by electoral laws and other complementary provisions, so it
could not become effective until the following year, after the first
elections of the newly founded Senate and Chamber of Deputies. M. Buffet
was then charged by the president of the republic, Marshal MacMahon, to
form a provisional ministry in which the duc Decazes, who had been
foreign minister since 1873, was retained at the Quai d'Orsay. The
cabinet met for the first time on the 11th of March, and ten days later
the National Assembly adjourned for a long recess.


  The crisis of 1875.

It was during that interval that occurred the incident known as "The
Scare of 1875." The Kulturkampf had left Prince Bismarck in a state of
nervous irritation. In all directions he was on the look out for traces
of Ultramontane intrigue. The clericals in France after the fall of
Thiers had behaved with great indiscretion in their desire to see the
temporal power of the pope revived. But when the reactionaries had
placed MacMahon at the head of the state, their divisions and their
political ineptitude had shown that the government of France would soon
pass from their hands, and of this the voting of the Republican
constitution by a monarchical assembly was the visible proof.
Nevertheless Bismarck, influenced by the presence at Berlin of a French
ambassador, M. de Gontaut-Biron, whom he regarded as an Ultramontane
agent, seems to have thought otherwise. A military party at Berlin
affected alarm at a law passed by the French Assembly on the 12th of
March, which continued a provision increasing from three to four the
battalions of each infantry regiment, and certain journals, supposed to
be inspired by Bismarck, argued that as the French were preparing, it
might be well to anticipate their designs before they were ready. Europe
was scared by an article on the 6th of May in _The Times_, professing to
reveal the designs of Bismarck, from its Paris correspondent, Blowitz,
who was in relations with the French foreign minister, the duc Decazes,
and with Prince Hohenlohe, German ambassador to France, both being
prudent diplomatists, and, though Catholics, opposed to Ultramontane
pretensions. Europe was astounded at the revelation and alarmed at the
alleged imminence of war. In England the Disraeli ministry addressed the
governments of Russia, Austria and Italy, with a view to restraining
Germany from its aggressive designs, and Queen Victoria wrote to the
German emperor to plead the cause of peace. It is probable that there
was no need either for this intervention or for the panic which had
produced it. We know now that the old emperor William was steadfastly
opposed to a fresh war, while his son, the crown prince Frederick, who
then seemed likely soon to succeed him for a long reign, was also
determined that peace should be maintained. The scare had, however, a
most important result, in sowing the seeds of the subsequent
Franco-Russian alliance. Notwithstanding that the tsar Alexander II. was
on terms of affectionate intimacy with his uncle, the emperor William,
he gave a personal assurance to General Le Flo, French ambassador at St
Petersburg, that France should have the "moral support" of Russia in the
case of an aggression on the part of Germany. It is possible that the
danger of war was exaggerated by the French foreign minister and his
ambassador at Berlin, as is the opinion of certain French historians,
who think that M. de Gontaut-Biron, as an old royalist, was only too
glad to see the Republic under the protection, as it were, of the most
reactionary monarchy of Europe. At the same time Bismarck's denials of
having acted with terrorizing intent cannot be accepted. He was more
sincere when he criticized the ostentation with which the Russian
Chancellor, Prince Gortchakoff, had claimed for his master the character
of the defender of France and the obstacle to German ambitions. It was
in memory of this that, in 1878 at the congress of Berlin, Bismarck did
his best to impair the advantages which Russia had obtained under the
treaty of San Stefano.


  Congress of Berlin.

The events which led to that congress put into abeyance the prospect of
a serious understanding between France and Russia. The insurrection in
Herzegovina in July 1875 reopened the Eastern question, and in the
Orient the interests of France and Russia had been for many years
conflicting, as witness the controversy concerning the Holy Places,
which was one of the causes of the Crimean War. France had from the
reign of Louis XIV. claimed the exclusive right of protecting Roman
Catholic interests in the East. This claim was supported not only by the
monarchists, for the most part friendly to Russia in other respects, who
directed the foreign policy of the Third Republic until the
Russo-Turkish War of 1877, but by the Republicans, who were coming into
perpetual power at the time of the congress of Berlin--the ablest of the
anti-clericals, Gambetta, declaring in this connexion that
"anti-clericalism was not an article of exportation." The defeat of the
monarchists at the elections of 1877, after the "Seize Mai," and the
departure from office of the duc Decazes, whose policy had tended to
prepare the way for an alliance with the tsar, changed the attitude of
French diplomacy towards Russia. M. Waddington, the first Republican
minister for foreign affairs, was not a Russophil, while Gambetta was
ardently anti-Russian, and he, though not a minister, was exercising
that preponderant influence in French politics which he retained until
1882, the last year of his life. Many Republicans considered that the
monarchists, whom they had turned out, favoured the support of Russia
not only as a defence against Germany, which was not likely to be
effective so long as a friendly uncle and nephew were reigning at Berlin
and at St Petersburg respectively, but also as a possible means of
facilitating a monarchical restoration in France. Consequently at the
congress of Berlin M. Waddington and the other French delegates
maintained a very independent attitude towards Russia. They supported
the resolutions which aimed at diminishing the advantages obtained by
Russia in the war, they affirmed the rights of France over the Holy
Places, and they opposed the anti-Semitic views of the Russian
representatives. The result of the congress of Berlin seemed therefore
to draw France and Russia farther apart, especially as Gambetta and the
Republicans now in power were more disposed towards an understanding
with England. The contrary, however, happened. The treaty of Berlin,
which took the place of the treaty of San Stefano, was the ruin of
Russian hopes. It was attributed to the support given by Bismarck to the
anti-Russian policy of England and Austria at the congress, the German
chancellor having previously discouraged the project of an alliance
between Russia and Germany. The consequence was that the tsar withdrew
from the Dreikaiserbund, and Germany, finding the support of Austria
inadequate for its purposes, sought an understanding with Italy. Hence
arose the Triple Alliance of 1882, which was the work of Bismarck, who
thus became eventually the author of the Franco-Russian alliance, which
was rather a sedative for the nervous temperament of the French than a
remedy necessary for their protection. The twofold aim of the Triplice
was the development of the Bismarckian policy of the continued isolation
of France and of the maintenance of the situation in Europe acquired by
the German empire in 1871. The most obvious alliance for Germany was
that with Russia, but it was clear that it could be obtained only at the
price of Russia having a free hand to satisfy its ambitions in the East.
This not only would have irritated England against Germany, but also
Austria, and so might have brought about a Franco-Austrian alliance, and
a day of reckoning for Germany for the combined rancours of two nations,
left by 1866 and 1871. It was thus that Germany allied itself first with
Austria and then with Italy, leaving Russia eventually to unite with
France.


  Egyptian question.

As the congress of Berlin took in review the general situation of the
Turkish empire, it was natural that the French delegates should
formulate the position of France in Egypt. Thus the powers of Europe
accepted the maintenance of the _condominium_ in Egypt, financial and
administrative, of England and France. Egypt, nominally a province of
the Turkish empire, had been invested with a large degree of autonomy,
guaranteed by an agreement made in 1840 and 1841 between the Porte and
the then five great powers, though some opposition was made to France
being a party to this compact. By degrees Austria, Prussia and Russia
(as well as Italy when it attained the rank of a great power) had left
the international control of Egypt to France and England by reason of
the preponderance of the interests of those two powers on the Nile.

In 1875 the interests of England in Egypt, which had hitherto been
considered inferior to those of France, gained a superiority owing to
the purchase by the British government of the shares of the khedive
Ismail in the Suez Canal. Whatever rivalry there may have been between
England and France, they had to present a united front to the
pretensions of Ismail, whose prodigalities made him impatient of the
control which they exercised over his finances. This led to his
deposition and exile. The control was re-established by his successor
Tewfik on the 4th of September 1879. The revival ensued of a so-called
national party, which Ismail for his own purposes had encouraged in its
movement hostile to foreign domination. In September 1881 took place the
rising led by Arabi, by whose action an assembly of notables was
convoked for the purpose of deposing the government authorized by the
European powers. The fear lest the sultan should intervene gave an
appearance of harmony to the policy of England and France, whose
interests were too great to permit of any such interference. At the end
of 1879 the first Freycinet cabinet had succeeded that of M. Waddington
and had in turn been succeeded in September 1880 by the first Ferry
cabinet. In the latter the foreign minister was M. Barthelemy
Saint-Hilaire, an aged philosopher who had first taken part in politics
when he helped to dethrone Charles X. in 1830. In September 1881 he
categorically invited the British government to join France in a
military intervention to oppose any interference which the Porte might
attempt, and the two powers each sent a war-ship to Alexandria. On the
14th of November Gambetta formed his _grand ministere_, in which he was
foreign minister. Though it lasted less than eleven weeks, important
measures were taken by it, as Arabi had become under-secretary for war
at Cairo, and was receiving secret encouragement from the sultan. On the
7th of January 1882, at the instance of Gambetta, a joint note was
presented by the British and French consuls to the khedive, to the
effect that their governments were resolved to maintain the _status
quo_, Gambetta having designed this as a consecration of the
Anglo-French alliance in the East. Thereupon the Porte protested, by a
circular addressed to the powers, against this infringement of its
suzerainty in Egypt. Meanwhile, the assembly of notables claimed the
right of voting the taxes and administering the finances of the country,
and Gambetta, considering this as an attempt to emancipate Egypt from
the financial control of Europe, moved the British government to join
with France in protesting against any interference on the part of the
notables in the budget. But when Lord Granville accepted this proposal
Gambetta had fallen, on the 26th of January, being succeeded by M. de
Freycinet, who for the second time became president of the council and
foreign minister. Gambetta fell nominally on a scheme of partial
revision of the constitution. It included the re-establishment of
_scrutin de liste_, a method of voting to which many Republicans were
hostile, so this gave his enemies in his own party their opportunity. He
thus fell the victim of republican jealousy, nearly half the Republicans
in the chamber voting against him in the fatal division. The subsequent
debates of 1882 show that many of Gambetta's adversaries were also
opposed to his policy of uniting with England on the Egyptian question.
Henceforth the interior affairs of Egypt have little to do with the
subject we are treating; but some of the incidents in France which led
to the English occupation of Egypt ought to be mentioned. M. de
Freycinet was opposed to any armed intervention by France; but in the
face of the feeling in the country in favour of maintaining the
traditional influence of France in Egypt, his declarations of policy
were vague. On the 23rd of February 1882 he said that he would assure
the non-exclusive preponderance in Egypt of France and England by means
of an understanding with Europe, and on the 11th of May that he wished
to retain for France its peculiar position of privileged influence.
England and France sent to Alexandria a combined squadron, which did not
prevent a massacre of Europeans there on the 11th of June, the khedive
being now in the hands of the military party under Arabi. On the 11th of
July the English fleet bombarded Alexandria, the French ships in
anticipation of that action having departed the previous day. On the
18th of July the Chamber debated the supplementary vote for the fleet in
the Mediterranean, M. de Freycinet declaring that France would take no
active part in Egypt except as the mandatory of the European powers.
This was the occasion for the last great speech of Gambetta in
parliament. In it he earnestly urged close co-operation with England,
which he predicted would otherwise become the mistress of Egypt, and in
his concluding sentences he uttered the famous "_Ne rompez jamais
l'alliance anglaise._" A further vote, proposed in consequence of
Arabi's open rebellion, was abandoned, as M. de Freycinet announced that
the European powers declined to give France and England a collective
mandate to intervene in their name. In the Senate on the 25th of July M.
Scherer, better known as a philosopher than as a politician, who had
Gambetta's confidence, read a report on the supplementary votes which
severely criticized the timidity and vacillation of the government in
Egyptian policy. Four days later in the Chamber M. de Freycinet proposed
an understanding with England limited to the protection of the Suez
Canal. Attacked by M. Clemenceau on the impossibility of separating the
question of the canal from the general Egyptian question, the ministry
was defeated by a huge majority, and M. de Freycinet fell, having
achieved the distinction of being the chief instrument in removing Egypt
from the sphere of French interest.

Some of the Republicans whose votes turned out M. de Freycinet wanted
Jules Ferry to take his place, as he was considered to be a strong man
in foreign policy, and Gambetta, for this reason, was willing to see his
personal enemy at the head of public affairs. But this was prevented by
M. Clemenceau and the extreme Left, and the new ministry was formed by
M. Duclerc, an old senator whose previous official experience had been
under the Second Republic. On its taking office on the 7th of August,
the ministerial declaration announced that its policy would be in
conformity with the vote which, by refusing supplies for the occupation
of the Suez Canal, had overthrown M. de Freycinet. The declaration
characterized this vote as "a measure of reserve and of prudence but not
as an abdication." Nevertheless the action of the Chamber--which was due
to the hostility to Gambetta of rival leaders, who had little mutual
affection, including MM. de Freycinet, Jules Ferry, Clemenceau and the
president of the Republic, M. Grevy, rather than to a desire to abandon
Egypt--did result in the abdication of France. After England
single-handed had subdued the rebellion and restored the authority of
the khedive, the latter signed a decree on the 11th of January 1883
abolishing the joint control of England and France. Henceforth Egypt
continued to be a frequent topic of debate in the Chambers; the
interests of France in respect of the Egyptian finances, the judicial
system and other institutions formed the subject of diplomatic
correspondence, as did the irritating question of the eventual
evacuation of Egypt by England. But though it caused constant friction
between the two countries up to the Anglo-French convention of the 8th
of April 1904, there was no longer a French active policy with regard to
Egypt. The lost predominance of France in that country did, however,
quicken French activity in other regions of northern Africa.


  Algerian policy.

  Tunis.

The idea that the Mediterranean might become a French lake has, in
different senses, been a preoccupation for France and for its rivals in
Europe ever since Algeria became a French province by a series of
fortuitous incidents--an insult offered by the dey to a French consul,
his refusal to make reparation, and the occasion it afforded of
diverting public attention in France from interior affairs after the
Revolution of 1830. The French policy of preponderance in Egypt had only
for a secondary aim the domination of the Mediterranean. The French
tradition in Egypt was a relic of Napoleon's vain scheme to become
emperor of the Orient even before he had made himself emperor of the
West. It was because Egypt was the highway to India that under Napoleon
III. the French had constructed the Suez Canal, and for the same reason
England could never permit them to become masters of the Nile delta. But
the possessors of Algeria could extend their coast-line of North Africa
without seriously menacing the power which held Gibraltar and Malta. It
was Italy which objected to a French occupation of Tunis. Algeria has
never been officially a French "colony." It is in many respects
administered as an integral portion of French territory, the
governor-general, as agent of the central power, exercising wide
jurisdiction. Although the Europeans in Algeria are less than a seventh
of the population, and although the French are actually a minority of
the European inhabitants--Spaniards prevailing in the west, Italians and
Maltese in the east--the three departments of Constantine, Algiers and
Oran are administered like three French departments. Consequently, when
disturbances occurred on the borderland separating Constantine from
Tunis, the French were able to say to Europe that the integrity of their
national frontier was threatened by the proximity of a turbulent
neighbour. The history of the relations between Tunis and France were
set forth, from the French standpoint, in a circular, of which Jules
Ferry was said to be the author, addressed by the foreign minister, M.
Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire on the 9th of May 1881, to the diplomatic
agents of France abroad. The most important point emphasized by the
French minister was the independence of Tunis from the Porte, a
situation which would obviate difficulties with Turkey such as had
always hampered the European powers in Egypt. In support of this
contention a protest made by the British government in 1830, against the
French conquest of Algiers, was quoted, as in it Lord Aberdeen had
declared that Europe had always treated the Barbary states as
independent powers. On the other hand, there was the incident of the bey
of Tunis having furnished to Turkey a contingent during the Crimean War,
which suggested a recognition of its vassalage to the Sublime Porte. But
in 1864, when the sultan had sent a fleet to La Goulette to affirm his
"rights" in Tunis, the French ambassador at Constantinople intimated
that France declined to have Turkey for a neighbour in Algeria. France
also in 1868 essayed to obtain control over the finances of the regency;
but England and Italy had also large interests in the country, so an
international financial commission was appointed. In 1871, when France
was disabled after the war, the bey obtained from Constantinople a
firman of investiture, thus recognizing the suzerainty of the Porte.
Certain English writers have reproached the Foreign Office for its lack
of foresight in not taking advantage of France's disablement by
establishing England as the preponderant power in Tunis. The fact that
five-sixths of the commerce of Tunis is now with France and Algeria may
seem to justify such regrets. Yet by the light of subsequent events it
seems probable that England would have been diverted from more
profitable undertakings had she been saddled with the virtual
administration and military occupation of a vast territory which such
preponderance would have entailed. The wonder is that this opportunity
was not seized by Italy; for Mazzini and other workers in the cause of
Italian unity, before the Bourbons had been driven from Naples, had cast
eyes on Tunis, lying over against the coasts of Sicily at a distance of
barely 100 m., as a favourable field for colonization and as the key of
the African Mediterranean. But when Rome became once more the capital of
Italy, Carthage was not fated to fall again under its domination and
the occasion offered by France's temporary impotence was neglected. In
1875 when France was rapidly recovering, there went to Tunis as consul
an able Frenchman, M. Roustan, who became virtual ruler of the regency
in spite of the resistance of the representative of Italy. French action
was facilitated by the attitude of England. On the 26th of July 1878 M.
Waddington wrote to the marquis d'Harcourt, French ambassador in London,
that at the congress of Berlin Lord Salisbury had said to him--the two
delegates being the foreign ministers of their respective
governments--in reply to his protest, on behalf of France, against the
proposed English occupation of Cyprus, "Do what you think proper in
Tunis: England will offer no opposition." This was confirmed by Lord
Salisbury in a despatch to Lord Lyons, British ambassador in Paris, on
the 8th of August, and it was followed in October by an intimation made
by the French ambassador at Rome that France intended to exercise a
preponderant influence in Tunis. Italy was not willing to accept this
situation. In January 1881 a tour made by King Humbert in Sicily, where
he received a Tunisian mission, was taken to signify that Italy had not
done with Tunis, and it was answered in April by a French expedition in
the regency sent from Algeria, on the pretext of punishing the Kroumirs
who had been marauding on the frontier of Constantine. It was on this
occasion that M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire issued the circular quoted
above. France nominally was never at war with Tunis; yet the result of
the invasion was that that country became virtually a French possession,
although officially it is only under the protection of France. The
treaty of El Bardo of the 12th of May 1881, confirmed by the decree of
the 22nd of April 1882, placed Tunis under the protectorate of France.
The country is administered under the direction of the French Foreign
Office, in which there is a department of Tunisian affairs. The governor
is called minister resident-general of France, and he also acts as
foreign minister, being assisted by seven French and two native
ministers.


  Extension of African Territory.

  The protectorate system.

The annexation of Tunis was important for many reasons. It was the first
successful achievement of France after the disasters of the
Franco-German War, and it was the first enterprise of serious utility to
France undertaken beyond its frontiers since the early period of the
Second Empire. It was also important as establishing the hegemony of
France on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. When M. Jules Cambon
became governor-general of Algeria, his brother M. Paul Cambon having
been previously French resident in Tunis and remaining the vigilant
ambassador to a Mediterranean power, a Parisian wit said that just as
Switzerland had its _Lac des quatre_ Cantons, so France had made of the
midland sea its _Lac des deux Cambons_. The _jeu d'esprit_ indicated
what was the primary significance to the French of their becoming
masters of the Barbary coast from the boundary of Morocco to that of
Tripoli. Apart from the Mediterranean question, when the scramble for
Africa began and the Hinterland doctrine was asserted by European
powers, the possession of this extended coast-line resulted in France
laying claim to the Sahara and the western Sudan. Consequently, on the
maps, the whole of northwest Africa, from Tunis to the Congo, is claimed
by France with the exception of the relatively small areas on the coast
belonging to Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Liberia, Germany and England. On
this basis, in point of area, France is the greatest African power, in
spite of British annexations in south and equatorial Africa, its area
being estimated at 3,866,950 sq. m. (including 227,950 in Madagascar) as
against 2,101,411 more effectively possessed by Great Britain. The
immensity of its domain on paper is no doubt a satisfaction to a people
which prefers to pursue its policy of colonial expansion without the aid
of emigration. The acquisition of Tunis by France is also important as
an example of the system of protectorate as applied to colonization.
Open annexation might have more gravely irritated the powers having
interests in the country. England, in spite of Lord Salisbury's
suggestions to the French foreign minister, was none too pleased with
France's policy; while Italy, with its subjects outnumbering all other
European settlers in the regency, was in a mood to accept a pretext for
a quarrel for the reasons already mentioned. Apart from these
considerations the French government favoured a protectorate because it
did not wish to make of Tunis a second Algeria. While the annexation of
the latter had excellent commercial results for France, it had not been
followed by successful colonization, though it had cost France 160
millions sterling in the first sixty years after it became French
territory. The French cannot govern at home or abroad without a
centralized system of administration. The organization of Algeria, as
departments of France with their administrative divisions, was not an
example to imitate. In the beylical government France found, ready-made,
a sufficiently centralized system, such as did not exist in Algeria
under native rule, which could form a basis of administration by French
functionaries under the direction of the Quai d'Orsay. The result has
not been unpleasing to the numerous advocates in France of protectorates
as a means of colonization. According to M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the
most eminent French authority on colonization, who knows Tunis well, a
protectorate is the most pacific, the most supple, and the least costly
method of colonization in countries where an organized form of native
government exists; it is the system in which the French can most nearly
approach that of English crown colonies. One evil which it avoids is the
so-called representative system, under which senators and deputies are
sent to the French parliament not only from Algeria as an integral part
of France, but from the colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe and French
India, while Cochin-China, Guiana and Senegal send deputies alone. These
sixteen deputies and seven senators attach themselves to the various
Moderate, Radical and Socialist groups in parliament, which have no
connexion with the interests of the colonies; and the consequent
introduction of French political controversies into colonial elections
has not been of advantage to the oversea possessions of France. From
this the protectorate system has spared Tunis, and the paucity of French
immigration will continue to safeguard that country from parliamentary
representation. After twenty years of French rule, of 120,000 European
residents in Tunis, not counting the army, only 22,000 were French,
while nearly 70,000 were Italian. If under a so-called representative
system the Italians had demanded nationalization, for the purpose of
obtaining the franchise, complications might have arisen which are not
to be feared under a protectorate.


  The Triple Alliance.

But of all the results of the French annexation of Tunis, the most
important was undoubtedly the Triple Alliance, into which Italy entered
in resentment at having been deprived of the African territory which
seemed marked out as its natural field for colonial expansion. The most
manifest cause of Italian hostility towards France had passed away four
years before the annexation of Tunis, when the reactionaries, who had
favoured the restitution of the temporal power of the pope, fell for
ever from power. The clericalism of the anti-republicans, who favoured a
revival of the fatal policy of the Second Empire whereby France, after
Magenta and Solferino, had by leaving its garrison at St Angelo, been
the last obstacle to Italian unity, was one of the chief causes of their
downfall. For after the war with Germany, the mutilated land and the
vanquished nation had need to avoid wanton provocations of foreign
powers. Henceforth the French Republic, governed by Republicans, was to
be an anti-clerical force in Europe, sympathizing with the Italian
occupation of Rome. But to make Italy realize that France was no longer
the enemy of complete Italian unity it would have been necessary that
all causes of irritation between the two Latin sister nations were
removed. Such causes of dissension did, however, remain, arising from
economic questions. The maritime relations of the two chief
Mediterranean powers were based on a treaty of navigation of 1862--when
Venice was no party to it being an Austrian port--which Crispi denounced
as a relic of Italian servility towards Napoleon III. Commercial rivalry
was induced by the industrial development of northern Italy, when freed
from Austrian rule. Moreover, the emigrant propensity of the Italians
flooded certain regions of France with Italian cheap labour, with the
natural result of bitter animosity between the intruders and the
inhabitants of the districts thus invaded. The annexation of Tunis,
coming on the top of these causes of irritation, exasperated Italy. A
new treaty of commerce was nevertheless signed between the two countries
on the 3rd of November 1881. Unfortunately for its stability, King
Humbert the previous week had gone to Vienna to see the emperor of
Austria. In visiting in his capital the former arch-enemy of Italian
unity, who could never return the courtesy, Rome being interdicted for
Catholic sovereigns by the "prisoner of the Vatican," Humbert had only
followed the example of his father Victor Emmanuel, who went both to
Berlin and to Vienna in 1873. But that was when in France the duc de
Broglie was prime minister of a clerical government of which many of the
supporters were clamouring for the restitution of the temporal power.
King Humbert's visit to Vienna at the moment when Gambetta, the great
anti-clerical champion, was at the height of his influence was
significant for other reasons. Since the 7th of October 1879 Germany and
Austria had been united by a defensive treaty, and though its provisions
were not published until 1888, the two central empires were known to be
in the closest alliance. The king of Italy's visit to Vienna, where he
was accompanied by his ministers Depretis and Mancini, had therefore the
same significance as though he had gone to Berlin also. On the 20th of
May 1882 was signed the treaty of the Triple Alliance, which for many
years bound Italy to Germany in its relations with the continental
powers. The alliance was first publicly announced on the 13th of March
1883, in the Italian Chamber, by Signor Mancini, minister for foreign
affairs. The aim of Italy in joining the combination was alliance with
Germany, the enemy of France. The connexion with Austria was only
tolerated because it secured a union with the powerful government of
Berlin. It effected the complete isolation of France in Europe. An
understanding between the French Republic and Russia, which alone could
alter that situation, was impracticable, as its only basis seemed to be
the possibility of having a common enemy in Germany or even in England.
But that double eventuality was anticipated by a secret convention
concluded at Skiernewice in September 1884 by the tsar and the German
emperor, in which they guaranteed to one another a benevolent neutrality
in case of hostilities between England and Russia arising out of the
Afghan question.

It will be convenient here to refer to the relations of France with
Germany and Italy respectively in the years succeeding the signature of
the Triple Alliance. With Germany both Gambetta, who died ten weeks
before the treaty was announced and who was a strong Russophobe, and his
adversary Jules Ferry were inclined to come to an understanding. But in
this they had not the support of French opinion. In September 1883 the
king of Spain had visited the sovereigns of Austria and Germany.
Alphonso XII., to prove that this journey was not a sign of hostility to
France, came to Paris on his way home on Michaelmas Day on an official
visit to President Grevy. Unfortunately it was announced that the German
emperor had made the king colonel of a regiment of Uhlans garrisoned at
Strassburg, the anniversary of the taking of which city was being
celebrated by the emperor by the inauguration of a monument made out of
cannon taken from the French, on the very eve of King Alphonso's
arrival. Violent protests were made in Paris in the monarchical and in
not a few republican journals, with the result that the king of Spain
was hooted by the crowd as he drove with the president from the station
to his embassy, and again on his way to dine the same night at the
Elysee. The incident was closed by M. Grevy's apologies and by the
retirement of the minister of war, General Thibaudin, who under pressure
from the extreme Left had declined to meet _le roi uhlan_. Though it
displayed the bitter hostility of the population towards Germany, the
incident did not aggravate Franco-German relations. This was due to the
policy of the prime minister, Jules Ferry, who to carry it out made
himself foreign minister in November, in the place of Challemel-Lacour,
who resigned.


  Franco-German relations.

Jules Ferry's idea was that colonial expansion was the surest means for
France to recover its prestige, and that this could be obtained only by
maintaining peaceful relations with all the powers of Europe. His
consequent unpopularity caused his fall in April 1885, and the next year
a violent change of military policy was marked by the arrival of General
Boulanger at the ministry of war, where he remained, in the Freycinet
and Goblet cabinets, from January 1886 to the 17th of May 1887. His
growing popularity in France was answered by Bismarck, who asked for an
increased vote for the German army, indicating that he considered
Boulanger the coming dictator for the war of revenge; so when the
Reichstag, on the 14th of January 1887, voted the supplies for three
years, instead of for the seven demanded by the chancellor, it was
dissolved. Bismarck redoubled his efforts in the press and in diplomacy,
vainly attempting to come to an understanding with Russia and with more
success moving the Vatican to order the German Catholics to support him.
He obtained his vote for seven years in March, and the same month
renewed the Triple Alliance. In April the Schnaebele incident seemed
nearly to cause war between France and Germany. The commissary-special,
an agent of the ministry of the interior, at Pagny-sur-Moselle, the last
French station on the frontier of the annexed territory of Lorraine,
having stepped across the boundary to regulate some official matter with
the corresponding functionary on the German side, was arrested. It was
said that Schnaebele was arrested actually on French soil, and on
whichever side of the line he was standing he had gone to meet the
German official at the request of the latter. Bismarck justified the
outrage in a speech in the Prussian Landtag which suggested that it was
impossible to live at peace with a nation so bellicose as the French. In
France the incident was regarded as a trap laid by the chancellor to
excite French opinion under the aggressive guidance of Boulanger, and to
produce events which would precipitate a war. The French remained calm,
in spite of the growing popularity of Boulanger. The Goblet ministry
resigned on the 17th of May 1887 after a hostile division on the budget,
and the opportunity was taken to get rid of the minister of war, who
posed as the coming restorer of Alsace and Lorraine to France. The
Boulangist movement soon became anti-Republican, and the opposition to
it of successive ministries improved the official relations of the
French and German governments. The circumstances attending the fall of
President Grevy the same year strengthened the Boulangist agitation, and
Jules Ferry, who seemed indicated as his successor, was discarded by the
Republican majority in the electoral congress, as a revolution was
threatened in Paris if the choice fell on "the German Ferry." Sadi
Carnot was consequently elected president of the Republic on the 3rd of
December 1887. Three months later, on the 9th of March 1888, died the
old emperor William who had personified the conquest of France by
Germany. His son, the pacific emperor Frederick, died too, on the 15th
of June, so the accession of William II., the pupil of Bismarck, at a
moment when Boulanger threatened to become plebiscitary dictator of
France, was ominous for the peace of Europe. But in April 1889 Boulanger
ignominiously fled the country, and in March 1890 Bismarck fell. France
none the less rejected all friendly overtures made by the young emperor.
In February 1891 his mother came to Paris and was unluckily induced to
visit the scenes of German triumph near the capital--the ruins of St
Cloud and the Chateau of Versailles where the German empire was
proclaimed. The incident called forth such an explosion of wrath from
the French press that it was clear that France had not forgotten 1871.
By this time, however, France was no longer isolated and at the mercy of
Germany, which by reason of the increase of its population while that of
France had remained almost stationary, was, under the system of
compulsory military service in the two countries, more than a match for
its neighbour in a single-handed conflict. Even the Triple Alliance
ceased to be a terror for France. An understanding arose between France
and Russia preliminary to the Franco-Russian alliance, which became the
pivot of French exterior relations until the defeat of Russia in the
Japanese war of 1904. So the second renewal of the Triplice was
forthwith answered by a visit of the French squadron to Kronstadt in
July 1891.


  France and Italy.

While such were the relations between France and the principal party to
the Triple Alliance, the same period was marked by bitter dissension
between France and Italy. Tunis had made Italy Gallophobe, but the
diplomatic relations between the two countries had been courteous until
the death of Depretis in 1887. When Crispi succeeded him as prime
minister, and till 1891 was the director of the exterior policy of
Italy, a change took place. Crispi, though not the author of the Triple
Alliance, entered with enthusiasm into its spirit of hostility to
France. The old Sicilian revolutionary hastened to pay his respects to
Bismarck at Friedrichsruh in October 1887, the visit being highly
approved in Italy. Before that the French Chamber had, in July 1886, by
a small majority, rejected a new treaty of navigation between France and
Italy, this being followed by the failure to renew the commercial treaty
of 1881. Irritating incidents were of constant occurrence. In 1888 a
conflict between the French consul at Massowah and the Italians who
occupied that Abyssinian port induced Bismarck to instruct the German
ambassador in Paris to tell M. Goblet, minister for foreign affairs in
the Floquet cabinet, in case he should refer to the matter, that if
Italy were involved thereby in complications it would not stand
alone--this menace being communicated to Crispi by the Italian
ambassador at Berlin and officially printed in a green-book. But after
Bismarck's fall relations improved a little, and in April 1890 the
Italian fleet was sent to Toulon to salute President Carnot in the name
of King Humbert, though this did not prevent the French government being
suspected of having designs on Tripoli. Italian opinion was again
incensed against France by the action of the French clericals,
represented by a band of Catholic "pilgrims" who went to Rome to offer
their sympathy to the pope in the autumn of 1891, and outraged the
burial-place of Victor Emmanuel by writing in the visitors' register
kept at the Pantheon the words "_Vive le pape._" In August 1893 a fight
took place at Aigues Mortes, the medieval walled city on the salt
marshes of the Gulf of Lyons, between French and Italian workmen, in
which seven Italians were killed. But Crispi had gone out of office
early in 1891, and the ministers who succeeded him were more disposed to
prevent a rupture between Italy and France. Crispi became prime minister
again in December 1893, but this time without the portfolio of foreign
affairs. He placed at the Consulta Baron Blanc, who though a strong
partisan of the Triple Alliance was closely attached to France, being a
native of Savoy, where he spent his yearly vacations on French soil.
That the relations between the two nations were better was shown by what
occurred after the murder of President Carnot in June 1894. The fact
that the assassin was an Italian might have caused trouble a little
earlier; but the grief of the Italians was so sincere, as shown by
popular demonstrations at Rome, that no anti-Italian violence took place
in France, and in the words of the French ambassador, M. Billot,
Caserio's crime seemed likely to further an understanding between the
two peoples. The movement was very slight and made no progress during
the short presidency of M. Casimir-Perier. On the 1st of November 1894
Alexander III. died, when the Italian press gave proof of the importance
attributed by the Triplice to the Franco-Russian understanding by
expressing a hope that the new tsar would put an end to it. But on the
10th of June 1895, the foreign minister, M. Hanotaux, intimated to the
French Chamber that the understanding had become an alliance, and on the
17th the Russian ambassador in Paris conveyed to M. Felix Faure, who was
now president of the Republic, the collar of St Andrew, while the same
day the French and Russian men-of-war, invited to the opening of the
Kiel Canal, entered German waters together. The union of France with
Russia was no doubt one cause of the cessation of Italian hostility to
France; but others were at work. The inauguration of the statue of
MacMahon at Magenta the same week as the announcement of the
Franco-Russian alliance showed that there was a disposition to revive
the old sentiment of fraternity which had once united France with Italy.
More important was the necessity felt by the Italians of improved
commercial relations with the French. Crispi fell on the 4th of March
1896, after the news of the disaster to the Italian troops at Adowa, the
war with Abyssinia being a disastrous legacy left by him. The previous
year he had caused the withdrawal from Paris of the Italian ambassador
Signor Ressmann, a friend of France, transferring thither Count
Tornielli, who during his mission in London had made a speech, after the
visit of the Italian fleet to Toulon, which qualified him to rank as a
_misogallo_. But with the final disappearance of Crispi the relations of
the two Latin neighbours became more natural. Commerce between them had
diminished, and the business men of both countries, excepting certain
protectionists, felt that the commercial rupture was mutually
prejudicial. Friendly negotiations were initiated on both sides, and
almost the last act of President Felix Faure before his sudden death--M.
Delcasse being then foreign minister--was to promulgate, on the 2nd of
February 1899, a new commercial arrangement between France and Italy
which the French parliament had adopted. By that time M. Barrere was
ambassador at the Quirinal and was engaged in promoting cordial
relations between Italy and France, of which Count Tornielli in Paris
had already become an ardent advocate. Italy remained a party to the
Triple Alliance, which was renewed for a third period in 1902. But so
changed had its significance become that in October 1903 the French
Republic received for the first time an official visit from the
sovereigns of Italy. This reconciliation of France and Italy was
destined to have most important results outside the sphere of the Triple
Alliance. The return visit which President Loubet paid to Victor
Emmanuel III. in April 1904, it being the first time that a French chief
of the state had gone to Rome since the pope had lost the temporal
sovereignty, provoked a protest from the Vatican which caused the
rupture of diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See,
followed by the repudiation of the Concordat by an act passed in France,
in 1905, separating the church from the state.


  Russian alliance.

While the decadence of the Triple Alliance had this important effect on
the domestic affairs of France, its inception had produced the
Franco-Russian alliance, which took France out of its isolation in
Europe, and became the pivot of its exterior policy. It has been noted
that in the years succeeding the Franco-Prussian War the tsar Alexander
II. had shown a disposition to support France against German aggression,
as though to make up for his neutrality during the war, which was so
benevolent for Germany that his uncle William I. had ascribed to it a
large share of the German victory. The assassination of Alexander II. by
revolutionaries in 1881 made it difficult for the new autocrat to
cultivate closer relations with a Republican government, although the
Third Republic, under the influence of Gambetta, to whom its
consolidation was chiefly due, had repudiated that proselytizing spirit,
inherited from the great Revolution, which had disquieted the monarchies
of Europe in 1848 and had provoked their hostility to the Second
Republic. But the Triple Alliance which was concluded the year after the
murder of the tsar indicated the possible expediency of an understanding
between the two great powers of the West and the East, in response to
the combination of the three central powers of Europe,--though Bismarck
after his fall revealed that in 1884 a secret treaty was concluded
between Germany and Russia, which was, however, said to have in view a
war between England and Russia. Internal dissension on the subject of
colonial policy in the far East, followed by the fall of Jules Ferry and
the Boulangist agitation were some of the causes which prevented France
from strengthening its position in Europe by seeking a formal
understanding with Russia in the first part of the reign of Alexander
III. But when the Boulangist movement came to an end, entirely from the
incompetency of its leader, it behoved the government of the Republic to
find a means of satisfying the strong patriotic sentiment revealed in
the nation, which, directed by a capable and daring soldier, would have
swept away the parliamentary republic and established a military
dictatorship in its place. The Franco-Russian understanding provided
that means, and Russia was ready for it, having become, by the
termination in 1890 of the secret treaty with Germany, not less isolated
in Europe than France. In July 1891, when the French fleet visited
Kronstadt the incident caused such enthusiasm throughout the French
nation that the exiled General Boulanger's existence would have been
forgotten, except among his dwindling personal followers, had he not put
an end to it by suicide two months later at Brussels. The Franco-Russian
understanding united all parties, not in love for one another but in the
idea that France was thereby about to resume its place in Europe. The
Catholic Royalists ceased to talk of the restitution of the temporal
power of the pope in their joy at the deference of the government of the
republic for the most autocratic monarchy of Christendom; the
Boulangists, now called Nationalists, hoped that it would lead to the
war of revenge with Germany, and that it might also be the means of
humiliating England, as shown by their resentment at the visit of the
French squadron to Portsmouth on its way home from Kronstadt. It is,
however, extremely improbable that the understanding and subsequent
alliance would have been effected had the Boulangist movement succeeded.
For the last thing that the Russian government desired was war with
Germany. What it needed and obtained was security against German
aggression on its frontier and financial aid from France; so a French
plebiscitary government, having for its aim the restitution of Alsace
and Lorraine, would have found no support in Russia. As the German
chancellor, Count von Caprivi, said in the Reichstag on the 27th of
November 1891, a few weeks after a Russian loan had been subscribed in
France nearly eight times over, the naval visit to Kronstadt had not
brought war nearer by one single inch. Nevertheless when in 1893 the
Russian fleet paid a somewhat tardy return visit to Toulon, where it was
reviewed by President Carnot, a party of Russian officers who came to
Paris was received by the population of the capital, which less than
five years before had acclaimed General Boulanger, with raptures which
could not have been exceeded had they brought back to France the
territory lost in 1871. In November 1894, Alexander III. died, and in
January 1895, M. Casimir-Perier resigned the presidency of the Republic,
to which he had succeeded only six months before on the assassination of
M. Carnot. So it was left to Nicholas II. and President Felix Faure to
proclaim the existence of a formal alliance between France and Russia.
It appears that in 1891 and 1892, at the time of the first public
manifestations of friendship between France and Russia, in the words of
M. Ribot, secret conventions were signed by him, being foreign minister,
and M. de Freycinet, president of the council, which secured for France
"the support of Russia for the maintenance of the equilibrium in
Europe"; and on a later occasion the same statesman said that it was
after the visit of the empress Frederick to Paris in 1891 that Alexander
III. made to France certain offers which were accepted. The word
"alliance" was not publicly used by any minister to connote the
relations of France with Russia until the 10th of June 1895, when M.
Hanotaux used the term with cautious vagueness amid the applause of the
Chamber of Deputies. Yet not even when Nicholas II. came to France in
October 1896 was the word "alliance" formally pronounced in any of the
official speeches. But the reception given to the tsar and tsaritsa in
Paris, where no European sovereign had come officially since William of
Germany passed down the Champs Elysees as a conqueror, was of such a
character that none could doubt that this was the consecration of the
alliance. It was at last formally proclaimed by Nicholas II., on board a
French man-of-war, on the occasion of the visit of the president of the
Republic to Russia in August 1897. From that date until the formation of
M. Briand's cabinet in 1909, nine different ministries succeeded one
another and five ministers of foreign affairs; but they all loyally
supported the Franco-Russian alliance, although its popularity
diminished in France long before the war between Russia and Japan, which
deprived it of its efficacy in Europe. In 1901 Nicholas II. came again
to France and was the guest of President Loubet at Compiegne. His visit
excited little enthusiasm in the nation, which was disposed to attribute
it to Russia's financial need of France; while the Socialists, now a
strong party which provided the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry with an
important part of its majority in the Chamber, violently attacked the
alliance of the Republic with a reactionary autocracy. However anomalous
that may have been it did not prevent the whole French nation from
welcoming the friendship between the governments of Russia and of France
in its early stages. Nor can there be any doubt that the popular
instinct was right in according it that welcome. France in its
international relations was strengthened morally by the understanding
and by the alliance, which also served as a check to Germany. But its
association with Russia had not the results hoped for by the French
reactionaries. It encouraged them in their opposition to the
parliamentary Republic during the Dreyfus agitation, the more so because
the Russian autocracy is anti-Semitic. It also made a Nationalist of one
president of the Republic, Felix Faure, whose head was so turned by his
imperial frequentations that he adopted some of the less admirable
practices of princes, and also seemed ready to assume the bearing of an
autocrat. His sudden death was as great a relief to the parliamentary
Republicans as it was a disappointment to the plebiscitary party, which
anti-Dreyfusism, with its patriotic pretensions, had again made a
formidable force in the land. But the election of the pacific and
constitutional M. Loubet as president of the Republic at this critical
moment in its history counteracted any reactionary influence which the
Russian alliance might have had in France; so the general effect of the
alliance was to strengthen the Republic and to add to its prestige. The
visit of the tsar to Paris, the first paid by a friendly sovereign since
the Second Empire, impressed a population, proud of its capital, by an
outward sign which seemed to show that the Republic was not an obstacle
to the recognition by the monarchies of Europe of the place still held
by France among the great powers. Before M. Loubet laid down office the
nation, grown more republican, saw the visit of the tsar followed by
those of the kings of England and of Italy, who might never have been
moved to present their respects to the French Republic had not Russia
shown them the way.


  Relations with England.

While the French rejoiced at the Russian alliance chiefly as a check to
the aggressive designs of Germany, they also liked the association of
France with a power regarded as hostile to England. This traditional
feeling was not discouraged by one of the chief artificers of the
alliance, Baron Mohrenheim, Russian ambassador in Paris, who until 1884
had filled the same position in London, where he had not learned to love
England, and who enjoyed in France a popularity rarely accorded to the
diplomatic agent of a foreign power. An _entente cordiale_ has since
been initiated between England and France. But it is necessary to refer
to the less agreeable relations which existed between the two countries,
as they had some influence on the exterior policy of the Third Republic.
England and France had no causes of friction within Europe. But in its
policy of colonial expansion, during the last twenty years of the 19th
century, France constantly encountered England all over the globe. The
first important enterprise beyond the seas seriously undertaken by
France after the Franco-German War, was, as we have seen, in Tunis. But
even before that question had been mentioned at the congress of Berlin,
in 1878, France had become involved in an adventure in the Far East,
which in its developments attracted more public attention at home than
the extension of French territory in northern Africa. Had these pages
been written before the end of the 19th century it would have seemed
necessary to trace the operations of France in Indo-China with not less
detail than has been given to the establishment of the protectorate in
Tunis. But French hopes of founding a great empire in the Far East came
to an end with the partial resuscitation of China and the rise to power
of Japan. As we have seen, Jules Ferry's idea was that in colonial
expansion France would find the best means of recovering prestige after
the defeat of 1870-71 in the years of recuperation when it was
essential to be diverted from European complications. Jules Ferry was
not a friend of Gambetta, in spite of later republican legends. But the
policy of colonial expansion in Tunis and in Indo-China, associated with
Ferry's name, was projected by Gambetta to give satisfaction to France
for the necessity, imposed, in his opinion, on the French government, of
taking its lead in foreign affairs from Berlin. How Jules Ferry
developed that system we know now from Bismarck's subsequent expressions
of regret at Ferry's fall. He believed that, had Ferry remained in
power, an amicable arrangement would have been made between France and
Germany, a formal agreement having been almost concluded to the effect
that France should maintain peaceable and friendly relations with
Germany, while Bismarck supported France in Tunis, in Indo-China and
generally in its schemes of oversea colonization. Even though the
friendly attitude of Germany towards those schemes was not official the
contrast was manifest between the benevolent tone of the German press
and that of the English, which was generally hostile. Jules Ferry took
his stand on the position that his policy was one not of colonial
conquest, but of colonial conservation, that without Tunis, Algeria was
insecure, that without Tongking and Annam, there was danger of losing
Cochin-China, where the French had been in possession since 1861. It was
on the Tongking question that Ferry fell. On the 30th of March 1885, on
the news of the defeat of the French troops at Lang-Son, the Chamber
refused to vote the money for carrying on the campaign by a majority of
306 to 149. Since that day public opinion in France has made amends to
the memory of Jules Ferry. His patriotic foresight has been extolled.
Criticism has not been spared for the opponents of his policy in
parliament of whom the most conspicuous, M. Clemenceau and M. Ribot,
have survived to take a leading part in public affairs in the 20th
century. The attitude of the Parisian press, which compared Lang-Son
with Sedan and Jules Ferry with Emile Ollivier, has been generally
deplored, as has that of the public which was ready to offer violence to
the fallen minister, and which was still so hostile to him in 1887 that
the congress at Versailles was persuaded that there would be a
revolution in Paris if it elected "the German Ferry" president of the
Republic. Nevertheless his adversaries in parliament, in the press and
in the street have been justified--not owing to their superior sagacity,
but owing to a series of unexpected events which the most foreseeing
statesmen of the world never anticipated. The Indo-China dream of Jules
Ferry might have led to a magnificent empire in the East to compensate
for that which Dupleix lost and Napoleon failed to reconquer.

