Part 1208

It is certain, notwithstanding the assertions to the contrary of many historians of Jeanne, that from this date the English were rendered absolutely masters of the bailiwick of Chaumont. The principal fortresses of Bassigny, notably Nogent-le-Roi and Montigny-le-Roi, received garrisons of the enemy. The 'registres du Trésor des Chartes,' preserved in our National Archives, where the acts emanating from the English government [chancellorship] during this period are registered, are full of letters of pardon or of remission granted in the name of Henry V. and Henry VI. to different inhabitants of this bailiwick, and nothing proves better to what degree the authority of the king of England was at that time received and accepted in this region. Some of these letters were given on account of offenses committed in the provostship of Andelot, of which the châtellenie of Vaucouleurs held, as is known. This châtellenie was, in truth, the last fragment of French soil that Charles VII. had kept at the eastern extremity of his kingdom, as he had succeeded in keeping Mont-Saint-Michel at the western extremity. Pressed upon by the Anglo-Burgundians on the south, by the restless and violent Robert of Saarbruck, seigneur of Commercy, on the north, hemmed in, on the east and west, between the possessions of the dukes of Bar and of Lorraine, who were unceasingly at war with their neighbors, this little corner of the earth was a sort of arena where all parties came into collision; and during the four or five years which immediately preceded the first apparition of the archangel Michael to the Maid, toward the middle of 1425, ten or twelve leaders of bands may be counted who emulated each other, as it were, in ravaging it in all directions. During the first half of the 15th century, the men at arms of the marches of Lorraine had the reputation of being, with the Bretons, the greatest pillagers in the world. … We know now in all its details a curious episode which particularly concerns the native village of Jeanne. This episode had remained completely unknown up to the present day, and it was a fortunate accident which, in the beginning of our researches, commenced in 1878, caused us to discover in the National Archives, in the 'registres du Trésor des Chartes,' the document in which the relation of it is found. There is question in this document of a remission of penalty granted by King Charles VII. to a certain Burthélemy de Clefmont for the murder of an Anglo-Burgundian band-leader who had carried away the cattle from two villages of the châtellenie of Vaucouleurs; now, these two villages are precisely Greux and Domremy. … Different circumstances of the narrative, compared with several documents relative to the leader killed by Barthélemy de Clefmont, do not permit us to place the incident at any other date than 1425. … The principal, not to say the only wealth of the inhabitants of Domremy, was the cattle which they pastured in the meadows of the Meuse. The configuration of the soil permits the cultivation only of some fields situated along the border of these meadows, at the foot of the wooded hill against which the village is set; so, the little grain that was harvested there would not have sufficed to feed the population. … We understand then the important injury done to these unfortunate peasants by taking from them at one stroke all the communal flock; they were completely ruined; they were stripped between one day and another of the most precious of their possessions; they were almost condemned to die of poverty with very brief delay. Such a disaster would have cast down a spirit of ordinary temper; it had no other effect than to exalt the profound faith and to awaken the already extraordinary energies of the little Jeannette d'Arc. Endowed, notwithstanding her tender years, with that almost superhuman moral force of which we read that it transports mountains, she called Heaven confidently to the assistance of her people, and our readers already know that Heaven heard her voice. Jeanne de Joinville, lady of Ogéviller, the good châtelaine of Domremy, must have been keenly touched by the unfortunate situation caused to her people, and she had besides the greatest interest in making the brigands in the pay of Henri d'Orly disgorge, in order to assure the payment of her taxes. This is why she complained to her cousin Antoine de Lorraine, count of Vaudemont, who had in his immediate tenure the château of Doulevant, occupied by the chief of these brigands. The count hastened to give satisfaction to the demands of his relative; he sent Barthélemy de Clefmont, one of his men at arms, in pursuit of the marauders. {3755} The expedition was a complete success. Though the cattle had already been taken as far as Dommartin-le-Franc, twenty leagues distant from the shores of the Meuse, they were recovered. Antoine de Lorraine then caused them to be restored to the lady of Ogéviller whose people, those of Greux as well as of Domremy, thus came again into possession of the precious booty which had been stolen from them and which they believed irreparably lost. What a signal favor of Providence, a miracle, these poor people in general and Jeannette d'Arc in particular must have seen in a restitution so unhoped for! In the meantime,—we may reasonably suppose this, if not affirm it with certainty,—the news of a great defeat inflicted on the English before Mont-Saint-Michel, toward the end of June 1425, by sea as well as by land, must have arrived at Domremy. Almost at the same time, that is in the last days of the following August, they learned that these same English had just invaded Barrois and that they had burned dwellings at Revigny as well as in the ban of Chaumont, near Bar-le-Duc. Never had Jeanne felt more sorrowfully 'the pity it was for the kingdom of France,' and never also had she had a more entire faith in God to assure the salvation of her country. The theft, then the restitution of the cattle of Greux and Domremy, the victory won by the defenders of Mont-Saint-Michel, the invasion of Barrois by the English, here are the three principal occurrences which immediately preceded and which explain, at least in a certain degree, the first apparition of the archangel Michael to the little Jeannette d'Arc."

