History of France

A free download from http://www.dertz.in


History of France

The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of France, by Charlotte M.
Yonge This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: History of France
Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
Editor: J.R. Green
Release Date: December 12, 2005 [EBook #17287]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY
OF FRANCE ***

Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Taavi Kalju and the Online
Distributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net.

History Primers. Edited by J.R. GREEN.

HISTORY OF FRANCE.
BY
CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.
NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1, 3, AND 5 BOND
STREET. 1882.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
THE EARLIER KINGS OF FRANCE 1
CHAPTER II.
THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 25
CHAPTER III.
THE STRUGGLE WITH BURGUNDY 43
CHAPTER IV.
THE ITALIAN WARS 52
CHAPTER V.
THE WARS OF RELIGION 63
CHAPTER VI.

POWER OF THE CROWN 81
CHAPTER VII.
THE REVOLUTION 102
CHAPTER VIII.
FRANCE SINCE THE REVOLUTION 116

[Illustration: MAP OF FRANCE.
_Shewing the Provinces._]
[Illustration: MAP OF FRANCE.
_Shewing the Departments._]

FRANCE.
CHAPTER I.
THE EARLIER KINGS OF FRANCE.
1. France.--The country we now know as France is the tract of land shut
in by the British Channel, the Bay of Biscay, the Pyrenees, the
Mediterranean, and the Alps. But this country only gained the name of
France by degrees. In the earliest days of which we have any account, it
was peopled by the Celts, and it was known to the Romans as part of a
larger country which bore the name of Gaul. After all of it, save the
north-western moorlands, or what we now call Brittany, had been
conquered and settled by the Romans, it was overrun by tribes of the
great Teutonic race, the same family to which Englishmen belong. Of
these tribes, the Goths settled in the provinces to the south; the
Burgundians, in the east, around the Jura; while the Franks, coming

over the rivers in its unprotected north-eastern corner, and making
themselves masters of a far wider territory, broke up into two
kingdoms--that of the Eastern Franks in what is now Germany, and that
of the Western Franks reaching from the Rhine to the Atlantic. These
Franks subdued all the other Teutonic conquerors of Gaul, while they
adopted the religion, the language, and some of the civilization of the
Romanized Gauls who became their subjects. Under the second
Frankish dynasty, the Empire was renewed in the West, where it had
been for a time put an end to by these Teutonic invasions, and the then
Frankish king, Charles the Great, took his place as Emperor at its head.
But in the time of his grandsons the various kingdoms and nations of
which the Empire was composed, fell apart again under different
descendants of his. One of these, Charles the Bald, was made King of
the Western Franks in what was termed the Neustrian, or "not eastern,"
kingdom, from which the present France has sprung. This kingdom in
name covered all the country west of the Upper Meuse, but practically
the Neustrian king had little power south of the Loire; and the Celts of
Brittany were never included in it.
2. The House of Paris.--The great danger which this Neustrian kingdom
had to meet came from the Northmen, or as they were called in
England the Danes. These ravaged in Neustria as they ravaged in
England; and a large part of the northern coast, including the mouth of
the Seine, was given by Charles the Bald to Rolf or Rollo, one of their
leaders, whose land became known as the Northman's land, or
Normandy. What most checked the ravages of these pirates was the
resistance of Paris, a town which commanded the road along the river
Seine; and it was in defending the city of Paris from the Northmen, that
a warrior named Robert the Strong gained the trust and affection of the
inhabitants of the Neustrian kingdom. He and his family became
Counts (_i.e._, judges and protectors) of Paris, and Dukes (or leaders)
of the Franks. Three generations of them were really great men--Robert
the Strong, Odo, and Hugh the White; and when the descendants of
Charles the Great had died out, a Duke of the Franks, Hugh Capet, was
in 987 crowned King of the Franks. All the after kings of France down
to Louis Philippe were descendants of Hugh Capet. By this change,
however, he gained little in real power; for, though he claimed to rule

over the whole country of the Neustrian