The Russian alliance, which came at the time when Ferry's policy was
justified in the eyes of the public, too late for him to enjoy any
credit, gave a new impetus to the French idea of establishing an empire
in the Far East. In the opinion of all the prophets of Europe the great
international struggle in the near future was to be that of England with
Russia for the possession of India. If Russia won, France might have a
share in the dismembered Indian empire, of which part of the frontier
now marched with that of French Indo-China, since Burma had become
British and Tongking French. Such aspirations were not formulated in
white-books or in parliamentary speeches. Indeed, the apprehension of
difficulty with England limited French ambition on the Siamese frontier.
That did not prevent dangerous friction arising between England and
France on the question of the Mekong, the river which flows from China
almost due south into the China Sea traversing the whole length of
French Indo-China, and forming part of the eastern boundary of Upper
Burma and Siam. The aim of France was to secure the whole of the left
bank of the Mekong, the highway of commerce from southern China. The
opposition of Siam to this delimitation was believed by the French to be
inspired by England, the supremacy of France on the Mekong river being
prejudicial to British commerce with China. The inevitable rivalry
between the two powers reached an acute crisis in 1893, the British
ambassador in Paris being Lord Dufferin, who well understood the
question, upper Burma having been annexed to India under his
viceroyalty in 1885. The matter was not settled until 1894, when not
only was the French claim to the left bank of the Mekong allowed, but
the neutrality of a 25-kilometre zone on the Siamese bank was conceded
as open to French trade. It is said that at one moment in July 1893
England and France were more nearly at war than at any other
international crisis under the Third Republic, not excluding that of
Fashoda, though the acute tension between the governments was unknown to
the public.

The Panama affair had left French public opinion in a nervous condition.
Fantastic charges were brought not only in the press, but in the chamber
of deputies, against newspapers and politicians of having accepted
bribes from the British government. At the general election in August
and September 1893 M. Clemenceau was pursued into his distant
constituency in the Var by a crowd of Parisian politicians, who brought
about his defeat less by alleging his connexion with the Panama scandal
than by propagating the legend that he was the paid agent of England.
The official republic, which changed its prime minister three times and
its foreign minister twice in 1893, M. Develle filling that post in the
Ribot and Dupuy ministries and M. Casimir-Perier in his own, repudiated
with energy the calumnies as to the attempted interference of England in
French domestic affairs. But the successive governments were not in a
mood to make concessions in foreign questions, as all France was under
the glamour of the preliminary manifestations of the Russian alliance.
This was seen, a few weeks after the elections, in the wild enthusiasm
with which Paris received Admiral Avelane and his officers, who had
brought the Russian fleet to Toulon to return the visit of the French
fleet to Kronstadt in 1891. The death of Marshal MacMahon, who had won
his first renown in the Crimea, and his funeral at the Invalides while
the Russians were in Paris, were used to emphasize the fact that the
allies before Sebastopol were no longer friends. The projector of the
French empire in the Far East did not live to see this phase of the
seeming justification of the policy which had cost him place and
popularity. Jules Ferry had died on the 17th of March 1893, only three
weeks after his triumphant rehabilitation in the political world by his
election to the presidency of the Senate, the second post in the state.
The year he died it seemed as though with the active aid of Russia and
the sympathy of Germany the possessions of France in south-eastern Asia
might have indefinitely expanded into southern China. A few years later
the defeat of Russia by Japan and the rise of the sea-power of the
Japanese practically ended the French empire in Indo-China. What the
French already had at the end of the last century is virtually
guaranteed to them only by the Anglo-Japanese alliance. It is in the
irony of things that these possessions which were a sign of French
rivalry with England should now be secured to France by England's
friendliness. For it is now recognized by the French that the defence of
Indo-China is impossible.


  African policy.

  French and English rivalry.

  Upper Nile exploration.

  Marchand mission.

  Fashoda.

  Convention of 1898.

Had the French dream been realized of a large expansion of territory
into southern China, the success of the new empire would have been based
on free Chinese labour. This might have counterbalanced an initial
obstacle to all French colonial schemes, more important than those which
arise from international difficulties--the reluctance of the French to
establish themselves as serious colonists in their oversea possessions.
We have noted how Algeria, which is nearer to Toulon and Marseilles than
are Paris and Havre, has been comparatively neglected by the French,
after eighty years of occupation, in spite of the amenity of its climate
and its soil for European settlers. The new French colonial school
advocates the withdrawal of France from adventures in distant tropical
countries which can be reached only by long sea voyages, and the
concentration of French activity in the northern half of the African
continent. Madagascar is, as we have seen, counted as Africa in
computing the area of French colonial territory. But it lies entirely
outside the scheme of African colonization, and in spite of the loss of
life and money incurred in its conquest, its retention is not popular
with the new school, although the first claim of France to it was as
long ago as the reign of Louis XIII., when in 1642 a company was founded
under the protection of Richelieu for the colonization of the island.
The French of the 19th and 20th centuries may well be considered less
enterprising in both hemispheres than were their ancestors of the 17th,
and Madagascar, after having been the cause of much ill-feeling between
England and France under the Third Republic down to the time of its
formal annexation, by the law of the 9th of August 1896, is not now the
object of much interest among French politicians. On the African
continent it is different. When the Republic succeeded to the Second
Empire the French African possessions outside Algiers were
inconsiderable in area. The chief was Senegal, which though founded as a
French station under Louis XIII., was virtually the creation of
Faidherbe under the Second Empire, even in a greater degree than were
Tunis and Tongking of Jules Ferry under the Third Republic. There was
also Gabun, which is now included in French Congo. Those outposts in the
tropics became the starting-points for the expansion of a French sphere
of influence in north Africa, which by the beginning of the 20th century
made France the nominal possessor of a vast territory stretching from
the equatorial region on the gulf of Guinea to the Mediterranean. A
large portion of it is of no importance, including the once mysterious
Timbuktu and the wilds of the waterless Sahara desert. But the steps
whereby these wide tracts of wilderness and of valuable territory came
to be marked on the maps in French colours, by international agreement,
are important, as they were associated with the last serious official
dispute between England and France before the period of _entente_. M.
Hanotaux, who was foreign minister for the then unprecedented term of
four years, from 1894 to 1898, with one short interval of a few months,
has thrown an instructive light on the feeling with which French
politicians up to the end of the 19th century regarded England. He
declared in 1909, with the high authority of one who was during years of
Anglo-French tension the mouthpiece of the Republic in its relations
with other powers, that every move in the direction of colonial
expansion made by France disquieted and irritated England. He complained
that when France, under the stimulating guidance of Jules Ferry,
undertook the reconstitution of an oversea domain, England barred the
way--in Egypt, in Tunis, in Madagascar, in Indo-China, in the Congo, in
Oceania. Writing with the knowledge of an ex-foreign minister, who had
enjoyed many years of retirement to enable him to weigh his words, M.
Hanotaux asserted without any qualification that when he took office
England "had conceived a triple design, to assume the position of heir
to the Portuguese possessions in Africa, to destroy the independence of
the South African republics, and to remain in perpetuity in Egypt." We
have not to discuss the truth of those propositions, we have only to
note the tendency of French policy; and in so doing it is useful to
remark that the official belief of the Third Republic in the last period
of the 19th century was that England was the enemy of French colonial
expansion all over the globe, and that in the so-called scramble for
Africa English ambition was the chief obstacle to the schemes of France.
M. Hanotaux, with the authority of official knowledge, indicated that
the English project of a railway from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo was
the provocation which stimulated the French to essay a similar
adventure; though he denied that the Marchand mission and other similar
expeditions about to be mentioned were conceived with the specific
object of preventing the accomplishment of the British plan. The
explorations of Stanley had demonstrated that access to the Great Lakes
and the Upper Nile could be effected as easily from the west coast of
Africa as from other directions. The French, from their ancient
possession of Gabun, had extended their operations far to the east, and
had by treaties with European powers obtained the right bank of the
Ubanghi, a great affluent of the Congo, as a frontier between their
territory and that of the Congo Independent State. They thus found
themselves, with respect to Europe, in possession of a region which
approached the valley of the Upper Nile. Between the fall of Jules Ferry
in 1885 and the beginning of the Russian alliance came a period of
decreased activity in French colonial expansion. The unpopularity of the
Tongking expedition was one of the causes of the popularity of General
Boulanger, who diverted the French public from distant enterprises to a
contemplation of the German frontier, and when Boulangism came to an end
the Panama affair took its place in the interest it excited. But the
colonial party in France did not lose sight of the possibility of
establishing a position on the Upper Nile. The partition of Africa
seemed to offer an occasion for France to take compensation for the
English occupation of Egypt. In 1892 the Budget Commission, on the
proposal of M. Etienne, deputy for Oran, who had three times been
colonial under secretary, voted 300,000 francs for the despatch of a
mission to explore and report on those regions, which had not had much
attention since the days of Emin. But the project was not then carried
out. Later, parliament voted a sum six times larger for strengthening
the French positions on the Upper Ubanghi and their means of
communication with the coast. But Colonel Monteil's expedition, which
was the consequence of this vote, was diverted, and the 1,800,000 francs
were spent at Loango, the southern port of French Congo, and on the
Ivory Coast, the French territory which lies between Liberia and the
British Gold Coast Colony, where a prolonged war ensued with Samory, a
Nigerian chieftain. In September 1894, M. Delcasse being colonial
minister, M. Liotard was appointed commissioner of the Upper Ubanghi
with instructions to extend French influence in the Bahr-el-Ghazal up to
the Nile. In addition to official missions, numerous expeditions of
French explorers took place in Central Africa during this period, and
negotiations were continually going on between the British and French
governments. Towards the end of 1895 Lord Salisbury, who had succeeded
Lord Kimberley at the foreign office, informed Baron de Courcel, the
French ambassador, that an expedition to the Upper Nile was projected
for the purpose of putting an end to Mahdism. M. Hanotaux was not at
this moment minister of foreign affairs. He had been succeeded by M.
Berthelot, the eminent chemist, who resigned that office on the 26th of
March 1896, a month before the fall of the Bourgeois cabinet of which he
was a member, in consequence of a question raised in the chamber on this
subject of the English expedition to the Soudan. According to M.
Hanotaux, who returned to the Quai d'Orsay, in the Meline ministry, on
the 29th of April 1896, Lord Salisbury at the end of the previous year,
in announcing the expedition confidentially to M. de Courcel, had
assured him that it would not go beyond Dongola without a preliminary
understanding with France. There must have been a misunderstanding on
this point, as after reaching Dongola in September 1896 the
Anglo-Egyptian army proceeded up the Nile in the direction of Khartoum.
Before M. Hanotaux resumed office the Marchand mission had been formally
planned. On the 24th of February 1896 M. Guieysse, colonial minister in
the Bourgeois ministry, had signed Captain Marchand's instructions to
the effect that he must march through the Upper Ubanghi, in order to
extend French influence as far as the Nile, and try to reach that river
before Colonel Colvile, who was leading an expedition from the East. He
was also advised to conciliate the Mahdi if the aim of the mission could
be benefited thereby. M. Liotard was raised to the rank of governor of
the Upper Ubanghi, and in a despatch to him the new colonial minister,
M. Andre Lebon, wrote that the Marchand mission was not to be considered
a military enterprise, it being sent out with the intention of
maintaining the political line which for two years M. Liotard had
persistently been following, and of which the establishment of France in
the basin of the Nile ought to be the crowning reward. Two days later,
on the 25th of June 1896, Captain Marchand embarked for Africa. This is
not the place for a description of his adventures in crossing the
continent or when he encountered General Kitchener at Fashoda, two
months after his arrival there in July 1898 and a fortnight after the
battle of Omdurman and the capture of Khartoum. The news was made known
to Europe by the sirdar's telegrams to the British government in
September announcing the presence of the French mission at Fashoda. Then
ensued a period of acute tension between the French and English
governments, which gave the impression to the public that war between
the two countries was inevitable. But those who were watching the
situation in France on the spot knew that there was no question of
fighting. France was unprepared, and was also involved in the toils of
the Dreyfus affair. Had the situation been that of a year later, when
the French domestic controversy was ending and the Transvaal War
beginning, England might have been in a very difficult position. General
Kitchener declined to recognize a French occupation of any part of the
Nile valley. A long discussion ensued between the British and French
governments, which was ended by the latter deciding on the 6th of
November 1898 not to maintain the Marchand mission at Fashoda. Captain
Marchand refused to return to Europe by way of the Nile and Lower Egypt,
marching across Abyssinia to Jibuti in French Somaliland, where he
embarked for France. He was received with well-merited enthusiasm in
Paris. But the most remarkable feature of his reception was that the
ministry became so alarmed lest the popularity of the hero of Fashoda
should be at the expense of that of the parliamentary republic, that it
put an end to the public acclamations by despatching him secretly from
the capital--a somewhat similar treatment having been accorded to
General Dodds in 1893 on his return to France after conquering Dahomey.
The Marchand mission had little effect on African questions at issue
between France and Great Britain, as a great settlement had been
effected while it was on its way across the continent. On the 14th of
June 1898, the day before the fall of the Meline ministry, when M.
Hanotaux finally quitted the Quai d'Orsay, a convention of general
delimitation was signed at Paris by that minister and by the British
ambassador, Sir Edmund Monson, which as regards the respective claims of
England and France covered in its scope the whole of the northern half
of Africa from Senegambia and the Congo to the valley of the Nile.
Comparatively little attention was paid to it amid the exciting events
which followed, so little that M. de Courcel has officially recorded
that three months later, on the eve of the Fashoda incident, Lord
Salisbury declared to him that he was not sufficiently acquainted with
the geography of Africa to express an opinion on certain questions of
delimitation arising out of the success of the British expedition on the
Upper Nile. The convention of June 1898 was, however, of the highest
importance, as it affirmed the junction into one vast territory of the
three chief African domains of France, Algeria and Tunis, Senegal and
the Niger, Chad and the Congo, thus conceding to France the whole of the
north-western continent with the exception of Morocco, Liberia and the
European colonies on the Atlantic. This arrangement, which was completed
by an additional convention on the 21st of March 1899, made Morocco a
legitimate object of French ambition.


  The entente with England.

The other questions which caused mutual animosity between England and
France in the decline of the 19th century had nothing whatever to do
with their conflicting international interests. The offensive attitude
of the English press towards France on account of the Dreyfus affair was
repaid by the French in their criticism of the Boer War. When those
sentimental causes of mutual irritation had become less acute, the press
of the two countries was moved by certain influences to recognize that
it was in their interest to be on good terms with one another. The
importance of their commercial relations was brought into relief as
though it were a new fact. At last in 1903 state visits between the
rulers of England and of France took place in their respective capitals,
for the first time since the early days of the Second Empire, followed
by an Anglo-French convention signed on the 8th of April 1904. By this
an arrangement was come to on outstanding questions of controversy
between England and France in various parts of the world. France
undertook not to interfere with the action of England in Egypt, while
England made a like undertaking as to French influence in Morocco.
France conceded certain of its fishing rights in Newfoundland which had
been a perpetual source of irritation between the two countries for
nearly two hundred years since the treaty of Utrecht of 1713. In return
England made several concessions to France in Africa, including that of
the Los Islands off Sierra Leone and some rectifications of frontier on
the Gambia and between the Niger and Lake Chad. Other points of
difference were arranged as to Siam, the New Hebrides and Madagascar.
The convention of 1904 was on the whole more advantageous for England
than for France. The free hand which England conceded to France in
dealing with Morocco was a somewhat burdensome gift owing to German
interference; but the incidents which arose from the Franco-German
conflict in that country are as yet too recent for any estimate of their
possible consequences.


  The work of M. Delcasse.

One result was the retirement of M. Delcasse from the foreign office on
the 6th of June 1905. He had been foreign minister for seven years, a
consecutive period of rare length, only once exceeded in England since
the creation of the office, when Castlereagh held it for ten years, and
one of prodigious duration in the history of the Third Republic. He
first went to the Quai d'Orsay in the Brisson ministry of June 1898,
remained there during the Dupuy ministry of the same year, was
reappointed by M. Waldeck-Rousseau in his cabinet which lasted from June
1899 to June 1902, was retained in the post by M. Combes till his
ministry fell in January 1905, and again by his successor M. Rouvier
till his own resignation in June of that year. M. Delcasse had thus an
uninterrupted reign at the foreign office during a long critical period
of transition both in the interior politics of France and in its
exterior relations. He went to the Quai d'Orsay when the Dreyfus
agitation was most acute, and left it when parliament was absorbed in
discussing the separation of church and state. He saw the Franco-Russian
alliance lose its popularity in the country even before the Russian
defeat by the Japanese in the last days of his ministry. Although in the
course of his official duties at the colonial office he had been partly
responsible for some of the expeditions sent to Africa for the purpose
of checking British influence, he was fully disposed to pursue a policy
which might lead to a friendly understanding with England. In this he
differed from M. Hanotaux, who was essentially the man of the
Franco-Russian alliance, owing to it much of his prestige, including his
election to the French Academy, and Russia, to which he gave exclusive
allegiance, was then deemed to be primarily the enemy of England. M.
Delcasse on the contrary, from the first, desired to assist a
_rapprochement_ between England and Russia as preliminary to the
arrangement he proposed between England and France. He was foreign
minister when the tsar paid his second visit to France, but there was no
longer the national unanimity which welcomed him in 1896, M. Delcasse
also accompanied President Loubet to Russia when he returned the tsar's
second visit in 1902. But exchange of compliments between France and
Russia were no longer to be the sole international ceremonials within
the attributes of the French foreign office; M. Delcasse was minister
when the procession of European sovereigns headed by the kings of
England and of Italy in 1903 came officially to Paris, and he went with
M. Loubet to London and to Rome on the president's return visits to
those capitals--the latter being the immediate cause of the rupture of
the concordat with the Vatican, though M. Delcasse was essentially a
concordatory minister. His retirement from the Rouvier ministry in June
1905 was due to pressure from Germany in consequence of his opposition
to German interference in Morocco. His resignation took place just a
week after the news had arrived of the destruction of the Russian fleet
by the Japanese, which completed the disablement of the one ally of
France. The impression was current in France that Germany wished to give
the French nation a fright before the understanding with England had
reached an effective stage, and it was actually believed that the
resignation of M. Delcasse averted a declaration of war. Although that
belief revived to some extent the fading enmity of the French towards
the conquerors of Alsace-Lorraine, the fear which accompanied it moved a
considerable section of the nation to favour an understanding with
Germany in preference to, or even at the expense of, friendly relations
with England. M. Clemenceau, who only late in life came into office, and
attained it at the moment when a better understanding with England was
progressing, had been throughout his long career, of all French public
men in all political groups, the most consistent friend of England. His
presence at the head of affairs was a guarantee of amicable Anglo-French
relations, so far as they could be protected by statesmanship.

By reason of the increased duration and stability of ministries, the
personal influence of ministers in directing the foreign policy of
France has in one sense become greater in the 20th century than in those
earlier periods when France had first to recuperate its strength after
the war and then to take its exterior policy from Germany. Moreover, not
only have cabinets lasted longer, but the foreign minister has often
been retained in a succession of them. Of the thirty years which in 1909
had elapsed since Marshal MacMahon retired and the republic was governed
by republicans, in the first fifteen years from 1879 to 1894 fourteen
different persons held the office of minister of foreign affairs, while
six sufficed for the fifteen years succeeding the latter date. One must
not, however, exaggerate the effect of this greater stability in
office-holding upon continuity of policy, which was well maintained even
in the days when there was on an average a new foreign minister every
year. Indeed the most marked breach in the continuity of the foreign
policy of France has been made in that later period of long terms of
office, which, with the repudiation of the Concordat, has seen the
withdrawal of the French protectorate over Roman Catholic missions in
the East--though it is too soon to estimate the result. In another
respect France has under the republic departed a long way from a
tradition of the Quai d'Orsay. It no longer troubles itself on the
subject of nationalities. Napoleon III., who had more French temperament
than French blood in his constitution, was an idealist on this question,
and one of the causes of his own downfall and the defeat of France was
his sympathy in this direction with German unity. Since Sedan little has
been done in France to further the doctrine of nationalities. A faint
echo of it was heard during the Boer war, but French sympathy with the
struggling Dutch republics of South Africa was based rather on
anti-English sentiment than on any abstract theory.     (J. E. C. B.)

  BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRENCH HISTORY.--The scientific study of the history
  of France only begins with the 16th century. It was hampered at first
  by the traditions of the middle ages and by a servile imitation of
  antiquity. Paulus Aemilius of Verona (_De rebus gestis Francorum_,
  1517), who may be called the first of modern historians, merely
  applies the oratorical methods of the Latin historiographers. It is
  not till the second half of the century that history emancipates
  itself; Catholics and Protestants alike turn to it for arguments in
  their religious and political controversies. Francois Hotman published
  (1574) his _Franco-Gallia_; Claude Fauchet his _Antiquites gauloises
  et francoises_ (1579); Etienne Pasquier his _Recherches de la France_
  (1611), "the only work of erudition of the 16th century which one can
  read through without being bored." Amateurs like Petau, A. de Thou,
  Bongars and Peiresc collected libraries to which men of learning went
  to draw their knowledge of the past; Pierre Pithou, one of the authors
  of the _Satire Menippee_, published the earliest annals of France
  (_Annales Francorum_, 1588, and _Historiae Francorum scriptores
  coetanei XI._, 1596), Jacques Bongars collected in his _Gesta Dei per
  Francos_ (1611-1617) the principal chroniclers of the Crusades. Others
  made a study of chronology like J.J. Scaliger (_De emendatione
  temporum_, 1583; _Thesaurus temporum_, 1606), sketched the history of
  literature, like Francois Grude, sieur of La Croix in Maine
  (_Bibliotheque francoise_, 1584), and Antoine du Verdier (_Catalogue
  de tous les auteurs qui ont ecrit ou traduit en francais_, 1585), or
  discussed the actual principles of historical research, like Jean
  Bodin (_Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem_, 1566) and Henri
  Lancelot Voisin de La Popeliniere (_Histoire des histoires_, 1599).

  But the writers of history are as yet very inexpert; the _Histoire
  generale des rois de France_ of Bernard de Girard, seigneur de Haillan
  (1576), the _Grandes Annales de France_ of Francois de Belleforest
  (1579), the _Inventaire general de l'histoire de France_ of Jean de
  Serres (1597), the _Histoire generale de France depuis Pharamond_ of
  Scipion Dupleix (1621-1645), the _Histoire de France_ (1643-1651) of
  Francois Eudes de Mezeray, and above all his _Abrege chronologique de
  l'histoire de France_ (1668), are compilations which were eagerly
  read when they appeared, but are worthless nowadays. Historical
  research lacked method, leaders and trained workers; it found them all
  in the 17th century, the golden age of learning which was honoured
  alike by laymen, priests and members of the monastic orders,
  especially the Benedictines of the congregation of St Maur. The
  publication of original documents was carried on with enthusiasm. To
  Andre Duchesne we owe two great collections of chronicles: the
  _Historiae Normannorum scriptores antiqui_ (1619) and the _Historiae
  Francorum scriptores_, continued by his son Francois (5 vols.,
  1636-1649). These publications were due to a part only of his
  prodigious activity; his papers and manuscripts, preserved in the
  Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, are an inexhaustible mine. Charles du
  Fresne, seigneur du Cange, published Villehardouin (1657) and
  Joinville (1668); Etienne Baluze, the _Capitularia regum Francorum_
  (1674), the _Nova collectio conciliorum_ (1677), the _Vitae paparum
  Avenionensium_ (1693). The clergy were very much aided in their work
  by their private libraries and by their co-operation; Pere Philippe
  Labbe published his _Bibliotheca nova manuscriptorum_ (1657), and
  began (1671) his _Collection des conciles_, which was successfully
  completed by his colleague Pere Cossart (18 vols.). In 1643 the Jesuit
  Jean Bolland brought out vol. i. of the _Acta sanctorum_, a vast
  collection of stories and legends which has not yet been completed
  beyond the 4th of November. (See BOLLANDISTS.) The Benedictines, for
  their part, published the _Acta sanctorum ordinis sancti Benedicti_ (9
  vols., 1668-1701). One of the chief editors of this collection, Dom
  Jean Mabillon, published on his own account the Vetera analecta (4
  vols., 1675-1685) and prepared the _Annales ordinis sancti Benedicti_
  (6 vols., 1703-1793). To Dom Thierri Ruinart we owe good editions of
  Gregory of Tours and Fredegarius (1699). The learning of the 17th
  century further inaugurated those specialized studies which are
  important aids to history. Mabillon in his _De re diplomatica_ (1681)
  creates the science of documents or diplomatics. Adrien de Valois lays
  a sound foundation for historical geography by his critical edition of
  the _Notitia Galliarum_ (1675). Numismatics finds an enlightened
  pioneer in Francois Leblanc (_Traite historique des monnaies de
  France_, 1690). Du Cange, one of the greatest of the French scholars
  who have studied the middle ages, has defined terms bearing on
  institutions in his _Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis_ (1678),
  recast by the Benedictines (1733), with an important supplement by Dom
  Carpentier (1768), republished twice during the 19th century, with
  additions, by F. Didot (1840-1850), and by L. Favre at Niort
  (1883-1888); this work is still indispensable to every student of
  medieval history. Finally, great biographical or bibliographical works
  were undertaken; the _Gallia christiana_, which gave a chronological
  list of the archbishops, bishops and abbots of the Gauls and of
  France, was compiled by two twin brothers, Scevole and Louis de
  Sainte-Marthe, and by the two sons of Louis (4 vols., 1656); a fresh
  edition, on a better plan, and with great additions, was begun in 1715
  by Denys de Sainte-Marthe, continued throughout the 18th century by
  the Benedictines, and finished in the 19th century by Barthelemy
  Haureau (1856-1861).

  As to the nobility, a series of researches and publications, begun by
  Pierre d'Hozier (d. 1660) and continued well on into the 19th century
  by several of his descendants, developed into the _Armorial general de
  la France_, which was remodelled several times. A similar work, of a
  more critical nature, was carried out by Pere Anselme (_Histoire
  genealogique de la maison de France et des grands officiers de la
  couronne_, 1674) and by Pere Ange and Pere Simplicien, who completed
  the work (3rd ed. in 9 vols., 1726-1733). Critical bibliography is
  especially represented by certain Protestants, expelled from France by
  the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Pierre Bayle, the sceptic,
  famous for his _Dictionnaire critique_ (1699), which is in part a
  refutation of the _Dictionnaire historique et geographique_ published
  in 1673 by the Abbe Louis Moreri, was the first to publish the
  _Nouvelles de la republique des lettres_ (1684-1687), which was
  continued by Henri Basnage de Beauval under the title of _Histoire des
  ouvrages des savants_ (24 vols.). In imitation of this, Jean Le Clerc
  successively edited a _Bibliotheque universelle et historique_
  (1686-1693), a _Bibliotheque choisie_ (1703-1713), and a _Bibliotheque
  ancienne et moderne_ (1714-1727). These were the first of our
  "periodicals."

  The 18th century continues the traditions of the 17th. The
  Benedictines still for some time hold the first place. Dom Edmond
  Martene visited numerous archives (which were then closed) in France
  and neighbouring countries, and drew from them the material for two
  important collections: _Thesaurus novus anecdotorum_ (9 vols., 1717,
  in collaboration with Dom Ursin Durand) and _Veterum scriptorum
  collectio_ (9 vols., 1724-1733). Dom Bernard de Montfaucon also
  travelled in search of illustrated records of antiquity; private
  collections, among others the celebrated collection of Gaignieres (now
  in the Bibliotheque Nationale), provided him with the illustrations
  which he published in his _Monuments de la monarchie francoise_ (5
  vols., 1729-1733). The text is in two languages, Latin and French. Dom
  Martin Bouquet took up the work begun by the two Duchesnes, and in
  1738 published vol. i. of the Historians of France (_Rerum Gallicarum
  et Francicarum scriptores_), an enormous collection which was intended
  to include all the sources of the history of France, grouped under
  centuries and reigns. He produced the first eight volumes himself; his
  work was continued by several collaborators, the most active of whom
  was Dom Michel J. Brial, and already comprised thirteen volumes when
  it was interrupted by the Revolution. In 1733, Antoine Rivet de La
  Grange produced vol. i. of the _Histoire litteraire de la France_,
  which in 1789 numbered twelve volumes. While Dom C. Francois Toustaint
  and Dom Rene Prosper Tassin published a _Nouveau Traite de
  diplomatique_ (6 vols., 1750-1765), others were undertaking the _Art
  de verifier les dates_ (1750; new and much enlarged edition in 1770).
  Still others, with more or less success, attempted histories of the
  provinces.

  In the second half of the 18th century, the ardour of the Benedictines
  of St Maur diminished, and scientific work passed more and more into
  the hands of laymen. The Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres,
  founded in 1663 and reorganized in 1701, became its chief instrument,
  numbering among its members Denis Francois Secousse, who continued the
  collection of _Ordonnances des rois de France_, begun (1723) by J. de
  Lauriere; J.-B. de La Curne de Sainte Palaye (_Memoires sur l'ancienne
  chevalerie_, 1759-1781; _Glossaire de la langue francaise depuis son
  origine jusqu'a la fin de Louis XIV_, printed only in 1875-1882);
  J.-B. d'Anville (_Notice sur l'ancienne Gaule tiree des monuments_,
  1760); and L.G. de Brequigny, the greatest of them all, who continued
  the publication of the _Ordonnances_, began the _Table chronologique
  des diplomes concernant l'histoire de France_ (3 vols., 1769-1783),
  published the _Diplomata, chartae, ad res Francicas spectantia_ (1791,
  with the collaboration of La Porte du Theil), and directed fruitful
  researches in the archives in London, to enrich the _Cabinet des
  chartes_, where Henri Bertin (1719-1792), an enlightened minister of
  Louis XV., had in 1764 set himself the task of collecting the
  documentary sources of the national history. The example set by the
  religious orders and the government bore fruit. The general assembly
  of the clergy gave orders that its _Proces verbaux_ (9 vols.,
  1767-1789) should be printed; some of the provinces decided to have
  their history written, and mostly applied to the Benedictines to have
  this done. Brittany was treated by Dom Lobineau (1707) and Dom Morice
  (1742); the duchy of Burgundy by Dom Urbain Plancher (1739-1748);
  Languedoc by Dom Dominique Vaissete (1730-1749, in collaboration with
  Dom Claude de Vic; new ed. 1873-1893); for Paris, its secular history
  was treated by Dom Michel Felibien and Dom Lobineau (1725), and its
  ecclesiastical history by the abbe Lebeuf (1745-1760; new ed.
  1883-1890).

  This ever-increasing stream of new evidence aroused curiosity, gave
  rise to pregnant comparisons, developed and sharpened the critical
  sense, but further led to a more and more urgent need for exact
  information. The Academie des Inscriptions brought out its _Histoire
  de l'Academie avec les memoires de litterature tires de ses registres_
  (vol. i. 1717; 51 vols. appeared before the Revolution, with five
  indexes; _vide_ the _Bibliographie_ of Lasteyrie, vol. iii. pp. 256 et
  seq.). Other collections, mostly of the nature of bibliographies, were
  the _Journal des savants_ (111 vols., from 1665 to 1792; _vide_ the
  _Table methodique_ by H. Cocheris, 1860); the _Journal de Trevoux_, or
  _Memoires pour l'histoire des sciences et des beaux-arts_, edited by
  Jesuits (265 vols., 1701-1790); the _Mercure de France_ (977 vols.,
  from 1724 to 1791). To these must be added the dictionaries and
  encyclopaedias: the _Dictionnaire de Moreri_, the last edition of
  which numbers 10 vols. (1759); the _Dictionnaire geographique,
  historique et politique des Gaules et de la France_, by the abbe J.J.
  Expilly (6 vols., 1762-1770; unfinished); the _Repertoire universel et
  raisonne de jurisprudence civile, criminelle, canonique et
  beneficiale_, by Guyot (64 vols., 1775-1786; supplement in 17 vols.,
  1784-1785), reorganized and continued by Merlin de Douai, who was
  afterwards one of the _Montagnards_, a member of the Directory, and a
  count under the Empire.

  The historians did not use to the greatest advantage the treasures of
  learning provided for them; they were for the most part superficial,
  and dominated by their political or religious prejudices. Thus works
  like that of Pere Gabriel Daniel (_Histoire de France_, 3 vols.,
  1713), of President Henault (_Abrege chronologique_, 1744; 25 editions
  between 1770 and 1834), of the abbe Paul Francois Velly and those who
  completed his work (_Histoire de France_, 33 vols., 1765 to 1783), of
  G.H. Gaillard (_Histoire de la rivalite de la France et de
  l'Angleterre_, 11 vols., 1771-1777), and of L.P. Anquetil (1805), in
  spite of the brilliant success with which they met at first, have
  fallen into a just oblivion. A separate place must be given to the
  works of the theorists and philosophers: _Histoire de l'ancien
  gouvernement de la France_, by the Comte de Boulainvilliers (1727),
  _Histoire critique de l'etablissement de la monarchie francoise dans
  les deux Gaules_, by the abbe J.B. Dubos (1734); _L'Esprit des lois_,
  by the president de Montesquieu (1748); the _Observations sur
  l'histoire de France_, by the abbe de Mably (1765); the _Theorie de la
  politique de la monarchie francaise_, by Marie Pauline de Lezardiere
  (1792). These works have, if nothing else, the merit of provoking
  reflection.

  At the time of the Revolution this activity was checked. The religious
  communities and royal academies were suppressed, and France violently
  broke with even her most recent past, which was considered to belong
  to the _ancien regime_. When peace was re-established, she began the
  task of making good the damage which had been done, but a greater
  effort was now necessary in order to revive the spirit of the
  institutions which had been overthrown. The new state, which was, in
  spite of all, bound by so many ties to the former order of things,
  seconded this effort, and during the whole of the 19th century, and
  even longer, had a strong influence on historical production. The
  section of the Institut de France, which in 1816 assumed the old name
  of Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, began to reissue the
  two series of the _Memoires_ and of the _Notices et extraits des
  manuscrits tires de la bibliotheque royale_ (the first volume had
  appeared in 1787); began (1844) that of the _Memoires presentes par
  divers savants_ and the _Comptes rendus_ (subject index 1857-1900, by
  G. Ledos, 1906); and continued the _Recueil des historiens de France_,
  the plan of which was enlarged by degrees (_Historiens des croisades,
  obituaires, pouilles, comptes_, &c.), the _Ordonnances_ and the _Table
  chronologique des diplomes_. During the reign of Louis Philippe, the
  ministry of the interior reorganized the administration of the
  archives of the departments, communes and hospitals, of which the
  _Inventaires sommaires_ are a mine of precious information (see the
  _Rapport au ministre_, by G. Servois, 1902). In 1834 the ministry of
  public instruction founded a committee, which has been called since
  1881 the Comite des Travaux historiques et scientifiques, under the
  direction of which have been published: (1) the _Collection des
  documents inedits relatifs a l'histoire de France_ (more than 260
  vols. have appeared since 1836); (2) the _Catalogue general des
  manuscrits des bibliotheques de France_; (3) the _Dictionnaires
  topographiques_ (25 vols. have appeared); and the _Repertoires
  archeologiques_ of the French departments (8 vols. between 1861 and
  1888); (4) several series of _Bulletins_, the details of which will be
  found in the _Bibliographie_ of Lasteyrie. At the same time were
  founded or reorganized, both in Paris and the departments, numerous
  societies, devoted sometimes partially and sometimes exclusively to
  history and archaeology; the Academie Celtique (1804), which in 1813
  became the Societe des Antiquaires de France (general index by M.
  Prou, 1894); the Societe de l'Histoire de France (1834); the Societe
  de l'Ecole des Chartes (1839); the Societe de l'Histoire de Paris et
  de l'Ile-de-France (1874; four decennial indexes), &c. The details
  will be found in the excellent _Bibliographie generale des travaux
  historiques et archeologiques publies par les societes savantes de
  France_, which has appeared since 1885 under the direction of Robert
  de Lasteyrie.

  Individual scholars also associated themselves with this great
  literary movement. Guizot published a _Collection de memoires relatifs
  a l'histoire de France_ (31 vols., 1824-1835); Buchon, a _Collection
  des chroniques nationales francaises ecrites en langue vulgaire du
  XIII^e au XVI^e siecle_ (47 vols., 1824-1829), and a _Choix de
  chroniques et memoires sur l'histoire de France_ (14 vols.,
  1836-1841); Petitot and Monmerque, a _Collection de memoires relatifs
  a l'histoire de France_ (131 vols., 1819-1829); Michaud and Poujoulat,
  a _Nouvelle Collection de memoires pour servir a l'histoire de France_
  (32 vols., 1836-1839); Barriere and de Lescure, a _Bibliotheque de
  memoires relatifs a l'histoire de France pendant le XVIII^e siecle_
  (30 vols., 1855-1875); and finally Berville and Barriere, a
  _Collection des memoires relatifs a la Revolution Francaise_ (55
  vols., 1820-1827). The details are to be found in the _Sources de
  l'histoire de France_, by Alfred Franklin (1876). The abbe J.P. Migne
  in his _Patrologia Latina_ (221 vols., 1844-1864), re-edited a number
  cf texts anterior to the 13th century. Under the second empire, the
  administration of the imperial archives at Paris published ten volumes
  of documents (_Monuments historiques_, 1866; _Layettes du tresor des
  chartes_, 1863, which were afterwards continued up to 1270; _Actes du
  parlement de Paris_, 1863-1867), not to mention several volumes of
  _Inventaires_. The administration of the Bibliotheque imperiale had
  printed the _Catalogue general de l'histoire de France_ (10 vols.,
  1855-1870; vol. xi., containing the alphabetical index to the names of
  the authors, appeared in 1895). Other countries also supplied a number
  of useful texts; there is much in the English Rolls series, in the
  collection of _Chroniques belges_, and especially in the _Monumenta
  Germaniae historica_.

  At the same time the scope of history and its auxiliary sciences
  becomes more clearly defined; the Ecole des Chartes produces some
  excellent palaeographers, as for instance Natalis de Wailly (_Elements
  de paleographie_, 1838), and L. Delisle (q.v.), who has also left
  traces of his profound researches in the most varied departments of
  medieval history (_Bibliographie des travaux de M. Leopold Delisle_,
  1902); Anatole de Barthelemy made a study of coins and medals, Douet
  d'Arcq and G. Demay of seals. The works of Alexandre Lenoir (_Musee
  des monuments francais_, 1800-1822), of Arcisse de Caumont (_Histoire
  de l'architecture du moyen age_, 1837; _Abecedaire ou rudiment
  d'archeologie_, 1850), of A. Napoleon Didron (_Annales
  archeologiques_, 1844), of Jules Quicherat (_Melanges d'archeologie et
  d'histoire_, published after his death, 1886), and the dictionaries of
  Viollet le Duc (_Dictionnaire raisonne de l'architecture francaise_,
  1853-1868; _Dictionnaire du mobilier francais_, 1855) displayed to the
  best advantage one of the most brilliant sides of the French
  intellect, while other sciences, such as geology, anthropology, the
  comparative study of languages, religions and folk-lore, and political
  economy, continued to enlarge the horizon of history. The task of
  writing the general history of a country became more and more
  difficult, especially for one man, but the task was none the less
  undertaken by several historians, and by some of eminence. Francois
  Guizot treated of the _Histoire de la civilisation en France_
  (1828-1830); Augustin Thierry after the _Recits des temps
  merovingiens_ (1840) published the _Monuments de l'histoire du tiers
  etat_ (1849-1856), the introduction to which was expanded into a book
  (1855); Charles Simonde de Sismondi produced a mediocre _Histoire des
  francais_ in 31 vols. (1821-1844), and Henri Martin a _Histoire de
  France_ in 16 vols. (1847-1854), now of small use except for the two
  or three last centuries of the _ancien regime_. Finally J. Michelet,
  in his _Histoire de France_ (17 vols., 1833-1856) and his _Histoire de
  la Revolution_ (7 vols., 1847-1853), aims at reviving the very soul of
  the nation's past.

  After the Franco-German War begins a better organization of scientific
  studies, modelled on that of Germany. The Ecole des Hautes Etudes,
  established in 1868, included in its programme the critical study of
  the sources, both Latin and French, of the history of France; and from
  the _seminaire_ of Gabriel Monod came men of learning, already
  prepared by studying at the Ecole des Chartes: Paul Viollet, who
  revived the study of the history of French law; Julien Havet, who
  revived that of Merovingian diplomatics; Arthur Giry, who resumed the
  study of municipal institutions where it had been left by A. Thierry,
  prepared the _Annales carolingiennes_ (written by his pupils, Eckel,
  Favre, Lauer, Lot, Poupardin), and brought back into honour the study
  of diplomatics (_Manuel de diplomatique_, 1894); Auguste Molinier,
  author of the _Sources de l'histoire de France_ (1902-1904; general
  index, 1906), &c. Auguste Longnon introduced at the Ecole des Hautes
  Etudes the study of historical geography (_Atlas historique de la
  France_, in course of publication since 1888). The universities, at
  last reorganized, popularized the employment of the new methods. The
  books of Fustel de Coulanges and Achille Luchaire on the middle ages,
  and those of A. Aulard on the revolution, gave a strong, though
  well-regulated, impetus to historical production. The Ecole du Louvre
  (1881) increased the value of the museums and placed the history of
  art among the studies of higher education, while the Musee
  archeologique of St-Germain-en-Laye offered a fruitful field for
  research on Gallic and Gallo-Roman antiquities. Rich archives,
  hitherto inaccessible, were thrown open to students; at Rome those of
  the Vatican (_Registres pontificaux_, published by students at the
  French school of archaeology, since 1884); at Paris, those of the
  Foreign Office (_Recueil des instructions donnees aux ambassadeurs
  depuis le traite de Westphalie_, 16 vols., 1885-1901; besides various
  collections of diplomatic papers, inventories, &c.). Those of the War
  Office were used by officers who published numerous documents bearing
  on the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, and on that of
  1870-1871. In 1904 a commission, generously endowed by the French
  parlement, was entrusted with the task of publishing the documents
  relating to economic and social life of the time of the Revolution,
  and four volumes had appeared by 1908. Certain towns, Paris, Bordeaux,
  &c., have made it a point of honour to have their chief historical
  monuments printed. The work now becomes more and more specialized.
  _L'Histoire de France_, by Ernest Lavisse (1900, &c.), is the work of
  fifteen different authors. It is therefore more than ever necessary
  that the work should be under sound direction. The _Manuel de
  bibliographie historique_ of Ch. V. Langlois (2nd edition, 1901-1904)
  is a good guide, as is his _Archives de l'histoire de France_ (1891,
  in collaboration with H. Stein).

