NEW SCHOOL OF HISTORY IN FRANCE. 385 



rich in events highly interesting, not only to the people of France, 

 hut also to the English and Flemish, more especially as, in fact, the 

 history of the Dukes of Burgundy, during the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries, is equally that of the three nations just mentioned. The 

 two former were, during this period, constantly at strife and waging 

 deadly warfare for the superiority ; while the Flemings, on their side, 

 defended their liberties with all the fury of despair. The struggle 

 between the two first was long and terrible ; the struggles of the 

 latter, though of shorter duration, are considered as some of the most 

 bloody and disastrous recorded in the history of the world. It was 

 the period also when that liberty, which now illumines us with its ex- 

 pansive light like a mighty conflagration, was first dawning on the 

 world, the epoch of transition from the middle ages to modern 

 times ; and on these accounts the study of its events is of the highest 

 importance to the present age, as it is the only key by which the his- 

 tory of later times can be made intelligible. How painfully interest- 

 ing, even to us living four or five centuries afterwards, are the trans- 

 actions of this characteristic age the age of chivalry and at the same 

 time of discomfort, of vice, and of crime ; an age that we have been 

 accustomed to hear called the golden age, in the absence of those 

 documents and historic realities which disclose to us a lamentable de- 

 pravation of morals in all the conditions of life, and in the higher 

 ranks an assemblage of oppressive and ferocious tyrants extorting all 

 by sword and fire, freely spilling the blood of the feeble and un- 

 armed, and disdaining, with indomitable pride, to employ the mass 

 of the people in the ranks of their armies; a refusal which occasioned 

 those frightful disasters which once nearly destroyed France, and 

 were only repaired by the admission of the people to the privilege 

 of bearing arms in the wars.* 



From this period the trustworthy chronicles begin to be more plen- 

 tiful, written in the language then commonly spoken in the south 

 of France {at one derived from and taking the place of the Latin), 

 and they are infinitely more interesting to us than the Latin chroni- 

 cles of the middle ages, inasmuch as they exhibit a faithful picture 

 of the characteristic traits of the manners and customs belonging to 

 those times ; indeed it would be difficult to find any documents more 

 interesting and more graphic than the simple and naive annals of the 

 chroniclers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whose recitals 

 reveal to us an infinite variety of things at once curious and highly 

 important. These chronicles, however, are voluminous, and quite 

 out of the reach of ordinary readers ; indeed, they are only to be 

 found in the collections of the curious and in the public libraries. 

 We are happy to say that M. de Barante, without sacrificing his cha- 

 racter for originality, generally follows the guidance of Froissart 

 and others of these ingenious writers of the earliest historic period. 



If the history of France has not been hitherto sufficiently popular, 

 the cause of this unpopularity is to be sought not in the matter ; the 



* The disasters of the French in the wars in which the English reaped so much glory 

 on the fields of Crefi, Poictiers, and Azincourt ,were attributable to the want of a body 

 of native archers. A body of French bowmen was first established by Charles VII. 

 who finally expelled the English from France. 