_S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy (translated from the French), chapters 2-3._

FRANCE: A. D. 1582. Footing secured at the mouth of the Senegal.

See (in this Supplement) AFRICA: 1582.

FRANCE: A. D. 1631. First printed newspaper publication.

See PRINTING AND PRESS: A. D. 1631 (page 2594).

FRANCE: A. D. 1648-1715. Relations with Germany and Austria.

See (in this Supplement) GERMANY: A. D. 1648-1715.

FRANCE: A. D. 1682-1693. Contest of the King and the Gallican Church with the Papacy.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1682-1693 (page 2462).

FRANCE: A. D. 1715-1770. The fatal policy in Europe which lost to the French their opportunity for colonial aggrandizement.

"Louis XIV. had made France odious to her neighbors and suspected by all Europe. Those who succeeded him required much prudence and wisdom to diminish the feelings of fear and jealousy which this long reign of wars and conquests had inspired. They were fortunate in that the moderation demanded of them was for France the most skilful and advantageous policy. France kept Alsace, Franche-Comte, Flanders, Roussillon, and beyond this enlarged frontier she was no longer menaced by the same enemies. The treaty of Utrecht had modified the entire balance of power. There is henceforward no house of Austria excepting in Germany. It is too often forgotten, in speaking of this house and its rivalry with that of France, that the most ardent center of hatred was in Spain. It was Spain which cherished that violent rancor which, for lack of words as much as of ideas, is placed to the account of Austria alone. Spain is no longer to be feared; she is weakened, she is becoming dependent. A cadet of France, a Bourbon, reigns at Madrid, and the roles, in that direction, are exchanged. As to Austria even, she has increased undoubtedly: she has taken the Low Countries, Milan, Naples, very soon she adds Sicily to them; but she is scattered. In multiplying her outposts, she presents so many points of aggression to her adversaries. France has the Low Countries under her hand: Savoy threatens Milan: and, in Germany, Prussia, which is growing, groups the opponents of the Empire. France completes her work by the annexation of Lorraine. The house of Lorraine is transported to Tuscany, and by the effect of the same treaty, that of Vienna in 1738, Naples and Sicily pass to the Spaniards. It seems that henceforward France has only to conserve on the continent. She presents to it the most compact power. Her principal enemy in it is greatly reduced. She is surrounded by states, weaker than she, who defer to her and fear her; she can resume that fine role of moderator and guardian of the peace of Europe which Richelieu had prepared for her, and bear elsewhere, into the other hemisphere, the superabundance of her forces and that excess of vigor which in great nations is precisely the condition of health. The future of her grandeur is henceforward in the colonies. There she will encounter England. Upon this new stage their rivalry will be revived, more ardent than in the days of the hundred years war. To maintain this struggle which extends over the entire world, France will not be too strong with all her resources. When she is engaged in Canada and the Indies at the same time, she will not need to carry her armies across the Rhine. Peace on the continent is the condition necessary to the magnificent fortune which awaits her in America and Asia. If she wishes to obtain it she must renounce continental ambitions. She can do it; her defense is formidable. No one about her would dare to fire a gun without her permission. But, alas! she is far removed from this wisdom, and, in attempting to establish colonies, and make changes in the kingdoms of Europe at the same time, she will compromise her power in both worlds at once. The French desire colonial conquests, but they can not abstain from European conquests, and England profits by it. Austria becomes her natural ally against France. These powerful diversions keep the French on the ground. However, they can yet curb Austria; they have Prussia, Savoy, Poland and Turkey if necessary. Diplomacy is sufficient for this game; but this game is not sufficient for the French politicians. The hatred of the house of Austria survives the causes of rivalry. This house seems always 'the monster' of which Balzac speaks. One is not satisfied to have chained it; one can cease only after having annihilated it. 'There is always,' writes Argenson, 'for politicians a fundamental rule of reducing this power to the point where the Emperor will not be a greater landholder than the richest elector.' Charles VI. dies in 1740; he leaves only a daughter; the opportunity seems favorable, and noisily sounding the death-cry (l'hallali) they take the field at the head of all the hunters by inheritance.