  Besides the special bibliographies mentioned above, it will be useful
  to consult the _Bibliotheque historique_ of Pere Jacques Lelong (1719;
  new ed. by Fevret de Fontette, 5 vols., 1768-1778); the _Geschichte
  der historischen Forschung und Kunst_ of Ludwig Wachler (2 vols.,
  1812-1816); the _Bibliographie de la France_, established in 1811 (1st
  series, 1811-1856, 45 vols.; 2nd series, 1 vol. per annum since 1857);
  the publications of the Societe de Bibliographie (_Polybiblion_, from
  1868 on, &c.); the _Bibliographie de l'histoire de France_, by Gabriel
  Monod (1888); the _Repertoire_ of the abbe Ulysse Chevalier
  (_Biobibliographie_; new ed. 1903-1907; and _Topobibliographie_,
  1894-1899). Bearing exclusively on the middle ages are the
  _Bibliotheca historica medii aevi_ of August Potthast (new ed. 1896)
  and the _Manuel_ (_Les Sources de l'histoire de France_, 1901, &c.) of
  A. Molinier; but the latter is to be continued up to modern times, the
  16th century having already been begun by Henri Hausser (1st part,
  1906). Finally, various special reviews, besides teaching historical
  method by criticism and by example, try to keep their readers _au
  courant_ with literary production; the _Revue critique d'histoire et
  de litterature_ (1866 fol.), the _Revue des questions historiques_
  (1866 fol.), the _Revue historique_ (1876 fol.), the _Revue d'histoire
  moderne et contemporaine_, accompanied annually by a valuable
  _Repertoire methodique_ (1898 fol.); the _Revue de synthese
  historique_ (1900 fol.), &c.     (C. B.*)


FRENCH LAW AND INSTITUTIONS

_Celtic Period._--The remotest times to which history gives us access
with reference to the law and institutions formerly existing in the
country which is now called France are those in which the dominant race
at least was Celtic. On the whole, our knowledge is small of the law and
institutions of these Celts, or Gauls, whose tribes constituted
independent Gaul. For their reconstruction, modern scholars draw upon
two sources; firstly, there is the information furnished by the
classical writers and by Caesar and Strabo in particular, which is
trustworthy but somewhat scanty; the other source, which is not so pure,
consists in the accounts found in those legal works of the middle ages
written in the neo-Celtic dialects, the most important and the greater
number of which belong to Ireland. A reconstruction from them is always
hazardous, however delicate and scientific be the criticism which is
brought to bear on it, as in the case of d'Arbois de Jubainville, for
example. Moreover, in the historical evolution of French institutions
those of the Celts or Gauls are of little importance. Not one of them
can be shown to have survived in later law. What has survived of the
Celtic race is the blood and temperament, still found in a great many
Frenchmen, certain traits which the ancients remarked in the Gauls being
still recognizable: _bellum gerere et argute loqui_.

_Roman Period._--It was the Roman conquest and rule which really formed
Gaul, for she was Romanized to the point of losing almost completely
that which persists most stubbornly in a conquered nation, namely, the
language; the Breton-speaking population came to France later, from
Britain. The institutions of Roman Gaul became identical with those of
the Roman empire, provincial and municipal government undergoing the
same evolution as in the other parts of the empire. It was under Roman
supremacy too, as M. d'Arbois de Jubainville has shown, that the
ownership of land became personal and free in Gaul. The law for the
Gallo-Romans was that which was administered by the _conventus_ of the
magistrate; there are only a few peculiarities, mere Gallicisms,
resulting from conventions or usage, which are pointed out by Roman
jurisconsults of the classical age. The administrative reforms of
Diocletian and Constantine applied to Gaul as to the rest of the empire.
Gaul under this rule consisted of seventeen provinces, divided between
two dioceses, ten in the diocese of the Gauls, under the authority of
the praetorian prefect, who resided at Treves; and the other seven in
the _dioecesis septem provinciarum_, under the authority of a
_vicarius_. The Gallo-Romans became Christian with the other subjects of
the empire; the Church extended thither her powerful organization
modelled on the administrative organization, each _civitas_ having a
bishop, just as it had a _curia_ and municipal magistrates. But,
although endowed with privileges by the Christian emperors, the Church
did not yet encroach upon the civil power. She had the right of
acquiring property, of holding councils, subject to the imperial
authority, and of the free election of bishops. But only the first germs
of ecclesiastical jurisdiction are to be traced. In virtue of the laws,
the bishops were privileged arbitrators, and in the matter of public
sins exercised a disciplinary jurisdiction over the clergy and the
faithful. In the second half of the 4th century, monasteries appeared in
Gaul. After the fall of the Western empire, there was left to the
Gallo-Romans as an expression of its law, which was also theirs, a
written legislation. It consisted of the imperial constitutions,
contained in the Gregorian, Hermogenian and Theodosian codes (the two
former being private compilations, and the third an official
collection), and the writings of the five jurists (Gaius, Papinian,
Paulus, Ulpian and Modestinus), to which Valentinian III. had in 426
given the force of law.

_The Barbarian Invasion._--The invasions and settlements of the
barbarians open a new period. Though there were robbery and violence in
every case, the various barbarian kingdoms set up in Gaul were
established under different conditions. In those of the Burgundians and
Visigoths, the owners of the great estates, which had been the
prevailing form of landed property in Roman Gaul, suffered partial
dispossession, according to a system the rules regulating which can, in
the case of the Burgundians, be traced almost exactly. It is doubtful
whether a similar process took place in the case of the Frankish
settlements, but their first conquests in the north and east seem to
have led to the extermination or total expulsion of the Gallo-Roman
population. It is impossible to say to what extent, in these various
settlements, the system of collective property prevailing among the
Germanic tribes was adopted. Another important difference was that, in
embracing Christianity, some of the barbarians became Arians, as in the
case of the Visigoths and Burgundians; others Catholic, as in the case
of the Franks. This was probably the main cause of the absorption of the
other kingdoms into the Frankish monarchy. In each case, however, the
barbarian king appeared as wishing not to overthrow the Roman
administration, but to profit by its continuation. The kings of the
Visigoths and Burgundians were at first actually representatives of the
Western empire, and Clovis himself was ready to accept from the emperor
Anastasius the title of consul; but these were but empty forms, similar
to the fictitious ties which long existed or still exist between China
or Turkey and certain parts of their former empires, now separated from
them for ever.

As soon as the Merovingian monarch had made himself master of Gaul, he
set himself to maintain and keep in working order the administrative
machinery of the Romans, save that the administrative unit was
henceforth no longer the _provincia_ but the _civitas_, which generally
took the name of _pagus_, and was placed under the authority of a count,
_comes_ or _grafio_ (_Graf_). Perhaps this was not entirely an
innovation, for it appears that at the end of the Roman supremacy
certain _civitates_ had already a _comes_. Further, several _pagi_ could
be united under the authority of a _dux_. The _pagus_ seems to have
generally been divided into hundreds (_centenae_).

But the Roman administrative machinery was too delicate to be handled by
barbarians; it could not survive for long, but underwent changes and
finally disappeared. Thus the Merovingians tried to levy the same direct
taxes as the Romans had done, the _capitatio terrena_ and the _capitatio
humana_, but they ceased to be imposts reassessed periodically in
accordance with the total sum fixed as necessary to meet the needs of
the state, and became fixed annual taxes on lands or persons; finally,
they disappeared as general imposts, continuing to exist only as
personal or territorial dues. In the same way the Roman municipal
organization, that of the _curiae_, survived for a considerable time
under the Merovingians, but was used only for the registration of
written deeds; under the Carolingians it disappeared, and with it the
old senatorial nobility which had been that of the Empire. The
administration of justice (apart from the king's tribunal) seems to have
been organized on a system borrowed partly from Roman and partly from
Germanic institutions; it naturally tends to assume popular forms.
Justice is administered by the count (_comes_) or his deputy
(_centenarius_ or _vicarius_), but on the verdict of notables called in
the texts _boni homines_ or _rachimburgii_. This takes place in an
assembly of all the free subjects, called _mallus_, at which every free
man is bound to attend at least a certain number of times a year, and in
which are promulgated the general acts emanating from the king. The
latter could issue commands or prohibitions under the name of _bannus_,
the violation of which entailed a fine of 60 _solidi_; the king also
administered justice (_in palatio_), assisted by the officers of his
household, his jurisdiction being unlimited and at the same time
undefined. He could hear all causes, but was not bound to hear any,
except, apparently, accusations of deliberate failure of justice and
breach of trust on the part of the _rachimburgii_.


  Character of the Merovingian kingship.

But what proved the great disturbing element in Gallo-Roman society was
the fact that the conquerors, owing to their former customs and the
degree of their civilization, were all warriors, men whose chief
interest was to become practised in the handling of arms, and whose
normal state was that of war. It is true that under the Roman empire all
the men of a _civitas_ were obliged, in case of necessity, to march
against the enemy, and under the Frankish monarchy the count still
called together his _pagenses_ for this object. But the condition of the
barbarian was very different; he lived essentially for fighting. Hence
those gatherings or annual reviews of the _Campus Martius_, which
continued so long, in Austrasia at least. They constituted the chief
armed force; for mercenary troops, in spite of the assertions of some to
the contrary, play at this period only a small part. But this military
class, though not an aristocracy (for among the Franks the royal race
alone was noble), was to a large extent independent, and the king had to
attach these _leudes_ or _fideles_ to himself by gifts and favours. At
the same time the authority of the king gradually underwent a change in
character, though he always claimed to be the successor of the Roman
emperor. It gradually assumed that domestic or personal character that,
among the Germans, marked most of the relations between men. The
household of the king gained in political importance, by reason that the
heads of the principal offices in the palace became at the same time
high public officials. There was, moreover, a body of men more
especially attached to the king, the _antrustions_ (q.v.) and the
commensals (_convivae regis_) whose _weregeld_ (i.e. the price of a
man's life in the system of compensation then prevalent) was three times
greater than that of the other subjects of the same race.

The Frankish monarch had also the power of making laws, which he
exercised after consulting the chief men of the kingdom, both lay and
ecclesiastical, in the _placita_, which were meetings differing from the
_Campus Martius_ and apparently modelled principally on the councils of
the Church. But throughout the kingdom in many places the direct
authority of the king over the people ceased to make itself felt. The
_immunitates_, granted chiefly to the great ecclesiastical properties,
limited this authority in a curious way by forbidding public officials
to exercise their functions in the precinct of land which was _immunis_.
The judicial and fiscal rights frequently passed to the landowner, who
in any case became of necessity the intermediary between the supreme
power and the people. In regard to this last point, moreover, the case
seems to have been the same with all the great landowners or _potentes_,
whose territory was called _potestas_, and who gained a real authority
over those living within it; later in the middle ages they were called
_homines potestatis_ (_hommes de poeste_).

Other principles, arising perhaps less from Germanic custom strictly
speaking than from an inferior level of civilization, also contributed
towards the weakening of the royal power. The monarch, like his
contemporaries, considered the kingdom and the rights of the king over
it to be his property; consequently, he had the power of dealing with it
as if it were a private possession; it is this which gave rise to the
concessions of royal rights to individuals, and later to the partitions
of the kingdom, and then of the empire, between the sons of the king or
emperor, to the exclusion of the daughters, as in the division of an
inheritance in land. This proved one of the chief weaknesses of the
Merovingian monarchy.


  Position of the Church.

In order to rule the Gallo-Romans, the barbarians had had inevitably to
ask the help of the Church, which was the representative of Roman
civilization. Further, the Merovingian monarch and the Catholic Church
had come into close alliance in their struggle with the Arians. The
result for the Church had been that she gained new privileges, but at
the same time became to a certain extent dependent. Under the
Merovingians the election of the bishop _a clero et populo_ is only
valid if it obtains the assent (_assensus_) of the king, who often
directly nominates the prelate. But at the same time the Church retains
her full right of acquiring property, and has her jurisdiction partially
recognized; that is to say, she not only exercises more freely than ever
a disciplinary jurisdiction, but the bishop, in place of the civil
power, administers civil and criminal justice over the clergy. The
councils had for a long time forbidden the clergy to cite one another
before secular tribunals; they had also, in the 6th century, forbidden
secular judges under pain of excommunication to cite before them and
judge the clergy, without permission of the bishop. A decree of Clotaire
II. (614) acknowledged the validity of these claims, but not completely;
a precise interpretation of the text is, however, difficult.


  Carolingian period.

  Beginnings of the feudal system.

The Merovingian dynasty perished of decay, amid increasing anarchy. The
crown passed, with the approval of the papacy, to an Austrasian mayor of
the palace and his family, one of those mayors of the palace (i.e. chief
officer of the king's household) who had been the last support of the
preceding dynasty. It was then that there developed a certain number of
institutions, which offered themselves as useful means of consolidating
the political organism, and were in reality the direct precursors of
feudalism. One was the royal benefice (_beneficium_), of which, without
doubt, the Church provided both the model and, in the first instance,
the material. The model was the _precaria_, a form of concession by
which it was customary for the Church to grant the possession of her
lands to free men; this practice she herself had copied from the
five-years leases granted by the Roman exchequer. Gradually, however,
the _precaria_ had become a concession made, in most cases, free and for
life. As regards the material, when the Austrasian mayors of the palace
(probably Charles Martel) wished to secure the support of the _fideles_
by fresh benefits, the royal treasury being exhausted, they turned to
the Church, which was at that time the greatest landowner, and took
lands from her to give to their warriors. In order to disguise the
robbery it was decided--perhaps as an afterthought--that these lands
should be held as _precariae_ from the Church, or from the monastic
houses which had furnished them. Later, when the royal treasury was
reorganized, the grants of land made by the kings naturally took a
similar form: the _beneficium_, as a free grant for life. Under the
Merovingians royal grants of land were in principle made in full
ownership, except, as Brunner has shown, that provision was made for a
revocation under certain circumstances. No special services seem to have
been attached to the benefice, whether granted by the king or by some
other person, but, in the second half of the 9th century at least, the
possession of the benefice is found as the characteristic of the
military class and the form of their pay. This we find clearly set forth
in the treatise _de ecclesiis et capellis_ of Hincmar of Reims. The
_beneficium_, in obedience to a natural law, soon tended to crystallize
into a perpetual and hereditary right. Another institution akin to the
_beneficium_ was the _senioratus_; by the _commendatio_, a form of
solemn contract, probably of Germanic origin, and chiefly characterized
by the placing of the hands between those of the lord, a man swore
absolute fidelity to another man, who became his _senior_. It became the
generally received idea (as expressed in the capitularies) that it was
natural and normal for every free man to have a _senior_. At the same
time a benefice was never granted unless accompanied by the
_commendatio_ of the beneficiary to the grantor. As the most important
_seniores_ were thus bound to the king and received from him their
benefices, he expected through them to command their men; but in reality
the king disappeared little by little in the _senior_. The king granted
as benefices not only lands, but public functions, such as those of
count or _dux_, which thus became possessions, held, first for life, and
later as hereditary properties. The Capitulary of Kiersy-sur-Oise (877),
which was formerly considered to have made fiefs legally and generally
hereditary, only proves that it was already the custom for benefices of
this kind, _honores_, to pass from the father to one of the sons.


  Reforms of Charlemagne.

  Carolingian fiscal system.

  The Church under Charlemagne.

Charlemagne, while sanctioning these institutions, tried to arrest the
political decomposition. He reorganized the administration of justice,
fixing the respective jurisdictions of the count and the _centenarius_,
substituting for the _rachimburgii_ permanent _scabini_, chosen by the
count in the presence of the people, and defining the relations of the
count, as the representative of the central authority, with the
_advocati_ or _judices_ of _immunitates_ and _potestates_. He
reorganized the army, determining the obligations and the military
outfit of free men according to their means. Finally, he established
those regular inspections by the _missi dominici_ which are the subject
of so many of his capitularies. From the _De ordine palatii_ of Hincmar
of Reims, who follows the account of a contemporary of the great
emperor, we learn that he also regularly established two general
assemblies, _conventus_ or _placita_, in the year, one in the autumn,
the other in the spring, which were attended by the chief officials, lay
and ecclesiastical. It was here that the capitularies (q.v.) and all
important measures were first drawn up and then promulgated. The
revenues of the Carolingian monarch (which are no longer identical with
the finances of the state) consisted chiefly in the produce of the royal
lands (_villae_), which the king and his suite often came and consumed
on the spot; and it is known how carefully Charlemagne regulated the
administration of the _villae_. There were also the free gifts which the
great men were bound, according to custom, to bring to the _conventus_,
the contributions of this character from the monasteries practically
amounting to a tax; the regular personal or territorial dues into which
the old taxes had resolved themselves; the profits arising from the
courts (the royal _bannus_, and the _fredum_, or part of the
compensation-money which went to the king); finally, numberless
requisitions in kind, a usage which had without doubt existed
continuously since Roman times. The Church was loaded with honours and
had added a fresh prerogative to her former privileges, namely, the
right of levying a real tax in kind, the _tithe_. Since the 3rd century
she had tried to exact the payment of tithes from the faithful,
interpreting as applicable to the Christian clergy the texts in the Old
Testament bearing on the Levites; Gallican councils had repeatedly
proclaimed it as an obligation, though, it appears, with little success.
But from the reign of Pippin the Short onwards the civil law recognized
and sanctioned this obligation, and the capitularies of Charlemagne and
Louis the Debonnaire contain numerous provisions dealing with it.
Ecclesiastical jurisdiction extended farther and farther, but
Charlemagne, the protector of the papacy, maintained firmly his
authority over the Church. He nominated its dignitaries, both bishops
and abbots, who were true ecclesiastical officials, parallel with the
lay officials. In each _pagus_, bishop and count owed each other mutual
support, and the missi on the same circuit were ordinarily a count and a
bishop. In the first collection of capitularies, that of Ansegisus, two
books out of four are devoted to ecclesiastical capitularies.


  The law under the Frank monarchy.

What, then, was the private and criminal law of this Frankish monarchy
which had come to embrace so many different races? The men of Roman
descent continued under the Roman law, and the conquerors could not hope
to impose their customs upon them. The authorized expression of the
Roman law was henceforth to be found in the _Lex romana Wisigothorum_ or
_Breviarium Alarici_, drawn up by order of Alaric II. in 506. It is an
abridgment of the codes, of that of Theodosius especially, and of
certain of the writings of the jurists included under the Law of
Citations. As to the barbarians, they had hitherto had nothing but
customs, and these customs, of which the type nearest to the original is
to be found in the oldest text of the _Lex Salica_, were nothing more
than a series of tariffs of compensations, that is to say, sums of money
due to the injured party or his family in case of crimes committed
against individuals, for which crimes these compensations were the only
penalty. They also introduced a barbarous system of trial, that by
compurgation, i.e. exculpation by the oath of the defendant supported by
a certain number of _cojurantes_, and that by ordeal, later called
_judicium Dei_. In each new kingdom the barbarians naturally kept their
own laws, and when these men of different races all became subject to
the Frankish monarchy, there evolved itself a system (called the
_personnalite des lois_) by which every subject had, in principle, the
right to be tried by the law of the race to which he belonged by birth
(or sometimes for some other reason, such as emancipation or marriage).
When the two adversaries were of different race, it was the law of the
defendant which had to be applied. The customs of the barbarians had
been drawn up in Latin. Sometimes, as in the case of the first text of
the Salic law, the system on which they were compiled is not exactly
known; but it was generally done under the royal authority. At this
period only these written documents bear the name of "law" (_leges
romanorum_; _leges barbarorum_), and at least the tacit consent of the
people seems to have been required for these collections of laws, in
accordance with an axiom laid down in a later capitulary; _lex fit
consensu populi et constitutione regis_. It is noteworthy, too, that in
the process of being drawn up in Latin, most of the _leges barbarorum_
were very much Romanized.

In the midst of this diversity, a certain number of causes tended to
produce a partial unity. The capitularies, which had in themselves the
force of law, when there was no question of modifying the _leges_,
constituted a legislation which was the same for all; often they
inflicted corporal punishment for grave offences, which applied to all
subjects without distinction. Usage and individual convenience led to
the same result. The Gallo-Romans, and even the Church itself, to a
certain extent, adopted the methods of trial introduced by the Germans,
as was likely in a country relapsing into barbarism. On the other hand,
written acts became prevalent among the barbarians, and at the same time
they assimilated a certain amount of Roman law; for these acts continued
to be drawn up in Latin, after Roman models, which were in most cases
simply misinterpreted owing to the general ignorance. The type is
preserved for us in those collections of _Formulae_, of which complete
and scientific editions have been published by Eugene de Roziere and
Carl Zeumer. During this period, too, the Gallican Church adopted the
collection of councils and decretals, called later the _Codex canonum
ecclesiae Gallicanae_, which she continued to preserve. This collection
was that of Dionysius Exiguus, which was sent to Charlemagne in 774 by
Pope Adrian I. But in the course of the 9th century apocryphal
collections were also formed in the Gallican Church: the False
Capitularies of Benedictus Levita, and the False Decretals of Isidorus
Mercator (see DECRETALS).

All the subjects of the Frankish monarchy were not of equal status.
There was, strictly speaking, no nobility, both the Roman and the
Germanic nobility having died out; but slavery continued to exist. The
Church, however, was preparing the transformation of the slave into the
serf, by giving force and validity to their marriages, in cases, at
least, when the master had approved of them, and by forbidding the
latter unjustly to seize the slave's _peculium_. But between the free
man (_ingenuus_) and the slave lay a number of persons of intermediate
status; they possessed legal personality but were subject to
incapacities of various kinds, and had to perform various duties towards
other men. There was, to begin with, the Roman colonist (_colonus_), a
class as to the origin of which there is still a controversy, and of
which there is no clear mention in the laws before the 4th century; they
and their children after them were attached perpetually to a certain
piece of land, which they were allowed to cultivate on payment of a
rent. There were, further, the _liti_ (_litus_ or _lidus_), a similar
class of Germanic origin; also the greater number of the freedmen or
descendants of freedmen. Many free men who had fled to the great
landowners for protection took, by arrangement or by custom, a similar
position. Under the Merovingian regime, and especially under the
Carolingians, the occupation of the land tended to assume the character
of tenure; but free ownership of land continued to exist under the name
of _alod_ (_alodis_), and there is even evidence for the existence of
this in the form of small properties, held by free men; the capitularies
contain numerous complaints and threats against the counts, who
endeavoured by the abuse of their power to obtain the surrender of these
properties.


  Anarchy and feudal origins.

_Period of Anarchy and the Rise of Feudalism._--The 10th and 11th
centuries were a period of profound anarchy, during which feudalism was
free to develop itself and to take definitive shape. At that time the
French people may be said to have lived without laws, without even fixed
customs and without government. The legislative power was no longer
exercised, for the last Carolingian capitularies date from the year 884,
and the first laws of the Capetian kings (if they may be called laws) do
not appear till during the 12th century. During this period the old
capitularies and _leges_ fell into disuse and in their place territorial
customs tended to grow up, their main constituents being furnished by
the law of former times, but which were at the outset ill-defined and
strictly local. As to the government, if the part played by the Church
be excepted, we shall see that it could be nothing but the application
of brute force. In this anarchy, as always happens under similar
conditions, men drew together and formed themselves into groups for
mutual defence. A nucleus was formed which was to become the new social
unit, that is to say, the feudal group. Of this the centre was a chief,
around whom gathered men capable of bearing arms, who commended
themselves to him according to the old form of vassalage, _per manus_.
They owed him fidelity and assistance, the support of their arms but not
of their purse, save in quite exceptional cases; while he owed them
protection. Some of them lived in his castle or fortified house,
receiving their equipment only and eating at his table. Others received
lands from him, which were, or later became, fiefs, on which they lived
_casati_. The name fief, _feudum_, does not appear, however, till
towards the end of this period; these lands are frequently called
_beneficia_ as before; the term most in use at first, in many parts, is
_casamentum_. The fief, moreover, was generally held for life and did
not become generally hereditary till the second half of the 11th
century. The lands kept by the chief and those which he granted to his
men were for the most part rented from him, or from them, for a certain
amount in money or in kind. All these conditions had already existed
previously in much the same form; but the new development is that the
chief was no longer, as before, merely an intermediary between his men
and the royal power. The group had become in effect independent, so
organized as to be socially and politically self-sufficient. It
constituted a small army, led, naturally, by the chief, and composed of
his feudatories, supplemented in case of need by the _rustici_. It also
formed an assembly in which common interests were discussed, the lord,
according to custom, being bound to consult his feudatories and they to
advise him to the best of their power. It also formed a court of
justice, in which the feudatories gave judgment under the presidency of
their lord; and all of them claimed to be subject only to the
jurisdiction of this tribunal composed of their peers. Generally they
also judged the villeins (_villani_) and the serfs dependent on the
group, except in cases where the latter obtained as a favour judges of
their own status, which was, however, at that time a very rare
occurrence.

Under these conditions a nobility was formed, those men becoming nobles
who were able to devote themselves to the profession of arms and were
either chiefs or soldiers in one of the groups which have just been
described. The term designating a noble, _miles_, corresponds also to
that of knight (Fr. _chevalier_, Low Lat. _caballerius_), for the reason
that chivalry, of which the origins are uncertain, represents
essentially the technical skill and professional duties of this military
class. Every noble was destined on coming of age to become a knight, and
the knight equally as a matter of course received a fief, if he had not
one already by hereditary title. This nobility, moreover, was not a
caste but could be indefinitely recruited by the granting of fiefs and
admission to knighthood (see KNIGHTHOOD AND CHIVALRY).


  Private war.

The state of anarchy was by now so far advanced that war became an
individual right, and the custom of private war arose. Every man had in
principle the right of making war to defend his rights or to avenge his
wrongs. Later on, doubtless, in the 13th century, this was a privilege
of the noble (_gentilhomme_); but the texts defining the limits which
the Church endeavoured to set to this abuse, namely, the Peace of God
and the Truce of God, show that this was at the outset a power possessed
by men of all classes. Even a man who had appeared in a court of law and
received judgment had the choice of refusing to accept the judgment and
of making war instead. Justice, moreover, with its frequent employment
of trial by combat, did not essentially differ from private war.

It is unnecessary to go further and to affirm, with certain historians
of our time, for example Guilhermoz and See, that the only free men at
that time, besides the clergy, were the nobles, all the rest being
serfs. There are many indications which lead us to assume, not only in
the towns but even in the country districts, the existence of a class of
men of free status who were not _milites_, the class later known in the
13th century as _vilains_, _hommes de poeste_, and, later, _roturiers_.
The fact more probably was that only the nobles and ecclesiastics were
exempt from the exactions of the feudal lords; while from all the others
the seigneurs could at pleasure levy the _taille_ (a direct and
arbitrary tax), and those innumerable rights then called
_consuetudines_. Free ownership, the _allodium_, even under the form of
small freeholds, still existed by way of exception in many parts.

Had, then, the main public authority disappeared? This is practically
the contention of certain writers, who, like M. See, maintain that real
property, the possession of a domain, conferred on the big landed
proprietor all rights of taxation, command and coercion over the
inhabitants of his domain, who, according to this view, were always
serfs. But this is an exaggeration of the thesis upheld by old French
authors, who saw in feudalism, though in a different sense, a confusion
of property with sovereignty. It appears that in this state of political
disintegration each part of the country which had a homogeneous
character tended to form itself into a higher unit. In this unit there
arose a powerful lord, generally a duke, a count, or a viscount, who
sometimes came to be called the _capitalis dominus_. He was either a
former official of the monarchy, whose function had become hereditary,
or a usurper who had formed himself on this model. He laid claim to an
authority other than that conferred by the possession of real property.
He still claimed to exercise over the whole of his former district
certain rights, which we see him sometimes surrendering for the benefit
of churches or monasteries. His court of justice was held in the highest
honour, and to it were referred the most important affairs. But in this
district there were generally a number of more or less powerful lords,
who as a rule had as yet no particular feudal title and are often given
the name of _principes_. Often, but not always, they had commended
themselves to this duke or count by doing homage.


  The royal power.

On the other hand, the royal power continued to exist, being recognized
by a considerable part of old Gaul, the _regnum Francorum_. But under
the last of the Carolingians it had in fact become elective, as is shown
by the elections of Odo and Robert before that of Hugh Capet. The
electors were the chief lords and prelates of the _regnum Francorum_.
But following a clever policy, each king during his lifetime took as
partner of his kingdom his eldest son and consecrated and crowned him in
advance, so that the first of the Capetians revived the principle of
heredity in favour of the eldest son, while establishing the hereditary
indivisibility of the kingdom. This custom was recognized at the
accession of Louis the Fat, but the authority of the king was very weak,
being merely a vague allegiance. His only real authority lay where his
own possessions were, or where there had not arisen a duke, a count, or
lord of equal rank with them. He maintained, however, a general right of
administering justice, a _curia_, the jurisdiction of which seems to
have been universal. It is true that the parties in a suit had to submit
themselves to it voluntarily, and could accept or reject the judgment
given, but this was at that time the general rule. The king dispensed
justice surrounded by the officers of his household (_domestici_), who
thus formed his council; but these were not the only ones to assist him,
whether in court or council. Periodically, at the great yearly
festivals, he called together the chief lords and prelates of his
kingdom, thus carrying on the tradition of the Carolingian _placita_ or
_conventus_; but little by little, with the appropriation of the
_honores_, the character of the gathering changed; it was no longer an
assembly of officials but of independent lords. This was now called the
_curia regis_.


  The Church.

While the power of the State was almost disappearing, that of the
Church, apart from the particular acts of violence of which she was
often the victim, continued to grow. Her jurisdiction gained ground,
since her procedure was reasonable and comparatively scientific (except
that she admitted to a certain extent compurgation by oath and the
_judicia Dei_, with the exception of trial by combat). Not only was the
privilege of clergy, by which accused clerks were brought under her
jurisdiction, almost absolute, but she had cognizance of a number of
causes in which laymen only were concerned, marriage and everything
nearly or remotely affecting it, wills, crimes and offences against
religion; and even contracts, when the two parties wished it or when the
agreement was made on oath, came within her competence. Such, then, were
the ecclesiastical or Christian courts (_cours d'eglise, course de
chretiente_). The Church, moreover, remained in close connexion with the
crown, the king preserving a quasi-ecclesiastical character, while the
royal prerogatives with regard to the election of bishops were
maintained more successfully than the rights of the crown, though in
many of the great fiefs they none the less passed to the count or the
duke. It was at this time too that the Church tried to break the last
ties which still kept her more or less dependent on the civil power;
this was the true import of the Investiture Contest (see INVESTITURE,
and CHURCH HISTORY), though this was not very acute in France.


  The feudal monarchy.

  Roman law.

  The customs.

The period of the true feudal monarchy is embraced by the 12th and 13th
centuries, that is to say, it was at this time that the crown again
assumed real strength and authority; but so far it had no organs and
instruments save those which were furnished by feudalism, now organized
under a regular hierarchy, of which the king was the head, the
"sovereign enfeoffer of the kingdom" (_souverain fieffeux du royaume_),
as he came later on to be called. This new position of affairs was the
result of three great factors: the revival of Roman Law, the final
organization of feudalism and the rise of the privileged towns. The
revival of Roman law began in France and Italy in the second half of the
11th century, developing with extraordinary brilliance in the latter
country at the university of Bologna, which was destined for a long time
to dominate Europe. Roman law spread rapidly in the French schools and
universities, except that of Paris, which was closed to it by the
papacy; and the influence of this study was so great that it transformed
society. On the one hand it contributed largely to the reconstitution of
the royal power, modelling the rights of the king on those of the Roman
emperor. On the other hand it wrought a no less profound change in
private law. From this time dates the division of old France into the
_Pays de droit ecrit_, in which Roman law, under the form in which it
was codified by Justinian, was received as the ordinary law; and the
_Pays de coutume_, where it played only a secondary part, being
generally valid only as _ratio scripta_ and not as _lex scripta_. In
this period the customs also took definitive form, and over and above
the local customs properly so called there were formed customs known as
_general_, which held good through a whole province or _bailliage_, and
were based on the jurisprudence of the higher jurisdictions.


  Final organization of feudalism.

  Feudal character of justice.

The final organization of feudalism resulted from the struggle for
organization which was proceeding in each district where the more
powerful lords compelled the others to do them homage and become their
vassals; the _capitalis dominus_ had beneath him a whole hierarchy, and
was himself a part of the feudal system of France (see FEUDALISM).
Doubtless in the case of lords like the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy,
the king could not actually demand the strict fulfilment of the feudal
obligations; but the principle was established. The question now arises,
did free and absolute property, the _allodium_, entirely disappear in
this process, and were all lands held as tenures? It continued to exist,
by way of exception, in most districts, unchanged save in the burden of
proof of ownership, with which, according to the customs, sometimes the
lord and sometimes the holder of the land was held charged. In one
respect, however, namely in the administration of justice, the feudal
hierarchy had absolute sway. Towards the end of the 13th century
Beaumanoir clearly laid down this principle: "All secular jurisdiction
in France is held from the king as a fief or an _arriere-fief_."
Henceforth it could also be said that "All justice emanates from the
king." The law concerning fiefs became settled also from another point
of view, the fief becoming patrimonial; that is to say, not only
hereditary, but freely alienable by the vassal, subject in both cases to
certain rights of transfer due to the lord, which were at first fixed by
agreement and later by custom. The most salient features of feudal
succession were the right of primogeniture and the preference given to
heirs-male; but from the 13th century onwards the right of
primogeniture, which had at first involved the total exclusion of the
younger members of a family, tended to be modified, except in the case
of the chief lords, the eldest son obtaining the preponderant share or
_preciput_. Non-noble (_roturier_) tenancies also became patrimonial in
similar circumstances, except that in their case there was no right of
primogeniture nor any privilege of males. The tenure of serfs did not
become alienable, and only became hereditary by certain devices.


  Rise of the privileged towns.

Feudal society next saw the rise of a new element within it: the
privileged towns. At this time many towns acquired privileges, the
movement beginning towards the end of the 11th century; they were
sanctioned by a formal concession from the lord to whom the town was
subject, the concession being embodied in a charter or in a record of
customs (_coutume_). Some towns won for themselves true political
rights, for instance the right of self-administration, rights of justice
over the inhabitants, the right of not being taxed except by their own
consent, of maintaining an armed force, and of controlling it
themselves. Others only obtained civil rights, e.g. guarantees against
the arbitrary rights of justice and taxation of the lord or his provost.
The chief forms of municipal organization at this time were the _commune
juree_ of the north and east, and the _consulat_, which came from Italy
and penetrated as far as Auvergne and Limousin. The towns with important
privileges formed in feudal society as it were a new class of lordships;
but their lords, that is to say their burgesses, were inspired by quite
a new spirit. The crown courted their support, taking them under its
protection, and championing the causes in which they were interested
(see COMMUNE). Finally, it is in this period, under Philip Augustus,
that the great fiefs began to be effectually reannexed to the crown, a
process which, continued by the kings up to the end of the _ancien
regime_, refounded for their profit the territorial sovereignty of
France.


  Great officers of the crown and peers of France.

The crown maintained the machinery of feudalism, the chief central
instruments of which were the great officers of the crown, the
seneschal, butler, constable and chancellor, who were to become
irremovable officials, those at least who survived. But this period saw
the rise of a special college of dignitaries, that of the Twelve Peers
of France, consisting of six laymen and six ecclesiastics, which took
definitive shape at the beginning of the 13th century. We cannot yet
discern with any certainty by what process it was formed, why those six
prelates and those six great feudatories in particular were selected
rather than others equally eligible. But there is no doubt that we have
here a result of that process of feudal organization mentioned above;
the formation of a similar assembly of twelve peers occurs also in a
certain number of the great fiefs. Besides the part which they played at
the consecration of kings, the peers of France formed a court in which
they judged one another under the presidency of the king, their
overlord, according to feudal custom. But the _cour des pairs_ in this
sense was not separate from the _curia regis_, and later from the
parlement of Paris, of which the peers of France were by right members.
From this time, too, dates another important institution, that of the
_maitres des requetes_.


  Growth of the royal power.

The legislative power of the crown again began to be exercised during
the 12th century, and in the 13th century had full authority over all
the territories subject to the crown. Beaumanoir has a very interesting
theory on this subject. The right of war tends to regain its natural
equilibrium, the royal power following the Church in the endeavour to
check private wars. Hence arose the _quarantaine le roi_, due to Philip
Augustus or Saint Louis, by which those relatives of the parties to a
quarrel who had not been present at the quarrel were rendered immune
from attack for forty days after it; and above all the _assurements_
imposed by the king or lord; on these points too Beaumanoir has an
interesting theory. The rule was, moreover, already in force by which
private wars had to cease during the time that the king was engaged in a
foreign war. But the most appreciable progress took place in the
administrative and judicial institutions. Under Philip Augustus arose
the royal _baillis_ (see BAILIFF: section _Bailli_), and seneschals
(q.v.), who were the representatives of the king in the provinces, and
superior judges. At the same time the form of the feudal courts tended
to change, as they began more and more to be influenced by the
Romano-canonical law. Saint Louis had striven to abolish trial by
combat, and the Church had condemned other forms of ordeal, the
_purgatio vulgaris_. In most parts of the country the feudal lords began
to give place in the courts of law to the provosts (_prevots_) and
_baillis_ of the lords or of the crown, who were the judges, having as
their councillors the _avocats_ (advocates) and _procureurs_
(procurators) of the assize. The feudal courts, which were founded
solely on the relations of homage and tenure, before which the vassals
and tenants as such appeared, disappeared in part from the 13th century
on. Of the seigniorial jurisdictions there soon remained only the
_hautes_ or _basses justices_ (in the 14th century arose an intermediate
grade, the _moyenne justice_), all of which were considered to be
concessions of the royal power, and so delegations of the public
authority. As a result of the application of Roman and canon law, there
arose the _appeal_ strictly so called, both in the class of royal and of
seigniorial jurisdictions, the case in the latter instance going finally
before a royal court, from which henceforth there was no appeal. In the
13th century too appeared the theory of crown cases (_cas royaux_),
cases which the lords became incompetent to try and which were reserved
for the royal court. Finally, the _curia regis_ was gradually
transformed into a regular court of justice, the _Parlement_ (q.v.), as
it was already called in the second half of the 13th century. At this
time the king no longer appeared in it regularly, and before each
session (for it was not yet a permanent body) a list of properly
qualified men was drawn up in advance to form the parlement, only those
whose names were on the list being capable of sitting in it. Its main
function had come to be that of a final court of appeal. At the various
sessions, which were regularly held at Paris, appeared the _baillis_ and
seneschals, who were called upon to answer for the cases they had judged
and also for their administration. The accounts were received by members
of the parlement at the Temple, and this was the origin of the Cour or
Chambre des Comptes.


  Nobles, commons and the Church in the 13th century.

At the end of this period the nobility became an exclusive class. It
became an established rule that a man had to be noble in order to be
made a knight, and even in order to acquire a fief; but in this latter
respect the king made exceptions in the case of _roturiers_, who were
licensed to take up fiefs, subject to a payment known as the _droits de
franc-fief_. The _roturiers_, or villeins who were not in a state of
thraldom, were already a numerous class not only in the towns but in the
country. The Church maintained her privileges; a few attempts only were
made to restrain the abuse, not the extent, of her jurisdiction. This
jurisdiction was, during the 12th century, to a certain extent
regularized, the bishop nominating a special functionary to hold his
court; this was the _officialis_ (Fr. _official_), whence the name of
_officialite_ later applied in France to the ecclesiastical
jurisdictions. On one point, however, her former rights were diminished.
She preserved the right of freely acquiring personal and real property,
but though she could still acquire feudal tenures she could not keep
them; the customs decided that she must _vider les mains_, that is,
alienate the property again within a year and a day. The reason for this
new rule was that the Church, the ecclesiastical establishment, is a
proprietor who does not die and in principle does not surrender her
property; consequently, the lords had no longer the right of exacting
the transfer duties on those tenures which she acquired. It was
possible, however, to compromise and allow the Church to keep the tenure
on condition of the consent not only of the lord directly concerned, but
of all the higher lords up to the _capitalis dominus_; it goes without
saying that this concession was only obtained by the payment of
pecuniary compensations, the chief of which was the _droit
d'amortissement_, paid to these different lords. In this period the form
of the episcopal elections underwent a change, the electoral college
coming to consist only of the canons composing the chapter of the
cathedral church. But except for the official candidatures, which were
abused by the kings and great lords, the elections were regular; the
Pragmatic Sanction, attributed to Saint Louis, which implies the
contrary, is nowadays considered apocryphal by the best critics.


  Changes in criminal law.

Finally, it must be added that during the 13th century criminal law was
profoundly modified. Under the influence of Roman law a system of
arbitrary penalties replaced those laid down by the customs, which had
usually been fixed and cruel. The criminal procedure of the feudal
courts had been based on the right of accusation vested only in the
person wronged and his relations; for this was substituted the
inquisitorial procedure (_processus per inquisitionem_), which had
developed in the canon law at the very end of the 12th century, and was
to become the _procedure a l'extraordinaire_ of the _ancien regime_,
which was conducted in secret and without free defence and debate. Of
this procedure torture came to be an ordinary and regular part.


  The customs.

The customs, which at that time contained almost the whole of the law
for a great part of France, were not fixed by being written down. In
that part of France which was subject to customary law (_la France
coutumiere_) they were defined when necessary by the verdict of a jury
of practitioners in what was called the _enquete par turbes_; some of
them, however, were, in part at least, authentically recorded in
seigniorial charters, _chartes de ville_ or _chartes de coutume_. Their
rules were also recorded by experts in private works or collections
called _livres coutumiers_, or simply _coutumiers_ (customaries). The
most notable of these are _Les Coutumes de Beauvoisis_ of Philippe de
Beaumanoir, which Montesquieu justly quotes as throwing light on those
times; also the _Tres ancienne coutume de Normandie_ and the _Grand
Coutumier de Normandie_; the _Conseil a un ami of Pierre des Fontaines_,
the _Etablissements de Saint Louis_; the _Livre de jostice et de plet_.
At the same time the clerks of important judges began to collect in
registers notable decisions; it is in this way that we have preserved to
us the old decisions of the exchequer of Normandy, and the _Olim_
registers of the parlement of Paris.

_The Limited Monarchy._--The 14th and 15th centuries were the age of the
limited monarchy. Feudal institutions kept their political importance;
but side by side with them arose others of which the object was the
direct exercise of the royal authority; others also arose from the very
heart of feudalism, but at the same time transformed its laws in order
to adapt them to the new needs of the crown. In this period certain
rules for the succession to the throne were fixed by precedents: the
exclusion of women and of male descendants in the female line, and the
principle that a king could not by an act of will change the succession
of the crown. The old _curia regis_ disappeared and was replaced by the
parlement as to its judicial functions, while to fulfil its deliberative
functions there was formed a new body, the royal council (_conseil du
roi_), an administrative and governing council, which was in no way of a
feudal character. The number of its members was at first small, but they
tended to increase; soon the brevet of _conseiller du roi en ses
conseils_ was given to numerous representatives of the clergy and
nobility, the great officers of the crown becoming members by right.
Side by side with these officials, whose power was then at its height,
there were gradually evolved more subservient ministers who could be
dispensed with at will; the _secretaires des commandements du roi_ of
the 15th century, who in the 16th century developed into the
_secretaires d'etat_, and were themselves descended from the _clercs du
secret_ and _secretaires des finances_ of the 14th century. The College
of the Twelve Peers of France had not its full numbers at the end of the
13th century; the six ecclesiastical peerages existed and continued to
exist to the end, together with the archbishopric and bishoprics to
which they were attached, not being suppressed; but several of the great
fiefs to which six lay peerages had been attached had been annexed to
the crown. To fill these vacancies, Philip the Fair raised the duchies
of Brittany and Anjou and the countship of Artois to the rank of
peerages of France. This really amounted to changing the nature of the
institution; for the new peers held their rank merely at the king's
will, though the rank continued to belong to a great barony and to be
handed down with it. Before long peers began to be created when there
were no gaps in the ranks of the College, and there was a constant
increase in the numbers of the lay peers.


  States general and provincial estates.

At the beginning of the 14th century appeared the states general (_etats
generaux_), which were often convoked, though not at fixed intervals,
throughout the whole of the 14th century and the greater part of the
15th. Their power reached its height at a critical moment of the Hundred
Years' War during the reign of King John. At the same time there arose
side by side with them, and from the same causes, the provincial
estates, which were in miniature for each province what the states
general were for the whole kingdom. Of these provincial assemblies some
were founded in one or other of the great fiefs, being convoked by the
duke or count under the pressure of the same needs which led the king to
convoke the states general; others, in provinces which had already been
annexed to the crown, probably had their origin in the councils summoned
by the _bailli_ or seneschal to aid him in his administration. Later it
became a privilege for a province to have its own assembly; those which
did so were never of right subject to the royal _taille_, and kept, at
least formally, the right of sanctioning, by means of the assembly, the
subsidies which took its place. Hence it became the endeavour of the
crown to suppress these provincial assemblies, which in the 14th century
were to be found everywhere; from the outset of the 15th century they
began to disappear in central France.


  Royal taxation.

