## The Project Gutenberg eBook of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "French Literature" to "Frost, William"

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Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "French Literature" to "Frost, William"

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "FRENCH LITERATURE" TO "FROST, WILLIAM" ***

Transcriber’s note: | A few typographical errors have been corrected. They appear in the text like this, and the explanation will appear when the mouse pointer is moved over the marked passage. Sections in Greek will yield a transliteration when the pointer is moved over them, and words using diacritic characters in the Latin Extended Additional block, which may not display in some fonts or browsers, will display an unaccented version. Links to other EB articles: Links to articles residing in other EB volumes will be made available when the respective volumes are introduced online.

## THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

## A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

### ELEVENTH EDITION

### VOLUME XI SLICE II
French Literature to Frost, William

Articles in This Slice

FRENCH LITERATURE | FRIEDRICHSHAFEN
FRENCH POLISH | FRIEDRICHSRUH
FRENCH REVOLUTION, THE | FRIENDLY SOCIETIES
FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS | FRIENDS, SOCIETY OF
FRENCH WEST AFRICA | FRIES, ELIAS MAGNUS
FRENTANI | FRIES, JAKOB FRIEDRICH
FREPPEL, CHARLES ÉMILE | FRIES, JOHN
FRERE, SIR HENRY BARTLE EDWARD | FRIESLAND
FRERE, JOHN HOOKHAM | FRIEZE
FRÈRE, PIERRE ÉDOUARD | FRIGATE
FRÈRE-ORBAN, HUBERT JOSEPH WALTHER | FRIGATE-BIRD
FRÉRET, NICOLAS | FRIGG
FRÉRON, ÉLIE CATHERINE | FRIGIDARIUM
FRÉRON, LOUIS MARIE STANISLAS | FRIIS, JOHAN
FRESCO | FRIMLEY
FRESCOBALDI, GIROLAMO | FRIMONT, JOHANN MARIA PHILIPP
FRESENIUS, KARL REMIGIUS | FRISCHES HAFF
FRESHWATER | FRISCHLIN, PHILIPP NIKODEMUS
FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN JEAN | FRISI, PAOLO
FRESNILLO | FRISIAN ISLANDS
FRESNO | FRISIANS
FRESNOY, CHARLES ALPHONSE DU | FRITH, JOHN
FRET | FRITH, WILLIAM POWELL
FREUDENSTADT | FRITILLARY
FREUND, WILHELM | FRITZLAR
FREWEN, ACCEPTED | FRIULI
FREY | FROBEN, JOANNES
FREYBURG | FROBISHER, SIR MARTIN
FREYCINET, CHARLES LOUIS DE SAULCES DE | FROCK
FREYCINET, LOUIS CLAUDE DESAULSES DE | FROEBEL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM AUGUST
FREYIA | FROG
FREYTAG, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH | FROG-BIT
FREYTAG, GUSTAV | FROGMORE
FRIAR | FRÖHLICH, ABRAHAM EMANUEL
FRIBOURG (Swiss Canton) | FROHSCHAMMER, JAKOB
FRIBOURG (Swiss town) | FROISSART, JEAN
FRICTION | FROME
FRIDAY | FROMENTIN, EUGÈNE
FRIEDBERG | FROMMEL, GASTON
FRIEDEL, CHARLES | FRONDE, THE
FRIEDLAND (town of Austria) | FRONTENAC ET PALLUAU, LOUIS DE BUADE
FRIEDLAND (towns in Germany) | FRONTINUS, SEXTUS JULIUS
FRIEDLAND (town of Prussia) | FRONTISPIECE
FRIEDMANN, MEIR | FRONTO, MARCUS CORNELIUS
FRIEDRICH, JOHANN | FROSINONE
FRIEDRICHRODA | FROSSARD, CHARLES AUGUSTE
FRIEDRICHSDORF | FROST, WILLIAM EDWARD

110

FRENCH LITERATURE. Origins.—The history of French literature in the proper sense of the term can hardly be said to extend farther back than the 11th century. The actual manuscripts which we possess are seldom of older date than the century subsequent to this. But there is no doubt that by the end at least of the 11th century the French language, as a completely organized medium of literary expression, was in full, varied and constant use. For many centuries previous to this, literature had been composed in France, or by natives of that country, using the term France in its full modern acceptation; but until the 9th century, if not later, the written language of France, so far as we know, was Latin; and despite the practice of not a few literary historians, it does not seem reasonable to notice Latin writings in a history of French literature. Such a history properly busies itself only with the monuments of French itself from the time when the so-called Lingua Romana Rustica 111 assumed a sufficiently independent form to deserve to be called a new language. This time it is indeed impossible exactly to determine, and the period at which literary compositions, as distinguished from mere conversation, began to employ the new tongue is entirely unknown. As early as the 7th century the Lingua Romana, as distinguished from Latin and from Teutonic dialects, is mentioned, and this Lingua Romana would be of necessity used for purposes of clerical admonition, especially in the country districts, though we need not suppose that such addresses had a very literary character. On the other hand, the mention, at early dates, of certain cantilenae or songs composed in the vulgar language has served for basis to a superstructure of much ingenious argument with regard to the highly interesting problem of the origin of the Chansons de Geste, the earliest and one of the greatest literary developments of northern French. It is sufficient in this article, where speculation would be out of place, to mention that only two such cantilenae actually exist, and that neither is French. One of the 9th century, the “Lay of Saucourt,” is in a Teutonic dialect; the other, the “Song of St Faron,” is of the 7th century, but exists only in Latin prose, the construction and style of which present traces of translation Early monuments. from a poetical and vernacular original. As far as facts go, the most ancient monuments of the written French language consist of a few documents of very various character, ranging in date from the 9th to the 11th century. The oldest gives us the oaths interchanged at Strassburg in 842 between Charles the Bald and Louis the German. The next probably in date and the first in literary merit is a short song celebrating the martyrdom of St Eulalia, which may be as old as the end of the 9th century, and is certainly not younger than the beginning of the 10th. Another, the Life of St Leger, in 240 octosyllabic lines, is dated by conjecture about 975. The discussion indeed of these short and fragmentary pieces is of more philological than literary interest, and belongs rather to the head of French language. They are, however, evidence of the progress which, continuing for at least four centuries, built up a literary instrument out of the decomposed and reconstructed Latin of the Roman conquerors, blended with a certain limited amount of contributions from the Celtic and Iberian dialects of the original inhabitants, the Teutonic speech of the Franks, and the Oriental tongue of the Moors who pressed upwards from Spain. But all these foreign elements bear a very small proportion to the element of Latin; and as Latin furnished the greater part of the vocabulary and the grammar, so did it also furnish the principal models and helps to literary composition. The earliest French versification is evidently inherited from that of the Latin hymns of the church, and for a certain time Latin originals were followed in the choice of literary forms. But by the 11th century it is tolerably certain that dramatic attempts were already being made in the vernacular, that lyric poetry was largely cultivated, that laws, charters, and such-like documents were written, and that commentators and translators busied themselves with religious subjects and texts. The most important of the extant documents, outside of the epics presently to be noticed, has of Epic poetry. late been held to be the Life of Saint Alexis, a poem of 625 decasyllabic lines, arranged in five-line stanzas, each of one assonance or vowel-rhyme, which may be as early as 1050. But the most important development of the 11th century, and the one of which we are most certain, is that of which we have evidence remaining in the famous Chanson de Roland, discovered in a manuscript at Oxford and first published in 1837. This poem represents the first and greatest development of French literature, the chansons de geste (this form is now preferred to that with the plural gestes). The origin of these poems has been hotly debated, and it is only recently that the importance which they really possess has been accorded to them,—a fact the less remarkable in that, until about 1820, the epics of ancient France were unknown, or known only through late and disfigured prose versions. Whether they originated in the north or the south is a question on which there have been more than one or two revolutions of opinion, and will probably be others still, but which need not be dealt with here. We possess in round numbers a hundred of these chansons. Three only of them are in Provençal. Two of these, Ferabras and Betonnet d’Hanstonne, are obviously adaptations of French originals. The third, Girartz de Rossilho (Gerard de Roussillon), is undoubtedly Provençal, and is a work of great merit and originality, but its dialect is strongly tinged with the characteristics of the Langue d’Oïl, and its author seems to have been a native of the debatable land between the two districts. To suppose under these circumstances that the Provençal originals of the hundred others have perished seems gratuitous. It is sufficient to say that the chanson de geste, as it is now extant, is the almost exclusive property of northern France. Nor is there much authority for a supposition that the early French poets merely versified with amplifications the stories of chroniclers. On the contrary, chroniclers draw largely from the chansons, and the question of priority between Roland and the pseudo-Turpin, though a hard one to determine, seems to resolve itself in favour of the former. At most we may suppose, with much probability, that personal and family tradition gave a nucleus for at least the earliest.

Chansons de Geste.—Early French narrative poetry was divided by one of its own writers, Jean Bodel, under three heads—poems relating to French history, poems relating to ancient history, and poems of the Arthurian cycle Chansons de Geste. (Matières de France, de Bretagne, et de Rome). To the first only is the term chansons de geste in strictness applicable. The definition of it goes partly by form and partly by matter. A chanson de geste must be written in verses either of ten or twelve syllables, the former being the earlier. These verses have a regular caesura, which, like the end of a line, carries with it the licence of a mute e. The lines are arranged, not in couplets or in stanzas of equal length, but in laisses or tirades, consisting of any number of lines from half a dozen to some hundreds. These are, in the earlier examples assonanced,—that is to say, the vowel sound of the last syllables is identical, but the consonants need not agree. Thus, for instance, the final words of a tirade of Amis et Amiles (Il. 199-206) are erbe, nouvelle, selles, nouvelles, traversent, arrestent, guerre, cortége. Sometimes the tirade is completed by a shorter line, and the later chansons are regularly rhymed. As to the subject, a chanson de geste must be concerned with some event which is, or is supposed to be, historical and French. The tendency of the trouvères was constantly to affiliate their heroes on a particular geste or family. The three chief gestes are those of Charlemagne himself, of Doon de Mayence, and of Garin de Monglane; but there are not a few chansons, notably those concerning the Lorrainers, and the remarkable series sometimes called the Chevalier au Cygne, and dealing with the crusades, which lie outside these groups. By this joint definition of form and subject the chansons de geste are separated from the romances of antiquity, from the romances of the Round Table, which are written in octosyllabic couplets, and from the romans d’aventures or later fictitious tales, some of which, such as Brun de la Montaigne, are written in pure chanson form.

Not the least remarkable point about the chansons de geste is their vast extent. Their number, according to the strictest definition, exceeds 100, and the length of each chanson varies from 1000 lines, or thereabouts, to 20,000 or Volume and changes of early epics. even 30,000. The entire mass, including, it may be supposed, the various versions and extensions of each chanson, is said to amount to between two and three million lines; and when, under the second empire, the publication of the whole Carolingian cycle was projected, it was estimated, taking the earliest versions alone, at over 300,000. The successive developments of the chansons de geste may be illustrated by the fortunes of Huon de Bordeaux, one of the most lively, varied and romantic of the older epics, and one which is interesting from the use made of it by Shakespeare, Wieland and Weber. In the oldest form now extant, though even this is probably not the original, Huon consists of over 10,000 lines. A subsequent version contains 4000 more; and lastly, in the 14th century, a later poet has amplified the legend to the extent of 30,000 lines. 112 When this point had been reached, Huon began to be turned into prose, was with many of his fellows published and republished during the 15th and subsequent centuries, and retains, in the form of a roughly printed chap-book, the favour of the country districts of France to the present day. It is not, however, in the later versions that the special characteristics of the chansons de geste are to be looked for. Of those which we possess, one and one only, the Chanson de Roland, belongs in its present form to the 11th century. Their date of production extends, speaking roughly, from the 11th to the 14th century, their palmy days were the 11th and the 12th. After this latter period the Arthurian romances, with more complex attractions, became their rivals, and induced their authors to make great changes in their style and subject. But for a time they reigned supreme, and no better instance of their popularity can be given than the fact that manuscripts of them exist, not merely in every French dialect, but in many cases in a strange macaronic jargon of mingled French and Italian. Two classes of persons were concerned in them. There was the trouvère who composed them, and the jongleur who carried them about in manuscript or in his memory from castle to castle and sang them, intermixing frequent appeals to his auditory for silence, declarations of the novelty and the strict copyright character of the chanson, revilings of rival minstrels, and frequently requests for money in plain words. Not a few of the manuscripts which we now possess appear to have been actually used by the jongleur. But the names of the authors, the trouvères who actually composed them, are in very few cases known, those of copyists, continuators, and mere possessors of manuscripts having been often mistaken for them.

The moral and poetical peculiarities of the older and more authentic of these chansons are strongly marked, though perhaps not quite so strongly as some of their encomiasts have contended, and as may appear to a reader of the most famous of them, the Chanson de Roland, alone. In that poem, indeed, war and religion are the sole motives employed, and its motto might be two lines from another of the finest chansons (Aliscans, 161-162):—

“Dist à Bertran: ‘N’avons mais nul losir, Tant ke vivons alons paiens ferir.’”

In Roland there is no love-making whatever, and the hero’s betrothed “la belle Aude” appears only in a casual gibe of her brother Oliver, and in the incident of her sudden death at the news of Roland’s fall. M. Léon Gautier and others have drawn the conclusion that this stern and masculine character was a feature of all the older chansons, and that imitation of the Arthurian romance is the cause of its disappearance. This seems rather a hasty inference. In Amis et Amiles, admittedly a poem of old date, the parts of Bellicent and Lubias are prominent, and the former is demonstrative enough. In Aliscans the part of the Countess Guibourc is both prominent and heroic, and is seconded by that of Queen Blancheflor and her daughter Aelis. We might also mention Oriabel in Jourdans de Blaivies and others. But it may be admitted that the sex which fights and counsels plays the principal part, that love adventures are not introduced at any great length, and that the lady usually spares her knight the trouble and possible indignities of a long wooing. The characters of a chanson of the older style are somewhat uniform. There is the hero who is unjustly suspected of guilt or sore beset by Saracens, the heroine who falls in love with him, the traitor who accuses him or delays help, who is almost always of the lineage of Ganelon, and whose ways form a very curious study. There are friendly paladins and subordinate traitors; there is Charlemagne (who bears throughout the marks of the epic king common to Arthur and Agamemnon, but is not in the earlier chanson the incapable and venal dotard which he becomes in the later), and with Charlemagne generally the duke Naimes of Bavaria, the one figure who is invariably wise, brave, loyal and generous. In a few chansons there is to be added to these a very interesting class of personages who, though of low birth or condition, yet rescue the high-born knights from their enemies. Such are Rainoart in Aliscans, Gautier in Gaydon, Robastre in Gaufrey, Varocher in Macaire. These subjects, uniform rather than monotonous, are handled with great uniformity if not monotony of style. There are constant repetitions, and it sometimes seems, and may sometimes be the case, that the text is a mere cento of different and repeated versions. But the verse is generally harmonious and often stately. The recurrent assonances of the endless tirade soon impress the ear with a grateful music, and occasionally, and far more frequently than might be thought, passages of high poetry, such as the magnificent Granz doel por la mort de Rollant, appear to diversify the course of the story. The most remarkable of the chansons are Roland, Aliscans, Gerard de Roussillon, Amis et Amiles, Raoul de Cambrai, Garin le Loherain and its sequel Les quatre Fils Aymon, Les Saisnes (recounting the war of Charlemagne with Witekind), and lastly, Le Chevalier au Cygne, which is not a single poem but a series, dealing with the earlier crusades. The most remarkable group is that centring round William of Orange, the historical or half-historical defender of the south of France against Mahommedan invasion. Almost all the chansons of this group, from the long-known Aliscans to the recently printed Chançon de Willame, are distinguished by an unwonted personality of interest, as well as by an intensified dose of the rugged and martial poetry which pervades the whole class. It is noteworthy that one chanson and one only, Floovant, deals with Merovingian times. But the chronology, geography, and historic facts of nearly all are, it is hardly necessary to say, mainly arbitrary.

Arthurian Romances.—The second class of early French epics consists of the Arthurian cycle, the Matière de Bretagne, the earliest known compositions of which are at least a century junior to the earliest chanson de geste, but which soon succeeded the chansons in popular favour, and obtained a vogue both wider and far more enduring. It is not easy to conceive a greater contrast in form, style, subject and sentiment than is presented by the two classes. In both the religious sentiment is prominent, but the religion of the chansons is of the simplest, not to say of the most savage character. To pray to God and to kill his enemies constitutes the whole duty of man. In the romances the mystical element becomes on the contrary prominent, and furnishes, in the Holy Grail, one of the most important features. In the Carlovingian knight the courtesy and clemency which we have learnt to associate with chivalry are almost entirely absent. The gentix ber contradicts, jeers at, and execrates his sovereign and his fellows with the utmost freedom. He thinks nothing of striking his cortoise moullier so that the blood runs down her cler vis. If a servant or even an equal offends him, he will throw the offender into the fire, knock his brains out, or set his whiskers ablaze. The Arthurian knight is far more of the modern model in these respects. But his chief difference from his predecessor is undoubtedly in his amorous devotion to his beloved, who, if not morally superior to Bellicent, Floripas, Esclairmonde, and the other Carlovingian heroines, is somewhat less forward. Even in minute details the difference is strongly marked. The romances are in octosyllabic couplets or in prose, and their language is different from that of the chansons, and contains much fewer of the usual epic repetitions and stock phrases. A voluminous controversy has been held respecting the origin of these differences, and of the story or stories which were destined to receive such remarkable attention. Reference must be made to the article Arthurian Legend for the history of this controversy and for an account of its present state. This state, however, and all subsequent states, are likely to be rather dependent upon opinion than upon actual knowledge. From the point of view of the general historian of literature it may not be improper here to give a caution against the frequent use of the word “proven” in such matters. Very little in regard to early literature, except the literary value of the texts, is ever susceptible of proof; although things may be made more or less probable. What we are at present concerned with, however, is a body of verse and prose composed in the latter part of the 12th century and later. The earliest romances, the Saint Graal, the Quête du Saint Graal, Joseph d’Arimathie and Merlin bear the names of Walter Map and Robert de Borron. Artus and part at least of Lancelot du Lac (the whole of which has been by turns attributed and denied to 113 Walter Map) appear to be due to unknown authors. Tristan came later, and has a stronger mixture of Celtic tradition. At the same time as Walter Map, or a little later, Chrétien (or Chrestien) de Troyes threw the legends of the Round Table into octosyllabic verse of a singularly spirited and picturesque character. The chief poems attributed to him are the Chevalier au Lyon (Sir Ewain of Wales), the Chevalier à la Charette (one of the episodes of Lancelot), Eric et Enide, Tristan and Percivale. These poems, independently of their merit, which is great, had an extensive literary influence. They were translated by the German minnesingers, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strassburg, and others. With the romances already referred to, which are mostly in prose, and which by recent authorities have been put later than the verse tales which used to be postponed to them, Chrétien’s poems complete the early forms of the Arthurian story, and supply the matter of it as it is best known to English readers in Malory’s book. Nor does that book, though far later than the original forms, convey a very false impression of the characteristics of the older romances. Indeed, the Arthurian knight, his character and adventures, are so much better known than the heroes of the Carlovingian chanson that there is less need to dwell upon them. They had, however, as has been already pointed out, great influence upon their rivals, and their comparative fertility of invention, the much larger number of their dramatis personae, and the greater variety of interests to which they appealed, sufficiently explain their increased popularity. The ordinary attractions of poetry are also more largely present in them than in the chansons; there is more description, more life, and less of the mere chronicle. They have been accused of relaxing morality, and there is perhaps some truth in the charge. But the change is after all one rather of manners than of morals, and what is lost in simplicity is gained in refinement. Doon de Mayence is a late chanson, and Lancelot du Lac is an early romance. But the two beautiful scenes, in the former between Doon and Nicolette, in the latter between Lancelot, Galahault, Guinevere, and the Lady of Malehaut, may be compared as instances of the attitude of the two classes of poets towards the same subject.

Romances of Antiquity.—There is yet a third class of early narrative poems, differing from the two former in subject, but agreeing, sometimes with one sometimes with the other in form. These are the classical romances—the Matière de Rome—which are not much later than those of Charlemagne and Arthur. The chief subjects with which their authors busied themselves were the conquests of Alexander and the siege of Troy, though other classical stories come in. The most remarkable of all is the romance of Alixandre by Lambert the Short and Alexander of Bernay. It has been said that the excellence of the twelve-syllabled verse used in this romance was the origin of the term alexandrine. The Trojan romances, on the other hand, are chiefly in octosyllabic verse, and the principal poem which treats of them is the Roman de Troie of Benoit de Sainte More. Both this poem and Alixandre are attributed to the last quarter of the 12th century. The authorities consulted for these poems were, as may be supposed, none of the best. Dares Phrygius, Dictys Cretensis, the pseudo-Callisthenes supplied most of them. But the inexhaustible invention of the trouvères themselves was the chief authority consulted. The adventures of Medea, the wanderings of Alexander, the Trojan horse, the story of Thebes, were quite sufficient to spur on to exertion the minds which had been accustomed to spin a chanson of some 10,000 lines out of a casual allusion in some preceding poem. It is needless to say that anachronisms did not disturb them. From first to last the writers of the chansons had not in the least troubled themselves with attention to any such matters. Charlemagne himself had his life and exploits accommodated to the need of every poet who treats of him, and the same is the case with the heroes of antiquity. Indeed, Alexander is made in many respects a prototype of Charlemagne. He is regularly knighted, he has twelve peers, he holds tournaments, he has relations with Arthur, and comes in contact with fairies, he takes flights in the air, dives in the sea and so forth. There is perhaps more avowed imagination in these classical stories than in either of the other divisions of French epic poetry. Some of their authors even confess to the practice of fiction, while the trouvères of the chansons invariably assert the historical character of their facts and personages, and the authors of the Arthurian romances at least start from facts vouched for, partly by national tradition, partly by the authority of religion and the church. The classical romances, however, are important in two different ways. In the first place, they connect the early literature of France, however loosely, and with links of however dubious authenticity, with the great history and literature of the past. They show a certain amount of scholarship in their authors, and in their hearers they show a capacity of taking an interest in subjects which are not merely those directly connected with the village or the tribe. The chansons de geste had shown the creative power and independent character of French literature. There is, at least about the earlier ones, nothing borrowed, traditional or scholarly. They smack of the soil, and they rank France among the very few countries which, in this matter of indigenous growth, have yielded more than folk-songs and fireside tales. The Arthurian romances, less independent in origin, exhibit a wider range of view, a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more extensive command of the sources of poetical and romantic interest. The classical epics superadd the only ingredient necessary to an accomplished literature—that is to say, the knowledge of what has been done by other peoples and other literatures already, and the readiness to take advantage of the materials thus supplied.

Romans d’Aventures.—These are the three earliest developments of French literature on the great scale. They led, however, to a fourth, which, though later in date than all except their latest forms and far more loosely associated as a group, is so closely connected with them by literary and social considerations that it had best be mentioned here. This is the roman d’aventures, a title given to those almost avowedly fictitious poems which connect themselves, mainly and centrally, neither with French history, with the Round Table, nor with the heroes of antiquity. These began to be written in the 13th century, and continued until the prose form of fiction became generally preferred. The later forms of the chansons de geste and the Arthurian poems might indeed be well called romans d’aventures themselves. Hugues Capet, for instance, a chanson in form and class of subject, is certainly one of this latter kind in treatment; and there is a larger class of semi-Arthurian romance, which so to speak branches off from the main trunk. But for convenience sake the definition we have given is preferable. The style and subject of these romans d’aventures are naturally extremely various. Guillaume de Palerme deals with the adventures of a Sicilian prince who is befriended by a were-wolf; Le Roman de l’escoufle, with a heroine whose ring is carried off by a sparrow-hawk (escoufle), like Prince Camaralzaman’s talisman; Guy of Warwick, with one of the most famous of imaginary heroes; Meraugis de Portléguez is a sort of branch or offshoot of the romances of the Round Table; Cléomadès, the work of the trouvère Adenès le Roi, who also rehandled the old chanson subjects of Ogier and Berte aux grans piés, connects itself once more with the Arabian Nights as well as with Chaucer forwards in the introduction of a flying mechanical horse. There is, in short, no possibility of classifying their subjects. The habit of writing in gestes, or of necessarily connecting the new work with an older one, had ceased to be binding, and the instinct of fiction writing was free; yet those romans d’aventures do not rank quite as high in literary importance as the classes which preceded them. This under-valuation arises rather from a lack of originality and distinctness of savour than from any shortcomings in treatment. Their versification, usually octosyllabic, is pleasant enough; but there is not much distinctness of character about them, and their incidents often strike the reader with something of the sameness, but seldom with much of the naïveté, of those of the older poems. Nevertheless some of them attained to a very high popularity, such, for instance, as the Partenopex de Blois of Denis Pyramus, which has a motive drawn from the story of Cupid and Psyche and the charming Floire et Blanchefleur, giving the woes of a 114 Christian prince and a Saracen slave-girl. With them may be connected a certain number of early romances and fictions of various dates in prose, none of which can vie in charm with Aucassin et Nicolette (13th century), an exquisite literary presentment of medieval sentiment in its most delightful form.

In these classes maybe said to be summed up the literature of feudal chivalry in France. They were all, except perhaps the last, composed by one class of persons, the trouvères, and performed by another, the jongleurs. The latter, General characteristics of early narrative. indeed, sometimes presumed to compose for himself, and was denounced as a troveor batard by the indignant members of the superior caste. They were all originally intended to be performed in the palais marberin of the baron to an audience of knights and ladies, and, when reading became more common, to be read by such persons. They dealt therefore chiefly, if not exclusively, with the class to whom they were addressed. The bourgeois and the villain, personages of political nonentity at the time of their early composition, come in for far slighter notice, although occasionally in the few curious instances we have mentioned, and others, persons of a class inferior to the seigneur play an important part. The habit of private wars and of insurrection against the sovereign supply the motives of the chanson de geste, the love of gallantry, adventure and foreign travel those of the romances Arthurian and miscellaneous. None of these motives much affected the lower classes, who were, with the early developed temper of the middle- and lower-class Frenchman, already apt to think and speak cynically enough of tournaments, courts, crusades and the other occupations of the nobility. The communal system was springing up, the towns were receiving royal encouragement as a counterpoise to the authority of the nobles. The corruptions and maladministration of the church attracted the satire rather of the citizens and peasantry who suffered by them, than of the Spread of literary taste. nobles who had less to fear and even something to gain. On the other hand, the gradual spread of learning, inaccurate and ill-digested perhaps, but still learning, not only opened up new classes of subjects, but opened them to new classes of persons. The thousands of students who flocked to the schools of Paris were not all princes or nobles. Hence there arose two new classes of literature, the first consisting of the embodiment of learning of one kind or other in the vulgar tongue. The other, one of the most remarkable developments of sportive literature which the world has seen, produced the second indigenous literary growth of which France can boast, namely, the fabliaux, and the almost more remarkable work which is an immense conglomerate of fabliaux, the great beast-epic of the Roman de Renart.

Fabliaux.—There are few literary products which have more originality and at the same time more diversity than the fabliau. The epic and the drama, even when they are independently produced, are similar in their main characteristics all the world over. But there is nothing in previous literature which exactly corresponds to the fabliau. It comes nearest to the Aesopic fable and its eastern origins or parallels. But differs from these in being less allegorical, less obviously moral (though a moral of some sort is usually if not always enforced), and in having a much more direct personal interest. It is in many degrees further removed from the parable, and many degrees nearer to the novel. The story is the first thing, the moral the second, and the latter is never suffered to interfere with the former. These observations apply only to the fabliaux, properly so called, but the term has been used with considerable looseness. The collectors of those interesting pieces, Barbazan, Méon, Le Grand d’Aussy, have included in their collections large numbers of miscellaneous pieces such as dits (rhymed descriptions of various objects, the most famous known author of which was Baudouin de Condé, 13th century), and débats (discussions between two persons or contrasts of the attributes of two things), sometimes even short romances, farces and mystery plays. Not that the fable proper—the prose classical beast-story of “Aesop”—was neglected. Marie de France—the poetess to be mentioned again for her more strictly poetical work—is the most literary of not a few writers who composed what were often, after the mysterious original poet, named Ysopets. Aesop, Phaedrus, Babrius were translated and imitated in Latin and in the vernacular by this class of writer, and some of the best known of “fablers” date from this time. The fabliau, on the other hand, according to the best definition of it yet achieved, is “the recital, generally comic, of a real or possible incident occurring in ordinary human life.” The comedy, it may be added, is usually of a satiric kind, and occupies itself with every class and rank of men, from the king to the villain. There is no limit to the variety of these lively verse-tales, which are invariably written in eight-syllabled couplets. Now the subject is the misadventure of two Englishmen, whose ignorance of the French language makes them confuse donkey and lamb; now it is the fortunes of an exceedingly foolish knight, who has an amiable and ingenious mother-in-law; now the deserved sufferings of an avaricious or ill-behaved priest; now the bringing of an ungrateful son to a better mind by the wisdom of babes and sucklings. Not a few of the Canterbury Tales are taken directly from fabliaux; indeed, Chaucer, with the possible exception of Prior, is our nearest approach to a fabliau-writer. At the other end of Europe the prose novels of Boccaccio and other Italian tale-tellers are largely based upon fabliaux. But their influence in their own country was the greatest. They were the first expression of the spirit which has since animated the most national and popular developments of French literature. Simple and unpretending as they are in form, the fabliaux announce not merely the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles and the Heptameron, L’Avocat Patelin, and Pantagruel, but also L’Avare and the Roman comique, Gil Blas and Candide. They indeed do more than merely prophesy the spirit of these great performances—they directly lead to them. The prose-tale and the farce are the direct outcomes of the fabliau, and the prose-tale and the farce once given, the novel and the comedy inevitably follow.

The special period of fabliau composition appears to have been the 12th and 13th centuries. It signifies on the one side the growth of a lighter and more sportive spirit than had yet prevailed, on another the rise in importance of Social importance of fabliaux. other and lower orders of men than the priest and the noble, on yet another the consciousness on the part of these lower orders of the defects of the two privileged classes, and of the shortcomings of the system of polity under which these privileged classes enjoyed their privileges. There is, however, in the fabliau proper not so very much of direct satire, this being indeed excluded by the definition given above, and by the thoroughly artistic spirit in which that definition is observed. The fabliaux are so numerous and so various that it is difficult to select any as specially representative. We may, however, mention, both as good examples and as interesting from their subsequent history, Le Vair Palfroi, treated in English by Leigh Hunt and by Peacock; Le Vilain Mire, the original consciously or unconsciously followed in Le Médecin malgré lui; Le Roi d’Angleterre et le jongleur d’Éli; La houce partie; Le Sot Chevalier, an indecorous but extremely amusing story; Les deux bordeors ribaus, a dialogue between two jongleurs of great literary interest, containing allusions to the chansons de geste and romances most in vogue; and Le vilain qui conquist paradis par plait, one of the numerous instances of what has unnecessarily puzzled moderns, the association in medieval times of sincere and unfeigned faith with extremely free handling of its objects. This lightheartedness in other subjects sometimes bubbled over into the fatrasie, an almost pure nonsense-piece, parent of the later amphigouri.

Roman de Renart.—If the fabliaux are not remarkable for direct satire, that element is supplied in more than compensating quantity by an extraordinary composition which is closely related to them. Le Roman de Renart, or History of Reynard the Fox, is a poem, or rather series of poems, which, from the end of the 12th to the middle of the 14th century, served the citizen poets of northern France, not merely as an outlet for literary expression, but also as a vehicle of satirical comment,—now on the general vices and weaknesses of humanity, now on the usual corruptions in church and state, now on the various historical 115 events which occupied public attention from time to time. The enormous popularity of the subject is shown by the long vogue which it had, and by the empire which it exercised over generations of writers who differed from each other widely in style and temper. Nothing can be farther from the allegorical erudition, the political diatribes and the sermonizing moralities of the authors of Renart le Contre-fait than the sly naïveté of the writers of the earlier branches. Yet these and a long and unknown series of intermediate bards the fox-king pressed into his service, and it is scarcely too much to say that, during the two centuries of his reign, there was hardly a thought in the popular mind which, as it rose to the surface, did not find expression in an addition to the huge cycle of Renart.

We shall not deal with the controversies which have been raised as to the origin of the poem and its central idea. The latter may have been a travestie of real persons and actual events, or it may (and much more probably) have been an expression of thoughts and experiences which recur in every generation. France, the Netherlands and Germany have contended for the honour of producing Renart; French, Flemish, German and Latin for the honour of first describing him. It is sufficient to say that the spirit of the work seems to be more that of the borderland between France and Flanders than of any other district, and that, wherever the idea may have originally arisen, it was incomparably more fruitful in France than in any other country. The French poems which we possess on the subject amount in all to nearly 100,000 lines, independently of mere variations, but including the different versions of Renart le Contre-fait. This vast total is divided into four different poems. The most ancient and remarkable is that edited by Méon under the title of Roman du Renart, and containing, with some additions made by M. Chabaille, 37 branches and about 32,000 lines. It must not, however, be supposed that this total forms a continuous poem like the Aeneid or Paradise Lost. Part was pretty certainly written by Pierre de Saint-Cloud, but he was not the author of the whole. On the contrary, the separate branches are the work of different authors, hardly any of whom are known, and, but for their community of subject and to some extent of treatment, might be regarded as separate poems. The history of Renart, his victories over Isengrim, the wolf, Bruin, the bear, and his other unfortunate rivals, his family affection, his outwittings of King Noble the Lion and all the rest, are too well known to need fresh description here. It is perhaps in the subsequent poems, though they are far less known and much less amusing, that the hold which the idea of Renart had obtained on the mind of northern France, and the ingenious uses to which it was put, are best shown. The first of these is Le Couronnement Renart, a poem of between 3000 and 4000 lines, attributed, on no grounds whatever, to the poetess Marie de France, and describing how the hero by his ingenuity got himself crowned king. This poem already shows signs of direct moral application and generalizing. These are still more apparent in Renart le Nouvel, a composition of some 8000 lines, finished in the year 1288 by the Fleming Jacquemart Giélée. Here the personification, of which, in noticing the Roman de la rose, we shall soon have to give extended mention, becomes evident. Instead of or at least beside the lively personal Renart who used to steal sausages, set Isengrim fishing with his tail, or make use of Chanticleer’s comb for a purpose for which it was certainly never intended, we have Renardie, an abstraction of guile and hypocrisy, triumphantly prevailing over other and better qualities. Lastly, as the Roman de la rose of William of Lorris is paralleled by Renart le Nouvel, so its continuation by Jean de Meung is paralleled by the great miscellany of Renart le Contre-fait, which, even in its existing versions, extends to fully 50,000 lines. Here we have, besides floods of miscellaneous erudition and discourse, political argument of the most direct and important kind. The wrongs of the lower orders are bitterly urged. They are almost openly incited to revolt; and it is scarcely too much to say, as M. Lenient has said, that the closely following Jacquerie is but a practical carrying out of the doctrines of the anonymous satirists of Renart le Contre-fait, one of whom (if indeed there was more than one) appears to have been a clerk of Troyes.

Early Lyric Poetry.—Side by side with these two forms of literature, the epics and romances of the higher classes, and the fabliau, which, at least in its original, represented rather the feelings of the lower, there grew up a third kind, consisting of purely lyrical poetry. The song literature of medieval France is extremely abundant and beautiful. From the 12th to the 15th century it received constant accessions, some signed, some anonymous, some purely popular in their character, some the work of more learned writers, others again produced by members of the aristocracy. Of the latter class it may fairly be said that the catalogue of royal and noble authors boasts few if any names superior to those of Thibaut de Champagne, king of Navarre at the beginning of the 13th century, and Charles d’Orléans, the father of Louis XII., at the beginning of the 15th. Although much of this lyric poetry is anonymous, the more popular part of it almost entirely so, yet M. Paulin Paris was able to enumerate some hundreds of French chansonniers between the 11th and the 13th century. The earliest song literature, chiefly known in the delightful collection of Bartsch (Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen), is mainly sentimental in character. The collector divides it under the two heads of romances and pastourelles, the former being usually the celebration of the loves of a noble knight and maiden, and recounting how Belle Doette or Eglantine or Oriour sat at her windows or in the tourney gallery, or embroidering silk and samite in her chamber, with her thoughts on Gerard or Guy or Henry,—the latter somewhat monotonous but naïve and often picturesque recitals, very often in the first person, of the meeting of an errant knight or minstrel with a shepherdess, and his cavalier but not always successful wooing. With these, some of which date from the 12th century, may be contrasted, at the other end of the medieval period, the more varied and popular collection dating in their present form from the 15th century, and published in 1875 by M. Gaston Paris. In both alike, making allowance for the difference of their age and the state of the language, may be noticed a charming lyrical faculty and great skill in the elaboration of light and suitable metres. Especially remarkable is the abundance of refrains of an admirably melodious kind. It is said that more than 500 of these exist. Among the lyric writers of these four centuries whose names are known may be mentioned Audefroi le Bastard Audefroit le Bastard.
Thibaut de Champagne. (12th century), the author of the charming song of Belle Idoine, and others no way inferior, Quesnes de Bethune, the ancestor of Sully, whose song-writing inclines to a satirical cast in many instances, the Vidame de Chartres, Charles d’Anjou, King John of Brienne, the châtelain de Coucy, Gace Bruslé, Colin Muset, while not a few writers mentioned elsewhere—Guyot de Provins, Adam de la Halle, Jean Bodel and others—were also lyrists. But none of them, except perhaps Audefroi, can compare with Thibaut IV. (1201-1253), who united by his possessions and ancestry a connexion with the north and the south, and who employed the methods of both districts but used the language of the north only. Thibaut was supposed to be the lover of Blanche of Castile, the mother of St Louis, and a great deal of his verse is concerned with his love for her. But while knights and nobles were thus employing lyric poetry in courtly and sentimental verse, lyric forms were being freely employed by others, both of high and low birth, for more general purposes. Blanche and Thibaut themselves came in for contemporary lampoons, and both at this time and in the times immediately following, a cloud of writers composed light verse, sometimes of a lyric sometimes of a narrative kind, and sometimes in a mixture of both. By far the Rutebœf. most remarkable of these is Rutebœuf (a name which is perhaps a nickname), the first of a long series of French poets to whom in recent days the title Bohemian has been applied, who passed their lives between gaiety and misery, and celebrated their lot in both conditions with copious verse. Rutebœuf is among the earliest French writers who tell us their personal history and make personal appeals. But he does not confine himself to these. He discusses the history of his times, 116 upbraids the nobles for their desertion of the Latin empire of Constantinople, considers the expediency of crusading, inveighs against the religious orders, and takes part in the disputes between the pope and the king. He composes pious poetry too, and in at least one poem takes care to distinguish between the church which he venerates and the corrupt churchmen whom he lampoons. Besides Rutebœuf the most characteristic figure of his class and time (about the middle of the 13th century) is Adam de la Halle.
Lais. Adam de la Halle, commonly called the Hunchback of Arras. The earlier poems of Adam are of a sentimental character, the later ones satirical and somewhat ill-tempered. Such, for instance, is his invective against his native city. But his chief importance consists in his jeux, the Jeu de la feuillie, the Jeu de Robin et Marion, dramatic compositions which led the way to the regular dramatic form. Indeed the general tendency of the 13th century is to satire, fable and farce, even more than to serious or sentimental poetry. We should perhaps except the lais, the chief of which are known under the name of Marie de France. These lays are exclusively Breton in origin, though not in application, and the term seems originally to have had reference rather to the music to which they were sung than to the manner or matter of the pieces. Some resemblance to these lays may perhaps be traced in the genuine Breton songs published by M. Luzel. The subjects of the lais are indifferently taken from the Arthurian cycle, from ancient story, and from popular tradition, and, at any rate in Marie’s hands, they give occasion for some passionate, and in the modern sense really romantic, poetry. The most famous of all is the Lay of the Honeysuckle, traditionally assigned to Sir Tristram.

Satiric and Didactic Works.—Among the direct satirists of the middle ages, one of the earliest and foremost is Guyot de Provins, a monk of Clairvaux and Cluny, whose Bible, as he calls it, contains an elaborate satire on the time (the beginning of the 13th century), and who was imitated by others, especially Hugues de Brégy. The same spirit soon betrayed itself in curious travesties of the romances of chivalry, and sometimes invades the later specimens of these romances themselves. One of the earliest examples of this travesty is the remarkable composition entitled Audigier. This poem, half fabliau and half romance, is not so much an instance of the heroi-comic poems which afterwards found so much favour in Italy and elsewhere, as a direct and ferocious parody of the Carlovingian epic. The hero Audigier is a model of cowardice and disloyalty; his father and mother, Turgibus and Rainberge, are deformed and repulsive. The exploits of the hero himself are coarse and hideous failures, and the whole poem can only be taken as a counterblast to the spirit of chivalry. Elsewhere a trouvère, prophetic of Rabelais, describes a vast battle between all the nations of the world, the quarrel being suddenly atoned by the arrival of a holy man bearing a huge flagon of wine. Again, we have the history of a solemn crusade undertaken by the citizens of a country town against the neighbouring castle. As erudition and the fancy for allegory gained ground, satire naturally availed itself of the opportunity thus afforded it; the disputes of Philippe le Bel with the pope and the Templars had an immense literary influence, partly in the concluding portions of the Renart, partly in the Roman de la rose, still to be mentioned, and partly in other satiric allegories of which the chief is the romance of Fauvel, attributed to François de Rues. The hero of this is an allegorical personage, half man and half horse, signifying the union of bestial degradation with human ingenuity and cunning. Fauvel (the name, it may be worth while to recall, occurs in Langland) is a divinity in his way. All the personages of state, from kings and popes to mendicant friars, pay their court to him.

But this serious and discontented spirit betrays itself also in compositions which are not parodies or travesties in form. One of the latest, if not absolutely the latest (for Cuvelier’s still later Chronique de Du Guesclin is only a Baudouin de Sebourc. most interesting imitation of the chanson form adapted to recent events), of the chansons de geste is Baudouin de Sebourc, one of the members of the great romance or cycle of romances dealing with the crusades, and entitled Le Chevalier au Cygne. Baudouin de Sebourc dates from the early years of the 14th century. It is strictly a chanson de geste in form, and also in the general run of its incidents. The hero is dispossessed of his inheritance by the agency of traitors, fights his battle with the world and its injustice, and at last prevails over his enemy Gaufrois, who has succeeded in obtaining the kingdom of Friesland and almost that of France. Gaufrois has as his assistants two personages who were very popular in the poetry of the time,—viz., the Devil, and Money. These two sinister figures pervade the fabliaux, tales and fantastic literature generally of the time. M. Lenient, the historian of French satire, has well remarked that a romance as long as the Renart might be spun out of the separate short poems of this period which have the Devil for hero, and many of which form a very interesting transition between the fabliau and the mystery. But the Devil is in one respect a far inferior hero to Renart. He has an adversary in the Virgin, who constantly upsets his best-laid schemes, and who does not always treat him quite fairly. The abuse of usury at the time, and the exactions of the Jews and Lombards, were severely felt, and Money itself, as personified, figures largely in the popular literature of the time.

Roman de la Rose.—A work of very different importance from all of these, though with seeming touches of the same spirit, a work which deserves to take rank among the most important of the middle ages, is the Roman de la rose,—one William of Lorris. of the few really remarkable books which is the work of two authors, and that not in collaboration but in continuation one of the other. The author of the earlier part was Guillaume de Lorris, who lived in the first half of the 13th century; the author of the later part was Jean de Meung, who was born about the middle of that century, and whose part in the Roman dates at least from its extreme end. This great poem exhibits in its two parts very different characteristics, which yet go to make up a not inharmonious whole. It is a love poem, and yet it is satire. But both gallantry and raillery are treated in an entirely allegorical spirit; and this allegory, while it makes the poem tedious to hasty appetites of to-day, was exactly what gave it its charm in the eyes of the middle ages. It might be described as an Ars amoris crossed with a Quodlibeta. This mixture exactly hit the taste of the time, and continued to hit it for two centuries and a half. When its obvious and gallant meaning was attacked by moralists and theologians, it was easy to quote the example of the Canticles, and to furnish esoteric explanations of the allegory. The writers of the 16th century were never tired of quoting and explaining it. Antoine de Baïf, indeed, gave the simple and obvious meaning, and declared that “La rose c’est d’amours le guerdon gracieux”; but Marot, on the other hand, gives us the choice of four mystical interpretations,—the rose being either the state of wisdom, the state of grace, the state of eternal happiness or the Virgin herself. We cannot here analyse this celebrated poem. It is sufficient to say that the lover meets all sorts of obstacles in his pursuit of the rose, though he has for a guide the metaphorical personage Bel-Accueil. The early part, which belongs to William of Lorris, is remarkable for its gracious Jean de Meung. and fanciful descriptions. Forty years after Lorris’s death, Jean de Meung completed it in an entirely different spirit. He keeps the allegorical form, and indeed introduces two new personages of importance, Nature and Faux-semblant. In the mouths of these personages and of another, Raison, he puts the most extraordinary mixture of erudition and satire. At one time we have the history of classical heroes, at another theories against the hoarding of money, about astronomy, about the duty of mankind to increase and multiply. Accounts of the origin of loyalty, which would have cost the poet his head at some periods of history, and even communistic ideas, are also to be found here. In Faux-semblant we have a real creation of the theatrical hypocrite. All this miscellaneous and apparently incongruous material in fact explains the success of the poem. It has the one characteristic which has at all times secured the popularity of great works of literature. It holds the mirror up firmly and fully to its age. As we find in Rabelais 117 the characteristics of the Renaissance, in Montaigne those of the sceptical reaction from Renaissance and reform alike, in Molière those of the society of France after Richelieu had tamed and levelled it, in Voltaire and Rousseau respectively the two aspects of the great revolt,—so there are to be found in the Roman de la rose the characteristics of the later middle age, its gallantry, its mysticism, its economical and social troubles and problems, its scholastic methods of thought, its naïve acceptance as science of everything that is written, and at the same time its shrewd and indiscriminate criticism of much that the age of criticism has accepted without doubt or question. The Roman de la rose, as might be supposed, set the example of an immense literature of allegorical poetry, which flourished more and more until the Renaissance. Some of these poems we have already mentioned, some will have to be considered under the head of the 15th century. But, as usually happens in such cases and was certain to happen in this case, the allegory which has seemed tedious to many, even in the original, became almost intolerable in the majority of the imitations.

We have observed that, at least in the later section of the Roman de la rose, there is observable a tendency to import into the poem indiscriminate erudition. This tendency is now remote from our poetical habits; but in its own Early didactic verse. day it was only the natural result of the use of poetry for all literary purposes. It was many centuries before prose became recognized as the proper vehicle for instruction, and at a very early date verse was used as well for educational and moral as for recreative and artistic purposes. French verse was the first born of all literary mediums in modern European speech, and the resources of ancient learning were certainly not less accessible in France than in any other country. Dante, in his De vulgari eloquio, acknowledges the excellence of the didactic writers of the Langue d’Oïl. We have already alluded to the Bestiary of Philippe de Thaun, a Norman trouvère who lived and wrote in England during the reign of Henry Beauclerc. Besides the Bestiary, which from its dedication to Queen Adela has been conjectured to belong to the third decade of the 12th century, Philippe wrote also in French a Liber de creaturis, both works being translated from the Latin. These works of mystical and apocryphal physics and zoology became extremely popular in the succeeding centuries, and were frequently imitated. A moralizing turn was also given to them, which was much helped by the importation of several miscellanies of Oriental origin, partly tales, partly didactic in character, the most celebrated of which is the Roman des sept sages, which, under that title and the variant of Dolopathos, received repeated treatment from French writers both in prose and verse. The odd notion of an Ovide moralisé used to be ascribed to Philippe de Vitry, bishop of Meaux (1291?-1391?), a person complimented by Petrarch, but is now assigned to a certain Chrétien Legonais. Art, too, soon demanded exposition in verse, as well as science. The favourite pastime of the chase was repeatedly dealt with, notably in the Roi Modus (1325), mixed prose and verse; the Deduits de la chasse (1387), of Gaston de Foix, prose; and the Tresor de Venerie of Hardouin (1394), verse. Very soon didactic verse extended itself to all the arts and sciences. Vegetius and his military precepts had found a home in French octosyllables as early as the 12th century; the end of the same age saw the ceremonies of knighthood solemnly versified, and napes (maps) du monde also soon appeared. At last, in 1245, Gautier of Metz translated from various Latin works into French verse a sort of encyclopaedia, while another, incongruous but known as L’Image du monde, exists from the same century. Profane knowledge was not the only subject which exercised didactic poets at this time. Religious handbooks and commentaries on the scriptures were common in the 13th and following centuries, and, under the title of Castoiements, Enseignements and Doctrinaux, moral treatises became common. The most famous of these, the Castoiement d’un père à son fils, falls under the class, already mentioned, of works due to oriental influence, being derived from the Indian Panchatantra. In the 14th century the influence of the Roman de la rose helped to render moral verse frequent and popular. The same century, moreover, which witnessed these developments of well-intentioned if not always Artificial forms of verse. judicious erudition witnessed also a considerable change in lyrical poetry. Hitherto such poetry had chiefly been composed in the melodious but unconstrained forms of the romance and the pastourelle. In the 14th century the writers of northern France subjected themselves to severer rules. In this age arose the forms which for so long a time were to occupy French singers,—the ballade, the rondeau, the rondel, the triolet, the chant royal and others. These received considerable alterations as time went on. We possess not a few Artes poëticae, such as that of Eustache Deschamps at the end of the 14th century, that formerly ascribed to Henri de Croy and now to Molinet at the end of the 15th, and that of Thomas Sibilet in the 16th, giving particulars of them, and these particulars show considerable changes. Thus the term rondeau, which since Villon has been chiefly limited to a poem of 15 lines, where the 9th and 15th repeat the first words of the first, was originally applied both to the rondel, a poem of 13 or 14 lines, where the first two are twice repeated integrally, and to the triolet, one of 8 only, where the first line occurs three times and the second twice. The last is an especially popular metre, and is found where we should least expect it, in the dialogue of the early farces, the speakers making up triolets between them. As these three forms are closely connected, so are the ballade and the chant royal, the latter being an extended and more stately and difficult version of the former, and the characteristic of both being the identity of rhyme and refrain in the several stanzas. It is quite uncertain at what time these fashions were first cultivated, but the earliest poets who appear to have practised them extensively were born at the close of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th centuries. Of these Guillaume de Machault (c. 1300-1380) is the oldest. He has left us 80,000 verses, never yet completely printed. Eustache Deschamps (c. 1340-c. 1410) was nearly as prolific, but more fortunate as more meritorious, the Société des anciens Textes having at last provided a complete edition of him. Froissart the historian (1333-1410) was also an agreeable and prolific poet. Deschamps, the most famous as a poet of the three, has left us nearly 1200 ballades and nearly 200 rondeaux, besides much other verse all manifesting very considerable poetical powers. Less known but not less noteworthy, and perhaps the earliest of all, is Jehannot de Lescurel, whose personality is obscure, and most of whose works are lost, but whose remains are full of grace. Froissart appears to have had many countrymen in Hainault and Brabant who devoted themselves to the art of versification; and the Livre des cent ballades of the Marshal Boucicault (1366-1421) and his friends—c. 1390—shows that the French gentleman of the 14th century was as apt at the ballade as his Elizabethan peer in England was at the sonnet.

Early Drama.—Before passing to the prose writers of the middle ages, we have to take some notice of the dramatic productions of those times—productions of an extremely interesting character, but, like the immense Mysteries and miracles. majority of medieval literature, poetic in form. The origin or the revival of dramatic composition in France has been hotly debated, and it has been sometimes contended that the tradition of Latin comedy was never entirely lost, but was handed on chiefly in the convents by adaptations of the Terentian plays, such as those of the nun Hroswitha. There is no doubt that the mysteries (subjects taken from the sacred writings) and miracle plays (subjects taken from the legends of the saints and the Virgin) are of very early date. The mystery of the Foolish Virgins (partly French, partly Latin), that of Adam and perhaps that of Daniel, are of the 12th century, though due to unknown authors. Jean Bodel and Ruteboeuf, already mentioned, gave, the one that of Saint Nicolas at the confines of the 12th and 13th, the other that of Théophile later in the 13th itself. But the later moralities, soties, and farces seem to be also in part a very probable development of the simpler and earlier forms of the fabliau and of the tenson or jeu-parti, a poem in simple dialogue much used by both troubadours 118 and trouvères. The fabliau has been sufficiently dealt with already. It chiefly supplied the subject; and some miracle-plays and farces are little more than fabliaux thrown into dialogue. Of the jeux-partis there are many examples, varying from very simple questions and answers to something like regular dramatic dialogue; even short romances, such as Aucassin et Nicolette, were easily susceptible of dramatization. But the Jeu de la feuillie (or feuillée) of Adam de la Halle seems to be the earliest piece, profane in subject, containing something more than mere dialogue. The poet has not indeed gone far for his subject, for he brings in his own wife, father and friends, the interest being complicated by the introduction of stock characters (the doctor, the monk, the fool), and of certain fairies—personages already popular from the later romances of chivalry. Another piece of Adam’s, Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, also already alluded to, is little more than a simple throwing into action of an ordinary pastourelle with a considerable number of songs to music. Nevertheless later criticism has seen, and not unreasonably, in these two pieces the origin in the one case of farce, and thus indirectly of comedy proper, in the other of comic opera.

For a long time, however, the mystery and miracle-plays remained the staple of theatrical performance, and until the 13th century actors as well as performers were more or less taken from the clergy. It has, indeed, been well pointed out that the offices of the church were themselves dramatic performances, and required little more than development at the hands of the mystery writers. The occasional festive outbursts, such as the Feast of Fools, that of the Boy Bishop and the rest, helped on the development. The variety of mysteries and miracles was very great. A single manuscript contains forty miracles of the Virgin, averaging from 1200 to 1500 lines each, written in octosyllabic couplets, and at least as old as the 14th century, most of them perhaps much earlier. The mysteries proper, or plays taken from the scriptures, are older still. Many of these are exceedingly long. There is a Mystère de l’Ancien Testament, which extends to many volumes, and must have taken weeks to act in its entirety. The Mystère de la Passion, though not quite so long, took several days, and recounts the whole history of the gospels. The best apparently of the authors of these pieces, which are mostly anonymous, were two brothers, Arnoul and Simon Gréban (authors of the Actes des apôtres, and in the first case of the Passion), c. 1450, while a certain Jean Michel (d. 1493) is credited with having continued the Passion from 30,000 lines to 50,000. But these performances, though they held their ground until the middle of the 16th century and extended their range of subject from sacred to profane history—legendary as in the Destruction de Troie, contemporary as in the Profane drama. Siège d’Orléans—were soon rivalled by the more profane performances of the moralities, the farces and the soties. The palmy time of all these three kinds is the 15th century, while the Confrérie de la Passion itself, the special performers of the sacred drama, only obtained the licence constituting it by an ordinance of Charles VI. in 1402. In order, however, to take in the whole of the medieval theatre at a glance, we may anticipate a little. The Confraternity was not itself the author or performer of the profaner kind of dramatic performance. This latter was due to two other bodies, the clerks of the Bazoche and the Enfans sans Souci. As the Confraternity was chiefly composed of tradesmen and persons very similar to Peter Quince and his associates, so the clerks of the Bazoche were members of the legal profession of Paris, and the Enfans sans Souci were mostly young men of family. The morality was the special property of the first, the sotie of the second. But as the moralities were sometimes decidedly tedious plays, though by no means brief, they were varied by the introduction of farces, of which the jeux already mentioned were the early germ, and of which L’Avocat Patelin, dated by some about 1465 and certainly about 200 years subsequent to Adam de la Halle, is the most famous example.

The morality was the natural result on the stage of the immense literary popularity of allegory in the Roman de la rose and its imitations. There is hardly an abstraction, a virtue, a vice, a disease, or anything else of the kind, which does not figure in Moralities. these compositions. There is Bien Advisé and Mal Advisé, the good boy and the bad boy of nursery stories, who fall in respectively with Faith, Reason and Humility, and with Rashness, Luxury and Folly. There is the hero Mange-Tout, who is invited to dinner by Banquet, and meets after dinner very unpleasant company in Colique, Goutte and Hydropisie. Honte-de-dire-ses-Péchés might seem an anticipation of Puritan nomenclature to an English reader who did not remember the contemporary or even earlier personae of Langland’s poem. Some of these moralities possess distinct dramatic merit; among these is mentioned Les Blasphémateurs, an early and remarkable presentation of the Don Juan story. But their general character appears to be gravity, not to say dullness. The Enfans sans Souci, on the other hand, were definitely satirical, and nothing if not amusing. The chief of the society was entitled Soties. Prince des Sots, and his crown was a hood decorated with asses’ ears. The sotie was directly satirical, and only assumed the guise of folly as a stalking-horse for shooting wit. It was more Aristophanic than any other modern form of comedy, and like its predecessor, it perished as a result of its political application. Encouraged for a moment as a political engine at the beginning of the 16th century, it was soon absolutely forbidden and put down, and had to give place in one direction to the lampoon and the prose pamphlet, in another to forms of comic satire more general and vague in their scope. The farce, on the other hand, having neither moral purpose nor political intention, was a purer work of art, enjoyed a wider range of subject, and was in no danger of any permanent extinction. Farcical interludes were interpolated in the mysteries themselves; short farces introduced and rendered palatable the moralities, while the sotie was itself but a variety of farce, and all the kinds were sometimes combined in a sort of tetralogy. It was a short composition, 500 verses being considered sufficient, while the morality might run to at least 1000 verses, the miracle-play to nearly double that number, and the mystery to some 40,000 or 50,000, or indeed to any length that the author could find in his heart to bestow upon the audience, or the audience in their patience to suffer from the author. The number of persons and societies who acted these performances grew to be very large, being estimated at more than 5000 towards the end of the 15th century. Many fantastic personages came to join the Prince des Sots, such as the Empereur de Galilée, the Princes de l’Étrille, and des Nouveaux Mariés, the Roi de l’Épinette, the Recteur des Fous. Of the pieces which these societies represented one only, that of Maître Patelin, is now much known; but many are almost equally amusing. Patelin itself has an immense number of versions and editions. Other farces are too numerous to attempt to classify; they bear, however, in their subjects, as in their manner, a remarkable resemblance to the fabliaux, their source. Conjugal disagreements, the unpleasantness of mothers-in-law, the shifty or, in the earlier stages, clumsy valet and chambermaid, the mishaps of too loosely given ecclesiastics, the abuses of relics and pardons, the extortion, violence, and sometimes cowardice of the seigneur and the soldiery, the corruption of justice, its delays and its pompous apparatus, supply the subjects. The treatment is rather narrative than dramatic in most cases, as might be expected, but makes up by the liveliness of the dialogue for the deficiency of elaborately planned action and interest. All these forms, it will be observed, are directly or indirectly comic. Tragedy in the middle ages is represented only by the religious drama, except for a brief period towards the decline of that form, when the “profane” mysteries referred to above came to be represented. These were, however, rather “histories,” in the Elizabethan sense, than tragedies proper.

