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HISTORY OF FRANCE

By M. Guizot

Volume 1 (of 6)

Contents:

EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO THE

PUBLISHERS.

A POPULAR HISTORY OF FRANCE

CHAPTER I. GAUL.

CHAPTER II. THE GAULS OUT OF GAUL.

CHAPTER III. THE ROMANS IN GAUL.

CHAPTER IV. GAUL CONQUERED BY JULIUS CAESAR.

CHAPTER V. GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION.

CHAPTER VI. ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY IN GAUL.

CHAPTER VII. THE GERMANS IN GAUL.—THE FRANKS AND CLOVIS.

CHAPTER VIII. THE MEROVINGIANS.

CHAPTER IX. THE MAYORS OF THE PALACE. THE PEPINS.

CHAPTER X. CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS WARS.

CHAPTER XI. CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER XII. DECAY AND FALL OF THE CARLOVINGIANS.

CHAPTER XIII. FEUDAL FRANCE AND HUGH CAPET.

CHAPTER XIV. THE CAPETIANS TO THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES.

CHAPTER XV. CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BY THE NORMANS.

CHAPTER XVI. THE CRUSADES, THEIR ORIGIN AND THEIR SUCCESS.

Click on Map to Enlarge

List of Illustrations:

Ideal Landscape of Ancient Gaul——13

Gyptis Presenting the Goblet to Euxenes——17

A Tribe of Gauls on an Expedition——27

The Gauls in Rome——39

The Women Defending the Cars——58

The Roman Army Invading Gaul——61

Mounted Gauls——66

Vercingetorix Surrenders to Caesar——81

Gaul Subjugated by the Romans——83

From La Croix Rousse——86

Eponina and Sabinus Hidden in a Vault——97

Druids Offering Human Sacrifices——111

The Huns at the Battle of Chalons——135

"Thus Didst Thou to the Vase of Soissons."——139

Battle of Tolbiacum——144

The Sluggard King Journeying——156

"Thrust Him Away, Or Thou Diest in his Stead."——160

The Execution of Brunehaut——175

The Battle of Tours——193

"The Arabs Had Decamped Silently in the Night."——195

Charlemagne at the Head of his Army——212

Charlemagne Inflicting Baptism Upon the Saxons——215

The Submission of Wittikind——218

Death of Roland at Roncesvalles——227

Charlemagne and the General Assembly——239

Charlemagne Presiding at the School of The Palace——246

He Remained There a Long While, and his Eyes Were Filled With Tears.——

255

Paris Besieged by the Normans——259

The Barks of the Northmen Before Paris——260

Count Eudes Re-entering Paris Right Through the Besiegers- —-262

Ditcar the Monk Recognizing The Head of Morvan——273

Hugh Capet Elected King——300

"Who Made Thee King?"——302

Gerbert, Afterwards Pope Sylvester Ii——304

Notre Dame——310

Knights and Peasants——312

Robert Had a Kindly Feeling for the Weak and Poor——313

"The Accolade."——324

Normans Landing on English Coast——353

William the Conqueror Reviewing his Army——357

Edith Discovers the Body of Harold——360

"God Willeth It!"——383

The Four Leaders of the First Crusade——385

The Assault on St. Jean D'acre——386

EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO THE PUBLISHERS.

Every history, and especially that of France, is one vast, long drama, in which

events are linked together according to defined laws, and in which the actors play

parts not ready made and learned by heart, parts depending, in fact, not only upon the

accidents of their birth, but also upon their own ideas and their own will. There are, in

the history of peoples, two sets of causes essentially different, and, at the same time,

closely connected; the natural causes which are set over the general course of events,

and the unrestricted causes which are incidental. Men do not make the whole of

history it has laws of higher origin; but, in history, men are unrestricted agents who

produce for it results and exercise over it an influence for which they are responsible.

The fated causes and the unrestricted causes, the defined laws of events and the

spontaneous actions of man's free agency—herein is the whole of history. And in the

faithful reproduction of these two elements consist the truth and the moral of stories

from it.

Never was I more struck with this two-fold character of history than in my tales to

my grandchildren. When I commenced with them, they, beforehand, evinced a lively

interest, and they began to listen to me with serious good will; but when they did not

well apprehend the lengthening chain of events, or when historical personages did not

become, in their eyes, creatures real and free, worthy of sympathy or reprobation,

when the drama was not developed before them with clearness and animation, I saw

their attention grow fitful and flagging; they required light and life together; they

wished to be illumined and excited, instructed and amused.