See AUSTRIA: A. D.1740, and after (pages 212-220).

{3756}

They go 'to make an emperor, to conquer kingdoms!' The Bavarian whom they crown is a stage emperor, and, as for conquests, they are considered only too fortunate that Maurice of Saxe preserves to France those of Louis XIV. The coalition has no other result than to enlarge Prussia. Meanwhile France is beaten on the sea and abandons solely to the resources of his genius Dupleix, who with a handful of men was founding an empire. There was besides another small matter; after having exposed Canada in order to conquer Silesia for the king of Prussia, it was lost in order to have the pleasure of giving back that province to the queen of Hungary. France had played the game of England in the war of the succession of Austria, she played that of Austria in the seven years war.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1755-1756, and after (pages 1495-1502).

Frederic was the most equivocal of allies. In 1755, he deserted cynically and passed over to the English, who had just recommenced war against France. England having Prussia, it was important in order to maintain the equilibrium, that France have Austria. Maria Theresa offered her alliance and France accepted it. Thus was concluded the famous treaty of May 1, 1756. The object of this alliance was entirely defensive. This is what France did not understand, and she did not cease to be a dupe for having changed partners. Louis XV. made himself the defender of Austria with the same blindness as he had made himself her adversary. The continental war which was only the accessory became the principal. From a ruling power, France fell to the rank of a subordinate. She did not even attain the indirect result to which she sacrificed her most precious interests. Frederic kept Silesia, France lost Canada and abandoned Louisiana; the empire of the Indies passed to the English. Louis XV. had thus directed a policy the sole reason for which was the defeat of England, in such a way as to assure the triumph of that country. 'Above all,' wrote Bernis to Choiseul, then ambassador at Vienna, 'arrange matters in such a way that the king will not remain in servile dependence on his allies. That state would be the worst of all.' It was the state of France during the last years of the reign of Louis XV. The alliance of 1756 which had been at its beginning and under its first form, a skilful expedient, became a political system, and the most disastrous of all. Without gaining anything in territory, France lost her consideration in Europe. She had formerly grouped around her all those who were disturbed by the power of Austria; forced to choose between them and Austria, she allowed the Austrians to do as they chose. To crown the humiliation, immediately after a war in which she had lost everything to serve the hatred of Maria Theresa for Frederic, she saw those unreconcilable Germans draw together without her knowledge, come to an understanding at her expense and, in concert with Russia, divide the spoil of one of the oldest clients of the French monarchy, Poland. There remained to France but one ally, Spain. They were united in 1761 by the Family Pact, the only beneficial work which had been accomplished in these years of disaster. … To the anger of having felt herself made use of during the war, to the rancor of having seen herself duped during the peace, was joined the fear of being despoiled one day by an ally so greedy and so little scrupulous. 'I foresee,' wrote Mably some years later, 'that the Emperor will demand of us again Lorraine, Alsace and everything which may please him.'—'Who can guaranty France, if she should experience a complicated and unfortunate war,' said one of the ministers of Louis XVI., 'that the Emperor would not reclaim Alsace and even other provinces?' It was in this way that the abuse made by Austria of the alliance revived all the traditions of rivalry. Add that Maria Theresa was devout, that she was known to be a friend of the Jesuits, an enemy of the philosophers, and that at the King's court, the favorites were accounted as acquired from Austria: everything thus contributed to render odious to public opinion the alliance which, in itself, already seemed detestable. At the time when they were beginning to style the partisans of new ideas 'patriots,' they were in the habit of confounding all the adversaries of these ideas with the 'Austrian party.' … The marriage of Marie Antoinette with the Dauphin was destined to seal forever the alliance of 1756. The unfortunate princess accumulated on her head the hatreds and prejudices heaped up by three centuries of rivalry and excessively stimulated by the still smarting impression of recent wrongs. Even the cause of her coming to France rendered her suspected by the French; they imputed to her as a crime her attachment to the alliance, which was, notwithstanding, the very reason of her marriage. To understand the prodigious unpopularity which pursued her in France, it is necessary to measure the violence of the passions raised up against her mother and her country; it was summed up, long before the Revolution, in that word which became for Marie Antoinette a decree of forfeiture and of death: the Austrian."

_A. Sorel, L'Europe et la Révolution française (translated from the French), part 1, pages 288-297._

FRANCE: A. D. 1776-1778. Disposition to aid the revolt of the English colonies in America. The American embassy. Dealings of Beaumarchais and Silas Deane.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776-1778 (pages 3241, 3244).

FRANCE: A. D. 1777. The first daily newspaper.