Prose History.—In France, as in all other countries of whose literary developments we have any record, literature in prose is considerably later than literature in verse. We have certain glosses or vocabularies possibly dating as far Early chronicles. back as the 8th or even the 7th century; we have the Strassburg oaths, already described, of the 9th, and a commentary 119 on the prophet Jonas which is probably as early. In the 10th century there are some charters and muniments in the vernacular; of the 11th the laws of William the Conqueror are the most important document; while the Assises de Jérusalem of Godfrey of Bouillon date, though not in the form in which we now possess them, from the same age. The 12th century gives us certain translations of the Scriptures, and the remarkable Arthurian romances already alluded to; and thenceforward French prose, though long less favoured than verse, begins to grow in importance. History, as is natural, was the first subject which gave it a really satisfactory opportunity of developing its powers. For a time the French chroniclers contented themselves with Latin prose or with French verse, after the fashion of Wace and the Belgian, Philippe Mouskés (1215-1283). These, after a fashion universal in medieval times, began from fabulous or merely literary origins, and just as Wyntoun later carries back the history of Scotland to the terrestrial paradise, so does Mouskés start that of France from the rape of Helen. But soon prose chronicles, first translated, then original, became common; the earliest of all is said to have been that of the pseudo-Turpin, which thus recovered in prose the language which had originally clothed it in verse, and which, to gain a false appearance of authenticity, it had exchanged still earlier for Latin. Then came French selections and versions from the great series of historical compositions undertaken by the monks of St Denys, the so-called Grandes Chroniques de France from the date of 1274, when they first took form in the hands of a monk styled Primat, to the reign of Charles V., when they assumed the title just given. But the first really remarkable author who used French prose as a vehicle of historical expression is Geoffroi de Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, who was born rather after the middle of the 12th Villehardouin. century, and died in Greece in 1212. Under the title of Conquête de Constantinoble Villehardouin has left us a history of the fourth crusade, which has been accepted by all competent judges as the best picture extant of feudal chivalry in its prime. The Conquête de Constantinoble has been well called a chanson de geste in prose, and indeed in the surprising nature of the feats it celebrates, in the abundance of detail, and in the vivid and picturesque poetry of the narration, it equals the very best of the chansons. Even the repetition of the same phrases which is characteristic of epic poetry repeats itself in this epic prose; and as in the chansons so in Villehardouin, few motives appear but religious fervour and the love of fighting, though neither of these excludes a lively appetite for booty and a constant tendency to disunion and disorder. Villehardouin was continued by Henri de Valenciennes, whose work is less remarkable, and has more the appearance of a rhymed chronicle thrown into prose, a process which is known to have been actually applied in some cases. Nor is the transition from Villehardouin to Jean de Joinville (considerable in point of time, for Joinville was not born till ten years after Villehardouin’s death) in point of literary history immediate. The rhymed chronicles of Philippe Mouskés and Guillaume Guiart belong to this interval; and in prose the most remarkable works are the Chronique de Reims, a well-written history, having the interesting characteristics of taking the lay and popular side, and the great compilation edited (in the modern sense) by Baudouin d’Avesnes Joinville. (1213-1289). Joinville (? 1224-1317), whose special subject is the Life of St Louis, is far more modern than even the half-century which separates him from Villehardouin would lead us to suppose. There is nothing of the knight-errant about him personally, notwithstanding his devotion to his hero. Our Lady of the Broken Lances is far from being his favourite saint. He is an admirable writer, but far less simple than Villehardouin; the good King Louis tries in vain to make him share his own rather high-flown devotion. Joinville is shrewd, practical, there is even a touch of the Voltairean about him; but he, unlike his predecessor, has political ideas and antiquarian curiosity, and his descriptions are often very creditable pieces of deliberate literature.

It is very remarkable that each of the three last centuries of feudalism should have had one specially and extraordinarily gifted chronicler to describe it. What Villehardouin is to the 12th and Joinville to the 13th century, that Jean Froissart Froissart. (1337-1410) is to the 14th. His picture is the most famous as it is the most varied of the three, but it has special drawbacks as well as special merits. French critics have indeed been scarcely fair to Froissart, because of his early partiality to our own nation in the great quarrel of the time, forgetting that there was really no reason why he as a Hainaulter should take the French side. But there is no doubt that if the duty of an historian is to take in all the political problems of his time, Froissart certainly comes short of it. Although the feudal state in which knights and churchmen were alone of estimation was at the point of death, and though new orders of society were becoming important, though the distress and confusion of a transition state were evident to all, Froissart takes no notice of them. Society is still to him all knights and ladies, tournaments, skirmishes and feasts. He depicts these, not like Joinville, still less like Villehardouin, as a sharer in them, but with the facile and picturesque pen of a sympathizing literary onlooker. As the comparison of the Conquête de Constantinoble with a chanson de geste is inevitable, so is that of Froissart’s Chronique with a roman d’aventures.

For Provençal Literature see the separate article under that heading.

15th Century.—The 15th century holds a peculiar and somewhat disputed position in the history of French literature, as, indeed, it does in the history of the literature of all Europe, except Italy. It has sometimes been regarded as the final stage of the medieval period, sometimes as the earliest of the modern, the influence of the Renaissance in Italy already filtering through. Others again have taken the easy step of marking it as an age of transition. There is as usual truth in all these views. Feudality died with Froissart and Eustache Deschamps. The modern spirit can hardly be said to arise before Rabelais and Ronsard. Yet the 15th century, from the point of view of French literature, is much more remarkable than its historians have been wont to confess. It has not the strongly marked and compact originality of some periods, and it furnishes only one name of the highest order of literary interest; but it abounds in names of the second rank, and the very difference which exists between their styles and characters testifies to the existence of a large number of separate forces working in their different manners on different persons. Its theatre we have already treated by anticipation, and to it we shall afterwards recur. It was the palmy time of the early French stage, and all the dramatic styles which we have enumerated then came to perfection. Of no other kind of literature can the same be said. The century which witnessed the invention of printing naturally devoted itself at first more to the spreading of old literature than to the production of new. Yet as it perfected the early drama, so it produced the prose tale. Nor, as regards individual and single names, can the century of Charles d’Orléans, of Alain Chartier, of Christine de Pisan, of Coquillart, of Comines, and, above all, of Villon, be said to lack illustrations.

First among the poets of the period falls to be mentioned the shadowy personality of Olivier Basselin. Modern criticism has attacked the identity of the jovial miller, who was once supposed to have written and perhaps Christine de Pisan. invented the songs called vaux de vire, and to have also carried on a patriotic warfare against the English. But though Jean le Houx may have written the poems published under Basselin’s name two centuries later, it is taken as certain that an actual Olivier wrote actual vaux de vire at the beginning of the 15th century. About Christine de Pisan (1363-1430) and Alain Chartier (1392-c. 1430) there is no such doubt. Christine was the daughter of an Italian astrologer who was patronized by Charles V. She was born in Italy but brought up in France, and she enriched the literature of her adopted country Alain Chartier. with much learning, good sense and patriotism. She wrote history, devotional works and poetry; and though her literary merit is not of the highest, it is very far from despicable. Alain Chartier, best known to modern readers by 120 the story of Margaret of Scotland’s Kiss, was a writer of a somewhat similar character. In both Christine and Chartier there is a great deal of rather heavy moralizing, and a great deal of rather pedantic erudition. But it is only fair to remember that the intolerable political and social evils of the day called for a good deal of moralizing, and that it was the function of the writers of this time to fill up as well as they could the scantily filled vessels of medieval science and learning. A very different Charles d’Orléans. person is Charles d’Orléans (1391-1465), one of the greatest of grands seigneurs, for he was the father of a king of France, and heir to the duchies of Orléans and Milan. Charles, indeed, if not a Roland or a Bayard, was an admirable poet. He is the best-known and perhaps the best writer of the graceful poems in which an artificial versification is strictly observed, and helps by its recurrent lines and modulated rhymes to give to poetry something of a musical accompaniment even without the addition of music properly so called. His ballades are certainly inferior to those of Villon, but his rondels are unequalled. For fully a century and a half these forms engrossed the attention of French lyrical poets. Exercises in them were produced in enormous numbers, and of an excellence which has only recently obtained full recognition even in France. Charles d’Orléans is himself sufficient proof of what can be done in them in the way of elegance, sweetness, and grace which some have unjustly called effeminacy. But that this effeminacy was no natural or inevitable fault of the ballades and the rondeaux was fully proved by the most remarkable literary figure of the 15th century in France. To François Villon (1431-1463?), Villon. as to other great single writers, no attempt can be made to do justice in this place. His remarkable life and character especially lie outside our subject. But he is universally recognized as the most important single figure of French literature before the Renaissance. His work is very strange in form, the undoubtedly genuine part of it consisting merely of two compositions, known as the great and little Testament, written in stanzas of eight lines of eight syllables each, with lyrical compositions in ballade and rondeau form interspersed. Nothing in old French literature can compare with the best of these, such as the “Ballade des dames du temps jadis,” the “Ballade pour sa mère,” “La Grosse Margot,” “Les Regrets de la belle Heaulmière,” and others; while the whole composition is full of poetical traits of the most extraordinary vigour, picturesqueness and pathos. Towards the end of the century the poetical production of the time became very large. The artificial measures already alluded to, and others far more artificial and infinitely less beautiful, were largely practised. The typical poet of the end of the 15th century is Guillaume Crétin (d. 1525), who distinguished himself by writing verses with punning rhymes, verses ending with double or treble repetitions of the same sound, and many other tasteless absurdities, in which, as Pasquier remarks, “il perdit toute la grâce et la Crétin. liberté de la composition.” The other favourite direction of the poetry of the time was a vein of allegorical moralizing drawn from the Roman de la rose through the medium of Chartier and Christine, which produced “Castles of Love,” “Temples of Honour,” and such like. The combination of these drifts in verse-writing produced a school known in literary history, from a happy phrase of the satirist Coquillart (v. inf.), as the “Grands Rhétoriqueurs.” The chief of these besides Crétin were Jean Molinet (d. 1507); Jean Meschinot (c. 1420-1491), author of the Lunettes des princes; Florimond Robertet (d. 1522); Georges Chastellain (1404-1475), to be mentioned again; and Octavien de Saint-Gelais (1466-1502), father of a better poet than himself. Yet some of the minor poets of the time are not to be despised. Such are Henri Baude (1430-1490), a less pedantic writer than most, Martial d’Auvergne (1440-1508), whose principal work is L’Amant rendu cordelier au service de l’amour, and others, many of whom formed part of the poetical court which Charles d’Orléans kept up at Blois after his release.

While the serious poetry of the age took this turn, there was no lack of lighter and satirical verse. Villon, indeed, were it not for the depth and pathos of his poetical sentiment, might be claimed as a poet of the lighter order, and the patriotic diatribes against the English to which we have alluded easily passed into satire. The political quarrels of the latter part of the century also provoked much satirical composition. The disputes of the Bien Public and those between Louis XI. and Charles of Burgundy employed many pens. The most remarkable piece of the light literature of the first is “Les Ânes Volants,” a ballad on some of the early favourites of Louis. The battles of France and Burgundy were waged on paper between Gilles des Ormes and the above-named Georges Chastelain, typical representatives of the two styles of 15th-century poetry already alluded to—Des Ormes being the lighter and more graceful writer, Chastelain a pompous and learned allegorist. The most remarkable representative of purely light poetry outside the Coquillart. theatre is Guillaume Coquillart (1421-1510), a lawyer of Champagne, who resided for the greater part of his life in Reims. This city, like others, suffered from the pitiless tyranny of Louis XI. The beginnings of the standing army which Charles VII. had started were extremely unpopular, and the use to which his son put them by no means removed this unpopularity. Coquillart described the military man of the period in his Monologue du gendarme cassé. Again, when the king entertained the idea of unifying the taxes and laws of the different provinces, Coquillart, who was named commissioner for this purpose, wrote on the occasion a satire called Les Droits nouveaux. A certain kind of satire, much less good-tempered than the earlier forms, became indeed common at this epoch. M. Lenient has well pointed out that a new satirical personification dominates this literature. It is no longer Renart with his cynical gaiety, or the curiously travestied and almost amiable Devil of the Middle Ages. Now it is Death as an incident ever present to the imagination, celebrated in the thousand repetitions of the Danse Macabre, sculptured all over the buildings of the time, even frequently performed on holidays and in public. With the usual tendency to follow pattern, the idea of the “dance” seems to have been extended, and we have a Danse aux aveugles (1464) from Pierre Michaut, where the teachers are fortune, love and death, all blind. All through the century, too, anonymous verse of the lighter kind was written, some of it of great merit. The folk-songs already alluded to, published by Gaston Paris, show one side of this composition, and many of the pieces contained in M. de Montaiglon’s extensive Recueil des anciennes poésies françaises exhibit others.

The 15th century was perhaps more remarkable for its achievements in prose than in poetry. It produced, indeed, no prose writer of great distinction, except Comines; but it witnessed serious, if not extremely successful, efforts at prose composition. The invention of printing finally substituted the reader for the listener, and when this substitution has been effected, the main inducement to treat unsuitable subjects in verse is gone. The study of the classics at first hand contributed to the same end. As early as 1458 the university of Paris had a Greek professor. But long before this time translations in prose had been made. Pierre Bercheure (Bersuire) (1290-1352) had already translated Livy. Nicholas Oresme (c. 1334-1382), the tutor of Charles V., gave a version of certain Aristotelian works, which enriched the language with a large number of terms, then strange enough, now familiar. Raoul de Presles (1316-1383) turned into French the De civitate Dei of St Augustine. These writers or others composed Le Songe du vergier, an elaborate discussion of the power of the pope. The famous chancellor, Jean Charlier or Gerson (1363-1429), to whom the Imitation has among so many others been attributed, spoke constantly and wrote often in the vulgar tongue, though he attacked the most famous and popular work in that tongue, the Roman de la rose. Christine de Pisan and Alain Chartier were at least as much prose writers as poets; and the latter, while he, like Gerson, dealt much with the reform of the church, used in his Quadriloge invectif really forcible language for the purpose of spurring on the nobles of France to put an end to her sufferings and evils. These moral and didactic treatises were but continuations of others, which for convenience sake we have hitherto left unnoticed. Though 121 verse was in the centuries prior to the 15th the favourite medium for literary composition, it was by no means the only one; and moral and educational treatises—some referred to above—already existed in pedestrian phrase. Certain household books (Livres de raison) have been preserved, some of which date as far back as the 13th century. These contain not merely accounts, but family chronicles, receipts and the like. Accounts of travel, especially to the Holy Land, culminated in the famous Voyage of Mandeville which, though it has never been of so much importance in French as in English, perhaps first took vernacular form in the French tongue. Of the 14th century, we have a Menagier de Paris, intended for the instruction of a young wife, and a large number of miscellaneous treatises of art, science and morality, while private letters, mostly as yet unpublished, exist in considerable numbers, and are generally of the moralizing character; books of devotion, too, are naturally frequent.

But the most important divisions of medieval energy in prose composition are the spoken exercises of the pulpit and the bar. The beginnings of French sermons have been much discussed, especially the question whether St Bernard, Early sermon-writers. whose discourses we possess in ancient, but doubtfully contemporary French, pronounced them in that language or in Latin. Towards the end of the 12th century, however, the sermons of Maurice de Sully (1160-1196) present the first undoubted examples of homiletics in the vernacular, and they are followed by many others—so many indeed that the 13th century alone counts 261 sermon-writers, besides a large body of anonymous work. These sermons were, as might indeed be expected, chiefly cast in a somewhat scholastic form—theme, exordium, development, example and peroration following in regular order. The 14th-century sermons, on the other hand, have as yet been little investigated. It must, however, be remembered that this age was the most famous of all for its scholastic illustrations, and for the early vigour of the Dominican and Franciscan orders. With the end of the century and the beginning of the 15th, the importance of the pulpit begins to revive. The early years of the new age have Gerson for their representative, while the end of the century sees the still more famous names of Michel Menot (1450-1518), Olivier Maillard (c. 1430-1502), and Jean Rauhn (1443-1514), all remarkable for the practice of a vigorous and homely style of oratory, recoiling before no aid of what we should nowadays style buffoonery, and manifesting a creditable indifference to the indignation of principalities and powers. Louis XI. is said to have threatened to throw Maillard into the Seine, and many instances of the boldness of these preachers and the rough vigour of their oratory have been preserved. Froissart had been followed as a chronicler by Enguerrand de Monstrelet (c. 1390-1453) and by the historiographers of the Burgundian court, Chastelain, already mentioned, whose interesting Chronique de Jacques de Lalaing is much the most attractive part of his work, and Olivier de la Marche. The memoir and chronicle writers, who were to be of so much importance in French literature, also begin to be numerous at this period. Juvenal des Ursins (1388-1473), an anonymous bourgeois de Paris (two such indeed), and the author of the Chronique scandaleuse, may be mentioned as presenting the character of minute observation and record which has distinguished the class ever since. Jean le maire de (not des) Belges (1473-c. 1525) was historiographer to Louis XII. and wrote Illustrations des Gaules. But Comines (1445-1509) is no imitator of Froissart Comines. or of any one else. The last of the quartette of great French medieval historians, he does not yield to any of his three predecessors in originality or merit, but he is very different from them. He fully represents the mania of the time for statecraft, and his book has long ranked with that of Machiavelli as a manual of the art, though he has not the absolutely non-moral character of the Italian. His memoirs, considered merely as literature, show a style well suited to their purport,—not, indeed, brilliant or picturesque, but clear, terse and thoroughly well suited to the expression of the acuteness, observation and common sense of their author.

But prose was not content with the domain of serious literature. It had already long possessed a respectable position as a vehicle of romance, and the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries were pre-eminently the time when The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. the epics of chivalry were re-edited and extended in prose. Few, however, of these extensions offer much literary interest. On the other hand, the best prose of the century, and almost the earliest which deserves the title of a satisfactory literary medium, was employed for the telling of romances in miniature. The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles is undoubtedly the first work of prose belles-lettres in French, and the first, moreover, of a long and most remarkable class of literary work in which French writers may challenge all comers with the certainty of victory—the short prose tale of a comic character. This remarkable work has usually been attributed, like the somewhat similar but later Heptaméron, to a knot of literary courtiers gathered round a royal personage, in this case the dauphin Louis, afterwards Louis XI. Some evidence has recently been produced which seems to show that this tradition, which attributed some of the tales to Louis himself, is erroneous, but the question is still undecided. The subjects of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles are by no means new. They are simply the old themes of the fabliaux treated in the old way. The novelty is in the application of prose to such a purpose, and in the crispness, the fluency and the elegance of the prose used. The fortunate author or editor to whom these admirable tales have of late been attributed is Antoine de la Antoine de la Salle. Salle (1398-1461), who, if this attribution and certain others be correct, must be allowed to be one of the most original and fertile authors of early French literature. La Salle’s one acknowledged work is the story of Petit Jehan de Saintré, a short romance exhibiting great command of character and abundance of delicate draughtsmanship. To this not only the authorship, part-authorship or editorship of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles has been added; but the still more famous and important work of L’Avocat Patelin has been assigned by respectable, though of course conjecturing, authority to the same paternity. The generosity of critics towards La Salle has not even stopped here. A fourth masterpiece of the period, Les Quinze Joies de mariage, has also been assigned to him. This last work, like the other three, is satirical in subject, and shows for the time a wonderful mastery of the language. Of the fifteen joys of marriage, or, in other words, the fifteen miseries of husbands, each has a chapter assigned to it, and each is treated with the peculiar mixture of gravity and ridicule which it requires. All who have read the book confess its infinite wit and the grace of its style. It is true that it has been reproached with cruelty and with a lack of the moral sentiment. But humanity and morality were not the strong point of the 15th century. There is, it must be admitted, about most of its productions a lack of poetry and a lack of imagination, produced, it may be, partly by political and other conditions outside literature, but very observable in it. The old forms of literature Influence of the Renaissance. itself had lost their interest, and new ones possessing strength to last and power to develop themselves had not yet appeared. It was impossible, even if the taste for it had survived, to spin out the old themes any longer. But the new forces required some time to set to work, and to avail themselves of the tremendous weapon which the press had put into their hands. When these things had adjusted themselves, literature of a varied and vigorous kind became once more possible and indeed necessary, nor did it take long to make its appearance.

16th Century.—In no country was the literary result of the Renaissance more striking and more manifold than in France. The double effect of the study of antiquity and the religious movement produced an outburst of literary developments of the most diverse kinds, which even the fierce and sanguinary civil dissensions of the Reformation did not succeed in checking. While the Renaissance in Italy had mainly exhausted its effects by the middle of the 16th century, while in Germany those effects only paved the way for a national literature, and did not themselves greatly contribute thereto, while in England it was not 122 till the extreme end of the period that a great literature was forthcoming—in France almost the whole century was marked by the production of capital works in every branch of literary effort. Not even the 17th century, and certainly not the 18th, can show such a group of prose writers and poets as is formed by Calvin, St Francis de Sales, Montaigne, du Vair, Bodin, d’Aubigné, the authors of the Satire Ménippée, Monluc, Brantôme, Pasquier, Rabelais, des Periers, Herberay des Essarts, Amyot, Garnier, Marot, Ronsard and the rest of the “Pléiade,” and finally Regnier. These great writers are not merely remarkable for the vigour and originality of their thoughts, the freshness, variety and grace of their fancy, the abundance of their learning and the solidity of their arguments in the cases where argument is required. Their great merit is the creation of a language and a style able to give expression to these good gifts. The foregoing account of the medieval literature of France will have shown sufficiently that it is not lawful to despise the literary capacities and achievements of the older French. But the old language, with all its merits, was ill-suited to be a vehicle for any but the simpler forms of literary composition. Pleasant or affecting tales could be told in it with interest and pathos. Songs of charming naïveté and grace could be sung; the requirements of the epic and the chronicle were suitably furnished. But it was barren of the terms of art and science; it did not readily lend itself to sustained eloquence, to impassioned poetry or to logical discussion. It had been too long accustomed to leave these things to Latin as their natural and legitimate exponent, and it bore marks of its original character as a lingua rustica, a tongue suited for homely conversation, for folk-lore and for ballads, rather than for the business of the forum and the court, the speculations of the study, and the declamation of the theatre. Efforts had indeed been made, culminating in the heavy and tasteless erudition of the schools of Chartier and Crétin, to supply the defect; but it was reserved for the 16th century completely to efface it. The series of prose writers from Calvin to Montaigne, of poets from Marot to Regnier, elaborated a language yielding to no modern tongue in beauty, richness, flexibility and strength, a language which the reactionary purism of succeeding generations defaced rather than improved, and the merits of which have in still later days been triumphantly vindicated by the confession and the practice of all the greatest writers of modern France.

16th-Century Poetry.—The first few years of the 16th century were naturally occupied rather with the last developments of the medieval forms than with the production of the new model. The clerks of the Bazoche and the Confraternity of the Passion still produced and acted mysteries, moralities and farces. The poets of the “Grands Rhétoriqueurs” school still wrote elaborate allegorical poetry. Chansons de geste, rhymed romances and fabliaux had long ceased to be written. But the press was multiplying the contents of the former in the prose form which they had finally assumed, and in the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles there already existed admirable specimens of the short prose tale. There even were signs, as in some writers already mentioned and in Roger de Collérye, a lackpenny but light-hearted singer of the early part of the century, of definite enfranchisement in verse. But the first note of the new literature was sounded by Marot. Clément Marot (1496/7-1544). The son of an elder poet, Jehan des Mares called Marot (1463-1523), Clément at first wrote, like his father’s contemporaries, allegorical and mythological poetry, afterwards collected in a volume with a charming title, L’Adolescence clémentine. It was not till he was nearly thirty years old that his work became really remarkable. From that time forward till his death, about twenty years afterwards, he was much involved in the troubles and persecutions of the Huguenot party to which he belonged; nor was the protection of Marguerite d’Angoulême, the chief patroness of Huguenots and men of letters, always efficient. But his troubles, so far from harming, helped his literary faculties; and his epistles, epigrams, blasons (descendants of the medieval dits), and coq-à-l’âne became remarkable for their easy and polished style, their light and graceful wit, and a certain elegance which had not as yet been even attempted in any modern tongue, though the Italian humanists had not been far from it in some of their Latin compositions. Around Marot arose a whole school of disciples and imitators, such as Victor Brodeau (1470?-1540), the great authority on rondeaux, Maurice Scève, a fertile author of blasons, Salel, Marguerite herself (1492-1549), of whom more hereafter, and Mellin de Saint Gelais (1491-1558). The last, son of the bishop named above, is a courtly writer of occasional pieces, who sustained as well as he could the style marotique against Ronsard, and who has the credit of introducing the regular sonnet into French. But the inventive vigour of the age was so great that one school had hardly become popular before another pushed it from its stool, and even of the Marotists just mentioned Scève and Salel are often regarded as chief and member respectively of a Lyonnese coterie, intermediate between the schools of Marot and of Ronsard, containing other members of repute such as Antoine Heroët and Charles Fontaine and Ronsard. claiming Louise Labé (v. inf.) herself. Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585) was the chief of this latter. At first a courtier and a diplomatist, physical disqualification made him change his career. He began to study the classics under Jean Daurat (1508-1588), and with his master and five other writers, Étienne Jodelle (1532-1573), Rémy Belleau (1528-1577), Joachim du Bellay (1525-1560), Jean Antoine de Baïf (1532-1589), and Pontus de Tyard (d. 1605, bishop of Châlons-sur-Saône), composed the famous “Pléiade.” The object of this band was to bring the French language, in vocabulary, The Pléiade. constructions and application, on a level with the classical tongues by borrowings from the latter. They would have imported the Greek licence of compound words, though the genius of the French language is but little adapted thereto; and they wished to reproduce in French the regular tragedy, the Pindaric and Horatian ode, the Virgilian epic, &c. But it is an error (though one which until recently was very common, and which perhaps requires pretty thorough study of their work completely to extirpate it) to suppose that they advocated or practised indiscriminate borrowing. On the contrary both in du Bellay’s famous manifesto, the Deffense et illustration de la langue française, and in Ronsard’s own work, caution and attention to the genius and the tradition of French are insisted upon. Being all men of the highest talent, and not a few of them men of great genius, they achieved much that they designed, and even where they failed exactly to achieve it, they very often indirectly produced results as important and more beneficial than those which they intended. Their ideal of a separate poetical language distinct from that intended for prose use was indeed a doubtful if not a dangerous one. But it is certain that Marot, while setting an example of elegance and grace not easily to be imitated, set also an example of trivial and, so to speak, pedestrian language which was only too imitable. If France was ever to possess a literature containing something besides fabliaux and farces, the tongue must be enriched and strengthened. This accession of wealth and vigour it received from Ronsard and the Ronsardists. Doubtless they went too far and provoked to some extent the reaction which Malherbe led. Their importations were sometimes unnecessary. It is almost impossible to read the Franciade of Ronsard, and not too easy to read the tragedies of Jodelle and Garnier, fine as the latter are in parts. But the best of Ronsard’s sonnets and odes, the finest of du Bellay’s Antiquités de Rome (translated into English by Spenser), the exquisite Vanneur of the same author, and the Avril of Belleau, even the finer passages of d’Aubigné and du Bartas, are not only admirable in themselves, and of a kind not previously found in French literature, but are also such things as could not have been previously found, for the simple reason that the medium of expression was wanting. They constructed that medium for themselves, and no force of the reaction which they provoked was able to undo their work. Adverse criticism and the natural course of time rejected much that they had added. The charming diminutives they loved so much went out of fashion; their compounds (sometimes it must be confessed, justly) had their letters of naturalization promptly cancelled; many a gorgeous adjective, including some which could trace 123 their pedigree to the earliest ages of French literature, but which bore an unfortunate likeness to the new-comers, was proscribed. But for all that no language has ever had its destiny influenced more powerfully and more beneficially by a small literary clique than the language of France was influenced by the example and disciples of that Ronsard whom for two centuries it was the fashion to deride and decry.

In a sketch such as the present it is impossible to give a separate account of individual writers, the more important of whom will be found treated under their own names. The effort of the “Pléiade” proper was continued and The Ronsardists. shared by a considerable number of minor poets, some of them, as has been already noted, belonging to different groups and schools. Olivier de Magny (d. 1560) and Louise Labé (b. 1526) were poets and lovers, the lady deserving far the higher rank in literature. There is more depth of passion in the writings of “La Belle Cordière,” as this Lyonnese poetess was called, than in almost any of her contemporaries. Jacques Tahureau (1527-1555) scarcely deserves to be called a minor poet. There is less than the usual hyperbole in the contemporary comparison of him to Catullus, and he reminds an Englishman of the school represented nearly a century later by Carew, Randolph and Suckling. The title of a part of his poem—Mignardises amoureuses de l’admirée—is characteristic both of the style and of the time. Jean Doublet (c. 1528-c. 1580), Amadis Jamyn (c. 1530-1585), and Jean de la Taille (1540-1608) deserve mention at least as poets, but two other writers require a longer allusion. Guillaume de Salluste, seigneur du Bartas (1544-1590), Du Bartas. whom Sylvester’s translation, Milton’s imitation, and the copious citations of Southey’s Doctor, have made known if not familiar in England, was partly a disciple and partly a rival of Ronsard. His poem of Judith was eclipsed by his better-known La Divine Sepmaine or epic of the Creation. Du Bartas was a great user and abuser of the double compounds alluded to above, but his style possesses much stateliness, and has a peculiar solemn eloquence which he shared with the other French Calvinists, and which was derived from the study partly of Calvin and partly of the Bible. Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné D’Aubigné. (1552-1630), like du Bartas, was a Calvinist. His genius was of a more varied character. He wrote sonnets and odes as became a Ronsardist, but his chief poetical work is the satirical poem of Les Tragiques, in which the author brands the factions, corruptions and persecutions of the time, and in which there are to be found alexandrines of a strength, vigour and original cadence hardly to be discovered elsewhere, save in Corneille and Victor Hugo. Towards the end of the century, Philippe Desportes (1546-1606) and Jean Bertaut (1552-1611), with much enfeebled strength, but with a certain grace, continue the Ronsardizing tradition. Among their contemporaries must be noticed Jean Passerat (1534-1602), a writer of much wit and vigour and rather resembling Marot than Ronsard, and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (1536-1607), the author of a valuable Ars poëtica and of the first French satires which actually bear that title. Jean le Houx (fl. c. 1600) continued, rewrote or invented the vaux de vire, commonly known as the work of Olivier Basselin, and already alluded to, while a still lighter and more eccentric verse style was cultivated by Étienne Tabourot des Accords (1549-1590), whose epigrams and other pieces were collected under odd titles, Les Bigarrures, Les Touches, &c. A curious pair are Guy du Faur de Pibrac (1529-1584) and Pierre Mathieu (b. 1563), authors of moral quatrains, which were learnt by heart in the schools of the time, replacing the distichs of the grammarian Cato, which, translated into French, had served the same purpose in the middle ages.

The nephew of Desportes, Mathurin Regnier (1573-1613), marks the end, and at the same time perhaps the climax, of the poetry of the century. A descendant at once of the older Gallic spirit of Villon and Marot, in virtue of his Regnier. consummate acuteness, terseness and wit, of the school of Ronsard by his erudition, his command of language, and his scholarship, Regnier is perhaps the best representative of French poetry at the critical time when it had got together all its materials, had lost none of its native vigour and force, and had not yet submitted to the cramping and numbing rules and restrictions which the next century introduced. The satirical poems of Regnier, and especially the admirable epistle to Rapin, in which he denounces and rebuts the critical dogmas of Malherbe, are models of nervous strength, while some of the elegies and odes contain expression not easily to be surpassed of the softer feelings of affection and regret. No poet has had more influence on the revival of French poetry in the last century than Regnier, and he had imitators in his own time, the chief of whom was Courval-Sonnet (Thomas Sonnet, sieur de Courval) (1577-1635), author of satires of some value for the history of manners.

16th-Century Drama.—The change which dramatic poetry underwent during the 16th century was at least as remarkable as that undergone by poetry proper. The first half of the period saw the end of the religious mysteries, the licence of which had irritated both the parliament and the clergy. Louis XII., at the beginning of the century, was far from discouraging the disorderly but popular and powerful theatre in which the Confraternity of the Passion, the clerks of the Bazoche, and the Enfans sans souci enacted mysteries, moralities, soties and farces. He made them, indeed, an instrument in his quarrel with the papacy, just as Philippe le Bel had made use of the allegorical poems of Jehan de Meung and his fellows. Under his patronage were produced the chief works of Gringore or Gringoire (c. 1480-1547), by far the most remarkable writer of this class of composition. His Prince des sots and his Mystère de St Louis are among the best of their kind. An enormous volume of composition of this class was produced between 1500 and 1550. One morality by itself, L’Homme juste et l’homme mondain, contains some 36,000 lines. But in 1548, when the Confraternity was formally established at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, leave to play sacred subjects was expressly refused it. Moralities and soties dragged on under difficulties till the end of the century, and the farce, which is immortal, continually affected comedy. But the effect of the Renaissance was to sweep away all other vestiges of the medieval drama, at least in the capital. An entirely new class of subjects, entirely new modes of treatment, and a different kind of performers were introduced. The change naturally came from Italy. In the close relationship with that country which France had during the early years of the century, Italian translations of the classical masterpieces were easily imported. Soon French translations were made afresh of the Electra, the Hecuba, the Iphigenia in Aulis, and the French humanists hastened to compose original tragedies on the classical model, especially as exhibited in the Latin tragedian Seneca. It was impossible that the “Pléiade” should not eagerly seize such an opportunity of carrying out its principles, and one of its members, Jodelle (1532-1573), devoting himself mainly to dramatic Regular tragedy and comedy. composition, fashioned at once the first tragedy, Cléopatre, and the first comedy, Eugène, thus setting the example of the style of composition which for two centuries and a half Frenchmen were to regard as the highest effort of literary ambition. The amateur performance of these dramas by Jodelle and his friends was followed by a Bacchic procession after the manner of the ancients, which caused a great deal of scandal, and was represented by both Catholics and Protestants as a pagan orgy. The Cléopâtre is remarkable as being the first French tragedy, nor is it destitute of merit. It is curious that in this first instance the curt antithetic στιχομυθία, which was so long characteristic of French plays and plays imitated from them, and which Butler ridicules in his Dialogue of Cat and Puss, already appears. There appears also the grandiose and smooth but stilted declamation which came rather from the imitation of Seneca than of Sophocles, and the tradition of which was never to be lost. Cléopâtre was followed by Didon, which, unlike its predecessor, is entirely in alexandrines, and observes the regular alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes. Jodelle was followed by Jacques Grévin (1540?-1570) with a Mort de César, which shows an improvement in tragic art, and two still better comedies, Les Ébahis and La Trésorière by Jean de la Taille (1540-1608), who made still further progress 124 towards the accepted French dramatic pattern in his Saul furieux and his Corrivaux, Jacques, his brother (1541-1562), and Jean de la Péruse (1529-1554), who wrote a Médée. A very Garnier. different poet from all these is Robert Garnier (1545-1601). Garnier is the first tragedian who deserves a place not too far below Rotrou, Corneille, Racine, Voltaire and Hugo, and who may be placed in the same class with them. He chose his subjects indifferently from classical, sacred and medieval literature. Sédécie, a play dealing with the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, is held to be his masterpiece, and Bradamante deserves notice because it is the first tragi-comedy of merit in French, and because the famous confidant here makes his first appearance. Garnier’s successor, Antoine de Monchrétien or Montchrestien (c. 1576-1621), set the example of dramatizing contemporary subjects. His masterpiece is L’Écossaise, the first of many dramas on the fate of Mary, queen of Scots. While tragedy thus clings closely to antique models, comedy, as might be expected in the country of the fabliaux, is more independent. Italy had already a comic school of some originality, and the French farce was too vigorous and lively a production to permit of its being entirely overlooked. The first comic writer of great Larivey. merit was Pierre Larivey (c. 1550-c. 1612), an Italian by descent. Most if not all of his plays are founded on Italian originals, but the translations or adaptations are made with the greatest freedom, and almost deserve the title of original works. The style is admirable, and the skilful management of the action contrasts strongly with the languor, the awkward adjustment, and the lack of dramatic interest found in contemporary tragedians. Even Molière found something to use in Larivey.

16th-Century Prose Fiction.—Great as is the importance of the 16th century in the history of French poetry, its importance in the history of French prose is greater still. In poetry the middle ages could fairly hold their own with any of the ages that have succeeded them. The epics of chivalry, whether of the cycles of Charlemagne, Arthur, or the classic heroes, not to mention the miscellaneous romans d’aventures, have indeed more than held their own. Both relatively and absolutely the Franciade of the 16th century, the Pucelle of the 17th, the Henriade of the 18th, cut a very poor figure beside Roland and Percivale, Gerard de Roussillon, and Parthenopex de Blois. The romances, ballads and pastourelles, signed and unsigned, of medieval France were not merely the origin, but in some respects the superiors, of the lyric poetry which succeeded them. Thibaut de Champagne, Charles d’Orléans and Villon need not veil their crests in any society of bards. The charming forms of the rondel, the rondeau and the ballade have won admiration from every competent poet and critic who has known them. The fabliaux give something more than promise of La Fontaine, and the two great compositions of the Roman du Renart and the Roman de la rose, despite their faults and their alloy, will always command the admiration of all persons of taste and judgment who take the trouble to study them. But while poetry had in the middle ages no reason to blush for her French representatives, prose (always the younger and less forward sister) had far less to boast of. With the exception of chronicles and prose romances, no prose works of any real importance can be quoted before the end of the 15th century, and even then the chief if not the only place of importance must be assigned to the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, a work of admirable prose, but necessarily light in character, and not yet demonstrating the efficacy of the French language as a medium of expression for serious and weighty thought. Up to the time of the Renaissance and the consequent reformation, Latin had, as we have already remarked, been considered the sufficient and natural organ for this expression. In France as in other countries the disturbance in religious thought may undoubtedly claim the glory of having repaired this disgrace of the vulgar tongue, and of having fitted and taught it to express whatever thoughts the theologian, the historian, the philosopher, the politician and the savant had occasion to utter. But the use of prose as a vehicle for lighter themes was more continuous with the literature that preceded, and serves as a natural transition from poetry and the drama to history and science. Among the prose writers, therefore, of the 16th century we shall give the first place to the novelists and romantic writers.

Among these there can be no doubt of the precedence, in every sense of the word, of François Rabelais (c. 1490-1553), the one French writer (or with Molière one of the two) whom critics the least inclined to appreciate the Rabelais. characteristics of French literature have agreed to place among the few greatest of the world. With an immense erudition representing almost the whole of the knowledge of his time, with an untiring faculty of invention, with the judgment of a philosopher, and the common sense of a man of the world, with an observation that let no characteristic of the time pass unobserved, and with a tenfold portion of the special Gallic gift of good-humoured satire, Rabelais united a height of speculation and depth of insight and a vein of poetical imagination rarely found in any writer, but altogether portentous when taken in conjunction with his other characteristics. His great work has been taken for an exercise of transcendental philosophy, for a concealed theological polemic, for an allegorical history of this and that personage of his time, for a merely literary utterance, for an attempt to tickle the popular ear and taste. It is all of these, and it is none—all of them in parts, none of them in deliberate and exclusive intention. It may perhaps be called the exposition and commentary of all the thoughts, feelings, aspirations and knowledge of a particular time and nation put forth in attractive literary form by a man who for once combined the practical and the literary spirit, the power of knowledge and the power of expression. The work of Rabelais is the mirror of the 16th century in France, reflecting at once its comeliness and its uncomeliness, its high aspirations, its voluptuous tastes, its political and religious dissensions, its keen criticism, its eager appetite and hasty digestion of learning, its gleams of poetry, and its ferocity of manners. In Rabelais we can divine the “Pléiade” and Marot, the Cymbalum mundi and Montaigne, Amyot and the Amadis, even Calvin and Duperron.

It was inevitable that such extraordinary works as Gargantua and Pantagruel should attract special imitators in the direction of their outward form. It was also inevitable that this imitation should frequently fix upon these Rabelaisian characteristics which are least deserving of imitation, and most likely to be depraved in the hands of imitators. It fell within the plan of the master to indulge in what has been called fatrasie, the huddling together, that is to say, of a medley of language and images which is best known to English readers in the not always successful following of Sterne. It pleased him also to disguise his naturally terse, strong and nervous style in a burlesque envelope of redundant language, partly ironical, partly the result of superfluous erudition, and partly that of a certain childish wantonness and exuberance, which is one of his raciest and pleasantest characteristics. In both these points he was somewhat corruptly followed. But fortunately the romancical writers of the 16th century had not Rabelais for their sole model, but were also influenced by the simple and straightforward style of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. The joint influence gives us some admirable work. Nicholas of Troyes, a saddler of Champagne, came too early (his Grand Parangon des nouvelles nouvelles appeared in 1536) to copy Rabelais. But Noël du Fail (d. c. 1585?), a judge at Rennes, shows the double influence in his Propos rustiques and Contes d’Eutrapel, both of which, especially the former, are lively and well-written pictures of contemporary life and thought, as the country magistrate actually saw and dealt with them. In 1558, however, appeared two works of far higher literary and social interest. These are Des Periers. the Heptaméron of the queen of Navarre, and the Contes et joyeux devis of Bonaventure des Periers (c. 1500-1544). Des Periers, who was a courtier of Marguerite’s, has sometimes been thought to have had a good deal to do with the first-named work as well as with the second, and was also the author of a curious Lucianic satire, strongly sceptical in cast, the Cymbalum mundi. Indeed, not merely 125 the queen’s prose works, but also the poems gracefully entitled Les Marguerites de la Marguerite, are often attributed to the literary men whom the sister of Francis I. gathered round her. However this may be, some single influence of power enough to give unity and distinctness of savour evidently The Heptaméron. presided over the composition of the Heptaméron. Composed as it is on the model of Boccaccio, its tone and character are entirely different, and few works have a more individual charm. The Tales of des Periers are shorter, simpler and more homely; there is more wit in them and less refinement. But both works breathe, more powerfully perhaps than any others, the peculiar mixture of cultivated and poetical voluptuousness with a certain religiosity and a vigorous spirit of action which characterizes the French Renaissance. Later in time, but too closely connected with Rabelais in form and spirit to be here omitted, came the Moyen de parvenir of Béroalde de Verville (1558?-1612?), a singular fatrasie, uniting wit, wisdom, learning and indecency, and crammed with anecdotes which are always amusing though rarely decorous.

At the same time a fresh vogue was given to the chivalric romance by Herberay’s translation of Amadis de Gaula. French writers have supposed a French original for the Amadis in some lost roman d’aventures. It is of course Amadis of Gaul. impossible to say that this is not the case, but there is not one tittle of evidence to show that it is. At any rate the adventures of Amadis were prolonged in Spanish through generation after generation of his descendants. This vast work Herberay des Essarts in 1540 undertook to translate or retranslate, but it was not without the assistance of several followers that the task was completed. Southey has charged Herberay with corrupting the simplicity of the original, a charge which does not concern us here. It is sufficient to say that the French Amadis is an excellent piece of literary work, and that Herberay deserves no mean place among the fathers of French prose. His book had an immense popularity; it was translated into many foreign languages, and for some time it served as a favourite reading book for foreigners studying French. Nor is it to be doubted that the romancers of the Scudéry and Calprenède type in the next century were much more influenced both for good and harm by these Amadis romances than by any of the earlier tales of chivalry.

16th-Century Historians.—As in the case of the tale-tellers, so in that of the historians, the writers of the 16th century had traditions to continue. It is doubtful indeed whether many of them can risk comparison as artists with the great names cf Villehardouin and Joinville, Froissart and Comines. The 16th century, however, set the example of dividing the functions of the chronicler, setting those of the historian proper on one side, and of the anecdote-monger and biographer on the other. The efforts at regular history made in this century were not of the highest value. But on the other hand the practice of memoir-writing, in which the French were to excel every nation in the world, and of literary correspondence, in which they were to excel even their memoirs, was solidly founded.

One of the earliest historical writers of the century was Claude de Seyssel (1450-1520), whose history of Louis XII. aims not unsuccessfully at style. De Thou (1553-1617) wrote in Latin, but Bernard de Girard, sieur du Haillan (1537-1610), composed a Histoire de France on Thucydidean principles as transmitted through the successive mediums of Polybius, Guicciardini and Paulus Aemilius. The instance invariably quoted, after Thierry, of du Haillan’s method is his introduction, with appropriate speeches, of two Merovingian statesmen who argue out the relative merits of monarchy and oligarchy on the occasion of the election of Pharamond. Besides du Haillan, la Popelinière (c. 1540-1608), who less ambitiously attempted a history of Europe during his own time, and expended immense labour on the collection of information and materials, deserves mention.

There is no such poverty of writers of memoirs. Robert de la Mark, du Bellay, Marguerite de Valois (the youngest or third Marguerite, first wife of Henri IV., 1553-1615), Villars, Tavannes, La Tour d’Auvergne, and many others composed commentaries and autobiographies. The well-known and very agreeable Histoire du gentil seigneur de Bayart (1524) is by an anonymous “Loyal Serviteur.” Vincent Carloix (fl. 1550), the secretary of the marshal de Vielleville, composed some memoirs abounding in detail and incident. The Lettres of Cardinal d’Ossat (1536-1604) and the Négociations of Pierre Jeannin (1540-1622) have always had a high place among documents of their kind. But there are four collections of memoirs concerning this time which far exceed all others in interest and importance. The turbulent dispositions of the time, the loose dependence of the nobles and even the smaller gentry on any single or central authority, the rapid changes of political situations, and the singularly active appetite, both for pleasure and for business, for learning and for war, which distinguished the French gentleman of the 16th century, place the memoirs of François de Lanoue (1531-1591), Blaise de Mon[t]luc (1503-1577), Agrippa d’Aubigné and Pierre de Bourdeille[s] Brantôme (1540-1614) almost at the head of the literature of their class. The name of Brantôme is known to all who have the least tincture of French literature, and the works of the others are not inferior in interest, and perhaps superior in spirit and conception, to the Dames Galantes, the Grands Capitaines and the Hommes illustres. The commentaries of Montluc, which Henri Quatre is said to have called the soldier’s Bible, are exclusively military and deal with affairs only. Montluc was governor in Guienne, where he repressed the savage Huguenots of the south with a savagery worse than their own. He was, however, a partisan of order, not of Catholicism. He hung and shot both parties with perfect impartiality, and refused to have anything to do with the massacre of St Bartholomew. Though he was a man of no learning, his style is excellent, being vivid, flexible and straightforward. Lanoue, who was a moderate in politics, has left his principles reflected in his memoirs. D’Aubigné, so often to be mentioned, gives the extreme Huguenot side as opposed to the royalist partisanship of Montluc and the via media of Brantôme. Lanoue. Brantôme, on the other hand, is quite free from any political or religious prepossessions, and, indeed, troubles himself very little about any such matters. He is the shrewd and somewhat cynical observer, moving through the crowd and taking note of its ways, its outward appearance, its heroisms and its follies. It is really difficult to say whether the recital of a noble deed of arms or the telling of a scandalous story about a court lady gave him the most pleasure, and impossible to say which he did best. Certainly he had ample material for both exercises in the history of his time.

The branches of literature of which we have just given an account may be fairly connected, from the historical point of view, with work of the same kind that went before as well as with work of the same kind that followed them. It was not so with the literature of theology, law, politics and erudition, which the 16th century also produced, and with which it for the first time enlarged the range of composition in the vulgar tongue. Not only had Latin been invariably adopted as the language of composition on such subjects, but the style of the treatises dealing with such matters had been traditional rather than original. In speculative philosophy or metaphysics proper even this century did not witness a great development; perhaps, indeed, such a development was not to be expected until the minds of men had in some degree settled down from their agitation on more practical matters. It is not without significance that Calvin (1509-1564) is the great figure in serious French prose in the first half of the century, Montaigne the corresponding figure in the second half. After Calvin and Montaigne we expect Descartes.

16th-Century Theologians.—In France, as in all other countries, the Reformation was an essentially popular movement, though from special causes, such as the absence of political homogeneity, the nobles took a more active part both Calvin. with pen and sword in it than was the case in England. But the great textbook of the French Reformation was not the work of any noble. Jean Calvin’s Institution of the Christian Religion 126 is a book equally remarkable in matter and in form, in circumstances and in result. It is the first really great composition in argumentative French prose. Its severe logic and careful arrangement had as much influence on the manner of future thought, both in France and the other regions whither its widespread popularity carried it, as its style had on the expression of such thought. It was the work of a man of only seven-and-twenty, and it is impossible to exaggerate the originality of its manner when we remember that hardly any models of French prose then existed except tales and chronicles, which required and exhibited totally different qualities of style. It is indeed probable that had not the Institution been first written by its author in Latin, and afterwards translated by him, it might have had less dignity and vigour; but it must at the same time be remembered that this process of composition was at least equally likely, in the hands of any but a great genius, to produce a heavy and pedantic style neither French nor Latin in character. Something like this result was actually produced in some of Calvin’s minor works, and still more in the works of many of his followers, whose lumbering language gained for itself, in allusion to their exile from France, the title of “style refugié.” Nevertheless, the use of the vulgar tongue on the Protestant side, and the possession of a work of such importance written therein, gave the Reformers an immense advantage which their adversaries were some time in neutralizing. Even before the Institution, Lefèvre d’Étaples (1455-1537) and Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) saw and utilized the importance of the vernacular. Calvin (1509-1564) was much helped by Pierre Viret (1511-1571), who wrote a large number of small theological and moral dialogues, and of satirical pamphlets, destined to captivate as well as to instruct the lower people. The more famous Beza (Théodore de Bèze) (1519-1605) wrote chiefly in Latin, but he composed in French an ecclesiastical history of the Reformed churches and some translations of the Psalms. Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde (1530-1593), a gentleman of Brabant, followed Viret as a satirical pamphleteer on the Protestant side. On the other hand, the Catholic champions at first affected to disdain the use of the vulgar tongue, and their pamphleteers, when they did attempt it, were unequal to the task. Towards the end of the century a more decent war was waged with Philippe du Plessis Mornay (1549-1623) on the Protestant side, whose work is at least as much directed against freethinkers and enemies of Christianity in general as against the dogmas and discipline of Rome. His adversary, the redoubtable Cardinal du Perron (1556-1618), who, originally a Calvinist, went over to the other side, employed French most vigorously in controversial works, chiefly with reference to the eucharist. Du Perron was celebrated as the first controversialist of the time, and obtained dialectical victories over all comers. At the same time the bishop of Geneva, St Francis of Sales (1567-1622), supported the Catholic side, partly by controversial works, but still more by his devotional writings. The Introduction to a Devout Life, which, though actually published early in the next century, had been written some time previously, shares with Calvin’s Institution the position of the most important theological work of the period, and is in remarkable contrast with it in style and sentiment as well as in principles and plan. It has indeed been accused of a certain effeminacy, the appearance of which is in all probability mainly due to this very contrast. The 16th century does not, like the 17th, distinguish itself by literary exercises in the pulpit. The furious preachers of the League, and their equally violent opponents, have no literary value.

16th-Century Moralists and Political Writers.—The religious dissensions and political disturbances of the time could not fail to exert an influence on ethical and philosophical thought. Yet, as we have said, the century was Montaigne. not prolific of pure philosophical speculation. The scholastic tradition, though long sterile, still survived, and with it the habit of composing in Latin all works in any way connected with philosophy. The Logic of Ramus in 1555 is cited as the first departure from this rule. Other philosophical works are few, and chiefly express the doubt and the freethinking which were characteristic of the time. This doubt assumes the form of positive religious scepticism only in the Cymbalum mundi of Bonaventure des Periers, a remarkable series of dialogues which excited a great storm, and ultimately drove the author to commit suicide. The Cymbalum mundi is a curious anticipation of the 18th century. The literature of doubt, however, was to receive its principal accession in the famous essays of Michel Eyguem, seigneur de Montaigne (1533-1592). It would be a mistake to imagine the existence of any sceptical propaganda in this charming and popular book. Its principle is not scepticism but egotism; and as the author was profoundly sceptical, this quality necessarily rather than intentionally appears. We have here to deal only very superficially with this as with other famous books, but it cannot be doubted that it expresses the mental attitude of the latter part of the century as completely as Rabelais expresses the mental attitude of the early part. There is considerably less vigour and life in this attitude. Inquiry and protest have given way to a placid conviction that there is not much to be found out, and that it does not much matter; the erudition though abundant is less indiscriminate, and is taken in and given out with less gusto; exuberant drollery has given way to quiet irony; and though neither business nor pleasure is decried, both are regarded rather as useful pastimes incident to the life of man than with the eager appetite of the Renaissance. From the purely literary point of view, the style is remarkable from its absence of pedantry In construction, and yet for its rich vocabulary and picturesque brilliancy. The follower and imitator of Montaigne, Pierre Charron (1541-1603), carried his master’s scepticism to a somewhat more positive degree. His principal book, De la sagesse, scarcely deserves the comparative praise which Pope has given it. On the other hand Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621), a lawyer and orator, takes the positive rather than the negative side in morality, and regards the vicissitudes in human affairs from the religious and theological point of view in a series of works characterized by the special merit of the style of great orators.

The revolutionary and innovating instinct which showed itself in the 16th century with reference to church government and doctrine spread naturally enough to political matters. The intolerable disorder of the religious wars naturally set the thinkers of the age speculating on the doctrines of government in general. The favourite and general study of antiquity helped this tendency, and the great accession of royal power in all the monarchies of Europe invited a speculative if not a practical reaction. The persecutions of the Protestants naturally provoked a republican spirit among them, and the violent antipathy of the League to the houses of Valois and Bourbon made its partisans adopt almost openly the principles of democracy and tyrannicide.

The greatest political writer of the age is Jean Bodin (1530-1596), whose République is founded partly on speculative considerations like the political theories of the ancients, and partly on an extended historical inquiry. Bodin, Bodin. like most lawyers who have taken the royalist side, is for unlimited monarchy, but notwithstanding this, he condemns religious persecution and discourages slavery. In his speculations on the connexion between forms of government and natural causes, he serves as a link between Aristotle and Montesquieu. On the other hand, the causes which we have mentioned made a large number of writers adopt opposite conclusions. Étienne de la Boétie (1530-1563), the friend of Montaigne’s youth, composed the Contre un or Discours de la servitude volontaire, a protest against the monarchical theory. The boldness of the protest and the affectionate admiration of Montaigne have given la Boétie a much higher reputation than any extant work of his actually deserves. The Contre un is a kind of prize essay, full of empty declamation borrowed from the ancients, and showing no grasp of the practical conditions of politics. Not much more historically based, but far more vigorous and original, is the Franco-Gallia of François Hotmann (1524-1590), a work which appeared both in Latin and French, which extols the authority of the states-general, represents them as direct successors of the political institutions of Gauls and Franks, and maintains the 127 right of insurrection. In the last quarter of the century political animosity knew no bounds. The Protestants beheld a divine instrument in Poltrot de Méré, the Catholics in Jacques Clément. The Latin treatises of Hubert Languet (1518-1581) and Buchanan formally vindicated—the first, like Hotmann, the right of rebellion based on an original contract between prince and people, the second the right of tyrannicide. Indeed, as Montaigne confesses, divine authorization for political violence was claimed and denied by both parties according as the possession or the expectancy of power belonged to each, and the excesses of the preachers and pamphleteers knew no bounds.

Every one, however, was not carried away. The literary merits of the chancellor Michel de l’Hôpital (1507-1573) are not very great, but his efforts to promote peace and moderation were unceasing. On the other side Lanoue, with far greater literary gifts, pursued the same ends, and pointed out the ruinous consequences of continued dissension. Du Plessis Mornay took a part in political discussion even more important than that which he bore in religious polemics, and was of the utmost service to Henri Quatre in defending his cause against the League, as was also Hurault, another author of state papers. Du Vair, already mentioned, powerfully assisted the same cause by his successful defence of the Salic law, the disregard of which by the Leaguer states-general was intended to lead to the admission of the Spanish claim to the crown. But the foremost work against Satire Ménippée. the League was the famous Satire Ménippée (1594), in a literary point of view one of the most remarkable of political books. The Ménippée was the work of no single author, but was due, it is said, to the collaboration of five, Pierre Leroi, who has the credit of the idea, Jacques Gillot, Florent Chrétien, Nicolas Rapin (1541-1596) and Pierre Pithou (1539-1596), with some assistance in verse from Passerat and Gilles Durand. The book is a kind of burlesque report of the meeting of the states-general, called for the purpose of supporting the views of the League in 1593. It gives an account of the procession of opening, and then we have the supposed speeches of the principal characters—the duc de Mayenne, the papal legate, the rector of the university (a ferocious Leaguer) and others. But by far the most remarkable is that attributed to Claude d’Aubray, the leader of the Tiers État, and said to be written by Pithou, in which all the evils of the time and the malpractices of the leaders of the League are exposed and branded. The satire is extraordinarily bitter and yet perfectly good-humoured. It resembles in character rather that of Butler, who unquestionably imitated it, than any other. The style is perfectly suited to the purpose, having got rid of almost all vestiges of the cumbrousness of the older tongue without losing its picturesque quaintness. It is no wonder that, as we are told by contemporaries, it did more for Henri Quatre than all other writings in his cause. In connexion with politics some mention of legal orators and writers may be necessary. In 1539 the ordinance of Villers-Cotterets enjoined the exclusive use of the French language in legal procedure. The bar and bench of France during the century produced, however, besides those names already mentioned in other connexions, only one deserving of special notice, that of Étienne Pasquier (1529-1615), author of a celebrated speech against the right of the Jesuits to take part in public teaching. This he inserted in his great work, Recherches de la France, a work dealing with almost every aspect of French history whether political, antiquarian or literary.

16th-Century Savants.—One more division, and only one, that of scientific and learned writers pure and simple, remains. Much of the work of this kind during the period was naturally done in Latin, the vulgar tongue of the learned. But in France, as in other countries, the study of the classics led to a vast number of translations, and it so happened that one of the translators deserves as a prose writer a rank among the highest. Many of the authors already mentioned contributed to the literature of translation. Des Periers translated the Platonic dialogue Lysis, la Boétie some works of Xenophon and Plutarch, du Vair the De corona, the In Ctesiphontem and the Pro Milone. Salel attempted the Iliad, Belleau the false Anacreon, Baïf some plays of Plautus and Terence. Besides these Lefèvre d’Étaples gave a version of the Bible, Saliat one of Herodotus, and Louis Leroi (1510-1577), not to be confounded with the part author of the Ménippée, many works of Plato, Aristotle and other Greek writers. But while most if not all of these translators owed the merits of their work to their originals, and deserved, much more deserve, to be read only by those to whom those originals are Amyot. sealed, Jacques Amyot (1513-1593), bishop of Auxerre, takes rank as a French classic by his translations of Plutarch, Longus and Heliodorus. The admiration which Amyot excited in his own time was immense. Montaigne declares that it was thanks to him that his contemporaries knew how to speak and to write, and the Academy in the next age, though not too much inclined to honour its predecessors, ranked him as a model. His Plutarch, which had an enormous influence at the time, and coloured perhaps more than any classic the thoughts and writings of the 16th century, both in French and English, was then considered his masterpiece. Nowadays perhaps, and from the purely literary standpoint, that position would be assigned to his exquisite version of the exquisite story of Daphnis and Chloe. It is needless to say that absolute fidelity and exact scholarship are not the pre-eminent merits of these versions. They are not philological exercises, but works of art.

On the other hand, Claude Fauchet (1530-1601) in two antiquarian works, Antiquités gauloises et françoises and L’Origine de la langue et de la poésie française, displays a remarkable critical faculty in sweeping away the fables which had encumbered history. Fauchet had the (for his time) wonderful habit of consulting manuscripts, and we owe to him literary notices of many of the trouvères. At the same time François Grudé, sieur de la Croix du Maine (1552-1592), and Antoine Duverdier (1544-1600) founded the study of bibliography in France. Pasquier’s Recherches, already alluded to, carries out the principles of Fauchet independently, and besides treating the history of the past in a true critical spirit, supplies us with voluminous and invaluable information on contemporary politics and literature. He has, moreover, the merit which Fauchet had not, of being an excellent writer. Henri Estienne [Stephanus] (1528-1598) also deserves notice in this place, both for certain treatises on the French language, full of critical crotchets, and also for his curious Apologie pour Hérodote, a remarkable book not particularly easy to class. It consists partly of a defence of its nominal subject, partly of satirical polemics on the Protestant side, and is filled almost equally with erudition and with the buffoonery and fatrasie of the time. The book, indeed, was much too Rabelaisian to suit the tastes of those in whose defence it was composed.

The 16th century is somewhat too early for us to speak of science, and such science as was then composed falls for the most part outside French literature. The famous potter, Bernard Palissy (1510-1590), however, was not much less skilful as a fashioner of words than as a fashioner of pots, and his description of the difficulties of his experiments in enamelling, which lasted sixteen years, is well known. The great surgeon Ambrose Paré (c. 1510-1590) was also a writer, and his descriptions of his military experiences at Turin, Metz and elsewhere have all the charm of the 16th-century memoir. The only other writers who require special mention are Olivier de Serres (1539-1619), who composed, under the title of Théâtre d’agriculture, a complete treatise on the various operations of rural economy, and Jacques du Fouilloux (1521-1580), who wrote on hunting (La Vénerie). Both became extremely popular and were frequently reprinted.