At the same time that the difficulty of satisfying this two-fold desire was painfully

felt by me, I discovered therein more means and chances than I had at first foreseen of

succeeding in making my young audience comprehend the history of France in its

complication and its grandeur. When Corneille observed,—

"In the well-born soul Valor ne'er lingers till due seasons roll,"—

he spoke as truly for intelligence as for valor. When once awakened and really

attentive, young minds are more earnest and more capable of complete comprehension

than any one would suppose. In order to explain fully to my grandchildren the

connection of events and the influence of historical personages, I was sometimes led

into very comprehensive considerations and into pretty deep studies of character. And

in such cases I was nearly always not only perfectly understood but keenly

appreciated. I put it to the proof in the sketch of Charlemagne's reign and character;

and the two great objects of that great man, who succeeded in one and failed in the

other, received from my youthful audience the most riveted attention and the most

clear comprehension. Youthful minds have greater grasp than one is disposed to give

them credit for, and, perhaps, men would do well to be as earnest in their lives as

children are in their studies.

In order to attain the end I had set before me, I always took care to connect my

stories or my reflections with the great events or the great personages of history.

When we wish to examine and describe a district scientifically, we traverse it in all its

divisions and in every direction; we visit plains as well as mountains, villages as well

as cities, the most obscure corners as well as the most famous spots; this is the way of

proceeding with the geologist, the botanist, the archeologist, the statistician, the

scholar. But when we wish particularly to get an idea of the chief features of a

country, its fixed outlines, its general conformation, its special aspects, its great roads,

we mount the heights; we place ourselves at points whence we can best take in the

totality and the physiognomy of the landscape. And so we must proceed in history

when we wish neither to reduce it to the skeleton of an abridgment nor extend it to the

huge dimensions of a learned work. Great events and great men are the fixed points

and the peaks of history; and it is thence that we can observe it in its totality, and

follow it along its highways. In my tales to my grandchildren I sometimes lingered

over some particular anecdote which gave me an opportunity of setting in a vivid light

the dominant spirit of an age or the characteristic manners of a people; but, with rare

exceptions, it is always on the great deeds and the great personages of history that I

have relied for making of them in my tales what they were in reality—the centre and

the focus of the life of France.

GUIZOT.

VAL-RICHER,

December, 1869.

A POPULAR HISTORY OF FRANCE

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.

CHAPTER I.

GAUL.

The Frenchman of to-day inhabits a country, long ago civilized and Christianized,

where, despite of much imperfection and much social misery, thirty-eight millions of

men live in security and peace, under laws equal for all and efficiently upheld. There

is every reason to nourish great hopes of such a country, and to wish for it more and

more of freedom, glory, and prosperity; but one must be just towards one's own times,

and estimate at their true value advantages already acquired and progress already

accomplished. If one were suddenly carried twenty or thirty centuries backward, into

the midst of that which was then called Gaul, one would not recognize France. The

same mountains reared their heads; the same plains stretched far and wide; the same

rivers rolled on their course. There is no alteration in the physical formation of the

country; but its aspect was very different. Instead of the fields all trim with cultivation,

and all covered with various produce, one would see inaccessible morasses and vast

forests, as yet uncleared, given up to the chances of primitive vegetation, peopled with

wolves and bears, and even the urns, or huge wild ox, and with elks, too—a kind of

beast that one finds no longer nowadays, save in the colder regions of north-eastern

Europe, such as Lithuania and Courland. Then wandered over the champaign great

herds of swine, as fierce almost as wolves, tamed only so far as to know the sound of

their keeper's horn. The better sort of fruits and of vegetables were quite unknown;

they were imported into Gaul—the greatest part from Asia, a portion from Africa and

the islands of the Mediterranean; and others, at a later period, from the New World.

Cold and rough was the prevailing temperature. Nearly every winter the rivers froze

sufficiently hard for the passage of cars. And three or four centuries before the

Christian era, on that vast territory comprised between the ocean, the Pyrenees, the

Mediterranean, the Alps, and the Rhine, lived six or seven millions of men a bestial

life, enclosed in dwellings dark and low, the best of them built of wood and clay,

covered with branches or straw, made in a single round piece, open to daylight by the

door alone, and confusedly heaped together behind a rampart, not inartistically

composed of timber, earth, and stone, which surrounded and protected what they were

pleased to call a town.