1055 



FRANCE. 



FRANCE. 



1086 



long preparing, took place. The population of France, previously to 

 the first revolution, was politically divided into three classes called 

 e"tats, or states the clergy, the nobility, and the commons, or tiers 

 <!tat. The clergy, as a political body, was divided into the old French 

 clergy and the foreign clergy, that is, those belonging to the provinces 

 which had been united with France since the reign of Henry II. 



The nobility of France was exceedingly numerous ; for not only all 

 the children of a noble belonged to the class of their father, but that 

 class was continually increased by the creation of new nobles. There 

 were about 4000 offices or places in the country which conferred 

 nobility. The nobility possessed great privileges. The third class of 

 the inhabitants of France comprehended the whole population except 

 the nobility and clergy, and constituted somewhat more than f parts 

 of the whole. The tiers <5tat were crushed by the burden of a most 

 injudicious taxation, the weight of which pressed almost exclusively 

 on them. This was rendered still more intolerable by the oppression 

 of the landowners or their agents, and by the grossest abuses of the 

 manorial jurisdiction. A consequence of all this was the greatest 

 misery among the people, and a deeply-rooted hatred towards the 

 higher classes, which manifested itself in the terrible acts of revenge 

 and bloodshed which accompanied the revolution in France. 



The revenue was derived from direct and indirect taxation. The 

 direct taxation consisted : 1st, of a land-tax called taille, levied only 

 on the lands belonging to the non-privileged classes ; 2nd, the capi- 

 tation, to which al! classes were equally subject; 3rd, a property tax, 

 principally assessed on lands. These taxes were in many respects 

 very oppressive; but the indirect taxes were still more so. They 

 1st, of customs, levied not only on goods imported from 



abroad, but on those which passed from one part of France to another ; 

 2nd, of the monopoly of snuff and tobacco; nd 3rd, the monopoly of 

 salt. This last was a complete fiscal tyranny, both in its nature and 

 in its mode of collection. The oppression caused by this system of 

 taxation was increased by the custom of farming out the indirect 

 taxes, and by injudicious corn-laws. (Young's * Travels in France,' 

 ' Police of Corn,' L 488, 2nd ed.) 



The revenue extorted from the people by this system of taxation 

 was squandered in the most profligate manner. Louis XIV. and 

 Louis XV. shamelessly paid their courtezans and favourites out of 

 the public purse. Louis XVI., on whom the storms of popular 

 indignation subsequently fell, was far less obnoxious to these charges 

 than his predecessors. 



The royal power, which had long been limited by the feudal 

 institutions, gradually became absolute. The meeting of the states- 

 general (<!tats gdne'raux) had been discontinued since 1614. Some 

 provinces, as Artois, Bretagne, Languedoc, &c., had their provincial 

 Htates, which were composed of the deputies of the nobility, clergy, 

 aud tiers dtat ; all their powers however consisted in making the 

 assessment of the taxes in order to raise the quota of the general 

 revenue which was required of these provinces. The municipal insti- 

 tutions, which were flourishing in France during the middle ages, 

 were almost entirely abolished, and the offices of towns were generally 

 either hereditary or acquired by purchase. The offices of state and 

 the courts of justice were all so regulated as to give the people as 

 little voice as possible in the national affairs. This caused a fierce 

 though repressed indignation, which showed itself with terrible effect 

 before the close of the 18th century. 



After the decapitation of Louis XVI. in 1793 the state was declared 

 a republic ; after a time Napoleon Bonaparte became its first consul, 

 and then its emperor, until 1815, when, on his final overthrow, the 

 Bourbon dynasty was again restored. In 1830 another revolution 

 took place, by which Charles X. was dethroned and Louis Philippe 

 substituted. In 1848 another revolution displaced him, and again a 

 republic was declared, of which, after a time, Louis Napoleon, 

 the nephew of the first Napoleon, was elected president. In 

 December 1852 Louis Napoleon was elected by universal suffrage 

 emperor, with nearly despotic powers, aud has assumed the title of 

 the Emperor Napoleon III., recognising the title of the son of 

 Napoleon I. by the daughter of the emperor of Austria, in whose 

 favour he had abdicated in 1815, though the act was never acknow- 

 ledged cither by the nation or the allied sovereigns. 



French I/inguage. The dominion established in Gaul by the Romans 

 ultimately destroyed the ancient languages of the country. It is also 

 probable that the Greek colony of Massilia (Marseille), established 

 about six centuries before our era, had diffused in some parts of 

 southern France the use of the Greek tongue. No monuments of 

 the poetry of the Celts of Gaul have reached us, although we may 

 conjecture that they had one similar to that of the Scottish Gaels. 

 Under the Roman dominion Latin became the general language of 

 the country, which produced many writers in that tongue, such as 

 Ausonius, Hidonius Appollinaris, Salvianus, Sulpicius Severus, &c. 



The invasion and settlement of Germanic nations in Gaul produced 

 a corruption of the Latin by the admixture of foreign idioms. The 

 influence of the Visigoths, who established themselves in the southern 

 pi-nvinces, was however, in respect to language, not considerable, and 

 their northern idiom was soon absorbed by the Latin. Yet this Latin, 

 which, except among the educated, had probably never been spoken 

 with great purity by the population of Gaul, became still more cor- 

 I by the admixture of a foreign race, and degenerated into a 



peculiar idiom called the Romanzo, or Lingua Romana Rustica. This 

 idiom became not only the language of France, but of many other 

 parts of southern Europe, where the barbarians of the north estab- 

 lished their dominion on the ruins of the Roman empire. 