17th-Century Poetry.—It is not always easy or possible to make the end or the beginning of a literary epoch synchronize exactly with historical dates. It happens, however, that for once the beginning of the 17th century coincides Malherbe. almost exactly with an entire revolution in French literature. The change of direction and of critical standard given by François de Malherbe (1556-1628) to poetry was to last for two whole 128 centuries, and to determine, not merely the language and complexion, but also the form of French verse during the whole of that time. Accidentally, or as a matter of logical consequence (it would not be proper here to attempt to decide the question), poetry became almost synonymous with drama. It is true, as we shall have to point out, that there were, in the early part of the 17th century at least, poets, properly so called, of no contemptible merit. But their merit, in itself respectable, sank in comparison with the far greater merit of their dramatic rivals. Théophile de Viau and Racan, Voiture and Saint-Amant cannot for a moment be mentioned in the same rank with Corneille. It is certainly curious, if it is not something more than curious, that this decline in poetry proper should have coincided with the so-called reforms of Malherbe. The tradition of respect for this elder and more gifted Boileau was at one time all-powerful in France, and, notwithstanding the Romantic movement, is still strong. In rejecting a large number of the importations of the Ronsardists, he certainly did good service. But it is difficult to avoid ascribing in great measure to his influence the origin of the chief faults of modern French poetry, and modern French in general, as compared with the older language. He pronounced against “poetic diction” as such, forbade the overlapping (enjambement) of verse, insisted that the middle pause should be of sense as well as sound, and that rhyme must satisfy eye as well as ear. Like Pope, he sacrificed everything to “correctness,” and, unluckily for French, the sacrifice was made at a time when no writer of an absolutely supreme order had yet appeared in the language. With Shakespeare and Milton, not to mention scores of writers only inferior to them, safely garnered, Pope and his followers could do us little harm. Corneille and Molière unfortunately came after Malherbe. Yet it would be unfair to this writer, however badly we may think of his influence, to deny him talent, and even a certain amount of poetical inspiration. He had not felt his own influence, and the very influences which he despised and proscribed produced in him much tolerable and some admirable verse, though he is not to be named as a poet with Regnier, who had the courage, the sense and the good taste to oppose and ridicule his innovations. Of Malherbe’s school, Honorat de Bueil, marquis de Racan (1589-1670), and François de Maynard (1582-1646) were the most remarkable. The former was a true poet, though not a very strong one. Like his master, he is best when he follows the models whom that master contemned. Perhaps more than any other poet, he set the example of the classical alexandrine, the smooth and melodious but monotonous and rather effeminate measure which Racine was to bring to the highest perfection, and which his successors, while they could not improve its smoothness, were to make more and more monotonous until the genius of Victor Hugo once more broke up its facile polish, supplied its stiff uniformity, and introduced vigour, variety, colour and distinctness in the place of its feeble sameness and its pale indecision. But the vigour, not to say the licence, of the 16th century could not thus die all at once. In Théophile de Viau (1591-1626) the early years of the 17th century had their Villon. The later poet was almost as unfortunate as the earlier, and almost as disreputable, but he had a great share of poetical and not a small one of critical power. The étoile enragée under which he complains that he was born was at least kind to him in this respect; and his readers, after he had been forgotten for two centuries, have once more done him justice. Racan and Théophile were followed in the second quarter of the century by two schools which sufficiently well represented the tendencies of each. The first was that of Vincent Voiture (1598-1648), Isaac de Benserade (1612-1691), and other poets such as Claude de Maleville (1597-1647), author of La Belle Matineuse, who were connected more or less with the famous literary coterie of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. Théophile was less worthily succeeded by a class, it can hardly be called a school of poets, some of whom, like Gérard Saint-Amant (1594-1660), wrote drinking songs of merit and other light pieces; others, like Paul Scarron (1610-1660) and Sarrasin (1603? 4? 5?-1654), devoted themselves rather to burlesque of serious verse. Most of the great dramatic authors of the time also wrote miscellaneous poetry, and there was even an epic school of the most singular kind, in ridiculing and discrediting which Boileau for once did undoubtedly good service. The Pucelle of Jean Chapelain (1595-1674), the unfortunate author who was deliberately trained and educated for a poet, who enjoyed for some time a sort of dictatorship in French literature on the strength of his forthcoming work, and at whom from the day of its publication every critic of French literature has agreed to laugh, was the most famous and perhaps the worst of these. But Georges de Scudéry (1601-1667) wrote an Alaric, the Père le Moyne (1602-1671) a Saint Louis, Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (1595-1676), a dramatist and critic of some note, a Clovis, and Saint-Amant a Moïse, which were not much better, though Théophile Gautier in his Grotesques has valiantly defended these and other contemporary versifiers. And indeed it cannot be denied that even the epics, especially Saint Louis, contain flashes of finer poetry than France was to produce for more than a century outside of the drama. Some of the lighter poets and classes of poetry just alluded to also produced some remarkable verse. The Précieuses of the Hôtel Rambouillet, with all their absurdities, encouraged if they did not produce good literary work. In their society there is no doubt that a great reformation of manners took place, if not of morals, and that the tendency to literature elegant and polished, yet not destitute of vigour, which marks the 17th century, was largely developed side by side with much scandal-mongering and anecdotage. Many of the authors whom these influences inspired, such as Voiture, Saint-Évremond and others, have been or will be noticed. But even such poets and wits as Antoine Baudouin de Sénecé (1643-1737), Jean de Segrais (1624-1701), Charles Faulure de Ris, sieur de Charleval (1612-1693), Antoine Godeau (1605-1672), Jean Ogier de Gombaud (1590-1666), are not without interest in the history of literature; while if Charles Cotin (1604-1682) sinks below this level and deserves Molière’s caricature of him as Trissotin in Les Femmes savantes, Gilles de Ménage (1630-1692) certainly rises above it, notwithstanding the companion satire of Vadius. Ménage’s name naturally suggests the Ana which arose at this time and were long fashionable, stores of endless gossip, sometimes providing instruction and often amusement. The Guirlande de Julie, in which most of the poets of the time celebrated Julie d’Angennes, daughter of the marquise de Rambouillet, is perhaps the best of all such albums, and Voiture, the typical poet of the coterie, was certainly the best writer of vers de société who is known to us. The poetical war which arose between the Uranistes, the followers of Voiture, and the Jobistes, those of Benserade, produced reams of sonnets, epigrams and similar verses. This habit of occasional versification continued long. It led as a less important consequence to the rhymed Gazettes of Jean Loret (d. 1665), which recount in octosyllabic verse of a light and lively kind the festivals and court events of the early years of Louis XIV. It led also to perhaps the most remarkable non-dramatic poetry of the century, the Contes and Fables of Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695). No French writer is better known than la Fontaine, and there is no need to dilate on his merits. It has been well said that he completes Molière, and that the two together give something to French literature which no other literature possesses. Yet la Fontaine is after all only a writer of fabliaux, in the language and with the manners of his own century.

All the writers we have mentioned belong more or less to the first half of the century, and so do Valentin Conrart (1603-1675), Antoine Furetière (1626-1688), Chapelle (Claude Emmanuel) l’Huillier (1626-1686), and others not worth special mention. The latter half of the century is far less productive, and the poetical quality of its production is even lower than the quantity. In it Boileau (1636-1711) is the chief poetical figure. Next to him can only be mentioned Madame Deshoulières (1638-1694), Guillaume de Brébeuf (1618-1661), the translator of Lucan, Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), the composer of opera libretti. Boileau’s satire, where it has much merit, is usually borrowed direct from Horace. He had a certain faculty as a critic of the slashing order, and might have profitably used it if he had written in prose. But of his poetry it must be said, not so much that it is 129 bad, as that it is not, in strictness, poetry at all, and the same is generally true of all those who followed him.

17th-Century Drama.—We have already seen how the medieval theatre was formed, and how in the second half of the 16th century it met with a formidable rival in the classical drama of Jodelle and Garnier. In 1588 mysteries had been prohibited, and with the prohibition of the mysteries the Confraternity of the Passion lost the principal part of its reason for existence. The other bodies and societies of amateur actors had already perished, and at length the Hôtel de Bourgogne itself, the home of the confraternity, had been handed over to a regular troop of actors, while companies of strollers, whose life has been vividly depicted in the Roman comique of Scarron and the Capitaine Fracasse of Théophile Gautier, wandered all about the provinces. The old farce was for a time maintained or revived by Tabarin, a remarkable figure in dramatic history, of whom but little is known. The great dramatic author of the first quarter of the 17th century was Alexandre Hardy (1569-1631), who surpassed even Heywood Hardy. in fecundity, and very nearly approached the portentous productiveness of Lope de Vega. Seven hundred is put down as the modest total of Hardy’s pieces, but not much more than a twentieth of these exist in print. From these latter we can judge Hardy. They are hardly up to the level of the worst specimens of the contemporary Elizabethan theatre, to which, however, they bear a certain resemblance. Marston’s Insatiate Countess and the worst parts of Chapman’s Bussy d’Ambois may give English readers some notion of them. Yet Hardy was not totally devoid of merit. He imitated and adapted Spanish literature, which was at this time to France what Italian was in the century before and English in the century after, in the most indiscriminate manner. But he had a considerable command of grandiloquent and melodramatic expression, a sound theory if not a sound practice of tragic writing, and that peculiar knowledge of theatrical art and of the taste of the theatrical public which since his time has been the special possession of the French playwright. It is instructive to compare the influence of his irregular and faulty genius with that of the regular and precise Malherbe. From Hardy to Rotrou is, in point of literary interest, a great step, and from Rotrou to Corneille a greater. Yet the theory of Hardy only wanted the genius of Rotrou and Corneille to produce the latter. Jean de Rotrou (1610-1650) has been called the French Marlowe, and there is Rotrou. a curious likeness and yet a curious contrast between the two poets. The best parts of Rotrou’s two best plays, Venceslas and St Genest, are quite beyond comparison in respect of anything that preceded them, and the central speech of the last-named play will rank with anything in French dramatic poetry. Contemporary with Rotrou were other dramatic writers of considerable dramatic importance, most of them distinguished by the faults of the Spanish school, its declamatory rodomontade, its conceits, and its occasionally preposterous action. Jean de Schélandre (d. 1635) has left us a remarkable work in Tyr et Sidon, which exemplifies in practice, as its almost more remarkable preface by François Ogier defends in principle, the English-Spanish model. Théophile de Viau in Pyrame et Thisbé and in Pasiphaé produced a singular mixture of the classicism of Garnier and the extravagancies of Hardy. Scudéry in l’Amour tyrannique and other plays achieved a considerable success. The Marianne of Tristan (1601-1655) and the Sophonisbe of Jean de Mairet (1604-1686) are the chief pieces of their authors. Mairet resembles Marston in something more than his choice of subject. Another dramatic writer of some eminence is Pierre du Ryer (1606-1648). But the fertility of France at this moment in dramatic authors was immense; nearly 100 are enumerated in the first quarter Corneille. of the century. The early plays of Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) showed all the faults of his contemporaries combined with merits to which none of them except Rotrou, and Rotrou himself only in part, could lay claim. His first play was Mélite, a comedy, and in Clitandre, a tragedy, he soon produced what may perhaps be not inconveniently taken as the typical piece of the school of Hardy. A full account of Corneille may be found elsewhere. It is sufficient to say here that his importance in French literature is quite as great in the way of influence and example as in the way of intellectual excellence. The Cid and the Menteur are respectively the first examples of French tragedy and comedy which can be called modern. But this influence and example did not at first find many imitators. Corneille was a member of Richelieu’s band of five poets. Of the other four Rotrou alone deserves the title; the remaining three, the prolific abbé de Boisrobert, Guillaume Colletet (whose most valuable work, a MS. Lives of Poets, was never printed, and burnt by the Communards in 1871), and Claude de Lestoile (1597-1651), are as dramatists worthy of no notice, nor were they soon followed by others more worthy. Yet before many years had passed the examples which Corneille had set in tragedy and in comedy were followed up by unquestionably the greatest comic writer, and by one who long held the position of the greatest tragic writer of France. Beginning with mere farces of the Italian type, and passing from these to comedies still of an Italian character, it was in Les Précieuses ridicules, acted in 1659, that Molière.
Racine. Molière (1622-1673), in the words of a spectator, hit at last on “la bonne comédie.” The next fifteen years comprise the whole of his best known work, the finest expression beyond doubt of a certain class of comedy that any literature has produced. The tragic masterpieces of Racine (1639-1699) were not far from coinciding with the comic masterpieces of Molière, for, with the exception of the remarkable aftergrowth of Esther and Athalie, they were produced chiefly between 1667 and 1677. Both Racine and Molière fall into the class of writers who require separate mention. Here we can only remark that both to a certain extent committed and encouraged a fault which distinguished much subsequent French dramatic literature. This was the too great individualizing of one point in a character, and the making the man or woman nothing but a blunderer, a lover, a coxcomb, a tyrant and the like. The very titles of French plays show this influence—they are Le Grondeur, Le Joueur, &c. The complexity of human character is ignored. This fault distinguishes both Molière and Racine from writers of the very highest order; and in especial it distinguishes the comedy of Molière and the tragedy of Racine from the comedy and tragedy of Shakespeare. In all probability this and other defects of the French drama (which are not wholly apparent in the work of Molière and Corneille, are shown in their most favourable light in those of Racine, and appear in all their deformity in the successors of the latter) arise from the rigid adoption of the Aristotelian theory of the drama with its unities and other restrictions, especially as transmitted by Horace through Boileau. This adoption was very much due to the influence of the French Academy, which was founded unofficially by Conrart in 1629, which received official standing six years later, The Academy. and which continued the tradition of Malherbe in attempting constantly to school and correct, as the phrase went, the somewhat disorderly instincts of the early French stage. Even the Cid was formally censured for irregularity by it. But it is fair to say that François Hédélin, abbé d’Aubignac (1604-1676), whose Pratique du théâtre is the most wooden of the critical treatises of the time, was not an academician. It is difficult to say whether the subordination of all other classes of composition to the drama, which has ever since been characteristic of French literature, was or was not due to the predilection of Richelieu, the main protector if not exactly the founder of the Academy, for the theatre. Among the immediate successors and later contemporaries of the three great dramatists we do not find any who deserve high rank as tragedians, though there are some whose comedies are more than respectable. It is at least significant that the restrictions imposed by the academic theory on the comic drama were far less severe than those which tragedy had to undergo. The latter was practically confined, in respect of sources of attraction, to the dexterous manipulation of the unities; the interest of a plot attenuated as much as possible, and intended to produce, instead of pity a mild sympathy, and instead of terror a mild alarm (for the purists decided against Corneille that “admiration was not 130 a tragic passion”); and lastly the composition of long tirades of smooth but monotonous verses, arranged in couplets tipped with delicately careful rhymes. Only Thomas Corneille (1625-1709), the inheritor of an older tradition and of a great name, deserves to be excepted from the condemnation to be passed on the lesser tragedians of this period. He was unfortunate in possessing his brother’s name, and in being, like him, too voluminous in his compositions; but Camma, Ariane, Le Comte d’Essex, are not tragedies to be despised. On the other hand, the names of Jean de Campistron (1656-1723) and Nicolas Pradon (1632-1698) mainly serve to point injurious comparisons; Joseph François Duché (1668-1704) and Antoine La Fosse (1653-1708) are of still less importance, and Quinault’s tragedies are chiefly remarkable because he had the good sense to give up writing them and to take to opera. The general excellence of French comedy, on the other hand, was sufficiently vindicated. Besides the splendid sum of Molière’s work, the two great tragedians had each, in Le Menteur and Les Plaideurs, set a capital example to their successors, which was fairly followed. David Augustin de Brueys (1640-1723) and Jean Palaprat (1650-1721) brought out once more the ever new Advocat Patelin besides the capital Grondeur already referred to. Quinault and Campistron wrote fair comedies. Florent Carton Dancourt (1661-1726), Charles Rivière Dufresny (c. 1654-1724), Edmond Boursault (1638-1701), were all comic writers of considerable merit. But the chief comic dramatist of the latter period of the 17th century was Jean François Regnard (1655-1709), whose Joueur and Légataire are comedies almost of the first rank.

17th-Century Fiction.—In the department of literature which comes between poetry and prose, that of romance-writing, the 17th century, excepting one remarkable development, was not very fertile. It devoted itself to so Heroic Romance. many new or changed forms of literature that it had no time to anticipate the modern novel. Yet at the beginning of the century one very curious form of romance-writing was diligently cultivated, and its popularity, for the time immense, prevented the introduction of any stronger style. It is remarkable that, as the first quarter of the 17th century was pre-eminently the epoch of Spanish influence in France, the distinctive satire of Cervantes should have been less imitated than the models which Cervantes satirized. However this may be, the romances of 1600 to 1650 form a class of literature vast, isolated, and, perhaps, of all such classes of literature most utterly obsolete and extinct. Taste, affectation or antiquarian diligence have, at one time or another, restored to a just, and sometimes a more than just, measure of reputation most of the literary relics of the past. Romances of chivalry, fabliaux, early drama, Provençal poetry, prose chronicles, have all had, and deservedly, their rehabilitators. But Polexandre and Cléopâtre, Clélie and the Grand Cyrus, have been too heavy for all the industry and energy of literary antiquarians. As we have already hinted, the nearest ancestry which can be found for them is the romances of the Amadis type. But the Amadis, and in a less degree its followers, although long, are long in virtue of incident. The romances of the Clélie type are long in virtue of interminable discourse, moralizing and description. Their manner is not unlike that of the Arcadia and the Euphues which preceded them in England; and they express in point of style the tendency which simultaneously manifested itself all over Europe at this period, and whose chief exponents were Gongora in Spain, Marini in Italy, and Lyly in England. Everybody knows the Carte de Tendre which originally appeared in Clélie, while most people have heard of the shepherds and shepherdesses who figure in the Astrée of Honoré D’Urfé (1568-1625), on the borders of the Lignon; but here general knowledge ends, and there is perhaps no reason why it should go much further. It is sufficient to say that Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) principally devotes herself in the books above mentioned to laborious gallantry and heroism, La Calprénède (1610-1663) in Cassandre et Cléopâtre to something which might have been the historical novel if it had been constructed on a less preposterous scale, and Marin le Roy de Gomberville (1600-1647) in Polexandre to moralizings and theological discussions on Jansenist principles, while Pierre Camus, bishop of Belley (1582-1652), in Palombe and others, approached still nearer to the strictly religious story. In the latter part of the century, the example of La Fontaine, though he himself wrote in poetry, helped to recall the tale-tellers of France to an occupation more worthy of them, more suitable to the genius of the literature, and more likely to last. The reaction against the Clélie school produced first Madame de Villedieu (Cathérine Desjardins) (1632-1692), a fluent and facile novelist, who enjoyed great but not enduring popularity. The form which the prose tale took at this period was that of the fairy story. Perrault (1628-1703) and Madame d’Aulnoy (d. 1705) composed specimens of this kind which have never ceased to be popular since. Hamilton (1646-1720), the author of the well-known Mémoires du comte de Gramont, wrote similar stories of extraordinary merit in style and ingenuity. There is yet a third class of prose writing which deserves to be mentioned. It also may probably be traced to Spanish influence, that is to say, to the picaresque romances which the 16th and 17th centuries produced in Spain in large numbers. The most remarkable example of this is the Roman comique of the burlesque writer Scarron. The Roman bourgeois of Antoine Furetière (1619-1688) also deserves mention as a collection of pictures of the life of the time, arranged in the most desultory manner, but drawn with great vividness, observation and skill. A remarkable writer who had great influence on Molière has also to be mentioned in this connexion rather than in any other. This is Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655), who, besides composing doubtful comedies and tragedies, writing political pamphlets, and exercising the task of literary criticism in objecting to Scarron’s burlesques, produced in his Histoires comiques des états et empires de la lune et du soleil, half romantic and half satirical compositions, in which some have seen the original of Gulliver’s Travels, in which others have discovered only a not very successful imitation of Rabelais, and which, without attempting to decide these questions, may fairly be ranked in the same class of fiction with the masterpieces of Swift and Rabelais, though of course at an immense distance below them. One other work, and in literary influence perhaps the most remarkable of its kind in the century, remains. Madame de Lafayette, Marie de la Vergne (1634-1692), the friend of La Rochefoucauld and of Madame de Sévigné, though she did not exactly anticipate the modern novel, showed the way to it in her stories, the principal of which are Zaïde and still more La Princesse de Clèves. The latter, though a long way from Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, or Tom Jones, is a longer way still from Polexandre or the Arcadia. The novel becomes in it no longer a more or less fictitious chronicle, but an attempt at least at the display of character. La Princesse de Clèves has never been one of the works widely popular out of their own country, nor perhaps does it deserve such popularity, for it has more grace than strength; but as an original effort in an important direction its historical value is considerable. But with this exception, the art of fictitious prose composition, except on a small scale, is certainly not one in which the century excelled, nor are any of the masterpieces which it produced to be ranked in this class.

17th-Century Prose.—If, however, this was the case, it cannot be said that French prose as a whole was unproductive at this time. On the contrary, it was now, and only now, that it attained the strength and perfection for which J. G. de Balzac and modern French prose. it has been so long renowned, and which has perhaps, by a curious process of compensation, somewhat deteriorated since the restoration of poetry proper in France. The prose Malherbe of French literature was Jean Guez de Balzac (1594-1654). The writers of the 17th century had practically created the literary language of prose, but they had not created a prose style. The charm of Rabelais, of Amyot, of Montaigne, and of the numerous writers of tales and memoirs whom we have noticed, was a charm of exuberance, of naïveté, of picturesque effect—in short, of a mixture of poetry and prose, rather than of prose proper. Sixteenth-century French prose is a delightful instrument in the hands of men and women of genius, but in the hands of those who have not genius it is full 131 of defects, and indeed is nearly unreadable. Now, prose is essentially an instrument of all work. The poet who has not genius had better not write at all; the prose writer often may and sometimes must dispense with this qualification. He has need, therefore, of a suitable machine to help him to perform his task, and this machine it is the glory of Balzac to have done more than any other person to create. He produced himself no great work, his principal writings being letters, a few discourses and dissertations, and a work entitled Le Socrate chrétien, a sort of treatise on political theology. But if the matter of his work is not of the first importance, its manner is of a very different value. Instead of the endless diffuseness of the preceding century, its ill-formed or rather unformed sentences, and its haphazard periods, we find clauses, sentences and paragraphs distinctly planned, shaped and balanced, a cadence introduced which is rhythmical but not metrical, and, in short, prose which is written knowingly instead of the prose which is unwittingly talked. It has been well said of him that he “écrit pour écrire”; and such a man, it is evident, if he does nothing else, sets a valuable example to those who write because they have something to say. Voiture seconded Balzac without much intending to do so. His prose style, also chiefly contained in letters, is lighter than that of his contemporary, and helped to gain for French prose the tradition of vivacity and sparkle which it has always possessed, as well as that of correctness and grace.

17th-century History.—In historical composition, especially in the department of memoirs, this period was exceedingly rich. At last there was written, in French, an entire history of France. The author was François Eudes de Mézeray (1610-1683), whose work, though not exhibiting the perfection of style at which some of his contemporaries had already arrived, and though still more or less uncritical, yet deserves the title of history. The example was followed by a large number of writers, some of extended works, some of histories in part. Mézeray himself is said to have had a considerable share in the Histoire du roi Henri le grand by the archbishop Péréfixe (1605-1670); Louis Maimbourg (1610-1686) wrote histories of the Crusades and of the League; Paul Pellisson (1624-1693) gave a history of Louis XIV. and a more valuable Mémoire in defence of the superintendent Fouquet. Still later in the century, or at the beginning of the next, the Père d’Orléans (1644-1698) wrote a history of the revolutions of England, the Père Daniel (1649-1728), like d’Orléans a Jesuit, composed a lengthy history of France and a shorter one on the French military forces. Finally, at the end of the period, comes the great ecclesiastical history of Claude Fleury (1640-1723), a work which perhaps belongs more to the section of erudition than to that of history proper. Three small treatises, however, composed by different authors towards the middle part of the century, supply remarkable instances of prose style in its application to history. These are the Conjurations du comte de Fiesque, written by the famous Cardinal de Retz (1613-1679), the Conspiration de Walstein of Sarrasin, and the Conjuration des Espagnols contre Venise, composed in 1672 by the abbé de Saint-Réal (1639-1692), the author of various historical and critical works deserving less notice. These three works, whose similarity of subject and successive composition at short intervals leave little doubt that a certain amount of intentional rivalry animated the two later authors, are among the earliest and best examples of the monographs for which French, in point of grace of style and lucidity of exposition, has long been the most successful vehicle of expression among European languages. Among other writers of history, as distinguished from memoirs, need only be noticed Agrippa d’Aubigné, whose Histoire universelle closed his long and varied list of works, and Varillas (1624-1696), a historian chiefly remarkable for his extreme untrustworthiness. In point of memoirs and correspondence the period is hardly less fruitful than that which preceded it. The Régistres-Journaux of Pierre de l’Étoile (1540-1611) consist of a diary something of the Pepys character, kept for nearly forty years by a person in high official employment. The memoirs of Sully (1560-1641), published under a curious title too long to quote, date also from this time.

Henri IV. himself has left a considerable correspondence, which is not destitute of literary merit, though not equal to the memoirs of his wife. What are commonly called Richelieu’s Memoirs were probably written to his order; his Testament politique may be his own. Henri de Rohan (1579-1638) has not memoirs of the first value. Both this and earlier times found chronicle in the singular Historiettes of Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux (1619-1690), a collection of anecdotes, frequently scandalous, reaching from the times of Henri IV. to those of Louis XIV., to which may be joined the letters of Guy Patin (1602-1676). The early years of the latter monarch and the period of the Fronde had the cardinal de Retz himself, than whom no one was certainly better qualified for historian, not to mention a crowd of others, of whom we may mention Madame de Motteville (1621-1689), Jean Hérault de Gourville (1625-1703), Mademoiselle de Montpensier (“La Grande Mademoiselle”) (1627-1693), Conrart, Turenne and Mathieu Molé (1584-1663), François du Val, marquis de Fontenay-Mareuil (1594-1655), Arnauld d’Andilly (1588-1670). From this time memoirs and memoir writers were ever multiplying. The queen of them all is Madame de Sevigné (1626-1696), on whom, as on most of the great and better-known writers whom we have had and shall have to mention, it is impossible here to dwell at length. The last half of the century produced crowds of similar but inferior writers. The memoirs of Roger de Bussy-Rabutin (1618-1693) (author of a kind of scandalous chronicle called Histoire amoureuse des Gaules) and of Madame de Maintenon (1635-1719) perhaps deserve notice above the others. But this was in truth the style of composition in which the age most excelled. Memoir-writing became the occupation not so much of persons who made history, as was the case from Comines to Retz, as of those who, having culture, leisure and opportunity of observation, devoted themselves to the task of recording the deeds of others, and still more of regarding the incidents of the busy, splendid and cultivated if somewhat frivolous world of the court, in which, from the time of Louis XIV.’s majority, the political life of the nation and almost its whole history were centred. Many, if not most, of these writers were women, who thus founded the celebrity of the French lady for managing her mother-tongue, and justified by results the taste and tendencies of the blue-stockings and précieuses of the Hôtel Rambouillet and similar coteries. The life which these writers saw before them furnished them with a subject to be handled with the minuteness and care to which they had been accustomed in the ponderous romances of the Clélie type, but also with the wit and terseness hereditary in France, and only temporarily absent in those ponderous compositions. The efforts of Balzac and the Academy supplied a suitable language and style, and the increasing tendency towards epigrammatic moralizing, which reached its acme in La Rochefoucauld (1663-1680) and La Bruyère (1639-1696), added in most cases point and attractiveness to their writings.

17th-Century Philosophers and Theologians.—To these moralists we might, perhaps, not inappropriately pass at once. But it seems better to consider first the philosophical and theological developments of the age, which must share Descartes. with its historical experiences and studies the credit of producing these writers. Philosophy proper, as we have already had occasion to remark, had hitherto made no use of the vulgar tongue. The 16th century had contributed a few vernacular treatises on logic, a considerable body of political and ethical writing, and a good deal of sceptical speculation of a more or less vague character, continued into our present epoch by such writers as François de la Mothe le Vayer (1588-1672), the last representative of the orthodox doubt of Montaigne and Charron. But in metaphysics proper it had not dabbled. The 17th century, on the contrary, was to produce in René Descartes (1596-1650), at once a master of prose style, the greatest of French philosophers, and one of the greatest metaphysicians, not merely of France and of the 17th century, but of all countries and times. Even before Descartes there had been considerable and important developments of metaphysical speculation in France. The first eminent philosopher of French birth was Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). 132 Gassendi devoted himself to the maintenance of a modernized form of the Epicurean doctrines, but he wrote mainly, if not entirely, in Latin. Another sceptical philosopher of a less scientific character was the physicist Gabriel Naudé (1600-1653), who, like many others of the philosophers of the time, was accused of atheism. But as none of these could approach Descartes in philosophical power and originality, so also none has even a fraction of his importance in the history of French literature. Descartes stands with Plato, and possibly Berkeley and Malebranche, at the head of all philosophers in respect of style; and in his case the excellence is far more remarkable than in others, inasmuch as he had absolutely no models, and was forced in a great degree to create the language which he used. The Discours de la méthode is not only one of the epoch-making books of philosophy, it is also one of the epoch-making books of French style. The tradition of his clear and perfect expression was taken up, not merely by his philosophical disciples, but also by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) and the school of Port Royal, who will be noticed presently. The very genius of the Cartesian philosophy was intimately connected with this clearness, distinctness and severity of style; and there is something more than a fanciful contrast between these literary characteristics of Descartes, on the one hand, and the elaborate splendour of Bacon, the knotty and crabbed strength of Hobbes, and the commonplace and almost vulgar slovenliness of Locke. Of the followers of Descartes, putting aside the Port Royalists, by far the most distinguished, both in philosophy and in literature, Malebranche. is Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715). His Recherche de la vérité, admirable as it is for its subtlety and its consecutiveness of thought, is equally admirable for its elegance of style. Malebranche cannot indeed, like his great master, claim absolute originality. But his excellence as a writer is as great as, if not greater than, that of Descartes, and the Recherche remains to this day the one philosophical treatise of great length and abstruseness which, merely as a book, is delightful to read—not like the works of Plato and Berkeley, because of the adventitious graces of dialogue or description, but from the purity and grace of the language, and its admirable adjustment to the purposes of the argument. Yet, for all this, philosophy hardly flourished in France. It was too intimately connected with theological and ecclesiastical questions, and especially with Jansenism, to escape suspicion and persecution. Descartes himself was for much of his life an exile in Holland and Sweden; and though the unquestionable orthodoxy of Malebranche, the strongly religious cast of his works, and the remoteness of the abstruse region in which he sojourned from that of the controversies of the day, protected him, other followers of Descartes were not so fortunate. Holland, indeed, became a kind of city of refuge for students of philosophy, though even in Holland itself they were by no means entirely safe from persecution. By far the most remarkable of French philosophical Bayle. sojourners in the Netherlands was Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), a name not perhaps of the first rank in respect of literary value, but certainly of the first as regards literary influence. Bayle, after oscillating between the two confessions, nominally remained a Protestant in religion. In philosophy he in the same manner oscillated between Descartes and Gassendi, finally resting in an equally nominal Cartesianism. Bayle was, in fact, both in philosophy and in religion, merely a sceptic, with a scepticism at once like and unlike that of Montaigne, and differenced both by temperament and by circumstance—the scepticism of the mere student, exercised more or less in all histories, sciences and philosophies, and intellectually unable or unwilling to take a side. His style is hardly to be called good, being diffuse and often inelegant. But his great dictionary, though one of the most heterogeneous and unmethodical of compositions, exercised an enormous influence. It may be called the Bible of the 18th century, and contains in the germ all the desultory philosophy, the ill-ordered scepticism, and the critical but negatively critical acuteness of the Aufklärung.

We have said that the philosophical, theological and moral tendencies of the century, which produced, with the exception of its dramatic triumphs, all its greatest literary works, are almost inextricably intermingled. Its earliest years, however, bear Jansenists. in theological matters rather the complexion of the previous century. Du Perron and St Francis of Sales survived until nearly the end of its first quarter, and the most remarkable works of the latter bear the dates of 1608 and later. It was not, however, till some years had passed, till the counter-Reformation had reconverted the largest and most powerful portion of the Huguenot party, and till the influence of Jansenius and Descartes had time to work, that the extraordinary outburst of Gallican theology, both in pulpit and in press, took place. The Jansenist controversy may perhaps be awarded the merit of provoking this, as far as writing was concerned. The astonishing eloquence of contemporary pulpit oratory may be set down partly to the zeal for conversion of which du Perron and de Sales had given the example, partly to the same taste of the time which encouraged dramatic performances, for the sermon and the tirade have much in common. Jansenius himself, though a Dutchman by birth, passed much time in France, and it was in France that he found most disciples. These disciples consisted in the first place of the members of the society of Port Royal des Champs, a coterie after the fashion of the time, but one which devoted itself not to sonnets or madrigals but to devotional exercises, study and the teaching of youth. This coterie early Port Royal.
Pascal. adopted the Cartesian philosophy, and the Port Royal Logic was the most remarkable popular handbook of that school. In theology they adopted Jansenism, and were in consequence soon at daggers drawn with the Jesuits, according to the polemical habits of the time. The most distinguished champions on the Jansenist side were Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbé de St Cyran (1581-1643), and Antoine Arnauld (1560-1619), but by far the most important literary results of the quarrel were the famous Provinciales of Pascal, or, to give them their proper title, Lettres écrites à un provincial. Their literary importance consists, not merely in their grace of style, but in the application to serious discussion of the peculiarly polished and quiet irony of which Pascal is the greatest master the world has ever seen. Up to this time controversy had usually been conducted either in the mere bludgeon fashion of the Scaligers and Saumaises—of which in the vernacular the Jesuit François Garasse (1585-1631) had already contributed remarkable examples to literary and moral controversy—or else in a dull and legal style, or lastly under an envelope of Rabelaisian buffoonery such as survives to a considerable extent in the Satire Ménippée. Pascal set the example of combining the use of the most terribly effective weapons with good humour, good breeding and a polished style. The example was largely followed, and the manner of Voltaire and his followers in the 18th century owes at least as much to Pascal as their method and matter do to Bayle. The Jansenists, attacked and persecuted by the civil power, which the Jesuits had contrived to interest, were finally suppressed. But the Provinciales had given them an unapproachable superiority in matter of argument and literature. Their other literary works were inferior, though still remarkable. Antoine Arnauld (the younger, often called “the great”) (1612-1694) and Pierre Nicole (1625-1695) managed their native language with vigour if not exactly with grace. They maintained their orthodoxy by writings, not merely against the Jesuits, but also against the Protestants such as the Perpétuité de la foi due to both, and the Apologie des Catholiques written by Arnauld alone. The latter, besides being responsible for a good deal of the Logic (L’Art de penser) to which we have alluded, wrote also much of a Grammaire générale composed by the Port Royalists for the use of their pupils; but his principal devotion was to theology and theological polemics. To the latter Nicole also contributed Les Visionnaires, Les Imaginaires and other works. The studious recluses of Port Royal also produced a large quantity of miscellaneous literary work, to which full justice has been done in Sainte-Beuve’s well-known volumes.

17th-Century Preachers.—When we think of Gallican theology during the 17th century, it is always with the famous pulpit orators of the period that thought is most busied. Nor is this 133 unjust, for though the most prominent of them all, Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704) was remarkable as a writer of matter intended to be read, not merely as a speaker of matter intended to be heard, this double character is not possessed by most of the orthodox theologians of the time; and even Bossuet, great as is his genius, is more of a rhetorician than of a philosopher or a theologian. In no quarter was the advance of culture more remarkable in France than in the pulpit. We have already had occasion to notice the characteristics of French pulpit eloquence in the 15th and 16th centuries. Though this was very far from destitute of vigour and imagination, the political frenzy of the preachers, and the habit of introducing anecdotic buffoonery, spoilt the eloquence of Maillard and of Raulin, of Boucher and of Rose. The powerful use which the Reformed ministers made of the pulpit stirred up their rivals; the advance in science and classical study added weight and dignity to the matter of their discourses. The improvement of prose style and language provided them with a suitable instrument, and the growth of taste and refinement purged their sermons of grossness and buffoonery, of personal allusions, and even, as the monarchy became more absolute, of direct political purpose. The earliest examples of this improved style were given by St Francis de Sales and by Fenouillet, bishop of Marseilles (d. 1652); but it was not till the latter half of the century, when the troubles of the Fronde had completely subsided, and the church was established in the favour of Louis XIV., that the full efflorescence of theological eloquence took place. There were at the time pulpit orators of considerable excellence in England, and perhaps Jeremy Taylor, assisted by the genius of the language, has wrought a vein more precious than any which the somewhat academic methods and limitations of the French teachers allowed them to reach. But no country has ever been able to show a more magnificent concourse of orators, sacred or profane, than that formed by Bossuet, Fénelon (1651-1715), Esprit Fléchier (1632-1710), Jules Mascaron (1634-1703), Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704), and Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742), to whom may be justly added the Protestant divines, Jean Claude (1619-1687) and Jacques Saurin (1677-1730). Bossuet. The characteristics of all these were different. Bossuet, the earliest and certainly the greatest, was also the most universal. He was not merely a preacher; he was, as we have said, a controversialist, indeed somewhat too much of a controversialist, as his battle with Fénelon proved. He was a philosophical or at least a theological historian, and his Discours sur l’histoire universelle is equally remarkable from the point of view of theology, philosophy, history and literature. Turning to theological politics, he wrote his Politique tirée de l’écriture sainte, to theology proper his Méditations sur les évangiles and his Élevations sur les mystères. But his principal work, after all, is his Oraisons funèbres. The funeral sermon was the special oratorical exercise of the time. Its subject and character invited the gorgeous if somewhat theatrical commonplaces, the display of historical knowledge and parallel, and the moralizing analogies, in which the age specially rejoiced. It must also be noticed, to the credit of the preachers, that such occasions gave them an opportunity, rarely neglected, of correcting the adulation which was but too frequently characteristic of the period. The spirit of these compositions is fairly reflected in the most famous and often quoted of their phrases, the opening “Mes frères, Dieu seul est grand” of Massillon’s funeral discourse on Louis XIV.; and though panegyric is necessarily by no means absent, it is rarely carried beyond bounds. While Bossuet made himself chiefly remarkable in his sermons and in his writings by an almost Hebraic grandeur and rudeness, the more special characteristics of Christianity, largely alloyed with a Greek and Platonic Fénelon. spirit, displayed themselves in Fénelon. In pure literature he is not less remarkable than in theology, politics and morals. His practice in matters of style was admirable, as the universally known Télémaque sufficiently shows to those who know nothing else of his writing. But his taste, both in its correctness and its audacity, is perhaps more admirable still. Despite of Malherbe, Balzac, Boileau and the traditions of nearly a century, he dared to speak favourably of Ronsard, and plainly expressed his opinion that the practice of his own contemporaries and predecessors had cramped and impoverished the French language quite as much as they had polished or purified it. The other doctors whom we have mentioned were more purely theological than the accomplished archbishop of Cambray. Fléchier is somewhat more archaic in style than Bossuet or Fénelon, and he is also more definitely a rhetorician than either. Mascaron has the older fault of prodigal and somewhat indiscriminate erudition. But the two latest of the series, Bourdaloue and Massillon, had far the greatest repute in their own time purely as orators, and perhaps deserved this preference. The difference between the two repeated that between du Perron and de Sales. Bourdaloue’s great forte was vigorous argument and unsparing denunciation, but he is said to have been lacking in the power of influencing and affecting his hearers. His attraction was purely intellectual, and it is reflected in his style, which is clear and forcible, but destitute of warmth and colour. Massillon, on the other hand, was remarkable for his pathos, and for his power of enlisting and influencing the sympathies of his hearers. Of minor preachers on the same side, Charles de la Rue, a Jesuit (1643-1725), and the Père Cheminais (1652-1680), according to a somewhat idle form of nomenclature, “the Racine of the pulpit,” may be mentioned. The two Protestant ministers whom we have mentioned, though inferior to their rivals, yet deserve honourable mention among the ecclesiastical writers of the period. Claude engaged in a controversy with Bossuet, in which victory is claimed for the invincible eagle of Meaux. Saurin, by far the greater preacher of the two, long continued to occupy, and indeed still occupies, in the libraries of French Protestants, the position given to Bossuet and Massillon on the other side.

17th-Century Moralists.—It is not surprising that the works of Montaigne and Charron, with the immense popularity of the former, should have inclined the more thoughtful minds in France to moral reflection, especially as many other influences, both direct and indirect, contributed to produce the same result. The constant tendency of the refinements in French prose was towards clearness, succinctness and precision, the qualities most necessary in the moralist. The characteristics of the prevailing philosophy, that of Descartes, pointed in the same direction. It so happened, too, that the times were more favourable to the thinker and writer on ethical subjects than to the speculator in philosophy proper, in theology or in politics. Both the former subjects exposed their cultivators, as we have seen, to the suspicion of unorthodoxy; and to political speculation of any kind the rule of Richelieu, and still more that of Louis XIV., were in the highest degree unfavourable. No successors to Bodin and du Vair appeared; and even in the domain of legal writings, which comes nearest to that of politics, but few names of eminence are to be found.

Only the name of Omer-Talon (1595-1652) really illustrates the legal annals of France at this period on the bench, and that of Olivier Patru (1604-1681) at the bar. Thus it happened that the interests of many different classes Pascal and pensée-writing. of persons were concentrated upon moralizings, which took indeed very different forms in the hands of Pascal and other grave and serious thinkers of the Jansenist complexion in theology, and in those of literary courtiers like Saint-Évremond (1613-1703) and La Rochefoucauld, whose chief object was to depict the motives and characters prominent in the brilliant and not altogether frivolous society in which they moved. Both classes, however, were more or less tempted by the cast of their thoughts and the genius of the language to adopt the tersest and most epigrammatic form of expression possible, and thus to originate the “pensée” in which, as its greatest later writer, Joubert, has said, “the ambition of the author is to put a book into a page, a page into a phrase, and a phrase into a word.” The great genius and admirable style of Pascal are certainly not less shown in his Pensées than in his Provinciales, though perhaps the literary form of the former is less strikingly supreme than that of the latter. The author is more dominated by his 134 subject and dominates it less. Nicole, a far inferior writer as well as thinker, has also left a considerable number of Pensées, which have about them something more of the essay and less of the aphorism. They are, however, though not comparable to Pascal, excellent in matter and style, and go far to justify Bayle in calling their author “l’une des plus belles plumes de l’Europe.” In sharp contrast with these thinkers, who are invariably not merely respecters of religion but ardently and avowedly religious, who treat morality from the point of view of the Bible and the church, there arose side by side with them, or only a little later, a very different group of moralists, whose writings have been as widely read, and who have had as great a practical and literary influence as perhaps any other class of authors. The earliest to be born and the last to die of these was Charles de Saint-Denis, seigneur de saint-Évremond (1613-1703). Saint-Évremond. Saint-Évremond was long known rather as a conversational wit, some of whose good things were handed about in manuscript, or surreptitiously printed in foreign lands, than as a writer, and this is still to a certain extent his reputation. He was at least as cynical as his still better known contemporary La Rochefoucauld, if not more so, and he had less intellectual force and less nobility of character. But his wit was very great, and he set the example of the brilliant societies of the next century. Many of Saint-Évremond’s printed works are nominally works of literary criticism, but the moralizing spirit pervades all of them. No writer had a greater influence on Voltaire, and through Voltaire on the whole course of French literature after him. In direct literary value, however, no comparison can be made between Saint-Évremond and the author of the Sentences et maximes morales. François, duc de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), has other literary La Rochefoucauld. claims besides those of this famous book. His Mémoires were very favourably judged by his contemporaries, and they are still held to deserve no little praise even among the numerous and excellent works of the kind which that age of memoir-writers produced. But while the Mémoires thus invite comparison, the Maximes et sentences stand alone. Even allowing that the mere publication of detached reflections in terse language was not absolutely new, it had never been carried, perhaps has never since been carried, to such a perfection. Beside La Rochefoucauld all other writers are diffuse, vacillating, unfinished, rough. Not only is there in him never a word too much, but there is never a word too little. The thought is always fully expressed, not compressed. Frequently as the metaphor of minting or stamping coin has been applied to the art of managing words, it has never been applied so appropriately as to the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The form of them is almost beyond praise, and its excellencies, combined with their immense and enduring popularity, have had a very considerable share in influencing the character of subsequent French literature. Of hardly less importance in this respect, though of considerably less intellectual and literary individuality, was the translator of Theophrastus and the author of the Caractères, La Bruyère. La Bruyère. Jean de la Bruyère (1645-1696), though frequently epigrammatic, did not aim at the same incredible terseness as the author of the Maximes. His plan did not, indeed, render it necessary. Both in England and in France there had been during the whole of the century a mania for character writing, both of the general and Theophrastic kind, and of the historical and personal order. The latter, of which our own Clarendon is perhaps the greatest master, abound in the French memoirs of the period. The former, of which the naïve sketches of Earle and Overbury are English examples, culminated in those of La Bruyère, which are not only light and easy in manner and matter, but also in style essentially amusing, though instructive as well. Both he and La Rochefoucauld had an enduring effect on the literature which followed them—an effect perhaps superior to that exercised by any other single work in French, except the Roman de la rose and the Essais of Montaigne.

17th-century Savants.—Of the literature of the 17th century there only remains to be dealt with the section of those writers who devoted themselves to scientific pursuits or to antiquarian erudition of one form or another. It was in this century that literary criticism of French and in French first began to be largely composed, and after this time we shall give it a separate heading. It was very far, however, from attaining the excellence or observing the form which it afterwards assumed. The institution of the Academy led to various linguistic works. One of the earliest of these was the Remarques of the Savoyard Claude Favre de Vaugelas (1595-1650), afterwards re-edited by Thomas Corneille. Pellisson wrote a history of the Academy itself when it had as yet but a brief one. The famous Examen du Cid was an instance of the literary criticism of the time which was afterwards represented by René Rapin (1621-1687), Dominique Bouhours (1628-1702) and René de Bossu (1631-1680), while Adrien Baillet (1649-1706) has collected the largest thesaurus of the subject in his Jugemens des savants. Boileau set the example of treating such subjects in verse, and in the latter part of the century Reflexions, Discourses, Observations, and the like, on particular styles, literary forms and authors, became exceedingly numerous. In earlier years France possessed a numerous band of classical scholars of the first rank, such as Scaliger and Casaubon, who did not lack followers. But all or almost all this sort of work was done in Latin, so that it contributed little to French literature properly so-called, though the translations from the classics of Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt (1606-1664) have always taken rank among the models of French style. On the other hand, mathematical studies were pursued by persons of far other and far greater genius, and, taking from this time forward a considerable position in education and literature in France, had much influence on both. The mathematical discoveries of Pascal and Descartes are well known. Of science proper, apart from mathematics, France did not produce many distinguished cultivators in this century. The philosophy of Descartes was not on the whole favourable to such investigations, which were in the next century to be pursued with ardour. Its tendencies found more congenial vent and are more thoroughly Controversy between Ancients and Moderns. exemplified in the famous quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. This, of Italian origin, was mainly started in France by Charles Perrault (1628-1703), who thereby rendered much less service to literature than by his charming fairy tales. The opposite side was taken by Boileau, and the fight was afterwards revived by Antoine Houdar[d, t] de la Motte (1672-1731), a writer of little learning but much talent in various ways, and by the celebrated Madame Dacier, Anne Lefèvre (1654-1720). The discussion was conducted, as is well known, without very much knowledge or judgment among the disputants on the one side or on the other. But at this very time there were in France students and scholars of the most profound erudition. We have already mentioned Fleury and his ecclesiastical history. But Fleury is only the last and the most popular of a race of omnivorous and untiring scholars, whose labours have ever since, until the modern fashion of first-hand investigations came in, furnished the bulk of historical and scholarly references and quotations. To this century belong le Nain de Tillemont (1637-1698), whose enormous Histoire des empereurs and Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique served Gibbon and a hundred others as quarry; Charles Dufresne, seigneur de Ducange (1614-1688), whose well-known glossary was only one of numerous productions; Jean Mabillon (1632-1707), one of the most voluminous of the voluminous Benedictines; and Bernard de Montfaucon (1655-1741), chief of all authorities of the dry-as-dust kind on classical archaeology and art.

Opening of the 18th Century.—The beginning of the 18th century is among the dead seasons of French literature. All the greatest men whose names had illustrated the early reign of Louis XIV. in profane literature passed away long before him, and the last if the least of them, Boileau and Thomas Corneille, only survived into the very earliest years of the new age. The political and military disasters of the last years of the reign were accompanied by a state of things in society unfavourable to literary development. The devotion to pure literature and philosophy proper which Descartes and Corneille had inspired had 135 died out, and the devotion to physical science, to sociology, and to a kind of free-thinking optimism which was to inspire Voltaire and the Encyclopedists had not yet become fashionable. Fénelon and Malebranche still survived, but they were emphatically men of the last age, as was Massillon, though he lived till nearly the middle of the century. The characteristic literary figures of the opening years of the period are d’Aguesseau, Fontenelle, Saint-Simon, personages in many ways interesting and remarkable, but purely transitional in their characteristics. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757) is, indeed, perhaps the most typical figure of the time. He was a dramatist, a moralist, a philosopher, physical and metaphysical, a critic, an historian, a poet and a satirist. The manner of his works is always easy and graceful, and their matter rarely contemptible.

18th-Century Poetry.—The dispiriting signs shown during the 17th century by French poetry proper received entire fulfilment in the following age. The two poets who were most prominent at the opening of the period were the abbé de Chaulieu (1639-1720) and the marquis de la Fare (1644-1712), poetical or rather versifying twins who are always quoted together. They were both men who lived to a great age, yet their characteristics are rather those of their later than of their earlier contemporaries. They derive on the one hand from the somewhat trifling school of Voiture, on the other from the Bacchic sect of Saint-Amant; and they succeed in uniting the inferior qualities of both with the cramped and impoverished though elegant style of which Fénelon had complained. Their compositions are as a rule lyrical, as lyrical poetry was understood after the days of Malherbe—that is to say, quatrains of the kind ridiculed by Molière, and Pindaric odes, which have been justly described as made up of alexandrines after the manner of Boileau cut up into shorter or longer lengths. They were followed, however, by the one poet who succeeded in producing something resembling poetry J. B. Rousseau. in this artificial style, J. B. Rousseau (1671-1741). Rousseau, who in some respects was nothing so little as a religious poet, was nevertheless strongly influenced, as Marot had been, by the Psalms of David. His Odes and his Cantates are perhaps less destitute of that spirit than the work of any other poet of the century excepting André Chénier. Rousseau was also an extremely successful epigrammatist, having in this respect, too, resemblances to Marot. Le Franc de Pompignan (1700-1784), to whom Voltaire’s well-known sarcasms are not altogether just, and Louis Racine (1692-1763), who wrote pious and altogether forgotten poems, belonged to the same poetical school; though both the style and matter of Racine are strongly tinctured by his Port Royalist sympathies and education. Lighter verse was represented in the 18th century by the long-lived Saint-Aulaire (1643-1742), by Gentil Bernard (1710-1775), by the abbé (afterwards cardinal) de Bernis (1715-1794), by Claude Joseph Dorat (1734-1780), by Antoine Bertin (1752-1790) and by Evariste de Parny (1753-1814), the last the most vigorous, but all somewhat deserving the term applied to Dorat of ver luisant du Parnasse. The jovial traditions of Saint-Amant begat a similar school of anacreontic songsters, which, represented in turn by Charles François Panard (1674-1765), Charles Collé (1709-1783), Armand Gouffé (1775-1845), and Marc-Antoine-Madeleine Desaugiers (1772-1827), led directly to the best of all such writers, Béranger. To this class Rouget de Lisle (1760-1836) perhaps also belongs; though his most famous composition, the Marseillaise, is of a different stamp. Nor is the account of the light verse of the 18th century complete without reference to a long succession of fable writers, who, in an unbroken chain, connect La Fontaine in the 17th century with Viennet in the 19th. None of the links, however, of this chain, with the exception of Jean Pierre Florian (1759-1794) deserve Voltaire (poetry). much attention. The universal faculty of Voltaire (1694-1778) showed itself in his poetical productions no less than in his other works, and it is perhaps not least remarkable in verse. It is impossible nowadays to regard the Henriade as anything but a highly successful prize poem, but the burlesque epic of La Pucelle, discreditable as it may be from the moral point of view, is remarkable enough as literature.

The epistles and satires are among the best of their kind, the verse tales are in the same way admirable, and the epigrams, impromptus, and short miscellaneous poems generally are the ne plus ultra of verse which is not poetry. The Anglomania of the century extended into poetry, and the Seasons of Thomson set the example of a whole library of tedious descriptive verse, which in its turn revenged France upon England by producing or helping to produce English poems of the Darwin school. The first of these descriptive performances was the Saisons of Jean François de Saint-Lambert (1716-1803), identical in title with its model, but of infinitely inferior value. Saint-Lambert was followed by Jacques Delille (1738-1813) in Les Jardins, Antoine Marin le Mierre (1723-1793) in Les Fastes, and Jean Antoine Roucher (1745-1794) in Les Mois. Indeed, everything that could be described was seized upon by these describers. Delille also translated the Georgics, and for a time was the greatest living poet of France, the title being only disputed by Escouchard le Brun (1729-1807), a lyrist and ode writer of the school of J. B. Rousseau, but not destitute of energy. The only other poets until Chénier who deserve notice are Nicolas Gilbert (1751-1780)—the French Chatterton, or perhaps rather the French Oldham, who died in a workhouse at twenty-nine after producing some vigorous satires and, at the point of death, an elegy of great beauty; Jacques Charles Louis Clinchaut de Malfilâtre (1732-1767), another short-lived poet whose “Ode to the Sun” has a certain stateliness; and Jean Baptiste Gresset (1709-1777), the author of Ver-Vert and of other poems of the lighter order, which are not far, if at all, below the Chénier. level of Voltaire. André Chénier (1762-1794) stands far apart from the art of his century, though the strong chain of custom, and his early death by the guillotine, prevented him from breaking finally through the restraints of its language and its versification. Chénier, half a Greek by blood, was wholly one in spirit and sentiment. The manner of his verses, the very air which surrounds them and which they diffuse, are different from those of the 18th century; and his poetry is probably the utmost that its language and versification could produce. To do more, the revolution which followed a generation after his death was required.

18th-Century Drama.—The results of the cultivation of dramatic poetry at this time were even less individually remarkable than those of the attention paid to poetry proper. Here again the astonishing power and literary aptitude of Voltaire gave value to his attempts in a style which, notwithstanding that it counts Racine among its practitioners, was none the less predestined to failure. Voltaire’s own efforts in this kind are indisputably as successful as they could be. Foreigners usually prefer Mahomet and Zaïre to Bajazet and Mithridate, though there is no doubt that no work of Voltaire’s comes up to Polyeucte and Rodogune, as certainly no single passage in any of his plays can approach the best passages of Cinna and Les Horaces. But the remaining tragic writers of the century, with the single exception of Crébillon père, are scarcely third-rate. C. Jolyot de Crébillon (1674-1762) himself had genius, and there are to be found in his work evidences of a spirit which had seemed to die away with Saint-Genest, and was hardly to revive until Hernani. Of the imitators of Racine and Voltaire, La Motte in Inés de Castro was not wholly unsuccessful. François Joseph de la Grange-Chancel (1677-1758) copied chiefly the worst side of the author of Britannicus, and Bernard Joseph Saurin (1706-1781) and Pierre-Laurent de Belloy (1727-1775) performed the same service for Voltaire. Le Mierre and La Harpe, mentioned and to be mentioned, were tragedians; but the Iphigénie en Tauride of Guimond de la Touche (1725-1760) deserves more special mention than anything of theirs. There was an infinity of tragic writers and tragic plays in this century, but hardly any others of them even deserve mention. The muse of comedy was decidedly more happy in her devotees. Molière was a far safer if a more difficult model than Racine, and the inexorable fashion which had bound down tragedy to a feeble imitation of Euripides did not similarly prescribe an undeviating adherence to Terence. Tragedy had never been, has scarcely been since, anything but an exotic in France; comedy was of the 136 soil and native. Very early In the century Alain René le Sage (1668-1747), in the admirable comedy of Turcaret, produced a work not unworthy to stand by the side of all but his master’s best. Philippe Destouches (1680-1754) was also a fertile comedy writer in the early years of the century, and in Le Glorieux and Le Philosophe marié achieved considerable success. As the age went on, comedy, always apt to lay hold of passing events, devoted itself to the great struggle between the Philosophes and their opponents. Curiously enough, the party which engrossed almost all the wit of France had the worst of it in this dramatic portion of the contest, if in no other. The Méchant of Gresset and the Métromanie of Alexis Piron (1689-1773) were far superior to anything produced on the other side, and the Philosophes of Charles Palissot de Montenoy (1730-1814), though scurrilous and broadly farcical, had a great success. On the other hand, it was to a Philosophe that the invention of a new dramatic style was due, and still more the promulgation of certain ideas on dramatic criticism and construction, which, after being filtered through the German mind, were to return to France and to exercise the most powerful influence on its dramatic productions. Diderot (plays). This was Denis Diderot (1713-1784), the most fertile genius of the century, but also the least productive in finished and perfect work. His chief dramas, the Fils naturel and the Père de famille, are certainly not great successes; the shorter plays, Est-il bon? est-il méchant? and La Pièce et le prologue, are better. But it was his follower Michel Jean Sédaine (1719-1797) who, in Le Philosophe sans le savoir and other pieces, produced the best examples of the bourgeois as opposed to the heroic drama. Diderot is sometimes credited or discredited with the invention of the Comédie Larmoyante, a title which indeed his own plays do not altogether refuse, but this special variety seems to be, in its invention, rather the property of Pierre Claude Nivelle de la Chaussée (1692-1754). Comedy sustained itself, and even gained ground towards the end of the century; the Jeune Indienne of Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794), if not quite worthy of its author’s brilliant talent in other paths, is noteworthy, and so is the Billet perdu of Joseph François Edouard de Corsembleu Desmahis (1722-1761), while at the extreme limit of our present period there appears the remarkable figure of Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799). The Mariage de Figaro and the Barbier de Séville are well known as having had attributed to them no mean place among the literary causes and forerunners of the Revolution. Their dramatic and literary value would itself have sufficed to obtain attention for them at any time, though there can be no doubt that their popularity was mainly due to their political appositeness. The most remarkable point about them, as about the school of comedy of which Congreve was the chief master in England at the beginning of the century, was the abuse and superfluity of wit in the dialogue, indiscriminately allotted to all characters alike. It is difficult to give particulars, but would be improper to omit all mention, of such dramatic or quasi-dramatic work as the libretti of operas, farces for performance at fairs and the like. French authors of the time from Le Sage downwards usually managed these with remarkable skill.