The most characteristic feature of this period was the institution of
universal taxation by the crown. So far the king's sole revenues were
those which he exacted, in his capacity of feudal lord, wherever another
lord did not intervene between him and the inhabitants, in addition to
the income arising from certain crown rights which he had preserved or
regained. But these revenues, known later as the income of the royal
domain and later still as the _finances ordinaires_, became insufficient
in proportion as the royal power increased; it became a necessity for
the monarch to be able to levy imposts throughout the whole extent of
the provinces annexed to the crown, even upon the subjects of the
different lords. This he could only do by means of the co-operation of
those lords, lay and ecclesiastical, who alone had the right of taxing
their subjects; the co-operation of the privileged towns, which had the
right to tax themselves, was also necessary. It was in order to obtain
this consent that the states general, in most cases, and the provincial
assemblies, in all cases, were convoked. In some cases, however, the
king adopted different methods; for instance, he sometimes utilized the
principle of the feudal aids. In cases where his vassals owed him, as
overlord, a pecuniary aid, he substituted for the sum paid directly by
his vassals a tax levied by his own authority on their subjects. It is
in this way that for thirty years the necessary sums were raised,
without any vote from the states general, to pay the ransom of King
John. But in principle the taxes were in the 14th century sanctioned by
the states general. Whatever form they took, they were given the generic
name of Aids or _auxilia_, and were considered as occasional and
extraordinary subsidies, the king being obliged in principle to "live of
his own" (_vivre de son domaine_). Certain aids, it is true, tended to
become permanent under the reign of Charles VI.; but the taxes subject
to the consent of the states general were at first the sole resource of
Charles VII. In the second half of his reign the two chief taxes became
permanent: in 1435 that of the aids (a tax on the sale of articles of
consumption, especially on wine), with the formal consent of the states
general, and that of the _taille_ in 1439. In the latter case the
consent of the states general was not given; but only the nobility
protested, for at the same time as the royal _taille_ became permanent
the seigniorial _taille_ was suppressed. These imposts were increased,
on the royal authority, by Louis XI. After his death the states general,
which met at Tours in 1484, endeavoured to re-establish the periodical
vote of the tax, and only granted it for two years, reducing it to the
sum which it had reached at the death of Charles VII. But the promise
that they would again be convoked before the expiry of two years was not
kept. These imposts and that of the _gabelle_ were henceforth permanent.
Together with the taxes there was evolved the system of their
administration. Their main outlines were laid down by the states general
in the reign of King John, in 1355 and the following years. For the
administration of the subsidies which they granted, they nominated from
among their own numbers _surintendants generaux_ or _generaux des
finances_, and further, for each diocese or equivalent district, _elus_.
Both had not only the active administration but also judicial rights,
the latter constituting courts of the first instance and the former
courts of final appeal. After 1360 the crown again adopted this
organization, which had before been only temporary; but henceforth
_generaux_ and _elus_ were nominated by the king. The _elus_, or
_officiers des elections_, only existed in districts which were subject
to the royal _taille_; hence the division, so important in old France,
into _pays d'elections_ and _pays d'etats_. The _elus_ kept both
administration and jurisdiction; but in the higher stage a
differentiation was made: the _generaux des finances_, who numbered
four, kept the administration, while their jurisdiction as a court of
final appeal was handed over to another body, the _cour des aides_,
which had already been founded at the end of the 14th century. Besides
the four _generaux des finances_, who administered the taxation, there
were four Treasurers of France (_tresoriers de France_), who
administered the royal domain; and these eight officials together formed
in the 15th century a kind of ministry of finance to the monarchy.


  The army.

The army also was organized. On the one hand, the military service
attached to the fiefs was transformed for the profit of the king, who
alone had the right of making war: it became the _arriere-ban_, a term
which had formerly applied to the _levee en masse_ of all the
inhabitants in times of national danger. Before the 14th century the
king had only had the power of calling upon his own immediate vassals
for service. Henceforth all possessors of fiefs owed him, whether within
the kingdom or on the frontiers, military service without pay and at
their own expense. This was for long an important resource for the king.
But Charles VII. organized an army on another footing. It comprised the
_francs-archers_ furnished by the parishes, a militia which was only
summoned in case of war, but in time of peace had to practise archery,
and companies of _gendarmerie_ or heavy cavalry, forming a permanent
establishment, which were called _compagnies d'ordonnance_. It was
chiefly to provide for the expense of the first nucleus of a permanent
army that the _taille_ itself had been made permanent.

The new army led to the institution of the governors of provinces, who
were to command the troops quartered there. At first they were only
appointed for the frontiers and fortified places, but later the kingdom
was divided into _gouvernements generaux_. There were at first twelve of
these, which were called in the middle of the 16th century the _douze
anciens gouvernements_. Although, strictly speaking, they had only
military powers, the governors, always chosen from among the great
lords, became in the provinces the direct representatives of the king
and caused the _baillis_ and seneschals to take a secondary place.


  The law courts.

The courts of law continued to develop on the lines already laid down.
The parlement, which had come to be a judicial committee nominated every
year, but always consisting in fact of the same persons, changed in the
course of the 14th century into a body of magistrates who were permanent
but as yet subject to removal. During this period were evolved its
organization and definitive features (see PARLEMENT). The provincial
parlements had arisen after and in imitation of that of Paris, and had
for the most part taken the place of some superior jurisdiction which
had formerly existed in the same district when it had been independent
(like Provence) or had formed one of the great fiefs (like Normandy or
Burgundy). It was during this period also that the parlements acquired
the right of opposing the registration, that is to say, the promulgation
of laws, of revising them, and of making representations
(_remontrances_) to the king when they refused the registration, giving
the reasons for such refusal. The other royal jurisdictions were
completed (see BAILIFF, CHATELET). Besides them arose another of great
importance, which was of military origin, but came to include all
citizens under its sway. These were the provosts of the marshals of
France (_prevots des marechaux de France_), who were officers of the
_Marechaussee_ (the gendarmerie of the time); they exercised criminal
jurisdiction without appeal in the case of crimes committed by vagabonds
and fugitives from justice, this class being called their _gibier_
(game), and of a number of crimes of violence, whatever the rank of the
offender. Further, another class of officers was created in connexion
with the law courts: the "king's men" (_gens du roi_), the _procureurs_
and _avocats du roi_, who were at first simply those lawyers who
represented the king in the law courts, or pleaded for him when he had
some interest to follow up or to defend. Later they became officers of
the crown. In the case of the _procureurs du roi_ this development took
place in the first half of the 14th century. Their duty was not only to
represent the king in the law courts, whether as plaintiff or defendant,
but also to take care that in each case the law was applied, and to
demand its application. From this time on the _procureurs du roi_ had
full control over matters concerning the public interest, and especially
over public prosecution. In this period, too, appeared what was
afterwards called _justice retenue_, that is to say, the justice which
the king administered, or was supposed to administer, in person. It was
based on the idea that, since all justice and all judicial power reside
in the king, he could not deprive himself of them by delegating their
exercise to his officers and to the feudal lords. Consequently he could,
if he thought fit, take the place of the judges and call up a case
before his own council. He could reverse even the decisions of the
courts of final appeal, and in some cases used this means of appealing
against the decrees of the parlements (_proposition d'erreur, requete
civile, pourvoi en revision_). In these cases the king was supposed to
judge in person; in reality they were examined by the _maitres des
requetes_ and submitted to the royal council (_conseil du roi_), at
which the king was always supposed to be present and which had in itself
no power of giving a decision. For this purpose there was soon formed a
special committee of the council, which was called the _conseil prive_
or _de justice_. At the end of the 15th century, Charles VIII., in order
to relieve the council of some of its functions, created a new final
court, the _grand conseil_, to deal with a number of these cases. But
before long it again became the custom to appeal to the _conseil du
roi_, so that the _grand conseil_ became almost useless. The king
frequently, by means of _lettres de justice_, intervened in the
procedure of the courts, by granting _benefices_, by which rules which
were too severe were modified, and faculties or facilities for
overcoming difficulties arising from flaws in contracts or judgments,
cases at that time not covered by the common law. By _lettres de grace_
he granted reprieve or pardon in individual cases. The most extreme form
of intervention by the king was made by means of _lettres de cachet_
(q.v.), which ordered a subject to go without trial into a state prison
or into exile.


  The Church.

The condition of the Church changed greatly during this period. The
jurisdiction of the _officialites_ was very much reduced, even over the
clergy. They ceased to be competent to judge actions concerning the
possession of real property, in which the clergy were defendants. In
criminal law the theory of the _cas privilegie_, which appears in the
14th century, enabled the royal judges to take action against and judge
the clergy for all serious crimes, though without the power of
inflicting any penalties but arbitrary fines, the ecclesiastical judge
remaining competent, in accordance with the privileges of clergy, to try
the offender for the same crime as what was technically called a _delit
commun_. The development of jurisprudence gradually removed from the
_officialites_ causes of a purely secular character in which laymen only
were concerned, such as wills and contracts; and in matrimonial cases
their jurisdiction was limited to those in which the _foedus matrimonii_
was in question. For the acquisition of real property by ecclesiastical
establishments the consent of the king to the amortizement was always
necessary, even in the case of allodial lands; and if it was a case of
feudal tenures the king and the direct overlords alone kept their
rights, the intermediate lords being left out of the question.


  Papal encroachments.

As regards the conferring of ecclesiastical benefices, from the 14th
century onwards the papacy encroached more and more upon the rights of
the bishops, in whose gift the inferior benefices generally were, and of
the electors, who usually conferred the superior benefices; at the same
time it exacted from newly appointed incumbents heavy dues, which were
included under the generic name of annates (q.v.). During the Great
Schism of the Western Church, these abuses became more and more crying,
until by a series of edicts, promulgated with the consent and advice of
the parlement and the clergy, the Gallican Church was restored to the
possession of its former liberties, under the royal authority. Thus
France was ready to accept the decrees of reform issued by the council
of Basel (q.v.), which she did, with a few modifications, in the
Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII., adopted after a solemn assembly of
the clergy and nobles at Bourges and registered by the parlement of
Paris in 1438. It suppressed the annates and most of the means by which
the popes disposed of the inferior benefices: the reservations and the
_gratiae expectativae_. For the choice of bishops and abbots, it
restored election by the chapters and convents. The Pragmatic Sanction,
however, was never recognized by the papacy, nor was it consistently and
strictly applied by the royal power. The transformation of the civil and
criminal law under the influence of Roman and canon law had become more
and more marked. The production of the _coutumiers_, or _livres de
pratiques_, also continued. The chief of them were: in the 14th century,
the _Stylus Vetus Curiae Parlamenti_ of Guillaume de Breuil; the _Tres
ancienne coutume de Bretagne_; the _Grand Coutumier de France_, or
_Coutumier de Charles VI._; the _Somme rural_ of Boutillier; in the 15th
century, for Auvergne, the _Practica forensis_ of Masuer. Charles VII.,
in an article of the Grand Ordonnance of Montil-les-Tours (1453),
ordered the general customs to be officially recorded under the
supervision of the crown. It was an enormous work, which would almost
have transformed them into written laws; but up to the 16th century
little recording was done, the procedure established by the Ordonnance
for the purpose not being very suitable.


  Government under the absolute monarchy.

_The Absolute Monarchy._--From the 16th century to the Revolution was
the period of the absolute monarchy, but it can be further divided into
two periods: that of the establishment of this regime, from 1515 to
about 1673; and that of the _ancien regime_ when definitively
established, from 1673 to 1789. The reigns of Francis I. and Henry II.
clearly laid down the principle of the absolute power of the crown and
applied it effectually, as is plainly seen from the temporary
disappearance of the states general, which were not assembled under
these two reigns. There were merely a few assemblies of notables chosen
by the royal power, the most important of which was that of Cognac,
under Francis I., summoned to advise on the non-fulfilment of the treaty
of Madrid. It is true that in the second half of the 16th century the
states general reappeared. They were summoned in 1560 at Orleans, then
in 1561 at Pontoise, and in 1576 and 1588 at Blois. The League even
convoked one, which was held at Paris in 1593. This represented a
crucial and final struggle. Two points were then at issue: firstly,
whether France was to be Protestant or Catholic; secondly, whether she
was to have a limited or an absolute monarchy. The two problems were not
necessarily bound up with one another. For if the Protestants desired
political liberty, many of the Catholics wished for it too, as is proved
by the writings of the time, and even by the fact that the League
summoned the estates. But the states general of the 16th century, in
spite of their good intentions and the great talents which were at their
service, were dominated by religious passions, which made them powerless
for any practical purpose. They only produced a few great ordinances of
reform, which were not well observed. They were, however, to be called
together yet again, as a result of the disturbances which followed the
death of Henry IV.; but their dissensions and powerlessness were again
strikingly exemplified and they did not reappear until 1789. Other
bodies, however, which the royal power had created, were to carry on the
struggle against it. There were the parlements, the political rivals of
the states general. Thanks to the principle according to which no law
came into effect so long as it had not been registered by them, they
had, as we have seen, won for themselves the right of a preliminary
discussion of those laws which were presented to them, and of refusing
registration, explaining their reasons to the king by means of the
_remontrances_. The royal power saw in this merely a concession from
itself, a consultative power, which ought to yield before the royal
will, when the latter was clearly manifested, either by _lettres de
jussion_ or by the actual words and presence of the king, when he came
in person to procure the registration of a law in a so-called _lit de
justice_. But from the 16th century onwards the members of the
parlements claimed, on the strength of a historical theory, to have
inherited the powers of the ancient assemblies (the Merovingian and
Carolingian _placita_ and the _curia regis_), powers which they,
moreover, greatly exaggerated. The successful assertion of this claim
would have made them at once independent of and necessary to the crown.
During the minority of kings, they had possessed, in fact, special
opportunities for asserting their pretensions, particularly when they
had been called upon to intervene in the organization of the regency. It
is on this account that at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. the
parlement of Paris wished to take part in the government, and in 1648,
in concert with the other supreme courts of the capital, temporarily
imposed a sort of charter of liberties. But the first Fronde, of which
the parlement was the centre and soul, led to its downfall, which was
completed when later on Louis XIV. became all-powerful. The ordinance of
1667 on civil procedure, and above all a declaration of 1673, ordered
the parlement to register the laws as soon as it received them and
without any modification. It was only after this registration that they
were allowed to draw up remonstrances, which were henceforth futile. The
nobles, as a body, had also become politically impotent. They had been
sorely tried by the wars of religion, and Richelieu, in his struggles
against the governors of the provinces, had crushed their chief leaders.
The second Fronde was their last effort (see FRONDE). At the same time
the central government underwent changes. The great officers of the
crown disappeared one by one. The office of constable of France was
suppressed by purchase during the first half of the 17th century, and of
those in the first rank only the chancellor survived till the
Revolution. But though his title could only be taken from him by
condemnation on a capital charge, the king was able to deprive him of
his functions by taking from him the custody and use of the seal of
France, which were entrusted to a _garde des sceaux_. Apart from the
latter, the king's real ministers were the secretaries of state,
generally four in number, who were always removable and were not chosen
from among the great nobles. For purposes of internal administration,
the provinces were divided among them, each of them corresponding by
despatches with those which were assigned to him. Any other business
(with the exception of legal affairs, which belonged to the chancellor,
and finance, of which we shall speak later) was divided among them
according to convenience. At the end of the 16th century, however, were
evolved two regular departments, those of war and foreign affairs. Under
Francis I. and Henry II., the chief administration of finance underwent
a change; for the four _generaux des finances_, who had become too
powerful, were substituted the _intendants des finances_, one of whom
soon became a chief minister of finance, with the title _surintendant_.
The _generaux des finances_, like the _tresoriers_ de France, became
provincial officials, each at the head of a _generalite_ (a superior
administrative district for purposes of finance); under Henry II. the
two functions were combined and assigned to the _bureaux des finances_.
The fall of Fouquet led to the suppression of the office of
_surintendant_; but soon Colbert again became practically a minister of
finance, under the name of _controleur general des finances_, both title
and office continuing to exist up to the Revolution.

The _conseil du roi_, the origin of which we have described, was an
important organ of the central government, and for a long time included
among its members a large number of representatives of the nobility and
clergy. Besides the councillors of state (_conseillers d'etat_), its
ordinary members, the great officers of the crown and secretaries of
state, princes of the blood and peers of France were members of it by
right. Further, the king was accustomed to grant the brevet of
councillor to a great number of the nobility and clergy, who could be
called upon to sit in the council and give an opinion on matters of
importance. But in the 17th century the council tended to differentiate
its functions, forming three principal sections, one for political, one
for financial, and the third for legal affairs. Under Louis XIV. it took
a definitely professional, administrative and technical character. The
_conseillers a brevet_ were all suppressed in 1673, and the peers of
France ceased to be members of the council. The political council, or
_conseil d'en haut_, had no _ex officio_ members, not even the
chancellor; the secretary of state for foreign affairs, however,
necessarily had entry to it; it also included a small number of persons
chosen by the king and bearing the title of ministers of state
(_ministres d'etat_). The other important sections of the conseil du roi
were the _conseil des finances_, organized after the fall of Fouquet,
and the _conseil des depeches_, in which sat the four secretaries of
state and where everything concerned with internal administration
(except finance) was dealt with, including the legal business connected
with this administration. As to the government and the preparation of
laws, under Louis XIV. and Louis XV., the _conseil du roi_ often passed
into the background, when, as the saying went, a minister who was
projecting some important measure _travaillait seul avec le roi_ (worked
alone with the king), having from the outset gained the king's ear.


  Provincial administration.

The chief authority in the provincial administration belonged in the
16th century to the governors of the provinces, though, strictly
speaking, the governor had only military powers in his _gouvernement_;
for, as we have seen, he was the direct representative of the king for
general purposes. But at the end of this century were created the
intendants of the provinces, who, after a period of conflict with the
governors and the parlements, became absolute masters of the
administration in all those provinces which had no provincial estates,
and the instruments of a complete administrative centralization (see
INTENDANT).


  The towns.

The towns having a _corps de ville_, that is to say, a municipal
organization, preserved in the 16th century a fairly wide autonomy, and
played an important part in the wars of religion, especially under the
League. But under Louis XIV. their independence rapidly declined. They
were placed under the tutelage of the intendants, whose sanction, or
that of the _conseil du roi_, was necessary for all acts of any
importance. In the closing years of the 17th century, the municipal
officials ceased, even in principle, to be elective. Their functions
ranked as offices which were, like royal offices, saleable and
heritable. The pretext given by the edicts were the intrigues and
dissensions caused by the elections; the real cause was that the
government wanted to sell these offices, which is proved by the fact
that it frequently allowed towns to redeem them and to re-establish the
elections.


  Sale of offices.

The sale of royal offices is one of the characteristic features of the
_ancien regime_. It had begun early, and, apparently, with the office of
councillor of the parlement of Paris, when this became permanent, in the
second half of the 14th century. It was first practised by magistrates
who wished to dispose of their office in favour of a successor of their
own choice. The _resignatio in favorem_ of ecclesiastical benefices
served as model, and at first care was taken to conceal the money
transaction between the parties. The crown winked at these resignations
in consideration of a payment in money. But in the 16th century, under
Francis I. at the latest, the crown itself began officially to sell
offices, whether newly created or vacant by the death of their
occupiers, taking a fee from those upon whom they were conferred. Under
Charles IX. the right of resigning _in favorem_ was recognized by law in
the case of royal officials, in return for a payment to the treasury of
a certain proportion of the price. In the case of judicial offices there
was a struggle for at least two centuries between the system of sale and
another, also imitated from canon law, i.e. the election or presentation
of candidates by the legal corporations. The ordinances of the second
half of the 16th century, granted in answer to complaints of the states
general, restored and confirmed the latter system, giving a share in the
presentation to the towns or provincial notables and forbidding sales.
The system of sale, however, triumphed in the end, and, in the case of
judges, had, moreover, a favourable result, assuring to them that
irremovability which Louis XI. had promised in vain; for, under this
system, the king could not reasonably dismiss an official arbitrarily
without refunding the fee which he had paid. On the other hand, it
contributed to the development of the _epices_, or dues paid by
litigants to the judges. The system of sale, and with it irremovability,
was extended to all official functions, even to financial posts. The
process was completed by the recognition of the rights in the sale of
offices as hereditary, i.e. the right of resigning the office on payment
of a fee, either in favour of a competent descendant or of a third
party, passed to the heirs of an official who had died without having
exercised this right himself. It was established under Henry IV. in 1604
by the system called the _Paulette_, in return for the payment by the
official of an annual fee (_droit annuel_) which was definitely fixed at
a hundredth part of the price of the office. Thus these offices, though
the royal nomination was still required as well as the professional
qualifications required by the law, became heritable property in virtue
of the finance attached to them. This led to the formation of a class of
men who, though bound in many ways to the crown, were actually
independent. Hence the tendency in the 18th century to create new and
important functions under the form, not of offices, but of simple
commissions.


  Fundamental laws of France.

In this period of the history of France were evolved and defined the
essential principles of the old public law. There were, in the first
place, the _fundamental laws of the realm_, which were true
constitutional principles, established for the most part not by law but
by custom, and considered as binding in respect of the king himself; so
that, although he was sovereign, he could neither abrogate, nor modify,
nor violate them. There was, however, some discussion as to what rules
actually came under this category, except in the case of two series
about which there was no doubt. These were, on the one hand, those which
dealt with the succession to the crown and forbade the king to change
its order, and those which proclaimed the inalienability of the royal
domain, against which no title by prescription was valid. This last
principle, introduced in the 14th century, had been laid down and
defined by the edict of Moulins in 1566; it admitted only two
exceptions: the formation of appanages (q.v.), and selling
(_engagement_), to meet the necessities of war, with a perpetual option
of redeeming it.

There was in the second place the theory of the rights, franchises and
liberties of the Gallican Church, formed of elements some of which were
of great antiquity, and based on the conditions which had determined the
relations of the Gallican Church with the crown and papacy during the
Great Schism and under the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and defined at
the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century. This body of
doctrine was defined by the writings of three men especially, Guy
Coquille, Pierre Pithou and Pierre Dupuy, and was solemnly confirmed by
the declaration of the clergy of France, or _Declaration des quatres
articles_ of 1682, and by the edict which promulgated it. Its substance
was based chiefly on three principles: firstly, that the temporal power
was absolutely independent of the spiritual power; secondly, that the
pope had authority over the clergy of France in temporal matters and
matters of discipline only by the consent of the king; thirdly, that
the king had authority over and could legislate for the Gallican Church
in temporal matters and matters of discipline. The old public law
provided a safeguard against the violation of these rules. This was the
process known as the _appel comme d'abus_, formed of various elements,
some of them very ancient, and definitely established during the 16th
century. It was heard before the parlements, but could, like every other
case, be evoked before the royal council. Its effect was to annul any
act of the ecclesiastical authority due to abuse or contrary to French
law. The clergy were, when necessary, reduced to obedience by means of
arbitrary fines and by the seizure of their temporalities. The Pragmatic
Sanction had been abrogated and replaced by the Concordat of 1515,
concluded between Francis I. and Leo X., which remained in force until
suppressed by the Constituent Assembly. The Concordat, moreover,
preserved many of the enactments of the Pragmatic Sanction, notably
those which protected the collation of the inferior benefices from the
encroachments of the papacy, and which had introduced reforms in certain
points of discipline. But in the case of the superior benefices
(bishoprics and abbeys) election by the chapters was suppressed. The
king of France nominated the candidate, to whom the pope gave canonical
institution. As a matter of fact, the pope had no choice; he had to
institute the nominee of the king, unless he could show his unworthiness
or incapacity, as the result of inquiries regularly conducted in France;
for the pope it was, as the ancient French authors used to say, a case
of compulsory collation. The annates were re-established at the time of
the Concordat, but considerably diminished in comparison with what they
had been before the Pragmatic Sanction. We must add, to complete this
account, that many of the inferior benefices, in France as in the rest
of Christendom, were conferred according to the rules of patronage, the
patron, whether lay or ecclesiastic, presenting a candidate whom the
bishop was bound to appoint, provided he was neither incapable nor
unsuitable. There was some difficulty in getting the Concordat
registered by the parlement of Paris, and the latter even announced its
intention of not taking the Concordat into account in those cases
concerning benefices which might come before it. The crown found an easy
method of making this opposition ineffectual, namely, to transfer to the
Grand Conseil the decision of cases arising out of the application of
the Concordat.

In the 16th century also, contributions to the public services drawn
from the immense possessions of the clergy were regularized. Since the
second half of the 12th century at least, the kings had in times of
urgent need asked for subsidies from the church, and ever since the
Saladin tithe (_dime saladine_) of Philip Augustus this contribution had
assumed the form of a tithe, taking a tenth part of the revenue of the
benefices for a given period. Tithes of this kind were fairly frequently
granted by the clergy of France, either with the pope's consent or
without (this being a disputed point). After the conclusion of the
Concordat, Leo X. granted the king a tithe (_decime_) under the pretext
of a projected war against the Turks; hitherto concessions of this kind
had been made by the papacy in view of the Crusades or of wars against
heretics. The concession was several times renewed, until, by force of
custom, the levying of these tithes became permanent. But in the middle
of the 16th century the system changed. The crown was heavily in debt,
and its needs had increased. The property of the clergy having been
threatened by the states general of 1560 and 1561, the king proposed to
them to remit the bulk of the tithes and other dues, in return for the
payment by them of a sum equivalent to the proceeds of the taxes which
he had mortgaged. A formal contract to this effect was concluded at
Poissy in 1561 between the king and the clergy of France, represented by
the prelates who were then gathered together for the Colloquy of Poissy
with the Protestants, and some of those who had been sitting at the
states general of Pontoise. The fulfilment of this agreement was,
however, evaded by the king, who diverted part of the funds provided by
the clergy from their proper purpose. In 1580, after a period of ten
years which had been agreed on, a new assembly of the clergy was called
together and, after protesting against this action, renewed the
agreement, which was henceforward always renewed every ten years. Such
was the definitive form of the contribution of the clergy, who also
acquired the right of themselves assessing and levying these taxes on
the holders of benefices. Thus every ten years there was a great
assembly of the clergy, the members of which were elected. There were
two stages in the election, a preliminary one in the dioceses and a
further election in the ecclesiastical provinces, each province sending
four deputies to the general assembly, two of the first rank, that is to
say, chosen from the episcopate, and two of the second rank, which
included all the other clergy. The _dons gratuits_ (benevolences) voted
by the assembly comprised a fixed sum equivalent to the old tithes and
supplementary sums paid on one occasion only, which were sometimes
considerable. The church, on her side, profited by this arrangement in
order to obtain the commutation or redemption of the taxes affecting
ecclesiastics considered as individuals. This settlement only applied to
the "clergy of France," that is to say, to the clergy of those districts
which were united to the crown before the end of the 16th century. The
provinces annexed later, called _pays etrangers_, or _pays conquis_, had
in this matter, as in many others, an arrangement of their own. At last,
under Louis XV. the edict of 1749, _concernant les etablissements et
acquisitions des gens de mainmorte_, was completely effective in
subordinating the acquisition of property by ecclesiastical
establishments to the consent and control of the crown, rendering them
incapable of acquiring real property by bequests.

At the end of the 16th century a wise law had been made which, in spite
of the traces which it bore of past struggles, had established a
reasonable balance among the Christians of France. The edict of Nantes,
in 1598, granted the Protestants full civil rights, liberty of
conscience and public worship in many places, and notably in all the
royal _bailliages_. The Catholics, whose religion was essentially a
state religion, had never accepted this arrangement as final, and at
last, in 1685, under Louis XIV., the edict of Nantes was revoked and the
Protestant pastors expelled from France. Their followers were forbidden
to leave the country, but many succeeded nevertheless in escaping
abroad. The position of those who remained behind was peculiar. Laws
passed in 1715 and 1724 established the legal theory that there were no
longer any Protestants in France, but only _vieux catholiques_ and
_nouveaux convertis_. The result was that henceforth they had no longer
any regular civil status, the registers containing the lists of
Catholics enjoying civil rights being kept by the Catholic clergy.

The form of government established under Louis XIV. was preserved
without any fundamental modification under Louis XV. After the death of
Louis XIV., however, the regent, under the inspiration of the duc de St
Simon, made trial of a system of which the latter had made a study while
in a close correspondence with the duke of Burgundy. It consisted in
substituting for the authority of the ministers, secretaries of state
and controller-general councils, or governmental bodies, mainly composed
of great lords and prelates. These only lasted for a few years, when a
return was made to the former organization. The parlements had regained
their ancient rights in consequence of the parlement of Paris having, in
1715, set aside the will of Louis XIV. as being contrary to the
fundamental laws of the kingdom, in that it laid down rules for the
composition of the council of regency, and limited the power of the
regent. This newly revived power they exercised freely, and all the more
so since they were the last surviving check on the royal authority.
During this reign there were numerous conflicts between them and the
government, the causes of this being primarily the innumerable incidents
to which the bull _Unigenitus_ gave rise, and the increase of taxation;
proceedings against Jesuits also figure conspicuously in the action of
the parlements. They became at this period the avowed representatives of
the nation; they contested the validity of the registration of laws in
the _lits de justice_, asserting that laws could only be made obligatory
when the registration had been freely endorsed by themselves. Before
the registration of edicts concerning taxation they demanded a statement
of the financial situation and the right of examining the accounts.
Finally, by the theory of the _classes_, which considered the various
parlements of France as parts of one and the same body, they established
among them a political union. These pretensions the crown refused to
recognize. Louis XV. solemnly condemned them in a _lit de justice_ of
December 1770, and in 1771 the chancellor Maupeou took drastic measures
against them. The magistrates of the parlement of Paris were removed,
and a new parlement was constituted, including the members of the _grand
conseil_, which had also been abolished. The _cour des aides_ of Paris,
which had made common cause with the parlement, was also suppressed.
Many of the provincial parlements were reorganized, and a certain number
of useful reforms were carried out in the jurisdiction of the parlement
of Paris; the object of these, however, was in most cases that of
diminishing its importance. These actions, the _coup d'etat_ of the
chancellor Maupeou, as they were called, produced an immense sensation.
The repeated conflicts of the reign of Louis XV. had already given rise
to a whole literature of books, pamphlets and tracts in which the rights
of the crown were discussed. At the same time the political philosophy
of the 18th century was disseminating new principles, and especially
those of the supremacy of the people and the differentiation of powers,
the government of England also became known among the French. Thus men's
minds were being prepared for the Revolution.

The personal government of Louis XVI. from 1774 to 1789 was chiefly
marked by two series of facts. Firstly, there was the partial
application of the principles propounded by the French economists of
this period, the Physiocrats, who had a political doctrine peculiar to
themselves. They were not in favour of political liberty, but attached
on the contrary to the absolute monarchy, of which they did not fear the
abuses because they were convinced that so soon as they should be known,
reason (_evidence_) alone would suffice to make the crown respect the
"natural and essential laws of bodies politic" (_Lois naturelles et
essentielles des societes politiques_, the title of a book by Mercier de
La Riviere). On the other hand, they favoured civil and economic
liberty. They wished, in particular, to decentralize the administration
and restore to the landed proprietors the administration and levying of
taxes, which they wished to reduce to a tax on land only. This school
came into power with Turgot, who was appointed controller-general of the
finances, and laid the foundations of many reforms. He actually
accomplished for the moment one very important reform, namely, the
suppression of the trade and craft gilds (_communautes, jurandes et
maitrises_). This organization, which was common to the whole of Europe
(see GILDS), had taken definitive shape in France in the 13th and 14th
centuries, but had subsequently been much abused. Turgot suppressed the
privileges of the _maitres_, who alone had been able to work on their
own account, or to open shops and workshops, and thus proclaimed the
freedom of labour, industry and commerce. However, the old organization,
slightly amended, was restored under his successor Necker. It was
Turgot's purpose to organize provincial and other inferior assemblies,
whose chief business was to be the assessment of taxes. Necker applied
this idea, partially and experimentally, by creating a few of these
provincial assemblies in various _generalites_ of the _pays
d'elections_. A general reform on these lines and on a very liberal
basis was proposed by Calonne to the assembly of notables in 1787, and
it was brought into force for all the _pays d'elections_, though not
under such good conditions, by an edict of the same year. Louis XVI. had
inaugurated his reign by the restoration of the parlements; all the
bodies which had been suppressed by Maupeou and all the officials whom
he had dismissed were restored, and all the bodies and officials created
by him were suppressed. But it was not long before the old struggle
between the crown and parlements again broke out. It began by the
conservative opposition offered by the parlement of Paris to Turgot's
reforms. But the real struggle broke out in 1787 over the edicts coming
from the assembly of notables, and particularly over the two new taxes,
the stamp duty and the land tax. The parlement of Paris refused to
register them, asserting that the consent of the taxpayers, as
represented by the states general, was necessary to fresh taxation. The
struggle seemed to have come to an end in September; but in the
following November it again broke out, in spite of the king's promise to
summon the states general. It reached its height in May 1788, when the
king had created a _cour pleniere_ distinct from the parlements, the
chief function of which was to register the laws in their stead. A
widespread agitation arose, amounting to actual anarchy, and was only
ended by the recall of Necker to power and the promise to convoke the
states general for 1789.


  The army.

_Various Institutions._--The permanent army which, as has been stated
above, was first established under Charles VII., was developed and
organized during the _ancien regime_. The _gendarmerie_ or heavy cavalry
was continuously increased in numbers. On the other hand, the _francs
archers_ fell into disuse after Louis XI.; and, after a fruitless
attempt had been made under Francis I. to establish a national infantry,
the system was adopted for this also of recruiting permanent bodies of
mercenaries by voluntary enlistment. First there were the "old bands"
(_vieilles bandes_), chiefly those of Picardy and Piedmont, and at the
end of the 16th century appeared the first regiments, the number of
which was from time to time increased. There were also in the service
and pay of the king French and foreign regiments, the latter principally
Swiss, Germans and Scots. The system of purchase penetrated also to the
army. Each regiment was the property of a great lord; the captain was,
so to speak, owner of his company, or rather a contractor, who, in
return for the sums paid him by the king, recruited his men and gave
them their uniform, arms and equipment. In the second half of the reign
of Louis XIV. appeared the militia (_milices_). To this force each
parish had to furnish one recruit, who was at first chosen by the
assembly of the inhabitants, later by drawing lots among the bachelors
or widowers without children, who were not exempt. The militia was very
rarely raised from the towns. The purpose for which these men were
employed varied from time to time. Sometimes, as under Louis XIV., they
were formed into special active regiments. Under Louis XV. and Louis
XVI. they were formed into _regiments provinciaux_, which constituted an
organized reserve. But their chief use was during war, when they were
individually incorporated into various regiments to fill up the gaps.

Under Louis XV., with the duc de Choiseul as minister of war, great and
useful reforms were effected in the army. Choiseul suppressed what he
called the "farming of companies" (_compagnie-ferme_); recruiting became
a function of the state, and voluntary enlistment a contract between the
recruit and the state. Arms, uniform and equipment were furnished by the
king. Choiseul also equalized the numbers of the military units, and his
reforms, together with a few others effected under Louis XVI., produced
the army which fought the first campaigns of the Revolution.


  System of taxation.

One of the most distinctive features of the _ancien regime_ was
excessive taxation. The taxes imposed by the king were numerous, and,
moreover, hardly any of them fell on all parts of the kingdom. To this
territorial inequality was added the inequality arising from privileges.
Ecclesiastics, nobles, and many of the crown officials were exempted
from the heaviest imposts. The chief taxes were the _taille_ (q.v.), the
_aides_ and the _gabelle_ (q.v.), or monopoly of salt, the consumption
of which was generally made compulsory up to the amount determined by
regulations. In the 17th and 18th centuries certain important new taxes
were established: from 1695 to 1698 the _capitation_, which was
re-established in 1701 with considerable modifications, and in 1710 the
tax of the _dixieme_, which became under Louis XV. the tax of the
_vingtiemes_. These two imposts had been established on the principle of
equality, being designed to affect every subject in proportion to his
income; but so strong was the system of privileges, that as a matter of
fact the chief burden fell upon the roturiers. The income of a roturier
who was not exempt was thus subject in turn to three direct imposts: the
_taille_, the _capitation_ and the _vingtiemes_, and the apportioning or
assessment of these was extremely arbitrary. In addition to indirect
taxation strictly so called, which was very extensive in the 17th and
18th centuries, France under the _ancien regime_ was subject to the
_traites_, or customs, which were not only levied at the frontiers on
foreign trade, but also included many internal custom-houses for trade
between different provinces. Their origin was generally due to
historical reasons; thus, among the _provinces reputees etrangeres_ were
those which in the 14th century had refused to pay the aids for the
ransom of King John, also certain provinces which had refused to allow
customs offices to be established on their foreign frontier. Colbert had
tried to abolish these internal duties, but had only succeeded to a
limited extent.

The indirect taxes, the _traites_ and the revenues of the royal domain
were farmed out by the crown. At first a separate contract had been made
for each impost in each _election_, but later they were combined into
larger lots, as is shown by the name of one of the customs districts,
_l'enceinte des cinq grosses fermes_. From the reign of Henry IV. on the
levying of each indirect impost was farmed _en bloc_ for the whole
kingdom, a system known as the _fermes generales_; but the real _ferme
generale_, including all the imposts and revenues which were farmed in
the whole of France, was only established under Colbert. The _ferme
generale_ was a powerful company, employing a vast number of men, most
of whom enjoyed various privileges. Besides the royal taxes, seigniorial
imposts survived under the form of tolls and market dues. The lords also
often possessed local monopolies, e.g. the right of the common bakehouse
(_four banal_), which were called the _banalites_.


  Courts of law.

The organization of the royal courts of justice underwent but few
modifications during the _ancien regime_. The number of parlements, of
_cours des aides_ and of _cours des comptes_ increased; in the 17th
century the name of _conseil superieur_ was given to some new bodies
which actually discharged the functions of the parlement, this being the
period of the decline of the parlement. In the 16th century, under Henry
II., had been created _presidiaux_, or courts of final jurisdiction,
intended to avoid numerous appeals in small cases, and above all to
avoid a final appeal to the parlements. Seigniorial courts survived, but
were entirely subordinate to the royal jurisdictions and were badly
officered by ill-paid and ignorant judges, the lords having long ago
lost the right to sit in them in person. Their chief use was to deal
with cases concerning the payment of feudal dues to the lord. Both
lawyers and people would have preferred only two degrees of justice; and
an ordinance of May 1788 realized this desire in the main. It did not
suppress the seigniorial jurisdictions, but made their extinction a
certainty by allowing litigants to ignore them and go straight to the
royal judges. This was, however, reversed on the recall of Necker and
the temporary triumph of the parlements.


  Ecclesiastical courts.

The ecclesiastical jurisdictions survived to the end, but with
diminished scope. Their competency had been considerably reduced by the
Ordinance of Villers Cotterets of 1539, and by an edict of 1693. But a
series of ingenious legal theories had been principally efficacious in
gradually depriving them of most of the cases which had hitherto come
under them. In the 18th century the privilege of clergy did not prevent
civil suits in which the clergy were defendants from being almost always
taken before secular tribunals, and ever since the first half of the
17th century, for all grave offences, or _cas privilegies_, the royal
judge could pronounce a sentence of corporal punishment on a guilty
cleric without this necessitating his previous degradation. The inquiry
into the case was, it is true, conducted jointly by the royal and the
ecclesiastical judge, but each of them pronounced his sentence
independently. All cases concerning benefices came before the royal
judges. Finally, the _officialites_ had no longer as a rule any
jurisdiction over laymen, even in the matter of marriage, except in
questions of betrothals, and sometimes in cases of opposition to
marriages. The parish priests, however, continued to enter declarations
of baptisms, marriages and burials in registers kept according to the
civil laws.


  The "customs."

The general customs of the _pays coutumiers_ were almost all officially
recorded in the 16th century, definite procedure for this purpose having
been adopted at the end of the 15th century. Drafts were prepared by the
officials of the royal courts in the chief town of the district in which
the particular customs were valid, and were then submitted to the
government. The king then appointed commissioners to visit the district
and promulgate the customs on the spot. For the purpose of this
_publication_ the lords, lay and ecclesiastical, of the district, with
representatives of the towns and of various bodies of the inhabitants,
were summoned for a given day to the chief town. In this assembly each
article was read, discussed and put to the vote. Those which were
approved by the majority were thereupon decreed (_decretes_) by the
commissioners in the king's name; those which gave rise to difficulties
were put aside for the parlement to settle when it registered the
_coutume_. The _coutumes_ in this form became practically written law;
henceforward their text could only be modified by a formal revision
carried out according to the same procedure as the first version.
Throughout the 16th century a fair number of _coutumes_ were thus
revised (_reformees_), with the express object of profiting by the
observations and criticisms on the first text which had appeared in
published commentaries and notes, the most important of which were those
of Charles Dumoulin. In the 16th century there had been a revival of the
study of Roman law, thanks to the historical school, among the most
illustrious representatives of which were Jacques Cujas, Hugues Doneau
and Jacques Godefroy; but this study had only slight influence on
practical jurisprudence. Certain institutions, however, such as
contracts and obligations, were regulated throughout the whole of France
by the principles of Roman law.

Legislation by _ordonnances, edits, declarations_ or _lettres patentes_,
emanating from the king, became more and more frequent; but the
character of the _grandes ordonnances_, which were of a far-reaching and
comprehensive nature, underwent a change during this period. In the
14th, 15th and 16th centuries they had been mainly _ordonnances de
reformation_ (i.e. revising previous laws), which were most frequently
drawn up after a sitting of the states general, in accordance with the
suggestions submitted by the deputies. The last of this type was the
ordinance of 1629, promulgated after the states general of 1614 and the
assemblies of notables which had followed it. In the 17th and 18th
centuries they became essentially _codifications_, comprising a
systematic and detailed statement of the whole branch of law. There are
two of these series of codifying ordinances: the first under Louis XIV.,
inspired by Colbert and carried out under his direction. The chief
ordinances of this group are that of 1667 on civil procedure (code of
civil procedure); that of 1670 on the examination of criminal cases
(code of penal procedure); that of 1673 on the commerce of merchants,
and that of 1681 on the regulation of shipping, which form between them
a complete code of commerce by land and sea. The ordinance of 1670
determined the formalities of that secret and written criminal
procedure, as opposed to the hearing of both parties in a suit, which
formerly obtained in France; it even increased its severity, continuing
the employment of torture, binding the accused by oath to speak the
truth, and refusing them counsel save in exceptional cases. The second
series of codifications was made under Louis XV., through the action of
the chancellor d'Aguesseau. Its chief result was the regulation, by the
ordinances of 1731, 1735 and 1747, of deeds of gift between living
persons, wills, and property left in trust. Under Louis XVI. some
mitigation was made of the criminal law, notably the abolition of
torture.


  Land tenure.

The feudal regime, in spite of the survival of seigniorial courts and
tolls, was no longer of any political importance; but it still furnished
the common form of real property. The fief, although it still implied
homage from the vassal, no longer involved any service on his part
(excepting that of the _arriere-ban_ due to the king); but when a fief
changed hands the lord still exacted his _profits_. Tenures held by
_roturiers_, in addition to some similar rights of transfer, were
generally subject to periodical and fixed contributions for the profit
of the lord. This system was still further complicated by tenures which
were simply real and not feudal, e.g. that by payment of ground rent,
which were superadded to the others, and had become all the heavier
since, in the 18th century, royal rights of transfer had been added to
the feudal rights. The inhabitants of the country districts were longing
for the liberation of real property.


  Serfdom.

  The three estates.

Serfdom had disappeared from most of the provinces of the kingdom; among
all the _coutumes_ which were officially codified, not more than ten or
so still recognized this institution. This had been brought about
especially by the agency of the custom by which serfs had been
transformed into _roturiers_. An edict of Louis XVI. of 1779 abolished
serfdom on crown lands, and mitigated the condition of the serfs who
still existed on the domains of individual lords. The nobility still
remained a privileged class, exempt from certain taxes. Certain offices
were restricted to the nobility; according to an edict of Louis XVI.
(1781) it was even necessary to be a noble in order to become an officer
in the army. In fact, the royal favours were reserved for the nobility.
Certain rules of civil and criminal procedure also distinguished nobles
from _roturiers_. The acquisition of fiefs had ceased to bring nobility
with it, but the latter was derived from three sources: birth, _lettres
d'anoblissement_ granted by the king and appointment to certain offices.
In the 17th and 18th centuries the peers of France can be reckoned among
the nobility, forming indeed its highest grade, though the rank of peer
was still attached to a fief, which was handed down with it; on the eve
of the Revolution there were thirty-eight lay peers. The rest of the
nation, apart from the ecclesiastics, consisted of the _roturiers_, who
were not subject to the disabilities of the serfs, but had not the
privileges of the nobility. Hence the three orders (estates) of the
kingdom: the clergy, the nobility and the _tiers etat_ (third estate).
An edict of Louis XVI. had made a regular civil status possible to the
Protestants, and had thrown open offices and professions to them, though
not entirely; but the exercise of their religion was still forbidden.

_The Revolution._--With the Revolution France entered the ranks of
constitutional countries, in which the liberty of men is guaranteed by
fixed and definite laws; from this time on, she has had always (except
in the interval between two revolutions) a written constitution, which
could not be touched by the ordinary legislative power. The first
constitution was that of 1791; the states general of 1789, transformed
by their own will, backed by public opinion, into the Constituent
Assembly, drew it up on their own authority. But their work did not stop
there. They abolished the whole of the old public law of France and part
of the criminal law, or rather, transformed it in accordance with the
principles laid down by the political philosophy of the 18th century.
The principles which were then proclaimed are still, on most points, the
foundation of modern French law. The development resulting from this
extraordinary impetus can be divided into two quite distinct phases: the
first, from 1789 to the _coup d'etat_ of the 18th Brumaire in the year
VIII., was the continuation of the impulse of the Revolution; the second
includes the Consulate and the first Empire, and was, as it were, the
marriage or fusion of the institutions arising from the Revolution with
those of the _ancien regime_.