See PRINTING AND PRESS: A. D. 1777 (page 2600).

FRANCE: A. D. 1788-1789. Paris in the Revolution. The part of the Nobodies.

"The history of the revolution can no more be understood without understanding the part played in it by Paris, than one can conceive of the tragedy of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out; and to understand the part played by Paris in the revolution is equally impossible. … Let us commence at the bottom with the nobodies. They are no specialty of Paris. There are many of them in every city, but the larger the city the greater the percentage. Paris, therefore, has the highest. They are isolated particles. In the ushering in of the new era they have no part. The regulations concerning the elections to the States-General contain no provision in regard to them. … It was simply a matter of course, that these nobodies went for nothing in the question at hand. Whether they were likely to continue to be nothing in it, nobody seems to have asked. … The existence of this class was partly due to natural causes, the working of which the wit of man can to a degree mitigate, but never prevent.

{3757}

In the 'ancien régime,' however, the wit of man had altogether been bent upon stimulating it. The privilege-bane had also been extended over the domain of labor. When, in 1776, Turgot broke down the guilds, the Parliament of Paris strenuously opposed the government, declaring: all Frenchmen are divided into established corporations, forming one continuous chain from the throne down to the lowest handicraft, indispensable to the existence of the state, and not to be abolished, lest the whole social order break asunder. That was but too true. Since the days of Henry III. (1574-1589) the forcing of all industrial pursuits into the strait-jacket of guildships had been carried to the extreme of utter absurdity. Here, too, the chronic financial distress had been the principal cause. At first the handicrafts, which everybody had been at liberty to practice, were withdrawn from free competition and sold as a privilege, and then, when nothing was left to be sold, the old guilds were split up into a number of guildlets, merely to have again something to put on the counter. And it was not only left pretty much to the masters whom they would admit to the freedom of the guild, but besides the charges for it were so high that it was often absolutely out of the reach even of the most skillful journeyman. Even a blood-aristocracy was not lacking. In a number of guilds only the sons of masters and the second husbands of masters' widows could become masters. Thus an immense proletariat was gradually formed, which to a great extent was a proletariat only because the law irresistibly forced it into this position. And the city proletariat proper received constant and ever-increasing additions from the country. There such distress prevailed, that the paupers flocked in crowds to the cities. … In 1791, long before the inauguration of the Reign of Terror, there were in a population of 650,000, 118,000 paupers (indigents). Under the 'ancien régime' the immigrant proletariat from the country was by the law barred out from all ways of earning a livelihood except as common day-laborers, and the wages of these were in 1788, on an average, 26 cents for men and 15 for women, while the price of bread was higher than in our times. What a gigantic heap of ferment!"

_H. von Holst, The French Revolution, lecture 2._

FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1792. Effects of the Revolution in Germany.

See (in this Supplement) GERMANY: A. D. 1789-1792.

FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1794. Myths of the Revolution.

"The rapid growth and the considerable number of these myths are one of the most curious features of the Revolution, while their persistent vitality is a standing warning for historical students. I claim to show that Cazotte's vision was invented by Laharpe, that Sombreuil's daughter did not purchase his liberty by quaffing blood, that the locksmith Gamain was not poisoned, that Labussière did not save hundreds of prisoners by destroying the documents incriminating them, that the Girondins had no last supper, that some famous ejaculations have been fabricated or distorted, that no attempt was made to save the last batch of victims, that the boys Barra and Viala were not heroes, that no leather was made of human skins, that no Englishmen plied the September assassins with drink, that the 'Vengeur' crew did not perish rather than surrender, that the ice-bound Dutch fleet was not captured, that Robespierre's wound was not the work of Merda, but was self-inflicted, and that Thomas Paine had no miraculous escape."

_J. G. Alger, Glimpses of the French Revolution, preface._

FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1796. The Assignats of the Revolution.

See MONEY AND BANKING: A. D. 1789-1796 (page 2212).

FRANCE: A. D. 1796-1807. Napoleon and Germany.

See (in this Supplement) GERMANY: A. D. 1796-1807.

FRANCE: A. D. 1855-1895. Acquisitions in Africa.

(See in this Supplement) AFRICA: 1855, 1864, 1876-1880, and after.

FRANCE: A. D. 1858-1886. Conquest of Tonkin and Cochin China.

See TONKIN (page 3114).

FRANCE: A. D. 1871-1892. Advance in the policy of Protection.

See TARIFF LEGISLATION: A. D. 1871-1892 (page 3082).

FRANCE: A. D. 1894-1895. Assassination of President Carnot. Election and resignation of M. Casimir-Périer. Election of M. Faure to the Presidency.