18th-Century Fiction.—With prose fiction the case was altogether different. We have seen how the short tale of a few pages had already in the 16th century attained high if not the highest excellence; how at three different periods the fancy for long-winded prose narration developed itself in the prose rehandlings of the chivalric poems, in the Amadis romances, and in the portentous recitals of Gomberville and La Calprenède; how burlesques of these romances were produced from Rabelais to Scarron; and how at last Madame de Lafayette showed the way to something like the novel of the day. If we add the fairy story, of which Perrault and Madame d’Aulnoy were the chief practitioners, and a small class of miniature romances, of which Aucassin et Nicolette in the 13th, and the delightful Jehan de Paris (of the 15th or 16th, in which a king of England is patriotically sacrificed) are good representatives, we shall have exhausted the list. The 18th century was quick to develop the system of the author of the Princesse de Clèves, but it did not abandon the cultivation of the romance, that is to say, fiction dealing with incident and with the simpler passions, in devoting itself to the novel, that is to say, fiction dealing with the analysis of sentiment and character. Le Sage, its first great novelist, in his Diable boiteux and Gil Blas, went to Spain not merely for his subject but also for his inspiration and manner, following the lead of the picaroon romance of Rojas and Scarron. Like Fielding, however, whom he much resembles, Le Sage mingled with the romance of incident the most careful attention to character and the most lively portrayal of it, while his style and language are such as to make his work one of the classics of French literature. The novel of character was really founded in France by the abbé Prévost d’Exilles (1697-1763), the author of Cleveland and of the incomparable Manon Lescaut. The popularity of this style was much helped by the immense vogue in France of the works of Richardson. Side by side with it, however, and for a time enjoying still greater popularity, there flourished a very different school of fiction, of which Voltaire, whose name occupies the first or all but the first place in every branch of literature of his time, was the most brilliant cultivator. This was a direct development of the earlier conte, and consisted usually of the treatment, in a humorous, satirical, and not always over-decent fashion, of contemporary foibles, beliefs, philosophies and occupations. These tales are of every rank of excellence and merit both literary and moral, and range from the astonishing wit, grace and humour of Candide and Zadig to the book which is Diderot’s one hardly pardonable sin, and the similar but more lively efforts of Crébillon fils (1707-1777). These latter deeps led in their turn to the still lower depths of La Clos and Louvet. A third class of 18th-century fiction consists of attempts to return to the humorous fatrasie of the 16th century, attempts which were as much influenced by Sterne as the sentimental novel was by Richardson. The Homme aux quarante écus of Voltaire has something of this character, but the most characteristic works of the style are the Jacques le fataliste of Diderot, which shows it nearly at its best, and the Compère Mathieu, sometimes attributed to Pigault-Lebrun (1753-1835), but no doubt in reality due to Jacques du Laurens (1719-1797), which shows it at perhaps its worst. Another remarkable story-teller was Cazotte (1719-1792), whose Diable amoureux displays much fantastic power, and connects itself with a singular fancy of the time for occult studies and diablerie, manifested later by the patronage shown to Cagliostro, Mesmer, St Germain and others. In this connexion, too, may perhaps also be mentioned most appropriately Restif de la Bretonne, a remarkably original and voluminous writer, who was little noticed by his contemporaries and successors for the best part of a century. Restif, who was nicknamed the “Rousseau of the gutter,” Rousseau du ruisseau, presents to an English imagination many of the characteristics of a non-moral Defoe. While these various schools busied themselves more or less with real life seriously depicted or purposely travestied, the great vogue and success of Télémaque produced a certain number of didactic works, in which moral or historical information was sought to be conveyed under a more or less thin guise of fiction. Such was the Voyage du jeune Anacharsis of Jean Jacques Barthélemy (1716-1795); such the Numa Pompilius and Gonzalve de Cordoue of Florian (1755-1794), who also deserves notice as a writer of pastorals, fables and short prose tales; such the Bélisaire and Les Incas of Jean François Marmontel (1723-1799). Between this class and that of the novel of sentiment may perhaps be placed Paul et Virginie and La Chaumière indienne; though Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) should more properly be noticed after Rousseau and as a moralist. Diderot’s fiction-writing has already been referred to more than once, but his Religieuse deserves citation here as a powerful specimen of the novel both of analysis and polemic; while his undoubted masterpiece, the Neveu de Rameau, though very difficult to class, comes under this head as well as under any other. There are, however, two of the novelists of this age, and of the most remarkable, who have yet to be noticed, and these are the author of Marianne and the author of Julie. We do 137 not mention Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763) in this connexion as the equal of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), but merely as being in his way almost equally original and equally remote from any suspicion of school influence. He began with burlesque writing, and was also the author of several comedies, of which Les Fausses Confidences is the principal. But it is in prose fiction that he really excels. He may claim to have, at least in the opinion of his contemporaries, invented a style, though perhaps the term marivaudage, which was applied to it, has a not altogether complimentary connotation. He may claim also to have invented the novel without a purpose, which aims simply at amusement, and at the same time does not seek to attain that end by buffoonery or by satire. Gray’s definition of happiness, “to lie on a sofa and read endless novels by Marivaux” (it is true that he added Crébillon), is well known, and the production of mere pastime by means more or less harmless has since become so well-recognized a function of the novelist that Marivaux, as one of the earliest to discharge it, deserves notice. The name, J. J. Rousseau. however, of Jean Jacques Rousseau is of far different importance. His two great works, the Nouvelle Héloïse and Émile, are as far as possible from being perfect as novels. But no novels in the world have ever had such influence as these. To a great extent this influence was due mainly to their attractions as novels, imperfect though they may be in this character, but it was beyond dispute also owing to the doctrines which they contained, and which were exhibited in novel form.

Such are the principal developments of fiction during the century; but it is remarkable that, varied as they were, and excellent as was some of the work to which they gave rise, none of these schools was directly very fertile in results or successors. The period with which we shall next have to deal, that from the outbreak of the Revolution to the death of Louis XVIII., is curiously barren of fiction of any merit. It was not till English influence began again to assert itself in the later days of the Restoration that the prose romance began once more to be written.

18th-Century History.—It is not, however, in any of the departments of belles-lettres that the real eminence of the 18th century as a time of literary production in France consists. In all serious branches of study its accomplishments were, from a literary point of view, remarkable, uniting as it did an extraordinary power of popular and literary expression with an ardent spirit of inquiry, a great speculative ability, and even a far more considerable amount of laborious erudition than is generally supposed. The historical studies and results of 18th-century speculation in France are of especial and peculiar importance. There is no doubt that what is called the science of history dates from this time, and though the beginning of it is usually assigned to the Italian Vico, its complete indication may perhaps with equal or greater justice be claimed by the Frenchman Turgot. Before Turgot, however, there were great names in French historical writing, and perhaps the greatest of all is that of Charles Secondat de Montesquieu (1689-1755). The three principal works of this great writer are all historical and at the same time political in character. In the Lettres persanes he handled, with wit inferior to the wit of no other writer even in that witty age, the corruptions and dangers of contemporary morals and politics. The literary charm of this book—the plan of which was suggested by a work, the Amusements sérieux et comiques, of Dufresny (1648-1724), a comic writer not destitute of merit—is very great, and its plan was so popular as to lead to a thousand imitations, of which all, except those of Voltaire and Goldsmith, only bring out the immense superiority of the original. Few things could be more different from this lively and popular book than Montesquieu’s next work, the Grandeur et décadence des Romains, in which the same acuteness and knowledge of human nature are united with considerable erudition, and with a weighty though perhaps somewhat grandiloquent and rhetorical style. His third and greatest work, the Esprit des lois, is again different both in style and character, and such defects as it has are as nothing when compared with the merits of its fertility in ideas, its splendid breadth of view, and the felicity with which the author, in a manner unknown before, recognizes the laws underlying complicated assemblages of fact. The style of this great work is equal to its substance; less light than that of the Lettres, less rhetorical than that of the Grandeur des Romains, it is still a marvellous union of dignity and wit. Around Montesquieu, partly before and partly after him, is a group of philosophical or at least systematic historians, of whom the chief are Jean Baptiste Dubos (1670-1742), and G. Bonnot de Mably (1709-1785). Dubos, whose chief work is not historical but aesthetic (Réflexions sur la poésie et la peinture), wrote a so-called Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie française, which is as far as possible from being in the modern sense critical, inasmuch as, in the teeth of history, and in order to exalt the Tiers état, it pretends an amicable coalition of Franks and Gauls, and not an irruption by the former. Mably (Observations sur l’histoire de la France) had a much greater influence than either of these writers, and a decidedly mischievous one, especially at the period of the Revolution. He, more than any one else, is responsible for the ignorant and childish extolling of Greek and Roman institutions, and the still more ignorant depreciation of the middle ages, which was for a time characteristic of French politicians. Montesquieu was, as we have said, followed by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781), whose writings are few in number, and not remarkable for style, but full of original thought. Turgot in his turn was followed by Condorcet (1743-1794), whose tendency is somewhat more sociological than directly historical. Towards the end of the period, too, a considerable number of philosophical histories were written, the usual object of which was, under cover of a kind of allegory, to satirize and attack the existing institutions and government of France. The most famous of these was the Histoire des Indes, nominally written by the Abbé Guillaume Thomas François Raynal (1713-1796), but really the joint work of many members of the Philosophe party, especially Diderot. Side by side with this really or nominally philosophical school of history there existed another and less ambitious school, which contented itself with the older and simpler view of the science. The Abbé René de Vertot (1655-1735) belongs almost as much to the 17th as to the 18th century; but his principal works, especially the famous Histoire des Chevaliers de Malte, date from the later period, as do also the Révolutions romaines. Vertot is above all things a literary historian, and the well-known “Mon siège est fait,” whether true or not, certainly expresses his system. Of the same school, though far more comprehensive, was the laborious Charles Rollin (1661-1741), whose works in the original, or translated and continued in the case of the Histoire romaine by Jean Baptiste Louis Crévier (1693-1765), were long the chief historical manuals of Europe. The president Charles Jean François Hénault (1685-1770), and Louis Pierre Anquetil (1723-1806) were praiseworthy writers, the first of French history, the second of that and much else. In the same class, too, far superior as is his literary power, must be ranked the historical works of Voltaire, Charles XII., Pierre le Grand, &c. A very perfect example of the historian who is literary first of all is supplied by Claude Carloman de Rulhière (1735-1791), whose Révolution en Russie en 1762 is one of the little masterpieces of history, while his larger and posthumous work on the last days of the Polish kingdom exhibits perhaps some of the defects of this class of historians. Lastly must be mentioned the memoirs and correspondence of the period, the materials of history if not history itself. The century opened with the most famous of all these, the memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755), an extraordinary series of pictures of the court of Louis XIV. and the Regency, written in an unequal and incorrect style, but with something of the irregular excellence of the great 16th-century writers, and most striking in the sombre bitterness of its tone. The subsequent and less remarkable memoirs of the century are so numerous that it is almost impossible to select a few for reference, and altogether impossible to mention all. Of those bearing on public history the memoirs of Madame de Staël (Mlle Delaunay) (1684-1750), of Pierre 138 Louis de Voyer, marquis d’Argenson (1694-1757), of Charles Pinot Duclos (1704-1772), of Stephanie Félicité de Saint-Aubin, Madame de Genlis (1746-1830), of Pierre Victor de Bésenval (1722-1791), of Madame Campan (1752-1822) and of the cardinal de Bernis (1715-1794), may perhaps be selected for mention; of those bearing on literary and private history, the memoirs of Madame d’Épinay (1726-1783), those of Mathieu Marais (1664-1737) the so-called Mémoires secrets of Louis Petit de Bachaumont (1690-1770), and the innumerable writings having reference to Voltaire and to the Philosophe party generally. Here, too, may be mentioned a remarkable class of literature, consisting of purely private and almost confidential letters, which were written at this time with very remarkable literary excellence. As specimens may be selected those of Mademoiselle Aissé (1694-1757), which are models of easy and unaffected tenderness, and those of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse (1732-1776) the companion of Madame du Deffand and afterwards of d’Alembert. These latter, in their extraordinary fervour and passion, not merely contrast strongly with the generally languid and frivolous gallantry of the age, but also constitute one of its most remarkable literary monuments. It has been said of them that they “burn the paper,” and the expression is not exaggerated. Madame du Deffand’s (1697-1780) own letters, many of which were written to Horace Walpole, are noteworthy in a very different way. Of lighter letters the charming correspondence of Diderot with Mademoiselle Voland deserves special mention. But the correspondence, like the memoirs of this century, defies justice to be done to it in any cursory or limited mention. In this connexion, however, it may be well to mention some of the most remarkable works of the time, the Confessions, Rêveries, and Promenades d’un solitaire of Rousseau. In these works, especially in the Confessions, there is not merely exhibited passion as fervid though perhaps less unaffected than that of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse—there appear in them two literary characteristics which, if not entirely novel, were for the first time brought out deliberately by powers of the first order, were for the first time made the mainspring of literary interest, and thereby set an example which for more than a century has been persistently followed, and which has produced some of the finest results of modern literature. The first of these was the elaborate and unsparing analysis and display of the motives, the weaknesses and the failings of individual character. This process, which Rousseau unflinchingly performed on himself, has been followed usually in respect to fictitious characters by his successors. The other novelty was the feeling for natural beauty and the elaborate description of it, the credit of which latter must, it has been agreed by all impartial critics, be assigned rather to Rousseau than to any other writer. His influence in this direction was, however, soon taken up and continued by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the connecting link between Rousseau and Chateaubriand, some of whose works have been already alluded to. In particular the author of Paul et Virginie set himself to develop the example of description which Rousseau had set, and his word-paintings, though less powerful than those of his model, are more abundant, more elaborate, and animated by a more amiable spirit.

18th-Century Philosophy.—The Anglomania which distinguished the time was nowhere more strongly shown than in the cast and direction of its philosophical speculations. As Montesquieu and Voltaire had imported into France a vivid theoretical admiration for the British constitution and for British theories in politics, so Voltaire, Diderot and a crowd of others popularized and continued in France the philosophical ideas of Hobbes and Locke and even Berkeley, the theological ideas of Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury and the English deists, and the physical discoveries of Newton. Descartes, Frenchman and genius as he was, and though his principles in physics and philosophy were long clung to in the schools, was completely abandoned by the more adventurous and progressive spirits. At no time indeed, owing to the confusion of thought and purpose to which we have already alluded, was the word philosophy used with greater looseness than at this time. Using it, as we have hitherto used it, in the sense of metaphysics, the majority of the Philosophes have very little claim to their title. There were some who manifested, however, an aptitude for purely philosophical argument, and one who confined himself strictly thereto. Among these the most remarkable are Julien Offroy de la Mettrie (1709-1751) and Denis Diderot. La Mettrie in his works L’Homme machine, L’Homme plante, &c., applied a lively and vigorous imagination, a considerable familiarity with physics and medicine, and a brilliant but unequal style, to the task of advocating materialistic ideas on the constitution of man. Diderot, in a series of early works, Lettre sur les aveugles, Promenade d’un sceptique, Pensées philosophiques, &c., exhibited a good acquaintance with philosophical history and opinion, and gave sign in this direction, as in so many others, of a far-reaching intellect. As in almost all his works, however, the value of the thought is extremely unequal, while the different pieces, always written in the hottest haste, and never duly matured or corrected, present but few specimens of finished and polished writing. Charles Bonnet (1720-1793), a Swiss of Geneva, wrote a large number of works, many of which are purely scientific. Others, however, are more psychological, and these, though advocating the materialistic philosophy generally in vogue, were remarkable for uniting materialism with an honest adherence to Christianity. The half mystical writer, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803) also deserves notice. But the French metaphysician of the century is undoubtedly Étienne Bonnot, abbé de Condillac. Condillac (1714-1780), almost the only writer of the time in France who succeeded in keeping strictly to philosophy without attempting to pursue his system to its results in ethics, politics and theology. In the Traité des sensations, the Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines and other works Condillac elaborated and continued the imperfect sensationalism of Locke. As his philosophical view, though perhaps more restricted, was far more direct, consecutive and uncompromising than that of the Englishman, so his style greatly exceeded Locke’s in clearness and elegance and as a good medium of philosophical expression.

18th-Century Theology.—To devote a section to the history of the theological literature of the 18th century in France may seem something of a contradiction; for, indeed, all or most of such literature was anti-theological. The magnificent list of names which the church had been able to claim on her side in the 17th century was exhausted before the end of the second quarter of the 18th with Massillon, and none came to fill their place. Very rarely has orthodoxy been so badly defended as at this time. The literary championship of the church was entirely in the hands of the Jesuits, and of a few disreputable literary freelances like Élie Fréron (1719-1776) and Pierre François Guyot, abbé Desfontaines (1685-1745). The Jesuits were learned enough, and their principal journal, that of Trévoux, was conducted with much vigour and a great deal of erudition. But they were in the first place discredited by the moral taint which has always hung over Jesuitism, and in the second place by the persecutions of the Jansenists and the Protestants, which were attributed to their influence. But one single work on the orthodox side has preserved the least reputation; while, on the other hand, the names of Père Nonotte (1711-1793) and several of his fellows have been enshrined unenviably in the imperishable ridicule of Voltaire, one only of whose adversaries, the abbé Antoine Guénée (1717-1803), was able to meet him in the Lettres de quelques Juifs with something like his own weapons. It has never been at all accurately Voltaire (theology). decided how far what may be called the scoffing school of Voltaire represents a direct revolt against Christianity, and how far it was merely a kind of guerilla warfare against the clergy. It is positively certain that Voltaire was not an atheist, and that he did not approve of atheism. But his Dictionnaire philosophique, which is typical of a vast amount of contemporary and subsequent literature, consists of a heterogeneous assemblage of articles directed against various points of dogma and ritual and various characteristics of the sacred records. From the literary point of view, it is one of the most characteristic of all Voltaire’s works, though it is perhaps not entirely his. The desultory arrangement, the light 139 and lively style, the extensive but not always too accurate erudition, and the somewhat captious and quibbling objections, are intensely Voltairian. But there is little seriousness about it, and certainly no kind of rancorous or deep-seated hostility. With many, however, of Voltaire’s pupils and younger contemporaries the case was altered. They were distinctively atheists and anti-supernaturalists. The atheism of Diderot, unquestionably the greatest of them all, has been keenly debated; but in the case of Étienne Damilaville (1723-1768), Jacques André Naigeon (1738-1810), Paul Henri Dietrich, baron d’Holbach, and others there is no room for doubt. By these persons a great mass of atheistic and anti-Christian literature was composed and set afloat. The characteristic work of this school, its last The “System of Nature.” word indeed, is the famous Système de la nature, attributed to Holbach (1723-1789), but known to be, in part at least, the work of Diderot. In this remarkable work, which caps the climax of the metaphysical materialism or rather nihilism of the century, the atheistic position is clearly put. It made an immense sensation; and it so fluttered not merely the orthodox but the more moderate freethinkers, that Frederick of Prussia and Voltaire, perhaps the most singular pair of defenders that orthodoxy ever had, actually set themselves to refute it. Its style and argument are very unequal, as books written in collaboration are apt to be, and especially books in which Diderot, the paragon of inequality, had a hand. But there is an almost entire absence of the heterogeneous assemblage of anecdotes, jokes good and bad, scraps of accurate or inaccurate physical science, and other incongruous matter with which the Philosophes were wont to stuff their works; and lastly, there is in the best passages a kind of sombre grandeur which recalls the manner as well as the matter of Lucretius. It is perhaps well to repeat, in the case of so notorious a book, that this criticism is of a purely literary and formal character; but there is little doubt that the literary merits of the work considerably assisted its didactic influence. As the Revolution approached, and the victory of the Philosophe party was declared, there appeared for a brief space a group of cynical and accomplished phrase-makers presenting some similarity to that of which, a hundred years before, Saint-Évremond was the most prominent figure. The chief of this group were Chamfort. Rivarol. Nicolas Chamfort (1747-1794) on the republican side, and Antoine Rivarol (1753-1801) on that of the royalists. Like the older writer to whom we have compared them, neither can be said to have produced any one work of eminence, and in this they stand distinguished from moralists like La Rochefoucauld. The floating sayings, however, which are attributed to them, or which occur here and there in their miscellaneous work, yield in no respect to those of the most famous of their predecessors in wit and a certain kind of wisdom, though they are frequently more personal than aphoristic.

18th-Century Moralists and Politicians.—Not the least part, however, of the energy of the period in thought and writing was devoted to questions of a directly moral and political kind. With regard to morality proper the favourite doctrine of the century was what is commonly called the selfish theory, the only one indeed which was suitable to the sensationalism of Condillac and the materialism of Holbach. The pattern book of this Helvétius. doctrine was the De l’esprit of Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771), the most amusing book perhaps which ever pretended to the title of a solemn philosophical treatise. There is some analogy between the principles of this work and those of the Système de la nature. With the inconsistency—some would say with the questionable honesty—which distinguished the more famous members of the Philosophe party when their disciples spoke with what they considered imprudent outspokenness, Voltaire and even Diderot attacked Helvétius as the former afterwards attacked Holbach. But whatever may be the general value of De l’esprit, it is full of acuteness, though Thomas. that acuteness is as desultory and disjointed as its style. As Helvétius may be taken as the representative author of the cynical school, so perhaps Alexandre Gérard Thomas (1732-1785) may be taken as representative of the votaries of noble sentiment to whom we have also alluded. The works of Thomas chiefly took the form of academic éloges or formal panegyrics, and they have all the defects, both in manner and substance, which are associated with that style. Of yet a third school, corresponding in form to La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère, and possessed of some of the antique vigour of preceding centuries, was Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues. Vauvenargues (1715-1747). This writer, who died very young, has produced maxims and reflections of considerable mental force and literary finish. From Voltaire downwards it has been usual to compare him with Pascal, from whom he is chiefly distinguished by a striking but somewhat empty stoicism. Between the moralists, of whom we have taken these three as examples, and the politicians may be placed Rousseau, who in his novels and miscellaneous works is of the first class, in his famous Contrat social of the second. All his theories, whatever their originality and whatever their value, were made novel and influential by the force of their statement and the literary beauties of its form. Of direct and avowed political writings there were few during the century, and none of anything like the importance of the Contrat social, theoretical acceptance of the established French constitution being a point of necessity with all Frenchmen. Nevertheless it may be said that almost the whole of the voluminous writings of the Philosophes, even of those who, like Voltaire, were sincerely aristocratic and monarchic in predilection, were of more or less veiled political significance. There was one branch of political writing, moreover, which could be indulged in without much fear. Political economy and administrative theories received much attention. The earliest writer of eminence on these subjects was the great engineer Sébastien le Prestre, marquis de Vauban (1633-1707), whose Oisivetés and Dîme royale exhibit both great ability and extensive observation. A more utopian economist of the same time was Charles Irénée Castel, abbé de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743), not to be confounded with the author of Paul et Virginie. Soon political economy in the hands of François Quesnay (1694-1774) took a regular form, and towards the middle of the century a great number of works on questions connected with it, especially that of free trade in corn, on which Ferdinand Galiani (1728-1787), André Morellet (1727-1819), both abbés, and above all Turgot, distinguished themselves. Of writers on legal subjects and of the legal profession, the century, though not less fertile than in other directions, produced few or none of any great importance from the literary point of view. The chief name which in this connexion is known is that of Chancellor Henri François d’Aguesseau (1668-1751), at the beginning of the century, an estimable writer of the Port Royal school, who took the orthodox side in the great disputes of the time, but failed to display any great ability therein. He was, as became his profession, more remarkable as an orator than a writer, and his works contain valuable testimonies to the especially perturbed and unquiet condition of his century—a disquiet which is perhaps also its chief literary note. There were other French magistrates, such as Montesquieu, Hénault (1685-1770), de Brosses (1706-1773) and others, who made considerable mark in literature; but it was usually (except in the case of Montesquieu) in subjects not even indirectly connected with their profession. The Esprit des lois stands alone; but as an example of work barristerial in kind, famous partly for political reasons but of some real literary merit, we may mention the Mémoire for Calas written by J. B. J. Élie de Beaumont (1732-1786).

18th-century Criticism and Periodical Literature.—We have said that literary criticism assumes in this century a sufficient importance to be treated under a separate heading. Contributions were made to it of many different kinds and from many different points of view. Periodical literature, the chief stimulus to its production, began more and more to come into favour. Even in the 17th century the Journal des savants, the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux, and other publications had set the example of different kinds of it. Just before the Revolution the Gazette de France was in the hands of J. B. A. Suard (1734-1817), a man who was nothing if not a literary critic. Perhaps, however, the most 140 remarkable contribution of the century to criticism of the periodical kind was the Feuilles de Grimm, a circular sent for many years to the German courts by Frédéric Melchior Grimm (1723-1807), the comrade of Diderot and Rousseau, and containing a compte rendu of the ways and works of Paris, literary and artistic as well as social. These Leaves not only include much excellent literary criticism by Diderot, but also gave occasion to the incomparable salons or accounts of the exhibition of pictures from the same hand, essays which founded the art of picture criticism, and which have hardly been surpassed since. The prize competitions of the Academy were also a considerable stimulus to literary criticism, though the prevailing taste in such compositions rather inclined to elegant themes than to careful studies of analyses. The most characteristic critic of the mid-century was the abbé Charles Batteux (1713-1780) who illustrated a tendency of the time by beginning with a treatise on Les Beaux Arts réduits à un même principe (1746); reduced it and others into Principes de la littérature (1764) and added in 1771 Les Quatres Poétiques (Aristotle, Horace, Vida and Boileau). Batteux is a very ingenious critic and his attempt to conciliate “taste” and “the rules,” though inadequate, is interesting. Works on the arts in general or on special divisions of them were not wanting, as, for instance, that of Dubos before alluded to, the Essai sur la peinture of Diderot and others. Critically annotated editions of the great French writers also came into fashion, and were no longer written by mere pedants. Of these Voltaire’s edition of Corneille was the most remarkable, and his annotations, united separately under the title of Commentaire sur Corneille, form not the least important portion of his works. Even older writers, looked down upon though they were by the general taste of the day, received a share of this critical interest. In the earlier portion of the century Nicolas Lenglet-Dufresnoy (1674-1755) and Bernard de la Monnoye (1641-1728) devoted their attention to Rabelais, Regnier, Villon, Marot and others. Étienne Barbazan (1696-1770) and P. J. B. Le Grand d’Aussy (1737-1800) gathered and brought into notice the long scattered and unknown rather than neglected fabliaux of the middle ages. Even the chansons de geste attracted the notice of the Comte de Caylus (1692-1765) and the Comte de Tressan (1705-1783). The latter, in his Bibliothèque des romans, worked up a large number of the old epics into a form suited to the taste of the century. In his hands they became lively tales of the kind suited to readers of Voltaire and Crébillon. But in this travestied form they had considerable influence both in France and abroad. By these publications attention was at least called to early French literature, and when it had been once called, a more serious and appreciative study became merely a matter of time. The method of much of the literary criticism of the close of this period was indeed deplorable enough. Jean François de la Harpe (1739-1803), who though a little later in time as to most of his critical productions is perhaps its most representative figure, shows criticism in one of its worst forms. The critic specially abhorred by Sterne, who looked only at the stop-watch, was a kind of prophecy of La Harpe, who lays it down distinctly that a beauty, however beautiful, produced in spite of rules is a “monstrous beauty” and cannot be allowed. But such a writer is a natural enough expression of an expiring principle. The year after the death of La Harpe Sainte-Beuve was born.

18th-Century Savants.—In science and general erudition the 18th century in France was at first much occupied with the mathematical studies for which the French genius is so peculiarly adapted, which the great discoveries of Descartes had made possible and popular, and which those of his supplanter Newton only made more popular still. Voltaire took to himself the credit, which he fairly deserves, of first introducing the Newtonian system into France, and it was soon widely popular—even ladies devoting themselves to the exposition of mathematical subjects, as in the case of Gabrielle de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749) Voltaire’s “divine Émilie.” Indeed ladies played a great part in the literary and scientific activity of the century, by actual contribution sometimes, but still more by continuing and extending the tradition of “salons.” The duchesse du Maine, Mesdames de Lambert, de Tencin, Geoffrin, du Deffand, Necker, and above all, the baronne d’Holbach (whose husband, however, was here the principal personage) presided over coteries which became more and more “philosophical.” Many of the greatest mathematicians of the age, such as de Moivre and Laplace, were French by birth, while others like Euler belonged to French-speaking races, and wrote in French. The physical sciences were also ardently cultivated, the impulse to them being given partly by the generally materialistic tendency of the age, partly by the Newtonian system, and partly also by the extended knowledge of the world provided by the circumnavigatory voyage of Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729-1811), and other travels. P. L. de Moreau Maupertuis (1698-1759) and C. M. de la Condamine (1701-1774) made long journeys for scientific purposes and duly recorded their experiences. The former, a mathematician and physicist of some ability but more oddity, is chiefly known to literature by the ridicule of Voltaire in the Diatribe du Docteur Akakia. Jean le Rond, called d’Alembert (1717-1783), a great mathematician and a writer of considerable though rather academic excellence, is principally known from his connexion with and introduction to the Encyclopédie, of which more presently. Chemistry was also assiduously cultivated, the baron d’Holbach, among others, being a devotee thereof, and helping to advance the science to the point where, at the conclusion of the century, it was illustrated by Berthollet and Lavoisier. During all this devotion to science in its modern acceptation, the older and more literary forms of erudition were not neglected, especially by the illustrious Benedictines of the abbey of St Maur. Dom Augustin Calmet (1672-1757) the author of the well-known Dictionary of the Bible, belonged to this order, and to them also (in particular to Dom Rivet) was due the beginning of the immense Histoire littéraire de la France, a work interrupted by the Revolution and long suspended, but diligently continued since the middle of the 19th century. Of less orthodox names distinguished for erudition, Nicolas Fréret (1688-1749), secretary of the Academy, is perhaps the most remarkable. But in the consideration of the science and learning in the 18th century from a literary point of view, there is one name and one book which require particular and, in the case of the book, somewhat extended mention. The man is Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1717-1788), the book the Encyclopédie. The immense Natural History of Buffon, Buffon. though not entirely his own, is a remarkable monument of the union of scientific tastes with literary ability. As has happened in many similar instances, there is in parts more literature than science to be found in it; and from the point of view of the latter, Buffon was far too careless in observation and far too solicitous of perfection of style and grandiosity of view. The style of Buffon has sometimes been made the subject of the highest eulogy, and it is at its best admirable; but one still feels in it the fault of all serious French prose in this century before Rousseau—the presence, that is to say, of an artificial spirit rather than of natural variety and power. The The Encyclopédie. Encyclopédie, unquestionably on the whole the most important French literary production of the century, if we except the works of Rousseau and Voltaire, was conducted for a time by Diderot and d’Alembert, afterwards by Diderot alone. It numbered among its contributors almost every Frenchman of eminence in letters. It is often spoken of as if, under the guise of an encyclopaedia, it had been merely a plaidoyer against religion, but this is entirely erroneous. Whatever anti-ecclesiastical bent some of the articles may have, the book as a whole is simply what it professes to be, a dictionary—that is to say, not merely an historical and critical lexicon, like those of Bayle and Moreri (indeed history and biography were nominally excluded), but a dictionary of arts, sciences, trades and technical terms. Diderot himself had perhaps the greatest faculty of any man that ever lived for the literary treatment in a workman-like manner of the most heterogeneous and in some cases rebellious subjects; and his untiring labour, not merely in writing original articles, but in editing the contributions of others, determined the character of the whole work. There is no doubt that it had, 141 quite independently of any theological or political influence, an immense share in diffusing and gratifying the taste for general information.

1789-1830—General Sketch.—The period which elapsed between the outbreak of the Revolution and the accession of Charles X. has often been considered a sterile one in point of literature. As far as mere productiveness goes, this judgment is hardly correct. No class of literature was altogether neglected during these stirring five-and-thirty years, the political events of which have so engrossed the attention of posterity that it has sometimes been necessary for historians to remind us that during the height of the Terror and the final disasters of the empire the theatres were open and the booksellers’ shops patronized. Journalism, parliamentary eloquence and scientific writing were especially cultivated, and the former in its modern sense may almost be said to have been created. But of the higher products of literature the period may justly be considered to have been somewhat barren. During the earlier part of it there is, with the exception of André Chénier, not a single name of the first or even second order of excellence. Towards the midst those of Chateaubriand (1768-1848) and Madame de Staël (1766-1817) stand almost alone; and at the close those of Courier, Béranger and Lamartine are not seconded by any others to tell of the magnificent literary burst which was to follow the publication of Cromwell. Of all departments of literature, poetry proper was worst represented during this period. André Chénier was silenced at its opening by the guillotine. Le Brun and Delille, favoured by an extraordinary longevity, continued to be admired and followed. It was the palmy time of descriptive poetry. Louis, marquis de Fontanes (1757-1821, who deserves rather more special notice as a critic and an official patron of literature), Castel, Boisjolin, Esmenard, Berchoux, Ricard, Martin, Gudin, Cournaud, are names which chiefly survive as those of the authors of scattered attempts to turn the Encyclopaedia into verse. Charles Julien de Chênedollé (1769-1833) owes his reputation rather to amiability, and to his association with men eminent in different ways, such as Rivarol and Joubert, than to any real power. He has been regarded as a precursor of Lamartine; but the resemblance is chiefly on Lamartine’s weakest side; and the stress laid on him recently, as on Lamartine himself and even on Chénier, is part of a passing reaction against the school of Hugo. Even more ambitiously, Luce de Lancival, Campenon, Dumesnil and Parseval de Grand-Maison endeavoured to write epics, and succeeded rather worse than the Chapelains and Desmarets of the 17th century. The characteristic of all this poetry was the description of everything in metaphor and paraphrase, and the careful avoidance of anything like directness of expression; and the historians of the Romantic movement have collected many instances of this absurdity. Lamartine will be more properly noticed in the next division. But about the same time as Lamartine, and towards the end of the present period, there appeared a poet who may be regarded as the last important echo of Malherbe. This was Casimir Delavigne (1793-1843), the author of Les Messéniennes, a writer of very great talent, and, according to the measure of J. B. Rousseau and Lebrun, no mean poet. It is usual to reckon Delavigne as transitionary between the two schools, but in strictness he must be counted with the classicists. Dramatic poetry exhibited somewhat similar characteristics. The system of tragedy writing had become purely mechanical, and every act, almost every scene and situation, had its regular and appropriate business and language, the former of which the poet was not supposed to alter at all, and the latter only very slightly. Poinsinet, La Harpe, M. J. Chénier, Raynouard, de Jouy, Briffaut, Baour-Lormian, all wrote in this style. Of these Chénier (1764-1811) had some of the vigour of his brother André, from whom he was distinguished by more popular political principles and better fortune. On the other hand, Jean François Ducis (1733-1816), who passes with Englishmen as a feeble reducer of Shakespeare to classical rules, passed with his contemporaries as an introducer into French poetry of strange and revolutionary novelties. Comedy, on the other hand, fared better, as indeed it had always fared. Fabre d’Églantine (1755-1794) (the companion in death of Danton), Collin d’Harleville (1755-1806), François G. J. S. Andrieux (1759-1833), Picard, Alexandre Duval, and Népomucène Lemercier (1771-1840) (the most vigorous of all as a poet and a critic of mark) were the comic authors of the period, and their works have not suffered the complete eclipse of the contemporary tragedies which in part they also wrote. If not exactly worthy successors of Molière, they are at any rate not unworthy children of Beaumarchais. In romance writing there is again, until we come to Madame de Staël, a great want of originality and even of excellence in workmanship. The works of Madame de Genlis (1746-1830) exhibit the tendencies of the 18th century to platitude and noble sentiment at their worst. Madame Cottin (1770-1807), Madame de Souza (1761-1836), and Madame de Krudener, exhibited some of the qualities of Madame de Lafayette and more of those of Madame de Genlis. Joseph Fiévée (1767-1839), in Le Dot de Suzette and other works, showed some power over the domestic story; but perhaps the most remarkable work in point of originality of the time was Xavier de Maistre’s (1763-1852) Voyage autour de ma chambre, an attempt in quite a new style, which has been happily followed up by other writers. Turning to history we find comparatively little written at this period. Indeed, until quite its close, men were too much occupied in making history to have time to write it. There is, however, a considerable body of memoir writers, especially in the earlier years of the period, and some great names appear even in history proper. Many of Sismondi’s (1773-1842) best works were produced during the empire. A. G. P. Brugière, baron de Barante (1782-1866), though his best-known works date much later, belongs partially to this time. On the other hand, the production of philosophical writing, especially in what we may call applied philosophy, was considerable. The sensationalist views of Condillac were first continued as by Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) and Laromiguière (1756-1837) and subsequently opposed, in consequence partly of a religious and spiritualist revival, partly of the influence of foreign schools of thought, especially the German and the Scotch. The chief philosophical writers from this latter point of view were Pierre Paul Royer Collard (1763-1845), F. P. G. Maine de Biran (1776-1824), and Théodore Simon Jouffroy (1796-1842). Their influence on literature, however, was altogether inferior to that of the reactionist school, of whom Louis Gabriel, vicomte de Bonald (1754-1840), and Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) were the great leaders. These latter were strongly political in their tendencies, and political philosophy received, as was natural, a large share of the attention of the time. In continuation of the work of the Philosophes, the most remarkable writer was Constantin François Chasseboeuf, comte de Volney (1757-1820), whose Ruines are generally known. On the other hand, others belonging to that school, such as Necker and Morellet, wrote from the moderate point of view against revolutionary excesses. Of the reactionists Bonald is extremely royalist, and carries out in his Législations primitives somewhat the same patriarchal and absolutist theories as our own Filmer, but with infinitely greater Maistre. genius. As Bonald is royalist and aristocratic, so Maistre is the advocate of a theocracy pure and simple, with the pope for its earthly head, and a vigorous despotism for its system of government. Pierre Simon Ballanche (1776-1847), often mentioned in the literary memoirs of his time, wrote among other things Essais de palingénésie sociale, good in style but vague in substance. Of theology proper there is almost necessarily little or nothing, the clergy being in the earlier period proscribed, in the latter part kept in a strict and somewhat discreditable subjection by the Empire. In moralizing literature there is one work of the very highest excellence, which, though not published till long afterwards, belongs in point of composition to this period. This is the Pensées of Joseph Joubert. Joubert (1754-1824), the most illustrious successor of Pascal and Vauvenargues, and to be ranked perhaps above both in the literary finish of his maxims, and certainly above Vauvenargues in the breadth and depth of thought which 142 they exhibit. In pure literary criticism more particularly, Joubert, though exhibiting some inconsistencies due to his time, is astonishingly penetrating and suggestive. Of science and erudition the time was fruitful. At an early period of it appeared the remarkable work of Pierre Cabanis (1757-1808), the Rapports du physique et du morale de l’homme, a work in which physiology is treated from the extreme materialist point of view but with all the liveliness and literary excellence of the Philosophe movement at its best. Another physiological work of great merit at this period was the Traité de la vie et de la mort of Bichat, and the example set by these works was widely followed; while in other branches of science Laplace, Lagrange, Haüy, Berthollet, &c., produced contributions of the highest value. From the literary point of view, however, the chief interest of this time is centred in two individual names, those of Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël, and in three literary developments of a more or less novel character, which were all of the highest importance in shaping the course which French literature has taken since 1824. One of these developments was the reactionary movement of Maistre and Bonald, which in its turn largely influenced Chateaubriand, then Lamennais and Montalembert, and was later represented in French literature in different guises, chiefly by Louis Veuillot (1815-1883) and Mgr Dupanloup (1802-1878). The second and third, closely connected, were the immense advances made by parliamentary eloquence and by political writing, the latter of which, by the hand of Paul Louis Courier (1773-1825), contributed for the first time an undoubted masterpiece to French literature. The influence of the two combined has since raised journalism to even a greater pitch of power in France than in any other country. It is in the development of these new openings for literature, and in the cast and complexion which they gave to its matter, that the real literary importance of the Revolutionary period consists; just as it is in the new elements which they supplied for the treatment of such subjects that the literary value of the authors of René and De l’Allemagne mainly lies. We have already alluded to some of the beginnings of periodical and journalistic letters in France. For some time, in the hands of Bayle, Basnage, Des Maizeaux, Jurieu, Leclerc, periodical literature consisted mainly of a series, more or less disconnected, of pamphlets, with occasional extracts from forthcoming works, critical adversaria and the like. Of a more regular kind were the often-mentioned Journal de Trévoux and Mercure de France, and later the Année littéraire of Fréron and the like. The Correspondance of Grimm also, as we have pointed out, bore considerable resemblance to a modern monthly review, though it was addressed to a very few persons. Of political news there was, under a despotism, naturally very little. 1789, however, saw a vast change in this respect. An enormous efflorescence of periodical literature at once took place, and a few of the numerous journals founded in that year or soon afterwards survived for a considerable time. A whole class of authors arose who pretended to be nothing more than journalists, while many writers distinguished for more solid contributions to literature took part in the movement, and not a few active politicians contributed. Thus to the original staff of the Moniteur, or, as it was at first called, La Gazette Nationale, La Harpe, Lacretelle, Andrieux, Dominique Joseph Garat (1749-1833) and Pierre Ginguené (1748-1826) were attached. Among the writers of the Journal de Paris André Chénier had been ranked. Fontanes contributed to many royalist and moderate journals. Guizot and Morellet, representatives respectively of the 19th and the 18th century, shared in the Nouvelles politiques, while Bertin, Fievée and J. L. Geoffroy (1743-1814), a critic of peculiar acerbity, contributed to the Journal de l’empire, afterwards turned into the still existing Journal des débats. With Geoffroy, François Bénoit Hoffman (1760-1828), Jean F. J. Dussault (1769-1824) and Charles F. Dorimond, abbé de Féletz (1765-1850), constituted a quartet of critics sometimes spoken of as “the Débats four,” though they were by no means all friends. Of active politicians Marat (L’Ami du peuple), Mirabeau (Courrier de Provence), Barère (Journal des débats et des décrets), Brissot (Patriote français), Hébert (Père Duchesne), Robespierre (Défenseur de la constitution), and Tallien (La Sentinelle) were the most remarkable who had an intimate connexion with journalism. On the other hand, the type of the journalist pure and simple is Camille Desmoulins (1759-1794), one of the most brilliant, in a literary point of view, of the short-lived celebrities of the time. Of the same class were Pelletier, Durozoir, Loustalot, Royou. As the immediate daily interest in politics drooped, there were formed periodicals of a partly political and partly literary character. Such had been the décade philosophique, which counted Cabanis, Chénier, and De Tracy among its contributors, and this was followed by the Revue française at a later period, which was in its turn succeeded by the Revue des deux mondes. On the other hand, parliamentary eloquence was even more important than journalism during the early period of the Revolution. Mirabeau naturally stands at the head of orators of this class, and next to him may be ranked the well-known names of Malouet and Meunier among constitutionalists; of Robespierre, Marat and Danton, the triumvirs of the Mountain; of Maury, Cazalès and the vicomte de Mirabeau, among the royalists; and above all of the Girondist speakers Barnave, Vergniaud, and Lanjuinais. The last named survived to take part in the revival of parliamentary discussion after the Restoration. But the permanent contributions to French literature of this period of voluminous eloquence are, as frequently happens in such cases, by no means large. The union of the journalist and the parliamentary spirit produced, however, in Paul Louis Courier a Courier. master of style. Courier spent the greater part of his life, tragically cut short, in translating the classics and studying the older writers of France, in which study he learnt thoroughly to despise the pseudo-classicism of the 18th century. It was not till he was past forty that he took to political writing, and the style of his pamphlets, and their wonderful irony and vigour, at once placed them on the level of the very best things of the kind. Along with Courier should be mentioned Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), who, though partly a romance writer and partly a philosophical author, was mainly a politician and an orator, besides being fertile in articles and pamphlets. Lamennais, like Lamartine, will best be dealt with later, and the same may be said of Béranger; but Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël must be noticed here. The former represents, in the influence which changed the literature of the 18th century into the literature of the 19th, the vague spirit of unrest and “Weltschmerz,” the affection for the picturesque qualities of nature, the religious spirit occasionally turning into mysticism, and the respect, sure to become more and more definite and appreciative, for antiquity. He gives in short the romantic and conservative Madame de Staël. element. Madame de Staël (1766-1817) on the other hand, as became a daughter of Necker, retained a great deal of the Philosophe character and the traditions of the 18th century, especially its liberalism, its sensibilité, and its thirst for general information; to which, however, she added a cosmopolitan spirit, and a readiness to introduce into France the literary and social, as well as the political and philosophical, peculiarities of other countries to which the 18th century, in France at least, had been a stranger, and which Chateaubriand himself, notwithstanding his excursions into English literature, had been very far from feeling. She therefore contributed to the positive and liberal side of the future movement. The absolute literary importance of the two was very different. Madame de Staël’s early writings were of the critical kind, half aesthetic half ethical, of which the 18th century had been fond, and which their titles, Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau, De l’influence des passions, De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, sufficiently show. Her romances, Delphine and Corinne, had immense literary influence at the time. Still more was this the case with De l’Allemagne, which practically opened up to the rising generation in France the till then unknown Chateaubriand. treasures of literature and philosophy, which during the most glorious half century of her literary history Germany had, sometimes on hints taken from France herself, been accumulating. The literary importance of Chateaubriand (1768-1848) is far greater, while his literary influence 143 can hardly be exaggerated. Chateaubriand’s literary father was Rousseau, and his voyage to America helped to develop the seeds which Rousseau had sown. In René and other works of the same kind, the naturalism of Rousseau received a still further development. But it was not in mere naturalism that Chateaubriand was to find his most fertile and most successful theme. It was, on the contrary, in the rehabilitation of Christianity as an inspiring force in literature. The 18th century had used against religion the method of ridicule; Chateaubriand, by genius rather than by reasoning, set up against this method that of poetry and romance. “Christianity,” says he, almost in so many words, “is the most poetical of all religions, the most attractive, the most fertile in literary, artistic and social results.” This theme he develops with the most splendid language, and with every conceivable advantage of style, in the Génie du Christianisme and the Martyrs. The splendour of imagination, the summonings of history and literature to supply effective and touching illustrations, analogies and incidents, the rich colouring so different from the peculiarly monotonous and grey tones of the masters of the 18th century, and the fervid admiration for nature which were Chateaubriand’s main attractions and characteristics, could not fail to have an enormous literary influence. Indeed he has been acclaimed, with more reason than is usually found in such acclamations, as the founder of comparative and imaginative literary criticism in France if not in Europe. The Romantic school acknowledged, and with justice, its direct indebtedness to him.

Literature since 1830.—In dealing with the last period of the history of French literature and that which was introduced by the literary revolution of 1830 and has continued, in phases of only partial change, to the present day, a slight alteration of treatment is requisite. The subdivisions of literature have lately become so numerous, and the contributions to each have reached such an immense volume, that it is impossible to give more than cursory notice, or indeed allusion, to most of them. It so happens, however, that the purely literary characteristics of this period, though of the most striking and remarkable, are confined to a few branches of literature. The character of the 19th century in France has hitherto been at least as strongly marked as that of any previous period. In the middle ages men of letters followed each other in the cultivation of certain literary forms for long centuries. The chanson de geste, the Arthurian legend, the roman d’aventure, the fabliau, the allegorical poem, the rough dramatic jeu, mystery and farce, served successively as moulds into which the thought and writing impulse of generations of authors were successively cast, often with little attention to the suitability of form and subject. The end of the 15th century, and still more the 16th, owing to the vast extension of thought and knowledge then introduced, finally broke up the old forms, and introduced the practice of treating each subject in a manner more or less appropriate to it, and whether appropriate or not, freely selected by the author. At the same time a vast but somewhat indiscriminate addition was made to the actual vocabulary of the language. The 17th and 18th centuries witnessed a process of restriction once more to certain forms and strict imitation of predecessors, combined with attention to purely arbitrary rules, the cramping and impoverishing effect of this (in Fénelon’s words) being counterbalanced partly by the efforts of individual genius, and still more by the constant and steady enlargement of the range of thought, the choice of subjects, and the familiarity with other literature, both of the ancient and modern world. The literary work of the 19th century and of the great Romantic movement which began in its second quarter was to repeat on a far larger scale the work of the 16th, to break up and discard such literary forms as had become useless or hopelessly stiff, to give strength, suppleness and variety to such as were retained, to invent new ones where necessary, to enrich the language by importations, inventions and revivals, and, above all, to bring into prominence the principle of individualism. Authors and even books, rather than groups and kinds, demand principal attention.

The result of this revolution is naturally most remarkable in the belles-lettres and the kindred department of history. Poetry, not dramatic, has been revived; prose romance and literary criticism have been brought to a perfection previously unknown; and history has produced works more various, if not more remarkable, than at any previous stage of the language. Of all these branches we shall therefore endeavour to give some detailed account. But the services done to the language were not limited to the strictly literary branches of literature. Modern French, if it lacks, as it probably does lack, the statuesque precision and elegance of prose style to which between 1650 and 1800 all else was sacrificed, has become a much more suitable instrument for the accurate and copious treatment of positive and concrete subjects. These subjects have accordingly been treated in an abundance corresponding to that manifested in other countries, though the literary importance of the treatment has perhaps proportionately declined. We cannot even attempt to indicate the innumerable directions of scientific study which this copious industry has taken, and must confine ourselves to those which come more immediately under the headings previously adopted. In philosophy proper France, like other nations, has been more remarkable for attention to the historical side of the matter than for the production of new systems; and the principal exception among her philosophical writers, Auguste Comte (1793-1857), besides inclining, as far as his matter went to the political and scientific rather than to the purely philosophical side (which indeed he regarded as antiquated), was not very remarkable merely as a man of letters. Victor Cousin (1792-1867), on the other hand, almost a brilliant man of letters and for a time regarded as something of a philosophical apostle preaching “eclecticism,” betook himself latterly to biographical and other miscellaneous writing, especially on the famous French ladies of the 17th century, and is likely to be remembered chiefly in this department, though not to be forgotten in that of philosophical history and criticism. The same curious declension was observable in the much younger Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893), who, beginning with philosophical studies, and always maintaining a strong tincture of philosophical determinism, applied himself later, first to literary history and criticism in his famous Histoire de la littérature anglaise (1864), and then to history proper in his still more famous and far more solidly based Origines de la France contemporaine (1876). To him, however, we must recur under the head of literary criticism. And not dissimilar phenomena, not so much of inconstancy to philosophy as of a tendency towards the applied rather than the pure branches of the subject, are noticeable in Edgar Quinet (1803-1875), in Charles de Rémusat (1797-1875), and in Ernest Renan (1823-1892), the first of whom began by translating Herder while the second and third devoted themselves early to scholastic philosophy, de Rémusat dealing with Abelard (1845) and Anselm (1856), Renan with Averroes (1852). More single-minded devotion to at least the historical side was shown by Jean Philibert Damiron (1794-1862), who published in 1842 a Cours de philosophie and many minor works at different times; but the inconstancy recurs in Jules Simon (1814-1896), who, in the earlier part of his life a professor of philosophy and a writer of authority on the Greek philosophers (especially in Histoire de l’école d’Alexandrie, 1844-1845), began before long to take an active and, towards the close of his life-work, all but a foremost part in politics. In theology the chief name of great literary eminence in the earlier part of the century is that of Lamennais, of whom more presently, in the later, that of Renan again. But Charles Forbes de Montalembert (1810-1870), an historian with a strong theological tendency, deserves notice; and among ecclesiastics who have been orators and writers the père Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire (1802-1861), a pupil of Lamennais who returned to orthodoxy but always kept to the Liberal side; the père Célestin Joseph Félix (1810-1891), a Jesuit teacher and preacher of eminence; and the père Didon (1840-1900), a very popular preacher and writer who, though thoroughly orthodox, did not escape collision with his superiors. On the Protestant side Athanase Coquerel (1820-1875) is the most remarkable name. Recently Paul Sabatier (b. 1858) has displayed, especially 144 in dealing with Saint Francis of Assisi, much power of literary and religious sympathy and a style somewhat modelled on that of Renan, but less unctuous and effeminate. There are strong philosophical tendencies, and at least a revolt against the religious as well as philosophical ideas of the Encyclopédists, in the Pensées of Joubert, while the hybrid position characteristic of the 19th century is particularly noticeable in Étienne Pivert de Sénancour (1770-1846), whose principal work, Obermann (1804), had an extraordinary influence on its own and the next generation in the direction of melancholy moralizing. This tone was notably taken up towards the other end of the century by Amiel (q.v.), who, however, does not strictly belong to French literature: while in Ximénès Doudon (1800-1872), author of Mélanges et lettres posthumously published, we find more of a return to the attitude of Joubert—literary criticism occupying a very large part of his reflections. Political philosophy and its kindred sciences have naturally received a large share of attention. Towards the middle of the century there was a great development of socialist and fanciful theorizing on politics, with which the names of Claude Henri, comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), Charles Fourier (1772-1837), Étienne Cabet (1788-1856), and others are connected. As political economists Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), L. G. L. Guilhaud de Lavergne (1809-1880), Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881), and Michel Chevalier (1806-1879) may be noticed. In Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) France produced a political observer of a remarkably acute, moderate and reflective character, and Armand Carrel (1800-1836), whose life was cut short in a duel, was a real man of letters, as well as a brilliant journalist and an honest if rather violent party politician. The name of Jean Louis Eugène Lerminier (1803-1857) is of wide repute for legal and constitutional writings, and that of Henri, baron de Jomini (1779-1869) is still more celebrated as a military historian; while that of François Lenormant (1837-1883) holds a not dissimilar position in archaeology. With the publications devoted to physical science proper we do not attempt to meddle. Philology, however, demands a brief notice. In classical studies France has till recently hardly maintained the position which might be expected of the country of Scaliger and Casaubon. She has, however, produced some considerable Orientalists, such as Champollion the younger, Burnouf, Silvestre de Sacy and Stanislas Julien. The foundation of Romance philology was due, indeed, to the foreigners Wolf and Diez. But early in the century the curiosity as to the older literature of France created by Barbazan, Tressan and others continued to extend. Dominique Martin Méon (1748-1829) published many unprinted fabliaux, gave the whole of the French Renart cycle, with the exception of Renart le contrefait, and edited the Roman de la rose. Charles Claude Fauriel (1772-1844) and François Raynouard (1761-1836) dealt elaborately with Provençal poetry as well as partially with that of the trouvères; and the latter produced his comprehensive Lexique romane. These examples were followed by many other writers, who edited manuscript works and commented on them, always with zeal and sometimes with discretion. Foremost among these must be mentioned Paulin Paris (1800-1881) who for fifty years served the cause of old French literature with untiring energy, great literary taste, and a pleasant and facile pen. His selections from manuscripts, his Romancero français, his editions of Garin le Loherain and Berte aus grans piés, and his Romans de la table ronde may especially be mentioned. Soon, too, the Benedictine Histoire littéraire, so long interrupted, was resumed under M. Paris’s general management, and has proceeded nearly to the end of the 14th century. Among its contents M. Paris’s dissertations on the later chansons de gestes and the early song writers, M. Victor le Clerc’s on the fabliaux, and M. Littré’s on the romans d’aventures may be specially noticed. For some time indeed the work of French editors was chargeable with a certain lack of critical and philological accuracy. This reproach, however, was wiped off by the efforts of a band of younger scholars, chiefly pupils of the École des Chartes, with MM. Gaston Paris (1839-1903) and Paul Meyer at their head. Of M. Paris in particular it may be said that no scholar in the subject has ever combined literary and linguistic competence more admirably. The Société des Anciens Textes Français was formed for the purpose of publishing scholarly editions of inedited works, and a lexicon of the older tongue by M. Godefroy at last supplemented, though not quite with equal accomplishment, the admirable dictionary in which Émile Littré (1801-1881), at the cost of a life’s labour, embodied the whole vocabulary of the classical French language. Meanwhile the period between the middle ages proper and the 17th century has not lacked its share of this revival of attention. To the literature between Villon and Regnier especial attention was paid by the early Romantics, and Sainte-Beuve’s Tableau historique et critique de la poésie et du théâtre au seizième siècle was one of the manifestoes of the school. Since the appearance of that work in 1828 editions with critical comments of the literature of this period have constantly multiplied, aided by the great fancy for tastefully produced works which exists among the richer classes in France; and there are probably now few countries in which works of old authors, whether in cheap reprints or in éditions de luxe can be more readily procured.

The Romantic Movement.—It is time, however, to return to the literary revolution itself, and its more purely literary results. At the accession of Charles X. France possessed three writers, and perhaps only three, of already remarkable Béranger. eminence, if we except Chateaubriand, who was already of a past generation. These three were Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780-1857), Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), and Hugues Félicité Robert Lamennais (1782-1854). The first belongs definitely in manner, despite his striking originality of nuance, to the past. He has remnants of the old periphrases, the cumbrous mythological allusions, the poetical “properties” of French verse. He has also the older and somewhat narrow limitations of a French poet; foreigners are for him mere barbarians. At the same time his extraordinary lyrical faculty, his excellent wit, which makes him a descendant of Rabelais and La Fontaine, and his occasional touches of pathos made him deserve and obtain something more than successes of occasion. Béranger, moreover, was very far from being the mere improvisatore which those who cling to the inspirationist theory of poetry would fain see in him. His studies in style and composition were persistent, and it was long before he attained the firm and brilliant manner which distinguishes him. Béranger’s talent, however, was still too much a matter of individual genius to have great literary influence, and he formed no school. It was different Lamartine. with Lamartine, who was, nevertheless, like Béranger, a typical Frenchman. The Méditations and the Harmonies exhibit a remarkable transition between the old school and the new. In going direct to nature, in borrowing from her striking outlines, vivid and contrasted tints, harmony and variety of sound, the new poet showed himself an innovator of the best class. In using romantic and religious associations, and expressing them in affecting language, he was the Chateaubriand of verse. But with all this he retained some of the vices of the classical school. His versification, harmonious as it is, is monotonous, and he does not venture into the bold lyrical forms which true poetry loves. He has still the horror of the mot propre; he is always spiritualizing and idealizing, and his style and thought have a double portion of the feminine and almost flaccid softness which had come to pass for grace in French. The last of the trio, Lamennais, represents an altogether Lamennais. bolder and rougher genius. Strongly influenced by the Catholic reaction, Lamennais also shows the strongest possible influence of the revolutionary spirit. His earliest work, the Essai sur l’indifférence en matière de religion (1817 and 1818) was a defence of the church on curiously unecclesiastical lines. It was written in an ardent style, full of illustrations, and extremely ambitious in character. The plan was partly critical and partly constructive. The first part disposed of the 18th century; the second, adopting the theory of papal absolutism which Joseph de Maistre had already advocated, proceeded to base it on a supposed universal consent. The after history of Lamennais was perhaps not an unnatural recoil from this; but it is sufficient here to point out that in his prose, 145 especially as afterwards developed in the apocalyptic Paroles d’un croyant (1839) are to be discerned many of the tendencies of the Romantic school, particularly its hardy and picturesque choice of language, and the disdain of established and accepted methods which it professed. The signs of the revolution itself were, as was natural, first given in periodical literature. The feudalist affectations of Chateaubriand and the legitimists excited a sort of aesthetic affection for Gothicism, and Walter Scott became one of the most favourite authors in France. Soon was started the periodical La Muse française, in which the names of Hugo, Vigny, Deschamps and Madame de Girardin appear. Almost all the writers in this periodical were eager royalists, and for some time the battle was still fought on political grounds. There could, however, be no special connexion between classical drama and liberalism; and the liberal journal, the Globe, with no less a person than Sainte-Beuve among its contributors, declared definite war against classicism in the drama. The chief “classical” organs were the Constitutionnel, the Journal des débats, and after a time and not exclusively, the Revue des deux mondes. Soon the question became purely literary, and the Romantic school proper was born in the famous cénacle or clique in which Hugo was chief poet, Sainte-Beuve chief critic, and Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, the brothers Émile (1791-1871) and Antony (1800-1869), Deschamps, Petrus Borel (1809-1859) and others were officers. Alfred de Vigny and Alfred de Musset stand somewhat apart, and so does Charles Nodier (1780-1844), a versatile and voluminous writer, the very variety and number of whose works have somewhat prevented the individual excellence of any of them from having justice done to it. The objects of the school, which was at first violently opposed, so much so that certain academicians actually petitioned the king to forbid the admission of any Romantic piece at the Théâtre Français, were, briefly stated, the burning of everything which had been adored, and the adoring of everything which had been burnt. They would have no unities, no arbitrary selection of subjects, no restraints on variety of versification, no academically limited vocabulary, no considerations of artificial beauty, and, above all, no periphrastic expression. The mot propre, the calling of a spade a spade, was the great commandment of Romanticism; but it must be allowed that what was taken away in periphrase was made up in adjectives. Musset, who was very much of a free-lance in the contest, maintained indeed that the differentia of the Romantic was the copious use of this part of speech. All sorts of epithets were invented to distinguish the two parties, of which flamboyant and grisâtre are perhaps the most accurate and expressive pair—the former serving to denote the gorgeous tints and bold attempts of the new school, the latter the grey colour and monotonous outlines of the old. The representation of Hernani in 1830 was the culmination of the struggle, and during great part of the reign of Louis Philippe almost all the younger men of letters in France were Romantics. The representation of the Lucrèce of François Ponsard (1814-1867) in 1846 is often quoted as the herald or sign of a classical reaction. But this was only apparent, and signified, if it signified anything, merely that the more juvenile excesses of the Romantics were out of date. All the greatest men of letters of France since 1830 have been on the innovating side, and all without exception, whether intentionally or not, have had their work coloured by the results of the movement, and of those which have succeeded it as developments rather than reactions.