  The Constitutions of the Revolution.

On the whole, the constitutional law of the Revolution is a remarkably
united whole, if we consider only the two constitutions which were
effectively applied during this first phase, that of the 3rd of
September 1791, and that of the 5th Fructidor in the year III. It is
true that between them occurred the ultra-democratic constitution of the
24th of June 1793, the first voted by the Convention; but although this
was ratified by the popular vote, to which it had been directly
submitted, in accordance with a principle proclaimed by the Convention
and kept in force under the Consulate and the Empire, it was never
carried into effect. It was first suspended by the establishment of the
revolutionary government strictly so called, and after Thermidor, under
the pretext of completing it, the Convention put it aside and made a new
one, being taught by experience. As long as it existed it was the
sovereign assembly of the Convention itself which really exercised the
executive power, governing chiefly by means of its great committees.

The constitution of 1791 was without doubt monarchical, in so far as it
preserved royalty. The constitution of the year III. was, on the
contrary, republican. The horror of monarchy was still so strong at that
time that an executive college was created, a Directory of five members,
one of whom retired every year; they were elected by a complicated and
curious procedure, in which each of the two legislative councils played
a distinct part. But this difference, though apparently essential, was
not in reality very profound; this is proved, for example, by the fact
that the Directory had distinctly more extensive powers than those
conferred on Louis XVI. by the Constituent Assembly. On almost all
points of importance the two constitutions were similar. They were both
preceded by a statement of principles, a "Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen." They were both based on two principles which
they construed alike: the sovereignty of the people and the separation
of powers. Both of them (with the exception of what has been said with
regard to the ratification of constitutions after 1793) recognized only
representative government. From the principle of the sovereignty of the
people they had not deduced universal suffrage; though, short of this,
they had extended the suffrage as far as possible. According to the
constitution of 1791, in addition to the conditions of age and
residence, an elector was bound to pay a direct contribution equivalent
to three days' work; the constitution of the year III. recognized the
payment of any direct contribution as sufficient; it even conferred on
every citizen the right of having himself enrolled, without any other
qualification than a payment equivalent to three days' work, and thus to
become an elector. Further, neither of the two constitutions admitted of
a direct suffrage; the elections were carried out in two stages, and
only those who paid at a higher rating could be chosen as electors for
the second stage. The executive power, which was in the case of both
constitutions clearly separated from the legislative, could not initiate
legislation. The Directory had no veto; Louis XVI. had with difficulty
obtained a merely suspensive veto, which was overridden in the event of
three legislatures successively voting against it. The right of
dissolution was possessed by neither the king nor the Directory. Neither
the king's ministers nor those of the Directory could be members of the
legislative body, nor could they even be chosen from among its ranks.
The ministers of Louis XVI. had, however, thanks to an unfortunate
inspiration of the Constituent Assembly of 1791, the right of entry to,
and, to a certain extent, of speaking in the Legislative Assembly; the
constitution of the year III. showed greater wisdom in not bringing them
in any way into contact with the legislative power. The greatest and
most notable difference between the two constitutions was that that of
1791 established a single chamber which was entirely renewed every two
years; that of the year III., on the contrary, profiting by the lessons
of the past, established two chambers, one-third of the members of which
were renewed every year. Moreover, the two chambers, the Council of Five
Hundred and the Council of Ancients, were appointed by the same
electors, and almost the only difference between their members was that
of age.


  Abolition of the "ancien regime."

The Revolution entirely abolished the _ancien regime_, and in the first
instance whatever remained of feudalism. The Constituent Assembly, in
the course of its immense work of settlement, wished to draw
distinctions, abolishing absolutely, without indemnity, all rights which
had amounted in the beginning to a usurpation and could not be
justified, e.g. serfdom and seigniorial courts of justice. On the other
hand, it declared subject to redemption such feudal charges as had been
the subject of contract or of a concession of lands. But as it was
almost impossible to discover the exact origin of various feudal
rights, the Assembly had proceeded to do this by means of certain legal
assumptions which sometimes admitted of a proof to the contrary. It
carefully regulated the conditions and rate of repurchase, and forbade
the creation in the future of any perpetual charge which could not be
redeemed: a principle that has remained permanent in French law. This
was a rational and equitable solution; but in a period of such violent
excitement it could not be maintained. The Legislative Assembly declared
the abolishment without indemnity of all feudal rights for which the
original deed of concession could not be produced; and to produce this
was, of course, in most cases impossible. Finally, the Convention
entirely abolished all feudal rights, and commanded that the old deeds
should be destroyed; it maintained on the contrary, though subject to
redemption, those tenures and charges which were solely connected with
landed property and not feudal.

With feudalism had been abolished serfdom. Further, the Constituent
Assembly suppressed nobility; it even forbade any one to assume and bear
the titles, emblems and arms of nobility. Thus was established the
equality of citizens before the law. The Assembly also proclaimed the
liberty of labour and industry, and suppressed the corporations of
artisans and workmen, the _jurandes_ and _maitrises_, as Turgot had
done. But, in order to maintain this liberty of the individual, it
forbade all associations between workers, or employers, fearing that
such contracts would again lead to the formation of corporations similar
to the old ones. It even forbade and declared punishable, as being
contrary to the declaration of the rights of man and the citizen,
combinations or strikes, or an agreement between workmen or employers to
refuse to work or to give work except on given conditions. Such, for a
long time, was French legislation on this point.


  Administrative reorganization.

The Constituent Assembly gave to France a new administrative division,
that into departments, districts, cantons and communes; and this
division, which was intended to make the old provincial distinctions
disappear, had to serve all purposes, the department being the unit for
all public services. This settlement was definitive, with the exception
of certain modifications in detail, and exists to the present day. But
there was a peculiar administrative organism depending on this
arrangement. The constitution of 1791, it is true, made the king the
titulary head of the executive power; but the internal administration of
the kingdom was not actually in his hands. It was deputed, under his
orders, to bodies elected in each department, district and commune. The
municipal bodies were directly elected by citizens duly qualified; other
bodies were chosen by the method of double election. Each body consisted
of two parts: a council, for deliberative purposes, and a _bureau_ or
_directoire_ chosen by the council from among its numbers to form the
executive. These were the only instruments for the general
administration and for that of the direct taxes. The king could, it is
true, annul the illegal acts of these bodies, but not dismiss their
members; he could merely suspend them from exercising their functions,
but the matter then went before the Legislative Assembly, which could
maintain or remit the suspension as it thought fit. The king had not a
single agent chosen by himself for general administrative purposes. This
was a reaction, though a very exaggerated one, against the excessive
centralization of the _ancien regime_, and resulted in an absolute
administrative anarchy. The organization of the revolutionary government
partly restored the central authority; the councils of the departments
were suppressed; the Committee of Public Safety and the "representatives
of the people on mission" were able to remove and replace the members of
the elected bodies; and also, by an ingenious arrangement, national
agents were established in the districts. The constitution of the year
III. continued in this course, simplifying the organization established
by the Constituent Assembly, while maintaining its principle. The
department had an administration of five members, elected as in the
past, but having executive as well as deliberative functions. The
district was suppressed. The communes retained only a municipal agent
elected by themselves, and the actual municipal body, the importance of
which was considerably increased, was removed to the canton, and
consisted of the municipal agents from each commune, and a president
elected by the duly qualified citizens of the canton. The Directory was
represented in each departmental and communal administration by a
commissary appointed and removable by itself, and could dismiss the
members of these administrations.


  Judicial system.

The Constituent Assembly decided on the complete reorganization of the
judicial organization. This was accomplished on a very simple plan,
which realized that ideal of the two degrees of justice which, as we
have noticed, was that of France under the _ancien regime_. In the lower
degrees it created in each canton a justice of the peace (_juge de
paix_), the idea and name of which were borrowed from England, but which
differed very much from the English justice of the peace. He judged,
both with and without appeal, civil cases of small importance; and, in
cases which did not come within his competency, it was his duty to try
to reconcile the parties. In each district was established a civil court
composed of five judges. This completed the judicial organization,
except for the court of cassation, which had functions peculiar to
itself, never judging the facts of the case but only the application of
the law. For cases coming under the district court, the Assembly had not
thought fit to abolish the guarantee of the appeal in cases involving
sums above a certain figure. But by a curious arrangement the district
tribunals could hear appeals from one another. With regard to penal
prosecutions, there was in each department a criminal court which judged
crimes with the assistance of a jury; it consisted of judges borrowed
from district courts, and had its own president and public prosecutor.
Correctional tribunals, composed of _juges de paix_, dealt with
misdemeanours. The Assembly preserved the commercial courts, or consular
jurisdictions, of the _ancien regime_. There was a court of cassation,
the purpose of which was to preserve the unity of jurisprudence in
France; it dealt with matters of law and not of fact, considering
appeals based on the violation of law, whether in point of matter or of
form, and if such violation were proved, sending the matter before
another tribunal of the same rank for re-trial. All judges were elected
for a term of years; the _juges de paix_ by the primary assembly of the
canton, the district judges by the electoral assembly consisting of the
electors of the second degree for the district, the members of the court
of cassation by the electors of the departments, who were divided for
the purpose into two series, which voted alternately. The Constituent
Assembly did, it is true, require professional guarantees, by proof of a
more or less extended exercise of the profession of lawyer from all
judges except the _juges de paix_. But the system was really the same as
that of the administrative organization. The king only appointed the
_commissaires du roi_ attached to the district courts, criminal
tribunals and the court of cassation; but the appointment once made
could not be revoked by him. These commissaries fulfilled one of the
functions of the old _ministere public_, their duty being to demand the
application of laws. The Convention did not change this general
organization; but it suppressed the professional guarantees required in
the case of candidates for a judgeship, so that henceforth all citizens
were eligible; and it also caused new elections to take place. Moreover,
the Convention, either directly or by means of one of its committees,
not infrequently removed and replaced judges without further election.
The constitution of the year III. preserved this system, but introduced
one considerable modification. It suppressed the district courts, and in
their place created in each department a civil tribunal consisting of
twenty judges. The idea was a happy one, for it gave the courts more
importance, and therefore more weight and dignity. But this reform,
beneficial as it would be nowadays, was at the time premature, in view
of the backward condition of means of communication.


  The army.

The Constituent Assembly suppressed the militia and maintained the
standing army, according to the old type, the numbers of which were
henceforth to be fixed every year by the Legislative Assembly. The army
was to be recruited by voluntary enlistment, careful rules for which
were drawn up; the only change was in the system of appointment to
ranks; promotion went chiefly by seniority, and in the lower ranks a
system of nomination by equals or inferiors was organized. The Assembly
proclaimed, however, the principle of compulsory and personal service,
but under a particular form, that of the National Guard, to which all
qualified citizens belonged, and in which almost all ranks were
conferred by election. Its chief purpose was to maintain order at home;
but it could be called upon to furnish detachments for defence against
foreign invasion. This was an institution which, with many successive
modifications, and after various long periods of inactivity followed by
a revival, lasted more than three-quarters of a century, and was not
suppressed till 1871. For purposes of war the Convention, in addition to
voluntary enlistments and the resources furnished by the National
Guards, and setting aside the forced levy of 200,000 men in 1793,
decided on the expedient of calling upon the communes to furnish men, a
course which revived the principle of the old militia. But the Directory
drew up an important military law, that of the 6th Fructidor of the year
VI., which established compulsory military service for all, under the
form of conscription strictly so called. Frenchmen aged from 20 to 25
(_defenseurs conscrits_) were divided into five classes, each including
the men born in the same year, and were liable until they were 25 years
old to be called up for active service, the whole period of service not
exceeding four years. No class was called upon until the younger classes
had been exhausted, and the sending of substitutes was forbidden. This
law, with a few later modifications, provided for the French armies up
to the end of the Empire.


  Taxation.

The Constituent Assembly abolished nearly all the taxes of the _ancien
regime_. Almost the only taxes preserved were the stamp duty and that on
the registration of acts (the old _controle_ and _centieme denier_), and
these were completely reorganized; the customs were maintained only at
the frontiers for foreign trade. In the establishment of new taxes the
Assembly was influenced by two sentiments: the hatred which had been
inspired by the former arbitrary taxation, and the influence of the
school of the Physiocrats. Consequently it did away with indirect
taxation on objects of consumption, and made the principal direct tax
the tax on land. Next in importance were the _contribution personnelle
et mobiliere_ and the _patentes_. The essential elements of the former
were a sort of capitation-tax equivalent to three days' work, which was
the distinctive and definite sign of a qualified citizen, and a tax on
personal income, calculated according to the rent paid. The _patentes_
were paid by traders, and were also based on the amount of rent. These
taxes, though considerably modified later, are still essentially the
basis of the French system of direct taxation. The Constituent Assembly
had on principle repudiated the tax on the gross income, much favoured
under the _ancien regime_, which everybody had felt to be arbitrary and
oppressive. The system of public contributions under the Convention was
arbitrary and revolutionary, but the councils of the Directory, side by
side with certain bad laws devised to tide over temporary crises, made
some excellent laws on the subject of taxation. They resumed the
regulation of the land tax, improving and partly altering it, and also
dealt with the _contribution personnelle et mobiliere_, the _patentes_,
and the stamp and registration duties. It was at this time, too, that
the door and window tax, which still exists, was provisionally
established; there was also a partial reappearance of indirect taxation,
in particular the _octrois_ of the towns, which had been suppressed by
the Constituent Assembly.


  Religious liberty.

The Constituent Assembly gave the Protestants liberty of worship and
full rights; it also gave Jews the status of citizen, which they had not
had under the _ancien regime_, together with political rights. With
regard to the Catholic Church, the Assembly placed at the disposal of
the nation the property of the clergy, which had already, in the course
of the 18th century, been regarded by most political writers as a
national possession; at the same time it provided for salaries for the
members of the clergy and pensions for those who had been monks. It
abolished tithes and the religious orders, and forbade the re-formation
of the latter in the future. The ecclesiastical districts were next
reorganized, the department being always taken as the chief unit, and a
new church was organized by the civil constitution of the clergy, the
bishops being elected by the electoral assembly of the department (the
usual electors), and the cures by the electoral assembly of the
district. This was an unfortunate piece of legislation, inspired partly
by the old Gallican spirit, partly by the theories on civil religion of
J.J. Rousseau and his school, and, together with the civic oath imposed
on the clergy, it was a source of endless troubles. The constitutional
church established in this way was, however, abolished as a state
institution by the Convention. By laws of the years III. and IV. the
Convention and the Directory, in proclaiming the liberty of worship,
declared that the Republic neither endowed nor recognized any form of
worship. Buildings formerly consecrated to worship, which had not been
alienated, were again placed at the disposal of worshippers for this
purpose, but under conditions which were hard for them to accept.


  Civil law.

  Criminal law.

The Assemblies of the Revolution, besides the laws which, by abolishing
feudalism, altered the character of real property, passed many others
concerning civil law. The most important are those of 1792, passed by
the Legislative Assembly, which organized the registers of the _etat
civil_ kept by the municipalities, and laid down rules for marriage as a
purely civil contract. Divorce was admitted to a practically unlimited
extent; it was possible not only for causes determined by law, and by
mutual consent, but also for incompatibility of temper and character
proved, by either husband or wife, to be of a persistent nature. Next
came the laws of the Convention as to inheritance, imposing perfect
equality among the natural heirs and endeavouring to ensure the division
of properties. Illegitimate children were considered by these laws as on
the same level with legitimate children. The Convention and the councils
of the Directory also made excellent laws on the administration of
_hypotheques_, and worked at the preparation of a Civil Code (see CODE
NAPOLEON). In criminal law their work was still more important. In 1791
the Constituent Assembly gave France her first penal code. It was
inspired by humanitarian ideas, still admitting capital punishment,
though accompanied by no cruelty in the execution; but none of the
remaining punishments was for life. Long imprisonment with hard labour
was introduced. Finally, as a reaction against the former system of
arbitrary penalties, there came a system of fixed penalties determined,
both as to its assessment and its nature, for each offence, which the
judge could not modify. The Constituent Assembly also reformed the
procedure of criminal trials, taking English law as model. It introduced
the jury, with the double form of _jury d'accusation_ and _jury de
jugement_. Before the judges procedure was always public and oral. The
prosecution was left in principle to the parties concerned, plaintiffs
or _denonciateurs civiques_, and the preliminary investigation was
handed over to two magistrates; one was the _juge de paix_, as in
English procedure at this period, and the other a magistrate chosen from
the district court and called the _directeur du jury_. The Convention,
before separating, passed the _Code des delits et des peines_ of the 3rd
Brumaire in the year IV. This piece of work, which was due to Merlin de
Douai, was intended to deal with criminal procedure and penal law; but
only the first part could be completed. It was the procedure established
by the Constituent Assembly, but further organized and improved.

_The Consulate and the Empire._--The constitutional law of the Consulate
and the Empire is to be found in a series of documents called later the
_Constitutions de l'Empire_, the constitution promulgated during the
Hundred Days being consequently given the name of _Acte additionnel aux
Constitutions de l'Empire_. These documents consist of (1) the
Constitution of the 22nd Frimaire of the year VIII., the work of Sieyes
and Bonaparte, the text on which the others were based; (2) the
_senatus consulte_ of the 16th Thermidor in the year X., establishing
the consulate for life; and (3) the _senatus consulte_ of the 28th
Floreal in the year XII., which created the Empire. These constitutional
acts, which were all, whether in their full text or in principle,
submitted to the popular vote by means of a _plebiscite_, had all the
same object: to assure absolute power to Napoleon, while preserving the
forms and appearance of liberty. Popular suffrage was maintained, and
even became universal; but, since the system was that of suffrage in
many stages, which, moreover, varied very much, the citizens in effect
merely nominated the candidates, and it was the Senate, playing the part
of _grand electeur_ which Sieyes had dreamed of as his own, which chose
from among them the members of the various so-called elected bodies,
even those of the political assemblies. According to the constitution of
the year VIII., the first consul (to whom had been added two colleagues,
the second and third consuls, who did not disappear until the Empire)
possessed the executive power in the widest sense of the word, and he
alone could initiate legislation. There were three representative
assemblies in existence, elected as we have seen; but one of them, the
Corps Legislatif, passed laws without discussing them, and without the
power of amending the suggestions of the government. The Tribunate, on
the contrary, discussed them, but its vote was not necessary for the
passing of the law. The Senate was the guardian and preserver of the
constitution; in addition to its role of _grand electeur_, its chief
function was to annul laws and acts submitted to it by the Tribunate as
being unconstitutional. This original organization was naturally
modified during the course of the Consulate and the Empire; not only did
the emperor obtain the right of directly nominating senators, and the
princes of the imperial family, and grant dignitaries of the Empire that
of entering the Senate by right; but a whole body, the Tribunate, which
was the only one which could preserve some independence, disappeared,
without resort having been had to a plebiscite; it was modified and
weakened by _senatus consulte_ of the year X., and was suppressed in
1807 by a mere _senatus consulte_. The importance of another body, on
the contrary, the _conseil d'etat_, which had been formed on the
improved type of the ancient _conseil du roi_, and consisted of members
appointed by Napoleon and carefully chosen, continually increased. It
was this body which really prepared and discussed the laws; and it was
its members who advocated them before the Corps Legislatif, to which the
Tribunate also sent orators to speak on its behalf. The ministers, who
had no relation with the legislative power, were merely the agents of
the head of the state, freely chosen by himself. Napoleon, however,
found these powers insufficient, and arrogated to himself others, a fact
which the Senate did not forget when it proclaimed his downfall. Thus he
frequently declared war upon his own authority, in spite of the
provisions to the contrary made by the constitution of the year VIII.;
and similarly, under the form of _decrets_, made what were really laws.
They were afterwards called _decrets-lois_, and those that were not
indissolubly associated with the political regime of the Empire, and
survived it, were subsequently declared valid by the court of cassation,
on the ground that they had not been submitted to the Senate as
unconstitutional, as had been provided by the constitution of the year
VIII.


  Administrative changes under Consulate and Empire.

This period saw the rise of a whole new series of great organic laws.
For administrative organization, the most important was that of the 28th
Pluviose in the year VIII. It established as chief authority for each
department a prefect, and side by side with him a _conseil general_ for
deliberative purposes; for each _arrondissement_ (corresponding to the
old _district_) a sub-prefect (_sous-prefet_) and a _conseil
d'arrondissement_; and for each _commune_, a mayor and a municipal
council. But all these officials, both the members of the councils and
the individual agents, were appointed by the head of the state or by the
prefect, so that centralization was restored more completely than ever.
Together with the prefect there was also established a _conseil de
prefecture_, having administrative functions, and generally acting as a
court of the first instance in disputes and litigation arising out of
the acts of the administration; for the Constituent Assembly had removed
such cases from the jurisdiction of the civil tribunals, and referred
them to the administrative bodies themselves. The final appeal in these
disputes was to the _conseil d'etat_, which was supreme judge in these
matters. In 1807 was created another great administrative jurisdiction,
the _cour des comptes_, after the pattern of that which had existed
under the _ancien regime_.


  Judicial changes.

Judicial organization had also been fundamentally altered. The system of
election was preserved for a time in the case of the _juges de paix_ and
the members of the court of cassation, but finally disappeared there,
even where it had already been no more than a form. The magistrates were
in principle appointed for life, but under the Empire a device was found
for evading the rule of irremovability. For the judgment of civil cases
there was a court of first instance in every arrondissement, and above
these a certain number of courts of appeal, each of which had within its
province several departments. The separate criminal tribunals were
abolished in 1809 by the _Code d'Instruction Criminelle_, and the
magistrates forming the _cour d'assises_, which judged crimes with the
aid of a jury, were drawn from the courts of appeal and from the civil
tribunals. The _jury d'accusation_ was also abolished by the _Code
d'Instruction Criminelle_, and the right of pronouncing the indictment
was transferred to a chamber of the court of appeal. The correctional
tribunals were amalgamated with the civil tribunals of the first
instance. The _tribunal de cassation_, which took under the Empire the
name of _cour de cassation_, consisted of magistrates appointed for
life, and still kept its powers. The _ministere public_ (consisting of
imperial _avocats_ and _procureurs_) was restored in practically the
same form as under the _ancien regime_.


  Taxation.

The former system of taxation was preserved in principle, but with one
considerable addition: Napoleon re-established indirect taxation on
articles of consumption, which had been abolished by the Constituent
Assembly; the chief of these were the duties on liquor (_droits reunis_,
or excise) and the monopoly of tobacco.


  The Concordat.

The Concordat concluded by Napoleon with the papacy on the 26th Messidor
of the year IX. re-established the Catholic religion in France as the
form of worship recognized and endowed by the state. It was in principle
drawn up on the lines of that of 1516, and assured to the head of the
French state in his dealings with the papacy the same prerogatives as
had formerly been enjoyed by the kings; the chief of these was that he
appointed the bishops, who afterwards had to ask the pope for canonical
institution. The territorial distribution of dioceses was preserved
practically as it had been left by the civil constitution of the clergy.
The state guaranteed the payment of salaries to bishops and cures; and
the pope agreed to renounce all claims referring to the appropriation of
the goods of the clergy made by the Constituent Assembly. Later on, a
decree restored to the _fabriques_ (vestries) such of their former
possessions as had not been alienated, and the churches which had not
been alienated were restored for the purposes of worship. The law of the
18th Germinal in the year X., ratifying the Concordat, reasserted, under
the name of _articles organiques du culte catholique_, all the main
principles contained in the old doctrine of the liberties of the
Gallican Church. The Concordat did not include the restoration of the
religious orders and congregations; Napoleon sanctioned by decrees only
a few establishments of this kind.


  The university.

One important creation of the Empire was the university. The _ancien
regime_ had had its universities for purposes of instruction and for the
conferring of degrees; it had also, though without any definite
organization, such secondary schools as the towns admitted within their
walls, and the primary schools of the parishes. The Revolution
suppressed the universities and the teaching congregations. The
constitution of the year III. proclaimed the liberty of instruction and
commanded that public schools, both elementary and secondary, should be
established. Under the Directory there was in each department an _ecole
centrale_, in which all branches of human knowledge were taught.
Napoleon, developing ideas which had been started in the second half of
the 18th century, founded by laws and decrees of 1806, 1808 and 1811 the
Universite de France, which provided and organized higher, secondary and
primary education; this was to be the monopoly of the state, carried on
by its _facultes_, _lycees_ and primary schools. No private educational
establishment could be opened without the authorization of the state.


  The Codes.

But chief among the documents dating from this period are the Codes,
which still give laws to France. These are the Civil Code of 1804, the
_Code de Procedure Civile_ of 1806, the _Code de Commerce_ of 1807, the
_Code d'Instruction Criminelle_ of 1809, and the _Code Penal_ of 1810.
These monumental works, in the elaboration of which the _conseil d'etat_
took the chief part, contributed, to a greater or less extent, towards
the fusion of the old law of France with the laws of the Revolution. It
was in the case of the _Code Civil_ that this task presented the
greatest difficulty (see CODE NAPOLEON). The _Code de Commerce_ was
scarcely more than a revised and emended edition of the _ordonnances_ of
1673 and 1681; while the _Code de Procedure Civile_ borrowed its chief
elements from the _ordonnance_ of 1667. In the case of the _Code
d'Instruction Criminelle_ a distinctly new departure was made; the
procedure introduced by the Revolution into courts where judgment was
given remained public and oral, with full liberty of defence; the
preliminary procedure, however, before the examining court (_juge
d'instruction_ or _chambre des mises en accusation_) was borrowed from
the _ordonnance_ of 1670; it was the procedure of the old law, without
its cruelty, but secret and written, and generally not in the presence
of both parties. The _Code Penal_ maintained the principles of the
Revolution, but increased the penalties. It substituted for the system
of fixed penalties, in cases of temporary punishment, a maximum and a
minimum, between the limits of which judges could assess the amount.
Even in the case of misdemeanours, it admitted the system of extenuating
circumstances, which allowed them still further to decrease and alter
the penalty in so far as the offence was mitigated by such
circumstances. (See further under NAPOLEON I.)


  Constitutional monarchy.

_The Restored Monarchy._--The Restoration and the Monarchy of July,
though separated by a revolution, form one period in the history of
French institutions, a period in which the same regime was continued and
developed. This was the constitutional monarchy, with a parliamentary
body consisting of two chambers, a system imitated from England. The
same constitution was preserved under these two monarchies--the charter
granted by Louis XVIII. in 1814. The revolution of 1830 took place in
defence of the charter which Charles X. had violated by the
_ordonnances_ of July, so that this charter was naturally preserved
under the "July Monarchy." It was merely revised by the Chamber of
Deputies, which had been one of the movers of the revolution, and by
what remained of the House of Peers. In order to give the constitution
the appearance of originating in the will of the people, the preface,
which made it appear to be a favour granted by the king, was destroyed.
The two chambers acquired the initiative in legislation, which had not
been recognized as theirs under the Restoration, but from this time on
belonged to them equally with the king. The sittings of the House of
Peers were henceforth held in public; but this chamber underwent another
and more fundamental transformation. The peers were nominated by the
king, with no limit of numbers, and according to the charter of 1814
their appointment could be either for life or hereditary; but, in
execution of an ordinance of Louis XVIII., during the Restoration they
were always appointed under the latter condition. Under the July
Monarchy their tenure of office was for life, and the king had to choose
them from among twenty-two classes of notables fixed by law. The
franchise for the election of the Chamber of Deputies had been limited
by a system of money qualifications; but while, under the Restoration,
it had been necessary, in order to be an elector, to pay three hundred
francs in direct taxation, this sum was reduced in 1831 to two hundred
francs, while in certain cases even a smaller amount sufficed. In order
to be elected as a deputy it was necessary, according to the charter of
1814, to pay a thousand francs in direct taxation, and according to that
of 1830 five hundred francs. From 1817 onwards there was direct
suffrage, the electors directly electing the deputies. The idea of those
who had framed the charter of 1814 had been to give the chief influence
to the great landed proprietors, though the means adopted to this end
were not adequate: in 1830 the chief aim had been to give a
preponderating influence to the middle and lower middle classes, and
this had met with greater success. The House of Peers, under the name of
_cour des pairs_, had also the function of judging attempts and plots
against the security of the state, and it had frequently to exercise
this function both under the Restoration and the July Monarchy.

This was a period of parliamentary government; that is, of government by
a cabinet, resting on the responsibility of the ministers to the Chamber
of Deputies. The only interruption was that caused by the resistance of
Charles X. at the end of his reign, which led to the revolution of July.
Parliamentary government was practised regularly and in an enlightened
spirit under the Restoration, although the Chamber had not then all the
powers which it has since acquired. It is noteworthy that during this
period the right of the House of Peers to force a ministry to resign by
a hostile vote was not recognized. By the creation of a certain number
of new peers, a _fournee de pairs_, as it was then called, the majority
in this House could be changed when necessary. But the government of the
Restoration had to deal with two extreme parties of a very opposite
nature: the _Ultras_, who wished to restore as far as possible the
_ancien regime_, to whom were due the acts of the _chambre introuvable_
of 1816, and later the laws of the ministry of Villele, especially the
law of sacrilege and that voting compensation to the dispossessed
nobles, known as the _milliard des emigres_; and on the other hand the
_Liberals_, including the Bonapartists and Republicans, who were
attached to the principles of the Revolution. In order to prevent either
of these parties from predominating in the chamber, the government made
a free use of its power of dissolution. It further employed two means to
check the progress of the Liberals; firstly, there were various
alterations successively made in the electoral law, and the press laws,
frequently restrictive in their effect, which introduced the censorship
and a preliminary authorization in the case of periodical publications,
and gave the correctional tribunals jurisdiction in cases of press
offences. The best electoral law was that of 1817, and the best press
laws were those of 1819; but these were not of long duration. Under the
July Monarchy parliamentary government, although its machinery was
further perfected, was not so brilliant. The majorities in the Chamber
of Deputies were often uncertain, so much so, that more than once the
right of dissolution was exercised in order to try by new elections to
arrive at an undivided and certain majority. King Louis Philippe, though
sober-minded, wished to exercise a personal influence on the policy of
the cabinet, so that there were then two schools, represented
respectively by Thiers and Guizot, one of which held the theory that
"the king reigns but does not govern"; while the other maintained that
he might exercise a personal influence, provided that he could rely on a
ministry supported by a majority of the Chamber of Deputies. But the
weak point in the July Monarchy was above all the question of the
franchise. A powerful movement of opinion set in towards demanding an
extension, some wishing for universal suffrage, but the majority
proposing what was called the _adjonction des capacites_, that is to
say, that to the number of qualified electors should be added those
citizens who, by virtue of their professions, capacity or acquirements,
were inscribed after them on the general list for juries. But the
government obstinately refused all electoral reform, and held to the law
of 1831. It also refused parliamentary reform, by which was meant a rule
which would have made most public offices incompatible with the position
of deputy, the Chamber of Deputies being at that time full of
officials. The press, thanks to the Charter, was perfectly free, without
either censorship or preliminary authorization, and press offences were
judged by a jury.


  The system of the Empire retained.

In another respect also the Restoration and the July Monarchy were at
one, the second continuing the spirit of the first, viz. in maintaining
in principle the civil, legal and administrative institutions of the
Empire. The preface to the charter of 1814 sanctioned and guaranteed
most of the legal rights won by the Revolution; even the alienation of
national property was confirmed. It was said, it is true, that the old
nobility regained their titles, and that the nobility of the Empire kept
those which Napoleon had given them; but these were merely titles and
nothing more; there was no privileged nobility, and the equality of
citizens before the law was maintained. Judicial and administrative
organization, the system of taxation, military organization, the
relations of church and state, remained the same, and the university
also continued to exist. The government did, it is true, negotiate a new
Concordat with the papacy in 1817, but did not dare even to submit it to
the chambers. The most important reform was that of the law concerning
recruiting for the army. The charter of 1814 had promised the abolition
of conscription, in the form in which it had been created by the law of
the year VI. The law of the 10th of March 1818 actually established a
new system. The contingent voted by the chambers for annual
incorporation into the standing army was divided up among all the
cantons; and, in order to furnish it, lots were drawn among all the men
of a certain class, that is to say, among the young Frenchmen who
arrived at their majority that year. Those who were not chosen by lot
were definitely set free from military service. The sending of
substitutes, a custom which had been permitted by Napoleon, was
recognized. This was the type of all the laws on recruiting in France,
of which there were a good number in succession up to 1867. On other
points they vary, in particular as to the duration of service, which was
six years, and later eight years, under the Restoration; but the system
remained the same.

The Restoration produced a code, the _Code forestier_ of 1827, for the
regulation of forests (_eaux et forets_). In 1816 a law had abolished
divorce, making marriage indissoluble, as it had been in the old law.
But the best laws of this period were those on finance. Now, for the
first time, was introduced the practice of drawing up regular budgets,
voted before the year to which they applied, and divided since 1819 into
the budget of expenditure and budget of receipts.

Together with other institutions of the Empire, the Restoration had
preserved the exaggerated system of administrative centralization
established in the year VIII.; and proposals for its relaxation
submitted to the chambers had come to nothing. It was only under the
July Monarchy that it was relaxed. The municipal law of the 21st of
March 1831 made the municipal councils elective, and extended widely the
right of voting in the elections for them; the _maires_ and their
assistants continued to be appointed by the government, but had to be
chosen from among the members of the municipal councils. The law of the
22nd of June 1833 made the general councils of the departments also
elective, and brought the _adjonction des capacites_ into effect for
their election. The powers of these bodies were enlarged in 1838, and
they gained the right of electing their president. In 1833 was granted
another liberty, that of primary education; but in spite of violent
protestations, coming especially from the Catholics, secondary and
higher education continued to be a monopoly of the state. Many organic
laws were promulgated, one concerning the National Guard, which was
reorganized in order to adapt it to the system of citizen
qualifications; one in 1832 on the recruiting of the army, fixing the
period of service at seven years; and another in 1834 securing the
status of officers. A law of the 11th of June 1842 established the great
railway lines. In 1832 the _Code Penal_ and _Code d'Instruction
Criminelle_ were revised, with the object of lightening penalties; the
system of extenuating circumstances, as recognized by a jury, was
extended to the judgment of all crimes. There was also a revision of
Book III. of the _Code de Commerce_, treating of bankruptcy. Finally,
from this period date the laws of the 3rd of May 1841, on expropriation
for purposes of public utility, and of the 30th of June 1838, on the
treatment of the insane, which is still in force. Judicial organization
remained as it was, but the amount of the sum up to which civil
tribunals of the first instance could judge without appeal was raised
from 1000 francs to 1500, and the competency of the _juges de paix_ was
widened.

_The Second Republic and the Second Empire._--From the point of view of
constitutional law, the Second Republic and the Second Empire were each
in a certain sense a return to the past. The former revived the
tradition of the Assemblies of the Revolution; the latter was obviously
and avowedly an imitation of the Consulate and the First Empire.


  Republican constitution of 1848.

The provisional government set up by the revolution of the 24th of
February 1848 proclaimed universal suffrage, and by this means was
elected a Constituent Assembly, which sat till May 1849, and, after
first organizing various forms of another provisional government, passed
the Republican constitution of the 4th of November 1848. This
constitution, which was preceded by a preface recalling the Declarations
of Rights of the Revolution, gave the legislative power to a single
permanent assembly, elected by direct universal suffrage, and entirely
renewed every three years. The executive authority, with very extensive
powers, was given to a president of the Republic, also elected by the
universal and direct suffrage of the French citizens. The constitution
was not very clear upon the point of whether it adopted parliamentary
government in the strict sense, or whether the president, who was
declared responsible, was free to choose his ministers and to retain or
dismiss them at his own pleasure. This gave rise to an almost permanent
dispute between the president, who claimed to have his own political
opinions and to direct the government, and the Assembly, which wished to
carry on the traditions of cabinet government and to make the ministers
fully responsible to itself. Consequently, in January 1851, a solemn
debate was held, which ended in the affirmation of the responsibility of
ministers to the Assembly. On the other hand, the president, though very
properly given great power by the constitution, was not immediately
eligible for re-election on giving up his office. Now Louis Napoleon,
who was elected president on the 10th of December 1848 by a huge
majority, wished to be re-elected. Various propositions were submitted
to the Assembly in July 1851 with a view to modifying the constitution;
but they could not succeed, as the number of votes demanded by the
constitution for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly was not
reached. Moreover, the Legislative Assembly elected in May 1849 was very
different from the Constituent Assembly of 1848. The latter was animated
by that spirit of harmony and, in the main, of adhesion to the Republic
which had followed on the February Revolution. The new assembly, on the
contrary, was composed for the most part of representatives of the old
parties, and had monarchist aspirations. By the unfortunate law of the
31st of May 1850 it even tried by a subterfuge to restrict the universal
suffrage guaranteed by the constitution. It suspended the right of
holding meetings, but, on the whole, respected the liberty of the press.
It was especially impelled to these measures by the growing fear of
socialism. The result was the _coup d'etat_ of the 2nd of December 1851.
A detail of some constitutional importance is to be noticed in this
period. The _conseil d'etat_, which had remained under the Restoration
and the July Monarchy an administrative council and the supreme arbiter
in administrative trials, acquired new importance under the Second
Republic. The ordinary _conseillers d'etat_ (_en service ordinaire_)
were elected by the Legislative Assembly, and consultation with the
_conseil d'etat_ was often insisted on by the constitution or by law.
This was the means of obtaining a certain modifying power as a
substitute for the second chamber, which had not met with popular
approval. During its short existence the Second Republic produced many
important laws. It abolished the penalty of death for political crimes,
and suppressed <DW64> slavery in the colonies. The election of
_conseillers generaux_ was thrown open to universal suffrage, and the
municipal councils were allowed to elect the _maires_ and their
colleagues. The law of the 15th of March 1850 established the liberty of
secondary education, but it conferred certain privileges on the Catholic
clergy, a clear sign of the spirit of social conservatism which was the
leading motive for its enactment. Certain humanitarian laws were passed,
applying to the working classes.


  Constitution of Jan. 14, 1852.

  Restoration of the Empire.

  The empire liberal.

With the _coup d'etat_ of the 2nd of December 1851 began a new era of
constitutional plebiscites and disguised absolutism. The proclamations
of Napoleon on the 2nd of December contained a criticism of
parliamentary government, and formulated the wish to restore to France
the constitutional institutions of the Consulate and the Empire, just as
she had preserved their civil, administrative and military institutions.
Napoleon asked the people for the powers necessary to draw up a
constitution on these principles; the plebiscite issued in a vast
majority of votes in his favour, and the constitution of the 14th of
January 1852 was the result. It bore a strong resemblance to the
constitution of the First Empire after 1807. The executive power was
conferred on Louis Napoleon for ten years, with the title of president
of the Republic and very extended powers. Two assemblies were created.
The conservative Senate, composed of _ex officio_ members (cardinals,
marshals of France and admirals) and life members appointed by the head
of the state, was charged with the task of seeing that the laws were
constitutional, of opposing the promulgation of unconstitutional laws,
and of receiving the petitions of citizens; it had also the duty of
providing everything not already provided but necessary for the proper
working of the constitution. The second assembly was the _Corps
Legislatif_, elected by direct universal suffrage for six years, which
passed the laws, the government having the initiative in legislation.
This body was not altogether a _corps des muets_, as in the year VIII.,
but its powers were very limited; thus the general session assured to it
by the constitution was only for three months, and it could only discuss
and put to the vote amendments approved by the _conseil d'etat_; the
ministers did not in any way come into contact with it and could not be
members of it, being responsible only to the head of the state, and only
the Senate having the right of accusing them before a high court of
justice. The _conseil d'etat_ was composed in the same way and had the
same authority as it had possessed from the year VIII. to 1814; and it
was the members of it who supported projected laws before the Corps
Legislatif. To this was added a Draconian press legislation; not only
were press offences, many of which were mere expressions of opinion,
judged not by a jury but by the correctional tribunals; but further,
political papers could not be founded without an authorization, and were
subject to a regular administrative discipline; they could be warned,
suspended or suppressed without a trial, by a simple act of the
administration. The constitution of January 1852 was still Republican in
name, though less so than that of the year VIII. The period
corresponding with the Consulate was also shorter in the case of Louis
Napoleon. The year 1852 had not come to an end before a _senatus
consulte_, that of the 10th of November, ratified by a plebiscite,
re-established the imperial rank in favour of Napoleon III.; it also
conferred on him certain new powers, especially with reference to the
budget and foreign treaties; thus various cracks, which experience had
revealed in the original structure of the Empire, were filled up. This
period was called that of the _empire autoritaire_. Further features of
it were the free appointment of the _maires_ by the emperor, the oath of
fidelity to him imposed on all officials, and the legal organization of
official candidatures for the elections. Two measures marked the highest
point reached by this system: the _loi de surete generale_ of the 27th
of February 1858, which allowed the government to intern in France or
Algeria, or to exile certain French citizens, without a trial. The other
was the _senatus consulte_ of the 17th of February 1858, which made the
validity of candidatures for the Corps Legislatif subject to a
preliminary oath of fidelity on the part of the candidate. But for
various causes, which cannot be examined here, a series of measures was
soon to be initiated which were gradually to lead back again to
political liberty, and definitively to found what has been called the
_empire liberal_. One by one the different rules and proceedings of
parliamentary government as it had existed in France regained their
force. The first step was the decree of the 24th of November 1860, which
re-established for each ordinary session the address voted by the
chambers in response to the speech from the throne. In 1867 this
movement took a more decisive form. It led to a new constitution, that
of the 21st of May 1870, which was again ratified by popular suffrage.
While maintaining the Empire and the imperial dynasty, it organized
parliamentary government practically in the form in which it had
operated under the July Monarchy, with two legislative chambers, the
Senate and the Corps Legislatif, the consent of both of which was
necessary for legislation, and which, together with the emperor, had the
initiative in this matter. The laws of the 11th of May 1868 and the 6th
of June 1868 restored to a certain extent the liberty of the press and
of holding meetings, though without abolishing offences of opinion, or
again bringing press offences under the jurisdiction of a jury. Laws of
the 22nd and 23rd of July 1870 gave the _conseils generaux_, whose
powers had been somewhat widened, the right of electing their
presidents, and provided that the _maires_ and their colleagues should
be chosen from among the members of the municipal councils.


  Economic and social reforms under the Second Empire.

  Commercial treaties.

The legislation of the Second Empire led to a considerable number of
reforms. Its chief aim was the development of commerce, industry and
agriculture, and generally the material prosperity of the country. The
Empire, though restricting liberty in political matters, increased it in
economic matters. Such were the decrees and laws of 1852 and 1853
relating to land-banks (_etablissements de credit foncier_) and that of
1857 on trade-marks, those of 1863 and 1867 on commercial companies,
that of 1858 on general stores (_magasins generaux_) and warrants, that
of 1856 on drainage, that of 1865 on the _associations syndicales de
proprietaires_, that of 1866 on the mercantile marine. The law of the
14th of June 1865 introduced into France the institution, borrowed from
England, of cheques. But of still greater importance for economic
development than all these laws were the treaties concluded by the
emperor with foreign powers, in order to introduce, as far as possible,
free exchange of commodities; the chief of these, which was the model of
all the others, was that concluded with Great Britain on the 23rd of
January 1860. Moreover, the law of the 25th of May 1864 admitted for the
first time the right of strikes and lock-outs among workmen or
employers, annulling articles 414 and following of the _Code Penal_,
which had so far made them a penal offence, even when not accompanied by
fraudulent practices, threats or violence, tending to hinder the liberty
of labour. The superannuation fund (_caisse des retraites pour la
vieillesse_), supported by voluntary payments from those participating
in it, which had been created by the law of the 18th of June 1850, was
reorganized and perfected, and a law of the 11th of July 1868
established, with the guarantee of the state, two funds for voluntary
insurance, one in case of death, the other against accidents occurring
in industrial or agricultural employment. A decree of 1863 established
in principle the freedom of bakeries, and another in 1864 that of
theatrical management.


  Reforms in the criminal law.

  Civil legislation.

  Taxation and army.