The conquest of Gaul by the Franks hastened the corruption of 

 the Latin tongue. The conquerors however seem for a long time to 

 have preserved their native tongue ; as the council of Tours, held in 

 813, recommends the bishops to translate their homilies into two 

 languages, the Roman and the Theotisk, or German. The samo 

 injunction was repented at the council of Aries in 851. 



It appears that the separation of the German from the Roman 

 language dates from the division of Charlemagne's empire among the 

 sons of Louis le Ddbonuaire, when the German part of it became 

 separated from France. The most ancient monument of the French 

 Romanzo is the oath of Louis the Germanic, son of Louis le De'bon- 

 naire, on the occasion of a treaty with his brother Charles the Bald 

 of France, concluded at Strasbourg iu 847. The German monarch took 

 the oath in Roman, and the French iu Teutonic. 



The Romanzo of France had a variety of idioms, according to the 

 provinces where the influence of the invaders was more or less exer- 

 cised. These were however but shades, and the language of France 

 in general could be divided into two principal idioms, separated by 

 the Loire. These were called respectively from their affirmatives, the 

 southern the Langue d'Oc, and the northern the Langue d'Oil, or d'Oui. 



The Langue d'Oc, or as it was frequently called the Occitanian 

 language, is better known under the appellation of the Provencal, as 

 the rulers of Provence united at the beginning of the 12th century 

 under their dominion the greatest part of southern France. 



The Provencal language was rather formed by a modification of 

 Latin words, than by the admixture of foreign words and idioms. 

 Many favourable circumstances united with the beautiful climate of 

 those countries to promote the early development of a poetical litera- 

 ture in the Occitanian language. The poetry of Provence was not 

 like the northern, of a melancholy and meditative character, but 

 rather of a sprightly and animated tone ; aud it bore the appropriate 

 name of the merry science (Gaya Ciencia). It was cultivated by 

 the Troubadours, who spread its glory over all Europe. The dialect 

 of northern France, or the Langue d'Oui, although formed like 

 the Laugue d'Oc from the Latin, had a greater admixture of the 

 Germanic element. It underwent still greater changes, owing to the 

 establishment of the Normans in France at the beginning of the 10th 

 century. The first authors who wrote in the Langue d'Oui were 

 descendants of Normans, who introduced the romance of chivalry. 

 This kind of composition was originally a versified chronicle, which 

 though often founded on facts was disfigured by the most extravagant 

 fictions. Robert Wace, an Englishman educated iu Normiindie, who 

 lived at the court of Eleanor of Aquitain, mother of Richard Cccur de 

 Lion, wrote the ' Brut d' Angleterre ' about the middle of the 1 2th 

 century. He is also the author of the celebrated 'Roman do 

 Rou." Many other romances were written about that time. Their 

 principal theme was King Arthur, aud his Knights of the Round 

 Table. The exploits of Charlemagne aud the crusades are also the 

 subject of many romances ; and some of them are founded on ancient 

 history, for instance the romance of 'Troy,' written about 1170, by 

 Benoit St. More ; aud the celebrated romance of ' Alexander,' written 

 in the beginning of the 13th century, which is the origin of the 

 Alexandrine verses of twelve syllables which are still used by modern 

 French writers. (' Corps d'Extraits de Romans de la Chevalerie,' 

 par Tressan ; Dunlop, ' History of Fiction;' and Huet, 'De 1'Origina 

 des Romans.') 



The poets who wrote in the Langue d'Oui were called 'Trouveres,' 

 and like their namesakes of Provence, the Troubadours, reckoned 

 among their body several persons of -high rank, such as Thiebaut, 

 count of Champagne, and king of Navarre (1201-53), who imitated 

 with great success the poets of Provence. His poems were published 

 in 1742 at Paris, under the title ' Poesies du Roi de Navarre,' 2nd 

 edit. 182*. Another kind of poetry which belongs to this period is 

 the Fabliaux, or tales, which are partly of oriental origin, aud were 

 imported by the crusaders into Europe. They are generally written 

 in verse, and sometimes alternately iu verse aud prose. They often 

 contain a great deal of wit aud fun, but are also frequently disrigured 

 by a coarse licentiousness. The poets of other countries have bor- 

 rowed from them, and Boccaccio has largely drawn from this source. 

 A fine edition of the Fabliaux, printed from the manuscripts of the 

 Royal Library, was published by Barbazau in 1756, 3 vols. ; and a 

 new edition of the same collection iu 4 vols., by Meon, 1808, and in 

 2 vols. 1823. The most entertaining of these Fabliaux were trans- 

 lated into modern French by Legrand d'Aussy, and published iu 

 1779 under the title of 'Fabliaux, ou Coutes du 12me et 13me 

 Siccles'; a new edition by Raynouard appeared in 1829. 



The persecution of the Albigenses, whose tenets were embraced by 

 many of the Troubadours, plunged the south of France during tho 

 13th century into an abyss of misery, aud destroyed the literature of 

 Provence. The -Troubadours, who had spread the glory of the 

 language of Provence disappeared for ever, and the language itself 

 sunk to the coudition of a patois, or country dialect. Divided into 

 many dialects, it is still spoken over all the south of France, and is 

 the idiom of a p;\rt of eastern Spain, extending from Figueras to 