Drama and Poetry since 1830.—Although the immediate subject on which the battles of Classics and Romantics arose was dramatic poetry, the dramatic results of the movement have not been those of greatest value or most permanent character. The principal effect in the long run has been the introduction of a species of play called drame, as opposed to regular comedy and tragedy, admitting of much freer treatment than either of these two as previously understood in French, and lending itself in some measure to the lengthy and disjointed action, the multiplicity of personages, and the absence of stock characters which characterized the English stage in its palmy days. All Victor Hugo’s dramatic works are of this class, and each, as it was produced or published (Cromwell, Hernani, Marion de l’Orme, Le Roi s’amuse, Lucrèce Borgia, Marie Tudor, Ruy Blas and Les Burgraves), was a literary event, and excited the most violent discussion—the author’s usual plan being to prefix a prose preface of a very militant character to his work. A still more melodramatic variety of drame was that chiefly represented by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), whose Henri III and Antony, to which may be added later La Tour de Nesle and Mademoiselle de Belleisle, were almost as much rallying points for the early Romantics as the dramas of Hugo, despite their inferior literary value. At the same time Alexandre Soumet (1788-1845), in Norma, Une Fête de Néron, &c., and Casimir Delavigne in Marino Faliero, Louis XI, &c., maintained a somewhat closer adherence to the older models. The classical or semi-classical reaction of the last years of Louis Philippe was represented in tragedy by Ponsard (Lucrèce, Agnes de Méranie, Charlotte Corday, Ulysse, and several comedies), and on the comic side, to a certain extent, by Émile Augier (1820-1889) in L’Aventurière, Le Gendre de M. Poirier, Le Fils de Giboyer, &c. During almost the whole period Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) poured forth innumerable comedies of the vaudeville order, which, without possessing much literary value, attained immense popularity. For the last half-century the realist development of Romanticism has had the upper hand in dramatic composition, its principal representatives being on the one side Victorien Sardou (1831-1909), who in Nos Intimes, La Famille Benoîton, Rabagas, Dora, &c., chiefly devoted himself to the satirical treatment of manners, and Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), author in 1852 of the famous Dame aux camélias, who in such pieces as Les Idées de Madame Aubray and L’Étrangère rather busied himself with morals and “problems,” while his Dame aux camélias (1852) is sometimes ranked as the first of such things in “modern” style. Certain isolated authors also deserve notice, such as Joseph Autran (1813-1877), a poet and academician having some resemblance to Lamartine, whose Fille d’Æschyle created for him a dramatic reputation which he did not attempt to follow up, and Gabriel Legouvé (b. 1807), whose Adrienne Lecouvreur was assisted to popularity by the admirable talent of Rachel. A special variety of drama of the first literary importance has also been cultivated in this century under the title of scènes or proverbes, slight dramatic sketches in which the dialogue and style are of even more importance than the action. The best of all of these are those of Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), whose Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée, On ne badine pas avec l’amour, &c., are models of grace and wit. Among his followers may be mentioned especially Octave Feuillet (1821-1890). Few social dramas of the kind in modern times have attained a greater success than Le Monde où l’on s’ennuie (1868) of Édouard Pailleron (1834-1899). (See also Drama.)

In poetry proper, as in drama, Victor Hugo showed the way. In him all the Romantic characteristics were expressed and embodied—disregard of arbitrary critical rules, free choice of subject, variety and vigour of metre, splendour Victor Hugo. and sonorousness of diction, abundant “local colour,” and that irrepressible individualism which is one of the chief, though not perhaps the chief, of the symptoms. If the careful attention to form which is also characteristic of the movement is less apparent in him than in some of his followers, it is not because it is absent, but because the enthusiastic conviction with which he attacked every subject somewhat diverts attention from it. As with the merits so with the defects. A deficient sense of the ludicrous which characterized many of the Romantics was strongly apparent in their leader, as was also an equally representative grandiosity, and a fondness for the introduction of foreign and unfamiliar words, especially proper names, which occasionally produces an effect of burlesque. Victor Hugo’s earliest poetical works, his chiefly royalist and political Odes, were cast in the older and accepted forms, but already displayed astonishing poetical qualities. But it was in the Ballades (for instance, the splendid Pas d’armes du roi Jean, written in verses of three syllables) and the Orientales (of which may be taken for a sample the sixth section of Navarin, a perfect 146 torrent of outlandish terms poured forth in the most admirable verse, or Les Djinns, where some of the stanzas have lines of two syllables each) that the grand provocation was thrown to the believers in alexandrines, careful caesuras and strictly separated couplets. Les Feuilles d’automne, Les Chants du crépuscule, Les Voix intérieures, Les Rayons et les ombres, the productions of the next twenty years, were quieter in style and tone, but no less full of poetical spirit. The Revolution of 1848, the establishment of the empire and the poet’s exile brought about a fresh determination of his genius to lyrical subjects. Les Châtiments and La Légende des siècles, the one political, the other historical, reach perhaps the high-water mark of French verse; and they were followed by the philosophical Contemplations, the lighter Chansons des rues et des bois, the Année terrible, the second Légende des siècles, and the later work to be found noticed sub nom. We have been thus particular here because the literary productiveness of Victor Hugo himself has been the measure and sample of the whole literary productiveness of France on the poetical side. At five-and-twenty he was acknowledged as a master, at seventy-five he was a master still. His poetical influence has been represented in three different schools, from which very few of the poetical writers of the century can be excluded. These few we may notice first. Alfred Musset. de Musset, a writer of great genius, felt part of the Romantic inspiration very strongly, but was on the whole unfortunately influenced by Byron, and partly out of wilfulness, partly from a natural want of persevering industry and vigour, allowed himself to be careless and even slovenly in composition. Notwithstanding this, many of his lyrics are among the finest poems in the language, and his verse, careless as it is, has extraordinary natural grace. Auguste Barbier (1805-1882) whose Iambes shows an extraordinary command of nervous and masculine versification, also comes in here; and the Breton poet, Auguste Brizeux (1803-1858), much admired by some, together with Hégésippe Moreau, an unequal writer possessing some talent, Pierre Dupont (1821-1870), one of much greater gifts, and Gustave Nadaud (1820-1893), a follower of Béranger, also deserve mention. Of the school of Lamartine rather than of Hugo are Alfred de Vigny (1799-1865) and Victor de Laprade (1812-1887), the former a writer of little bulk and somewhat over-fastidious, but possessing one of the most correct and elegant styles to be found in French, with a curious restrained passion and a complicated originality, the latter a meditative and philosophical poet, like Vigny an admirable writer, but somewhat deficient in pith and substance, as well as in warmth and colour. Madame Ackermann (1813-1890) is the chief philosophical poetess of France, and this style has recently been very popular; but for actual poetical powers, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786-1859) perhaps excelled her, though in a looser and more sentimental fashion. The poetical schools which more directly derive from the Romantic movement as represented by Hugo are three in number, corresponding in point of time with the first outburst of the movement, with the period of reaction already alluded to, and with the closing years of the second empire. Of the first by far the most distinguished member was Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), the most perfect Gautier. poet in point of form that France has produced. When quite a boy he devoted himself to the study of 16th-century masters, and though he acknowledged the supremacy of Hugo, his own talent was of an individual order, and developed itself more or less independently. Albertus alone of his poems has much of the extravagant and grotesque character which distinguished early romantic literature. The Comédie de la mort, the Poésies diverses, and still more the Émaux et camées, display a distinctly classical tendency—classical, that is to say, not in the party and perverted sense, but in its true acceptation. The tendency to the fantastic and horrible may be taken as best shown by Petrus Borel (1809-1859), a writer of singular power almost entirely wasted. Gerard Labrunie or de Nerval (1808-1855) adopted a manner also fantastic but more idealistic than Borel’s, and distinguished himself by his Oriental travels and studies, and by his attention to popular ballads and traditions, while his style has an exquisite but unaffected strangeness hardly inferior to Gautier’s. This peculiar and somewhat quintessenced style is also remarkable in the Gaspard de la nuit of Louis Bertrand (1807-1841), a work of rhythmical prose almost unique in its character. One famous sonnet preserves the name of Félix Arvers (1806-1850). The two Deschamps were chiefly remarkable as translators. The next generation produced three remarkable poets, to whom may perhaps be added a fourth. Théodore de Banville (1823-1891), adopting the principles of Gautier, and combining with them a considerable satiric faculty, composed a large amount of verse, faultless in form, delicate and exquisite in shades and colours, but so entirely neutral in moral and political tone that it has found fewer admirers than it deserved. Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), carrying out the principle of ransacking foreign literature for subjects, went to Celtic, classical or even Oriental sources for his inspiration, and despite a science in verse not much inferior to Banville’s, and a far wider range and choice of subject, diffused an air of erudition, not to say pedantry, over his work which disgusted some readers, and a pessimism which displeased others, but has left poetry only inferior to that of the greatest of his countrymen. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), by his choice of unpopular subjects and the terrible truth of his analysis, revolted not a few of those who, in the words of an English critic, cannot take pleasure in the representation if they do not take pleasure in the thing represented, and who thus miss his extraordinary command of the poetical appeal in sound, in imagery and in suggestion generally. Thus, by a strange coincidence, each of the three representatives of the second Romantic generation was for a time disappointed of his due fame. A fourth poet of this time, Joséphin Soulary (1815-1891), produced sonnets of rare beauty and excellence. A fifth, Louis Bouilhet (1822-1869), an intimate friend of Flaubert, pushed even farther the fancy for strange subjects, but showed powers in Melænis and other things. In 1866 a collection of poems, entitled after an old French fashion Le Parnasse contemporain, appeared. It included contributions by many of the poets just mentioned, but the mass of the contributors were hitherto unknown to fame. A similar collection appeared in 1869, and was interrupted by the German war, but continued after it, and a third in 1876.

The first Parnasse had been projected by MM. Xavier de Ricard (b. 1843) and Catulle Mendès (1841-1909) as a sort of manifesto of a school of young poets: but its contents were largely coloured by the inclusion among them of work by representatives of older generations—Gautier, Laprade, Leconte de Lisle, Banville, Baudelaire and others. The continuation, however, of the title in the later issues, rather than anything else, led to the formation and promulgation of the idea of a “Parnassien” or an “Impassible” school which was supposed to adopt as its watchword the motto of “Art for Art’s sake,” to pay especial attention to form, and also to aim at a certain objectivity. As a matter of fact the greater poets and the greater poems of the Parnasse admit of no such restrictive labelling, which can only be regarded as mischievous, though (or very mainly because) it has been continued. Another school, arising mainly in the later ’eighties and calling itself that of “Symbolism,” has been supposed to indicate a reaction against Parnassianism and even against the main or Hugonic Romantic tradition generally; with a throwing back to Lamartine and perhaps Chénier. This idea of successive schools (“Decadents,” “Naturists,” “Simplists,” &c.) has even been reduced to such an absurdum as the statement that “France sees a new school of poetry every fifteen years.” Those who have studied literature sufficiently widely, and from a sufficient elevation, know that these systematisings are always more or less delusive. Parnassianism, symbolism and the other things are merely phases of the Romantic movement itself—as may be proved to demonstration by the simple process of taking, say, Hugo and Verlaine on the one hand, Delille or Escouchard Lebrun on the other, and comparing the two first mentioned with each other and with the older poet. The differences in the first case will be found to be 147 differences at most of individuality: in the other of kind. We shall not, therefore, further refer to these dubious classifications: but specify briefly the most remarkable poets whom they concern, and all the older of whom, it may be observed, were represented in the Parnasse itself. Of these the most remarkable were Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907), François Coppée (1842-1908) and Paul Verlaine (1844-1896). The first (Stances et poèmes, 1865, Vaines Tendresses, 1875, Bonheur, 1888, &c.) is a philosophical and rather pessimistic poet who has very strongly rallied the suffrages of the rather large present public who care for the embodiment of these tendencies in verse; the second (La Grève des forgerons, 1869, Les Humbles, 1872, Contes et vers, 1881-1887, &c.) a dealer with more generally popular subjects in a more sentimental manner; and the third (Sagesse, 1881, Parallèlement, 1889, Poèmes saturniens, including early work, 1867-1890), by far the most original and remarkable poet of the three, starting with Baudelaire and pushing farther the fancy for forbidden subjects, but treating both these and others with wonderful command of sound and image-suggestion. Verlaine in fact (he was actually well acquainted with English) endeavoured, and to a small extent succeeded in the endeavour, to communicate to French the vague suggestion of visual and audible appeal which has characterized English poetry from Blake through Coleridge. Others of the original Parnassiens who deserve mention are Albert Glatigny (1839-1873), a Bohemian poet of great talent who died young; Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), afterwards chief of the Symbolists, also a true poet in his way, but somewhat barren, and the victim of pose and trick; José Maria de Heredia (1842-1905), a very exquisite practitioner of the sonnet but with perhaps more art than matter in him; Henri Cazalis (1840-1909), who long afterwards, under his name of Jean Lahor, appeared as a Symbolist pessimist; A. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, another eccentric but with a spark of genius; Emmanuel des Essarts; Auguste de Châtillon (1810-1882); Léon Dierx (b. 1838) who, after producing even less than Mallarmé, succeeded him as Symbolist chief; Jean Aicard (b. 1848), a southern bard of merit; and lastly Catulle Mendès himself, who has been a brilliant writer in verse and prose ever since, and whose Mouvement poétique français de 1867 à 1900 (1903), an official report largely amplified so that it is in fact a history and dictionary of French poetry during the century, forms an almost unique work of reference on the subject. Among the later recruits the most specially noticeable was Armand Silvestre (1837-1901), whose verse (La Chanson des heures, 1878, Ailes d’or, 1880, La Chanson des étoiles, 1885), of an ethereal beauty, was contrasted with prose admirably written and sometimes most amusing, but “Pantagruelist,” and more, in manners and morals. This declension from poetry to prose fiction was also noticeable in Guy de Maupassant, André Theuriet, Anatole France and even Alphonse Daudet.

Yet another flight of poets may be grouped as those specially representing the last quarter of the century and (whether Parnassian, Symbolist or what not) the latest development of French poetry. Verlaine and Mallarmé already mentioned were in a manner the leaders of these. Perhaps something of the influence of Whitman may be detected in the irregular verses of Gustave Kahn (b. 1859), Francis Viélé Griffin, actually an American by birth (b. 1864), Stuart Merrill, of like origin, and Paul Fort (b. 1872). But the whole tendency of the period has been to relax the stringency of French prosody. Albert Samain (1859-1900), a musical versifier enough; Jean Moréas (1856-1910) who began with a volume called Les Syrtes in 1884; Laurent Tailhade (b. 1854) and others are more or less Symbolist, and contributed to the Symbolist periodical (one of many such since the beginning of the Romantic movement which would almost require an article to themselves), the Mercure de France. An older man than many of these, M. Jean Richepin (b. 1849), made for a time considerable noise with poetical work of a colour older even than his age, and harking back somewhat to the Jeune-France and “Bousingot” type of early Romanticism—La Chanson des gueux, Les Blasphèmes, &c. Other writers of note are M. Paul Déroulède (b. 1846), a violently nationalist poet; M. Maurice Bouchor (b. 1864), who started his serious and respectable work with Les Symboles in 1888; while M. Henri de Regnier, born in the same year, has received very high praise for work from Lendemains in 1886 and other volumes up to Les Jeux rustiques et divins (1897) and Les Médailles d’argile (1900). The truth, however, perhaps is that this extraordinary abundance of verse (for we have not mentioned a quarter of the names which present themselves, or a twentieth part of those who figure in M. Mendès’s catalogue for the last half-century) reminds the literary historian somewhat too much of similar phenomena in other times. There is undoubtedly a great diffusion of poetical dexterity, and not perhaps a small one of poetical spirit, but it requires the settling, clarifying and distinguishing effects of time to separate the poet from the minor poet. Still more perhaps must we look to time to decide whether the vers libre as it is called—that is to say, the verse freed from the minute traditions of the elder prosody, admitting hiatus, neglecting to a greater or less extent caesura, and sometimes relying upon mere rhythm to the neglect of strict metre altogether—can hold its ground. It has as yet been practised by no poet at all approaching the first class, except Verlaine, and not by him in its extremer forms. And the whole history of prosody and poetry teaches us that though similar changes often come in as it were unperceived, they scarcely ever take root in the language unless a great poet adopts them. Or rather it should perhaps be said that when they are going to take root in the language a great poet always does adopt them before very long.

Prose Fiction since 1830.—Even more remarkable, because more absolutely novel, was the outburst of prose fiction which followed 1830. Madame de Lafayette, Le Sage, Marivaux, Voltaire, the Abbé Prévost, Diderot, J. J. Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Fiévée had all of them produced work excellent in its way, and comprising in a more or less rudimentary condition most varieties of the novel. But none of them had, in the French phrase, made a school, and at no time had prose fiction been composed in any considerable quantities. The immense influence which Walter Scott exercised was perhaps the direct cause of the attention paid to prose fiction; the facility, too, with which all the fancies, tastes and beliefs of the time could be embodied in such work may have had considerable importance. But it is difficult on any theory of cause and effect to account for the appearance in less than ten years of such a group of novelists as Hugo, Gautier, Dumas, Mérimée, Balzac, George Sand, Jules Sandeau and Charles de Bernard, names to which might be added others scarcely inferior. There is hardly anything else resembling it in literature, except the great cluster of English dramatists in the beginning of the 17th century, and of English poets at the beginning of the 19th; and it is remarkable that the excellence of the first group was maintained by a fresh generation—Murger, About, Feuillet, Flaubert, Erckmann-Chatrian, Droz, Daudet, Cherbuliez and Gaboriau, forming a company of diadochi not far inferior to their predecessors, and being themselves not unworthily succeeded almost up to the present day. The romance-writing of France during the period has taken two different directions—the first that of the novel of incident, the second that of analysis and character. The first, now mainly deserted, was that which, as was natural when Scott was the model, was formerly most trodden; the second required the genius of George Sand and of Balzac and the more problematical talent of Beyle to attract students to it. The novels of Victor Hugo are novels of incident, with a strong infusion of purpose, and considerable but rather ideal character drawing. They are in fact lengthy prose drames rather than romances proper, and they have found no imitators. They display, however, the powers of the master at their fullest. Dumas. On the other hand, Alexandre Dumas originally composed his novels in close imitation of Scott, and they are much less dramatic than narrative in character, so that they lend themselves to almost indefinite continuation, and there is often no particular reason why they should terminate even at the end of the score or so of volumes to which they sometimes actually extend. Of this purely narrative kind, which hardly 148 even attempts anything but the boldest character drawing, the best of them, such as Les Trois Mousquetaires, Vingt ans après, La Reine Margot, are probably the best specimens extant. Dumas possesses, almost alone among novelists, the secret of writing interminable dialogue without being tedious, and of telling the story by it. Of something the same kind, but of a far lower stamp, are the novels of Eugène Sue (1804-1857). Dumas and Sue were accompanied and followed by a vast crowd of companions, independent or imitative. Alfred de Vigny had already attempted the historical novel in Cinq-Mars. Henri de La Touche (1785-1851) (Fragoletta), an excellent critic who formed George Sand, but a mediocre novelist, may be mentioned: and perhaps also Roger de Beauvoir, whose real name was Eugène Auguste Roger de Bully (1806-1866) (Le Chronique de Saint Georges), and Frédéric Soulié (Les Mémoires du diable) (1800-1847). Paul Féval (La Fée des grèves) (1817-1877) and Amédée Achard (Belle-Rose) (1814-1875) are of the same school, and some of the attempts of Jules Janin (1804-1874), more celebrated as a critic, may also be connected with it. By degrees, however, the taste for the novel of incident, at least of an historical kind, died out till it was revived in another form, and with an admixture of domestic interest, by MM. Erckmann-Chatrian. The last and one of the most splendid instances of the old style was Le Capitaine Fracasse, which Théophile Gautier began early and finished late as a kind of tour de force. The last-named writer in his earlier days had modified the incident novel in many short tales, a kind of writing for which French has always been famous, and in which Gautier’s sketches are masterpieces. His only other long novel, Mademoiselle de Maupin, belongs rather to the class of analysis. With Gautier, as a writer whose literary characteristics even excel his purely tale-telling powers, may be classed Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870), one of the most exquisite 19th-century masters of the language. Already, however, in 1830 the tide was setting strongly in favour of novels of contemporary life and manners. These were of course susceptible of extremely various treatment. For many years Paul de Kock (1793-1871), a writer who did not trouble himself about Classics or Romantics or any such matter, continued the tradition of Marivaux, Crébillon fils, and Pigault Lebrun (1753-1835) in a series of not very moral or polished but lively and amusing sketches of life, principally of the bourgeois type. Later Charles de Bernard (1804-1850) (Gerfaut) with infinitely greater wit, elegance, propriety and literary skill, did the same thing for the higher classes of French society. But the two great masters of the novel of character and manners as opposed to that of history and incident are Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) and Aurore Dudevant, commonly called George Sand (1804-1876). Their influence affected the entire body of novelists who succeeded them, with very few exceptions. At the head of these exceptions may be placed Jules Sandeau (1811-1883), who, after writing a certain number of novels in a less individual style, at last made for himself a special subject in a certain kind of domestic novel, where the passions set in motion are less boisterous than those usually preferred by the French novelist, and reliance is mainly placed on minute character drawing and shades of colour sober in hue but very carefully adjusted (Catherine, Mademoiselle de Penarvan, Mademoiselle de la Seiglière). In the same class of the more quiet and purely domestic novelists may be placed X. B. Saintine (1798-1865) (Picciola), Madame C. Reybaud (1802-1871) (Clémentine, Le Cadet de Colobrières), J. T. de Saint-Germain (Pour en épingle, La Feuille de coudrier), Madame Craven (1808-1891) (Récit d’une sœur, Fleurange). Henri Beyle (1798-1865), who wrote under the nom de plume of Stendhal and belongs to an older generation than most of these, also stands by himself. His chief book in the line of fiction is La Chartreuse de Parme, an exceedingly powerful novel of the analytical kind, and he also composed a considerable number of critical and miscellaneous works. Of little influence at first (though he had great power over Mérimée) and never master of a perfect style, he has exercised ever increasing authority as a master of pessimist analysis. Indeed much of his work was never published till towards the close of the century. Last among the independents must be mentioned Henry Murger (1822-1861), the painter of what is called Bohemian life, that is to say, the struggles, difficulties and amusements of students, youthful artists, and men of letters. In this peculiar style, which may perhaps be regarded as an irregular descendant of the picaroon romance, Murger has no rival; and he is also, though on no extensive scale, a poet of great pathos. But with these exceptions, the influences of the two writers we have mentioned, sometimes combined, more often separate, may be traced throughout the whole of later novel literature. George Sand began with books strongly tinged with the spirit of revolt against moral and social arrangements, and she sometimes diverged into very curious paths of pseudo-philosophy, such as was popular in the second quarter of the century. At times, too, as in Lucrezia Floriani and some other works, she did not hesitate to draw largely on her own personal adventures and experiences. But latterly she devoted herself rather to sketches of country life and manners, and to novels involving bold if not very careful sketches of character and more or less dramatic situations. She was one of the most fertile of novelists, continuing to the end of her long life to pour forth fiction at the rate of many volumes a year. Of her different styles may be mentioned as fairly characteristic, Lélia, Lucrezia Floriani, Consuelo, La Mare au diable, La Petite Fadette, François le champi, Mademoiselle de la Quintinie. Considering the shorter Balzac the younger. length of his life the productiveness of Balzac was almost more astonishing, especially if we consider that some of his early work was never reprinted, and that he left great stores of fragments and unfinished sketches. He is, moreover, the most remarkable example in literature of untiring work and determination to achieve success despite the greatest discouragements. His early work was worse than unsuccessful, it was positively bad. After more than a score of unsuccessful attempts, Les Chouans at last made its mark, and for twenty years from that time the astonishing productions composing the so-called Comédie humaine were poured forth successively. The sub-titles which Balzac imposed upon the different batches, Scènes de la vie parisienne, de la vie de province, de la vie intime, &c., show, like the general title, a deliberate intention on the author’s part to cover the whole ground of human, at least of French life. Such an attempt could not succeed wholly; yet the amount of success attained is astonishing. Balzac has, however, with some justice been accused of creating the world which he described, and his personages, wonderful as is the accuracy and force with which many of the characteristics of humanity are exemplified in them, are somehow not altogether human. Since these two great novelists, many others have arisen, partly to tread in their steps, partly to strike out independent paths. Octave Feuillet (1821-1890), beginning his career by apprenticeship to Alexandre Dumas and the historical novel, soon found his way in a very different style of composition, the roman intime of fashionable life, in which, notwithstanding some grave defects, he attained much popularity and showed remarkable skill in keeping abreast of his time. The so-called realist side of Balzac was developed (but, as he himself acknowledged, with a double dose of intermixed if somewhat transformed Romanticism) by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), who showed culture, scholarship and a literary power over the language inferior to that of no writer of the century. No novelist of his generation has attained a higher literary rank than Flaubert. Madame Bovary and L’Éducation sentimentale are studies of contemporary life; in Salammbô and La Tentation de Saint Antoine erudition and antiquarian knowledge furnish the subjects for the display of the highest literary skill. Of about the same date Edmond About (1828-1885), before he abandoned novel-writing, devoted himself chiefly to sketches of abundant but not always refined wit (L’Homme à l’oreille cassée, Le Nez d’un notaire), and sometimes to foreign scenes (Tolla, Le Roi des montagnes). Champfleury (Henri Husson, 1829-1889), a prolific critic, deserves notice for stories of the extravaganza kind. During the whole of the Second Empire one of the most popular writers was Ernest Feydeau (1821-1873), a writer of great ability, but morbid and affected in the choice and treatment of his subjects (Fanny, 149 Sylvie, Catherine d’Overmeire). Émile Gaboriau (1833-1873), taking up that side of Balzac’s talent which devoted itself to inextricable mysteries, criminal trials, and the like, produced M. Le Coq, Le Crime d’Orcival, La Dégringolade, &c.; and Adolphe Belot (b. 1829) for a time endeavoured to out-Feydeau Feydeau in La Femme de feu and other works. Eugène Fromentin (1820-1876), best known as a painter, wrote a novel, Dominique, which was highly appreciated by good judges.

During the last decade of the Second Empire there arose, continuing for varying lengths of time till nearly the end of the century, another remarkable group of novelists, most of whom are dealt with under separate headings, but who must receive combined treatment here; with the warning that even more danger than in the case of the poets is incurred by classing them in “schools.” Undoubtedly, however, the “Naturalist” tendency, starting from Balzac and continued through Flaubert, but taking quite a new direction under some of those to be mentioned, is in a manner dominant. Flaubert himself and Feuillet (an exact observer of manners but an anti-Naturalist) have already been mentioned. Victor Cherbuliez (1829-1899), a constant writer in the Revue des deux mondes on politics and other subjects, also accomplished a long series of novels from Le Comte Kostia (1863) onwards, of which the most remarkable are that just named, Le Roman d’une honnête femme (1866), and Meta Holdenis (1873). With something of Balzac and more of Feuillet, Cherbuliez mixed with his observation of society a dose of sentimental and popular romance which offended the younger critics of his day, but he had solid merits. Gustave Droz (b. 1832) devoted himself chiefly to short stories sufficiently “free” in subject (Monsieur, madame et bébé, Entre nous, &c.) but full of fancy, excellently written, and of a delicate wit in one sense if not in all. André Theuriet (1833-1907) began with poetry but diverged to novels, in which the scenery of France and especially of its great forests is used with much skill; Le Fils Maugars (1879) may be mentioned out of many as a specimen. Léon Cladel (1835-1892), whose most remarkable work was Les Va-nu-pieds (1874), had, as this title of itself shows, Naturalist leanings; but with a quaint Romantic tendency in prose and verse.

The Naturalists proper chiefly developed or seemed to develop one side of Balzac, but almost entirely abandoned his Romantic element. They aimed first at exact and almost photographic delineation of the accidents of modern life, and secondly at still more uncompromising non-suppression of the essential features and functions of that life which are usually suppressed. This school may be represented in chief by four novelists (really three, as two of them were brothers who wrote together till the rather early death of one of them), Émile Zola (1840-1903), Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), and Edmond (1822-1897) and Jules (1830-1870) de Goncourt. The first, of Italian extraction and Marseillais birth, began by work of undecided kinds and was always a critic as well as a novelist. Of this first stage Contes à Ninon (1864) and Thérèse Raquin (1867) deserve to be specified. But after 1870 Zola entered upon a huge scheme (suggested no doubt by the Comédie humaine) of tracing the fortunes in every branch, legitimate and illegitimate, and in every rank of society of a family, Les Rougon-Macquart, and carried it out in a full score of novels during more than as many years. He followed this with a shorter series on places, Paris, Rome, Lourdes, and lastly by another of strangely apocalyptic tone, Fécondité, Travail, Vérité, the last a story of the Dreyfus case, retrospective and, as it proved, prophetic. The extreme repulsiveness of much of his work, and the overdone detail of almost the whole of it, caused great prejudice against him, and will probably always prevent his being ranked among the greatest novelists; but his power is indubitable, and in passages, if not in whole books, does itself justice.

MM. de Goncourt, besides their work in Naturalist (they would have preferred to call it “Impressionist”) fiction, devoted themselves especially to study and collection in the fine arts, and produced many volumes on the historical side of these, volumes distinguished by accurate and careful research. This quality they carried, and the elder of them after his brother’s death continued to carry, into novel-writing (Renée Mauperin, Germinie Lacerteux, Chérie, &c.) with the addition of an extraordinary care for peculiar and, as they called it, “personal” diction. On the other hand, Alphonse Daudet (who with the other three, Flaubert to some extent, and the Russian novelist Turgenieff, formed a sort of cénacle or literary club) mixed with some Naturalism a far greater amount of fancy and wit than his companions allowed themselves or could perhaps attain; and in the Tartarin series (dealing with the extravagances of his fellow-Provençaux) added not a little to the gaiety of Europe. His other novels (Fromont jeune et Risler aîné, Jack, Le Nabab, &c.), also very popular, have been variously judged, there being something strangely like plagiarism in some of them, and in others, in fact in most, an excessive use of that privilege of the novelist which consists in introducing real persons under more or less disguise. It should be observed in speaking of this group that the Goncourts, or rather the survivor of them, left an elaborate Journal disfigured by spite and bad taste, but of much importance for the appreciation of the personal side of French literature during the last half of the century.

In 1880 Zola, who had by this time formed a regular school of disciples, issued with certain of them a collection of short stories, Les Soirées de Médan, which contains one of his own best things, L’Attaque du moulin, and also the capital story, Boule de suif, by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), who in the same year published poems, Des vers, of very remarkable if not strictly poetical quality. Maupassant developed during his short literary career perhaps the greatest powers shown by any French novelist since Flaubert (his sponsor in both senses) in a series of longer novels (Une Vie, Bel Ami, Pierre et Jean, Fort comme la mort) and shorter stories (Monsieur Parent, Les Sœurs Rondoli, Le Horla), but they were distorted by the Naturalist pessimism and grime, and perhaps also by the brain-disease of which their author died. M. J. K. Huysmans (b. 1848), also a contributor to Les Soirées de Médan, who had begun a little earlier with Marthe (1876) and other books, gave his most characteristic work in 1884 with Au rebours and in 1891 with Là-bas, stories of exaggerated and “satanic” pose, decorated with perhaps the extremest achievements of the school in mere ugliness and nastiness. Afterwards, by an obvious reaction, he returned to Catholicism. Of about the same date as these two are two other novelists of note, Julien Viaud (“Pierre Loti,” b. 1850), a naval officer who embodied his experiences of foreign service with a faint dose of story and character interest, and a far larger one of elaborate description, in a series of books (Aziyadé, Le Mariage de Loti, Madame Chrysanthème, &c.), and M. Paul Bourget (b. 1852), an important critic as well as novelist who deflected the Naturalist current into a “psychological” channel, connecting itself higher with Stendhal, and composed in its books very popular in their way—Cruelle Énigme (1885), Le Disciple, Terre promise, Cosmopolis. As a contrast or complement to Bourget’s “psychological” novel may be taken the “ethical” novel of Edouard Rod (1857-1909)—La Vie privée de Michel Tessier (1893), Le Sens de la vie, Les Trois Cœurs. Contemporary with these as a novelist though a much older man, and occupied at different times of his life with verse and with criticism, came Anatole France (b. 1844), who in Le Crime de Silvestre Bonnard, La Rôtisserie de la reine Pédauque, Le Lys rouge, and others, has made a kind of novel as different from the ordinary styles as Pierre Loti’s, but of far higher appeal in its wit, its subtle fancy, and its perfect French. Ferdinand Fabre (1830-1898) and René Bazin (b. 1853) represent the union, not too common in the French novel, of orthodoxy in morals and religion with literary ability. Further must be mentioned Paul Hervieu (b. 1857), a dramatist rather than a novelist; the brothers Margueritte (Paul, b. 1860, Victor, b. 1866), especially strong in short stories and passages; another pair of brothers of Belgian origin writing under the name of “J. H. Rosny”—Zolaists partly converted not to religion but to science and a sort of non-Christian virtue; the ingenious and amusing, if not exactly moral, brilliancy of Marcel Prévost (b. 1862); the 150 contorted but rather attractive style and the perverse sentiment of Maurice Barrès (b. 1862); and, above all, the audacious and inimitable dialogue pieces of “Gyp” (Madame de Martel, b. 1850), worthy of the best times of French literature for gaiety, satire, acuteness and style, and perhaps likely, with the work of Maupassant, Pierre Loti and Anatole France, to represent the capital achievement of their particular generation to posterity.

Periodical Literature since 1830. Criticism.—One of the causes which led to this extensive composition of novels was the great spread of periodical literature in France, and the custom of including in almost all periodicals, daily, weekly or monthly, a feuilleton or instalment of fiction. Of the contributors of these periodicals who were strictly journalists and almost political journalists only, the most remarkable after Carrel were his opponent in the fatal duel,—Émile de Girardin, Lucien A. Prévost-Paradol (1829-1870), Jean Hippolyte Cartier, called de Villemessant (1812-1879), and, above all, Louis Veuillot (1815-1883), the most violent and unscrupulous but by no means the least gifted of his class. The same spread of periodical literature, together with the increasing interest in the literature of the past, led also to a very great development of criticism. Almost all French authors of any eminence during nearly the last century have devoted themselves more or less to criticism of literature, of the theatre, or of art. And sometimes, as in the case of Janin and Gautier, the comparatively lucrative nature of journalism, and the smaller demands which it made for labour and intellectual concentration, have diverted to feuilleton-writing abilities which might perhaps have been better employed. At the same time it must be remembered that from this devotion of men of the best talents to critical work has arisen an immense elevation of the standard of such work. Before the romantic movement in France Diderot in that country, Lessing and some of his successors in Germany, Hazlitt, Coleridge and Lamb in England, had been admirable critics and reviewers. But the theory of criticism, though these men’s principles and practice had set it aside, still remained more or less what it had been for centuries. The critic was merely the administrator of certain hard and fast rules. There were certain recognized kinds of literary composition; every new book was bound to class itself under one or other of these. There were certain recognized rules for each class; and the goodness or badness of a book consisted simply in its obedience or disobedience to these rules. Even the kinds of admissible subjects and the modes of admissible treatment were strictly noted and numbered. This was especially the case in France and with regard to French belles-lettres, so that, as we have seen, certain classes of composition had been reduced to unimportant variations of a registered pattern. The Romantic protest against this absurdity was specially loud and completely victorious. It is said that a publisher advised the youthful Lamartine to try “to be like somebody else” if he wished to succeed. The Romantic standard of success was, on the contrary, to be as individual as possible. Victor Hugo himself composed a good deal of criticism, and in the preface to his Orientales he states the critical principles of the new school clearly. The critic, he says, has nothing to do with the subject chosen, the colours employed, the materials used. Is the work, judged by itself and with regard only to the ideal which the worker had in his mind, good or bad? It will be seen that as a legitimate corollary of this theorem the critic becomes even more of an interpreter than of a judge. He can no longer satisfy himself or his readers by comparing the work before him with some abstract and accepted standard, and marking off its shortcomings. He has to reconstruct, more or less conjecturally, the special ideal at which each of his authors aimed, and to do this he has to study their idiosyncrasies with the utmost care, and set them before his readers in as full and attractive a fashion as he can manage. The first writer who thoroughly grasped this necessity and successfully Sainte-Beuve. dealt with it was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), who has indeed identified his name with the method of criticism just described. Sainte-Beuve’s first remarkable work (his poems and novels we may leave out of consideration) was the sketch of 16th-century literature already alluded to, which he contributed to the Globe. But it was not till later that his style of criticism became fully developed and accentuated. During the first decade of Louis Philippe’s reign his critical papers, united under the title of Critiques et portraits littéraires, show a gradual advance. During the next ten years he was mainly occupied with his studies of the writers of the Port Royal school. But it was during the last twenty years of his life, when the famous Causeries du lundi appeared weekly in the columns of the Constitutionnel and the Moniteur, that his most remarkable productions came out. Sainte-Beuve’s style of criticism (which is the key to so much of French literature of the last half-century that it is necessary to dwell on it at some length), excellent and valuable as it is, lent itself to two corruptions. There is, in the first place, in making the careful investigations into the character and circumstances of each writer which it demands, a danger of paying too much attention to the man and too little to his work, and of substituting for a critical study a mere collection of personal anecdotes and traits, especially if the author dealt with belongs to a foreign country or a past age. The other danger is that of connecting the genius and character of particular authors too much with their conditions and circumstances, so as to regard them as merely so many products of the age. These faults, and especially the latter, have been very noticeable in many of Sainte-Beuve’s successors, particularly in, perhaps, Hippolyte Taine, who, however, besides his work on English literature, did much of importance on French, and has been regarded as the first critic who did thorough honour to Balzac in his own country. A large number of other critics during the period deserve notice because, though acting more or less on the newer system of criticism, they have manifested considerable originality in its application. As far as merely critical faculty goes, and still more in the power of giving literary expression to criticism, Théophile Gautier yields to no one. His Les Grotesques, an early work dealing with Villon, the earlier “Théophile” de Viau, and other enfants terribles of French literature, has served as a model to many subsequent writers, such as Charles Monselet (1825-1888), and Charles Asselineau (1820-1874), the affectionate historian, in his Bibliographie romantique (1872-1874), of the less famous promoters of the Romantic movement. On the other hand, Gautier’s picture criticisms, and his short reviews of books, obituary notices, and other things of the kind contributed to daily papers, are in point of style among the finest of all such fugitive compositions. Jules Janin (1804-1874), chiefly a theatrical critic, excelled in light and easy journalism, but his work has neither weight of substance nor careful elaboration of manner sufficient to give it permanent value. This sort of light critical comment has become almost a speciality of the French press, and among its numerous practitioners the names of Armand de Pontmartin (1811-1890) (an imitator and assailant of Sainte-Beuve), Arsène Houssaye, Pierangelo Fiorentino (1806-1864), may be mentioned. Edmond Scherer (1815-1889) and Paul de Saint-Victor (1827-1881) represent different sides of Sainte-Beuve’s style in literary criticism, Scherer combining with it a martinet and somewhat prudish precision, while Saint-Victor, with great powers of appreciation, is the most flowery and “prose-poetical” of French critics. In theatrical censure Francisque Sarcey (1827-1899), an acute but somewhat severe and limited judge, succeeded to the good-natured sovereignty of Janin. The criticism of the Revue des deux mondes has played a sufficiently important part in French literature to deserve separate notice in passing. Founded in 1829, the Revue, after some vicissitudes, soon attained, under the direction of the Swiss Buloz, the character of being one of the first of European critical periodicals. Its style of criticism has, on the whole, inclined rather to the classical side—that is, to classicism as modified by, and possible after, the Romantic movement. Besides some of the authors already named, its principal critical contributors were Gustave Planche (1808-1857), an acute but somewhat truculent critic, Saint-René Taillandier (1817-1879), and Émile Montégut (1825-1895), a man of letters whom greater leisure would have made greater, but who actually combined much and varied critical power with 151 an agreeable style. Lastly we must notice the important section of professorial or university critics, whose critical work has taken the form either of regular treatises or of courses of republished lectures, books somewhat academic and rhetorical in character, but often representing an amount of influence which has served largely to stir up attention to literature. The most prominent name among these is that of Abel Villemain (1790-1867), who was one of the earliest critics of the literature of his own country to obtain a hearing out of it. Désiré Nisard (1806-1888) was perhaps more fortunate in his dealings with Latin than with French, and in his History of the latter literature represents too much the classical tradition, but he had dignity, erudition and an excellent style. Alexandre Vinet (1797-1847), a Swiss critic of considerable eminence, Saint-Marc-Girardin (1801-1873), whose Cours de littérature dramatique is his chief work, and Eugène Géruzez (1799-1865), the author not only of an extremely useful and well-written handbook to French literature before the Revolution, but also of other works dealing with separate portions of the subject, must also be mentioned. One remarkable critic, Ernest Hello (1818-1885), attracted during his life little attention even in France, and hardly any out of it, his work being strongly tinctured with the unpopular flavour and colour of uncompromising “clericalism,” and his extremely bad health keeping him out of the ordinary fraternities of literary society. It was, however, as full of idiosyncrasy as of partisanship, and is exceedingly interesting to those who regard criticism as mainly valuable because it gives different aspects of the same thing.

Perhaps in no branch of belles-lettres did the last quarter of the century maintain the level at which predecessors had arrived better than in criticism; though whether this fact is connected with something of decadence in the creative branches, is a question which may be better posed than resolved here. A remarkable writer whose talent, approaching genius, was spoilt by eccentricity and pose, and who belonged to a more modern generation, Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly (1808-1889), poet, novelist and critic, produced much of his last critical work, and corrected more, in these later days. Not only did the critical work in various ways of Renan, Taine, Scherer, Sarcey and others continue during parts of it, but a new generation, hardly in this case inferior to the old, appeared. The three chiefs of this were the already mentioned Anatole France, Émile Faguet (b. 1847), and Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906), to whom some would add Jules Lemaître (b. 1853). The last, however, though a brilliant writer, was but an “interim” critic, beginning with poetry and other matters, and after a time turning to yet others, while, brilliant as he was, his criticism was often ill-informed. So too Anatole France, after compiling four volumes of La Vie littéraire in his own inimitable style and with singular felicity of appreciation, also turned away. The phenomenon in both cases may be associated, though it must not be too intimately connected in the relation of cause and effect, with the fact that both were champions and practitioners of “impressionist criticism”—of the doctrine (unquestionably sound if not exaggerated) that the first duty of the critic is to reproduce the effect produced on his own mind by the author. Brunetière and Faguet, on the other hand, are partisans of the older academic style of criticism by kind and on principle. Faguet, besides regular volumes on each of the four great centuries of French literature, has produced much other work—all of it somewhat “classical” in tendency and frequently exhibiting something of a want of comprehension of the Romantic side. Brunetière was still more prolific on the same side but with still greater effort after system and “science.” In the books definitely called L’Évolution des genres, in his Manuel of French literature, and in a large number of other volumes of collected essays he enforced with great learning and power of argument, if with a somewhat narrow purview and with some prejudice against writers whom he disliked, a new form of the old doctrine that the “kind” not the individual author or book ought to be the main subject of the critic’s attention. He did not escape the consequential danger of taking authors and books not as they are but as in relation to the kinds which they in fact constitute and to his general views. But he was undoubtedly at his death the first critic of France and a worthy successor of her best.

Of others older and younger must be mentioned Paul Stapfer (b. 1840), professor of literature, and the author of divers excellent works from Shakespeare et l’antiquité to volumes of the first value on Montaigne and Rabelais; Paul Bourget and Edouard Rod, already noticed; Augustin Filon (b. 1841), author of much good work on English literature and an excellent book on Mérimée; Alexandre Beljame (1843-1906), another eminent student of English literature, in which subject J. A. Jusserand (b. 1855), Legouis, K. A. J. Angellier (b. 1848), and others have recently distinguished themselves; Gustave Larroumet, especially an authority on Marivaux; Eugène Lintilhac (b. 1854); Georges Pellissier; Gustave Lanson, author of a compact history of French literature in French; Marcel Schwob, who had done excellent work on Villon and other subjects before his early death; René Doumic, a frequent writer in the Revue des deux mondes, who collected four volumes of Études sur la littérature française between 1895 and 1900; and the Vicomte Melchior de Vogüé (b. 1848), whose interests have been more political-philosophical than strictly literary, but who has done much to familiarize the French public with that Russian literature to which Mérimée had been the first to introduce them. But the body of recent critical literature in France is perhaps larger in actual proportion and of greater value when considered in relation to other kinds of literature than has been the case at any previous period.

History since 1830.—The remarkable development of historical studies which we have noticed as taking place under the Restoration was accelerated and intensified in the reigns of Charles X. and Louis Philippe. Both the scope and the method of the historian underwent a sensible alteration. For something like 150 years historians had been divided into two classes, those who produced elegant literary works pleasant to read, and those who produced works of laborious erudition, but not even intended for general perusal. The Vertots and Voltaires were on one side, the Mabillons and Tillemonts on another. Now, although the duty of a French historian to produce works of literary merit was not forgotten, it was recognized as part of that duty to consult original documents and impart original observation. At the same time, to the merely political events which had formerly been recognized as forming the historian’s province were added the social and literary phenomena which had long been more or less neglected. Old chronicles and histories were re-read and re-edited; innumerable monographs on special subjects and periods were produced, and these latter were of immense service to romance writers at the time of the popularity of the historical novel. Not a few of the works, for instance, which were signed by Alexandre Dumas consist mainly of extracts or condensations from old chronicles, or modern monographs, ingeniously united by dialogue and varnished with a little description. History, however, had not to wait for this second-hand popularity, and its cultivators had fully sufficient literary talent to maintain its dignity. Sismondi, whom we have already noticed, continued during this period his great Histoire des Français, and produced his even better-known Histoire des républiques italiennes au moyen âge. The brothers Thierry devoted themselves to early French history, Amédée Thierry (1797-1873) producing a Histoire des Gaulois and other works concerning the Roman period, and Augustin Thierry (1795-1856) the well-known history of the Norman Conquest, the equally attractive Récits des temps Mérovingiens and other excellent works. Philippe de Ségur (1780-1873) gave a history of the Russian campaign of Napoleon, and some other works chiefly dealing with Russian history. The voluminous Histoire de France of Henri Martin (1810-1883) is perhaps the best and most impartial work dealing in detail with the whole subject. A. G. P. Brugière, baron de Barante (1782-1866), after beginning with literary criticism, turned to history, and in his Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne produced a work of capital importance. As was to be expected, many of the most brilliant results of this devotion to historical subjects consisted of works dealing with the French Revolution. No 152 series of historical events has ever perhaps received treatment at the same time from so many different points of view, and by writers of such varied literary excellence, among whom it must, however, be said that the purely royalist side is hardly at all represented. One of the earliest of these histories is that of François Mignet (1796-1884), a sober and judicious historian of the older school, also well known for his Histoire de Marie Stuart. About the same time was begun the brilliant if not extremely trustworthy work of Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) on the Revolution, which established the literary reputation of the future president of the French republic, and was at a later period completed by the Histoire du consulat et de l’empire. The downfall of the July monarchy and the early years of the empire witnessed the publication of several works of the first importance on this subject. Barante contributed histories of the Convention and the Directory, but the three books of greatest note were those of Lamartine, Jules Michelet (1798-1874), and Louis Blanc (1811-1882). Lamartine’s Histoire des Girondins is written from the constitutional-republican point of view, and is sometimes considered to have had much influence in producing the events of 1848. It is, perhaps, rather the work of an orator and poet than of an historian. The work of Michelet is of a more original character. Besides his history of the Revolution, Michelet wrote an extended history of France, and a very large number of smaller works on historical, political and social subjects. His imaginative powers are of the highest order, and his style stands alone in French for its strangely broken and picturesque character, its turbid abundance of striking images, and its somewhat sombre magnificence, qualities which, as may easily be supposed, found full occupation in a history of the Revolution. The work of Louis Blanc was that of a sincere but ardent republican, and is useful from this point of view, but possesses no extraordinary literary merit. The principal contributions to the history of the Revolution of the third quarter of the century were those of Quinet, Lanfrey and Taine. Edgar Quinet (1803-1875), like Louis Blanc a devotee of the republic and an exile for its sake, brought to this one of his latest works a mind and pen long trained to literary and historical studies; but La Révolution is not considered his best work. P. Lanfrey devoted himself with extraordinary patience and acuteness to the destruction of the Napoleonic legend, and the setting of the character of Napoleon I. in a new, authentic and very far from favourable light. And Taine, after distinguishing himself, as we have mentioned, in literary criticism (Histoire de la littérature anglaise), and attaining less success in philosophy (De l’intelligence), turned in Les Origines de la France moderne to an elaborate discussion of the Revolution, its causes, character and consequences, which excited some commotion among the more ardent devotees of the principles of ’89. To return from this group, we must notice J. F. Michaud (1767-1839), the historian of the crusades, and François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874), who, like his rival Thiers, devoted himself much to historical study. His earliest works were literary and linguistic, but he soon turned to political history, and for the last half-century of his long life his contributions to historical literature were almost incessant and of the most various character. The most important are the histories Des Origines du gouvernement représentatif, De la révolution d’Angleterre, De la civilisation en France, and latterly a Histoire de France, which he was writing at the time of his death. Among minor historians of the earlier century may be mentioned Prosper Duvergier de Hauranne (1798-1881) (Gouvernement parlementaire en France), J. J. Ampère (1800-1864) (Histoire romaine à Rome), Auguste Arthur Beugnot (1797-1865) (Destruction du paganisme d’occident), J. O. B. de Cléron, comte d’Haussonville (La Réunion de la Lorraine à la France), Achille Tendelle de Vaulabelle (1799-1870) (Les Deux Restaurations). In the last quarter of the century, under the department of history, the most remarkable names were still those of Taine and Renan, the former being distinguished for thought and matter, the latter for style. Indeed it may be here proper to remark that Renan, in the kind of elaborated semi-poetic style which has most characterized the prose of the 19th century in all countries of Europe, takes pre-eminence among French writers even in the estimation of critics who are not enamoured of his substance and tone. But, under the influence of Taine to some extent and of a general European tendency still more, France during this period attained or recovered a considerable place for what is called “scientific” history—the history which while, in some cases, though not in all, not neglecting the development of style attaches itself particularly to “the document,” on the one hand, and to philosophical arrangement on the other. The chief representative of the school was probably Albert Sorel (1842-1906), whose various handlings of the Revolutionary period (including an excursion into partly literary criticism in the shape of an admirable monograph on Madame de Staël) have established themselves once for all. In a wider sweep Ernest Lavisse (b. 1842), who has dealt mainly with the 18th century, may hold a similar position. Of others, older and younger, the duc de Broglie (1821-1901), who devoted himself also to the 18th century and especially to its secret diplomacy; Gaston Boissier (b. 1823), a classical scholar rather than an historian proper, and one of the latest masters of the older French academic style; Thureau-Dangin (b. 1837), a student of mid 19th-century history; Henri Houssaye (b. 1848), one of the Napoleonic period; Gabriel Hanotaux (b. 1853), an historian of Richelieu and other subjects, and a practical politician, may be mentioned. A large accession has also been made to the publication of older memoirs—that important branch of French literature from almost the whole of its existence since the invention of prose.

Summary and Conclusion.—We have in these last pages given such an outline of the 19th-century literature of France as seemed convenient for the completion of what has gone before. It has been already remarked that the nearer approach is made to our own time the less is it possible to give exhaustive accounts of the individual cultivators of the different branches of literature. It may be added, perhaps, that such exhaustiveness becomes, as we advance, less and less necessary, as well as less and less possible. The individual poet of to-day may and does produce work that is in itself of greater literary value than that of the individual trouvère. As a matter of literary history his contribution is less remarkable because of the examples he has before him and the circumstances which he has around him. Yet we have endeavoured to draw such a sketch of French literature from the Chanson de Roland onwards that no important development and hardly any important partaker in such development should be left out. A few lines may, perhaps, be now profitably given to summing up the aspects of the whole, remembering always that, as in no case is generalization easier than in the case of the literary aspects and tendencies of periods and nations, so in no case is it apt to be more delusive unless corrected and supported by ample information of fact and detail.

At the close of the 11th century and at the beginning of the 12th we find the vulgar tongue in France not merely in fully organized use for literary purposes, but already employed in most of the forms of poetical writing. An immense outburst of epic and narrative verse has taken place, and lyrical poetry, not limited as in the case of the epics to the north of France, but extending from Roussillon to the Pas de Calais, completes this. The 12th century adds to these earliest forms the important development of the mystery, extends the subjects and varies the manner of epic verse, and begins the compositions of literary prose with the chronicles of St Denis and of Villehardouin, and the prose romances of the Arthurian cycle. All this literature is so far connected purely with the knightly and priestly orders, though it is largely composed and still more largely dealt in by classes of men, trouvères and jongleurs, who are not necessarily either knights or priests, and in the case of the jongleurs are certainly neither. With a possible ancestry of Romance and Teutonic cantilenae, Breton lais, and vernacular legends, the new literature has a certain pattern and model in Latin and for the most part ecclesiastical compositions. It has the sacred books and the legends of the saints for examples of narrative, the rhythm of the hymns for a guide to metre, and the ceremonies of the church for a stimulant to dramatic performance. By degrees 153 also, in this 12th century, forms of literature which busy themselves with the unprivileged classes begin to be born. The fabliau takes every phase of life for its subject; the folk-song acquires elegance and does not lose raciness and truth. In the next century, the 13th, medieval literature in France arrives at its prime—a prime which lasts until the first quarter of the 14th. The early epics lose something of their savage charms, the polished literature of Provence quickly perishes. But in the provinces which speak the more prevailing tongue nothing is wanting to literary development. The language itself has shaken off all its youthful incapacities, and, though not yet well adapted for the requirements of modern life and study, is in every way equal to the demands made upon it by its own time. The dramatic germ contained in the fabliau and quickened by the mystery produces the profane drama. Ambitious works of merit in the most various kinds are published; Aucassin et Nicolette stands side by side with the Vie de Saint Louis, the Jeu de la feuillie with Le Miracle de Théophile, the Roman de la rose with the Roman du Renart. The earliest notes of ballads and rondeau are heard; endeavours are made with zeal, and not always without understanding, to naturalize the wisdom of the ancients in France, and in the graceful tongue that France possesses. Romance in prose and verse, drama, history, songs, satire, oratory and even erudition, are all represented and represented worthily. Meanwhile all nations of western Europe have come to France for their literary models and subjects, and the greatest writers in English, German, Italian, content themselves with adaptations of Chrétien de Troyes, of Benoit de Sainte More, and of a hundred other known and unknown trouvères and fabulists. But this age does not last long. The language has been put to all the uses of which it is as yet capable; those uses in their sameness begin to pall upon reader and hearer; and the enormous evils of the civil and religious state reflect themselves inevitably in literature. The old forms die out or are prolonged only in half-lifeless travesties. The brilliant colouring of Froissart, and the graceful science of ballade and rondeau writers like Lescurel and Deschamps, alone maintain the literary reputation of the time. Towards the end of the 14th century the translators and political writers import many terms of art, and strain the language to uses for which it is as yet unhandy, though at the beginning of the next age Charles d’Orléans by his natural grace and the virtue of the forms he used emerges from the mass of writers. Throughout the 15th century the process of enriching or at least increasing the vocabulary goes on, but as yet no organizing hand appears to direct the process. Villon stands alone in merit as in peculiarity. But in this time dramatic literature and the literature of the floating popular broadsheet acquire an immense extension—all or almost all the vigour of spirit being concentrated in the rough farce and rougher lampoon, while all the literary skill is engrossed by insipid rhétoriqueurs and pedants. Then comes the grand upheaval of the Renaissance and the Reformation. An immense influx of science, of thought to make the science living, of new terms to express the thought, takes place, and a band of literary workers appear of power enough to master and get into shape the turbid mass. Rabelais, Amyot, Calvin and Herberay fashion French prose; Marot, Ronsard and Regnier refashion French verse. The Pléiade introduces the drama as it is to be and the language that is to help the drama to express itself. Montaigne for the first time throws invention and originality into some other form than verse or than prose fiction. But by the end of the century the tide has receded. The work of arrangement has been but half done, and there are no master spirits left to complete it. At this period Malherbe and Balzac make their appearance. Unable to deal with the whole problem, they determine to deal with part of it, and to reject a portion of the riches of which they feel themselves unfit to be stewards. Balzac and his successors make of French prose an instrument faultless and admirable in precision, unequalled for the work for which it is fit, but unfit for certain portions of the work which it was once able to perform. Malherbe, seconded by Boileau, makes of French verse an instrument suited only for the purposes of the drama of Euripides, or rather of Seneca, with or without its chorus, and for a certain weakened echo of those choruses, under the name of lyrics. No French verse of the first merit other than dramatic is written for two whole centuries. The drama soon comes to its acme, and during the succeeding time usually maintains itself at a fairly high level until the death of Voltaire. But prose lends itself to almost everything that is required of it, and becomes constantly a more and more perfect instrument. To the highest efforts of pathos and sublimity its vocabulary and its arrangement likewise are still unsuited, though the great preachers of the 17th century do their utmost with it. But for clear exposition, smooth and agreeable narrative, sententious and pointed brevity, witty repartee, it soon proves itself to have no superior and scarcely an equal in Europe. In these directions practitioners of the highest skill apply it during the 17th century, while during the 18th its powers are shown to the utmost of their variety by Voltaire, and receive a new development at the hands of Rousseau. Yet, on the whole, it loses during this century. It becomes more and more unfit for any but trivial uses, and at last it is employed for those uses only. Then occurs the Revolution, repeating the mighty stir in men’s minds which the Renaissance had given, but at first experiencing more difficulty in breaking up the ground and once more rendering it fertile. The faulty and incomplete genius of Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël gives the first evidence of a new growth, and after many years the Romantic movement completes the work. Whether the force of that movement is now, after three-quarters of a century, spent or not, its results remain. The poetical power of French has been once more triumphantly proved, and its productiveness in all branches of literature has been renewed, while in that of prose fiction there has been almost created a new class of composition. In the process of reform, however, not a little of the finish of French prose style has been lost, and the language itself has been affected in something the same way as it was affected by the less judicious innovations of the Ronsardists. The pedantry of the Pléiade led to the preposterous compounds of Du Bartas; the passion of the Romantics for foreign tongues and for the mot propre has loaded French with foreign terms on the one hand and with argot on the other, while it is questionable whether the vers libre is really suited to the French genius. There is, therefore, room for new Malherbes and Balzacs, if the days for Balzacs and Malherbes had not to all appearance passed. Should they be once more forthcoming, they have the failure as well as the success of their predecessors to guide them.

Finally, we may sum up even this summary. For volume and merit taken together the product of these eight centuries of literature excels that of any European nation, though for individual works of the supremest excellence they may perhaps be asked in vain. No French writer is lifted by the suffrages of other nations—the only criterion when sufficient time has elapsed—to the level of Homer, of Shakespeare, or of Dante, who reign alone. Of those of the authors of France who are indeed of the thirty but attain not to the first three Rabelais and Molière alone unite the general suffrage, and this fact roughly but surely points to the real excellence of the literature which these men are chosen to represent. It is great in all ways, but it is greatest on the lighter side. The house of mirth is more suited to it than the house of mourning. To the latter, indeed, the language of the unknown marvel who told Roland’s death, of him who gave utterance to Camilla’s wrath and despair, and of Victor Hugo, who sings how the mountain wind makes mad the lover who cannot forget, has amply made good its title of entrance. But for one Frenchman who can write admirably in this strain there are a hundred who can tell the most admirable story, formulate the most pregnant reflection, point the acutest jest. There is thus no really great epic in French, few great tragedies, and those imperfect and in a faulty kind, little prose like Milton’s or like Jeremy Taylor’s, little verse (though more than is generally thought) like Shelley’s or like Spenser’s. But there are the most delightful short tales, both in prose and in verse, that the world has ever seen, the most polished jewelry of reflection that has 154 ever been wrought, songs of incomparable grace, comedies that must make men laugh as long as they are laughing animals, and above all such a body of narrative fiction, old and new, prose and verse, as no other nation can show for art and for originality, for grace of workmanship in him who fashions, and for certainty of delight to him who reads.

