FRANCE 



3297 



FRANCE 



heard voices telling her how to 

 save her country from the English, 

 and restore her king to his throne. 

 She gained access to the author- 

 ities, and informed them that she 

 would lead the army, raise the 

 siege of Orleans, and have the 

 king crowned in Reims. What she 

 promised to do she accomplished. 



The king was crowned, but when 

 she would have pressed on to 

 Paris the king's counsellors said 

 that compromise was now the best 

 hope for France. The generals were 

 jealous of Jeanne's influence over 

 the soldiers. Time was wasted and 

 intrigues became more complicated, 

 until certain French troops, acting 

 in collusion with the English, 

 captured Jeanne and shamefully 

 sold her to be put to death. The 

 English had counted upon this as 

 likely to benefit them, but from 

 that moment they fared worse and 

 worse. Even the king played a 

 man's part under the guidance of 

 more honourable counsellors. Bur- 

 gundy, which had been divided 

 from royal France for many years, 

 and had sided with England 

 became reconciled. The French, 

 united at last, drove their enemies 

 off all their territory, except Calais, 

 which remained English for two 

 centuries longer. 



After the Hundred Years' War 



The condition of France at the 

 end of the Hundred Years' War 

 was pitiful. The land had been 

 ravaged by successive invasions 

 and by civil war. The nation, worn 

 out by suffering, had no energy 

 left to resist the increase of the 

 powers of the monarchy, and so 

 another step was taken towards the 

 Revolution. For, while the mon- 

 archy under Louis XI did much to 

 unite the French people, yet it set 

 obstacles in the way of their gov- 

 erning themselves, and made the 

 government autocratic. 



Under Louis XI the claim of 

 Burgundy to be a separate state 

 was finally defeated. Nicknamed 

 the " universal spider," he stands 

 out in history as a type of cunning, 

 cruel despotism. But he left his 

 country well on the way to become 

 the great power which it was under 

 Louis XIV. More was done to 

 build up royal authority by Francis 

 I. Francis involved the country in 

 wars provoked largely by his am- 

 bition and intrigues. Soon there 

 was to be another cause for war, 

 this time civil war, accompanied 

 by assassination and massacre. 



The Reformation began in Ger- 

 many, and its echoes were heard in 

 all lands. At first the demand for 

 the purging of the Church from 

 scandals was made in France, 

 purely in the interest of religion. 

 As time went on, social and eco- 



nomic grievances were added to 

 those against the Church, and so 

 the Reformers or Protestants be- 

 came in France, as in England, a 

 political party. Known as the 

 Huguenots, their leaders were men 

 of high position, such as the prince 

 of Conde and Admiral Coligny. On 

 the other side were the Guises, un- 

 principled and self-seeking, and 

 Catherine de' Medici, an Italian 

 princess with a passion for power 

 and a genius f orunscrupulous diplo- 

 macy, who was now queen-mother, 

 ruling in the name of her son. The 

 struggle was really one for the con- 

 trol of the government. Religious 

 toleration had little to do with it. 

 At one moment liberty of con- 

 science and worship was conceded, 

 but soon after that came the ap- 

 palling crime of the massacre of 

 S. Bartholomew's Day, 1572. 

 Henry of Navarre 



At last an end was put to the 

 savage religious wars by Henry IV, 

 king of Navarre, a Bourbon. He 

 was a good soldier and an honest 

 man, who sincerely desired his 

 country's advantage. A Protes- 

 tant, he saw that the feeling of the 

 people favoured the old Church, so 

 he decided to become a Catholic for 

 the sake of peace. " Paris," he 

 said, with jovial cynicism, " is well 

 worth a Mass." So he went to 

 Mass, but, at the same time, he 

 made an agreement called the 

 Edict of Nantes, which gave the 

 Protestants full freedom to follow 

 and teach their faith, to have 

 their ministers paid out of state 

 funds, and to be admitted to all 

 employments equally with Catho- 

 lics. Henry and his minister, Sully, 

 tried to restore prosperity to a land 

 terribly damaged by discord and 

 dishonest governors. But all that 

 they did was on the old unsatis- 

 factory lines. All power was kept 

 in the king's hands. Such re- 

 presentative bodies as did exist 

 were weakened and confused. The 

 iniquity of throwing the burden 

 of taxation upon working folk, 

 and letting off the nobility and the 

 official class, was not altered. 



After Henry IV died another 

 Italian princess became ruler of 

 the unhappy kingdom. This was 

 Marie de' Medici, the king's second 

 wife, who became regent during 

 the youth of her son. Her chief 

 adviser was the cardinal de Riche- 

 lieu, who continued to be the 

 minister of Louis XIII until his 

 death in 1642. His methods were 

 disastrous for the people of France. 

 His aim was to make the king's 

 authority supreme, and he be- 

 lieved he could best accomplish 

 this by safeguarding the privi- 

 leges of the noble and wealthy. He 

 was a man of narrow vision, but he 



perfected the autocratic system 

 which Louis XIV inherited and 

 used according to the motto 

 UEtat, c'est moi. It was Richelieu 

 who made the Revolution inevit- 

 able. He was followed by another 

 cardinal, Mazarin the Sicilian. The 

 widow of Louis XIII, appointed 

 regent for her son, Louis XIV, was 

 the mistress of the cardinal, and 

 made him the ruling power. So 

 hardly did he drive the people 

 that he provoked rebellion. 

 The Glory of Louis XIV 



For four years the wars of the 

 Fronde devastated the country, 

 and sowed bitter seeds of hatred 

 among the population. Their only 

 result was that when Louis XIV 

 took upon himself the ruling power 

 he inherited a method of govern- 

 ment which was fated to bring 

 about its own downfall. This 

 king, whose reign, beginning no- 

 minally in 1643 (actually about 16 

 years later), lasted until 1715, has 

 been made to stand out as a com- 

 manding figure in history, and, 

 much as historians have exag- 

 gerated his force of intellect and 

 personality, it is impossible not j 

 to recognize in him a man who 

 would have made a name for him- 

 self, no matter what his birth. 



Brought up to believe that he was 

 different from all other children, 

 flattered as he grew by those who 

 persuaded him that he was the 

 representative of God upon earth, 

 he lost all sense of reality. He held 

 it to be indisputable that he was 

 infinitely wiser than his subjects, 

 that it was his right to give them 

 laws and their duty to obey. He 

 spent incredible sums upon the 

 palace of Versailles, where he kept 

 up a state never dreamed of by 

 earlier kings. A whole literature 

 of gossip and fiction has grown 

 up round the court of the Grand 

 Monarch. It was an age of splen- 

 dour on the surface and of misery 

 and corruption beneath. While the 

 formalities of Racine and the 

 satirical comedies of Moliere were 

 delighting the well-to-do, while 

 preachers like Bossuet were draw- 

 ing crowded congregations, while 

 architecture was raising monu- 

 ments which are still marvelled at, 

 and triumphs of engineering, both 

 civil and military, were being won, 

 the mass of the French people were 

 struggling under the burden of 

 taxation, were being swept off by 

 epidemics due to unhealthy con- 

 ditions, were the prey of tyranny 

 in its most odious forms. 



The aims of Louis were to make 

 himself greater both at home and 

 abroad. For these ends he waged 

 war, maintained spies, and put the 

 royal intendants in a position to 

 dragoon the nation. He renewed 



1Q 4 