Criminal law was the subject of important legislation. Two codes were
promulgated on special points, the codes of military justice for the
land forces (1857) and for the naval forces (1858). But the common law
was also largely remodelled. A law of the 10th of June 1858, it is true,
created certain new crimes, with a view to protecting the members of the
imperial family, and that of the 17th of July 1856 increased the powers
and independence of the _juges d'instruction_; but, on the other hand,
useful improvements were introduced by laws of 1856 and 1865, and
notably with regard to precautionary detention and provisional release
with or without bail. A law of the 20th of May 1863 organized a simple
and rapid procedure, copied from that followed in England before the
police courts, for summary jurisdiction. A law of 1868 permitted the
revision of criminal trials after the death of the condemned person. But
the most far-reaching reforms took place in 1854, namely, the abolition
of the total loss of civil rights which formerly accompanied
condemnation to imprisonment for life, and the law of the 30th of May on
penal servitude (_travaux forces_) which substituted transportation to
the colonies for the system of continental convict prisons. Finally, in
1863, there was a revision of the _Code Penal_, which, in the process of
lightening penalties, made a certain number of crimes into
misdemeanours, and in consequence transferred the judgment of them from
the assize courts to the correctional tribunals. In civil legislation
may be noted the law of the 23rd of March 1855 on hypothecs (see CODE
NAPOLEON); that of the 22nd of July 1857, which abolished seizure of the
person (_contrainte par corps_) for civil and commercial debts; and
finally, the law of the 14th of July 1866, on literary copyright. The
system of taxation was hardly modified at all, except for the
establishment of a tax on the income arising from investments (shares
and bonds of companies) in 1857, and the tax on carriages (1862). On the
1st of February 1868 was promulgated an important military law, which,
however, passed the Corps Legislatif with some difficulty. It asserted
the principle of universal compulsory military service, at least, in
time of war. It preserved, however, the system of drawing lots to
determine the annual contingent to be incorporated into the standing
army; the term of service was fixed at five years, and it was still
permissible to send a substitute. But able-bodied men who were not
included in the annual contingent formed a reserve force called the
_garde nationale mobile_, each department organizing its own section.
These _gardes mobiles_, though they were not effectively organized or
exercised under the Empire, took part in the war of 1870-71.


  Definitive establishment of the Republic.

_The Third Republic._--The Third Republic had at first a provisional
government, unanimously acclaimed by the people of Paris. It was
accepted by France, exercised full powers, and sustained by no means
ingloriously a desperate struggle against the enemy; a certain number of
its _decrets-lois_ are still in force. After the capitulation of Paris,
a National Assembly was elected to treat with Germany. It was elected in
accordance with the electoral law of 1849, which had been revived with a
few modifications, and it met at Bordeaux to the number of 753 members
on the 13th of February 1871. It was a sovereign assembly, since France
had no longer a constitution, and for this very reason it claimed from
the outset constituent powers; the Republican party at the time,
however, contested this claim, the majority in the assembly being
frankly monarchist, though divided as to the choice of a monarch. But
for some time the National Assembly either could not or would not
exercise this power, and up to 1875 affairs remained in a provisional
state, legalized and regulated this time by the Assembly. This was an
application, though unconscious, of a form of government which M. Grevy
had proposed to the Constituent Assembly in 1848. There was a single
assembly, with one man elected by it as head of the executive power (the
first to be elected was M. Thiers, who received the title of president
of the Republic in August 1871), who was responsible to the Assembly and
governed with the help of ministers chosen by himself, who were also
responsible to it. Thiers fell on the 24th of May 1873. His place was
taken by Marshal MacMahon, on whom the Assembly later conferred, in
November 1873, the position of president of the Republic for seven
years, when the refusal of the comte de Chambord to accept the tricolour
in place of the white flag of the Bourbons had made any attempt to
restore the monarchy impossible. Henceforth the definitive adoption of
the Republican form of government became inevitable, and the opinion of
the country began to turn in this direction, as was shown by the
elections of deputies which took place to fill up the gaps occurring in
the Assembly. The Assembly, however, shrank from the inevitable
solution, and when a discussion was begun in January 1875 on the
projected constitutional laws prepared by the _commission des trente_,
the only proposals made by the latter were for a more complete
organization of the powers of one man, Marshal MacMahon. But on the 30th
of January 1875 was adopted, by 353 votes to 352, an amendment by M.
Wallon which provided for the election of an indefinite succession of
presidents of the Republic; this amounted to a definitive recognition of
the Republic. In this connexion it has often been said that the Republic
was established by a majority of one. This is not an accurate statement,
for it was only the case on the first reading of the law; the majority
on the second and third readings increased until it became considerable.
There was a strong movement in the direction of a reconciliation between
the parties; and there had been a _rapprochement_ between the
Republicans and the Right Centre. At the end of February were passed and
promulgated two constitutional laws, that of the 25th of February 1875,
on the organization of the public powers, and that of the 24th of
February 1875, on the organization of the senate. In the middle of the
year they were supplemented by a third, that of the 16th of July 1875,
on the relations between the public powers.


  The French Constitution.

Thus was built up the actual constitution of France. It differs
fundamentally, both in form and contents, from previous constitutions.
As to its form, instead of a single methodical text divided into an
uninterrupted series of articles, it consisted of three distinct laws.
As to matter, it is obviously a work of an essentially practical nature,
the result of compromise and reciprocal concessions. It does not lay
down any theoretical principles, and its provisions, which were arrived
at with difficulty, confine themselves strictly to what is necessary to
ensure the proper operation of the governmental machinery. The result is
a compromise between Republican principles and the rules of
constitutional and parliamentary monarchy. On this account it has been
accused, though unjustly, of being too monarchical. Its duration, by far
the longest of any French constitution since 1791, is a sign of its
value and vitality. It is in fact a product of history, and not of
imagination. Its composition is as follows. The legislative power was
given to two elective chambers, having equal powers, the vote of both of
which is necessary for legislation, and both having the right of
initiating and amending laws. The constitution assures them an ordinary
session of five months, which opens by right on the second Tuesday in
January. One house, the Chamber of Deputies, is elected by direct
universal suffrage and is entirely renewed every four years; the other,
the Senate, consists of 300 members, divided by the law of the 27th of
February 1875 into two categories; 75 of the senators were elected for
life and irremovable, and the first of them were elected by the National
Assembly, but afterwards it was the Senate itself which held elections
to fill up vacancies. The 225 remaining senators were elected by the
departments and by certain colonies, among which they were apportioned
in proportion to the population; they are elected for nine years, a
third of the house being renewed every three years. The electoral
college in each department which nominated them included the deputies,
the members of the general council of the department and of the councils
of the arrondissements, and one delegate elected by each municipal
council, whatever the importance of the commune. This was practically a
system of election in two and, partly, three degrees, but with this
distinguishing feature, that the electors of the second degree had not
been chosen purely with a view to this election, but chiefly for the
exercise of other functions. The most important elements in this
electoral college were the delegates from the municipal councils, and by
giving one delegate to each, to Paris just as to the smallest commune in
France, the National Assembly intended to counterbalance the power of
numbers, which governed the elections for the Chamber of Deputies, and,
at the same time, to give a preponderance to the country districts. The
75 irremovable senators were another precaution against the danger from
violent waves of public opinion. The executive power was entrusted to a
president, elected for seven years (as Marshal MacMahon had been in
1873), by the Chamber and the Senate, combined into a single body under
the name of National Assembly. He is always eligible for re-election,
and is irresponsible except in case of high treason. His powers are of
the widest, including the initiative in legislation jointly with the two
chambers, the appointment to all civil and military offices, the
disposition, and, if he wish it, the leadership of the armed forces, the
right of pardon, the right of negotiating treaties with foreign powers,
and, in principle, of ratifying them on his own authority, the consent
of the two chambers being required only in certain cases defined by the
constitution. The nomination of _conseillers d'etat_ for ordinary
service, whom the National Assembly had made elective, as in 1848, and
elected itself, was restored to the president of the Republic, together
with the right of dismissing them. But these powers he can only exercise
through the medium of a ministry, politically and jointly responsible to
the chambers, and forming a council, over which the president usually
presides.

The French Republic is essentially a parliamentary republic. The right
of dissolving the Chamber of Deputies before the expiration of its term
of office belongs to the president, but in order to do so he must have,
besides a ministry which will take the responsibility for it, the
preliminary sanction of the Senate. The Senate is at the same time a
high court of justice, which can judge the president of the Republic and
ministers accused of crimes committed by them in the exercise of their
functions; in these two cases the prosecution is instituted by the
Chamber of Deputies. The Senate can also be called upon to judge any
person accused of an attempt upon the safety of the state, who is then
seized by a decree of the president of the Republic, drawn up in the
council of ministers. Possible revision of the constitution is provided
for very simply: it has to be proposed as a law, and for its acceptance
a resolution passed by each chamber separately, by an absolute majority,
is necessary. The revision is then carried out by the Senate and the
Chamber of Deputies to form a National Assembly. There have been two
revisions since 1875. The first time, in 1879, it was simply a question
of transferring the seat of the government and of the chambers back to
Paris from Versailles, where it had been fixed by one of the
constitutional laws. The second time, in 1884, more fundamental
modifications were required. The most important point was to change the
composition and election of the Senate. With a view to this, the new
constitutional law of the 14th of August 1884 abolished the
constitutional character of a certain number of articles of the law of
the 24th of February 1875, thus making it possible to modify them by an
ordinary law. This took place in the same year; the 75 senators for life
were suppressed for the future by a process of extinction, and their
seats divided among the most populous departments. Further, in the
electoral college which elects the senators, there was allotted to the
municipal councils a number of delegates proportionate to the number of
members of the councils, which depends on the importance of the commune.
The law of the 14th of August 1884 also modified the constitution in
another important respect. The law of the 25th of February 1875 had
admitted the possibility not only of a partial, but even of a total
revision, which could affect and even change the form of the state. The
law of the 14th of August 1884, however, declared that no proposition
for a revision could be accepted which aimed at changing the republican
form of government. The composition of the Chamber of Deputies was not
fixed by the constitution, and consequently admitted more easily of
variation. Since 1871 the mode of election has oscillated between the
_scrutin de liste_ for the departments and the _scrutin uninominal_ for
the arrondissements. The organic law of the 30th of November 1875 had
established the latter system; in 1885 the _scrutin de liste_ was
established by law, but in 1889 the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ was
restored; and in this same year, on account of the ambitions of General
Boulanger and the suggestion which was made for a sort of plebiscite in
his favour, was passed the law on plural candidatures, which forbids
anyone to become a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies in more than
one district at a time.


  Working of the constitution.

The system established by the constitution of 1875 has worked
excellently in some of its departments; for instance, the mode of
electing the president of the Republic. Between 1875 and 1906 there were
seven elections, sometimes under tragic or very difficult conditions;
the election has always taken place without delay or obstruction, and
the choice has been of the best. The high court of justice, which has
twice been called into requisition, in 1889 and in 1899-1900, has acted
as an efficient check, in spite of the difficulties confronting such a
tribunal when feeling runs high. Parliamentary government in the form
set up by the constitution, besides the criticism to which this system
is open in all countries where it is established, even in England, met
with special difficulties in France. In the first place, the useful but
rather secondary role assigned to the president of the Republic has by
no means satisfied all those who have occupied this high office. Two
presidents have resigned on the ground that their powers were
insufficient. Another, even after re-election, had to withdraw in face
of the opposition of the two chambers, being no longer able to obtain a
parliamentary ministry. It is difficult, however, to accept the theory
of an eminent American political writer, Mr John W. Burgess,[1] that in
order to attain to a position of stable equilibrium, the French Republic
ought to adopt the presidential system of the United States. In France
this sharp division between the two powers has never been observed
except in those periods when the representative assemblies were
powerless, under the First and Second Empires. It is true that the
apparent multiplicity of parties and their lack of discipline, together
with the French procedure of _interpellations_ and the orders of the day
by which they are concluded, make the formation of homogeneous and
lasting cabinets difficult; but since the end of the 19th century there
has been great progress in this respect. Another difficulty arose in
1896. The Senate, appealing to the letter of the constitution and
relying on its elective character, claimed the right of forcing a
ministry to resign by its vote, in the same way as the Chamber of
Deputies. The Senate was victorious in the struggle, and forced the
ministry presided over by M. Leon Bourgeois to resign; but the precedent
is not decisive, for in order to gain its ends the Senate had recourse
to the means of refusing to sanction the taxes, declining to consider
the proposals for the supplies necessary for the Madagascar expedition
so long as the ministry which it was attacking was in existence. The
weakest point in the French parliamentary organism is perhaps the right
of dissolution. It is difficult of application, for the reason that the
president must obtain the preliminary consent of the Senate before
exercising it; moreover, this valuable right has been discredited by its
abuse by Marshal MacMahon in the campaign of the 16th of May 1877, on
which occasion he exercised his right of dissolution against a chamber,
the moderate but decidedly republican majority in which he was
re-elected by the country.


  Reforms under the Third Republic.

  The religious congregations.

  Education.

  Separation of church and state.

The legislative reforms carried out under the Third Republic are very
numerous. As to public law, it is only possible to mention here those of
a really organic character, chief among which are those which safeguard
and regulate the exercise of the liberties of the individual. The law of
the 30th of June 1881, modified in 1901, established the right of
holding meetings. Public meetings, whether for ordinary or electoral
purposes, may be held without preliminary authorization; the law of 1881
prescribed a declaration made by a certain number of citizens enjoying
full civil and political rights, which is now remitted. The only really
restrictive provision is that which does not allow them to be held in
the public highway, but only in an enclosed space. But this is made
necessary by the customs of France. The law of the 21st of July 1881 on
the press is one of the most liberal in the world. By it all offences
committed by any kind of publication are submitted to a jury; the
punishment for the mere expression of obnoxious opinions is abolished,
the only punishment being for slander, libel, defamation, inciting to
crime, and in certain cases the publication of false news. The law of
the 1st of July 1901 established in France the right of forming
associations. It recognizes the legality of all associations strictly so
called, the objects of which are not contrary to law or to public order
or morality. On condition of a simple declaration to the administrative
authority, it grants them a civil status in a wide sense of the term.
Religious congregations, on the contrary, which are not authorized by a
law, are forbidden by this law. This was not a new principle, but the
traditional rule in France both before and after the Revolution, except
that under certain governments authorization by decree had sufficed. As
a matter of fact the unauthorized congregations had been tolerated for a
long time, although on various occasions, and especially in 1881, their
partial dissolution had been proclaimed by decrees. The law of 1901
dissolved them all, and made it an offence to belong to such a
congregation. The members of unauthorized congregations, and later, in
1904, even those of the authorized congregations, were disqualified from
teaching in any kind of establishment. The liberty of primary education
was confirmed and reorganized by the law of the 30th of October 1886,
which simply deprived the clergy of the privileges granted them by the
law of 1850, though the latter remains in force with regard to the
liberty of secondary education. A law passed by the National Assembly
(July 12, 1875) established the liberty of higher education. It even
went beyond this, for it granted to students in private _facultes_ who
aspired to state degrees the right of being examined before a board
composed partly of private and partly of state professors. The law of
the 18th of March 1880 abolished this privilege. Another law, that of
the 22nd of March 1882, made primary education obligatory, though
allowing parents to send their children either to private schools or to
those of the state; the law of the 16th of June 1881 established secular
(_laique_) education in the case of the latter. The Third Republic also
organized secondary education for girls in lycees or special colleges
(_colleges de fille_). Finally, a law of the 10th of July 1896 dealing
with higher education and the faculties of the state reorganized the
universities, which form distinct bodies, enjoying a fairly wide
autonomy. A law of the 19th of December 1905, abrogating that of the
18th Germinal in the year X., which had sanctioned the Concordat,
proclaimed the separation of the church from the state. It is based on
the principle of the secular state (_etat laique_) which recognizes no
form of religion, though respecting the right of every citizen to
worship according to his beliefs, and it aimed at organizing
associations of citizens, the object of which was to collect the funds
and acquire the property necessary for the maintenance of worship, under
the form of _associations cultuelles_, differing in certain respects
from the associations sanctioned by the law of the 1st of July 1901, but
having a wider scope. It also handed over to these regularly formed
associations the property of the ecclesiastical establishments formerly
in existence, while taking precautions to ensure their proper
application, and allowed the associations the free use of the churches
and places of worship belonging to the state, the departments or the
communes. If no _association cultuelle_ was founded in a parish, the
property of the former _fabrique_ should devolve to the commune. But
this law was condemned by the papacy, as contrary to the church
hierarchy; and almost nowhere were _associations cultuelles_ formed,
except by Protestants and Jews, who complied with the law. After many
incidents, but no church having been closed, a new law of the 2nd of
January 1907 was enacted. It permits the public exercise of any cult, by
means of ordinary associations regulated by the law of the 1st of July
1901, and even of public meetings summoned by individuals. Failing all
associations, either _cultuelles_ or others, churches, with their
ornaments and furniture, are left to the disposition of the faithful and
ministers, for the purpose of exercising the cult; and, on certain
conditions, the long use of them can be granted as a free gift to
ministers of the cult.


  Administrative changes.

Among the organic laws concerning administrative affairs there are two
of primary importance; that of the 10th of August 1871, on the
_conseils generaux_, considerably increased the powers and independence
of these elective bodies, which have become important deliberative
assemblies, their sessions being held in public. The law of 1871 created
a new administrative organ for the departments, the _commission
departmentale_, elected by the council-general of the department from
among its own members and associated with the administration of the
prefect. The other law is the municipal law of the 5th of April 1884,
which effected a widespread decentralization; the _maires_ and their
_adjoints_ are elected by the municipal council.


  Reorganization of the army.

The war of 1870-71 necessarily led to a modification of the military
organization. The law of the 25th of July 1872 established the principle
of compulsory service for all, first in the standing army, the period of
service in which was fixed at five years, then in the reserve, and
finally in the territorial army. But the application of this principle
was by no means absolute, only holding good in time of war. Each annual
class was divided into two parts, by means of drawing lots, and in time
of peace one of these parts had only a year of service with the active
army. The previous exemptions, based either on the position of supporter
of the family (as in the case of the son of a widow or aged father, &c.)
or on equivalent services rendered to the state (as in the case of young
ecclesiastics or members of the teaching profession), were preserved,
but only held good for service in the active army in times of peace.
Finally, the system of conditional engagement for a year allowed young
men, for the purposes of study or apprenticeship to their profession,
only to serve a year with the active army in time of peace. By this
means it was sought to combine the advantages of an army of veterans
with those of a numerous and truly national army. But the conditional
volunteering (_volontariat conditionnel_) for a year was open to too
great a number of people, and so brought the system into discredit. As
those who profited by it had to be clothed and maintained at their own
expense, and the sum which they had to furnish for this purpose was
generally fixed at 1500 francs, it came to be considered the privilege
of those who could pay this sum. A new law of the 15th of July 1889
lessened the difference between the two terms which it attempted to
reconcile. It reduced the term of service in the active army to three
years, and the exemptions, which were still preserved, merely reduced
the period to a year in times of peace. The same reduction was also
granted to those who were really pursuing important scientific,
technical or professional studies; the system was so strict on this
point that the number of those who profited by those exemptions did not
amount to 2000 in a year. This was a compromise between two opposing
principles; the democratic principle of equality, being the stronger,
was bound to triumph. The law of the 21st of March 1905 reduced the term
of service in the active army to two years, but made it equal for all,
admitting of no exemption, but only certain facilities as to the age at
which it had to be accomplished.


  Justice and taxation.

In 1883 the judicial _personnel_ was reorganized and reduced in number.
With the exception of a few modifications the main lines of judicial
organization remained the same. In 1879 the conseil d'etat was also
reorganized. The whole fabric of administrative jurisdiction was
carefully organized, and almost entirely separated from the active
administration.

The system of taxation has remained essentially unaltered; we may
notice, however, the laws of 1897, 1898 and 1900, which abolished or
lessened the duties on so called _hygienic_ drinks (wine, beer, cider),
and the financial law of 1901, which rearranged and increased the
transfer fees, and established a system of progressive taxation in the
case of succession dues.


  Labour legislation.

The labour laws, which generally partook of the nature both of public
and of private law, are a sign of our times. Under the Third Republic
they have been numerous, the most notable being: the law of the 21st of
March 1884 on professional syndicates, which introduced the liberty of
association in matters of this kind before it became part of the common
law (see TRADE UNIONS); the law of the 9th of April 1898 on the
liability for accidents incurred during work, and those which have
completed it; that of the 22nd of December 1892 on conciliation and
arbitration in the case of collective disputes between employers and
workmen; that of the 29th of June 1893 on the hygiene and safeguarding
of workers in industrial establishments, and the laws which regulate the
work of children and women in factories; finally, that of the 15th of
July 1893 on free medical attendance (see LABOUR LEGISLATION).


  Criminal law.

As to criminal law, there have been more than fifty enactments, mostly
involving important modifications, due to more scientific ideas of
punishment, so that we may say that it has been almost entirely recast
since the establishment of the Third Republic. The separate system
applied in cases of preventive detention and imprisonment for short
periods; liberation before the expiry of the term of sentence, subject
to the condition that no fresh offence shall be committed within a given
time; transportation to the colonies of habitual offenders; the
remission of the penalty in the case of first offenders, and the lapsing
of the penalty when a certain time has gone by without a fresh
condemnation; greater facilities for the rehabilitation of condemned
persons, which now became simply a matter for the courts, and occurred
as a matter of course at the end of a certain time; such were the chief
results of this legislation. Finally, the law of the 8th of December
1897 completely altered the form of the preliminary examination before
the _juge d'instruction_, which had been the weakest point in the French
criminal procedure, though it was still held in private; the new law
made this examination really a hearing of both sides, and made the
appearance of counsel for the defence practically compulsory.

As to private law, both civil and commercial, we could enumerate between
1871 and 1906 more than a hundred laws which have modified it, sometimes
profoundly, and have for the most part done very useful work without
attracting much attention. They are generally examined and drawn up by
commissions of competent men, and pass both chambers almost without
discussion. There have, however, been a few which aroused public
interest and even deep feeling. Firstly, there was the law of the 27th
of July 1884, and those which completed it; this law re-established
divorce, which had been abolished since 1816, but only permitted it for
certain definite causes determined by law. On the other hand, the law of
the 6th of February 1893 increased the liberty and independence of a
woman who was simply judicially separated, in order to encourage
separation, as opposed to divorce, when the conditions allowed it. The
law of the 25th of March 1896 on the succession of illegitimate
children, who were recognized by the parents, treated them not in the
same way as legitimate children, but gave them the title of heirs in the
succession of their father and mother, together with much greater rights
than they had possessed under the _Code Civil_. The law of the 24th of
July 1899, on the protection of children who are ill-treated or morally
neglected, also modified some of the provisions of the law as applied to
the family, with a view to greater justice and humanity. Finally, on the
occasion of the centenary of the _Code Civil_ (see CODE NAPOLEON), a
commission, composed of members of the chambers, magistrates, professors
of law, lawyers, political writers, and even novelists and dramatic
authors, was given the task of revising the whole structure of the code.

  See generally Adhemar Esmein, _Cours elementaire d'histoire du droit
  francais_ (6th ed., 1906); J. Brissand, _Cours d'histoire generale du
  droit francais public et prive_ (1904); Ernest Glasson, _Histoire du
  droit et des institutions en France_ (1887-1904); Paul Viollet,
  _Histoire des institutions politiques et administratives de la France_
  (3rd ed., 1903); Fustel de Coulanges, _Histoire des institutions
  politiques de l'ancienne France_; Jacques Flach, _Les Origines de
  l'ancienne France_ (1875-1889); Achille Luchaire, _Histoire des
  institutions monarchiques de la France sous les premiers Capetiens_
  (2nd ed., 1900); Hippolyte Taine, _Les Origines de la France
  contemporaine_ (1878-1894); Adhemar Esmein, _Elements de droit
  constitutionnel francais et compare_ (4th ed., 1906); Leon Duguit et
  Henry Monnier, _Les Constitutions et les principales lois politiques
  de la France depuis 1789_ (1898).     (J. P. E.)


FOOTNOTE:

  [1] _Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law_ (Boston,
    1896).




FRANCESCHI, JEAN BAPTISTE, BARON (1766-1813), French general, was born
at Bastia on the 5th of December 1766 and entered the French service in
1793. He took part in the operations in Corsica in the following year,
and received a wound at the siege of San Fiorenzo. After this he left
the island and was appointed a field officer in the French Army of
Italy, with which he served from 1795 to 1799. He served as a general
officer in the campaign of Marengo, in the Naples campaign of 1805-1806,
and in the Peninsular War from 1807 to 1809. He was created a baron by
Napoleon. He commanded a Neapolitan brigade in the Russian War of 1812,
and after the retreat from Moscow took refuge, with the remnant of his
command, in Danzig, where in the course of the siege of 1813 he died on
the 19th of March.

Two other generals of brigade in Napoleon's wars bore the name of
Franceschi, and the three have often been mistaken for each other. The
first was born at Lyons, JEAN BAPTISTE MARIE FRANCESCHI-DELONNE
(1767-1810), who served throughout the Revolutionary campaign on the
Rhine, took part in the campaign of Zuerich in 1799, and distinguished
himself very greatly by his escape from, and subsequent return to,
Genoa, when in 1800 Massena was closely besieged in that city. He became
a cavalry colonel in 1803, was promoted general of brigade on the field
of Austerlitz, and served in southern Italy and in Spain on the staff of
King Joseph Bonaparte. During the Peninsular War he won great
distinction as a cavalry general, and in 1810 Napoleon made him a baron.
At this time he was a prisoner in the hands of the Spaniards, into whose
hands he had fallen while bearing important despatches during the
campaign of Talavera. He was harshly treated by his captors, and died at
Carthagena on the 23rd of October 1810. The second was FRANCOIS
FRANCESCHI-LOSIO (1770-1810), born at Milan, who entered the French
Revolutionary army in 1795. He served through the Italian campaign of
1796-97, and subsequently, like Franceschi-Delonne, with Massena at
Zuerich and at Genoa, and at the headquarters of King Joseph in Italy and
Spain. He was killed in a duel by the Neapolitan colonel Filangieri in
1810.




FRANCESCHI, PIERO (or PIETRO) DE' (c. 1416-1492), Italian painter of the
Umbrian school. This master is generally named Piero della Francesca
(Peter, son of Frances), the tradition being that his father, a
woollen-draper named Benedetto, had died before his birth. This is not
correct, for the mother's name was Romana, and the father continued
living during many years of Piero's career. The painter is also named
Piero Borghese, from his birthplace, Borgo San Sepolcro, in Umbria. The
true family name was, as above stated, Franceschi, and the family still
exists under the name of Martini-Franceschi.

Piero first received a scientific education, and became an adept in
mathematics and geometry. This early bent of mind and course of study
influenced to a large extent his development as a painter. He had more
science than either Paolo Uccello or Mantegna, both of them his
contemporaries, the former older and the latter younger. Skilful in
linear perspective, he fixed rectangular planes in perfect order and
measured them, and thus got his figures in true proportional height. He
preceded and excelled Domenico Ghirlandajo in projecting shadows, and
rendered with considerable truth atmosphere, the harmony of colours, and
the relief of objects. He was naturally therefore excellent in
architectural painting, and, in point of technique, he advanced the
practice of oil-colouring in Italy.

The earliest trace that we find of Piero as a painter is in 1439, when
he was an apprentice of Domenico Veneziano, and assisted him in painting
the chapel of S. Egidio, in S. Maria Novella of Florence. Towards 1450
he is said to have been with the same artist in Loreto; nothing of his,
however, can now be identified in that locality. In 1451 he was by
himself, painting in Rimini, where a fresco still remains. Prior to this
he had executed some extensive frescoes in the Vatican; but these were
destroyed when Raphael undertook on the same walls the "Liberation of St
Peter" and other paintings. His most extensive extant series of frescoes
is in the choir of S. Francesco in Arezzo,--the "History of the Cross,"
beginning with legendary subjects of the death and burial of Adam, and
going on to the entry of Heraclius into Jerusalem after the overthrow of
Chosroes. This series is, in relation to its period, remarkable for
effect, movement, and mastery of the nude. The subject of the "Vision of
Constantine" is particularly vigorous in chiaroscuro; and a preparatory
design of the same composition was so highly effective that it used to
be ascribed to Giorgione, and might even (according to one authority)
have passed for the handiwork of Correggio or of Rembrandt. A noted
fresco in Borgo San Sepolcro, the "Resurrection," may be later than this
series; it is preserved in the Palazzo de' Conservatori. An important
painting of the "Flagellation of Christ," in the cathedral of Urbino, is
later still, probably towards 1470. Piero appears to have been much in
his native town of Borgo San Sepolcro from about 1445, and more
especially after 1454, when he finished the series in Arezzo. He grew
rich there, and there he died, and in October 1492 was buried.

  Two statements made by Vasari regarding "Piero della Francesca" are
  open to much controversy. He says that Piero became blind at the age
  of sixty, which cannot be true, as he continued painting some years
  later; but scepticism need perhaps hardly go to the extent of
  inferring that he was never blind at all. Vasari also says that Fra
  Luca Pacioli, a disciple of Piero in scientific matters, defrauded his
  memory by appropriating his researches without acknowledgment. This is
  hard upon the friar, who constantly shows a great reverence for his
  master in the sciences. One of Pacioli's books was published in 1509,
  and speaks of Piero as still living. Hence it has been propounded that
  Piero lived to the patriarchal age of ninety-four or upwards; but, as
  it is now stated that he was buried in 1492, we must infer that there
  is some mistake in relation to Pacioli's remark--perhaps the date of
  writing was several years earlier than that of publication. Piero was
  known to have left a manuscript of his own on perspective; this
  remained undiscovered for a long time, but eventually was found by E.
  Harzen in the Ambrosian library of Milan, ascribed to some
  supposititious "Pietro, Pittore di Bruges." The treatise shows a
  knowledge of perspective as dependent on the point of distance.

  In the National Gallery, London, are three paintings attributed to
  Piero de' Franceschi. Another work, a profile of Isotta da Rimini, may
  safely be rejected. The "Baptism of Christ," which used to be the
  altar-piece of the Priory of the Baptist in Borgo San Sepolcro, is an
  important example; and still more so the "Nativity," with the Virgin
  kneeling, and five angels singing to musical instruments. This is a
  very interesting and characteristic specimen, and has indeed been
  praised somewhat beyond its deservings on aesthetic grounds.

  Piero's earlier style was energetic but unrefined, and to the last he
  lacked selectness of form and feature. The types of his visages are
  peculiar, and the costumes (as especially in the Arezzo series)
  singular. He used to work assiduously from clay models swathed in real
  drapery. Luca Signorelli was his pupil, and probably to some extent
  Perugino; and his own influence, furthered by that of Signorelli, was
  potent over all Italy. Belonging as he does to the Umbrian school, he
  united with that style something of the Sienese and more of the
  Florentine mode.

  Besides Vasari and Crowe & Cavalcaselle, the work by W.G. Waters,
  _Piero della Francesca_ (1899) should be consulted.     (W. M. R.)




FRANCESCHINI, BALDASSARE (1611-1689), Italian painter of the Tuscan
school, named, from Volterra the place of his birth, Il Volterrano, or
(to distinguish him from Ricciarelli) Il Volterrano Giuniore, was the
son of a sculptor in alabaster. At a very early age he learned from
Cosimo Daddi some of the elements of art, and he started as an assistant
to his father. This employment being evidently below the level of his
talents, the marquises Inghirami placed him, at the age of sixteen,
under the Florentine painter Matteo Rosselli. In the ensuing year he had
advanced sufficiently to execute in Volterra some frescoes, skilful in
foreshortening, followed by other frescoes for the Medici family in the
Valle della Petraia. In 1652 the marchese Filippo Niccolini, being
minded to employ Franceschini upon the frescoes for the cupola and
back-wall of his chapel in S. Croce, Florence, despatched him to various
parts of Italy to perfect his style. The painter, in a tour which lasted
some months, took more especially to the qualities distinctive of the
schools of Parma and Bologna, and in a measure to those of Pietro da
Cortona, whose acquaintance he made in Rome. He then undertook the
paintings commissioned by Niccolini, which constitute his most noted
performance, the design being good, and the method masterly.
Franceschini ranks higher in fresco than in oil painting. His works in
the latter mode were not unfrequently left unfinished, although numerous
specimens remain, the cabinet pictures being marked by much
sprightliness of invention. Among his best oil paintings of large scale
is the "St John the Evangelist" in the church of S. Chiara at Volterra.
One of his latest works was the fresco of the cupola of the Annunziata,
Florence, which occupied him for two years towards 1683, a production of
much labour and energy. Franceschini died of apoplexy at Volterra on the
6th of January 1689. He is reckoned among those painters of the decline
of art to whom the general name of "machinist" is applied.

He is not to be confounded with another Franceschini of the same class,
and of rather later date, also of no small eminence in his time--the
Cavaliere Marcantonio Franceschini (1648-1729), who was a Bolognese.




FRANCHE-COMTE, a province of France from 1674 to the Revolution. It was
bounded on the E. by Switzerland, on the S. by Bresse and Bugey, on the
N. by Lorraine, and on the W. by the duchy of Burgundy and by Bassigny,
embracing to the E. of the Jura the valley of the Saone and most of that
of the Doubs. Under the Romans it corresponded to _Maxima Sequanorum_,
and after having formed part of the kingdom of Burgundy was in the early
part of the middle ages split up into the four countships of Portois,
Varais, Amons and Escuens. In the 10th century these four countships
were united to form a whole, which came to be called the countship of
Burgundy, and belonged at that time to the family of the counts of
Macon.

The limits of the countship were definitely settled under Otto William,
son of Albert or Adalbert, king of Italy (+1027), who on the death of
his father-in-law, Henry (1002), tried to seize the duchy of Burgundy,
but without success. The countship, which formed a fief dependent on the
kingdom of Burgundy, passed to Renaud I., the second son of Otto
William. When the kingdom of Burgundy was joined to the Germanic empire,
he refused to pay homage to the emperor Henry III., whose suzerainty
over him never existed except in theory. William I., surnamed the Great
or Headstrong (1059-1087), still further added to the power of his house
by marrying Etiennette, heiress of the count of Vienne, and by acquiring
from his cousin Guy, when the latter became a monk at Cluny, the
countship of Macon. One of his sons, Guy, became pope, under the name of
Calixtus II. His grandson, Renaud III. (1097-1148), in his turn refused
to pay homage to the emperor Lothair, who retaliated by confiscating his
dominions and giving them to Conrad of Zaehringen. Renaud, however,
succeeded in maintaining until his death his possession of the
countships of Burgundy, Vienne and Macon. He left as sole heiress a
daughter, Beatrix, whom his brother William III. imprisoned, in order to
make an attempt on her inheritance; she was set free, however, by the
emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who married her in 1156.

On the death of Beatrix (1185) the countship of Burgundy passed to Otto
I. (1190-1200), the youngest but one of her sons, who had to dispute its
possession with Stephen, count of Auxonne, the grandson of William III.
Beatrix, the daughter and heiress of Otto I. (1200-1231), married Otto,
duke of Meran (+1234), under whose government the inhabitants of
Besancon, which had been since the time of Frederick Barbarossa an
imperial city, formed themselves definitely into a _commune_. Alix,
daughter of Beatrix and of Otto of Meran, and heiress to the countship
of Burgundy, married Hugh of Chalon, son of John the Ancient or the Wise
(d. 1248), and a descendant of William III. and consequently of William
the Headstrong, thus bringing the countship back into the family of its
former lords. His son Otto IV. (1279-1303) engaged in war against the
bishop of Basel, and the German king Rudolph I., who supported the
latter, entered Franche-Comte and besieged Besancon, but without success
(1289). Otto, in fulfilment of the treaties of Ervennes and Vincennes
(1291-1295) gave Jeanne, his daughter by Mahaut of Artois, in marriage
to Philip, count of Poitiers, son of Philip the Fair. The latter took
over the administration of the countship in spite of strong opposition
from the nobles of the country, but their leader, John of Chalon-Arlay,
was compelled to make his submission. Another of Otto's daughters
married Charles IV., the Handsome, and both princesses, together with
their sister-in-law Margaret of Burgundy, were concerned in the
celebrated trial of the Tour de Nesle. Jeanne, however, continued to
govern her countship when Philip her husband became king of France
(Philip V., "the Long"). Jeanne, their daughter and heiress, married Odo
IV., duke of Burgundy (1330-1347), and her sister Margaret became the
wife of Louis II., count of Flanders. The countship returned to Margaret
at the death of Odo IV., who was succeeded in his duchy by his grandson
Philip of Rouvre.

The marriage of Philip the Bold with Margaret, daughter of Louis of
Male, caused Franche-Comte to pass to the princes of the ducal house of
Burgundy, who kept it up till the death of Charles the Bold (1477). On
his death Louis XI. laid claim to the government of the countship as
well as of the duchy, as trustee for the property of the princess Mary,
who was closely related to him and destined to marry the dauphin (later
Charles VIII.). French garrisons occupied the principal towns, and the
lord of Craon was appointed governor of the country. In consequence of
his severity there was a general rising, and at the same time Mary
married Maximilian, archduke of Austria, to whom her father had formerly
betrothed her (Aug. 1477). The French were expelled from the fortified
towns and Craon beaten by the people of Dole. Charles of Amboise, who
took his place, reconquered the province, and even Besancon submitted to
the authority of the king of France, who promised to respect its
privileges.

On the death of Louis XI. (1483), the estates of Franche-Comte
recognized as sovereign his son Charles, who was betrothed to the little
Margaret of Burgundy, daughter of Maximilian and Mary (d. 1482), but
when Charles VIII. refused Margaret's hand in order to marry Anne of
Brittany there was a fresh rising, and the French were again driven out.
The treaty of Senlis (23rd May 1483) put an end to the struggle: Charles
abandoned all his pretensions, and Maximilian was thus left in
possession of Franche-Comte, the sovereignty of which he handed on to
his son Philip and ultimately to the crown of Spain. He had, however,
constituted his daughter Margaret sovereign-governess of Franche-Comte
for life, and under the administration of this princess (who died in
1530), as under the rule of Charles V., the country enjoyed comparative
independence, paying a "_don gratuit_" of 200,000 livres every three
years, and being actually governed by the parliament of Dole, and by
governors chosen from the nobility of the country. It was Franche-Comte
which furnished Philip II. of Spain with one of his best counsellors,
Cardinal Perrenot de Granvella.

In the 16th century the country was disturbed by the preaching of
Protestant doctrines, which gained adherents especially in the district
of Montbeliard, and later by the wars between France and Spain. In 1595
the armies of Henry IV. levied contributions on Besancon and other
towns; but the people of Franche-Comte succeeded in obtaining special
terms of neutrality in order to shelter themselves from injury from
either of the parties in the war, and enjoyed a period of calm under the
government of the infanta Isabella Clara Eugenie and the archduke Albert
(1599-1621). But the country suffered greatly from the ravages of the
Thirty Years' War, from the presence of the army of the Condes, which
besieged Dole, from the devastation of the troops of Gallas, and later
of those of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. The peace of Westphalia (1648)
confirmed Spain in the possession of Franche-Comte. In 1668 the French
again entered it, and the conquest, of which the foundations had been
laid by the intrigues of the abbot of Watteville and the French party
constituted by him, was easily accomplished by Conde and Luxemburg,
Louis XIV. directing the army in Franche-Comte for some time in person.
None the less, the country was restored to Spain at the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), but in 1674 Louis headed another expedition
there. Besancon capitulated after a siege of twenty-seven days, and Dole
and Salins also fell into the hands of the invaders.

In 1678 the treaty of Nijmwegen gave Franche-Comte to France (the
principality of Montbeliard remaining in the possession of the house of
Wuerttemberg, which had acquired it by marriage), and it was in
celebration of this conquest that the Arc de Triomphe of the Portes
Saint Denis and Saint Martin at Paris was erected. Franche-Comte became
a military government (_gouvernement_). The estates ceased to meet, and
the old "_don gratuit_" was replaced by a tax which became increasingly
heavy. Louis made Besancon, which Vauban fortified, into the capital of
the province, and transferred to it the parliament and the university,
the seat of which had hitherto been Dole. For purposes of
administration, the county was divided among the four great _bailliages_
of Besancon, Dole, Amont (chief town Vesoul) and Aval (chief town
Salins). At the Revolution were formed from it the departments of Jura,
Doubs and Haute-Saone.

  See Dunod, _Histoire des Sequanois; Hist. du comte de Bourgogne_
  (Dijon, 1735-1740); E. Clerc, _Essai sur l'histoire de la
  Franche-Comte_ (2nd ed., Besancon, 1870).     (R. Po.)




FRANCHISE (from O. Fr. _franchise_, freedom, _franc_, free), in English
law, a royal privilege or branch of the crown's prerogative subsisting
in the hands of a subject. A franchise is an incorporeal hereditament,
and arises either from royal grants or from prescription which
presupposes a grant. Such franchises are bodies corporate, the right to
hold a fair, market, ferry, free fishery, &c. The term is also applied
to the right of voting at elections and the qualifications upon which
that right is based (see REGISTRATION; REPRESENTATION; VOTE). In the
United States the term is especially applied to the right or powers of
partial appropriation of public property by exclusive use, or to a
privilege of a public nature conferred on a corporation created for the
purpose.




FRANCIA (c. 1450-1517), a Bolognese painter, whose real name was
Francesco Raibolini, his father being Marco di Giacomo Raibolini, a
carpenter, descended from an old and creditable family, was born at
Bologna about 1450. He was apprenticed to a goldsmith currently named
Francia, and from him probably he got the nickname whereby he is
generally known; he moreover studied design under Marco Zoppo. The youth
was thus originally a goldsmith, and also an engraver of dies and
niellos, and in these arts he became extremely eminent. He was
particularly famed for his dies for medals; he rose to be mint-master at
Bologna, and retained that office till the end of his life. A famous
medal of Pope Julius II. as liberator of Bologna is ascribed to his
hand, but not with certainty. As a type-founder he made for Aldus
Manutius the first italic type.

At a mature age--having first, it appears, become acquainted with
Mantegna--he turned his attention to painting. His earliest known
picture is dated 1494 (not 1490, as ordinarily stated). It shows so much
mastery that one is compelled to believe that Raibolini must before then
have practised painting for some few years. This work is now in the
Bologna gallery,--the "Virgin enthroned, with Augustine and five other
saints." It is an oil picture, and was originally painted for the church
of S. Maria della Misericordia, at the desire of the Bentivoglio family,
the rulers of Bologna. The same patrons employed him upon frescoes in
their own palace; one of "Judith and Holophernes" is especially noted,
its style recalling that of Mantegna. Francia probably studied likewise
the works of Perugino; and he became a friend and ardent admirer of
Raphael, to whom he addressed an enthusiastic sonnet. Raphael cordially
responded to the Bolognese master's admiration, and said, in a letter
dated in 1508, that few painters or none had produced Madonnas more
beautiful, more devout, or better portrayed than those of Francia. If we
may trust Vasari--but it is difficult to suppose that he was entirely
correct--the exceeding value which Francia set on Raphael's art brought
him to his grave. Raphael had consigned to Francia his famous picture of
"St Cecilia," destined for the church of S. Giovanni in Monte, Bologna;
and Francia, on inspecting it, took so much to heart his own
inferiority, at the advanced age of about sixty-six, to the youthful
Umbrian, that he sickened and shortly expired on the 6th of January
1517. A contemporary record, after attesting his pre-eminence as a
goldsmith, jeweller and painter, states that he was "most handsome in
person and highly eloquent."

Distanced though he may have been by Raphael, Francia is rightly
regarded as the greatest painter of the earlier Bolognese school, and
hardly to be surpassed as representing the art termed "antico-moderno,"
or of the "quattrocento." It has been well observed that his style is a
medium between that of Perugino and that of Giovanni Bellini; he has
somewhat more of spontaneous naturalism than the former, and of abstract
dignity in feature and form than the latter. The magnificent portrait in
the Louvre of a young man in black, of brooding thoughtfulness and
saddened profundity of mood, would alone suffice to place Francia among
the very great masters, if it could with confidence be attributed to his
hand, but in all probability its real author was Franciabigio; it had
erewhile passed under the name of Raphael, of Giorgione, or of Sebastian
del Piombo. The National Gallery, London, contains two remarkably fine
specimens of Francia, once combined together as principal picture and
lunette,--the "Virgin" and "Child and St Anna" enthroned, surrounded by
saints, and (in the lunette) the "Pieta," or lamentation of angels over
the dead Saviour. They come from the Buonvisi chapel in the church of S.
Frediano, Lucca, and were among the master's latest paintings. Other
leading works are--in Munich, the "Virgin" sinking on her knees in
adoration of the Divine Infant, who is lying in a garden within a rose
trellis; in the Borghese gallery, Rome, a Peter Martyr; in Bologna, the
frescoes in the church of St Cecilia, illustrating the life of the
saint, all of them from the design of Raibolini, but not all executed by
himself. His landscape backgrounds are of uncommon excellence. Francia
had more than 200 scholars. Marcantonio Raimondi, the famous engraver,
is the most renowned of them; next to him Amico Aspertini, and Francia's
own son Giacomo, and his cousin Julio. Lorenzo Costa was much associated
with Francia in pictorial work.

  Among the authorities as to the life and work of Francia may be
  mentioned J.A. Calvi, _Memorie della vita di Francesco Raibolini_
  (1812), and especially G.C. Williamson, _Francia_ (1900).
       (W. M. R.)