Bibliography.—The most elaborate book on French literature as a whole is that edited by Petit de Julleville, and composed of chapters by different authors, Histoire de la langue et de la littérature françaises (8 vols., Paris, 1896-1899). Unfortunately these chapters, some of which are of the highest excellence, are of very unequal value: they require connexions which are not supplied, and there is throughout a neglect of minor authors. The bibliographical indications are, however, most valuable. For a survey in a single volume Lanson’s Histoire has superseded the older but admirable manuals of Demogeot and Géruzez, which, however, are still worth consulting. Brunetière’s Manuel (translated into English) is very valuable with the cautions above given; and the large Histoire de la langue française depuis le seizième siècle of Godefroy supplies copious and well-chosen extracts with much biographical information. In English there is an extensive History by H. van Laun (3 vols., 1874, &c.); a Short History by Saintsbury (1882; 6th ed. continued to the end of the century, 1901); and a History by Professor Dowden (1895).

To pass to special periods—the fountain-head of the literature of the middle ages is the ponderous Histoire littéraire already referred to, which, notwithstanding that it extended to 27 quarto volumes in 1906, and had occupied, with interruptions, 150 years in publication, had only reached the 14th century. Many of the monographs which it contains are the best authorities on their subjects, such as that of P. Paris on the early chansonniers, of V. Leclerc on the fabliaux, and of Littré on the romans d’aventures. For the history of literature before the 11th century, the period mainly Latin, J. J. Ampère’s Histoire littéraire de la France avant Charlemagne, sous Charlemagne, et jusqu’au onzième siècle is the chief authority. Léon Gautier’s Épopées françaises (5 vols., 1878-1897) contains almost everything known concerning the chansons de geste. P. Paris’s Romans de la table ronde was long the main authority for this subject, but very much has been written recently in France and elsewhere. The most important of the French contributions, especially those by Gaston Paris (whose Histoire poétique de Charlemagne has been reprinted since his death), will be found in the periodical Romania, which for more than thirty years has been the chief receptacle of studies on old French literature. On the cycle of Reynard the standard work is Rothe, Les Romans de Renart. All parts of the lighter literature of old France are excellently treated by Lenient, Le Satire au moyen âge. The early theatre has been frequently treated by the brothers Parfaict (Histoire du théâtre français), by Fabre (Les Clercs de la Bazoche), by Leroy (Étude sur les mystères), by Aubertin (Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française au moyen âge). This latter book will be found a useful summary of the whole medieval period. The historical, dramatic and oratorical sections are especially full. On a smaller scale but of unsurpassed authority is G. Paris’s Littérature du moyen âge translated into English.

On the 16th century an excellent handbook is that by Darmesteter and Hatzfeld; and the recent Literature of the French Renaissance of A. Tilley (2 vols., 1904) is of high value. Sainte-Beuve’s Tableau has been more than once referred to. Ebert (Entwicklungsgeschichte der französischen Tragödie vornehmlich im 16ten Jahrhundert) is the chief authority for dramatic matters. Essays and volumes on periods and sub-periods since 1600 are innumerable; but those who desire thorough acquaintance with the literature of these three hundred years should read as widely as possible in all the critical work of Sainte-Beuve, of Schérer, of Faguet and Brunetière—which may be supplemented ad libitum from that of other critics mentioned above. The series of volumes entitled Les grands écrivains français, now pretty extensive, is generally very good, and Catulle Mendès’s invaluable book on 19th-century poetry has been cited above. As a companion to the study of poetry E. Crepet’s Poètes français (4 vols., 1861), an anthology with introductions by Sainte-Beuve and all the best critics of the day, cannot be surpassed, but to it may be added the later Anthologie des poètes français du XIXe siècle (1877-1879).

(G. Sa.)

FRENCH POLISH, a liquid for polishing wood, made by dissolving shellac in methylated spirit. There are four different tints, brown, white, garnet and red, but the first named is that most extensively used. All the tints are made in the same manner, with the exception of the red, which is a mixture of the brown polish and methylated spirit with either Saunders wood or Bismarck brown, according to the strength of colour required. Some woods, and especially mahogany, need to be stained before they are polished. To stain mahogany mix some bichromate of potash in hot water according to the depth of colour required. After staining the wood the most approved method of filling the grain is to rub in fine plaster of Paris (wet), wiping off before it “sets.” After this is dry it should be oiled with linseed oil and thoroughly wiped off. The wood is then ready for the polish, which is put on with a rubber made of wadding covered with linen rag and well wetted with polish. The polishing process has to be repeated gradually, and after the work has hardened, the surface is smoothed down with fine glass-paper, a few drops of linseed oil being added until the surface is sufficiently smooth. After a day or two the surface can be cleared by using a fresh rubber with a double layer of linen, removing the top layer when it is getting hard and finishing off with the bottom layer.

FRENCH REVOLUTION, THE. Among the many revolutions which from time to time have given a new direction to the political development of nations the French Revolution stands out as at once the most dramatic in its incidents and the most momentous in its results. This exceptional character is, indeed, implied in the name by which it is known; for France has experienced many revolutions both before and since that of 1789, but the name “French Revolution,” or simply “the Revolution,” without qualification, is applied to this one alone. The causes which led to it: the gradual decay of the institutions which France had inherited from the feudal system, the decline of the centralized monarchy, and the immediate financial necessities that compelled the assembling of the long neglected states-general in 1789, are dealt with in the article on France: History. The successive constitutions, and the other legal changes which resulted from it, are also discussed in their general relation to the growth of the modern French polity in the article France (Law and Institutions). The present article deals with the progress of the Revolution itself from the convocation of the states-general to the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire which placed Napoleon Bonaparte in power.

The elections to the states-general of 1789 were held in unfavourable circumstances. The failure of the harvest of 1788 and a severe winter had caused widespread distress. The government was weak and despised, and its agents Opening of the States-General. were afraid or unwilling to quell outbreaks of disorder. At the same time the longing for radical reform and the belief that it would be easy were almost universal. The cahiers or written instructions given to the deputies covered well-nigh every subject of political, social or economic interest, and demanded an amazing number of changes. Amid this commotion the king and his ministers remained passive. They did not even determine the question whether the estates should act as separate bodies or deliberate collectively. On the 5th of May the states-general were opened by Louis in the Salle des Menus Plaisirs at Versailles. Barentin, the keeper of the seals, informed them that they were free to determine whether they would vote by orders or vote by head. Necker, as director-general of the finances, set forth the condition of the treasury and proposed some small reforms. The Tiers État (Third Estate) was dissatisfied that the question of joint or separate deliberation should have been left open. It was aware that some of the nobles and many of the inferior clergy agreed with it as to the need for comprehensive reform. Joint deliberation would ensure a majority to the reformers and therefore the abolition of privileges and the extinction of feudal rights of property. Separate deliberation would enable the majority among the nobles and the superior clergy to limit reform. Hence it became the first object of the Tiers État to effect the amalgamation of the three estates.

The conflict between those who desired and those who resisted amalgamation took the form of a conflict over the verification of the powers of the deputies. The Tiers État insisted that the deputies of all three estates should have their Conflict between the Three Estates. powers verified in common as the first step towards making them all members of one House. It resolved to hold its meetings in the Salle des Menus Plaisirs, whereas the nobles and the clergy met in smaller apartments set aside for their exclusive use. It refrained from taking any step which might have implied that it was an organized assembly, and persevered in regarding itself as a mere crowd of individual members incapable of transacting business. Meanwhile the clergy and 155 the nobles began a separate verification of their powers. But a few of the nobles and a great many of the clergy voted against this procedure. On the 7th the Tiers État sent deputations to exhort the other estates to union, while the clergy sent a deputation to it with the proposal that each estate should name commissioners to discuss the best method of verifying powers. The Tiers État accepted the proposal and conferences were held, but without result. It then made another appeal to the clergy which was almost successful. The king interposed with a command for the renewal of the conferences. They were resumed under the presidency of Barentin, but again to no purpose.

On the 10th of June Sieyès moved that the Tiers État should for the last time invite the First and Second Estates to join in the verification of powers and announce that, whether they did or not, the work of verifying would begin forthwith. The motion was carried by an immense majority. As there was no response, the Tiers État on the 12th named Bailly provisional president and commenced verification. Next day three curés of Poitou came to have their powers verified. Other clergymen followed later. When the work of verification was over, a title had to be found for the body thus created, which would no longer accept the style of the Tiers État. On the 15th Sieyès proposed that they should entitle themselves the Assembly of the known and verified representatives of the French nation. Mirabeau, Mounier and others proposed various appellations. But success was reserved for Legrand, an obscure deputy who proposed the simple name of National Assembly. Withdrawing his own motion, Sieyès adopted Legrand’s suggestion, which was carried by 491 votes to 90. The Assembly went on to declare that it placed the debts of the crown under the safeguard of the national honour and that all existing taxes, although illegal as having been imposed without the consent of the people, should continue to be paid until the day of dissolution.

By these proceedings the Tiers État and a few of the clergy declared themselves the national legislature. Then and thereafter the National Assembly assumed full sovereign and constituent powers. Nobles and clergy might The National Assembly. come in if they pleased, but it could do without them. The king’s assent to its measures would be convenient, but not necessary. This boldness was rewarded, for on the 19th the clergy decided by a majority of one in favour of joint verification. On the same day the nobles voted an address to the king condemning the action of the Tiers État. Left to himself, Louis might have been too inert for resistance. But the queen and his brother, the count of Artois, with some of the ministers and courtiers, urged him to make a stand. A Séance Royale was notified for the 22nd and workmen were sent to prepare the Salle des Menus Plaisirs for the ceremony. On the 20th Bailly and the deputies proceeded to the hall and found it barred against their entrance. Thereupon they adjourned to a neighbouring tennis Oath of the Tennis Court. court, where Mounier proposed that they should swear not to separate until they had established the constitution. With a solitary exception they swore and the Oath of the Tennis Court became an era in French history. As the ministers could not agree on the policy which the king should announce in the Séance Royale, it was postponed to the 23rd. The Assembly found shelter in the church of St Louis, where it was joined by the main body of the clergy and by the first of the nobles.

At the Séance Royale Louis made known his will that the Estates should deliberate apart, and declared that if they should refuse to help him he would do by his sole authority what was necessary for the happiness of his people. When he quitted the hall, some of the clergy and most of the nobles retired to their separate chambers. But the rest, together with the Tiers État, remained, and Mirabeau declared that, as they had come by the will of the nation, force only should make them withdraw. “Gentlemen,” said Sieyès, “you are to-day what you were yesterday.” With one voice the Assembly proclaimed its adhesion to its former decrees and the inviolability of its members. In Versailles and in Paris popular feeling was clamorous for the Assembly and against the court. During the next few days many of the clergy and nobles, including the archbishop of Paris and the duke of Orleans, joined the Assembly. Louis tamely accepted his defeat. He recalled Necker, who had resigned after the Séance Royale. On the 27th he wrote to those clerical and noble deputies who still held out, urging submission. By the 2nd of July the joint verification of powers was completed. The last trace of the historic States-General disappeared and the National Assembly was perfect. On the same day it claimed an absolute discretion by a decree that the mandates of the electors were not binding on its members.

Having failed in their first attempt on the Assembly, the Court party resolved to try what force could do. A large number of troops, chiefly foreign regiments in the service of France, were concentrated near Paris under the command of the Dismissal of Necker. marshal de Broglie. On Mirabeau’s motion the Assembly voted an address to the king asking for their withdrawal. The king replied that the troops were not meant to act against the Assembly, but intimated his purpose of transferring the session to some provincial town. On the same day he dismissed Necker and ordered him to quit Versailles. These acts led to the first insurrection of Paris. The capital had long been in a dangerous condition. Bread was dear and employment was scarce. The measures taken to relieve distress had allured a multitude of needy and desperate men from the surrounding country. Among the middle class there already existed a party, consisting of men like Danton or Camille Desmoulins, which was prepared to go much further than any of the leaders of the Assembly. The rich citizens were generally fund-holders, who regarded the Assembly as the one bulwark against a public bankruptcy. The duke of Orleans, a weak and dissolute but ambitious man, had conceived the hope of supplanting his cousin on the throne. He strained his wealth and influence to recruit followers and to make mischief. The gardens of his residence, the Palais Royal, became the centre of political agitation. Ever since the elections virtual freedom of the press and freedom of speech had prevailed in Paris. Clubs were multiplied and pamphlets came forth every hour. The municipal officers who were named by the Crown had little influence with the citizens. The police were a mere handful. Of the two line regiments quartered in the capital, one was Swiss and therefore trusty; but the other, the Gardes Françaises, shared all the feelings of the populace.

On the 12th of July Camille Desmoulins announced the dismissal of Necker to the crowd in the Palais Royal. Warmed by his eloquence, they sallied into the street. Part of Broglie’s troops occupied the Champs Elysées and the Rioting in Paris. Place Louis Quinze. After one or two petty encounters with the mob they were withdrawn, either because their temper was uncertain or because their commanders shunned responsibility. Paris was thus left to the rioters, who seized arms wherever they could find them, broke open the jails, burnt the octroi barriers and soon had every man’s life and goods at their discretion. Citizens with anything to lose were driven to act for themselves. For the purpose of choosing its representatives in the states-general the Third Estate of Paris had named 300 electors. Their function once discharged, these men had no public character, but they resolved that they would hold together in order to watch over the interests of the city. After the Séance Royale the municipal authority, conscious of its own weakness, allowed them to meet at the Hôtel de Ville, where they proceeded to consider the formation of a civic guard. On the 13th, when all was anarchy in Paris, they were joined by Flesselles, Provost of the Merchants, and other municipal officers. The project of a civic guard was then adopted. The insurrection, however, ran its course unchecked. Crowds of deserters from the regular troops swelled the ranks of the insurgents. They attacked the Fall of the Bastille, July 14, 1789. Hôtel des Invalides and carried off all the arms which were stored there. With the same object they assailed the Bastille. The garrison was small and disheartened, provisions were short, and after some hours’ fighting De Launay the governor surrendered on promise of quarter. He and several of his men were, notwithstanding, butchered by the mob before they could be brought to 156 the Hôtel de Ville. As all Paris was in the hands of the insurgents, the king saw the necessity of submission. On the morning of the 15th he entered the hall of the Assembly to announce that the troops would be withdrawn. Immediately afterwards he dismissed his new ministers and recalled Necker. Thereupon the princes and courtiers most hostile to the National Assembly, the count of Artois, the prince of Condé, the duke of Bourbon and many others, feeling themselves no longer safe, quitted France. Their departure is known as the first emigration.

The capture of the Bastille was hailed throughout Europe as symbolizing the fall of absolute monarchy, and the victory of the insurgents had momentous consequences. Recognizing New municipality of Paris and National Guard. the 300 electors as a temporary municipal government, the Assembly sent a deputation to confer with them at the Hôtel de Ville, and on a sudden impulse one of these deputies, Bailly, lately president of the Assembly, was chosen to be mayor of Paris. The marquis Lafayette, doubly popular as a veteran of the American War and as one of the nobles who heartily upheld the cause of the Assembly, was chosen commandant of the new civic force, thenceforwards known as the National Guard. On the 17th Louis himself visited Paris and gave his sanction to the new authorities. In the course of the following weeks the example of Paris was copied throughout France. All the cities and towns set up new elective authorities and organized a National Guard. At the same time the revolution Revolution in the provinces. spread to the country districts. In most of the provinces the peasants rose and stormed and burnt the houses of the seigneurs, taking peculiar care to destroy their title-deeds. Some of the seigneurs were murdered and the rest were driven into the towns or across the frontier. Amid the universal confusion the old administrative system vanished. The intendants and sub-delegates quitted or were driven from their posts. The old courts of justice, whether royal or feudal, ceased to act. In many districts there was no more police, public works were suspended and the collection of taxes became almost impossible. The insurrection of July really ended the ancien régime.

Disorder in the provinces led directly to the proceedings on the famous night of the 4th of August. While the Assembly was considering a declaration which might calm revolt, the vicomte de Noailles and the duc d’Aiguillon moved The 4th of August. that it should proclaim equality of taxation and the suppression of feudal burdens. Other deputies rose to demand the repeal of the game laws, the enfranchisement of such serfs as were still to be found in France, and the abolition of tithes and of feudal courts and to renounce all privileges, whether of classes, of cities, or of provinces. Amid indescribable enthusiasm the Assembly passed resolution after resolution embodying these changes. The resolutions were followed by decrees sometimes hastily and unskilfully drawn. In vain Sieyès remarked that in extinguishing tithes the Assembly was making a present to every landed proprietor. In vain the king, while approving most of the decrees, tendered some cautious criticisms of the rest. The majority did not, indeed, design to confiscate property wholesale. They drew a distinction between feudal claims which did and did not carry a moral claim to compensation. But they were embarrassed by the wording of their own decrees and forestalled by the violence of the people. The proceedings of the 4th of August issued in a wholesale transfer of property from one class to another without any indemnity for the losers.

The work of drafting a constitution for France had already been begun. Parties in the Assembly were numerous and ill-defined. The Extreme Right, who desired to keep the government as it stood, were a mere handful. Parties in the Assembly. The Right who wanted to revive, as they said, the ancient constitution, in other words, to limit the king’s power by periodic States-General of the old-fashioned sort, were more numerous and had able chiefs in Cazalès and Maury, but strove in vain against the spirit of the time. The Right Centre, sometimes called the Monarchiens, were a large body and included several men of talent, notably Mounier and Malouet, as well as many men of rank and wealth. They desired a constitution like that of England which should reserve a large executive power to the king, while entrusting the taxing and legislative powers to a modern parliament. The Left or Constitutionals, known afterwards as the Feuillants, among whom Barnave and Charles and Alexander Lameth were conspicuous, also wished to preserve monarchy but disdained English precedent. They were possessed with feelings then widespread, weariness of arbitrary government, hatred of ministers and courtiers, and distrust not so much of Louis as of those who surrounded him and influenced his judgment. Republicans without knowing it, they grudged every remnant of power to the Crown. The Extreme Left, still more republican in spirit, of whom Robespierre was the most noteworthy, were few and had little power. Mirabeau’s independence of judgment forbids us to place him in any party.

The first Constitutional Committee, elected on the 14th of July, had Mounier for its reporter. It was instructed to begin with drafting a Declaration of the Rights of Man. Six weeks were spent by the Assembly in discussing this Declaration of the Rights of Man. document. The Committee then presented a report which embodied the principle of two Chambers. This principle contradicted the extreme democratic theories so much in fashion. It also offended the self-love of most of the nobles and the clergy who were loath that a few of their number should be erected into a House of Lords. The Assembly rejected the principle of two Chambers by nearly 10 to 1. The question whether the king should have a veto on legislation was next raised. Mounier contended that he should have an The royal veto. absolute veto, and was supported by Mirabeau, who had already described the unlimited power of a single Chamber as worse than the tyranny of Constantinople. The Left maintained that the king, as depositary of the executive, should be wholly excluded from the legislative power. Lafayette, who imagined himself to be copying the American constitution, proposed that the king should have a suspensive veto. Thinking that it would be politic to claim no more, Necker persuaded the king to intimate that he was satisfied with Lafayette’s proposal. The suspensive veto was therefore adopted. As the king had no power of dissolution, it was an idle form. Mounier and his friends having resigned their places in the Constitutional Committee, it came to an end and the Assembly elected a new Committee which represented the opinions of the Left.

Soon afterwards a fresh revolt in Paris caused the king and the Assembly to migrate thither. The old causes of disorder were still working in that city. The scarcity of bread was set down to conspirators against the Revolution. Riots were frequent and persons supposed hostile to the Assembly and the nation were murdered with impunity. The king still had counsellors who wished for his departure as a means to regaining freedom of action. At the end of September the Flanders regiment came to Versailles to reinforce the Gardes du Corps. The officers of the Gardes du Corps entertained the officers of the Flanders regiment and of the Versailles National Guard at dinner in the palace. The king, queen and dauphin visited the company. There followed a vehement outbreak of loyalty. Rumour enlarged the incident into a military plot against freedom. Those who wanted a more thorough revolution wrought up the Removal of the royal family and Assembly to Paris. crowd and even respectable citizens wished to have the king among them and amenable to their opinion. On the 5th of October a mob which had gathered to assault the Hôtel de Ville was diverted into a march on Versailles. Lafayette was slow to follow it and, when he arrived, took insufficient precautions. At daybreak on the 6th some of the rioters made their way into the palace and stormed the apartment of the queen who escaped with difficulty. At length the National Guards arrived and the mob was quieted by the announcement that the king had resolved to go to Paris. The Assembly declared itself inseparable from the king’s person. Louis and his family reached Paris on the same evening and took up their abode in the Tuileries. A little later the Assembly established itself in the riding school of the palace. Thenceforward the king and queen were to all intents prisoners. The Assembly itself was subject to constant 157 intimidation. Many members of the Right gave up the struggle and emigrated, or at least withdrew from attendance, so that the Left became supreme.

Mirabeau had already taken alarm at the growing violence of the Revolution. In September he had foretold that it would not stop short of the death of both king and queen. After the insurrection of October he sought to communicate Mirabeau and the court. with them through his friend the comte de la Marck. In a remarkable correspondence he sketched a policy for the king. The abolition of privilege and the establishment of a parliamentary system were, he wrote, unalterable facts which it would be madness to dispute. But a strong executive authority was essential, and a king who frankly adopted the Revolution might still be powerful. In order to rally the sound part of the nation Louis should leave Paris, and, if necessary, he should prepare for a civil war; but he should never appeal to foreign powers. Neither the king nor the queen could grasp the wisdom of this advice. They distrusted Mirabeau as an unscrupulous adventurer, and were confirmed in this feeling by his demands for money. His correspondence with the court, although secret, was suspected. The politicians who envied his talents and believed him a rascal raised the cry of treason. In the Assembly Mirabeau, though sometimes successful on particular questions, never had a chance of giving effect to his policy as a whole. Whether even he could have controlled the Revolution is highly doubtful; but his letters and minutes drawn up for the king form the most striking monument of his genius (see Mirabeau and Montmorin de Saint-Hérem).

Early in the year 1790 a dispute with England concerning the frontier in North America induced the Spanish government to claim the help of France under the Family Compact. This demand led the Assembly to consider in what The Assembly and the royal power. hands the power of concluding alliances and of making peace and war should be placed. Mirabeau tried to keep the initiative for the king, subject to confirmation by the Chamber. On Barnave’s motion the Assembly decreed that the legislature should have the power of war and peace and the king a merely advisory power. Mirabeau was defeated on another point of the highest consequence, the inclusion of ministers in the National Assembly. His colleagues generally adhered to the principle that the legislative and executive powers should be totally separate. The Left assumed that, if deputies could hold office, the king would have the means of corrupting the ablest and most influential. It was decreed that no deputy should be minister while sitting in the House or for two years after. Ministers excluded from the House being necessarily objects of suspicion, the Assembly was careful to allow them the least possible power. The old provinces were abolished, and France was divided anew into eighty departments. Each department Reorganization of France. was subdivided into districts, cantons and communes. The main business of administration, even the levying of taxes, was entrusted to the elective local authorities. The judicature was likewise made elective. The army and the navy were so organized as to leave the king but a small share in appointing officers and to leave the officers but scanty means of maintaining discipline. Even the cases in which the sovereign might be deposed were foreseen and expressly stated. Monarchy was retained, but the monarch was regarded as a possible traitor and every precaution was taken to render him harmless even at the cost of having no effective national government.

The distrust which the Assembly felt for the actual ministers led it to undertake the business of government as well as the business of reform. There were committees for all the chief departments of state, a committee for the Executive committees of the Assembly. army, a committee for the navy, another for diplomacy, another for finance. These committees sometimes asked the ministers for information, but rarely took their advice. Even Necker found the Assembly heedless of his counsels. The condition of the treasury became worse day by day. The yield of the indirect taxes fell off through the interruption of business, and the direct taxes were in large measure withheld, for want of an authority to enforce payment. With some trouble Necker induced the Assembly to sanction first a loan of 30,000,000 livres and then a loan of 80,000,000 livres. The public having shown no eagerness to subscribe, Necker proposed that every man should be invited to make a patriotic contribution of one-fourth of his income. This expedient also failed. On the 10th Confiscation of church property. of October 1789 Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, proposed that the Assembly should take possession of the lands of the church. In November the Assembly enacted that they should be at the disposal of the nation, which would provide for the maintenance of the clergy. Since the church lands were supposed to occupy one-fifth of France, the Assembly thought that it had found an inexhaustible source of public wealth. On the security of the church lands it based a paper currency (the famous assignats). In December it ordered an issue to the amount of 400,000,000 livres. As the revenue still declined and the reforms enacted by the Assembly involved The assignats. a heavy outlay, it recurred again and again to this expedient. Before its dissolution the Assembly had authorized the creation of 1,800,000,000 livres of assignats and the depreciation of its paper had begun. Finding that he had lost all credit with the Assembly, Necker resigned office and left France in September 1790.

Even the committees of the Assembly had far less power than the new municipal authorities throughout France. They really governed so far as there was any government. Often full of public spirit, they lacked experience and Power of the municipalities and popular clubs. in a time of peculiar difficulty had no guide save their own discretion. They opened letters, arrested suspects, controlled the trade in corn, and sent their National Guards on such errands as they thought proper. The political clubs which sprang up all over the country often presumed to act as though they were public authorities (see Jacobins). The revolutionary journalists, Desmoulins in his Révolutions de France et de Brabant, Loustallot in his Révolutions de Paris, Marat in his Ami du peuple, continued to feed the fire of discord. Amid this anarchy it became a practice for the National Guards of different districts to form federations, that is, to meet and swear loyalty to each other and obedience to the laws made by the National Assembly. At the suggestion of the municipality of Paris the Assembly decreed a general federation of all France, to be held on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. The ceremony took place in the Champ de Mars (July 14, 1790) in presence of the king, the queen, the Assembly, and an enormous concourse of spectators. It was attended by deputations from the National Guards in every part of the kingdom, from the regular regiments, and from the crews of the fleet. Talleyrand celebrated Mass, and Lafayette was the first to swear fidelity to the Assembly and the nation. In this gathering the provincial deputations caught the revolutionary fever of Paris. Still graver was the effect upon the regular army. It had been disaffected since the outbreak of the Revolution. The rank and file complained of their food, their lodging and their pay. The non-commissioned officers, often intelligent Disaffection in the army. and hard-working, were embittered by the refusal of promotion. The officers, almost all nobles, rarely showed much concern for their men, and were often mere courtiers and triflers. After the festival of the federation the soldiers were drawn into the political clubs, and named regimental committees to defend their interests. Not content with asking for redress of grievances, they sometimes seized the regimental chest or imprisoned their officers. In August a formidable outbreak at Nancy was only quelled with much loss of life. Desertion became more frequent than ever, and the officers, finding their position unbearable, began to emigrate. Similar causes produced an even worse effect upon the navy.

By its rough handling of the church the Assembly brought fresh trouble upon France. The suppression of tithe and the confiscation of church lands had reduced the clergy to live on whatever stipend the legislature might think fit Civil constitution of the clergy. to give them. A law of February 1790 suppressed the religious orders not engaged in education or in works of charity, and forbade the introduction of new ones. Monastic vows 158 were deprived of legal force and a pension was granted to the religious who were cast upon the world. These measures aroused no serious discontent; but the so-called civil constitution of the clergy went much further. Old ecclesiastical divisions were set aside. Henceforth the diocese was to be conterminous with the department, and the parish with the commune. The electors of the commune were to choose the curé, the electors of the department the bishop. Every curé was to receive at least 1200 livres (about £50) a year. Relatively modest stipends were assigned to bishops and archbishops. French citizens were forbidden to acknowledge any ecclesiastical jurisdiction outside the kingdom. The Assembly not only adopted this constitution but decreed that all beneficed ecclesiastics should swear to its observance. As the constitution implicitly abrogated the papal authority and entrusted the choice of bishops and curés to electors who often were not Catholics, most of the clergy declined to swear and lost their preferments. Their places were filled by election. Thenceforwards the clergy were divided into hostile factions, the Constitutionals and the Nonjurors. As the generality of Frenchmen at that time were orthodox although not zealous Catholics, the Nonjurors carried with them a large part of the laity. The Assembly was misled by its Jansenist, Protestant and Free-thinking members, natural enemies of an established church which had persecuted them to the best of its power.

In colonial affairs the Assembly acted with the same imprudence. Eager to set an example of suppressing slavery, it took measures which prepared a terrible negro insurrection in St Domingo. With regard to foreign relations The Assembly, the colonies, and foreign powers. the Assembly showed itself well-meaning but indiscreet. It protested in good faith that it desired no conquests and aimed only at peace. Yet it laid down maxims which involved the utmost danger of war. It held that no treaty could be binding without the national consent. As this consent had not been given to any existing treaty, they were all liable to be revised by the French government without consulting the other parties. Thus the Assembly treated the Family Compact as null and void. Similarly, when it abolished feudal tenures in France, it ignored the fact that the rights of certain German princes over lands in Alsace were guaranteed by the treaties of Westphalia. It offered them compensation in money, and when this was declined, took no heed of their protests. Again, in the papal territory of Avignon a large number of the inhabitants declared for union with France. The Assembly could hardly be restrained by Mirabeau from acting upon their vote and annexing Avignon. Some time after his death it was annexed. The other states of Europe did not admit the doctrines of the Assembly, but peace was not broken. Foreign statesmen who flattered themselves that France was sinking into anarchy and therefore into decay were content to follow their respective ambitions without the dread of French interference.

Deprived of authority and in fact a prisoner, Louis had for many months acquiesced in the decrees of the Assembly however distasteful. But the civil constitution of the clergy wounded him in his conscience as well as in his pride. Attempt of Louis XVI. to escape from Paris. From the autumn of 1790 onwards he began to scheme for his liberation. Himself incapable of strenuous effort, he was spurred on by Marie Antoinette, who keenly felt her own degradation and the curtailment of that royal prerogative which her son would one day inherit. The king and queen failed to measure the forces which had caused the Revolution. They ascribed all their misfortunes to the work of a malignant faction, and believed that, if they could escape from Paris, a display of force by friendly powers would enable them to restore the supremacy of the crown. But no foreign ruler, not even the emperor Leopold II., gave the king or queen any encouragement. Whatever secrecy they might observe, the adherents of the Revolution divined their wish to escape. When Louis tried to leave the Tuileries for St Cloud at Easter 1791, in order to enjoy the ministrations of a nonjuring priest, the National Guards of Paris would not let him budge. Mirabeau, who had always dissuaded the king from seeking foreign help, died on the 2nd of April. Finally the king and queen resolved to fly to the army of the East, which the marquis de Bouillé had in some measure kept under discipline. Sheltered by him they could await foreign succour or a reaction at home. On the evening of the 20th of June they escaped from the Tuileries. Louis left behind him a declaration complaining of the treatment which he had received and revoking his assent to all measures which had been laid before him while under restraint. On the following day the royal party was captured at Varennes and sent back to Paris. The king’s eldest brother, the count of Provence, who had laid his plans much better, made his escape to Brussels and joined the émigrés.

It was no longer possible to pretend that the Revolution had been made with the free consent of the king. Some Republicans called for his deposition. Afraid to take a course which involved danger both at home and abroad, the Assembly decreed that Louis should be suspended from his office. The club of the Cordeliers (q.v.), led by Danton, demanded not only his deposition but his trial. A petition to that effect having been exposed for signature on the altar in the Champ de Mars, a disturbance ensued and the National Guard fired on the crowd, killing a few and wounding many. This incident afterwards became known as the massacre of the Champ de Mars. On the other hand, the leaders of the Left, Barnave and the Lameths, felt that they had weakened the executive power too much. They would gladly have come to an understanding with the king and revised the constitution so as to strengthen his prerogative. They failed in both objects. Louis and still more Marie Antoinette regarded them with incurable distrust. The Constitutional Act without any material change was voted on the 3rd of September. On the 14th Louis swore to the Constitution, thus regaining his nominal sovereignty. The National Assembly was dissolved on the 30th. Upon Robespierre’s motion it had decreed that none of its members should be capable of sitting in the next legislature.

If we view the work of the National Assembly as a whole, we are struck by the immense demolition which it effected. No other legislature has ever destroyed so much in the same time. The old form of government, the old Review of the work of the National Assembly. territorial divisions, the old fiscal system, the old judicature, the old army and navy, the old relations of Church and State, the old law relating to property in land, all were shattered. Such a destruction could not have been effected without the support of popular opinion. Most of what the Assembly did had been suggested in the cahiers, and many of its decrees were anticipated by actual revolt. In its constructive work many sound maxims were embodied. It asserted the principles of civil equality and freedom of conscience, it reformed the criminal law, and laid down a just scheme of taxation. Not intelligence and public spirit but political wisdom was lacking to the National Assembly. Its members did not suspect how limited is the usefulness of general propositions in practical life. Nor did they perceive that new ideas can be applied only by degrees in an old world. The Constitution of 1791 was impracticable and did not last a year. The civil constitution of the clergy was wholly mischievous. In the attempt to govern, the Assembly failed altogether. It left behind an empty treasury, an undisciplined army and navy, a people debauched by safe and successful riot.

At the elections of 1791 the party which desired to carry the Revolution further had a success out of all keeping with its numbers. This was due partly to a weariness of politics which had come over the majority of French citizens, The Legislative Assembly. partly to downright intimidation exercised by the Jacobin Club and by its affiliated societies throughout the kingdom. The Legislative Assembly met on the 1st of October. It consisted of 745 members. Few were nobles, very few were clergymen, and the great body was drawn from the middle class. The members were generally young, and, since none had sat in the previous Assembly, they were wholly without experience. The Right consisted of the Feuillants (q.v.). They numbered about 160, and among them were some able men, such as Matthieu Dumas and Bigot de Préamenau, but they were 159 guided chiefly by persons outside the House, because incapable of re-election, Barnave, Duport and the Lameths. The Left consisted of the Jacobins, a term which still included the party afterwards known as the Girondins or Girondists (q.v.)—so termed because several of their leaders came from the region of the Gironde in southern France. They numbered about 330. Among the extreme Left sat Cambon, Couthon, Merlin de Thionville. The Girondins could claim the most brilliant orators, Vergniaud, Guadet, Isnard. Inferior to these men in talent, Brissot de Warville, a restless pamphleteer, exerted more influence over the party which has sometimes gone by his name. The Left as a whole was republican, although it did not care to say so. Strong in numbers, it was reinforced by the disorderly elements in Paris and throughout France. The remainder of the House, about 250 deputies, scarcely belonged to any definite party, but voted oftenest with the Left, as the Left was the most powerful.

The Left had three objects of enmity: first, the king, the queen and the royal family; secondly, the émigrés; and thirdly, the clergy. The king could not like the new constitution, although, if left to himself, indolence and good nature The court and the émigrés. might have rendered him passive. The queen throughout had only one thought, to shake off the impotence and humiliation of the crown; and for this end she still clung to the hope of foreign succour and corresponded with Vienna. Those émigrés who had assembled in arms on the territories of the electors of Mainz and Treves (Trier) and in the Austrian Netherlands had put themselves in the position of public enemies. Their chiefs were the king’s brothers, who affected to consider Louis as a captive and his acts as therefore invalid. The count of Provence gave himself the airs of a regent and surrounded himself with a ministry. The émigrés were not, however, dangerous. They were only a few thousand strong; they had no competent leader and no money; they were unwelcome to the rulers whose hospitality they abused. The nonjuring clergy, although harassed by the local authorities, kept the respect and confidence of most Catholics. No acts of disloyalty were proved against them, and commissioners of the National Assembly reported to its successor that their flocks only desired to be let alone. But the anti-clerical bias of the Legislative Assembly was too strong for such a policy.

The king’s ministers, named by him and excluded from the Assembly, were mostly persons of little mark. Montmorin gave up the portfolio of foreign affairs on the 31st of October and was succeeded by De Lessart. Cahier de Gerville was minister of the interior; Tarbé, minister of finance; and Bertrand de Molleville, minister of marine. But the only minister who influenced the course of affairs was the comte de Narbonne, minister of war.

On the 9th of November the Assembly decreed that the émigrés assembled on the frontiers should be liable to the penalties of death and confiscation unless they returned to France by the 1st of January following. Louis did not love The king and the nonjurors. his brothers, and he detested their policy, which without rendering him any service made his liberty and even his life precarious; yet, loath to condemn them to death, he vetoed the decree. On the 29th of November the Assembly decreed that every nonjuring clergyman must take within eight days the civic oath, substantially the same as the oath previously administered, on pain of losing his pension and, if any troubles broke out, of being deported. This decree Louis vetoed as a matter of conscience. In either case his resistance only served to give a weapon to his enemies in the Assembly. But foreign affairs were at this time the most critical. The armed bodies of émigrés on the territory of the Empire afforded matter of complaint to France. The persistence of the French in refusing more than a money compensation to the German princes who had claims in Alsace afforded matter of complaint to the Empire. Foreign statesmen noticed with alarm the effect of the French Revolution upon opinion in their own countries, and they resented the endeavours of French revolutionists to make converts there. Of these statesmen, the emperor Leopold was the most intelligent. He had skilfully extricated himself from the embarrassments at home and abroad left by his predecessor Joseph. He was bound by family ties to Louis, and he was obliged, as chief of the Holy Roman Empire, to protect the border princes. On the other hand, he understood the weakness of the Habsburg monarchy. He knew that the Austrian Netherlands, where he had with difficulty restored his authority, were full of friends of the Revolution and that a French army would be welcomed by many Belgians. He despised the weakness and the folly of the émigrés and excluded them from his councils. He earnestly desired to avoid a war which might endanger his sister or her husband. In August 1791 he had met Frederick William Declaration of Pillnitz. II. of Prussia at Pillnitz near Dresden, and the two monarchs had joined in a declaration that they considered the restoration of order and of monarchy in France an object of interest to all sovereigns. They further declared that they would be ready to act for this purpose in concert with the other powers. This declaration appears to have been drawn from Leopold by pressure of circumstances. He well knew that concerted action of the powers was impossible, as the English government had firmly resolved not to meddle with French affairs. After Louis had accepted the constitution, Leopold virtually withdrew his declaration. Nevertheless it was a grave error of judgment and contributed to the approaching war.

In France many persons desired war for various reasons. Narbonne trusted to find in it the means of restoring a certain authority to the crown and limiting the Revolution. He contemplated a war with Austria only. The Girondins desired war in the hope that it would enable them to abolish monarchy altogether. They desired a general war because they believed that it would carry the Revolution into other countries and make it secure in France by making it universal. The extreme Left had the same objects, but it held that a war for those objects could not safely be entrusted to the king and his ministers. Victory would revive the power of the crown; defeat would be the undoing of the Revolution. Hence Robespierre and those who thought with him desired peace. The French nation generally had never approved of the Austrian alliance, and regarded the Habsburgs as traditional enemies. The king and queen, however, who looked for help from abroad and especially from Leopold, dreaded a war with Austria and had no faith in the schemes of Narbonne. Nor was France in a condition to wage a serious war. The constitution was unworkable and the governing authorities were mutually hostile. The finances remained in disorder, and assignats of the face value of 900,000,000 livres were issued by the Legislative Assembly in less than a year. The army had been thinned by desertion and was enervated by long indiscipline. The fortresses were in bad condition and short of supplies.

In October Leopold ordered the dispersion of the émigrés who had mustered in arms in the Austrian Netherlands. His example was followed by the electors of Treves and Mainz. At the same time they implored the emperor’s protection, and the Austrian chancellor Kaunitz informed Noailles the French ambassador that this protection would be given if necessary. Narbonne demanded a credit of 20,000,000 livres, which the Assembly granted. He made a tour of inspection in the north of France and reported untruly to the Assembly that all was in readiness for war. On the 14th of January 1792 the diplomatic committee reported to the Assembly that the emperor should be required to give satisfactory assurances before the 10th of February. The Assembly put off the term to the 1st of March. In February Leopold concluded a defensive treaty with Frederick William. But there was no mutual confidence between the sovereigns, who were at that very time pursuing opposite policies with regard to Poland. Leopold still hesitated and still hoped to avoid war. He died on the 1st of March, and the imperial dignity became vacant. The hereditary dominions of Austria passed to his son Francis, afterwards the emperor Francis II., a youth of small abilities and no experience. The real conduct of affairs fell, therefore, to the aged Kaunitz. In France Narbonne failed to carry the king or his colleagues along with him. The king took courage to dismiss 160 him on the 9th of March, whereupon the assembly testified its confidence in Narbonne. De Lessart having incurred its anger by the tameness of his replies to Austrian dictation, the Assembly voted his impeachment.

The king, seeing no other course open, formed a new ministry which was chiefly Girondin. Roland became minister of the interior, Clavière of finance, De Grave of war, and Lacoste of marine. Far abler and more resolute than War declared against Austria. any of these men was Dumouriez, the new minister for foreign affairs. A soldier by profession, he had been employed in the secret diplomacy of Louis XV. and had thus gained a wide knowledge of international politics. He stood aloof from parties and had no rigid principles, but held views closely resembling those of Narbonne. He wished for a war with Austria which should restore some influence to the crown and make himself the arbiter of France. The king bent to necessity, and on the 20th of April came to the Assembly with the proposal that war should be declared against Austria. It was carried by acclamation. Dumouriez intended to begin with an invasion of the Austrian Netherlands. As this would awaken English jealousy, he sent Talleyrand to London with assurances that, if victorious, the French would annex no territory.

It was designed that the French should invade the Netherlands at three points simultaneously. Lafayette was to march against Namur, Biron against Mons, and Dillon against Tournay. But the first movement disclosed the miserable state of the army. Smitten with panic, Dillon’s force fled at sight of the enemy, and Dillon, after receiving a wound from one of his own soldiers, was murdered by the mob of Lille. Biron was easily routed before Mons. On hearing of these disasters Lafayette found it necessary to retreat. This shameful discomfiture quickened all the suspicion and jealousy fermenting in France. De Grave had to resign and was succeeded by Servan. The Austrian forces in the Netherlands were, however, so weak that they could not take the offensive. Austria demanded help from Prussia under the recent alliance, and the claim was admitted. Prussia declared war against France, and the duke of Brunswick was chosen to command the allied forces, but various causes delayed action. Austrian and Prussian interests clashed in Poland. The Austrian government wished to preserve a harmless neighbour. The Prussian government desired another partition and a large tract of Polish territory. Only after long discussion was it agreed that Prussia should be free to act in Poland, while Austria might find compensation in provinces conquered from France.

A respite was thus given and something was done to improve the army. Meantime the Assembly passed three decrees: one for the deportation of nonjuring priests, another to suppress the king’s Constitutional Guard, and a third for the establishment of a camp of fédérés near Paris. Louis consented to sacrifice his guard, but vetoed the other decrees. Roland having addressed to him an arrogant letter of remonstrance, the king with the support of Dumouriez dismissed Roland, Servan and Clavière. Dumouriez then took the ministry of war, and the other places were filled with such men as could be had. Dumouriez, who cared only for the successful prosecution of the war, urged the king to accept the decrees. As Louis was obstinate, he felt that he could do no more, resigned office on the 15th of June and Émeute of the 20th of June 1792. went to join the army of the north. Lafayette, who remained faithful to the constitution of 1791, ventured on a letter of remonstrance to the Assembly. It paid no attention, for Lafayette could no longer sway the people. The Jacobins tried to frighten the king into accepting the decrees and recalling his ministers. On the 20th of June the armed populace invaded the hall of the Assembly and the royal apartments in the Tuileries. For some hours the king and queen were in the utmost peril. With passive courage Louis refrained from making any promise to the insurgents.

The failure of the insurrection encouraged a movement in favour of the king. Some twenty thousand Parisians signed a petition expressing sympathy with Louis. Addresses of like tenour poured in from the departments and the provincial cities. Lafayette himself came to Paris in the hope of rallying the constitutional party, but the king and queen eluded his offers of assistance. They had always disliked and distrusted Lafayette and the Feuillants, and preferred to rest their hopes of deliverance on the foreigner. Lafayette returned to his troops without having effected anything. The Girondins made a last advance to Louis, offering to save the monarchy if he would accept them as ministers. His refusal united all the Jacobins in the project of overturning the monarchy by force. The ruling spirit of this new revolution was Danton, a barrister only thirty-two years of age, who had not sat in either Assembly, although he had been the leader of the Cordeliers, an advanced republican club, and had a strong hold on the common people of Paris. Danton and his friends were assisted in their work by the fear of invasion, for the allied army was at length mustering on the frontier. The Assembly declared the country in danger. All the regular troops in or near Paris were sent to the front. Volunteers and fédérés were constantly arriving in Paris, and, although most went on to join the army, the Jacobins enlisted those who were suitable for their purpose, especially some 500 whom Barbaroux, a Girondin, had summoned from Marseilles. At the same time the National Guard was opened to the lowest class. Brunswick’s famous declaration of the 25th of July, announcing that the allies would enter France to restore the royal authority and would visit the Assembly and the city of Paris with military execution if any further outrage were offered to the king, heated the republican spirit to fury. It was resolved to strike the decisive blow on the 10th of August.

On the night of the 9th a new revolutionary Commune took possession of the hôtel de ville, and early on the morning of the 10th the insurgents assailed the Tuileries. As the preparations of the Jacobins had been notorious, some Rising of the 10th of August. measures of defence had been taken. Beside a few gentlemen in arms and a number of National Guards the palace was garrisoned by the Swiss Guard, about 950 strong. The disparity of force was not so great as to make resistance altogether hopeless. But Louis let himself be persuaded into betraying his own cause and retiring with his family under the shelter of the Assembly. The National Guards either dispersed or fraternized with the assailants. The Swiss Guard stood firm, and, possibly by accident, a fusillade began. The enemy were gaining ground when the Swiss received an order from the king to cease firing and withdraw. They were mostly shot down as they were retiring, and of those who surrendered many were murdered in cold blood next day. The king and queen spent long hours in a reporter’s box while the Assembly discussed their fate and the fate of the French monarchy. Little more than a third of the deputies were present and they were almost all Jacobins. They decreed that Louis should be suspended from his office and that a convention should be summoned to give France a new constitution. An executive council was formed by recalling Roland, Clavière and Servan to office and joining with them Danton as minister of justice, Lebrun as minister of foreign affairs, and Monge as minister of marine.

When Lafayette heard of the insurrection in Paris he tried to rally his troops in defence of the constitution, but they refused to follow him. He was driven to cross the frontier and surrender himself to the Austrians. Dumouriez The revolutionary Commune of Paris. was named his successor. But the new government was still beset with danger. It had no root in law and little hold on public opinion. It could not lean on the Assembly, a mere shrunken remnant, whose days were numbered. It remained dependent on the power which had set it up, the revolutionary Commune of Paris. The Commune could therefore extort what concessions it pleased. It got the custody of the king and his family who were imprisoned in the Temple. Having obtained an indefinite power of arrest, it soon filled the prisons of Paris. As the elections to the Convention were close at hand, the Commune resolved to strike the public with terror by the slaughter of its prisoners. It found its opportunity in the progress of invasion. On the 19th Brunswick crossed the frontier. On the 22nd Longwy surrendered. Verdun was invested and seemed likely to fall. On the 1st of September the Commune decreed 161 that on the following day the tocsin should be rung, all able-bodied citizens convened in the Champs de Mars, and 60,000 The September massacres. volunteers enrolled for the defence of the country. While this assembly was in progress gangs of assassins were sent to the prisons and began a butchery which lasted four days and consumed 1400 victims. The Commune addressed a circular letter to the other cities of France inviting them to follow the example. A number of state prisoners awaiting trial at Orleans were ordered to Paris and on the way were murdered at Versailles. The Assembly offered a feeble resistance to these crimes. Danton can hardly be acquitted of connivance at them. Roland hinted disapproval, but did not venture more. He with many other Girondins had been marked for slaughter in the original project.

The elections to the Convention were by almost universal suffrage, but indifference or intimidation reduced the voters to a small number. Many who had sat in the National, and many more who had sat in the Legislative The National Convention. Assembly were returned. The Convention met on the 20th of September. Like the previous assemblies, it did not fall into well-defined parties. The success of the Jacobins in overthrowing the monarchy had ended their union. Thenceforwards the name of Jacobin was confined to the smaller and more fanatical group, while the rest came to be known as the Girondins. The Jacobins, about 100 strong, formed the Left of the Convention, afterwards known from the raised benches on which they sat as the Mountain (q.v.). The Girondins, numbering perhaps 180, formed the Right. The rest of the House, nearly 500 members, voted now on one side now on the other, until in the course of the Terror they fell under the Jacobin domination. This neutral mass is often termed the Plain, in allusion to its seats on the floor of the House. The Convention as a whole was Republican, if not on principle, from the feeling that no other Abolition of the monarchy. form of government could be established. It decreed the abolition of monarchy on the 21st of September. A committee was named to draft a new constitution, which was presented and decreed in the following June, but never took effect and was superseded by a third constitution in 1795. The actual government of France was by committees of the Convention, but some months passed before it could be fully organized.

The inner history of the Convention was strange and terrible. It turned on the successive schisms in the ruling minority. Whichever side prevailed destroyed its adversaries only to divide afresh and renew the strife until the Jacobins and Girondins. victors were at length so reduced that their yoke was shaken off and the mass of the Convention, hitherto benumbed by fear, resumed its freedom and the government of France. The first and most memorable of these contests was the quarrel between Jacobin and Girondin. Both parties were republican and democratic; both wished to complete the Revolution; both were determined to maintain the integrity of France. But they differed in circumstances and temperament. Although the leaders on both sides were of the middle class, the Girondins represented the bourgeoisie, the Jacobins represented the populace. The Girondins desired a speedy return to law and order; the Jacobins thought that they could keep power only by violence. The Jacobins leant on the revolutionary commune and the mob of Paris; the Girondins leant on the thriving burghers of the provincial cities. Despite their smaller number the Jacobins were victors. They were the more resolute and unscrupulous. The Girondins numbered many orators, but not one man of action. The Jacobins controlled the parent club with its affiliated societies and the whole machinery of terror. The Girondins had no organized force at their disposal. The Jacobins perpetuated in a new form the old centralization of power to which France was accustomed. The Girondins addressed themselves to provincials who had lost the power of initiative. They were termed federalists by their enemies and accused, unjustly enough, of wishing to dissolve the national unity.

Even in the first days of the Convention the feud broke out. The Girondins condemned the September massacres and dreaded the Parisian populace. Barbaroux accused Robespierre of aiming at a dictatorship, and Buzot demanded a guard recruited in the departments to protect the Convention. In October Louvet reiterated the charge against Robespierre, and Barbaroux called for the dissolution of the Commune of Paris. But the Girondins gained no tangible result from this wordy warfare. For a time the question how to dispose of the king diverted the thoughts of all parties. It was approached in a political, not in a judicial spirit. The Jacobins desired the death of Louis, partly because they hated kings and deemed him a traitor, partly because they wished to envenom the Revolution, defy Europe and compromise their more temperate colleagues. The Girondins wished to spare Louis, but were afraid of incurring the reproach of royalism. At this critical moment the discovery of the famous iron chest, containing papers which showed that many public men had intrigued with the court, was disastrous for Louis. Members of the Convention were anxious to be thought severe lest they should be thought corrupt. Robespierre frankly demanded that Louis as a public enemy should be put to death without form of trial. The majority shrank from such open injustice and decreed on the 3rd of December that Louis should be tried by the Convention.

A committee of twenty-one was chosen to frame the indictment against Louis, and on the 11th of December he was brought to the bar for the first time to hear the charges read. The most essential might be summed up in the statement Trial and execution of Louis XVI. that he had plotted against the Constitution and against the safety of the kingdom. On the 26th Louis appeared at the bar a second time, and the trial began. The advocates of Louis could plead that all his actions down to the dissolution of the National Assembly came within the amnesty then granted, and that the Constitution had proclaimed his person inviolable, while enacting for certain offences the penalty of deposition which he had already undergone. Such arguments were not likely to weigh with such a tribunal. The Mountain called for immediate sentence of death; the Girondins desired an appeal to the people of France. The galleries of the Convention were packed with adherents of the Jacobins, whose fury, not confined to words, struck terror into all who might incline towards mercy. In Paris unmistakable signs announced a new insurrection, to be followed perhaps by new massacres. On the question whether Louis was guilty none ventured to give a negative vote. The motion for an appeal to the people was rejected by 424 votes to 283. The penalty of death was adopted by 361 votes against 360 in favour of other penalties or of postponing at least the execution of the sentence. On the 21st of January 1793 Louis was beheaded in the Place de la Révolution, now the Place de la Concorde.

Between the deposition and the death of Louis the war had run a surprising course. Accompanied by King Frederick William, Brunswick had entered France with 80,000 men, of whom more than half were Prussians, the Battle of Valmy. best soldiers in Europe. The disorder of France was such that many expected a triumphal march to Paris. But the Allies had opened the campaign late; they moved slowly; the weather broke, and sickness began to waste their ranks. Dumouriez succeeded in rousing the spirit of the French; he occupied the defiles of the forest of Argonne, thus causing the enemy to lose many valuable days, and when at last they turned his position, he retreated without loss. At Valmy on the 20th of September the two armies came in contact. The affair was only a cannonade, but the French stood firm and the advance of the Allies was stayed. Brunswick had no heart for his work; the king was ill satisfied with the Austrians, and both were alarmed by the ravages of disease among the soldiers. Within ten days after the affair of Valmy they began their retreat. Dumouriez, who still hoped to detach Prussia from Austria, left them unmolested. When the enemy had quitted France, he invaded Hainaut and defeated the Austrians at Jemappes on the 6th of November. In Belgium a large party regarded the French as deliverers. Dumouriez entered Brussels without further resistance, and was soon master of the whole country. Elsewhere the French were equally successful. With a slight force Custine 162 assailed the electorate of Mainz. The common people were friendly, and he had no trouble in occupying the country as far as the Rhine. The king of Sardinia having shown a hostile temper, Montesquiou made an easy conquest of Savoy. At the close of 1792 the relative position of France and her enemies had been reversed. It was seen that the French were still able to wage war, and that the revolutionary spirit had permeated the adjoining countries, while the old governments of Europe, jealous of one another and uncertain of the loyalty of their subjects, were ill qualified for resistance.

Intoxicated with these victories, the Convention abandoned itself to the fervour of propaganda and conquest. The river Scheldt had been closed to commerce by various treaties to which England and Holland, neutral powers, were parties. Without a pretence of negotiation the French government declared on the 16th of November that the Scheldt was thenceforwards open. On the 19th a decree of the Convention offered the aid of France to all nations which were striving after freedom—in other words, to the malcontents in every neighbouring state. Not long afterwards the Convention annexed Savoy, with the consent, it should be added, of many Savoyards. On the 15th of December the Convention decreed that all peoples freed by its assistance should carry out a revolution like that which had been made in France on pain of being treated as enemies. Towards Great Britain the executive council and the Convention behaved with singular folly. There, in spite of a growing antipathy to the Revolution, Pitt earnestly desired to maintain peace. The conquest of the Netherlands and the symptoms of a wish to annex that country made his task most difficult. But the French The first coalition against France. government underrated the strength of Great Britain, imagining that all Englishmen who desired parliamentary reform desired revolution, and that a few democratic societies represented the nation. When Monge announced the intention of attacking Great Britain on behalf of the English republicans, the British government and nation were thoroughly alarmed and roused; and when the news of the execution of Louis XVI. was received, Chauvelin, the French envoy, was ordered to quit England. France declared war against England and Holland on the 1st of February and soon afterwards against Spain. In the course of the year 1793 the Empire, the kings of Portugal and Naples and the grand-duke of Tuscany declared war against France. Thus was formed the first coalition.

France was not prepared to encounter so many enemies. Administrative confusion had been heightened by the triumph of the Jacobins. Servan was succeeded as minister of war by Pache who was incapable and dishonest. The army of Dumouriez was left in such want that it dwindled rapidly. The commissioners of the Convention plundered the Netherlands with so little remorse that the people became bitterly hostile. The attempt to enforce a revolution of the French sort on the Catholic and conservative Belgians drove them to fury. By every unfair means the commissioners extorted the semblance of a popular vote in favour of incorporation, and France annexed the Netherlands. This was the last outrage. When a new Austrian army under the prince of Coburg entered the country, Dumouriez, who had invaded Holland, was unable to defend Belgium. On the 18th of March he was defeated at Neerwinden, and a few days later he was driven back to the frontier. Alike on public and personal grounds Dumouriez was the enemy of the government. Trusting in his influence over the army he resolved to lead it against the Convention, and, in order to secure his rear, he negotiated with the enemy. But he could make no impression on his soldiers, and deserted to the Austrians. Events followed a similar course in the Rhine valley. There also the French wore out the goodwill at first shown to them. They summoned a convention and obtained a vote for incorporation with France. But they were unable to hold their ground on the approach of a Prussian army. By April they had lost the country with the exception of Mainz, which was invested. France thus lay open to invasion from the east and the north. The Convention decreed a levy of 300,000 men.

About the same time began the first formidable uprising against the Revolution, the War of La Vendée, the region lying to the south of the lower Loire and facing the Atlantic. Its inhabitants differed in many ways from the mass Rising in La Vendée. of the nation. Living far from large towns and busy routes of commerce, they remained primitive in all their thoughts and ways. The peasants had always been on friendly terms with the gentry, and the agrarian changes made by the Revolution had not been appreciated so highly as elsewhere. The people were ardent Catholics, who venerated the nonjuring clergy and resented the measures taken against them. But they remained passive until the enforcement of the decree for the levy of 300,000 men. Caring little for the Convention and knowing nothing of events on the northern or eastern frontier, the peasants were determined not to serve and preferred to fight the Republic at home. When once they had taken up arms they found gentlemen to lead and priests to exhort, and their rebellion became Royalist and Catholic. The chiefs were drawn from widely different classes. If Bonchamps and La Roche-jacquelin were nobles, Stofflet was a gamekeeper and Cathelineau a mason. As the country was favourable to guerilla warfare, and the government could not spare regular troops from the frontiers, the rebels were usually successful, and by the end of May had almost expelled the Republicans from La Vendée.

Danger without and within prompted the Convention to strengthen the executive authority. That the executive and legislative powers ought to be absolutely separate had been an axiom throughout the Revolution. The Committee of Public Safety. Ministers had always been excluded from a seat in the legislature. But the Assemblies were suspicious of the executive and bent on absorbing the government. They had nominated committees of their own members to control every branch of public affairs. These committees, while reducing the ministers to impotence, were themselves clumsy and ineffectual. It may be said that since the first meeting of the states-general the executive authority had been paralysed in France. The Convention in theory maintained the separation of powers. Even Danton had been forced to resign office when he was elected a member. But unity of government was restored by the formation of a central committee. In January the first Committee of General Defence was formed of members of the committees for the several departments of state. Too large and too much divided for strenuous labour, it was reduced in April to nine members and re-named the Committee of Public Safety. It deliberated in secret and had authority over the ministers; it was entrusted with the whole of the national defence and empowered to use all the resources of the state, and it quickly became the supreme power in the republic. Under it the ministers were no more than head clerks. About the same time were instituted the deputies on mission in the provinces, who could overrule any local authority, and who corresponded regularly with the Committee. France thus returned under new forms to its traditional government: a despotic authority in Paris with all-powerful agents in the provinces. Against disaffection the government was armed with formidable weapons: the Committee of General Security and the Revolutionary Tribunal. The Committee of General Security, first established in October 1792, was several times remodelled. In September 1793 the Convention decreed that its members should be nominated by the Committee of Public Safety. The Committee of General Security had unlimited powers for the prevention or discovery of crime against the state. The Revolutionary Tribunal was decreed on the 10th of March. It was an extraordinary Court, destined to try all offences against the Revolution without appeal. The jury, which received wages, voted openly, so that condemnation was almost certain. The director of the jury or public prosecutor was Fouquier Tinville. The first condemnation took place on the 11th of April.