FRANCIA, JOSE GASPAR RODRIGUEZ (c. 1757-1840), dictator of Paraguay, was
born probably about 1757. According to one account he was of French
descent; but the truth seems to be that his father, Garcia Rodriguez
Francia, was a native of S. Paulo in Brazil, and came to Paraguay to
take charge of a plantation of black tobacco for the government. He
studied theology at the college of Cordova de Tucuman, and is said to
have been for some time a professor in that faculty; but he afterwards
turned his attention to the law, and practised in Asuncion. Having
attained a high reputation at once for ability and integrity, he was
selected for various important offices. On the declaration of Paraguayan
independence in 1811, he was appointed secretary to the national junta,
and exercised an influence on affairs greatly out of proportion to his
nominal position. When the congress or junta of 1813 changed the
constitution and established a duumvirate, Dr Francia and the Gaucho
general Yegres were elected to the office. In 1814 he secured his own
election as dictator for three years, and at the end of that period he
obtained the dictatorship for life. In the accounts which have been
published of his administration we find a strange mixture of capacity
and caprice, of far-sighted wisdom and reckless infatuation, strenuous
endeavours after a high ideal and flagrant violations of the simplest
principles of justice. He put a stop to the foreign commerce of the
country, but carefully fostered its internal industries; was disposed to
be hospitable to strangers from other lands, and kept them prisoners for
years; lived a life of republican simplicity, and punished with
Dionysian severity the slightest want of respect. As time went on he
appears to have grown more arbitrary and despotic. Deeply imbued with
the principles of the French Revolution, he was a stern antagonist of
the church. He abolished the Inquisition, suppressed the college of
theology, did away with the tithes, and inflicted endless indignities on
the priests. He discouraged marriage both by precept and example, and
left behind him several illegitimate children. For the extravagances of
his later years the plea of insanity has been put forward. On the 20th
of September 1840 he was seized with a fit and died.

  The first and fullest account of Dr Francia was given to the world by
  two Swiss surgeons, Rengger and Longchamp, whom he had detained from
  1819 to 1825--_Essai historique sur la revolution de Paraguay et la
  gouvernement dictatorial du docteur Francia_ (Paris, 1827). Their work
  was almost immediately translated into English under the title of _The
  Reign of Doctor Joseph G.R. De Francia in Paraguay_ (1827). About
  eleven years after there appeared at London _Letters on Paraguay_, by
  J.P. and W.P. Robertson, two young Scotsmen whose hopes of commercial
  success had been rudely destroyed by the dictator's interference. The
  account which they gave of his character and government was of the
  most unfavourable description, and they rehearsed and emphasized their
  accusations in _Francia's Reign of Terror_ (1839) and _Letters on
  South America_ (3 vols., 1843). From the very pages of his detractors
  Thomas Carlyle succeeded in extracting materials for a brilliant
  defence of the dictator "as a man or sovereign of iron energy and
  industry, of great and severe labour." It appeared in the _Foreign
  Quarterly Review_ for 1843, and is reprinted in his _Critical and
  Miscellaneous Essays_. Sir Richard F. Burton gives a graphic sketch of
  Francia's life and a favourable notice of his character in his
  _Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay_ (1870), while C.A.
  Washburn takes up a hostile position in his _History of Paraguay_
  (1871).




FRANCIABIGIO (1482-1525), Florentine painter. The name of this artist is
generally given as Mercantonio Franciabigio; it appears, however, that
his only real ascertained name was Francesco di Cristofano; and that he
was currently termed Francia Bigio, the two appellatives being distinct.
He was born in Florence, and studied under Albertinelli for some months.
In 1505 he formed the acquaintance of Andrea del Sarto; and after a
while the two painters set up a shop in common in the Piazza del Grano.
Franciabigio paid much attention to anatomy and perspective, and to the
proportions of his figures, though these are often too squat and puffy
in form. He had a large stock of artistic knowledge, and was at first
noted for diligence. As years went on, and he received frequent
commissions for all sorts of public painting for festive occasions, his
diligence merged in something which may rather be called workmanly
offhandedness. He was particularly proficient in fresco, and Vasari even
says that he surpassed all his contemporaries in this method--a judgment
which modern connoisseurship does not accept. In the court of the
Servites (or cloister of the Annunziata) in Florence he painted in 1513
the "Marriage of the Virgin," as a portion of a series wherein Andrea
del Sarto was chiefly concerned. The friars having uncovered this work
before it was quite finished, Franciabigio was so incensed that, seizing
a mason's hammer, he struck at the head of the Virgin, and some other
heads; and the fresco, which would otherwise be his masterpiece in that
method, remains thus mutilated. At the Scalzo, in another series of
frescoes on which Andrea was likewise employed, he executed in 1518-1519
the "Departure of John the Baptist for the Desert," and the "Meeting of
the Baptist with Jesus"; and, at the Medici palace at Poggio a Caiano,
in 1521, the "Triumph of Cicero." Various works which have been ascribed
to Raphael are now known or reasonably deemed to be by Franciabigio.
Such are the "Madonna del Pozzo," in the Uffizi Gallery; the half figure
of a "Young Man," in the Louvre (see also FRANCIA); and the famous
picture in the Fuller-Maitland collection, a "Young Man with a Letter."
These two works show a close analogy in style to another in the Pitti
gallery, avowedly by Franciabigio, a "Youth at a Window," and to some
others which bear this painter's recognized monogram. The series of
portraits, taken collectively, placed beyond dispute the eminent and
idiosyncratic genius of the master. Two other works of his, of some
celebrity, are the "Calumny of Apelles," in the Pitti, and the "Bath of
Bathsheba" (painted in 1523), in the Dresden gallery.




FRANCIS (Lat. _Franciscus_, Ital. _Francesco_, Span. _Francisco_, Fr.
_Francois_, Ger. _Franz_), a masculine proper name meaning "Frenchman."
As a Christian name it originated with St Francis of Assisi, whose
baptismal name was Giovanni, but who was called Francesco by his father
on returning from a journey in France. The saint's fame made the name
exceedingly popular from his day onwards.




FRANCIS I. (1708-1765), Roman emperor and grand duke of Tuscany, second
son of Leopold Joseph, duke of Lorraine, and his wife Elizabeth
Charlotte, daughter of Philip, duke of Orleans, was born on the 8th of
December 1708. He was connected with the Habsburgs through his
grandmother Eleanore, daughter of the emperor Ferdinand III., and wife
of Charles Leopold of Lorraine. The emperor Charles VI. favoured the
family, who, besides being his cousins, had served the house of Austria
with distinction. He had designed to marry his daughter Maria Theresa to
Clement, the elder brother of Francis. On the death of Clement he
adopted the younger brother as her husband. Francis was brought up at
Vienna with Maria Theresa on the understanding that they were to be
married, and a real affection arose between them. At the age of fifteen,
when he was brought to Vienna, he was established in the Silesian duchy
of Teschen, which had been mediatized and granted to his father by the
emperor in 1722. He succeeded his father as duke of Lorraine in 1729,
but the emperor, at the end of the Polish War of Succession, desiring to
compensate his candidate Stanislaus Leszczynski for the loss of his
crown in 1735, persuaded Francis to exchange Lorraine for the reversion
of the grand duchy of Tuscany. On the 12th of February 1736 he was
married to Maria Theresa, and they went for a short time to Florence,
when he succeeded to the grand duchy in 1737 on the death of John
Gaston, the last of the ruling house of Medici. His wife secured his
election to the Empire on the 13th of September 1745, in succession to
Charles VII., and she made him co-regent of her hereditary dominions.
Francis was well content to leave the reality of power to his able wife.
He had a natural fund of good sense and some business capacity, and was
a useful assistant to Maria Theresa in the laborious task of governing
the complicated Austrian dominions, but his functions appear to have
been of a purely secretarial character. He died suddenly in his carriage
while returning from the opera at Innsbruck on the 18th of August 1765.

  See A. von Arneth, _Geschichte Maria Theresias_ (Vienna, 1863-1879).




FRANCIS II. (1768-1835), the last Roman emperor, and, as Francis I.,
first emperor of Austria, was the son of Leopold II., grand-duke of
Tuscany, afterwards emperor, and of his wife Maria Louisa, daughter of
Charles III. of Spain. He was born at Florence on the 12th of February
1768. In 1784 he was brought to Vienna to complete his education under
the eye of his uncle the emperor Joseph II., who was childless. Joseph
was repelled by the frigid and retiring character of his nephew, and is
said to have treated him with an impatient contempt which confirmed his
natural timidity; but after the marriage of Francis to Elizabeth of
Wuerttemberg (1788) their relations improved. At the close of his uncle's
reign he saw some service in the ill-conducted war with Turkey, and kept
a careful diary of his experiences. The death of his wife in childbirth
on the 18th of February 1790 was followed by the death of his uncle on
the 20th; and Francis acted as regent with Prince Kaunitz until his
father came from Florence. On the 19th of September he married his first
cousin Maria Theresa, daughter of Ferdinand, king of Naples, by whom he
was the father of his successor Ferdinand I., of Maria Louisa, wife of
Napoleon, and of the archduke Francis, father of the emperor Francis
Joseph. After her death (1807) he married Maria Ludovica Beatrix of Este
(1808), and when she died he made a fourth marriage with Carolina
Augusta of Bavaria (1816).

He succeeded to the Austrian dominions and the empire on the death of
his father on the 1st of March 1792. The position was a trying one for a
young prince twenty-four years of age. The dominions of the house of
Austria, widely scattered in the Low Countries, Germany and Italy, were
exposed to the attacks of the French revolutionary governments and of
Napoleon. He was dragged into all the coalitions against France, and in
the early days of his reign he had to guard against the ambition of
Prussia, and the aggressions of Russia in Poland and Turkey. For long
he had no adviser save such diplomatists as Prince Kaunitz and Thugut,
who had been trained in the old Austrian diplomacy. His own best quality
was an invincible patience supported by reliance on the loyalty of his
subjects, and a sense of his duty to the state. (For the general events
of this reign till 1815 see EUROPE, AUSTRIA, NAPOLEON, FRENCH
REVOLUTIONARY WARS, &c.) The emperor's firmness averted what would have
been an irreparable loss of position. Seeing that the Empire was in the
last stage of dissolution, and that, even were it to survive, it would
pass from the house of Habsburg to that of Bonaparte, he in 1804 assumed
the title of hereditary emperor of Austria. The object of this prudent
measure was double. In the first place, he guarded against the danger
that his house should sink to a lower rank than the Russian or the
French. In the second place, he gave some semblance of unity to his
complex dominions in Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and Italy, by providing a
common title for the supreme ruler. His action was justified when, in
1806, the establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine forced him to
abdicate the empty title of Holy Roman emperor.

In 1805 he made an important change in the working of his
administration. He had hitherto been assisted by a cabinet minister who
was in direct relation with all the "chanceries" and boards which formed
the executive government, and who acted as the channel of communication
between them and the emperor, and was in fact a prime minister. In 1805
Napoleon insisted on the removal of Count Colloredo, who held the post.
From that time forward the emperor Francis acted as his own prime
minister, superintending every detail of his administration. In foreign
affairs after 1809 he reposed full confidence in Prince Metternich. But
Metternich himself declared at the close of his life that he had
sometimes held Europe in the palm of his hand, but never Austria.
Francis was sole master, and is entitled to whatever praise is due to
his government. It follows that he must bear the blame for its errors.
The history of the Austrian empire under his rule and since his death
bears testimony to both his merits and his limitations. His indomitable
patience and loyalty to his inherited task enabled him to triumph over
Napoleon. By consenting to the marriage of his daughter, Marie Louise,
to Napoleon in 1810, he gained a respite which he turned to good
account. By following the guidance of Metternich in foreign affairs he
was able to intervene with decisive effect in 1813. The settlement of
Europe in 1815 left Austria stronger and more compact than she had been
in 1792, and that this was the case was largely due to the emperor.

During the twenty years which preceded his death in 1835, Francis
continued to oppose the revolutionary spirit. He had none of the
mystical tendencies of the tsar Alexander I., and only adhered to the
half fantastic Holy Alliance of 1815 out of pure politeness. But he was
wholly in sympathy with the policy of "repression" which came, in
popular view, to be identified with the Holy Alliance; and though
Metternich was primarily responsible for the part played by Austria in
the "policing" of Europe, Francis cannot but be held personally
responsible for the cruel and impolitic severities, associated
especially with the sinister name of the fortress prison of the
Spielberg, which made so many martyrs to freedom. It is not surprising
that Francis was denounced by Liberals throughout Europe as a tyrant and
an obscurantist. But though at home, as abroad, he met all suggestions
of innovation by a steady refusal to depart from old ways, he was always
popular among the mass of his subjects, who called him "our good Kaiser
Franz." In truth, if in the spirit of the traditional _Landesvater_ he
chastised his disobedient children mercilessly, he was essentially a
well-meaning ruler who forwarded the material and moral good of his
subjects according to his lights. But he held that, by the will of God,
the whole sovereign authority resided in his person, and could not be
shared with others without a dereliction of duty on his part and
disastrous consequences; and his capital error as a ruler of Austria was
that he persisted in maintaining a system of administration which
depended upon the indefatigable industry of a single man, and was
entirely outgrown by the modern development of his subjects. Before his
death, government in Austria was almost choked, and it broke down under
a successor who had not his capacity for work. Like his ancestor Philip
II. of Spain, Francis carried caution, and a disposition to sleep upon
every possible proposal, to a great length. He died on the 2nd of March
1835.

  See Baron J.A. Helfert, _Kaiser Franz und die oesterreichischen
  Befreiungs-Kriege_ (Vienna, 1867). Ample bibliographies will be found
  in Krones von Marchland's _Grundriss der oesterreichischen Geschichte_
  (Berlin, 1882).




FRANCIS I. (1494-1547), king of France, son of Charles of Valois, count
of Angouleme, and Louise of Savoy, was born at Cognac on the 12th of
September 1494. The count of Angouleme, who was the great-grandson of
King Charles V., died in 1496, and Louise watched over her son with
passionate tenderness. On the accession of Louis XII. in 1498, Francis
became heir-presumptive. Louis invested him with the duchy of Valois,
and gave him as tutor Marshal de Gie, and, after Gie's disgrace in 1503,
the sieur de Boisy, Artus Gouffier. Francois de Rochefort, abbot of St
Mesmin, instructed Francis and his sister Marguerite in Latin and
history; Louise herself taught them Italian and Spanish; and the library
of the chateau at Amboise was well stocked with romances of the Round
Table, which exalted the lad's imagination. Francis showed an even
greater love for violent exercises, such as hunting, which was his
ruling passion, and tennis, and for tournaments, masquerades and
amusements of all kinds. His earliest gallantries are described by his
sister in the 25th and 42nd stories of the _Heptameron_. In 1507 Francis
was betrothed to Claude, the daughter of Louis XII., and in 1508 he came
to court. In 1512 he gained his first military experience in Guienne,
and in the following year he commanded the army of Picardy. He married
Claude on the 18th of May 1514, and succeeded Louis XII. on the 1st of
January 1515. Of noble bearing, and, in spite of a very long and large
nose, extremely handsome, he was a sturdy and valiant knight, affable,
courteous, a brilliant talker and a facile poet. He had a sprightly wit,
some delicacy of feeling, and some generous impulses which made him
amiable. These brilliant qualities, however, were all on the surface. At
bottom the man was frivolous, profoundly selfish, unstable, and utterly
incapable of consistency or application. The ambassadors remarked his
negligence, and his ministers complained of it. Hunting, tennis, jewelry
and his gallantry were the chief preoccupations of his life.

His character was at once authoritative and weak. He was determined to
be master and to decide everything himself, but he allowed himself to be
dominated and easily persuaded. Favourites, too, without governing
entirely for him, played an important part in his reign. His capricious
humour elevated and deposed them with the same disconcerting suddenness.
In the early years of his reign the conduct of affairs was chiefly in
the hands of Louise of Savoy, Chancellor Antoine Duprat, Secretary
Florimond Robertet, and the two Gouffiers, Boisy and Bonnivet. The royal
favour then elevated Anne de Montmorency and Philippe de Chabot, and in
the last years of the reign Marshal d'Annebaud and Cardinal de Tournon.
Women too had always a great influence over Francis--his sister,
Marguerite d'Angouleme, and his mistresses. Whatever the number of
these, he had only two titular mistresses--at the beginning of the reign
Francoise de Chateaubriant, and from about 1526 to his death Anne de
Pisseleu, whom he created duchesse d'Etampes and who entirely dominated
him. It has not been proved that he was the lover of Diane de Poitiers,
nor does the story of "La belle Ferronniere" appear to rest on any
historical foundation.[1]

Circumstances alone gave a homogeneous character to the foreign policy
of Francis. The struggle against the emperor Charles V. filled the
greater part of the reign. In reality, the policy of Francis, save for
some flashes of sagacity, was irresolute and vacillating. Attracted at
first by Italy, dreaming of fair feats of prowess, he led the triumphal
Marignano expedition, which gained him reputation as a knightly king and
as the most powerful prince in Europe. In 1519, in spite of wise
counsels, he stood candidate for the imperial crown. The election of
Charles V. caused an inevitable rivalry between the two monarchs which
accentuated still further the light and chivalrous temper of the king
and the cold and politic character of the emperor. Francis's personal
intervention in this struggle was seldom happy. He did not succeed in
gaining the support of Henry VIII. of England at the interview of the
Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520; his want of tact goaded the
Constable de Bourbon to extreme measures in 1522-1523; and in the
Italian campaign of 1525 he proved himself a mediocre, vacillating and
foolhardy leader, and by his blundering led the army to the disaster of
Pavia (the 25th of February 1525), where, however, he fought with great
bravery. "Of all things," he wrote to his mother after the defeat,
"nothing remains to me but honour and life, which is safe"--the
authentic version of the legendary phrase "All is lost save honour." He
strove to play the part of royal captive heroically, but the prison life
galled him. He fell ill at Madrid and was on the point of death. For a
moment he thought of abdicating rather than of ceding Burgundy. But this
was too great a demand upon his fortitude, and he finally yielded and
signed the treaty of Madrid, after having drawn up a secret protest.
After Madrid he wavered unceasingly between two courses, either that of
continuing hostilities, or the policy favoured by Montmorency of peace
and understanding with the emperor. At times he had the sagacity to
recognize the utility of alliances, as was shown by those he concluded
with the Porte and with the Protestant princes of Germany. But he could
never pledge himself frankly in one sense or the other, and this
vacillation prevented him from attaining any decisive results. At his
death, however, France was in possession of Savoy and Piedmont.

In his religious policy Francis showed the same instability. Drawn
between various influences, that of Marguerite d'Angouleme, the du
Bellays, and the duchesse d'Etampes, who was in favour of the
Reformation or at least of toleration, and the contrary influence of the
uncompromising Catholics, Duprat, and then Montmorency and de Tournon,
he gave pledges successively to both parties. In the first years of the
reign, following the counsels of Marguerite, he protected Jacques
Lefevre of Etaples and Louis de Berquin, and showed some favour to the
new doctrines. But the violence of the Reformers threw him into the arms
of the opposite party. The affair of the Placards in 1534 irritated him
beyond measure, and determined him to adopt a policy of severity. From
that time, in spite of occasional indulgences shown to the Reformers,
due to his desire to conciliate the Protestant powers, Francis gave a
free hand to the party of repression, of which the most active and most
pitiless member was Cardinal de Tournon; and the end of the reign was
sullied by the massacre of the Waldenses (1545).

Francis introduced new methods into government. In his reign the
monarchical authority became more imperious and more absolute. His was
the government "_du bon plaisir_." By the unusual development he gave to
the court he converted the nobility into a brilliant household of
dependants. The Concordat brought the clergy into subjection, and
enabled him to distribute benefices at his pleasure among the most
docile of his courtiers. He governed in the midst of a group of
favourites, who formed the _conseil des affaires_. The states-general
did not meet, and the remonstrances of the parlement were scarcely
tolerated. By centralizing the financial administration by the creation
of the _Tresor de l'Epargne_, and by developing the military
establishments, Francis still further strengthened the royal power. His
government had the vices of his foreign policy. It was uncertain,
irregular and disorderly. The finances were squandered in gratifying the
king's unbridled prodigality, and the treasury was drained by his
luxurious habits, by the innumerable gifts and pensions he distributed
among his mistresses and courtiers, by his war expenses and by his
magnificent buildings. His government, too, weighed heavily upon the
people, and the king was less popular than is sometimes imagined.

Francis owes the greater measure of his glory to the artists and men of
letters who vied in celebrating his praises. He was pre-eminently the
king of the Renaissance. Of a quick and cultivated intelligence, he had
a sincere love of letters and art. He holds a high place in the history
of humanism by the foundation of the College de France; he did not found
an actual college, but after much hesitation instituted in 1530, at the
instance of Guillaume Bude (Budaeus), _Lecteurs royaux_, who in spite of
the opposition of the Sorbonne were granted full liberty to teach
Hebrew, Greek, Latin, mathematics, &c. The humanists Bude, Jacques Colin
and Pierre Duchatel were the king's intimates, and Clement Marot was his
favourite poet. Francis sent to Italy for artists and for works of art,
but he protected his own countrymen also. Here, too, he showed his
customary indecision, wavering between the two schools. At his court he
installed Benvenuto Cellini, Francesco Primaticcio and Rosso del Rosso,
but in the buildings at Chambord, St Germain, Villers-Cotterets and
Fontainebleau the French tradition triumphed over the Italian.

Francis died on the 31st of March 1547, of a disease of the urinary
ducts according to some accounts, of syphilis according to others. By
his first wife Claude (d. 1524) he had three sons and four daughters:
Louise, who died in infancy; Charlotte, who died at the age of eight;
Francis (d. 1536); Henry, who came to the throne as Henry II.;
Madeleine, who became queen of Scotland; Charles (d. 1545); and
Margaret, duchess of Savoy. In 1530 he married Eleanor, the sister of
the emperor Charles V.

  AUTHORITIES.--For the official acts of the reign, the _Catalogue des
  actes de Francois I^er_, published by the Academie des Sciences
  morales et politiques (Paris, 1887-1907), is a valuable guide. The
  _Bibliotheque Nationale_, the _National Archives_, &c., contain a mass
  of unpublished documents. Of the published documents, see N. Camuzat,
  _Meslanges historiques_ ... (Troyes, 1619); G. Ribier, _Lettres et
  memoires d'estat_ (Paris, 1666); _Letters de Marguerite d'Angouleme_,
  ed. by F. Genin (Paris, 1841 and 1842); the _Correspondence of
  Castillon and Marillac_ (ed. by Kaulek, Paris, 1885), of _Odet de
  Selve_ (ed. by Lefevre-Pontalis, Paris, 1888), and of _Guillaume
  Pellicier_ (ed. by Tausserat-Radel, Paris, 1900); _Captivite du roi
  Francois I^er_, and _Poesies de Francois I^er_ (both ed. by
  Champollion-Figeac, Paris, 1847, of doubtful authenticity); _Relations
  des ambassadeurs venitiens_, &c. Of the memoirs and chronicles, see
  the journal of Louise of Savoy in S. Guichenon's _Histoire de la
  maison de Savoie_, vol. iv. (ed. of 1778-1780); _Journal de Jean
  Barillon_, ed. by de Vaissiere (Paris, 1897-1899); _Journal d'un
  bourgeois de Paris_, ed. by Lalanne (Paris, 1854); _Cronique du roy
  Francois I^er_, ed. by Guiffrey (Paris, 1868); and the memoirs of
  Fleuranges, Montluc, Tavannes, Vieilleville, Brantome and especially
  Martin du Bellay (coll. Michaud and Poujoulat). Of the innumerable
  secondary authorities, see especially Paulin Paris, _Etudes sur le
  regne de Francois I^er_ (Paris, 1885), in which the apologetic
  tendency is excessive; and H. Lemonnier in vol. v. (Paris, 1903-1904)
  of E. Lavisse's _Histoire de France_, which gives a list of the
  principal secondary authorities. There is a more complete
  bibliographical study by V.L. Bourrilly in the _Revue d'histoire
  moderne et contemporaine_, vol. iv. (1902-1903). The printed sources
  have been catalogued by H. Hauser, _Les Sources de l'histoire de
  France, XVI^e siecle_, tome ii. (Paris, 1907).     (J. I.)


FOOTNOTE:

  [1]On this point see Paulin Paris, _Etudes sur le regne de Francois
    I^er_.




FRANCIS II. (1544-1560), king of France, eldest son of Henry II. and of
Catherine de' Medici, was born at Fontainebleau on the 19th of January
1544. He married the famous Mary Stuart, daughter of James V. of
Scotland, on the 25th of April 1558, and ascended the French throne on
the 10th of July 1559. During his short reign the young king, a sickly
youth and of feeble understanding, was the mere tool of his uncles
Francis, duke of Guise, and Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, into whose
hands he virtually delivered the reins of government. The exclusiveness
with which they were favoured, and their high-handed proceedings,
awakened the resentment of the princes of the blood, Anthony king of
Navarre and Louis prince of Conde, who gave their countenance to a
conspiracy (conspiracy of Amboise) with the Protestants against the
house of Guise. It was, however, discovered shortly before the time
fixed for its execution in March 1560, and an ambush having been
prepared, most of the conspirators were either killed or taken
prisoners. Its leadership and organization had been entrusted to Godfrey
de Barri, lord of la Renaudie (d. 1560); and the prince of Conde, who
was not present, disavowed all connexion with the plot. The duke of
Guise was now named lieutenant-general of the kingdom, but his Catholic
leanings were somewhat held in check by the chancellor Michel de
l'Hopital, through whose mediation the edict of Romorantin, providing
that all cases of heresy should be decided by the bishops, was passed in
May 1560, in opposition to a proposal to introduce the Inquisition. At a
meeting of the states-general held at Orleans in the December following,
the prince of Conde, after being arrested, was condemned to death, and
extreme measures were being enacted against the Huguenots; but the
deliberations of the Assembly were broken off, and the prince was saved
from execution, by the king's somewhat sudden death, on the 5th of the
month, from an abscess in the ear.

  PRINCIPAL AUTHORITIES.--"Lettres de Catherine de Medicis," edited by
  Hector de la Ferriere (1880 seq.), and "Negociations ... relatives au
  regne de Francois II," edited by Louis Paris (1841), both in the
  _Collection de documents inedits sur l'histoire de France_; notice of
  Francis, duke of Guise, in the _Nouvelle Collection des memoires pour
  servir a l'histoire de France_, edited by J.F. Michaud and J.J.F.
  Poujoulat, series i. vol. vi. (1836 seq.); _Memoires de Conde servant
  d'eclaircissement ... a l'histoire de M. de Thou_, vols. i and ii.
  (1743); Pierre de la Place, _Commentaires de l'estat de la religion et
  de la republique sous les rois Henri II, Francois II, Charles IX_
  (1565); and Louis Regnier de la Planche, _Histoire de l'estat de
  France ... sous ... Francois II (Pantheon litteraire_, new edition,
  1884). See also Ernest Lavisse, _Histoire de France_ (vol. vi. by J.H.
  Mariejol, 1904), which contains a bibliography.




FRANCIS I. (1777-1830), king of the Two Sicilies, was the son of
Ferdinand IV. (I.) and Maria Carolina of Austria. He married Clementina,
daughter of the emperor Leopold II. of Austria, in 1796, and at her
death Isabella, daughter of Charles IV. of Spain. After the Bourbon
family fled from Naples to Sicily in 1806, and Lord William Bentinck,
the British resident, had established a constitution and deprived
Ferdinand IV. of all power, Francis was appointed regent (1812). On the
fall of Napoleon his father returned to Naples and suppressed the
Sicilian constitution and autonomy, incorporating his two kingdoms into
that of the Two Sicilies (1816); Francis then assumed the revived title
of duke of Calabria. While still heir-apparent he professed liberal
ideas, and on the outbreak of the revolution of 1820 he accepted the
regency apparently in a friendly spirit towards the new constitution.
But he was playing a double game and proved to be the accomplice of his
father's treachery. On succeeding to the throne in 1825 he cast aside
the mask of liberalism and showed himself as reactionary as his father.
He took little part in the government, which he left in the hands of
favourites and police officials, and lived with his mistresses,
surrounded by soldiers, ever in dread of assassination. During his reign
the only revolutionary movement was the outbreak on the Cilento (1828),
savagely repressed by the marquis Delcarretto, an ex-Liberal turned
reactionary.

  See Nisco, _Il Reame di Napoli sotto Francesco I_ (Naples, 1893).




FRANCIS II. (1836-1894), king of the Two Sicilies, son of Ferdinand II.
and Maria Cristina of Savoy, was the last of the Bourbon kings of
Naples. His education had been much neglected and he proved a man of
weak character, greatly influenced by his stepmother Maria Theresa of
Austria, by the priests, and by the _Camarilla_, or reactionary court
set. He ascended the throne on the death of his father (22nd of May
1859). As prime minister he at once appointed Carlo Filangieri, who,
realizing the importance of the Franco-Piedmontese victories in
Lombardy, advised Francis to accept the alliance with Piedmont proposed
by Cavour. On the 7th of June a part of the Swiss Guard mutinied, and
while the king mollified them by promising to redress their grievances,
General Nunziante collected other troops, who surrounded the mutineers
and shot them down. The incident resulted in the disbanding of the whole
Swiss Guard, the strongest bulwark of the dynasty. Cavour again proposed
an alliance to divide the papal states between Piedmont and Naples, the
province of Rome excepted, but Francis rejected an idea which to him
savoured of sacrilege. Filangieri strongly advocated a constitution as
the only measure which might save the dynasty, and on the king's refusal
he resigned. Meanwhile the revolutionary parties were conspiring for the
overthrow of the Bourbons in Calabria and Sicily, and Garibaldi was
preparing for a raid in the south. A conspiracy in Sicily was discovered
and the plotters punished with brutal severity, but Rosalino Pilo and
Francesco Crispi had organized the movement, and when Garibaldi landed
at Marsala (May 1860) he conquered the island with astonishing ease.
These events at last frightened Francis into granting a constitution,
but its promulgation was followed by disorders in Naples and the
resignation of ministers, and Liborio Romano became head of the
government. The disintegration of the army and navy proceeded apace, and
Cavour sent a Piedmontese squadron carrying troops on board to watch
events. Garibaldi, who had crossed the straits of Messina, was advancing
northwards and was everywhere received by the people as a liberator.
Francis, after long hesitations and even an appeal to Garibaldi himself,
left Naples (6th of September) with his wife Maria Sophia, the court,
the diplomatic corps (the French and English ministers excepted), and
went by sea to Gaeta, where a large part of the army was concentrated.
The next day Garibaldi entered Naples, was enthusiastically welcomed,
and formed a provisional government. King Victor Emmanuel had decided on
the invasion of the papal states, and after occupying Romagna and the
Marche entered the Neapolitan kingdom. Garibaldi's troops defeated the
Neapolitan royalists on the Volturno (1st and 2nd of October), while the
Piedmontese captured Capua. Only Gaeta, Messina, and Civitella del
Tronto still held out, and the siege of the former by the Piedmontese
began on the 6th of November 1860. Both Francis and Maria Sophia behaved
with great coolness and courage, and even when the French fleet, whose
presence had hitherto prevented an attack by sea, was withdrawn, they
still resisted; it was not until the 12th of February 1861 that the
fortress capitulated. Thus the kingdom of Naples was incorporated in
that of Italy, and the royal pair from that time forth led a wandering
life in Austria, France and Bavaria. Francis died on the 27th of
December 1894 at Arco in Tirol. His widow survived him.

Francis II. was weak-minded, stupid and vacillating, but, although his
short reign was stained with some cruel massacres and persecutions, he
was less of a tyrant than his father. The courage and dignity he
displayed during his reverses inspired pity and respect. But the fact
that he protected brigandage in his former dominions and countenanced
the most abominable crimes in the name of legitimism greatly diminished
the sympathy which was felt for the fallen monarch.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY.--R. de Cesare, _La Fine d'un regno_, vol. ii. (Citta di
  Castello, 1900) gives a detailed account of the reign of Francis II.,
  while H.R. Whitehouse's _Collapse of the Kingdom of Naples_ (New York,
  1899) may be recommended to English readers; Nisco's _Francesco II_
  (Naples, 1887) should also be consulted. See under NAPLES; GARIBALDI;
  BIXIO; CAVOUR; ITALY; FILANGIERI; &c.     (L. V.*)




FRANCIS IV. (1779-1846) duke of Modena, was the son of the archduke
Ferdinand, Austrian governor of Lombardy, who acquired the duchy of
Modena through his wife Marie Beatrice, heiress of the house of Este as
well as of many fiefs of the Malaspina, Pio da Carpi, Pico della
Mirandola, Cibo, and other families. At the time of the French invasion
(1796) Francis was sent to Vienna to be educated, and in 1809 was
appointed governor of Galicia. Later he went to Sardinia, where the
exiled King Victor Emmanuel I. and his wife Maria Theresa were living in
retirement. The latter arranged a marriage between her daughter Marie
Beatrice and Francis, and a secret family compact was made whereby if
the king and his two brothers died without male issue, the Salic law
would be changed so that Francis should succeed to the kingdom instead
of Charles Albert of Carignano (N. Bianchi, _Storia della diplomazia
europea in Italia_, i. 42-43). On the fall of Napoleon in 1814 Francis
received the duchy of Modena, including Massa-Carrara and Lunigiana; his
mother's advice was "to be above the law ... never to forgive the
Republicans of 1796, nor to listen to the complaints of his subjects,
whom nothing satisfies; the poorer they are the quieter they are"
(Silingardi, "Ciro Menotti," in _Rivista europea_, Florence, 1880).

The duke was well received at Modena; inordinately ambitious,
strong-willed, immensely rich, avaricious but not unintelligent, he soon
proved one of the most reactionary despots in Italy. He still hoped to
acquire either Piedmont or some other part of northern Italy, and he was
in touch with the Sanfedisti and the Concistoro, reactionary Catholic
associations opposed to the Carbonari, but not always friendly to
Austria. Against the Carbonari and other Liberals he issued the severest
edicts, and although there was no revolt at Modena in 1821 as in
Piedmont and Naples, he immediately instituted judicial proceedings
against the supposed conspirators. Some 350 persons were arrested and
tortured, 56 being condemned to death (only a few of them were executed)
and 237 to imprisonment; a large number, however, escaped, including
Antonio Panizzi (afterwards director of the British Museum). The
ferocious police official Besini who conducted the trials was afterwards
murdered. The duke actually proposed to Prince Metternich, the Austrian
chancellor, an agreement whereby the various Italian rulers were to
arrest every Liberal in the country on a certain day, but the project
fell through owing to opposition from the courts of Florence and Rome.
At the congress of Verona Metternich made another attempt to secure the
Piedmontese succession for Francis, but without success. The duke became
ever more despotic; Modena swarmed with spies and informers, education
was hampered, feudalism strengthened; for the duke hoped to consolidate
his power by means of the nobility, and the least expression of
liberalism, or even failure to denounce a Carbonaro, involved arrest and
imprisonment. But strange to say, in 1830 we find Francis actually
coquetting with revolution. Having lost all hope of acquiring the
Piedmontese throne, he entered into negotiations with the French
Orleanist party with a view to obtaining its support in his plans for
extending his dominions. He was thus brought into touch with Ciro
Menotti (1798-1831) and the Modenese Liberals; what the nature of the
connexion was is still obscure, but it was certainly short-lived and
merely served to betray the Carbonari. As soon as Francis learned that a
conspiracy was on foot to gain possession of the town, he had Menotti
and several other conspirators arrested on the night of the 3rd of
February 1831, and sent the famous message to the governor of Reggio:
"The conspirators are in my hands; send me the hangman" (there is some
doubt as to the authenticity of the actual words). But the revolt broke
out in other parts of the duchy and in Romagna, and Francis retired to
Mantua with Menotti. A provisional government was formed at Modena which
proclaimed that "Italy is one," but the duke returned a few weeks later
with Austrian troops, and resistance was easily quelled. Then the
political trials began; Menotti and two others were executed, and
hundreds condemned to imprisonment. The population was now officially
divided into four classes, viz. "very loyal, loyal, less loyal, and
disloyal," and the reaction became worse than ever, the duke interfering
in the minutest details of administration, such as hospitals, schools,
and roads. New methods of procedure were introduced to deal with
political trials, but the ministerial cabal by which the country was
administered intrigued and squabbled to such an extent that it had to be
dismissed.

On the 20th of February 1846 Francis died. Although he had many domestic
virtues and charming manners, was charitable in times of famine, and was
certainly the ablest of the Italian despots, Liberalism was in his eyes
the most heinous of crimes, and his reign is one long record of
barbarous persecution.     (L. V.*)




FRANCIS V. (1819-1875), duke of Modena, son of Francis IV., succeeded
his father in 1846. Although less cruel and also less intelligent than
his father, he had an equally high opinion of his own authority. His
reign began with disturbances at Fivizzano and Pontremoli, which Tuscany
surrendered to him according to treaty but against the wishes of the
inhabitants (1847), and at Massa and Carrara, where the troops shot down
the people. Feeling his position insecure, the duke asked for and
obtained an Austrian garrison, but on the outbreak of revolution
throughout Italy and at Vienna in 1848, further disorders occurred in
the duchy, and on the 20th of March he fled with his family to Mantua. A
provisional government was formed, and volunteers were raised who fought
with the Piedmontese against Austria. But after the Piedmontese defeat
Francis returned to Modena, with Austrian assistance, in August and
conferred many appointments on Austrian officers. Like his father, he
interfered in the minutest details of administration, and instituted
proceedings against all who were suspected of Liberalism. Not content
with the severity of his judges, he overrode their sentences in favour
of harsher punishments. The disturbances at Carrara were ruthlessly
suppressed, and the prisons filled with politicals. In 1859 numbers of
young Modenese fled across the frontier to join the Piedmontese army, as
war with Austria seemed imminent; and after the Austrian defeat at
Magenta the duke left Modena to lead his army in person against the
Piedmontese, taking with him the contents of the state treasury and many
valuable books, pictures, coins, tapestries and furniture from the
palace. The events of 1859-1860 made his return impossible; and after a
short spell of provisional government the duchy was united to Italy. He
retired to Austria, and died at Munich in November 1875.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY.--N. Bianchi, _I Ducati Estensi_ (Turin, 1852); Galvani,
  _Memorie di S.A.R. Francesco IV_ (Modena, 1847); _Documenti
  riguardanti il governo degli Austro-Estensi in Modena_ (Modena, 1860);
  C. Tivaroni, _L'Italia durante il dominio austriaco_, i. 606-653
  (Turin, 1892), and _L'Italia degli Italiani_, i. 114-125 (Turin,
  1895); Silingardi, "Ciro Menotti," in the _Rivista europea_ (Florence,
  1880); F.A. Gualterio, _Gli ultimi rivolgimenti italiani_ (Florence,
  1850); Bayard de Volo, _Vita di Francesco V_ (4 vols., Modena,
  1878-1885).     (L. V.*)




FRANCIS OF ASSISI, ST. (1181 or 1182-1226), founder of the Franciscans
(q.v.), was born in 1181 or 1182 at Assisi, one of the independent
municipal towns of Umbria. He came from the upper middle class, his
father, named Pietro Bernardone, being one of the larger merchants of
the city. Bernardone's commercial enterprises made him travel abroad,
and it was from the fact that the father was in France at the time of
his son's birth that the latter was called Francesco. His education
appears to have been of the slightest, even for those days. It is
difficult to decide whether words of the early biographers imply that
his youth was not free from irregularities; in any case, he was the
recognized leader of the young men of the town in their revels; he was,
however, always conspicuous for his charity to the poor. When he was
twenty (1201) the neighbouring and rival city of Perugia attempted to
restore by force of arms the nobles who had been expelled from Assisi by
the burghers and the populace, and Francis took part in the battle
fought in the plain that lies between the two cities; the men of Assisi
were defeated and Francis was among the prisoners. He spent a year in
prison at Perugia, and when peace was made at the end of 1202 he
returned to Assisi and recommenced his old life.

Soon a serious and prolonged illness fell upon him, during which he
entered into himself and became dissatisfied with his way of life. On
his recovery he set out on a military expedition, but at the end of the
first day's march he fell ill, and had to stay at Spoleto and return to
Assisi. This disappointment brought on again the spiritual crisis he had
experienced in his illness, and for a considerable time the conflict
went on within him. One day he gave a banquet to his friends, and after
it they sallied forth with torches, singing through the streets, Francis
being crowned with garlands as the king of the revellers; after a time
they missed him, and on retracing their steps they found him in a trance
or reverie, a permanently altered man. He devoted himself to solitude,
prayer and the service of the poor, and before long went on a pilgrimage
to Rome. Finding the usual crowd of beggars before St Peter's, he
exchanged his clothes with one of them, and experienced an overpowering
joy in spending the day begging among the rest. The determining episode
of his life followed soon after his return to Assisi; as he was riding
he met a leper who begged an alms; Francis had always had a special
horror of lepers, and turning his face he rode on; but immediately an
heroic act of self-conquest was wrought in him; returning he alighted,
gave the leper all the money he had about him, and kissed his hand. From
that day he gave himself up to the service of the lepers and the
hospitals. To the confusion of his father and brothers he went about
dressed in rags, so that his old companions pelted him with mud. Things
soon came to a climax with his father: in consequence of his profuse
alms to the poor and to the restoration of the ruined church of St
Damian, his father feared his property would be dissipated, so he took
Francis before the bishop of Assisi to have him legally disinherited;
but without waiting for the documents to be drawn up, Francis cast off
his clothes and gave them back to his father, declaring that now he had
better reason to say "Our Father which art in heaven," and having
received a cloak from the bishop, he went off into the woods of Mount
Subasio singing a French song; some brigands accosted him and he told
them he was the herald of the great king (1206).

The next three years he spent in the neighbourhood of Assisi in abject
poverty and want, ministering to the lepers and the outcasts of society.
It was now that he began to frequent the ruined little chapel of St Mary
of the Angels, known as the Portiuncula, where much of his time was
passed in prayer. One day while Mass was being said therein, the words
of the Gospel came to Francis as a call: "Everywhere on your road preach
and say--The kingdom of God is at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse the lepers, drive out devils. Freely have you received, freely
give. Carry neither gold nor silver nor money in your girdles, nor bag,
nor two coats, nor sandals, nor staff, for the workman is worthy of his
hire" (Matt. x. 7-10). He at once felt that this was his vocation, and
the next day, layman as he was, he went up to Assisi and began to preach
to the poor (1209). Disciples joined him, and when they were twelve in
number Francis said: "Let us go to our Mother, the holy Roman Church,
and tell the pope what the Lord has begun to do through us, and carry it
out with his sanction." They obtained the sanction of Innocent III., and
returning to Assisi they gave themselves up to their life of apostolic
preaching and work among the poor.

The character and development of the order are traced in the article
FRANCISCANS; here the story of Francis's own life and the portrayal of
his personality will be attempted. To delineate in a few words the
character of the Poverello of Assisi is indeed a difficult task. There
is such a many-sided richness, such a tenderness, such a poetry, such an
originality, such a distinction revealed by the innumerable anecdotes in
the memoirs of his disciples, that his personality is brought home to us
as one of the most lovable and one of the strongest of men. It is
probably true to say that no one has ever set himself so seriously to
imitate the life of Christ and to carry out so literally Christ's work
in Christ's own way. This was the secret of his love of poverty as
manifested in the following beautiful prayer which he addressed to our
Lord: "Poverty was in the crib and like a faithful squire she kept
herself armed in the great combat Thou didst wage for our redemption.
During Thy passion she alone did not forsake Thee. Mary Thy Mother
stopped at the foot of the Cross, but poverty mounted it with Thee and
clasped Thee in her embrace unto the end; and when Thou wast dying of
thirst, as a watchful spouse she prepared for Thee the gall. Thou didst
expire in the ardour of her embraces, nor did she leave Thee when dead,
O Lord Jesus, for she allowed not Thy body to rest elsewhere than in a
borrowed grave. O poorest Jesus, the grace I beg of Thee is to bestow on
me the treasure of the highest poverty. Grant that the distinctive mark
of our Order may be never to possess anything as its own under the sun
for the glory of Thy name, and to have no other patrimony than begging"
(in the _Legenda 3 Soc._). This enthusiastic love of poverty is
certainly the keynote of St Francis's spirit; and so one of his
disciples in an allegorical poem (translated into English as _The Lady
of Poverty_ by Montgomery Carmichael, 1901), and Giotto in one of the
frescoes at Assisi, celebrated the "holy nuptials of Francis with Lady
Poverty."

Another striking feature of Francis's character was his constant
joyousness; it was a precept in his rule, and one that he enforced
strictly, that his friars should be always rejoicing in the Lord. He
retained through life his early love of song, and during his last
illness he passed much of his time in singing. His love of nature,
animate and inanimate, was very keen and manifested itself in ways that
appear somewhat naive. His preaching to the birds is a favourite
representation of St Francis in art. All creatures he called his
"brothers" or "sisters"--the chief example is the poem of the "Praises
of the Creatures," wherein "brother Sun," "sister Moon," "brother Wind,"
and "sister Water" are called on to praise God. In his last illness he
was cauterized, and on seeing the burning iron he addressed "brother
Fire," reminding him how he had always loved him and asking him to deal
kindly with him. It would be an anachronism to think of Francis as a
philanthropist or a "social worker" or a revivalist preacher, though he
fulfilled the best functions of all these. Before everything he was an
ascetic and a mystic--an ascetic who, though gentle to others, wore out
his body by self-denial, so much so that when he came to die he begged
pardon of "brother Ass the body" for having unduly ill treated it: a
mystic irradiated with the love of God, endowed in an extraordinary
degree with the spirit of prayer, and pouring forth his heart by the
hour in the tenderest affections to God and our Lord. St Francis was a
deacon but not a priest.