Enmity between Girondin and Jacobin grew fiercer as the perils of the Republic increased. Danton strove to unite all partisans of the Revolution in defence of the country; but the Girondins, detesting his character and fearing his ambition, Fall of the Girondins. 163 rejected all advances. The Commune of Paris and the journalists who were its mouthpieces, Hébert and Marat, aimed frankly at destroying the Girondins. In April the Girondins carried a decree that Marat should be sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal for incendiary writings, but his acquittal showed that a Jacobin leader was above the law. In May they proposed that the Commune of Paris should be dissolved, and that the suppléants, the persons elected to fill vacancies occurring in the Convention, should assemble at Bourges, where they would be safe from that violence which might be applied to the Convention itself. Barère, who was rising into notice by the skill with which he trimmed between parties, opposed this motion, and carried a decree appointing a Committee of Twelve to watch over the safety of the Convention. Then the Commune named as commandant of the National Guard, Hanriot, a man concerned in the September massacres. It raised an insurrection on the 31st of May. On Barère’s proposal the Convention stooped to dissolving the Committee of Twelve. The Commune, which had hoped for the arrest of the Girondin leaders, was not satisfied. It undertook a new and more formidable outbreak on the 2nd of June. Enclosed by Hanriot’s troops and thoroughly cowed, the Convention decreed the arrest of the Committee of Twelve and of twenty-two principal Girondins. They were put under confinement in their own houses. Thus the Jacobins became all-powerful.

A tremor of revolt ran through the cities of the south which chafed under the despotism of the Parisian mob. These cities had their own grievances. The Jacobin clubs menaced the lives and properties of all who were guilty of wealth Revolt of the provinces. or of moderate opinions, while the representatives on mission deposed the municipal authorities and placed their own creatures in power. At the end of April the citizens of Marseilles closed the Jacobin club, put its chiefs on their trial and drove out the representatives on mission. In May Lyons rose. The Jacobin municipality was overturned, and Challier, their fiercest demagogue, was arrested. In June the citizens of Bordeaux declared that they would not acknowledge the authority of the Convention until the imprisoned deputies were set free. In July Toulon rebelled. But in the north the appeals of such Girondins as escaped from Paris were of no avail. Even the southern uprising proved far less dangerous than might have been expected. The peasants, who had gained more by the Revolution than any other class, held aloof from the citizens. The citizens lacked the qualities necessary for the successful conduct of civil war. Bordeaux surrendered almost without waiting to be summoned. Marseilles was taken in August and treated with great cruelty. Lyons, where the Royalists were strong, defended itself with courage, for the trial and execution of Challier made the townsmen hopeless of pardon. Toulon, also largely Royalist, invited the English and Spanish admirals, Hood and Langara, who occupied the port and garrisoned the town. At the same time the Vendean War continued formidable. In June the insurgents took the important town of Saumur, although they failed in an attempt upon Nantes. At the end of July the Republicans were still unable to make any impression upon the revolted territory.

Thus in the summer of 1793 France seemed to be falling to pieces. It was saved by the imbecility and disunion of the hostile powers. In the north the French army after the treason of Dumouriez could only attempt to cover Disunion of the allied powers. the frontier. The Austrians were joined by British, Dutch and Prussian forces. Had the Allies pushed straight upon Paris, they might have ended the war. But the desire of each ally to make conquests on his own account led them to spend time and strength in sieges. When Condé and Valenciennes had been taken, the British went off to assail Dunkirk and the Prussians retired into Luxemburg. In the east the Prussians and Austrians took Mainz at the end of July, allowing the garrison to depart on condition of not serving against the Allies for a year. Then they invaded Alsace, but their mutual jealousy prevented them from going farther. Thus the summer passed away without any decisive achievement of the coalition. Meanwhile the Committee of Public Safety, inspired by Danton, strove to rebuild the French administrative system. In July the Committee was renewed and Danton fell out; but soon afterwards it was reinforced by two officers, Carnot, who undertook the organization of the army, and Prieur of the Côte d’Or, who undertook its equipment. Administrators of the first rank, these men renovated the warlike power of France, and enabled her to deal those crushing blows which broke up the coalition.

The Royalist and Girondin insurrections and the critical aspect of the war favoured the establishment of what is known as the reign of terror. Terrorism had prevailed more or less since the beginning of the Revolution, but it was The reign of terror. the work of those who desired to rule, not of the nominal rulers. It had been lawless and rebellious. It ended by becoming legal and official. While Danton kept power Terrorism remained imperfect, for Danton, although unscrupulous, did not love cruelty and kept in view a return to normal government. But soon after Danton had ceased to be a member of the Committee of Public Safety Robespierre was elected, and now became the most powerful man in France. Robespierre was an acrid fanatic, and unlike Danton, who only cared to secure the practical results of the Revolution, he had a moral and religious ideal which he intended to force on the nation. All who rejected his ideal were corrupt; all who resented his ascendancy were traitors. The death of Marat, who was stabbed by Charlotte Corday (q.v.) to avenge the Girondins, gave yet another pretext for terrible measures of repression. In Paris the armed ruffians who had long preyed upon respectable citizens were organized as a revolutionary army, and other revolutionary armies were established in the provinces. Two new laws placed almost everybody at the mercy of the government. The Law of the Maximum, passed on the 17th of September, fixed the price of food and made it capital to ask for more. The Law of Suspects, passed at the same time, declared suspect every person who was of noble birth, or had held office before the Revolution, or had any connexion with an émigré, or could not produce a card of civisme granted by the local authority, which had full discretion to refuse. Any suspect might be arrested and imprisoned until the peace or sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal. An earlier law had established in every commune an elective committee of surveillance. These bodies, better known as revolutionary committees, were charged with the enforcement of the Law of Suspects. On the 10th of October the new constitution was suspended and the government declared revolutionary until the peace.

The spirit of those in power was shown by the massacres which followed on the surrender of Lyons in that month. In Paris the slaughter of distinguished victims began with the trial of Marie Antoinette, who was guillotined on Execution of the queen. the 16th. Twenty-one Girondin deputies were next brought to the bar and, with the exception of Valazé who stabbed himself, were beheaded on the last day of October, Madame Roland and other Girondins of note suffered later. In November the duke of Orleans, who had styled himself Philippe Égalité, had sat in the Convention, and had voted for the king’s death, went to the scaffold. Bailly, Barnave and many others of note followed before the end of the year. As the bloody work went on the pretence of trial became more and more hollow, the chance of acquittal fainter and fainter. The Revolutionary Tribunal was a mere instrument of state. Knowing the slight foundation of its power the government deliberately sought to destroy all whose birth, political connexions or past career might mark them out as leaders of opposition. At the same time it took care to show that none was so obscure or so impotent as to be safe when its policy was to destroy.

The disastrous effects of the Terror were heightened by the financial mismanagement of the Jacobins. Assignats were issued with such reckless profusion that the total for the three years of the Convention has been estimated at 7250 millions of francs. Enormous depreciation ensued and, although penalties rising to death itself were denounced against all who should refuse to take them at par, they fell to little more than 1% of their 164 nominal value. What were known as revolutionary taxes were imposed at discretion by the representatives on mission and the local authorities. A forced loan of 1000 millions was exacted from those citizens who were reputed to be prosperous. Immense supplies of all kinds were requisitioned for the armies, and were sometimes allowed to rot unused. Anarchy and state interference having combined to check the trade in necessaries, the government undertook to feed the people, and spent huge sums, especially on bread for the starving inhabitants of Paris. As no regular budget was attempted, as accounts were not kept, and as audit was unknown, the opportunities for fraud and embezzlement were endless. Even when due allowance has been made for the financial disorder which the Convention inherited from previous assemblies, and for the war which it had to wage against a formidable alliance, it cannot be acquitted of reckless and wasteful maladministration.

Notwithstanding the disorder of the time, the mass of new laws produced by the Convention was extraordinary. A new system of weights and measures, a new currency, a new chronological era (that of the Republic), and a new Revolutionary legislation. The new calendar. calendar were introduced (see the section Republican Calendar below). A new and elaborate system of education was decreed. Two drafts of a complete civil code were made and, although neither was enacted, particular changes of great moment were decreed. Many of the new laws were stamped with the passions of the time. Such were the laws which suppressed all the remaining bodies corporate, even the academies, and which extinguished all manorial rights without any indemnity to the owners. Such too were the laws which took away the power of testation, placed natural children upon an absolute equality with legitimate, and gave a boundless freedom of divorce. It would be absurd, however, to dismiss all the legislative work of the Convention as merely partisan or eccentric. Much of it was enlightened and skilful, the product of the best minds in the assembly. To compete for power or even to express an opinion on public affairs was dangerous, and wholly to refrain from attendance might be construed as disaffection. Able men who wished to be useful without hazarding their lives took refuge in the committees where new laws were drafted and discussed. The result of their labours was often decreed as a matter of course. Whether the decree would be carried into effect was always uncertain.

The ruling faction was still divided against itself. The Commune of Paris, which had overthrown the Girondins, was jealous of the Committee of Public Safety, which meant to be supreme. Robespierre, the leading member of the committee, abhorred the chiefs of the Commune, not merely because they conflicted with his ambition but from difference of character. He was orderly and temperate, they were gross and debauched; he was a deist, they were atheists. In November the Commune fitted up Notre Dame as a temple of Reason, selected an opera girl to impersonate the goddess, and with profane ceremony installed her in the choir. All the churches in Paris were closed. Danton, when he felt power slipping from his hands, had retired from public business to his native town of Arcis-sur-Aube. When he became aware of the feud between Robespierre and the Commune, he conceived the hope of limiting the Terror and guiding the Revolution into a sane course. He returned to Paris and joined with Robespierre in carrying the law of 14 Frimaire (December 4), which gave the Committee of Public Safety absolute control over all municipal authorities. He became the advocate of mercy, and his friend Camille Desmoulins pleaded for the same cause in the Vieux Cordelier. Then the Overthrow of the Paris Commune. Fall of the Dantonists. oppressed nation took courage and began to demand pardon for the innocent and even justice upon murderers. A sharp contest ensued between the Dantonists and the Commune, Robespierre inclining now to this side, now to that, for he was really a friend to neither. His friend St Just, a younger and fiercer man, resolved to destroy both. Hébert and his followers in despair planned a new insurrection, but they were deserted by Hanriot, their military chief. Their doom was thus fixed. Twenty leaders of the Commune were arrested on the 17th of March 1794 and guillotined a week later. It was then Danton’s turn. He had several warnings, but either through over-confidence or weariness of life he scorned to fly. On the 30th he was arrested along with his friends Desmoulins, Delacroix, Philippeaux and Westermann. St Just read to the Convention a report on their case pre-eminent even in that day for its shameless disregard of truth, nay, of plausibility. Before the Revolutionary Tribunal Danton defended himself with such energy that St Just took means to have him silenced. Danton and his friends were executed on the 5th of April.

For a moment the conflict of parties seemed at an end. None could presume to challenge the authority of the Committee of Public Safety, and in the committee none disputed the leadership of Robespierre. Robespierre was at last Supremacy of Robespierre. free to establish the republic of virtue. On the 7th of May he persuaded the Convention to decree that the French people acknowledged the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. On the 4th of June he was elected president of the Convention, and from that time forward he appeared to be dictator of France. On the 8th the festival of the Supreme Being was solemnized, Robespierre acting as pontiff amid the outward deference and secret jeers of his colleagues. But Robespierre knew what a gulf parted him from almost all his countrymen. He knew that he could be safe only by keeping power and powerful only by making the Terror more stringent. Two days after the festival his friend Couthon presented the crowning law of the Terror, known as the Law of 22 Prairial. As the Revolutionary Tribunal was said to be paralysed by forms and delays, this law abolished the defence of prisoners by counsel and the examination of witnesses. Thenceforward the impressions of judges and jurors were to decide the fate of the accused. For all offences the penalty was to be death. The leave of the Convention was no longer required for the arrest of a member. In spite of some murmurs even this law was adopted. Its effect was fearful. The Revolutionary Tribunal had hitherto pronounced 1200 death sentences. In the next six weeks it pronounced 1400. With Robespierre’s approval St Just sketched at this time the plan of an ideal society in which every man should have just enough land to maintain him; in which domestic life should be regulated by law and all children over seven years should be educated by the state. Pending this regeneration of society St Just advised the rule of a dictator.

The growing ferocity of the Terror appeared more hideous as the dangers threatening the government receded. The surrender of Toulon in December 1793 closed the south of France to foreign enemies. The war in La Vendée turned against The Revolutionary War. Republican successes. the insurgents from the time when the veteran garrison of Mainz came to reinforce the Republican army. After a severe defeat at Cholet on the 16th of October the Royalists determined to cross the Loire and raise Brittany and Anjou, where the Chouans, or Royalist partisans, were already stirring. They failed in an attempt on the little seaport of Granville and in another upon Angers. In December they were defeated with immense loss at Le Mans and at Savenay. The rebellion would probably have died out but for the measures of the new Republican general Turreau, who wasted La Vendée so horribly with his “infernal columns” that he drove the peasants to take up arms once more. Yet Turreau’s crimes were almost surpassed by Carrier, the representative on mission at Nantes, who, finding the guillotine too slow in the destruction of his prisoners, adopted the plan of drowning them wholesale. In the autumn of 1793 the war against the coalition took a turn favourable to France. The energy of Danton, the organizing skill of Carnot, and the high spirit of the French nation, resolute at all costs to avoid dismemberment, had well employed the respite given by the sluggishness of the Allies. In Flanders the English were defeated at Hondschoote (September 8) and the Austrians at Wattignies (October 15). In the east Hoche routed the Austrians at Weissenburg and forced them to recross the Rhine before the end of 1793. The summer of 1794 saw France victorious on all her frontiers. Jourdan won the battle of Fleurus 165 (June 25), which decided the fate of the Belgian provinces. The Prussians were driven out of the eastern departments. Against the Spaniards and the Sardinians the French were also successful.

Under these circumstances government by terror could not endure. Robespierre was not a man of action; he knew not how to form or lead a party; he lived not with his fellows but with his own thoughts and ambitions. He was hated and feared by most of the oligarchy. They laughed at his religion, resented his puritanism, and felt themselves in daily peril. His only loyal friends in the Committee of Public Safety, Couthon and St Just, were themselves unpopular. Robespierre professed consideration for the deputies of the Plain, who were glad to buy safety by conforming to his will; but he could not reckon on their help in time of danger. By degrees a coalition against Robespierre was formed in the Mountain. It included old followers of Danton like Taillen, independent Jacobins like Cambon, some of the worst Terrorists like Fouché, and such a consummate time-server as Barère. In the course of July its influence began to be felt. When St Just proposed Robespierre to the committees as dictator, he found no response. On the 8th Thermidor (26th of July) Robespierre addressed the Convention, deploring the invectives against himself and the Revolutionary Tribunal and demanding the purification of the committees and the punishment of traitors. His enemies took the speech as a declaration of war and thwarted a proposal that it should be circulated in the departments. Robespierre felt his ascendancy totter. He repeated his speech with more success to the Jacobin Club. His friends determined to strike, and Hanriot ordered the National Guards to hold themselves in readiness. Robespierre’s enemies called on the Committee of Public Safety Fall of Robespierre. The 9th Thermidor. to arrest the traitors, but the committee was divided. On the morning of the 9th Thermidor St Just was beginning to speak in the Convention when Tallien cut him short. Robespierre and all who tried to speak in his behalf were shouted down. The Plain was deaf to Robespierre’s appeal. Finally the Convention decreed the arrest of Robespierre, of his brother Augustin, of Couthon and of St Just. But the Commune and the Jacobin Club were on the alert. They sounded the tocsin, mustered their partisans, and released the prisoners. The Convention outlawed Robespierre and his friends and sent out commissioners to rally the citizens. It named Barras, a deputy who had served in the royal army, to lead its forces. Had Robespierre possessed Danton’s energy, the result might have been doubtful. He did nothing himself and benumbed his followers. Without an effort Barras captured the Hôtel de Ville. Robespierre, whose jaw had been shattered by a pistol shot, was left in agony for the night. On the next morning he was beheaded along with his brother, Couthon, St Just, Hanriot and seventeen more of his adherents. On the day after seventy-one members of the Commune followed them to the scaffold. Such was the revolution of the 9th Thermidor (27th of July 1794) which ended the Reign of Terror.

In a period of fifteen months, it has been calculated, about 17,000 persons had been executed in France under form of law. The number of those who were shot, drowned or otherwise massacred without the pretence of a trial can never be accurately known, but must be reckoned far greater. The number of persons arrested and imprisoned reached hundreds of thousands, of whom many died in their crowded and filthy jails. The names on the list of émigrés at the close of the Terror were about 150,000. Of these a small proportion had borne arms against their country. The rest were either harmless fugitives from destruction or had never quitted France and had been placed on the list simply in order that they might incur the penalties of emigration. Every one of this multitude was liable to instant death if found in French territory. Their relatives were subjected to various pains and penalties. All the property of those condemned to death and of émigrés was confiscated. The carnage of the Terror spread far beyond the clergy and the nobility, beyond even the middle class, for peasants and artisans were among the victims. It spread far beyond those who could conspire or rebel, for bedridden old men and women and young boys and girls were often sacrificed. It made most havoc in the flower of the nation, since every kind of eminence marked men for death. By imbuing Frenchmen with such a mutual hatred as nothing but the arm of despotic power could control the Reign of Terror rendered political liberty impossible for many years. The rule of the Terrorists made inevitable the reign of Napoleon.

The fall of Robespierre had consequences unforeseen by his destroyers. Long kept mute by fear, the mass of the nation found a voice and demanded a total change of government. When once the reaction against Jacobin Reaction after the Terror. tyranny had begun, it was impossible to halt. Great numbers of prisoners were set at liberty. The Commune of Paris was abolished and the office of commandant of the National Guard was suppressed. The Revolutionary Tribunal was reorganized, and thenceforwards condemnations were rare. The Committees of Public Safety and General Security were remodelled, in virtue of a law that one-fourth of their number should retire at the end of every month and not be re-eligible until another month had elapsed. Somewhat later the Convention declared itself to be the only centre of authority, and executive business was parcelled out among sixteen committees. Most of the representatives on mission were recalled, and many office-holders were displaced. The trial of 130 prisoners sent up from Nantes led to so many terrible disclosures that public feeling turned still more fiercely against the Jacobins; Carrier himself was condemned and executed; and in November the Jacobin Club was closed. In December 73 members of the Convention who had been imprisoned for protesting against the violence done to the Girondins on the 2nd of June 1793 were allowed to resume their seats, and gave a decisive majority to the anti-Jacobins. Soon afterwards the law of the Maximum was repealed. A decree was passed in February 1795 severing the connexion of church and state and allowing general freedom of worship. At the beginning of March those Girondin deputies who survived came back to their places in the Convention.

But the return to normal life after the Jacobin domination was not destined to be smooth or continuous. Beside the remnant of Terrorists, such as Billaud Varennes and Collot d’Herbois, who had joined in the revolt against Parties in the Assembly after Thermidor. Robespierre, there were in the Convention at that time three principal factions. The so-called Independents, such as Barras and Merlin of Douai, who were all Jacobins, but had stood aloof from the internal conflicts of the party, hated Royalism as much as ever and desired the continuance of the war which was essential to their power. The Thermidorians, the immediate agents in Robespierre’s overthrow, such as Tallien, had loudly professed Jacobinism, but wanted to make their peace with the nation. They sought for an understanding with the Girondins and Feuillants, and some went so far as to correspond with the exiled princes. Lastly, those members who had never been Jacobins wanted a speedy return to legal government at home and therefore wished for peace abroad. While bent on preserving the civil equality introduced by the Revolution, many of these men were indifferent as between constitutional monarchy and a republic. The government, mainly Thermidorian, trimmed between Moderates and Independents, and for this reason its actions were often inconsistent.

The Jacobins were strong enough to carry a decree for keeping the anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI. as a national festival. They could count on the populace, because work was still scarce, food was still dear, and a multitude Progress of the reaction. of Parisians knew not where to find bread. A committee having recommended the indictment of Collot d’Herbois and three other Terrorists, there ensued the rising of the 12th Germinal (April 1). The mob forced their way into the hall of the Convention and remained there until the National Guards of the wealthy quarters drove them out. By a decree of the Convention the four accused persons were deported to Cayenne, a new mode of dealing with political offenders almost as effective as the guillotine, while less apt to excite 166 compassion. The National Guard was reorganized so as to exclude the lowest class. The property of persons executed since the 10th of March 1793 was restored to their families. The signs of reaction daily became more unmistakable. Worshippers crowded to the churches; the émigrés returned by thousands; and Anti-Jacobin outbreaks, followed by massacre, took place in the south. The despair of the Jacobins produced a second rising in Paris on the 1st Prairial (May 20). Again the mob invaded the Convention, murdered a deputy named Féraud who attempted to shield the president, and set his head on a pike. The ultra-Jacobin members took possession and embodied their wishes in decrees. Again the hall was cleared by the National Guards, but order was restored in Paris only by employing regular troops, a new precedent in the history of the Revolution. Paris was disarmed, and several leaders of the insurrection were sentenced to death. The Revolutionary Tribunal was suppressed. Toleration was proclaimed for all priests who would declare their obedience to the laws of the state. Royalists began to count upon the restoration of young Louis the Dauphin, otherwise Louis XVII.; but his health had been ruined by persevering cruelty, and he died on the 10th of June.

The Thermidorian government also endeavoured to pacify the rebels of the west. Its best adviser, Hoche, recommended an amnesty and the assurance of religious freedom. On these terms peace was made with the Vendéans Progress of the war. at La Jaunaie in February and with the Chouans at La Mabilais in April. Some of the Vendean leaders persevered in resistance until May, and even after their submission the peace was ill observed, for the Royalists hearkened to the solicitations of the princes and their advisers. In the hope of rekindling the civil war a body of émigrés sailed under cover of the British fleet and landed on the peninsula of Quiberon. They were presently hemmed in by Hoche, and all who could not make their escape to the ships were forced to surrender at discretion (July 20). Nearly 700 were executed by court-martial. Yet the spirit of revolt lingered in the west and broke out time after time. Against the coalition the Republic was gloriously successful. (See French Revolutionary Wars.) In the summer of 1794 the French invaded Spain at both ends of the Pyrenees, and at the close of the year they made good their footing in Catalonia and Navarre. By the beginning of 1795 the Rhine frontier had been won. Against the king of Sardinia alone they accomplished little. At sea the French had sustained a severe defeat from Lord Howe, and several of their colonies had been taken by the British. But Great Britain, when the Netherlands were lost, could do little for her allies. Even before the close of 1794 the king of Prussia retired from any active part in the war, and on the 5th of April 1795 he concluded with France the treaty of Basel, which recognized her occupation of the left bank of the Rhine. The new democratic government which the French had established in Holland purchased peace by surrendering Dutch territory to the south of that river. A treaty of peace between France and Spain followed in July. The grand duke of Tuscany had been admitted to terms in February. The coalition thus fell into ruin and France occupied a more commanding position than in the proudest days of Louis XIV.

But this greatness was unsure so long as France remained without a stable government. A constitutional committee was named in April. It resolved that the constitution of 1793 was impracticable and proceeded to frame Constitution of the year III. The Directory. a new one. The draft was submitted to the Convention in June. In its final shape the constitution established a parliamentary system of two houses: a Council of Five Hundred and a Council of Ancients, 250 in number. Members of the Five Hundred were to be at least thirty years of age, members of the Ancients at least forty. The system of indirect election was maintained but universal suffrage was abandoned. A moderate qualification was required for electors in the first degree, a higher one for electors in the second degree.

When the 750 persons necessary had been elected they were to choose the Ancients out of their own body. A legislature was to last for three years, and one-third of the members were to be renewed every year. The Ancients had a suspensory veto, but no initiative in legislation. The executive was to consist of five directors chosen by the Ancients out of a list elected by the Five Hundred. One director was to retire every year. The directors were aided by ministers for the various departments of State. These ministers did not form a council and had no general powers of government. Provision was made for the stringent control of all local authorities by the central government. Since the separation of powers was still deemed axiomatic, the directors had no voice in legislation or taxation, nor could directors or ministers sit in either house. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of labour were guaranteed. Armed assemblies and even public meetings of political societies were forbidden. Petitions were to be tendered only by individuals or through the public authorities. The constitution was not, however, allowed free play from the beginning. The Convention was so unpopular that, if its members had retired into private life, they would not have been safe and their work might have been undone. It was therefore decreed that two-thirds of the first legislature must be chosen out of the Convention.

When the constitution was submitted to the primary assemblies, most electors held aloof, 1,050,000 voting for and only 5,000 voting against it. On the 23rd of September it was declared to be law. Then all the parties which Insurrection of 13 Vendémiaire. resented the limit upon freedom of election combined to rise in Paris. The government entrusted its defence to Barras; but its true man of action was young General Bonaparte, who could dispose of a few thousand regular troops and a powerful artillery. The Parisians were ill-equipped and ill-led, and on the 13th of Vendémiaire (October 5) their insurrection was quelled almost without loss to the victors. No further resistance was possible. The Convention dissolved itself on the 26th of October.

The feeling of the nation was clearly shown in the elections. Among those who had sat in the Convention the anti-Jacobins were generally preferred. A leader of the old Right was sometimes chosen by many departments at once. Balance of parties in the new legislature. Owing to this circumstance, 104 places reserved to members of the Convention were left unfilled. When the persons elected met they had no choice but to co-opt the 104 from the Left of the Convention. The new one-third were, as a rule, enemies of the Jacobins, but not of the Revolution. Many had been members of the Constituent or of the Legislative Assembly. When the new legislature was complete, the Jacobins had a majority, although a weak one. After the Council of the Ancients had been chosen by lot, it remained to name the directors. For its own security the Left resolved that all five must be old members of the Convention and regicides. The persons chosen were Rewbell, Barras, La Révellière Lépeaux, Carnot and Letourneur. Rewbell was an able, although unscrupulous, man of action, Barras a dissolute and shameless adventurer, La Révellière Lépeaux the chief of a new sect, the Theophilanthropists, and therefore a bitter foe to other religions, especially the Catholic. Severe integrity and memorable public services raised Carnot far above his colleagues, but he was not a statesman and was hampered by his past. Letourneur, a harmless insignificant person, was his admirer and follower. The division in the legislature was reproduced in the Directory. Rewbell, Barras and La Révellière Lépeaux had a full measure of the Jacobin spirit; Carnot and Letourneur favoured a more temperate policy.

With the establishment of the Directory the Revolution might seem closed. The nation only desired rest and the healing of its many wounds. Those who wished to restore Louis XVIII. and the ancien régime and those who would Character of the Directory. have renewed the Reign of Terror were insignificant in number. The possibility of foreign interference had vanished with the failure of the coalition. Nevertheless the four years of the Directory were a time of arbitrary government and chronic disquiet. The late atrocities had made confidence or goodwill between parties impossible. The same instinct of self-preservation which had led the members of the Convention to claim so large a part in the new legislature and the whole of 167 the Directory impelled them to keep their predominance. As the majority of Frenchmen wanted to be rid of them, they could achieve their purpose only by extraordinary means. They habitually disregarded the terms of the constitution, and, when the elections went against them, appealed to the sword. They resolved to prolong the war as the best expedient for prolonging their power. They were thus driven to rely upon the armies, which also desired war and were becoming less and less civic in temper. Other reasons influenced them in this direction. The finances had been so thoroughly ruined that the government could not have met its expenses without the plunder and the tribute of foreign countries. If peace were made, the armies would return home and the directors would have to face the exasperation of the rank and file who had lost their livelihood, as well as the ambition of generals who could in a moment brush them aside. Barras and Rewbell were notoriously corrupt themselves and screened corruption in others. The patronage of the directors was ill bestowed, and the general maladministration heightened their unpopularity.

The constitutional party in the legislature desired a toleration of the nonjuring clergy, the repeal of the laws against the relatives of the émigrés, and some merciful discrimination toward the émigrés themselves. The directors baffled all such Military triumphs under the Directory. Bonaparte. endeavours. On the other hand, the socialist conspiracy of Babeuf was easily quelled (see Babeuf, François N.). Little was done to improve the finances, and the assignats continued to fall in value. But the Directory was sustained by the military successes of the year 1796. Hoche again pacified La Vendée. Bonaparte’s victories in Italy more than compensated for the reverses of Jourdan and Moreau in Germany. The king of Sardinia made peace in May, ceding Nice and Savoy to the Republic and consenting to receive French garrisons in his Piedmontese fortresses. By the treaty of San Ildefonso, concluded in August, Spain became the ally of France. In October Naples made peace. In 1797 Bonaparte finished the conquest of northern Italy and forced Austria to make the treaty of Campo Formio (October), whereby the emperor ceded Lombardy and the Austrian Netherlands to the Republic in exchange for Venice and undertook to urge upon the Diet the surrender of the lands beyond the Rhine. Notwithstanding the victory of Cape St Vincent, England was brought into such extreme peril by the mutinies in the fleet that she offered to acknowledge the French conquest of the Netherlands and to restore the French colonies. The selfishness of the three directors threw away this golden opportunity. In March and April the election of a new third of the Councils had been held. It gave a majority to the constitutional party. Among the directors the lot fell on Letourneur to retire, and he was succeeded by Barthélemy, an eminent diplomatist, who allied himself with Carnot. The political disabilities imposed upon the relatives of émigrés were repealed. Priests who would declare their submission to the Republic were restored to their rights as citizens. It seemed likely that peace would be made and that moderate men would gain power.

Barras, Rewbell and La Révellière-Lépeaux then sought help from the armies. Although Royalists formed but a petty fraction of the majority, they raised the alarm that it was seeking to restore monarchy and undo the work Coup d’état of the 18th Fructidor. of the Revolution. Hoche, then in command of the army of the Sambre and Meuse, visited Paris and sent troops. Bonaparte sent General Augereau, who executed the coup d’état of the 18th Fructidor (September 4). The councils were purged, the elections in forty-nine departments were cancelled, and many deputies and other men of note were arrested. Some of them, including Barthélemy, were deported to Cayenne. Carnot made good his escape. The two vacant places in the Directory were filled by Merlin of Douai and François of Neufchâteau. Then the government frankly returned to Jacobin methods. The law against the relatives of émigrés was reenacted, and military tribunals were established to condemn émigrés who should return to France. The nonjuring priests were again persecuted. Many hundreds were either sent to Cayenne or imprisoned in the hulks of Ré and Oleron. La Révellière Lépeaux seized the opportunity to propagate his religion. Many churches were turned into Theophilanthropic temples. The government strained its power to secure the recognition of the décadi as the day of public worship and the non-observance of Sunday. Liberty of the press ceased. Newspapers were confiscated and journalists were deported wholesale. It was proposed to banish from France all members of the old noblesse. Although the proposal was dropped, they were all declared to be foreigners and were forced to obtain naturalization if they would enjoy the rights of other citizens. A formal bankruptcy of the state, the cancelling of two-thirds of the interest on the public debt, crowned the misgovernment of this disastrous time.

In the spring of 1798 not only a new third of the legislature had to be chosen, but the places of the members expelled by the revolution of Fructidor had to be filled. The constitutional party had been rendered helpless, and the mass of the electors were indifferent. But among the Jacobins themselves there had arisen an extreme party hostile to the directors. With the support of many who were not Jacobins but detested the government, it bade fair to gain a majority. Before the new deputies could take their seats the directors forced through the councils the law of the 22nd Floréal (May 11), annulling or perverting the elections in thirty departments and excluding forty-eight deputies by name. Even this coup d’état did not secure harmony between the executive and the legislature. In the councils the directors were loudly charged with corruption and misgovernment. The retirement of François of Neufchâteau and the choice of Treilhard as his successor made no difference in the position of the Directory.

While France was thus inwardly convulsed, its rulers were doubly bound to husband the national strength and practise moderation towards other states. Since December 1797 a congress had been sitting at Rastadt to regulate the future of Germany. That it should be brought to a successful conclusion was of the utmost import for France. But the directors were driven by self-interest to new adventures abroad. Bonaparte was resolved not to sink into obscurity, and the directors were anxious to keep him as far as possible from Paris; they therefore sanctioned the expedition to Egypt which deprived the Republic of its best army and most renowned captain. Coveting the treasures of Bern, they sent Brune to invade Switzerland and remodel its constitution; in revenge for the murder of General Duphot, they sent Berthier to invade the papal states and erect the Roman Republic; they occupied and virtually annexed Piedmont. In all these countries they organized such an effective pillage that the French became universally hateful. As the armies were far below the strength required by the policy of unbounded conquest and rapine, the first permanent law of conscription was passed in the summer of 1798. The attempt to enforce it caused a revolt of the peasants in the Belgian departments. The priests were made responsible and some eight thousand were condemned in a mass to deportation, although much the greater part escaped by the goodwill of the people. Few soldiers were obtained by the conscription, for the government was as weak as it was tyrannical.

Under these circumstances Nelson’s victory of Aboukir (1st of August), which gave the British full command of the Mediterranean and secluded Bonaparte in Egypt, was the signal for a second coalition. Naples, Austria, Russia and The second coalition. Turkey joined Great Britain against France. Ferdinand of Naples, rashly taking the offensive before his allies were ready, was defeated and forced to seek a refuge in Sicily. In January 1799 the French occupied Naples and set up the Parthenopean republic. But the consequent dispersion of their weak forces only exposed them to greater peril. At home the Directory was in a most critical position. In the elections of April 1799 a large number of Jacobins gained seats. A little later Rewbell retired. It was imperative to fill his place with a man of ability and influence. The choice fell upon Sieyès, who had kept aloof from office and retained not only his immeasurable self-conceit but the respect of the public. Sieyès felt that 168 the Directory was bankrupt of reputation, and he intended to be far more than a mere member of a board. He hoped to concentrate power in his own hands, to bridle the Jacobins, and to remodel the constitution. With the help of Barras he proceeded to rid himself of the other directors. An irregularity having been discovered in Treilhard’s election, he retired, and his place was taken by Gohier. Merlin of Douai and La Révellière Lépeaux were driven to resign in June. They were succeeded by Moulin and Ducos. The three new directors were so insignificant that they could give no trouble, but for the same reason they were of little service.

Such a government was ill fitted to cope with the dangers then gathering round France. The directors having resolved on the offensive in Germany, the French crossed the Rhine early in March, but were defeated by the archduke French reverses. The Directory discredited. Charles at Stockach on the 25th. The congress at Rastadt, which had sat for fifteen months without doing anything, broke up in April and the French envoys were murdered by Austrian hussars. In Italy the allies took the offensive with an army partly Austrian, partly Russian under the command of Suvárov. After defeating Moreau at Cassano on the 27th of April, he occupied Milan and Turin. The republics established by the French in Italy were overthrown, and the French army retreating from Naples was defeated by Suvárov on the Trebbia. Thus threatened with invasion on her German and Italian frontiers, France was disabled by anarchy within. The finances were in the last distress; the anti-religious policy of the government kept many departments on the verge of revolt; and commerce was almost suspended by the decay of roads and the increase of bandits. There was no real political freedom, yet none of the ease or security which enlightened despotism can bestow. The Terrorists lifted their heads in the Council of Five Hundred. A Law of Hostages, which was really a new Law of Suspects, and a progressive income tax showed the temper of the majority. The Jacobin Club was reopened and became once more the focus of disorder. The Jacobin press renewed the licence of Hébert and Marat. Never since the outbreak of the Revolution had the public temper been so gloomy and desponding.

In this extremity Sieyès chose as minister of police the old Terrorist Fouché, who best understood how to deal with his brethren. Fouché closed the Jacobin Club and deported a number of journalists. But like his predecessors Sieyès felt that for the revolution which he meditated he must have the help of a soldier. As his man of action he chose General Joubert, one of the most distinguished among French officers. Joubert was sent to restore the fortune of the war in Italy. At Novi on the 15th of August he encountered Suvárov. He was killed at the outset of the battle and his men were defeated. After this disaster the French held scarcely anything south of the Alps save Genoa. The Russian and Austrian governments then agreed to drive the enemy out of Switzerland and to invade France from the east. At the same time Holland was assailed by the joint forces of Great Britain and Russia. But the second coalition, like the first, was doomed to failure by the narrow views and conflicting interests of its members. The invasion of Switzerland was baffled by want of concert between Austrians and Russians and by Masséna’s victory at Zürich on the 25th and 26th of September. In October the British and the Russians were forced to evacuate Holland. All immediate danger to France was ended, but the issue of the war was still in suspense. The directors had been forced to recall Bonaparte from Egypt. He anticipated their order and on the 9th of October landed at Fréjus.

Dazzled by his victories in the East the public forgot that the Egyptian expedition was ending in calamity. It received him with an ardour which convinced Sieyès that he was the indispensable soldier. Bonaparte was ready to act, Coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire. but at his own time and for his own ends. Since the close of the Convention affairs at home and abroad had been tending more and more surely to the establishment of a military dictatorship. Feeling his powers equal to such an office he only hesitated about the means of attainment. At first he thought of becoming a director; finally he decided upon a partnership with Sieyès. They resolved to end the actual government by a fresh coup d’état. Means were to be taken for removing the councils from Paris to St Cloud, where pressure could more easily be applied. Then the councils would be induced to decree a provisional government by three consuls and the appointment of a commission to revise the constitution. The pretext for this irregular proceeding was to be a vast Jacobin conspiracy. Perhaps the gravest obstacles were to be expected from the army. Of the generals, some, like Jourdan, were honest republicans; others, like Bernadotte, believed themselves capable of governing France. With perfect subtlety Bonaparte worked on the feelings of all and kept his own intentions secret.

On the morning of the 18th Brumaire (November 9) the Ancients, to whom that power belonged, decreed the transference of the councils to St Cloud. Of the directors, Sieyès and his friend Ducos had arranged to resign; Barras was cajoled and bribed into resigning; Gohier and Moulins, who were intractable, found themselves imprisoned in the Luxemburg palace and helpless. So far all had gone well. But when the councils met at St Cloud on the following day, the majority of the Five Hundred showed themselves bent on resistance, and even the Ancients gave signs of wavering. When Bonaparte addressed the Ancients, he lost his self-possession and made a deplorable figure. When he appeared among the Five Hundred, they fell upon him with such fury that he was hardly rescued by his officers. A motion to outlaw him was only baffled by the audacity of the president, his brother Lucien. At length driven to undisguised violence, he sent in his grenadiers, who turned out the deputies. Then the Ancients passed a decree which adjourned the Councils for three months, appointed Bonaparte, Sieyès and Ducos provisional consuls, and named the Legislative Commission. Some tractable members of the Five Hundred were afterwards swept up and served to give these measures the confirmation of their House. Thus the Directory and the Councils came to their unlamented end. A shabby compound of brute force and imposture, the 18th Brumaire was nevertheless condoned, nay applauded, by the French nation. Weary of revolution, men sought no more than to be wisely and firmly governed.

Although the French Revolution seemed to contemporaries a total break in the history of France, it was really far otherwise. Its results were momentous and durable in proportion as they were the outcome of causes which had been General estimate of the Revolution. working long. In France there had been no historic preparation for political freedom. The desire for such freedom was in the main confined to the upper classes. During the Revolution it was constantly baffled. No Assembly after the states-general was freely elected and none deliberated in freedom. After the Revolution Bonaparte established a monarchy even more absolute than the monarchy of Louis XIV. But the desire for uniformity, for equality and for what may be termed civil liberty was the growth of ages, had been in many respects nurtured by the action of the crown and its ministers, and had become intense and general. Accordingly it determined the principal results of the Revolution. Uniformity of laws and institutions was enforced throughout France. The legal privileges formerly distinguishing different classes were suppressed. An obsolete and burthensome agrarian system was abolished. A number of large estates belonging to the crown, the clergy and the nobles were broken up and sold at nominal prices to men of the middle or lower class. The new jurisprudence encouraged the multiplication of small properties. The new fiscal system taxed men according to their means and raised no obstacle to commerce within the national boundaries. Every calling and profession was made free to all French citizens, and in the public service the principle of an open career for talent was adopted. Religious disabilities vanished, and there was well-nigh complete liberty of thought. It was because Napoleon gave a practical form to these achievements of the Revolution and ensured the public order necessary to their continuance that 169 the majority of Frenchmen endured so long the fearful sacrifices which his policy exacted.

That a revolution largely inspired by generous and humane feeling should have issued in such havoc and such crimes is a paradox which astounded spectators and still perplexes the historian. Something in the cruelty of the French Revolution may be ascribed to national character. From the time when Burgundians and Armagnacs strove for dominion down to the last insurrection of Paris, civil discord in France has always been cruel. More, however, was due to the total dissolution of society which followed the meeting of the states-general. In the course of the Revolution we can discover no well-organized party, no governing mind. Mirabeau had the stuff of a great statesman, and Danton was capable of statesmanship. But these men were not followed or obeyed save by accident or for a moment. Those who seemed to govern were usually the sport of chance, often the victims of their colleagues. Neither Royalists nor Feuillants nor Girondins had the instinct of government. In the chaotic state of France all ferocious and destructive passions found ample scope. The same conditions explain the triumph of the Jacobins. Devoid of wisdom and virtue in the highest sense, they at least understood how power might be seized and kept. The Reign of Terror was the expedient of a party which knew its weakness and unpopularity. It was not necessary either to secure the lasting benefits of the Revolution or to save France from dismemberment; for nine Frenchmen out of ten were agreed on both of these points and were ready to lay down their lives for the national cause.

In the history of the French Revolution the influence which it exerted upon the surrounding countries demands peculiar attention. The French professed to act upon principles of universal authority, and from an early date they began to seek converts outside their own limits. The effect was slight upon England, which had already secured most of the reforms desired by the French, and upon Spain, where the bulk of the people were entirely submissive to church and king. But in the Netherlands, in western Germany and in northern Italy, countries which had attained a degree of civilization resembling that of France, where the middle and lower classes had grievances and aspirations not very different from those of the French, the effect was profound. Fear of revolution at home was one of the motives which led continental sovereigns to attack revolution in France. Their incoherent efforts only confirmed the Jacobin supremacy. Wherever the victorious French extended their dominion, they remodelled institutions in the French manner. Their sway proved so oppressive that the very classes which had welcomed them with most fervour soon came to long for their expulsion. But revolutionary ideas kept their charm. Under Napoleon the essential part of the changes made by the Republic was preserved in these countries also. Moreover the effacement of old boundaries, the overthrow of ancestral governments, and the invocation, however hollow, of the sovereignty of the people, awoke national feeling which had slumbered long and prepared the struggle for national union and independence in the 19th century.

See also France, sections History and Law and Institutions. For the leading figures in the Revolution see their biographies under separate headings. Particular phases, facts, and institutions of the period are also separately dealt with, e.g. Assignats, Convention, The National, Jacobins.

Bibliography.—The MS. authorities for the history of the French Revolution are exceedingly copious. The largest collection is in the Archives Nationales in Paris, but an immense number of documents are to be found in other collections in Paris and the provinces. The printed materials are so abundant and varied that any brief notice of them must be imperfect.

The condition of France and the state of public opinion at the beginning of the Revolution may be studied in the printed collections of Cahiers. The Cahiers were the statements of grievances drawn up for the guidance of deputies to the States-General by those who had elected them. In every bailliage and sénéchaussée each estate drew up its own cahier and the cahiers of the Third Estate were condensed from separate cahiers drawn up by each parish in the district. Thus the cahiers of the Third Estate number many thousands, the greater part of which have not yet been printed. Among the collections printed we may mention Les Élections et les cahiers de Paris en 1789, by C. L. Chassin (4 vols., Paris, 1888); Cahiers de plaintes et doléances des paroisses de la province de Maine, by A. Bellée and V. Duchemin (4 vols., Le Mans, 1881-1893); Cahiers de doléances de 1789 dans le département du Pas-de-Calais, by H. Loriquet (2 vols., Arras, 1891); Cahiers des paroisses et communautés du bailliage d’Autun, by A. Charmasse (Autun, 1895). New collections are printed from time to time. A more general collection of cahiers than any above named is given in vols. i.-vi. of the Archives parlementaires. The cahiers must not be read in a spirit of absolute faith, as they were influenced by certain models circulated at the time of the elections and by popular excitement, but they remain an authority of the utmost value and a mine of information as to old France. Reference should also be made to the works of travellers who visited France at the outbreak of the Revolution. Among these Arthur Young’s Travels in France during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789 (2 vols., Bury St Edmunds, 1792-1794) are peculiarly instructive.

For the history of the Assemblies during the Revolution a main authority is their Procès verbaux or Journals; those of the Constituent Assembly in 75 vols., those of the Legislative Assembly in 16 vols.; those of the Convention in 74 vols., and those of the Councils under the Directory in 99 vols. See also the Archives parlementaires edited by J. Mavidal and E. Laurent (Paris, 1867, and the following years); the Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution, by P. J. B. Buchez and P. C. Roux (Paris, 1838), and the Histoire de la Révolution par deux amis de la liberté (Paris, 1792-1803).

The newspapers, of which a few have been mentioned in the text, were numerous. They are useful chiefly as illustrating the ideas and passions of the time, for they give comparatively little information as to facts and that little is peculiarly inaccurate. The ablest of the Royalist journals was Mallet du Pan’s Mercure de France. Pamphlets of the Revolution period number many thousands. Such pamphlets as Mounier’s Nouvelles Observations sur les États-Généraux de France and Sieyès’s Qu’est-ce que le Tiers État had a notable influence on opinion. The richest collections of Revolution pamphlets are in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris and in the British Museum.

The contemporary memoirs, &c., already published are numerous and fresh ones are always coming forth. A few of the best known and most useful are, for the Constituent Assembly, the memoirs of Bailly, of Ferrières, of Malouet. The Correspondence of Mirabeau with the Count de la Marck, edited by Bacourt (3 vols., Paris, 1851), is especially valuable. Dumont’s Recollections of Mirabeau and the Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris give the impressions of foreigners with peculiar advantages for observing. For the Legislative Assembly and the Convention the memoirs of Madame Roland, of Bertrand de Molleville, of Barbaroux, of Buzot, of Louvet, of Dumouriez are instructive. For the Directory the memoirs of Barras, of La Révellière Lépeaux and of Thibaudeau deserve mention. The memoirs of Lafayette are useful. Those of Talleyrand are singularly barren, the result, no doubt, of deliberate suppression. The memoirs of the marquise de La Rochejacquelein are important for the war of La Vendée. The most notable Jacobins have seldom left memoirs, but the works of Robespierre and St Just enable us to form a clearer conception of the authors. The correspondence of the count of Mercy-Argenteau, the imperial ambassador, with Joseph II. and Kaunitz, and the correspondence of Mallet du Pan with the court of Vienna, are also instructive. But the contemporary literature of the French Revolution requires to be read in an unusually critical spirit. At no other historical crisis have passions been more fiercely excited; at none have shameless disregard of truth and blind credulity been more common.

Among later works based on these original materials the first place belongs to general histories. In French Louis Blanc’s Histoire de la Révolution (12 vols., Paris, 1847-1862), and Michelet’s Histoire de la Révolution Française (9 vols., Paris, 1847-1853), are the most elaborate of the older works. Michelet’s book is marked by great eloquence and power. In H. Taine’s Origines de la France contemporaine (Paris, 1876-1894) three volumes are devoted to the Revolution. They show exceptional talent and industry, but their value is impaired by the spirit of system and by strong prepossessions. F. A. M. Mignet’s Histoire de la Révolution Française (2 vols., Paris, 1861), short and devoid of literary charm, has the merits of learning and judgment and is still useful. F. A. Aulard’s Histoire politique de la Révolution Française (Paris, 1901) is a most valuable précis of political history, based on deep knowledge and lucidly set forth, although not free from bias. The volume on the Revolution in Lavisse and Rambaud’s Histoire générale de l’Europe (Paris, 1896) is the work of distinguished scholars using the latest information. In English, general histories of the Revolution are few. Carlyle’s famous work, published in 1837, is more of a prose epic than a history, omitting all detail which would not heighten the imaginative effect and tinged by all the favourite ideas of the author. Some fifty years later H. M. Stephens published the first (1886) and second (1892) volumes of a History of the French Revolution. They are marked by solid learning and contain much information. Volume viii. of the Cambridge Modern History, published in 1904, contains a general survey of the Revolution.

The most notable German work is H. von Sybel’s Geschichte der Revolutionszeit (5 vols., Stuttgart, 1853-1879). It is strongest in 170 those carts which relate to international affairs and foreign policy. There is an English translation.

None of the general histories of the Revolution above named is really satisfactory. The immense mass of material has not yet been thoroughly sifted; and the passions of that age still disturb the judgment of the historian. More successful have been the attempts to treat particular aspects of the Revolution.

The foreign relations of France during the Revolution have been most ably unravelled by A. Sorel in L’Europe et la Révolution Française (8 vols., Paris, 1885-1904) carrying the story down to the settlement of Vienna. Five volumes cover the years 1789-1799.

The financial history of the Revolution has been traced by C. Gomel, Histoire financière de l’Assemblée Constituante (2 vols., Paris, 1897), and R. Stourm, Les Finances de l’Ancien Régime et de la Révolution (2 vols., Paris, 1885).

The relations of Church and State are sketched in E. Pressensé’s L’Église et la Révolution Française (Paris, 1889).

The general legislation of the period has been discussed by Ph. Sagnac, La Législation civile de la Révolution Française (Paris, 1898). The best work upon the social life of the period is the Histoire de la société française sous la Révolution, by E. and J. de Goncourt (Paris, 1889). For military history see A. Duruy, L’Armée royale en 1789 (Paris, 1888); E. de Hauterive, L’Armée sous la Révolution, 1789-1794 (Paris, 1894); A. Chuquet, Les Guerres de la Révolution (Paris, 1886, &c.). See also the memoirs and biographies of the distinguished soldiers of the Republic and Empire, too numerous for citation here.

Modern lives of the principal actors in the Revolution are numerous. Among the most important are Mémoires de Mirabeau, by L. de Montigny (Paris, 1834); Les Mirabeau, by L. de Loménie (Paris, 1889-1891); H. L. de Lanzac de Laborie’s Jean Joseph Mounier (Paris, 1889); B. Mallet’s Mallet du Pan and the French Revolution (London, 1902); Robinet’s Danton (Paris, 1889); Hamel’s Histoire de Robespierre (Paris, 1865-1867) and Histoire de St-Just (2 vols., Brussels, 1860); A. Bigeon, Sieyès (Paris, 1893); Memoirs of Carnot, by his son (2 vols., Paris, 1861-1864).

For fuller information see M. Tourneux, Les Sources bibliographiques de l’histoire de la Révolution Française (Paris, 1898, etc.), and Bibliographie de l’histoire de Paris pendant la Révolution (Paris, 1890, etc.).

(F. C. M.)

French Republican Calendar.—Among the changes made during the Revolution was the substitution of a new calendar, usually called the revolutionary or republican calendar, for the prevailing Gregorian system. Something of the sort had been suggested in 1785 by a certain Riboud, and a definite scheme had been promulgated by Pierre Sylvain Maréchal (1750-1803) in his Almanach des honnêtes gens (1788). The objects which the advocates of a new calendar had in view were to strike a blow at the clergy and to divorce all calculations of time from the Christian associations with which they were loaded, in short, to abolish the Christian year; and enthusiasts were already speaking of “the first year of liberty” and “the first year of the republic” when the national convention took up the matter in 1793. The business of drawing up the new calendar was entrusted to the president of the committee of public instruction, Charles Gilbert Romme (1750-1795), who was aided in the work by the mathematicians Gaspard Monge and Joseph Louis Lagrange, the poet Fabre d’Églantine and others. The result of their labours was submitted to the convention in September; it was accepted, and the new calendar became law on the 5th of October 1793. The new arrangement was regarded as beginning on the 22nd of September 1792, this day being chosen because on it the republic was proclaimed and because it was in this year the day of the autumnal equinox.

By the new calendar the year of 365 days was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, every month being divided into three periods of ten days, each of which were called décades, and the tenth, or last, day of each decade being a day of rest. It was also proposed to divide the day on the decimal system, but this arrangement was found to be highly inconvenient and it was never put into practice. Five days of the 365 still remained to be dealt with, and these were set aside for national festivals and holidays and were called Sans-culottides. They were to fall at the end of the year, i.e. on the five days between the 17th and the 21st of September inclusive, and were called the festivals of virtue, of genius, of labour, of opinion and of rewards. A similar course was adopted with regard to the extra day which occurred once in every four years, but the first of these was to fall in the year III., i.e. in 1795, and not in 1796, the leap year in the Gregorian calendar. This day was set apart for the festival of the Revolution and was to be the last of the Sans-culottides. Each period of four years was to be called a Franciade.

An II. 1793-1794. | An III. 1794-1795. | An IV. 1795-1796. | An V. 1796-1797. | An VI. 1797-1798. | An VII. 1798-1799. | An VIII. 1799-1800. | An IX. 1800-1801.
1 Vendémiaire | 22 Sept. | 1793 | 22 Sept. | 1794 | 23 Sept. | 1795 | 22 Sept. | 1796 | 22 Sept. | 1797 | 22 Sept. | 1798 | 23 Sept. | 1799 | 23 Sept. | 1800
1 Brumaire | 22 Oct. | ” | 22 Oct. | ” | 23 Oct. | ” | 22 Oct. | ” | 22 Oct. | ” | 22 Oct. | ” | 23 Oct. | ” | 23 Oct. | ”
1 Frimaire | 21 Nov. | ” | 21 Nov. | ” | 22 Nov. | ” | 21 Nov. | ” | 21 Nov. | ” | 21 Nov. | ” | 22 Nov. | ” | 22 Nov. | ”
1 Nivôse | 21 Déc. | ” | 21 Déc. | ” | 22 Déc. | ” | 21 Déc. | ” | 21 Déc. | ” | 21 Déc. | ” | 22 Déc. | ” | 22 Déc. | ”
1 Pluviôse | 20 Janv. | 1794 | 20 Janv. | 1795 | 21 Janv. | 1796 | 20 Janv. | 1797 | 20 Janv. | 1798 | 20 Janv. | 1799 | 21 Janv. | 1800 | 21 Janv. | 1801
1 Ventôse | 19 Févr. | ” | 19 Févr. | ” | 20 Févr. | ” | 19 Févr. | ” | 19 Fév. | ” | 19 Fév. | ” | 20 Fév. | ” | 20 Fév. | ”
1 Germinal | 21 Mars | ” | 21 Mars | ” | 21 Mars | ” | 21 Mars | ” | 1 Mars | ” | 21 Mars | ” | 22 Mars | ” | 22 Mars | ”
1 Floréal | 20 Avr. | ” | 20 Avr. | ” | 20 Avr. | ” | 20 Avr. | ” | 20 Avr. | ” | 20 Avr. | ” | 21 Avr. | ” | 21 Avr. | ”
1 Prairial | 20 Mai | ” | 20 Mai | ” | 20 Mai | ” | 20 Mai | ” | 20 Mai | ” | 20 Mai | ” | 21 Mai | ” | 21 Mai | ”
1 Messidor | 19 Juin | ” | 19 Juin | ” | 19 Juin | ” | 19 Juin | ” | 19 Juin | ” | 19 Juin | ” | 20 Juin | ” | 20 Juin | ”
1 Thermidor | 19 Juil. | ” | 19 Juil. | ” | 19 Juil. | ” | 19 Juil. | ” | 19 Juil. | ” | 19 Juil. | ” | 20 Juil. | ” | 20 Juil. | ”
1 Fructidor | 18 Août | ” | 18 Août | ” | 18 Août | ” | 18 Août | ” | 18 Août | ” | 18 Août | ” | 19 Août | ” | 19 Août | ”
1 Sans-culottides | 17 Sept. | 1794 | 17 Sept. | 1795 | 17 Sept. | 1796 | 17 Sept. | 1797 | 17 Sept. | 1798 | 17 Sept. | 1799 | 18 Sept. | 1800 | 18 Sept. | 1801
6    ” |  | 22 ” | ” |  |  |  | 22 ” | ” |  |

An X. 1801-1802. | An XI. 1802-1803. | An XII. 1803-1804. | An XIII. 1804-1805. | An XIV. 1805.
1 Vendémiaire | 23 Septembre | 1801 | 23 Septembre | 1802 | 24 Septembre | 1803 | 23 Septembre | 1804 | 23 Septembre | 1805
1 Brumaire | 23 Octobre | ” | 23 Octobre | ” | 24 Octobre | ” | 23 Octobre | ” | 23 Octobre | ”
1 Frimaire | 22 Novembre | ” | 22 Novembre | ” | 23 Novembre | ” | 22 Novembre | ” | 22 Novembre | ”
1 Nivôse | 22 Décembre | ” | 22 Décembre | ” | 23 Décembre | ” | 22 Décembre | ” | 22 Décembre | ”
1 Pluviôse | 21 Janvier | 1802 | 21 Janvier | 1803 | 22 Janvier | 1804 | 21 Janvier | 1805 |
1 Ventôse | 20 Février | ” | 20 Février | ” | 21 Février | ” | 20 Février | ” |
1 Germinal | 22 Mars | ” | 22 Mars | ” | 22 Mars | ” | 22 Mars | ” |
1 Floréal | 21 Avril | ” | 21 Avril | ” | 21 Avril | ” | 21 Avril | ” |
1 Prairial | 21 Mai | ” | 21 Mai | ” | 21 Mai | ” | 21 Mai | ” |
1 Messidor | 20 Juin | ” | 20 Juin | ” | 20 Juin | ” | 20 Juin | ” |
1 Thermidor | 20 Juillet | ” | 20 Juillet | ” | 20 Juillet | ” | 20 Juillet | ” |
1 Fructidor | 19 Août | ” | 19 Août | ” | 19 Août | ” | 19 Août | ” |
1 Sans-culottides | 18 Septembre | 1802 | 18 Septembre | 1803 | 18 Septembre | 1804 | 18 Septembre | 1805 |
6    ” |  | 23    ” | ” |  |  |

Some discussion took place about the nomenclature of the new divisions of time. Eventually this work was entrusted to Fabre d’Églantine, who gave to each month a name taken from some seasonal event therein. Beginning with the new year on the 22nd of September the autumn months were Vendémiaire, the month of vintage, Brumaire, the months of fog, and Frimaire, 171 the month of frost. The winter months were Nivôse, the snowy, Pluviôse, the rainy, and Ventôse, the windy month; then followed the spring months, Germinal, the month of buds, Floréal, the month of flowers, and Prairial, the month of meadows; and lastly the summer months, Messidor, the month of reaping, Thermidor, the month of heat, and Fructidor, the month of fruit. To the days Fabre d’Églantine gave names which retained the idea of their numerical order, calling them Primedi, Duodi, &c., the last day of the ten, the day of rest, being named Décadi. The new order was soon in force in France and the new method was employed in all public documents, but it did not last many years. In September 1805 it was decided to restore the Gregorian calendar, and the republican one was officially discontinued on the 1st of January 1806.

It will easily be seen that the connecting link between the old and the new calendars is very slight indeed and that the expression of a date in one calendar in terms of the other is a matter of some difficulty. A simple method of doing this, however, is afforded by the table on the preceding page, which is taken from the article by J. Dubourdieu in La Grande Encyclopédie.

Thus Robespierre was executed on 10 Thermidor An II., i.e. the 28th of July 1794. The insurrection of 12 Germinal An III. took place on the 1st of April 1795. The famous 18 Brumaire An VIII. fell on the 9th of November 1799, and the coup d’état of 18 Fructidor An V. on the 4th of September 1797.

For a complete concordance of the Gregorian and the republican calendars see Stokvis, Manuel d’histoire, tome iii. (Leiden, 1889); also G. Villain, “Le Calendrier républicain,” in La Révolution Française for 1884-1885.

(A. W. H.*)

FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS (1792-1800), the general name for the first part of the series of French wars which went on continuously, except for some local and temporary cessations of hostilities, from the declaration of war against Britain in 1792 to the final overthrow of Napoleon in 1815. The most important of these cessations—viz. the peace of 1801-1803—closes the “Revolutionary” and opens the “Napoleonic” era of land warfare, for which see Napoleonic Campaigns, Peninsular War and Waterloo Campaign. The naval history of the period is divided somewhat differently; the first period, treated below, is 1792-1799; for the second, 1799-1815, see Napoleonic Campaigns.