From the return of Francis and his eleven companions from Rome to Assisi
in 1209 or 1210, their work prospered in a wonderful manner. The effect
of their preaching, and their example and their work among the poor,
made itself felt throughout Umbria and brought about a great religious
revival. Great numbers came to join the new order which responded so
admirably to the needs of the time. In 1212 Francis invested St Clara
(q.v.) with the Franciscan habit, and so instituted the "Second Order,"
that of the nuns. As the friars became more and more numerous their
missionary labours extended wider and wider, spreading first over Italy,
and then to other countries. Francis himself set out, probably in 1212,
for the Holy Land to preach the Gospel to the Saracens, but he was
shipwrecked and had to return. A year or two later he went into Spain to
preach to the Moors, but had again to return without accomplishing his
object (1215 probably). After another period of preaching in Italy and
watching over the development of the order, Francis once again set out
for the East (1219). This time he was successful; he made his way to
Egypt, where the crusaders were besieging Damietta, got himself taken
prisoner and was led before the sultan, to whom he openly preached the
Gospel. The sultan sent him back to the Christian camp, and he passed on
to the Holy Land. Here he remained until September 1220. During his
absence were manifested the beginnings of the troubles in the order that
were to attain to such magnitude after his death. The circumstances
under which, at an extraordinary general chapter convoked by him shortly
after his return, he resigned the office of minister-general (September
1220) are explained in the article FRANCISCANS: here, as illustrating
the spirit of the man, it is in place to cite the words in which his
abdication was couched: "Lord, I give Thee back this family which Thou
didst entrust to me. Thou knowest, most sweet Jesus, that I have no more
the power and the qualities to continue to take care of it. I entrust
it, therefore, to the ministers. Let them be responsible before Thee at
the Day of Judgment, if any brother by their negligence, or their bad
example, or by a too severe punishment, shall go astray." These words
seem to contain the mere truth: Francis's peculiar religious genius was
probably not adapted for the government of an enormous society spread
over the world, as the Friars Minor had now become.

The chief works of the next years were the revision and final redaction
of the Rule and the formation or organization of the "Third Order" or
"Brothers and Sisters of Penance," a vast confraternity of lay men and
women who tried to carry out, without withdrawing from the world, the
fundamental principles of Franciscan life (see TERTIARIES).

If for no other reason than the prominent place they hold in art, it
would not be right to pass by the Stigmata without a special mention.
The story is well known; two years before his death Francis went up
Mount Alverno in the Apennines with some of his disciples, and after
forty days of fasting and prayer and contemplation, on the morning of
the 14th of September 1224 (to use Sabatier's words), "he had a vision:
in the warm rays of the rising sun he discerned suddenly a strange
figure. A seraph with wings extended flew towards him from the horizon
and inundated him with pleasure unutterable. At the centre of the vision
appeared a cross, and the seraph was nailed to it. When the vision
disappeared Francis felt sharp pains mingling with the delights of the
first moment. Disturbed to the centre of his being he anxiously sought
the meaning of it all, and then he saw on his body the Stigmata of the
Crucified." The early authorities represent the Stigmata not as bleeding
wounds, the holes as it were of the nails, but as fleshy excrescences
resembling in form and colour the nails, the head on the palm of the
hand, and on the back as it were a nail hammered down. In the first
edition of the _Vie_, Sabatier rejected the Stigmata; but he changed his
mind, and in the later editions he accepts their objective reality as an
historically established fact; in an appendix he collects the evidence:
there exists what is according to all probability an autograph of Br.
Leo, the saint's favourite disciple and companion on Mount Alverno at
the time, which describes the circumstances of the stigmatization; Elias
of Cortona (q.v.), the acting superior, wrote on the day after his death
a circular letter wherein he uses language clearly implying that he had
himself seen the Stigmata, and there is a considerable amount of
contemporary authentic second hand evidence. On the strength of this
body of evidence Sabatier rejects all theories of fraud or
hallucination, whatever may be the explanation of the phenomena.

Francis was so exhausted by the sojourn on Mount Alverno that he had to
be carried back to Assisi. The remaining months of his life were passed
in great bodily weakness and suffering, and he became almost blind.
However, he worked on with his wonted cheerfulness and joyousness. At
last, on the 3rd of October 1226, he died in the Portiuncula at the age
of forty-five. Two years later he was canonized by Gregory IX., whom, as
Cardinal Hugolino of Ostia, he had chosen to be the protector of his
order.

The works of St Francis consist of the Rule (in two redactions), the
Testament, spiritual admonitions, canticles and a few letters. They were
first edited by Wadding in 1623. Two critical editions were published in
1904, one by the Franciscans of Quaracchi near Florence, the other (in a
longer and a shorter form) by Professor H. Boehmer of Bonn. Sabatier and
Goetz (see below) have investigated the authenticity of the several
works; and the four lists, while exhibiting slight variations, are in
substantial accord. Besides the works, properly so called, there is a
considerable amount of traditional matter--anecdotes, sayings,
sermons--preserved in the biographies and in the _Fioretti_;[1] a great
deal of this matter is no doubt substantially authentic, but it is not
possible to subject it to any critical sifting.

  _Note on Sources._--The sources for the life of St Francis and early
  Franciscan history are very numerous, and an immense literature has
  grown up around them. Any attempt to indicate even a selection of this
  literature would here be impossible and also futile; for the discovery
  of new documents has by no means ceased, and the criticism of the
  materials is still in full progress, nor can it be said that final
  results have yet emerged from the discussion. Students will find the
  chief materials in the following collections: _Archiv fuer Litteratur
  und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters_ (ed. by Ehrle and Denifle,
  1885, &c.); publications of the Franciscans of Quaracchi (list to be
  obtained from Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau); and the two series edited
  by Paul Sabatier, _Collection d'etudes et de documents sur l'histoire
  religieuse et litteraire du moyen age_ (5 vols. published up to 1906)
  and _Opuscules de critique historique_ (12 fascicules): the easiest
  and most consecutive way of following the controversy is by the aid of
  the "Bulletin Hagiographique" in _Analecta Bollandiana_. Relatively
  popular accounts of the most important sources are supplied in the
  introductory chapters of Sabatier's _Vie de S. Francois_ and _Speculum
  perfectionis_, and Lempp's _Frere Elie de Cortone_.

  Concerning the life of St Francis and the beginnings of the order, the
  chief documents that come under discussion are: the two _Lives_ by
  Thomas of Celano (1228 and 1248 respectively; Eng. trans. with
  introduction by A.G. Ferrers Howell, 1908), of which the only critical
  edition is that of Friar Ed. d'Alencon (1906); the so-called _Legenda
  trium sociorum_; the _Speculum perfectionis_, discovered by Paul
  Sabatier and edited in 1898 (Eng. trans. by Sebastian Evans, _Mirror
  of Perfection_, 1899). Sabatier's theory as to the nature of these
  documents was, in brief, that the _Speculum perfectionis_ was the
  first of all the Lives of the saint, written in 1227 by Br. Leo, his
  favourite and most intimate disciple, and that the _Legenda 3 Soc._ is
  what it claims to be--the handiwork of Leo and the two other most
  intimate companions of Francis, compiled in 1246; these are the most
  authentic and the only true accounts, Thomas of Celano's Lives being
  written precisely in opposition to them, in the interests of the
  majority of the order that favoured mitigations of the Rule especially
  in regard to poverty. For ten years the domain of Franciscan origins
  was explored and discussed by a number of scholars; and then the whole
  ground was reviewed by Professor W. Goetz of Munich in a study
  entitled _Die Quellen zur Geschichte des hl. Franz von Assisi_ (1904).
  His conclusions are substantially the same as those of Pere van
  Ortroy, the Bollandist, and Friar Lemmens, an Observant Franciscan,
  and are the direct contrary of Sabatier's: the _Legenda 3 Soc._ is a
  forgery; the _Speculum perfectionis_ is a compilation made in the 14th
  century, also in large measure a forgery, but containing an element
  (not to be precisely determined) derived from Br. Leo; on the other
  hand, Thomas of Celano's two Lives are free from the "tendencies"
  ascribed to them by Sabatier, and that of 1248 was written with the
  collaboration of Leo and the other companions; thus the best sources
  of information are those portions of the _Speculum_ that can with
  certainty be carried back to Br. Leo, and the Lives by Thomas of
  Celano, especially the second _Life_. Goetz's criticism of the
  documents is characterized by exceeding carefulness and sobriety. Of
  course he does not suppose that his conclusions are in all respects
  final; but his investigations show that the time has not yet come when
  a biography of St Francis could be produced answering to the demands
  of modern historical criticism. The official life of St Francis is St
  Bonaventura's _Legenda_, published in a convenient form by the
  Franciscans of Quaracchi (1898); Goetz's estimate of it (op. cit.) is
  much more favourable than Sabatier's.

  Paul Sabatier's fascinating and in many ways sympathetic _Vie de S.
  Francois_ (1894; 33rd ed., 1906; Eng. trans, by L.S. Houghton, 1901)
  will probably for a long time to come be accepted by the ordinary
  reader as a substantially correct portrait of St Francis; and yet
  Goetz declares that the most competent and independent critics have
  without any exception pronounced that Sabatier has depicted St Francis
  a great deal too much from the standpoint of modern religiosity, and
  has exaggerated his attitude in face of the church (op. cit. p. 5). In
  articles in the _Hist. Vierteljahrsschrift_ (1902, 1903) Goetz has
  shown that Sabatier's presentation of St Francis's relations with the
  ecclesiastical authority in general, and with Cardinal Hugolino
  (Gregory IX.) in particular, is largely based on misconception; that
  the development of the order was not forced on Francis against his
  will; and that the differences in the order did not during Francis's
  lifetime attain to such a magnitude as to cause him during his last
  years the suffering depicted by Sabatier. This from a Protestant
  historian like Goetz is most valuable criticism. In truth Sabatier's
  St Francis is an anachronism--a man at heart, a modern pietistic
  French Protestant of the most liberal type, with a veneer of 13th
  century Catholicism.

  Of lives of St Francis in English may be mentioned those by Mrs
  Oliphant (2nd ed., 1871) and by Canon Knox Little (1897). For general
  information and references to the literature of the subject, see Otto
  Zoeckler, _Askese und Moenchtum_ (1897), ii. 470-493, and his article in
  Herzog's _Realencyklopaedie_ (ed. 3), "Franz von Assisi" (1899); also
  Max Heimbucher, _Orden und Kongregationen_ (1896), i. Sec. 38. The
  chapter on St Francis in Emile Gebhart's _Italie mystique_ (ed. 3,
  1899) is very remarkable; indeed, though this writer is as little
  ecclesiastically-minded as Sabatier himself, his general picture of
  the state of religion in Italy at the time is far truer; here also
  Sabatier has given way to the usual temptation of biographers to exalt
  their hero by depreciating everybody else.     (E. C. B.)


FOOTNOTE:

  [1] _The Little Flowers of St Francis._




FRANCIS OF MAYRONE [FRANCISCUS DE MAYRONIS] (d. 1325), scholastic
philosopher, was born at Mayrone in Provence. He entered the Franciscan
order and subsequently went to Paris, where he was a pupil of Duns
Scotus. At the Sorbonne he acquired a great reputation for ability in
discussion, and was known as the _Doctor Illuminatus_ and _Magister
Acutus_. He became a professor of philosophy, and took part in the
discussions on the nature of Universals. Following Duns Scotus, he
adopted the Platonic theory of ideas, and denied that Aristotle had made
any contribution to metaphysical speculation. It is a curious commentary
on the theories of Duns Scotus that one pupil, Francis, should have
taken this course, while another pupil, Occam, should have used his
arguments in a diametrically opposite direction and ended in extreme
Nominalism.

  His works were collected and published at Venice in 1520 under the
  title _Praeclarissima ac multum subtilia scripta Illuminati Doctoris
  Francisci de Mayronis, &c._




FRANCIS OF PAOLA (or PAULA), ST, founder of the Minims, a religious
order in the Catholic Church, was born of humble parentage at Paola in
Calabria in 1416, or according to the Bollandists 1438. As a boy he
entered a Franciscan friary, but left it and went to live as a hermit in
a cave on the seashore near Paola. Soon disciples joined him, and with
the bishop's approval he built a church and monastery. At first they
called themselves "Hermits of St Francis"; but the object they proposed
to themselves was to go beyond even the strict Franciscans in fasts and
bodily austerities of all kinds, in poverty and in humility; and
therefore, as the Franciscans were the Minors (_minores_, less), the new
order took the name of Minims (_minimi_, least). By 1474 a number of
houses had been established in southern Italy and Sicily, and the order
was recognized and approved by the pope. In 1482 Louis XI. of France,
being on his deathbed and hearing the reports of the holiness of
Francis, sent to ask him to come and attend him, and at the pope's
command he travelled to Paris. On this occasion Philip de Comines in his
_Memoirs_ says: "I never saw any man living so holily, nor out of whose
mouth the Holy Ghost did more manifestly speak." He remained with Louis
till his death, and Louis' successor, Charles VIII., held him in such
high esteem that he kept him in Paris, and enabled him to found various
houses of his order in France; in Spain and Germany, too, houses were
founded during Francis's lifetime. He never left France, and died in
1507 in the monastery of his order at Plessis-les-Tours.

The Rule was so strict that the popes long hesitated to confirm it in
its entirety; not until 1506 was it finally sanctioned. The most special
feature is an additional vow to keep a perpetual Lent of the strictest
kind, not only flesh meat but fish and all animal products--eggs, milk,
butter, cheese, dripping--being forbidden, so that the diet was confined
to bread, vegetables, fruit and oil, and water was the only drink. Thus
in matter of diet the Minims surpassed in austerity all orders in the
West, and probably all permanently organized orders in the East. The
strongly ascetical spirit of the Minims manifested itself in the title
borne by the superiors of the houses--not abbot (father), or prior, or
guardian, or minister, or rector, but corrector; and the general
superior is the corrector general. Notwithstanding its extreme severity
the order prospered. At the death of the founder it had five
provinces--Italy, France, Tours, Germany, Spain. Later there were as
many as 450 monasteries, and some missions in India. There never was a
Minim house in England or Ireland. It ranks as one of the Mendicant
orders. In 1909 there were some twenty monasteries, mostly in Sicily,
but one in Rome (S. Andrea delle Fratte), and one in Naples, in
Marseilles and in Cracow. There have been Minim nuns (only one convent
has survived, till recently at Marseilles) and Minim Tertiaries, in
imitation of the Franciscan Tertiaries. The habit of the Minims is
black.

  See Helyot, _Hist. des ordres religieux_ (1714), vii. c. 56; Max
  Heimbucher, _Orden und Kongregationen_ (1896), i. Sec. 52; the article
  "Franz von Paula" in Wetzer und Welte, _Kirchenlexicon_ (ed. 2), and
  in Herzog, _Realencyklopaedie_ (ed. 3); Catholic _Dictionary_, art.
  "Minims."     (E. C. B.)




FRANCIS (FRANCOIS) OF SALES, ST (1567-1622), bishop of Geneva and doctor
of the Church (1877), was born at the castle of Sales, near Annecy,
Savoy. His father, also Francois, comte de Sales, but better known as M.
de Boisy, a nobleman and soldier, had been employed in various affairs
of state, but in 1560, at the age of thirty-eight, settled down on his
ancestral estates and married Francoise de Sionnay, a Savoyard like
himself, and an heiress. St Francis, the first child of this union, was
born in August 1567 when his mother was in her fifteenth year. M. de
Boisy was renowned for his experience and sound judgment, and both
parents were distinguished by piety, love of peace, charity to the poor,
qualities which early showed themselves in their eldest son.

He received his education first at La Roche, in the Arve valley, then at
the college of Annecy, founded by Eustace Chappius, ambassador in England
of Charles V., in 1549. At the age of thirteen or fourteen he went to the
Jesuit College of Clermont at Paris, where he stayed till the summer of
1588, and where he laid the foundations of his profound knowledge, while
perfecting himself in the exercises of a young nobleman and practising a
life of exemplary virtue. At this time also he developed an ardent love
of France, a country which was politically in antagonism with his own,
though so closely linked to it geographically, socially and by language.
At the end of 1588 he went to Padua, to take his degree in canon and
civil law, a necessary prelude in Savoy at that time to distinction in a
civil career. His heart, however, especially from the date of his
receiving the tonsure (1578), was already turned towards the Church, and
he gave his attention even more to theology, under the great masters
Antonio Possevino, S.J., and Gesualdo, afterwards general of the Friars
Minor, than to his legal course. "At Padua," he said to a friend, "I
studied law to please my father, and theology to please myself." In that
licentious university Francis found the greatest difficulty in resisting
attacks on his virtue, and once at least had to draw his sword to defend
his personal safety against a band of ruffians. The gentleness for which
he was already renowned was not that of a weak, but of a strong
character. He returned to Savoy in 1592, and, while seeking the occasion
to overcome his father's resistance to his resolution of embracing the
ecclesiastical profession, took the diploma of advocate to the senate.
Meantime, without his knowledge, his friends procured for him the post of
provost of the chapter of Geneva, an honour which reconciled M. de Boisy
to the sacrifice of more ambitious hopes. After a year of zealous work as
preacher and director he was sent by the bishop, Claude de Granier, to
try and win back the province of Chablais, which had embraced Calvinism
when usurped by Bern in 1535, and had retained it even after its
restitution to Savoy in 1564. At first the people refused to listen to
him, for he was represented to them as an instrument of Satan, and all
who had dealings with him were threatened with the vengeance of the
consistory. He therefore wrote out his message on sheets which were
passed from hand to hand, and these, with the spectacle of his virtues
and disinterestedness, soon produced a strong effect. The sheets just
spoken of still exist in the Chigi library at Rome, and were published,
though with many alterations, in 1672, under the title of _Les
Controverses_. This must be considered the first work of St Francis.

The re-erection of a wayside cross in Annemasse, at the gates of Geneva,
amid an enormous concourse of converts, an event which closed the three
years of his apostolate, led to the composition of the _Defense ... de
la Croix_, published in 1600. An illness brought on by toil and
privation forced him to leave his work to others for nearly a year, but
in August 1598 he returned to his field of labour, and in October of
that year practically the whole country was Catholic again. Up to that
time preaching and conference had been the only weapons employed. The
stories of the use of soldiers to produce simulated conversions are
incorrect.[1] Possibly the lamentable events of the campaigns of 1589 in
Gex and Chablais have been applied to the period 1594-1598. In October
of this last year, however, the duke of Savoy, who came then to assist
in person at the great religious feasts which celebrated the return of
the country to unity of faith, expatriated such of the leading men as
obstinately refused even to listen to the Catholic arguments. He also
forbade Calvinist ministers to reside in the Chablais, and substituted
Catholic for Huguenot officials. St Francis concurred in these measures,
and, three years later, even requested that those who, as he said,
"follow their heresy, rather as a party than a religion," should be
ordered either to conform or to leave their country, with leave to sell
their goods. His conduct, judged not by a modern standard, but by the
ideas of his age, will be found compatible with the highest Christian
charity, as that of the duke with sound political prudence. At this time
he was nominated to the pope as coadjutor of Geneva,[2] and after a
visit to Rome he assisted Bishop de Granier in the administration of the
newly converted countries and of the diocese at large.

In 1602 he made his second visit to the French capital, when his
transcendent qualities brought him into the closest relations with the
court of Henry IV., and made him the spiritual father of that circle of
select souls who centred round Madame Acarie. Among the celebrated
personages who became his life friends from this time were Pierre de
Berulle, founder of the French Oratorians, Guillaume Duval, the scholar,
and the duc de Bellegarde, the latter a special favourite of the king,
who begged to be allowed to share the Saint's friendship. At this time
also his gift as a preacher became fully recognized, and de Sanzea,
afterwards bishop of Bethlehem, records that Duval exhorted all his
students of the Sorbonne to listen to him and to imitate this, "the true
and excellent method of preaching." His principles are expressed in the
admirable letter to Andre Fremyot of October 1604.

De Granier died in September 1602, and the new bishop entered on the
administration of his vast diocese, which, as a contemporary says, "he
found brick and left marble." His first efforts were directed to
securing a virtuous and well-instructed clergy, with its consequence of
a people worthy of their pastors. All his time was spent in preaching,
confessing, visiting the sick, relieving the poor. His zeal was not
confined to his diocese. In concert with Jeanne Francoise Fremyot
(1572-1641), widow of the baron de Chantal, whose acquaintance he made
while preaching through Lent at Dijon in 1604, he founded the order of
the Visitation, in favour of "strong souls with weak bodies," as he
said, deterred from entering the orders already existing, by their
inability to undertake severe corporal austerities. The institution
rapidly spread, counting twenty houses before his death and eighty
before that of St Jeanne. The care of his diocese and of his new
foundation were not enough for his ardent charity, and in 1609 he
published his famous _Introduction to a Devout Life_, a work which was
at once translated into the chief European languages and of which he
himself published five editions. In 1616 appeared his _Treatise on the
Love of God_, which teaches that perfection of the spiritual life to
which the former work is meant to be the "Introduction."

The important Lents of 1617 and 1618 at Grenoble were a prelude to a
still more important apostolate in Paris, "the theatre of the world," as
St Vincent de Paul calls it. This third visit to the great city lasted
from the autumn of 1618 to that of 1619; the direct object of it was to
assist in negotiating the marriage of the prince of Piedmont with
Chretienne of France, but nearly all his time was spent in preaching and
works of mercy, spiritual or corporal. He was regarded as a living
saint. St Vincent scarcely left him, and has given the most
extraordinary testimonies (as yet unpublished) of his heroic virtues.
Mere Angelique Arnaud, who at this time put herself under his direction
and wished to join the Order of the Visitation, attracted by its
humility and sweetness, may be named as the most interesting of his
innumerable penitents of this period. He returned to Savoy, and after
three years more of unwearying labour died at Lyons on the 28th of
December 1622. A universal outburst of veneration followed; indeed his
cult had already begun, and after an episcopal inquiry the pontifical
commission in view of his beatification was instituted by decree of the
21st of July 1626, a celerity unique in the annals of the Congregation
of Rites. The depositions of witnesses were returned to Rome in 1632,
but meantime the forms of the Roman chancery had been changed by Urban
VIII., and the advocates could not at once continue their work.
Eventually a new commission was issued in 1656, and on its report, into
which were inserted nineteen of the former depositions, the "servant of
God" was beatified in 1661. The canonization took place in 1665.

  Besides the works which we have named, there were published
  posthumously his _Entretiens_, i.e. a selection of the lectures given
  to the Visitation, reported by the sisters who heard them, some of his
  sermons, a large number of his letters, various short treatises of
  devotion. The first edition of his united or so-called "Complete"
  works was published at Toulouse in 1637. Others followed in 1641,
  1647, 1652, 1663, 1669, 1685. The _Lettres_ and _Opuscules_ were
  republished in 1768.

  The only modern editions of the complete works which it is worth while
  to name are those of Blaise (1821), Vires (1856-1858), Migne (1861),
  and the critical edition published by the Visitation of Annecy, of
  which the 14th volume appeared in 1905.

  The biography of St Francis de Sales was written immediately after his
  death by the celebrated P. de La Riviere and Dom John de St Francois
  (Goulu), as well as by two other authors of less importance. The
  saint's nephew and successor, Charles Auguste de Sales, brought out a
  more extended life, Latin and French, in 1635. The lives of Giarda
  (1650), Maupas du Tour (1657) and Cotolendi (1687) add little to
  Charles Auguste. Marsollier's longer life, in two volumes (1700), is
  quite untrustworthy; still more so that by Loyau d'Amboise (1833),
  which is rather a romance than a biography. The lives by Hamon (1856)
  and Perennes (1860), without adding much to preceding biographies, are
  serious and edifying. A complete life, founded on the lately
  discovered process of 1626 and the new letters, was being prepared by
  the author of the present article at the time of his death. With the
  Lives must be mentioned the _Esprit du B.F. de Sales_ by Camus, bishop
  of Belley, who, amid innumerable errors, gives various interesting
  traits and sayings of his saintly friend. Among the very numerous
  modern studies may be named an essay by Leigh Hunt entitled "The
  Gentleman Saint" (_The Seer_, pt. ii. No. 41); a remarkable _causerie_
  by Sainte-Beuve (_Lundis_, 3rd Jan. 1853); _Le Reveil du sentiment
  religieux en France au XVII^e siecle_, by Strowski (Paris, 1898);
  _Four Essays on S. F. de S._ and _Three Essays on S. F. de S. as
  Preacher_, by Canon H.B. Mackey.     (H. B. M.)


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] This, at least, is the account given by Catholic authorities.
    Less favourable is the view taken by non-Catholic historians, which
    seems in some measure to be confirmed by St Francis himself.
    According to this, Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, who succeeded his
    more tolerant father in 1580, was determined to reduce the Chablais
    to the Catholic religion, by peaceful means if possible, by force if
    necessary. After two years of preaching Francis wrote to the duke
    (_Oeuvres compl._ ii. p. 551): "During 27 months I have scattered the
    seed of the Word of God in this miserable land; shall I say among
    thorns or on stony ground? Certainly, save for the conversion of the
    seigneur d'Avully and the advocate Poncet, I have little to boast
    of." In the winter of 1596-1597 Francis was at Turin, and at his
    suggestion the duke decided on a regular plan for the coercion of the
    refractory Protestants. This plan anticipated that employed later by
    Louis XIV. against the Huguenots in France. The Calvinist ministers
    were expelled; Protestant books were confiscated and destroyed; the
    acts of Protestant lawyers and officials were declared invalid. The
    country was flooded with Jesuits and friars, whose arguments were
    reinforced by quartering troops, veterans of the Indian wars in
    Mexico, on the refractory inhabitants. Those whose stubborn
    persistence in error survived all these inducements to repent were
    sent into exile. See the article "Franz von Sales" by J. Ehni in
    Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopaedie_ (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1899).
         (W. A. P.)

  [2] With the title of Nicopolis _in partibus_.--ED.




FRANCIS, SIR PHILIP (1740-1818), English politician and pamphleteer, the
supposed author of the _Letters of Junius_, and the chief antagonist of
Warren Hastings, was born in Dublin on the 22nd of October 1740. He was
the only son of Dr Philip Francis (c. 1708-1773), a man of some literary
celebrity in his time, known by his translations of Horace, Aeschines
and Demosthenes. He received the rudiments of an excellent education at
a free school in Dublin, and afterwards spent a year or two (1751-1752)
under his father's roof at Skeyton rectory, Norfolk, and elsewhere, and
for a short time he had Gibbon as a fellow-pupil. In March 1753 he
entered St Paul's school, London, where he remained for three years and
a half, becoming a proficient classical scholar. In 1756, immediately on
his leaving school, he was appointed to a junior clerkship in the
secretary of state's office by Henry Fox (afterwards Lord Holland), with
whose family Dr Francis was at that time on intimate terms; and this
post he retained under the succeeding administration. In 1758 he was
employed as secretary to General Bligh in the expedition against
Cherbourg; and in the same capacity he accompanied the earl of Kinnoul
on his special embassy to the court of Portugal in 1760.

In 1761 he became personally known to Pitt, who, recognizing his ability
and discretion, once and again made use of his services as private
amanuensis. In 1762 he was appointed to a principal clerkship in the war
office, where he formed an intimate friendship with Christopher D'Oyly,
the secretary of state's deputy, whose dismissal from office in 1772 was
hotly resented by "Junius"; and in the same year he married Miss
Macrabie, the daughter of a retired London merchant. His official duties
brought him into direct relations with many who were well versed in the
politics of the time. In 1763 the great constitutional questions arising
out of the arrest of Wilkes began to be sharply canvassed. It was
natural that Francis, who from a very early age had been in the habit of
writing occasionally to the newspapers, should be eager to take an
active part in the discussion, though his position as a government
official made it necessary that his intervention should be carefully
disguised. He is known to have written to the _Public Ledger_ and
_Public Advertiser_, as an advocate of the popular cause, on many
occasions about and after the year 1763; he frequently attended debates
in both Houses of Parliament, especially when American questions were
being discussed; and between 1769 and 1771 he is also known to have been
favourable to the scheme for the overthrow of the Grafton government and
afterwards of that of Lord North, and for persuading or forcing Lord
Chatham into power. In January 1769 the first of the _Letters of Junius_
appeared, and the series was continued till January 21, 1772. They had
been preceded by others under various signatures such as, "Candor,"
"Father of Candor," "Anti-Sejanus," "Lucius," "Nemesis," which have all
been attributed, some of them certainly in error, to one and the same
hand. The authorship of the _Letters of Junius_ has been assigned to
Francis on a variety of grounds (see JUNIUS).

In March 1772 Francis finally left the war office, and in July of the
same year he left England for a tour through France, Germany and Italy,
which lasted until the following December. On his return he was
contemplating emigration to New England, when in June 1773 Lord North,
on the recommendation of Lord Barrington, appointed him a member of the
newly constituted supreme council of Bengal at a salary of L10,000 per
annum. Along with his colleagues Monson and Clavering he reached
Calcutta in October 1774, and a long struggle with Warren Hastings, the
governor-general, immediately began. These three, actuated probably by
petty personal motives, combined to form a majority of the council in
harassing opposition to the governor-general's policy; and they even
accused him of corruption, mainly on the evidence of Nuncomar. The death
of Monson in 1776, and of Clavering in the following year, made Hastings
again supreme in the council. But a dispute with Francis, more than
usually embittered, led in August 1780 to a minute being delivered to
the council board by Hastings, in which he stated that "he judged of the
public conduct of Mr Francis by his experience of his private, which he
had found to be void of truth and honour." A duel was the consequence,
in which Francis received a dangerous wound (see HASTINGS, WARREN).
Though his recovery was rapid and complete, he did not choose to prolong
his stay abroad. He arrived in England in October 1781, and was received
with little favour.

Little is known of the nature of his occupations during the next two
years, except that he was untiring in his efforts to procure first the
recall, and afterwards the impeachment of his hitherto triumphant
adversary. In 1783 Fox produced his India Bill, which led to the
overthrow of the coalition government. In 1784 Francis was returned by
the borough of Yarmouth, Isle of Wight; and although he took an
opportunity to disclaim every feeling of personal animosity towards
Hastings, this did not prevent him, on the return of the latter in 1785,
from doing all in his power to bring forward and support the charges
which ultimately led to the impeachment resolutions of 1787. Although
excluded by a majority of the House from the list of the managers of
that impeachment, Francis was none the less its most energetic promoter,
supplying his friends Burke and Sheridan with all the materials for
their eloquent orations and burning invectives. At the general election
of 1790 he was returned member for Bletchingley. He sympathized warmly
and actively with the French revolutionary doctrines, expostulating with
Burke on his vehement denunciation of the same. In 1793 he supported
Grey's motion for a return to the old constitutional system of
representation, and so earned the title to be regarded as one of the
earliest promoters of the cause of parliamentary reform; and he was one
of the founders of the "Society of the Friends of the People." The
acquittal of Hastings in April 1795 disappointed Francis of the
governor-generalship, and in 1798 he had to submit to the additional
mortification of a defeat in the general election. He was once more
successful, however, in 1802, when he sat for Appleby, and it seemed as
if the great ambitions of his life were about to be realized when the
Whig party came into power in 1806. His disappointment was great when
the governor-generalship was, owing to party exigencies, conferred on
Sir Gilbert Elliot (Lord Minto); he declined, it is said, soon
afterwards the government of the Cape, but accepted a K.C.B. Though
re-elected for Appleby in 1806, he failed to secure a seat in the
following year; and the remainder of his life was spent in comparative
privacy.

Among the later productions of his pen were, besides the _Plan of a
Reform in the Election of the House of Commons_, pamphlets entitled
_Proceedings in the House of Commons on the Slave Trade_ (1796),
_Reflections on the Abundance of Paper in Circulation and the Scarcity
of Specie_ (1810), _Historical Questions Exhibited_ (1818), and a
_Letter to Earl Grey on the Policy of Great Britain and the Allies
towards Norway_ (1814). His first wife, by whom he had six children,
died in 1806, and in 1814 he married his second wife, Emma Watkins, who
long survived him, and who left voluminous manuscripts relating to his
biography. Francis died on the 23rd of December 1818. In his domestic
relations he was exemplary, and he lived on terms of mutual affection
with a wide circle of friends. He was, however, full of vindictiveness,
dissimulation and treachery, and there can be little doubt that in his
historic conflict with Warren Hastings unworthy personal motives played
a leading part.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY.--For the evidence identifying Francis with Junius see
  the article Junius, and the authorities there cited. See also _Memoirs
  of Sir Philip Francis, with Correspondence and Journals_, by Joseph
  Parkes and Herman Merivale (2 vols., London, 1867); _The Francis
  Letters_, edited by Beata Francis and Eliza Keary (2 vols., London,
  1901); Sir J.F. Stephen, _The Story of Nuncomar and the Impeachment of
  Sir E. Impey_ (2 vols., London, 1885); Lord Macaulay's _Essay_ on
  "Warren Hastings"; G.B. Malleson, _Life of Warren Hastings_ (London,
  1894); G.W. Forrest, _The Administration of Warren Hastings,
  1772-1785_ (Calcutta, 1892); Sir Leslie Stephen's article on Francis
  in _Dict. of Nat. Biog._ vol. xx.




FRANCIS JOSEPH I. (1830-   ), emperor of Austria, king of Bohemia, and
apostolic king of Hungary, was the eldest son of the archduke Francis
Charles, second son of the reigning emperor Francis I., being born on
the 18th of August 1830. His mother, the archduchess Sophia, was
daughter of Maximilian I., king of Bavaria. She was a woman of great
ability and strong character, and during the years which followed the
death of the emperor Francis was probably the most influential personage
at the Austrian court; for the emperor Ferdinand, who succeeded in 1835,
was physically and mentally incapable of performing the duties of his
office; as he was childless, Francis Joseph was in the direct line of
succession. During the disturbances of 1848, Francis Joseph spent some
time in Italy, where, under Radetzky, at the battle of St Lucia, he had
his first experience of warfare. At the end of that year, after the
rising of Vienna and capture of the city by Windischgraetz, it was
clearly desirable that there should be a more vigorous ruler at the head
of the empire, and Ferdinand, now that the young archduke was of age,
was able to carry out the abdication which he and his wife had long
desired. All the preparations were made with the utmost secrecy; on the
2nd of December 1848, in the archiepiscopal palace at Olmuetz, whither
the court had fled from Vienna, the emperor abdicated. His brother
resigned his rights of succession to his son, and Francis Joseph was
proclaimed emperor. Ferdinand retired to Prague, where he died in 1875.

The history of the Dual Monarchy during his reign is told under the
heading of AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, and here it is only necessary to deal with
its personal aspects. The young emperor was during the first years of
his reign completely in the hands of Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, to
whom, with Windischgraetz and Radetzky, he owed it that Austria had
emerged from the revolution apparently stronger than it had been before.
The first task was to reduce Hungary to obedience, for the Magyars
refused to acknowledge the validity of the abdication in so far as it
concerned Hungary, on the ground that such an act would only be valid
with the consent of the Hungarian parliament. A further motive for their
attitude was that Francis Joseph, unlike his predecessor, had not taken
the oath to observe the Hungarian constitution, which it was the avowed
object of Schwarzenberg to overthrow. In the war which followed the
emperor himself took part, but it was not brought to a successful
conclusion till the help of the Russians had been called in. Hungary,
deprived of her ancient constitution, became an integral part of the
Austrian empire. The new reign began, therefore, under sinister omens,
with the suppression of liberty in Italy, Hungary and Germany. In 1853 a
Hungarian named Lebenyi attempted to assassinate the emperor, and
succeeded in inflicting a serious wound with a knife. With the death of
Schwarzenberg in 1852 the personal government of the emperor really
began, and with it that long series of experiments of which Austria has
been the subject. Generally it may be said that throughout his long
reign Francis Joseph remained the real ruler of his dominions; he not
only kept in his hands the appointment and dismissal of his ministers,
but himself directed their policy, and owing to the great knowledge of
affairs, the unremitting diligence and clearness of apprehension, to
which all who transacted business with him have borne testimony, he was
able to keep a very real control even of the details of government.

The recognition of the separate status of Hungary, and the restoration
of the Magyar constitution in 1866, necessarily made some change in his
position, and so far as concerns Hungary he fully accepted the doctrine
that ministers are responsible to parliament. In the other half of the
monarchy (the so-called Cisleithan) this was not possible, and the
authority and influence of the emperor were even increased by the
contrast with the weaknesses and failures of the parliamentary system.
The most noticeable features in his reign were the repeated and sudden
changes of policy, which, while they arose from the extreme difficulty
of finding any system by which the Habsburg monarchy could be governed,
were due also to the personal idiosyncrasies of the emperor. First we
have the attempt at the autocratic centralization of the whole monarchy
under Bach; the personal influence of the emperor is seen in the
conclusion of the Concordat with Rome, by which in 1855 the work of
Joseph II. was undone and the power of the papacy for a while restored.
The foreign policy of this period brought about the complete isolation
of Austria, and the "ingratitude" towards Russia, as shown during the
period of the Crimean War, which has become proverbial, caused a
permanent estrangement between the two great Eastern empires and the
imperial families. The system led inevitably to bankruptcy and ruin; the
war of 1859, by bringing it to an end, saved the monarchy. After the
first defeat Francis Joseph hastened to Italy; he commanded in person at
Solferino, and by a meeting with Napoleon arranged the terms of the
peace of Villafranca. The next six years, both in home and foreign
policy, were marked by great vacillation. In order to meet the universal
discontent and the financial difficulties constitutional government was
introduced; a parliament was established in which all races of the
empire were represented, and in place of centralized despotism was
established Liberal centralization under Schmerling and the German
Liberals. But the Magyars refused to send representatives to the central
parliament; the Slavs, resenting the Germanizing policy of the
government, withdrew; and the emperor had really withdrawn his
confidence from Schmerling long before the constitution was suspended in
1865 as a first step to a reconciliation with Hungary. In the
complicated German affairs the emperor in vain sought for a minister on
whose knowledge and advice he could depend. He was guided in turn by the
inconsistent advice of Schmerling, Rechberg, Mensdorff, not to mention
more obscure counsellors, and it is not surprising that Austria was
repeatedly outmatched and outwitted by Prussia. In 1863, at the
_Fuerstentag_ in Frankfort, the emperor made an attempt by his personal
influence to solve the German question. He invited all the German
sovereigns to meet him in conference, and laid before them a plan for
the reconstruction of the confederation. The momentary effect was
immense; for some of the halo of the Holy Empire still clung round the
head of the house of Habsburg, and Francis Joseph was welcomed to the
ancient free city with enthusiasm. In spite of this, however, and of the
skill with which he presided over the debates, the conference came to
nothing owing to the refusal of the king of Prussia to attend.

The German question was settled definitively by the battle of Koeniggraetz
in 1866; and the emperor Francis Joseph, with characteristic Habsburg
opportunism, was quick to accommodate himself to the new circumstances.
Above all, he recognized the necessity for reconciling the Magyars to
the monarchy; for it was their discontent that had mainly contributed to
the collapse of the Austrian power. He had already, in 1859, as the
result of a visit to Budapest, made certain modifications in the Bach
system by way of concession to Magyar sentiment, and in 1861 he had had
an interview with Deak, during which, though unconvinced by that
statesman's arguments, he had at least assured himself of his loyalty.
He now made Beust, Bismarck's Saxon antagonist, the head of his
government, as the result of whose negotiations with Deak the
Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 was agreed upon. A law was passed by
the Hungarian diet regularizing the abdication of Ferdinand; at the
beginning of June Francis Joseph signed the inaugural diploma and took
the oath in Magyar to observe the constitution; on the 8th he was
solemnly crowned king of Hungary. The traditional coronation gift of
100,000 florins he assigned to the widows and orphans of those who had
fallen in the war against Austria in 1849.

Once having accepted the principle of constitutional government, the
emperor-king adhered to it loyally, in spite of the discouragement
caused by party struggles embittered by racial antagonisms. If in the
Cisleithan half of the monarchy parliamentary government broke down,
this was through no fault of the emperor, who worked hard to find a
_modus vivendi_ between the factions, and did not shrink from
introducing manhood suffrage in the attempt to establish a stable
parliamentary system. This expedient, indeed, probably also conveyed a
veiled threat to the Magyar chauvinists, who, discontented with the
restrictions placed upon Hungarian independence under the Compromise,
were agitating for the complete separation of Austria and Hungary under
a personal union only; for universal suffrage in Hungary would mean the
subordination of the Magyar minority to the hitherto subject races. For
nearly forty years after the acceptance of the Compromise the attitude
of the emperor-king towards the Magyar constitution had been
scrupulously correct. The agitation for the completely separate
organization of the Hungarian army, and for the substitution of Magyar
for German in words of command in Hungarian regiments, broke down the
patience of the emperor, tenacious of his prerogative as supreme "war
lord" of the common army. A Hungarian deputation which came to Vienna in
September 1905 to urge the Magyar claims was received ungraciously by
the emperor, who did not offer his hand to the members, addressed them
in German, and referred them brusquely to the chancellor, Count
Goluchowski. This incident caused a considerable sensation, and was the
prelude to a long crisis in Hungarian affairs, during which the
emperor-king, while quick to repair the unfortunate impression produced
by his momentary pique, held inflexibly to his resolve in the matter of
the common army.

In his relations with the Slavs the emperor displayed the same
conciliatory disposition as in the case of the Magyars; but though he
more than once held out hopes that he would be crowned at Prague as king
of Bohemia, the project was always abandoned. In this, indeed, as in
other cases, it may be said that the emperor was guided less by any
abstract principles than by a common-sense appreciation of the needs and
possibilities of the moment. Whatever his natural prejudices or natural
resentments, he never allowed these to influence his policy. The German
empire and the Italian kingdom had been built up out of the ruins of
immemorial Habsburg ambitions; yet he refused to be drawn into an
alliance with France in 1869 and 1870, and became the mainstay of the
Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy. His reputation as
a consistent moderating influence in European policy and one of the
chief guarantors of European peace was indeed rudely shaken in October
1908, the year in which he celebrated his sixty years' jubilee as
emperor, by the issue of the imperial recript annexing Bosnia and
Herzegovina to the Habsburg dominions, in violation of the terms of the
treaty of Berlin. But his opportunism was again justified by the result.
Europe lost an ideal; but Austria gained two provinces.

In his private life the emperor was the victim of terrible
catastrophes--his wife, his brother and his only son having been
destroyed by sudden and violent deaths. He married in 1854 Elizabeth,
daughter of Maximilian Joseph, duke of Bavaria, who belonged to the
younger and non-royal branch of the house of Wittelsbach. The empress,
who shared the remarkable beauty common to all her family, took little
part in the public life of Austria. After the first years of married
life she was seldom seen in Vienna, and spent much of her time in
travelling. She built a castle of great beauty and magnificence, called
the Achilleion, in the island of Corfu, where she often o resided. In
1867 she accompanied the emperor to Budapest, and took much interest in
the reconciliation with the Magyars. She became a good Hungarian
scholar, and spent much time in Hungary. An admirable horsewoman, in
later years she repeatedly visited England and Irland for the hunting
season. In 1897 she was assassinated at Geneva by an Italian anarchist;
previous attempts had been made on her and on her husband during a visit
to Trieste.

There was one son of the marriage, the crown prince Rudolph (1857-1889).
A man of much ability and promise, he was a good linguist, and showed
great interest in natural history. He published two works, _Fifteen Days
on the Danube_ and _A Journey in the East_, and also promoted
illustrated work giving a full description of the whole Austro-Hungarian
monarchy; he personally shared the labours of the editorial work. In
1881 he merried Stephanie, daughter of the king of the Belgians. On 30th
January 1889 he commited suicide at Mayerling, a country house near
Vienna. He left one daughter, Elizabeth, who was betrothed to Count
Alfred Windischgraetz in 1901. In 1900 his widow, the crown princess
Stephanie, married Count Lonyay; by this she sacrificed her rank and
position within the Austrian monarchy. Besides the crown prince the
empress gave birth to three daughters, of whom two survive: Gisela (born
1857), who married a son of the prince regent of Bavaria; and Marie
Valerie (born 1868), who married the archduke Franz Salvator of Tuscany.

  See J. Emmer. _Kaisser Franz Joseph_ (2 vols., Vienna, 1898); J.
  Schnitzer, _Franz Joseph I. und seine Zeit_ (2 vols., _ib._, 1899);
  _Viribis unitis. Das Buch vom Kaiser_, with introduction by J.A. v.
  Halfert, ed. M. Herzig (_ib._, 1898); R. Rostok, _Die Regierungszeit
  des K. u. K. Franz Joseph I._ (3rd ed. _ib._, 1903).







End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th
Edition, Volume 10, Slice 8, by Various

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