France declared war on Austria on the 20th of April 1792. But Prussia and other powers had allied themselves with Austria in view of war, and it was against a coalition and not a single power that France found herself pitted, at the moment when the “emigration,” the ferment of the Revolution, and want of material and of funds had thoroughly disorganized her army. The first engagements were singularly disgraceful. Near Lille the French soldiers fled at sight of the Austrian outposts, crying Nous sommes trahis, and murdered their general (April 29). The commanders-in-chief of the armies that were formed became one after another “suspects”; and before a serious action had been fought, the three armies of Rochambeau, Lafayette and Lückner had resolved themselves into two commanded by Dumouriez and Kellermann. Thus the disciplined soldiers of the Allies had apparently good reason to consider the campaign before them a military promenade. On the Rhine, a combined army of Prussians, Austrians, Hessians and émigrés under the duke of Brunswick was formed for the invasion of France, flanked by two smaller armies on its right and left, all three being under the supreme command of the king of Prussia. In the Netherlands the Austrians were to besiege Lille, and in the south the Piedmontese also took the field. The first step, taken against Brunswick’s advice, was the issue (July 25) of a proclamation which, couched in terms in the last degree offensive to the French nation, generated the spirit that was afterwards to find expression in the “armed nation” of 1793-4, and sealed the fate of Louis XVI. The duke, who was a model sovereign in his own principality, sympathized with the constitutional side of the Revolution, while as a soldier he had no confidence in the success of the enterprise. After completing its preparations in the leisurely manner of the previous generation, his army crossed the French frontier on the 19th of August. Longwy was easily captured; and the Allies slowly marched on to Verdun, which was more indefensible even than Longwy. The commandant, Colonel Beaurepaire, shot himself in despair, and the place surrendered on the 3rd of September. Brunswick now began his march on Paris and approached the defiles of the Argonne. But Dumouriez, who had been training his raw troops at Valenciennes in constant small engagements, with the purpose of invading Belgium, now threw himself into the Argonne by a rapid and daring flank march, almost under the eyes of the Prussian advanced guard, and barred the Paris road, summoning Kellermann to his assistance from Metz. The latter moved but slowly, and before he arrived the northern part of the line of defence had been forced. Dumouriez, undaunted, changed front so as to face north, with his right wing on the Argonne and his left stretching towards Châlons, and in this position Kellermann joined him at St Menehould on the 19th of September.

Brunswick meanwhile had passed the northern defiles and had then swung round to cut off Dumouriez from Châlons. At the moment when the Prussian manœuvre was nearly completed, Kellermann, commanding in Dumouriez’s Valmy. momentary absence, advanced his left wing and took up a position between St Menehould and Valmy. The result was the world-renowned Cannonade of Valmy (September 20, 1792). Kellermann’s infantry, nearly all regulars, stood steady. The French artillery justified its reputation as the best in Europe, and eventually, with no more than a half-hearted infantry attack, the duke broke off the action and retired. This trivial engagement was the turning-point of the campaign and a landmark in the world’s history. Ten days later, without firing another shot, the invading army began its retreat. Dumouriez’s pursuit was not seriously pressed; he occupied himself chiefly with a series of subtle and curious negotiations which, with the general advance of the French troops, brought about the complete withdrawal of the enemy from the soil of France.

Meanwhile, the French forces in the south had driven back the Piedmontese and had conquered Savoy and Nice. Another French success was the daring expedition into Germany made by Custine from Alsace. Custine captured Mainz Jemappes. itself on the 21st of October and penetrated as far as Frankfurt. In the north the Austrian siege of Lille had completely failed, and Dumouriez now resumed his interrupted scheme for the invasion of the Netherlands. His forward movement, made as it was late in the season, surprised the Austrians, and he disposed of enormously superior forces. On the 6th of November he won the first great victory of the war at Jemappes near Mons and, this time advancing boldly, he overran the whole country from Namur to Antwerp within a month.

Such was the prelude of what is called the “Great War” in England and the “Épopée” in France. Before going further it is necessary to summarize the special features of the French army—in leadership, discipline, tactics, organization and movement—which made these campaigns the archetype of modern warfare.

At the outbreak of the Revolution the French army, like other armies in Europe, was a “voluntary” long-service army, augmented to some extent in war by drafts of militia.

One of the first problems that the Constituent Assembly took upon itself to solve was the nationalization of this strictly royal and professional force, and as early as October 1789 the word “Conscription” was heard in its debates. But it was The French army, 1792-1796. decreed nevertheless that free enlistment alone befitted a free people, and the regular army was left unaltered in form. However, a National Guard came into existence side by side with it, and the history of French army organization in the next few years is the history of the fusion of these two elements. The first step, as regards the regular army, was the abolition of proprietary rights, the serial numbering of regiments throughout the Army, and the disbandment of the Maison du roi. The next was the promotion of deserving soldiers to fill the numerous vacancies caused by the emigration. Along with these, however, there came to the surface many incompetent leaders, favourites in the political clubs of Paris, &c., and the old strict discipline became impossible owing to the frequent intervention of the civil authorities in matters affecting it, the denunciation of generals, and especially the wild words and wild behaviour of “Volunteer” (embodied national guard) battalions.

When war came, it was soon found that the regulars had fallen too low in numbers and that the national guard demanded too high 172 pay, to admit of developing the expected field strength. Arms, discipline, training alike were wanting to the new levies, and the repulse of Brunswick was effected by manœuvring and fighting on the old lines and chiefly with the old army. The cry of La patrie en danger, after giving, at the crisis, the highest moral support to the troops in the front, dwindled away after victory, and the French government contented itself with the half-measures that had, apparently, sufficed to avert the peril. More, when the armies went into winter quarters, the Volunteers claimed leave of absence and went home.

But in the spring of 1793, confronted by a far more serious peril, the government took strong measures. Universal liability was asserted, and passed into law. Yet even now whole classes obtained exemption and the right of substitution as usual forced the burden of service on the poorer classes, so that of the 100,000 men called on for the regular army and 200,000 for the Volunteers, only some 180,000 were actually raised. Desertion, generally regarded as the curse of professional armies, became a conspicuous vice of the defenders of the Republic, except at moments when a supreme crisis called forth supreme devotion—moments which naturally were more or less prolonged in proportion to the gravity of the situation. Thus, while it almost disappeared in the great effort of 1793-1794, when the armies sustained bloody reverses in distant wars of conquest, as in 1799, it promptly rose again to an alarming height.

While this unsatisfactory general levy was being made, defeats, defections and invasion in earnest came in rapid succession, and to deal with the almost desperate emergency, the ruthless Committee of Public Safety sprang into existence. “The Universal service of the “Amalgam.” levy is to be universal. Unmarried citizens and widowers without children of ages from 18 to 25 are to be called up first,” and 450,000 recruits were immediately obtained by this single act. The complete amalgamation of the regular and volunteer units was decided upon. The white uniforms of the line gave place to the blue of the National Guard in all arms and services. The titles of officers were changed, and in fact every relic of the old régime, save the inherited solidity of the old regular battalions, was swept away. This rough combination of line and volunteers therefore—for the “Amalgam” was not officially begun until 1794—must be understood when we refer to the French army of Hondschoote or of Wattignies. It contained, by reason of its universality and also because men were better off in the army than out of it—if they stayed at home they went in daily fear of denunciation and the guillotine—the best elements of the French nation. To some extent at any rate the political arrivistes had been weeded out, and though the informer, here as elsewhere, struck unseen blows, the mass of the army gradually evolved its true leaders and obeyed them. It was, therefore, an army of individual citizen-soldiers of the best type, welded by the enemy’s fire, and conscious of its own solidarity in the midst of the Revolutionary chaos.

After 1794 the system underwent but little radical change until the end of the Revolutionary period. Its regiments grew in military value month by month and attained their highest level in the great campaign of 1796. In 1795 the French forces (now all styled National Guard) consisted of 531,000 men, of whom 323,000 were infantry (100 3-battalion demi-brigades), 97,000 light infantry (30 demi-brigades), 29,000 artillery, 20,000 engineers and 59,000 cavalry. This novel army developed novel fighting methods, above all in the infantry. This arm had just received a new drill-book, as the result of a prolonged controversy (see Infantry) between the advocates of “lines” and “columns,” and this drill-book, while retaining the principle of the line, set controversy at rest by admitting battalion columns of attack, and movements at the “quick” (100-120 paces to the minute) instead of at the “slow” march (76). On these two prescriptions, ignoring the rest, the practical troop leaders built up the new tactics little by little, and almost unconsciously. The process of evolution cannot be stated exactly, for the officers learned to use and even to invent now one form, now another, according to ground and circumstances. But the main stream of progress is easily distinguishable.

The earlier battles were fought more or less according to the drill-book, partly in line for fire action, partly in column for the bayonet attack. But line movements required the most accurate drill, and what was attainable after years of practice Tactics. with regulars moving at the slow march was wholly impossible for new levies moving at 120 paces to the minute. When, therefore, the line marched off, it broke up into a shapeless swarm of individual firers. This was the form, if form it can be called, of the tactics of 1793—“horde-tactics,” as they have quite justly been called—and a few such experiences as that of Hondschoote sufficed to suggest the need of a remedy. This was found in keeping as many troops as possible out of the firing line. From 1794 onwards the latter becomes thinner and thinner, and instead of the drill-book form, with half the army firing in line (practically in hordes) and the other half in support in columns, we find the rear lines becoming more and more important and numerous, till at last the fire of the leading line (skirmishers) becomes insignificant, and the decision rests with the bayonets of the closed masses in rear. Indeed, the latter often used mixed line and column formations, which enabled them not only to charge, but to fire close-order volleys—absolutely regardless of the skirmishers in front. In other words, the bravest and coolest marksmen were let loose to do what damage they could, and the rest, massed in close order, were kept under the control of their officers and only exposed to the dissolving influence of the fight when the moment arrived to deliver, whether by fire or by shock, the decisive blow.

The cavalry underwent little change in its organization and tactics, which remained as in the drill-books founded on Frederick’s practice. But except in the case of the hussars, who were chiefly Cavalry. Artillery. Engineers. Alsatians, it was thoroughly disorganized by the emigration or execution of the nobles who had officered it, and for long it was incapable of facing the hostile squadrons in the open. Still, its elements were good, it was fairly well trained, and mounted, and not overwhelmed with national guard drafts, and like the other arms it duly evolved and obeyed new leaders.

In artillery matters this period, 1792-1796, marks an important progress, due above all to Gribeauval (q.v.) and the two du Teils, Jean Pierre (1722-1794) and Jean (1733-1820) who were Napoleon’s instructors. The change was chiefly in organization and equipment—the great tactical development of the arm was not to come until the time of the Grande Armée—and may be summarized as the transition from battalion guns and reserve artillery to batteries of “horse and field.”

The engineers, like the artillery, were a technical and non-noble corps. They escaped, therefore, most of the troubles of the Revolution—indeed the artillery and engineer officers, Napoleon and Carnot amongst them, were conspicuous in the political regeneration of France—and the engineers carried on with little change the traditions of Vauban and Cormontaingne (see Fortification and Siegecraft). Both these corps were, after the Revolution as before it, the best in Europe, other armies admitting their superiority and following their precepts.

In all this the army naturally outgrew its old “linear” organization. Temporary divisions, called for by momentary necessities, placed under selected generals and released from the detailed supervision of the commander-in-chief, soon became, though in an irregular and haphazard fashion, permanent organisms, and by 1796 the divisional system had become practically universal. The next step, as the armies became fewer and larger, was the temporary grouping of divisions; this too in turn became permanent, and bequeathed to the military world of to-day both the army corps and the capable, self-reliant and enterprising subordinate generals, for whom the old linear organization had no room.

This subdivision of forces was intimately connected with the general method of making war adopted by the “New French,” as their enemies called them. What astonished the Allies most of all was the number and the velocity of the Republicans. The starting point of modern warfare. These improvised armies had in fact nothing to delay them. Tents were unprocurable for want of money, untransportable for want of the enormous number of wagons that would have been required, and also unnecessary, for the discomfort that would have caused wholesale desertion in professional armies was cheerfully borne by the men of 1793-1794. Supplies for armies of then unheard-of size could not be carried in convoys, and the French soon became familiar with “living on the country.” Thus 1793 saw the birth of the modern system of war—rapidity of movement, full development of national strength, bivouacs and requisitions, and force, as against cautious manœuvring, small professional armies, tents and full rations, and chicane. The first represented the decision-compelling spirit, the second the spirit of risking little to gain a little. Above all, the decision-compelling spirit was reinforced by the presence of the emissaries of the Committee of Public Safety, the “representatives on mission” who practically controlled the guillotine. There were civil officials with the armies of the Allies too, but their chief function was not to infuse desperate energy into the military operations, but to see that the troops did not maltreat civilians. Such were the fundamental principles of the “New French” method of warfare, from which the warfare of to-day descends in the direct line. But it was only after a painful period of trial and error, of waste and misdirection, that it became possible for the French army to have evolved Napoleon, and for Napoleon to evolve the principles and methods of war that conformed to and profited to the utmost by the new conditions.

Those campaigns and battles of this army which are described in detail in the present article have been selected, some on account of their historical importance—as producing great results; others from their military interest—as typifying and illustrating the nature of the revolution undergone by the art of war in these heroic years.

Campaigns in the Netherlands

The year 1793 opened disastrously for the Republic. As a consequence of Jemappes and Valmy, France had taken the offensive both in Belgium, which had been overrun by Dumouriez’s army, and in the Rhine countries, where Custine had preached the new gospel to the sentimental and half-discontented Hessians and Mainzers. But the execution of Louis XVI. raised up a host of new and determined enemies. England, Holland, Austria, Prussia, Spain and Sardinia promptly 173 formed the First Coalition. England poured out money in profusion to pay and equip her Allies’ land armies, and herself began the great struggle for the command of the sea (see Naval Operations, below).

In the Low Countries, while Dumouriez was beginning his proposed invasion of Holland, Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg, the new Austrian commander on the Lower Rhine, advanced with 42,000 men from the region of Cologne, Neerwinden. and drove in the various detachments that Dumouriez had posted to cover his right. The French general thereupon abandoned his advance into Holland, and, with what forces he could gather, turned towards the Meuse. The two armies met at Neerwinden (q.v.) on the 18th of March 1793. Dumouriez had only a few thousand men more than his opponent, instead of the enormous superiority he had had at Jemappes. Thus the enveloping attack could not be repeated, and in a battle on equal fronts the old generalship and the old armies had the advantage. Dumouriez was thoroughly defeated, the house of cards collapsed, and the whole of the French forces retreated in confusion to the strong line of border fortresses, created by Louis XIV. and Vauban.1 Dumouriez, witnessing the failure of his political schemes, declared against the Republic, and after a vain attempt to induce his own army to follow his example, fled (April 5) into the Austrian lines. The leaderless Republicans streamed back to Valenciennes. There, however, they found a general. Picot (comte de) Dampierre was a regimental officer of the old army, who, in spite of his vanity and extravagance, possessed real loyalty to the new order of things, and brilliant personal courage. At the darkest hour he seized the reins without orders and without reference to seniority, and began to reconstruct the force and the spirit of the shattered army by wise administration and dithyrambic proclamations. Moreover, he withdrew it well behind Valenciennes out of reach of a second reverse. The region of Dunkirk and Cassel, the camp of La Madeleine near Lille, and Bouchain were made the rallying points of the various groups, the principal army being at the last-named. But the blow of Neerwinden had struck deep, and the army was for long incapable of service, what with the general distrust, the misconduct of the newer battalions, and the discontent of the old white-coated regiments that were left ragged and shoeless to the profit of the “patriot” corps. “Beware of giving horses to the ‘Hussars of Liberty,’” wrote Carnot, “all these new corps are abominable.”

France was in fact defenceless, and the opportunity existed for the military promenade to Paris that the allied statesmen had imagined in 1792. But Coburg now ceased to be a purely Austrian commander, for one by one allied contingents, with instructions that varied with the political aims of the various governments, began to arrive. Moreover, he had his own views as to the political situation, fearing especially to be the cause of the queen’s death as Brunswick had been of the king’s, and negotiated for a settlement. The story of these negotiations should be read in Chuquet’s Valenciennes—it gives the key to many mysteries of the campaign and shows that though the revolutionary spirit had already passed all understanding, enlightened men such as Coburg and his chief-of-staff Mack sympathized with its first efforts and thought the constitution of 1791 a gain to humanity. “If you come to Paris you will find 80,000 patriots ready to die,” said the French negotiators. “The patriots could not resist the Austrian regulars,” replied Coburg, “but I do not propose to go to Paris. I desire to see a stable government, with a chief, king or other, with whom we can treat.” Soon, however, these personal negotiations Assembly of the Allies. were stopped by the emperor, and the idea of restoring order in France became little more than a pretext for a general intrigue amongst the confederate powers, each seeking to aggrandize itself at France’s expense. “If you wish to deal with the French,” observed Dumouriez ironically to Coburg, “talk ‘constitution.’ You may beat them but you cannot subdue them.” And their subjugation was becoming less and less possible as the days went on and men talked of the partition of France as a question of the moment like the partition of Poland—a pretension that even the émigrés resented.

Coburg’s plan of campaign was limited to the objects acceptable to all the Allies alike. He aimed at the conquest of a first-class fortress—Lille or Valenciennes—and chiefly for this reason. War meant to the burgher of Germany and the Netherlands a special form of haute politique with which it was neither his business nor his inclination to meddle. He had no more compunction, therefore, in selling his worst goods at the best price to the army commissaries than in doing so to his ordinary customers. It followed that, owing to the distance between Vienna and Valenciennes, and the exorbitant prices charged by carters and horse-owners, a mere concentration of Austrian troops at the latter place cost as much as a campaign, and the transport expenses rose to such a figure that Coburg’s first duty was to find a strong place to serve as a market for the country-side and a depot for the supplies purchased, and to have it as near as possible to the front to save the hire of vehicles. As for the other governments which Coburg served as best he could, the object of the war was material concessions, and it would be easy to negotiate for the cession of Dunkirk and Valenciennes when the British and Austrian colours already waved there. The Allies, therefore, instead of following up their advantage over the French field army and driving forward on the open Paris road, set their faces westward, intending to capture Valenciennes, Le Quesnoy, Dunkirk and Lille one after the other.

Dampierre meanwhile grew less confident as responsibility settled upon his shoulders. Quite unable to believe that Coburg would bury himself in a maze of rivers and fortresses when he could scatter the French army to the winds Dampierre at Valenciennes. by a direct advance, he was disquieted and puzzled by the Austrian investment of Condé. This was followed by skirmishes around Valenciennes, so unfavourable to the French that their officers felt it would be madness to venture far beyond the support of the fortress guns. But the representatives on mission ordered Dampierre, who was reorganizing his army at Bouchain, to advance and occupy Famars camp, east of Valenciennes, and soon afterwards, disregarding his protests, bade him relieve Condé at all costs. His skill, though not commensurate with his personal courage and devotion, sufficed to give him the idea of attacking Coburg on the right bank of the Scheldt while Clerfayt, with the corps covering the siege of Condé, was on the left, and then to turn against Clerfayt—in fact, to operate on interior lines—but it was far from being adequate to the task of beating either with the disheartened forces he commanded. On the 1st of May, while Clerfayt was held in check by a very vigorous demonstration, Coburg’s positions west of Quiévrain were attacked by Dampierre himself. The French won some local successes by force of numbers and surprise, but the Allies recovered themselves, thanks chiefly to the address and skill of Colonel Mack, and drove the Republicans in disorder to their entrenchments. Dampierre’s discouragement now became desperation, and, urged on by the representatives (who, be it said, had exposed their own lives freely enough in the action), he attacked Clerfayt on the 8th at Raismes. The troops fought far better in the woods and hamlets west of the Scheldt than they had done in the plains to the east. But in the heat of the action Dampierre, becoming again the brilliant soldier that he had been before responsibility stifled him, risked and lost his life in leading a storming party, and his men retired sullenly, though this time in good order, to Valenciennes. Two days later the French gave up the open field and retired into Valenciennes. Dampierre’s remains were by a vote of the Convention ordered to be deposited in the Panthéon. But he was a “ci-devant” noble, the demagogues denounced him as a traitor, and the only honour finally paid to the man who had tided over the weeks of greatest danger was the placing of his bust, in the strange company of those of Brutus and Marat, in the chamber of deputies.

Another pause followed, Coburg awaiting the British contingent under the duke of York, and the Republicans endeavouring to 174 assimilate the reinforcements of conscripts, for the most part “undesirables,” who now arrived. Mutiny and denunciations augmented the confusion in the French camp. Plan of campaign there was none, save a resolution to stay at Valenciennes in the hope of finding an opportunity of relieving Condé and to create diversions elsewhere by expeditions from Dunkirk, Lille and Sedan. These of course came to nothing, and before they had even started, Coburg, resuming the offensive, had stormed the lines of Famars (May 24), whereupon the French army retired to Bouchain, leaving not only Condé2 but also Valenciennes to resist as best they could. The central point of the new positions about Bouchain was called Caesar’s Camp. Here, surrounded by streams and marshes, the French generals thought that their troops were secure from the rush of the dreaded Austrian cavalry, and Mack himself shared their opinion.

Custine now took command of the abjectly dispirited army, the fourth change of command within two months. His first task was to institute a severe discipline, and his prestige was so great that his mere threat of death sentences for offenders produced the desired effect. As to operations, he wished for a concentration of all possible forces from other parts of the frontier towards Valenciennes, even if necessary at the cost of sacrificing his own conquest of Mainz. But after he had induced the government to assent to this, the generals of the numerous other armies refused to give up their troops, and on the 17th of June the idea was abandoned in view of the growing seriousness of the Vendéan insurrection (see Vendée). Custine, therefore, could do no more than continue the work of reorganization. Military operations were few. Coburg, who had all this time succeeded in remaining concentrated, now found himself compelled to extend leftwards towards Flanders,3 for Custine had infused some energy into the scattered groups of the Republicans in the region of Douai, Lille and Dunkirk—and during this respite the Paris Jacobins sent to the guillotine both Custine and his successor La Marlière before July was ended. Both were “ci-devant” nobles and, so far as is ascertainable, neither was guilty of anything worse than attempts to make his orders respected by, and himself popular with, the soldiers. By this time, owing to the innumerable denunciations and arrests, the confusion in the Army of the North was at its height, and no further attempt was made either to relieve Valenciennes and Condé, or to press forward from Lille and Dunkirk. Condé, starved out as Coburg desired, capitulated on the 10th of June, and the Austrians, who had done their work as soldiers, but were filled with pity for their suffering and distracted enemies, marched in with food for the women and children. Valenciennes, under the energetic General Ferrand, Fall of Valenciennes. held out bravely until the fire of the Allies became intolerable, and then the civil population began to plot treachery, and to wear the Bourbon cockade in the open street. Ferrand and the representatives with him found themselves obliged to surrender to the duke of York, who commanded the siege corps, on the 28th of July, after rejecting the first draft of a capitulation sent in by the duke and threatening to continue the defence to the bitter end. Impossible as this was known to be—for Valenciennes seemed to have become a royalist town—Ferrand’s soldierly bearing carried the day, and honourable terms were arranged. The duke even offered to assist the garrison in repressing disorder. Shortly after this the wreck of the field army was forced to evacuate Caesar’s Camp after an unimportant action (Aug. 7-8) and retired on Arras. By this they gave up the direct defence of the Paris road, but placed themselves in a “flank position” relatively to it, and secured to themselves the resources and reinforcements available in the region of Dunkirk-Lille. Bouchain and Cambrai, Landrecies and Le Quesnoy, were left to their own garrisons.

With this ended the second episode of the amazing campaign of 1793. Military operations were few and spasmodic, on the one side because the Allied statesmen were less concerned with the nebulous common object of restoring order in France than with their several schemes of aggrandisement, on the other owing to the almost incredible confusion of France under the régime of Danton and Marat. The third episode shows little or no change in the force and direction of the allied efforts, but a very great change in France. Thoroughly roused by disaster and now dominated by the furious and bloodthirsty energy of the terrorists, the French people and armies at last set before themselves clear and definite objects to be pursued at all costs.

Jean Nicolas Houchard, the next officer appointed to command, had been a heavy cavalry trooper in the Seven Years’ War. His face bore the scars of wounds received at Minden, and his bravery, his stature, his bold and fierce manner, Houchard. his want of education, seemed to all to betoken the ideal sans-culotte general. But he was nevertheless incapable of leading an army, and knowing this, carefully conformed to the advice of his staff officers Berthelmy and Gay-Vernon, the latter of whom, an exceptionally capable officer, had been Custine’s chief of staff and was consequently under suspicion. At one moment, indeed, operations had to be suspended altogether because his papers were seized by the civil authorities, and amongst them were all the confidential memoranda and maps required for the business of headquarters. It was the darkest hour. The Vendéans, the people of Lyons, Marseilles and Toulon, were in open and hitherto successful revolt. Valenciennes had fallen and Coburg’s hussar parties pressed forward into the Somme valley. Again the Allies had the decision of the war in their own hands. Coburg, indeed, was still afraid, on Marie Antoinette’s account, of forcing the Republicans to extremities, and on military grounds too he thought an advance on Paris hazardous. But, hazardous or not, it would have been attempted but for the English. The duke of York had definite orders from his government to capture Dunkirk—at present a nest of corsairs which interfered with the Channel trade, and in the future, it was hoped, a second Gibraltar—and after the fall of Valenciennes and the capture of Caesar’s Camp the English and Hanoverians marched away, via Tournai and Ypres, to besiege the coast fortress. Thereupon the king of Prussia in turn called off his contingent for operations on the middle Rhine. Holland, too, though she maintained her contingent in face of Lille (where it covered Flanders), was not disposed to send it to join the imperialists in an adventure in the heart of France. Coburg, therefore, was brought to a complete standstill, and the scene of the decision was shifted to the district between Lille and the coast.

Thither came Carnot, the engineer officer who was in charge of military affairs In the Committee of Public Safety and is known to history as the “Organizer of Victory.” His views of the strategy to be pursued indicate either a purely geographical idea of war, which does not square with his later principles and practice, or, as is far more likely, a profound disbelief in the capacity of the Army of the North, as it then stood, to fight a battle, and they went no further than to recommend an inroad into Flanders on the ground that no enemy would be encountered there. This, however, in the event developed into an operation of almost decisive importance, for at the moment of its inception the duke of York was already on the march. Fighting en route a very severe but successful action (Lincelles, Aug. 18) with the French troops encamped near Lille, the Anglo-Hanoverians entered the district—densely intersected with canals and morasses—around Dunkirk and Bergues on the 21st and 22nd. On the right, by way of Furnes, the British moved towards Dunkirk and invested the east front of the weak fortress, while on the left the Hanoverian field marshal v. Freytag moved via Poperinghe on Bergues. The French had a chain of outposts between Furnes and Bergues, but Freytag attacked them resolutely, and the defenders, except a brave handful who stood 175 to cross bayonets, fled in all directions. The east front of Bergues was invested on the 23rd, and Freytag spread out his Dunkirk. forces to cover the duke of York’s attack on Dunkirk, his right being opposite Bergues and his centre at Bambeke, while his left covered the space between Roosbrugge and Ypres with a cordon of posts. Houchard was in despair at the bad conduct of his troops. But one young general, Jourdan, anticipating Houchard’s orders, had already brought a strong force from Lille to Cassel, whence he incessantly harried Freytag’s posts. Carnot encouraged the garrisons of Dunkirk and Bergues, and caused the sluices to be opened. The moral of the defenders rose rapidly. Houchard prepared to bring up every available man of the Army of the North, and only waited to make up his mind as to the direction in which his attack should be made. The Allies themselves recognized the extreme danger of their position. It was cut in half by the Great Morass, stretches of which extended even to Furnes. Neither Dunkirk nor Bergues could be completely invested owing to the inundations, and Freytag sent a message to King George III. to the effect that if Dunkirk did not surrender in a few days the expedition would be a complete failure.

As for the French, they could hardly believe their good fortune. Generals, staff officers and representatives on mission alike were eager for a swift and crushing offensive. “’Attack’ and ‘attack in mass’ became the shibboleth and the catch-phrase of the camps” (Chuquet), and fortresses and armies on other parts of the frontier were imperiously called upon to supply large drafts for the Army of the North. Gay-Vernon’s strategical instinct found expression in a wide-ranging movement designed to secure the absolute annihilation of the duke of York’s forces. Beginning with an attack on the Dutch posts north and east of Lille, the army was then to press forward towards Furnes, the left wing holding Freytag’s left wing in check, and the right swinging inwards and across the line of retreat of both allied corps. At that moment all men were daring, and the scheme was adopted with enthusiasm. On the 28th of August, consequently, the Dutch posts were attacked and driven away by the mobile forces at Lille, aided by parts of the main army from Arras. But even before they had fired their last shot the Republicans dispersed to plunder and compromised their success. Houchard and Gay-Vernon began to fear that their army would not emerge successfully from the supreme test they were about to impose on it, and from this moment the scheme of destroying the English began to give way to the simpler and safer idea of relieving Dunkirk. The place was so ill-equipped that after a few days’ siege it was in extremis, and the political importance of its preservation led not merely the civilian representatives, but even Carnot, to implore Houchard to put an end to the crisis at once. On the 30th, Cassel, instead of Ypres, was designated as the point of concentration for the “mass of attack.” This surprised the representatives and Carnot as much as it surprised the subordinate generals, all of whom thought that there would still be time to make the détour through Ypres and to cut off the Allies’ retreat before Dunkirk fell. But Houchard and Gay-Vernon were no longer under any illusions as to the manœuvring power of their forces, and the government agents wisely left them to execute their own plans. Thirty-seven thousand men were left to watch Coburg and to secure Arras and Douai, and the rest, 50,000 strong, assembled at Cassel. Everything was in Houchard’s favour could he but overcome the indiscipline of his own army. The duke of York was more dangerous in appearance than in reality—as the result must infallibly have shown had Houchard and Gay-Vernon possessed the courage to execute the original plan—and Freytag’s covering army extended in a line of disconnected posts from Bergues to Ypres.

Against the left and centre of this feeble cordon 40,000 men advanced in many columns on the 6th of September. A confused outpost fight, in which the various assailing columns dissolved into excited swarms, ended, long after Hondschoote. nightfall, in the orderly withdrawal of the various allied posts to Hondschoote. The French generals were occupied the whole of next day in sorting out their troops, who had not only completely wasted their strength against mere outposts, but had actually consumed their rations and used up their ammunition. On the 8th, the assailants, having more or less recovered themselves, advanced again. They found Wallmoden (who had succeeded Freytag, disabled on the 6th) entrenched on either side of the village of Hondschoote, the right resting on the great morass and the left on the village of Leysele. Here was the opportunity for the “attack in mass” that had been so freely discussed; but Houchard was now concerned more with the relief of Dunkirk than with the defeat of the enemy. He sent away one division to Dunkirk, another to Bergues, and a third towards Ypres, and left himself only some 20,000 men for the battle. But Wallmoden had only 13,000—so great was the disproportion between end and means in this ill-designed enterprise against Dunkirk.

Redrawn from a map in Fortescue’s History of the British Army, by permission of Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

Houchard despatched a column, guided by his staff officer Berthelmy, to turn the Hanoverians’ left, but this column lost its way in the dense country about Loo. The centre waited motionless under the fire of the allied guns near Hondschoote. In vain the representative Delbrel implored the general to order the advance. Houchard was obstinate, and ere long the natural result followed. Though Delbrel posted himself in front of the line, conspicuous by his white horse and tricoloured sash and plume, to steady the men, the bravest left the ranks and skirmished forward from bush to bush, and the rest sought cover. Then the allied commander ordered forward one regiment of Hessians, and these, advancing at a ceremonial slow march, and firing steady rolling volleys, scattered the Republicans before them. At this crisis Houchard uttered the fatal word “retreat,” but Delbrel overwhelmed him with reproaches and stung him into renewed activity. He hurried away to urge forward the right wing while Jourdan rallied the centre and led it into the fight again. Once more Jourdan awaited in vain the order to advance, and once more the troops broke. But at last the exasperated Delbrel rose to the occasion. “You fear the responsibility,” he cried to Jourdan; “well, I assume it. My authority overrides the general’s and I give you the formal order to attack at once!” Then, gently, as if to soften a rebuke, he continued, “You have forced me to speak as a superior; now I will be your aide-de-camp,” 176 and at once hurried off to bring up the reserves and to despatch cavalry to collect the fugitives. This incident, amongst many, serves to show that the representatives on mission were no mere savage marplots, as is too generally assumed. They were often wise and able men, brave and fearless of responsibility in camp and in action. Jourdan led on the reserves, and the men fighting in the bushes on either side of the road heard their drums to right and left. Jourdan fell wounded, but Delbrel headed a wild irregular bayonet charge which checked the Hanoverians, and Houchard himself, in his true place as a cavalry leader, came up with 500 fresh sabres and flung himself on the Allies. The Hanoverians, magnificently disciplined troops that they were, soon re-formed after the shock, but by this time the fugitives collected by Delbrel’s troopers, reanimated by new hopes of victory, were returning to the front in hundreds, and a last assault on Hondschoote met with complete success.

Hondschoote was a psychological victory. Materially, it was no more than the crushing of an obstinate rearguard at enormous expense to the assailants, for the duke of York was able to withdraw while there was still time. Houchard had indeed called back the division he had sent to Bergues, and despatched it by Loo against the enemy’s rear, but the movement was undertaken too late in the day to be useful. The struggle was practically a front to front battle, numbers and enthusiasm on the one side, discipline, position and steadiness on the other. Hence, though its strategical result was merely to compel the duke of York to give up an enterprise that he should never have undertaken, Hondschoote established the fact that the “New French” were determined to win, at any cost and by sheer weight and energy. It was long before they were able to meet equal numbers with confidence, and still longer before they could freely oppose a small corps to a larger one. But the nightmare of defeats and surrenders was dispelled.

The influence of Houchard on the course of the operations had been sometimes null, sometimes detrimental, and only occasionally good. The plan and its execution were the work of Berthelmy and Gay-Vernon, the victory itself was Jourdan’s and, above all, Delbrel’s. To these errors, forgiven to a victor, Houchard added the crowning offence of failure, in the reaction after the battle, to pursue his advantage. His enemies in Paris became more and more powerful as the campaign continued.

Having missed the great opportunity of crushing the English, Houchard turned his attention to the Dutch posts about Menin. As far as the Allies were concerned Hondschoote was a mere reverse, not a disaster, and was counterbalanced Menin. in Coburg’s eyes by his own capture of Le Quesnoy (Sept. 11). The proximity of the main body of the French to Menin induced him to order Beaulieu’s corps (hitherto at Cysoing and linking the Dutch posts with the central group) to join the prince of Orange there, and to ask the duke of York to do the same. But this last meant negotiation, and before anything was settled Houchard, with the army from Hondschoote and a contingent from Lille, had attacked the prince at Menin and destroyed his corps (Sept. 12-13).

After this engagement, which, though it was won by immensely superior forces, was if not an important at any rate a complete victory, Houchard went still farther inland—leaving detachments to observe York and replacing them by troops from the various camps as he passed along the cordon—in the hope of dealing with Beaulieu as he had dealt with the Dutch, and even of relieving Le Quesnoy. But in all this he failed. He had expected to meet Beaulieu near Cysoing, but the Austrian general had long before gone northward to assist the prince of Orange. Thus Houchard missed his target. Worse still, one of his protective detachments chanced to meet Beaulieu near Courtrai on the 15th, and was not only defeated but driven in rout from Menin. Lastly, Coburg had already captured Le Quesnoy, and had also repulsed a straggling attack of the Landrecies, Bouchain and other French garrisons on the positions of his covering army (12th).4

Houchard’s offensive died away completely, and he halted his army (45,000 strong excluding detachments) at Gaverelle, half-way between Douai and Arras, hoping thereby to succour Bouchain, Cambrai or Arras, whichever should prove to be Coburg’s next objective. After standing still for several days, a prey to all the conflicting rumours that reached his ears, he came to the conclusion that Coburg was about to join the duke of York in a second siege of Dunkirk, and began to close on his left. But his conclusion was entirely wrong. The Allies were closing on their left inland to attack Maubeuge. Coburg drew in Beaulieu, and even persuaded the Dutch to assist, the duke of York undertaking for the moment to watch the whole of the Flanders cordon from the sea to Tournai. But this concentration of force was merely nominal, for each contingent worked in the interests of its own masters, and, above all, the siege that was the object of the concentration was calculated to last four weeks, i.e. gave the French four weeks unimpeded liberty of action.

Houchard was now denounced and brought captive to Paris. Placed upon his trial, he offered a calm and reasoned defence of his conduct, but when the intolerable word “coward” was hurled at him by one of his judges he wept with rage, pointing to the scars of his many wounds, and then, his spirit broken, sank into a lethargic indifference, in which he remained to the end. He was guillotined on the 16th of November 1793.

After Houchard’s arrest, Jourdan accepted the command, though with many misgivings, for the higher ranks were filled by officers with even less experience than he had himself, equipment and clothing was wanting, and, perhaps more important still, the new levies, instead of filling up the depleted ranks of the line, were assembled in undisciplined and half-armed hordes at various frontier camps, under elected officers who had for the most part never undergone the least training. The field states showed a total of 104,000 men, of whom less than a third formed the operative army. But an enthusiasm equal to that of Hondschoote, and similarly demanding a plain, urgent and recognizable objective, animated it, and although Jourdan and Carnot (who was with him at Gaverelle, where the army had now reassembled) began to study the general strategic situation, the Committee brought them back to realities by ordering them to relieve Maubeuge at all costs.

The Allies disposed in all of 66,000 men around the threatened fortress, but 26,000 of these were actually employed in the siege, and the remainder, forming the covering army, extended in an enormous semicircle of posts facing Wattignies. west, south and east. Thus the Republicans, as before, had two men to one at the point of contact (44,000 against 21,000), but so formidable was the discipline and steadiness of manœuvre of the old armies that the chances were considered as no more than “rather in favour” of the French. Not that these chances were seriously weighed before engaging. The generals might squander their energies in the council chamber on plans of sieges and expeditions, but in the field they were glad enough to seize the opportunity of a battle which they were not skilful enough to compel. It took place on the 15th and 16th of October, and though the allied right and centre held their ground, on their left the plateau of Wattignies (q.v.), from which the battle derives its name, was stormed on the second day, Carnot, Jourdan and the representatives leading the columns in person. Coburg indeed retired in unbroken order, added to which the Maubeuge garrison had failed to co-operate with their rescuers by a sortie,5 and the duke of York had hurried up with all the men he could spare from the Flanders cordon. But the Dutch generals refused to advance beyond the Sambre, and Coburg broke up the siege of Maubeuge and retired whence he had come, while Jourdan, so far from pressing forward, was anxiously awaiting a counter-attack, and entrenching himself with all possible energy. So ended the episode of Wattignies, which, alike in its general outline and in its details, gives a perfect picture of the character, at once intense and spasmodic, of the “New French” warfare in the days of the Terror.

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To complete the story of ’93 it remains to sketch, very briefly, the principal events on the eastern and southern frontiers of France. These present, in the main, no special features, and all that it is necessary to retain of them is the fact of their existence. What this multiplication of their tasks meant to the Committee of Public Safety and to Carnot in particular it is impossible to realize. It was not merely on the Sambre and the Scheldt, nor against one army of heterogeneous allies that the Republic had to fight for life, but against Prussians and Hessians on the Rhine, Sardinians in the Alps, Spaniards in the Pyrenees, and also (one might say, indeed, above all) against Frenchmen in Vendée, Lyons, Marseilles and Toulon.

On the Rhine, the advance of a Prussian-Hessian army, 63,000 strong, rapidly drove back Custine from the Main into the valleys of the Saar and the Lauter. An Austrian corps under Wurmser soon afterwards invaded Alsace. Here, as on the northern frontier, there was a long period of trial and error, of denunciations and indiscipline, and of wholly trivial fighting, before the Republicans recovered themselves. But in the end the ragged enthusiasts found their true leader in Lazare Hoche, and, though defeated by Brunswick at Pirmasens and Kaiserslautern, they managed to develop almost their full strength against Wurmser in Alsace. On the 26th of December the latter, who had already undergone a series of partial reverses, was driven by main force from the lines of Weissenburg, after which Hoche advanced into the Palatinate and delivered Landau, and Pichegru moved on to recapture Mainz, which had surrendered in July. On the Spanish frontier both sides indulged in a fruitless war of posts in broken ground. The Italian campaign of 1793, equally unprofitable, will be referred to below. Far more serious than either was the insurrection of Vendée (q.v.) and the counter-revolution in the south of France, the principal incidents of which were the terrible sieges of Lyons and Toulon.

For 1794 Carnot planned a general advance of all the northern armies, that of the North (Pichegru) from Dunkirk-Cassel by Ypres and Oudenarde on Brussels, the minor Army of the Ardennes to Charleroi, and the Army of the Campaign of 1794. Moselle (Jourdan) to Liége, while between Charleroi and Lille demonstrations were to be made against the hostile centre. He counted upon little as regards the two armies near the Meuse, but hoped to force on a decisive battle by the advance of the left wing towards Ypres. Coburg, on the other side, intended, if not forced to develop his strength on the Ypres side, to make his main effort against the French centre about Landrecies. This produced the siege of Landrecies, which need not concern us, a forward movement of the French to Menin and Courtrai which resulted in the battles of Tourcoing and Tournai, and the campaign of Fleurus, which, almost fortuitously, produced the long-sought decision.

The first crisis was brought about by the advance of the left wing of the Army of the North, under Souham, to Menin-Courtrai. This advance placed Souham in the midst of the enemy’s right wing, and at last stimulated the Allies into adopting the plan that Mack had advocated, in season and out of season, since before Neerwinden—that of annihilating the enemy’s army. This vigorous purpose, and the leading part in its execution played by the duke of York and the British contingent, give these operations, to Englishmen at any rate, a living interest which is entirely lacking in, say, the sieges of Le Quesnoy and Landrecies. On the other side, the “New French” armies and their leaders, without losing the energy of 1793, had emerged from confusion and inexperience, and the powers of the new army and the new system had begun to mature. Thus it was a fair trial of strength between the old way and the new.

In the second week of May the left wing of the Army of the North—the centre was towards Landrecies, and the right, fused in the Army of the Ardennes, towards Charleroi—found itself interposed at Menin-Courtrai-Lille between two hostile masses, the main body of the allied right wing about Tournai and a secondary corps at Thielt. Common-sense, therefore, dictated a converging attack for the Allies and a series of rapid radial blows for the French. In the allied camp common-sense had first to prevail over routine, and the emperor’s first orders were for a raid of the Thielt corps towards Ypres, which his advisers hoped would of itself cause the French to decamp. But the duke of York formed a very different plan, and Feldzeugmeister Clerfayt, in command at Thielt, agreed to co-operate. Their proposal was to surround the French on the Lys with their two corps, and by the 15th the emperor had decided to use larger forces with the same object.

On that day Coburg himself, with 6000 men under Feldzeugmeister Kinsky from the central (Landrecies) group, entered Tournai and took up the general command, while another reinforcement under the archduke Charles Mack’s “annihilation plan.” marched towards Orchies. Orders were promptly issued for a general offensive. Clerfayt’s corps was to be between Rousselaer and Menin on the 16th, and the next day to force its way across the Lys at Werwick and connect with the main army. The main army was to advance in four columns. The first three, under the duke of York, were to move off, at daylight on the 17th, by Dottignies, Leers and Lannoy respectively to the line Mouscron-Tourcoing-Mouveaux. The fourth and fifth under Kinsky and the archduke Charles were to defeat the French corps on the upper Marque, and then, leaving Lille on their left and guaranteeing themselves by a cordon system against being cut off from Tournai (either by the troops just defeated or by the Lille garrison), to march rapidly forward towards Werwick, getting touch on their right with the duke of York and on their left with Clerfayt, and thus completing the investing circle around Souham’s and Moreau’s isolated divisions. Speed was enjoined on all. Picked volunteers to clear away the enemy’s skirmishers, and pioneers to make good difficult places on the roads, were to precede the heads of the columns. Then came at the head of the main body the artillery with an infantry escort. All this might have been designed by the Japanese for the attack of some well-defined Russian position in the war of 1904. Outpost and skirmisher resistance was to be overpowered the instant it was offered, and the attack on the closed bodies of the enemy was to be initiated by a heavy artillery fire at the earliest possible moment. But in 1904 the Russians stood still, which was the last thing that the Revolutionary armies of 1794 would or could do. Mack’s well-considered and carefully balanced 178 combinations failed, and doubtless helped to create the legend of his incapacity, which finds no support either in the opinion of Coburg, the representative of the old school, or in that of Scharnhorst, the founder of the new.

Souham, who commanded in the temporary absence of Pichegru, had formed his own plan. Finding himself with the major part of his forces between York and Clerfayt, he had decided to impose upon the former by means of a covering detachment, and to fall upon Clerfayt near Rousselaer with the bulk of his forces. This plan, based as it was on a sound calculation of time, space, strength and endurance, merits close consideration, for it contains more than a trace of the essential principles of modern strategy, yet with one vital difference, that whereas, in the present case, the factor of the enemy’s independent will wrecked the scheme, Napoleon would have guaranteed to himself, before and during its development, the power of executing it in spite of the enemy. The appearance of fresh allied troops (Kinsky) on his right front at once modified these general arrangements. Divining Coburg’s intentions from the arrival of the enemy near Pont-à-Marque and at Lannoy, he ordered Bonnaud (Lille group, 27,000) to leave enough troops on the upper Marque to amuse the enemy’s leftmost columns, and with every man he had left beyond this absolute minimum to attack the left flank of the columns moving towards Tourcoing, which his weak centre (12,000 men at Tourcoing, Mouscron and Roubaix) was to stop by frontal defence. No rôle was as yet assigned to the principal mass (50,000 under Moreau) about Courtrai. Vandamme’s brigade was to extend along the Lys from Menin to Werwick and beyond, to deny as long as possible the passage to Clerfayt.

This second plan failed like the first, because the enemy’s counter-will was not controlled. All along the line Coburg’s advance compelled the French to fight as they were without any redistribution. But the French were sufficiently elastic to adapt themselves readily to unforeseen conditions, and on Coburg’s side too the unexpected happened. When Clerfayt appeared on the Lys above Menin, he found Werwick held. This was an accident, for the battalion there was on its way to Menin, and Vandamme, who had not yet received his new orders, was still far away. But the battalion fought boldly, Clerfayt sent for his pontoons, and ere they arrived Vandamme’s leading troops managed to come up on the other side. Thus it was not till 1 A.M. on the 18th that the first Austrian battalions passed the Lys.

On the front of the main allied group the “annihilation plan” was crippled at the outset by the tardiness of the archduke’s (fifth or left) column. On this the smooth working of the whole scheme depended, for Coburg considered that he must defeat Bonnaud before carrying out his intended envelopment of the Menin-Courtrai group (the idea of “binding” the enemy by a detachment while the main scheme proceeded had not yet arisen). The allied general, indeed, on discovering the backwardness of the archduke, went so far as to order all the other columns to begin by swerving southward against Bonnaud, but these were already too deeply committed to the original plan to execute any new variation.

The rightmost column (Hanoverians) under von dem Bussche moved on Mouscron, overpowering the fragmentary, if energetic, resistance of the French advanced posts. Next on the left, Lieutenant Field Marshal Otto moved by Leers and Watrelos, driving away a French post at Lis (near Lannoy) on his left flank, and entered Tourcoing. But meantime a French brigade had driven von dem Bussche away from Mouscron, so that Otto felt compelled to keep troops at Leers and Watrelos to protect his rear, which seriously weakened his hold on Tourcoing. The third column, led by the duke of York, advanced from Templeuve on Lannoy, at the same time securing its left by expelling the French from Willems. Lannoy was stormed by the British Guards under Sir R. Abercromby with such vigour that the cavalry which had been sent round the village to cut off the French retreat had no time to get into position. Beyond Lannoy, the French resistance, still disjointed, became more obstinate as the ground favoured it more, and the duke called up the Austrians from Willems to turn the right of the French position at Roubaix by way of a small valley. Once again, however, the Guards dislodged the enemy before the turning movement had taken effect. A third French position now appeared, at Mouvaux, and this seemed so formidable that the duke halted to rest his now weary men. The emperor himself, however, ordered the advance to be resumed, and Mouvaux too was carried by Abercromby. It was now nightfall, and the duke having attained his objective point prepared to hold it against a counter attack.

Kinsky meanwhile with the fourth column had made feints opposite Pont-à-Tressin, and had forced the passage of the Marque near Bouvines with his main body. But Bonnaud gave ground so slowly that up to 4 P.M. Kinsky had only progressed a few hundred paces from his crossing point. The fifth column, which was behind time on the 16th, did not arrive at Orchies till dawn on the 17th, and had to halt there for rest and food. Thence, moving across country in fighting formation, the archduke made his way to Pont-à-Marque. But he was unable to do more, before calling a halt, than deploy his troops on the other side of the stream.

So closed the first day’s operations. The “annihilation plan” had already undergone a serious check. The archduke and Kinsky, instead of being ready for the second part of their task, had scarcely completed the first, and the same could be said of Clerfayt, while von dem Bussche had definitively failed. Only the duke of York and Otto had done their share in the centre, and they now stood at Tourcoing and Mouvaux isolated in the midst of the enemy’s main body, with no hope of support from the other columns and no more than a chance of meeting Clerfayt. Coburg’s entire force was, without deducting losses, no more than 53,000 for a front of 18 m., and only half of the enemy’s available 80,000 men had as yet been engaged. Mack sent a staff officer, at 1 A.M., to implore the archduke to come up to Lannoy at once, but the young prince was asleep and his suite refused to wake him.

Matters did not, of course, present themselves in this light at Souham’s headquarters, where the generals met in an informal council. The project of flinging Bonnaud’s corps against the flank of the duke of York had not received even a beginning of execution, and the outposts, reinforced though they were from the main group, had everywhere been driven in. All the subordinate leaders, moreover (except Bonnaud), sent in the most despondent reports. “Councils of war never fight” is an old maxim, justified in ninety-nine cases in a hundred. But this council determined to do so, and with all possible vigour. The scheme was practically that which Coburg’s first threat had produced and his first brusque advance had inhibited. Vandamme was to hold Clerfayt, the garrison of Lille and a few outlying corps to occupy the archduke and Kinsky, and in the centre Moreau and Bonnaud, with 40,000 effectives, were to attack the Tourcoing-Mouvaux position in front and flank at dawn with all possible energy.

The first shots were fired on the Lys, where, it will be remembered, Clerfayt’s infantry had effected its crossing in the night. Vandamme, who was to defend the river, had in the evening assembled his troops (fatigued by a Battle of Tourcoing. long march) near Menin instead of pushing on at once. Thus only one of his battalions had taken part in the defence of Werwick on the 17th, and the remainder were by this chance massed on the flank of Clerfayt’s subsequent line of advance. Vandamme used his advantage well. He attacked, with perhaps 12,000 men against 21,000, the head and the middle of Clerfayt’s columns as they moved on Lincelles. Clerfayt stopped at once, turned upon him and drove him towards Roncq and Menin. Still, fighting in succession, rallying and fighting again, Vandamme’s regiments managed to spin out time and to commit Clerfayt deeper and deeper to a false direction till it was too late in the day to influence the battle elsewhere.

V. dem Bussche’s column at Dottignies, shaken by the blow it had received the day before, did nothing, and actually retreated to the Scheldt. On the other flank, Kinsky and the archduke 179 Charles practically remained inactive despite repeated orders to proceed to Lannoy, Kinsky waiting for the archduke, and the latter using up his time and forces in elaborating a protective cordon all around his left and rear. Both alleged that “the troops were tired,” but there was a stronger motive. It was felt that Belgium was about to be handed over to France as the price of peace, and the generals did not see the force of wasting soldiers on a lost cause. There remained the two centre columns, Otto’s and the duke of York’s. The orders of the emperor to the duke were that he should advance to establish communication with Clerfayt at Lincelles. Having thus cut off the French Courtrai group, he was to initiate a general advance to crush it, in which all the allied columns would take part, Clerfayt, York and Otto in front, von dem Bussche on the right flank and the archduke and Kinsky in support. These airy schemes were destroyed at dawn on the 18th. Macdonald’s brigade carried Tourcoing at the first rush, though Otto’s guns and the volleys of the infantry checked its further progress. Malbrancq’s brigade swarmed around the duke of York’s entrenchments at Mouvaux, while Bonnaud’s mass from the side of Lille passed the Marque and lapped round the flanks of the British posts at Roubaix and Lannoy. The duke had used up his reserves in assisting Otto, and by 8 A.M. the positions of Roubaix, Lannoy and Mouvaux were isolated from each other. But the Allies fought magnificently, and by now the Republicans were in confusion, excited to the highest pitch and therefore extremely sensitive to waves of enthusiasm or panic; and at this moment Clerfayt was nearing success, and Vandamme fighting almost back to back with Malbrancq. Otto was able to retire gradually, though with heavy losses, to Leers, before Macdonald’s left column was able to storm Watrelos, or Daendels’ brigade, still farther towards the Scheldt, could reach his rear. The resistance of the Austrians gave breathing space to the English, who held on to their positions till about 11.30, attacked again and again by Bonnaud, and then, not without confusion, retired to join Otto at Leers.

With the retreat of the two sorely tried columns and the suspension of Clerfayt’s attack between Lincelles and Roncq, the battle of Tourcoing ended. It was a victory of which the young French generals had reason to be proud. The main attack was vigorously conducted, and the two-to-one numerical superiority which the French possessed at the decisive point is the best testimony at once to Souham’s generalship and to Vandamme’s bravery. As for the Allies, those of them who took part in the battle at all, generals and soldiers, covered themselves with glory, but the inaction of two-thirds of Coburg’s army was the bankruptcy declaration of the old strategical system. The Allies lost, on this day, about 4000 killed and wounded and 1500 prisoners besides 60 guns. The French loss, which was probably heavier, is not known. The duke of York defeated, Souham at once turned his attention to Clerfayt, against whom he directed all the forces he could gather after a day’s “horde-tactics.” The Austrian commander, however, withdrew over the river unharmed. On the 19th he was at Rousselaer and Ingelminster, 9 or 10 m. north of Courtrai, while Coburg’s forces assembled and encamped in a strong position some 3 m. west and north-west of Tournai, the Hanoverians remaining out in advance of the right on the Espierre.

Souham’s victory, thanks to his geographical position, had merely given him air. The Allies, except for the loss of some 5500 men, were in no way worse off. The plan had failed, but the army as a whole had not been defeated, while the troops of the duke of York and Otto were far too well disciplined not to take their defeat as “all in the day’s work.” Souham was still on the Lys and midway between the two allied masses, able to strike each in turn or liable to be crushed between them in proportion as the opposing generals calculated time, space and endurance accurately. Souham, therefore, as early as the 19th, had decided that until Clerfayt had been pushed back to his old positions near Thielt he could not deal with the main body of the Allies on the side of Tournai, and he had left Bonnaud to hold the latter while he concentrated most of his forces towards Courtrai. This move had the desired effect, for Clerfayt retired without a contest, and on the 21st of May Souham issued his orders for an advance on Coburg’s army, which, as he knew, had meantime been reinforced. Vandamme alone was left to face Clerfayt, and this time with outposts far out, at Ingelminster and Roosebeke, so as to ensure his chief, not a few hours’, but two or three days’ freedom from interference.

Pichegru now returned and took up the supreme command, Souham remaining in charge of his own and Moreau’s divisions. On the extreme right, from Pont-à-Tressin, only demonstrations were to be made; the centre, between Battle of Tournai. Baisieux and Estaimbourg, was to be the scene of the holding attack of Bonnaud’s command, while Souham, in considerably greater density, delivered the decisive attack on the allied right by St Leger and Warcoing. At Helchin a brigade was to guard the outer flank of the assailants against a movement by the Hanoverians and to keep open communication with Courtrai in case of attack from the direction of Oudenarde. The details of the allied position were insufficiently known owing to the multiplicity of their advanced posts and the intricate and densely cultivated nature of the ground. The battle of Tournai opened in the early morning of the 22nd and was long and desperately contested. The demonstration on the French extreme right was soon recognized by the defenders to be negligible, and the allied left wing thereupon closed on the centre. There Bonnaud attacked with vigour, forcing back the various advanced posts, especially on the left, where he dislodged the Allies from Nechin. The defenders of Templeuve then fell back, and the attacking swarms—a dissolved line of battle—fringed the brook beyond Templeuve, on the other side of which was the Allies’ main position, and even for a moment seized Blandain. Meanwhile the French at Nechin, in concert with the main attack, pressed on towards Ramegnies.

Macdonald’s and other brigades had forced the Espierre rivulet and driven von dem Bussche’s Hanoverians partly over the Scheldt (they had a pontoon bridge), partly southward. The main front of the Allies was defined by the brook that flows between Templeuve and Blandain, then between Ramegnies and Pont-à-Chin and empties into the Scheldt near the last-named hamlet. On this front till close on nightfall a fierce battle raged. Pichegru’s main attack was still by his left, and Pont-à-Chin was taken and retaken by French, Austrians, British and Hanoverians in turn. Between Blandain and Pont-à-Chin Bonnaud’s troops more than once entered the line of defence. But the attack was definitively broken off at nightfall and the Republicans withdrew slowly towards Lannoy and Leers. They had for the first time in a fiercely contested “soldier’s battle” measured their strength, regiment for regiment, against the Allies, and failed, but by so narrow a margin that henceforward the Army of the North realized its own strength and solidity. The Army of the Revolution, already superior in numbers and imbued with the decision-compelling spirit, had at last achieved self-confidence.

But the actual decision was destined by a curious process of evolution to be given by Jourdan’s far-distant Army of the Moselle, to which we now turn.

The Army of the Moselle had been ordered to assemble a striking force on its left wing, without prejudicing the rest of its cordon in Lorraine, and with this striking force to operate towards Liége and Namur. Its first movement on Arlon, in April, was repulsed by a small Austrian corps under Beaulieu that guarded this region. But in the beginning of May the advance was resumed though the troops were ill-equipped and ill-fed, and requisitions had reduced the civil population to semi-starvation and sullen hostility. We quote Jourdan’s instructions to his advanced guard, not merely as evidence of the trivial purpose of the march as originally planned, but still more as an illustration of the driving power that made the troops march at all, and of the new method of marching and subsisting them.

Its commander was “to keep in mind the purpose of cutting the communications between Luxemburg and Namur, and was therefore to throw out strong bodies against the enemy daily and at different points, to parry the enemy’s movements by rapid Jourdan’s movement on Liége. 180 marches, to prevent any transfer of troops to Belgium, and lastly to seek an occasion for giving battle, for cutting off his convoys and for seizing his magazines.” So much for the purpose. The method of achieving it is defined as follows. “General Hatry, in order to attain the object of these instructions, will have with him the minimum of wagons. He is to live at the expense of the enemy as much as possible, and to send back into the interior of the Republic whatever may be useful to it; he will maintain his communications with Longwy, report every movement to me, and when necessary to the Committee of Public Safety and to the minister of war, maintain order and discipline, and firmly oppose every sort of pillage.” How the last of these instructions was to be reconciled with the rest, Hatry was not informed. In fact, it was ignored. “I am far from believing,” wrote the representative on mission Gillet, “that we ought to adopt the principles of philanthropy with which we began the war.”

At the moment when, on these terms, Jourdan’s advance was resumed, the general situation east of the Scheldt was as follows: The Allies’ centre under Coburg had captured Landrecies, and now (May 4) lay around that place, about 65,000 strong, while the left under Kaunitz (27,000) was somewhat north of Maubeuge, with detachments south of the Sambre as far as the Meuse. Beyond these again were the detachment of Beaulieu (8000) near Arlon, and another, 9000 strong, around Trier. On the side of the French, the Army of the Moselle (41,000 effectives) was in cordon between Saargemünd and Longwy; the Army of the Ardennes (22,000) between Beaumont and Givet; of the Army of the North, the right wing (38,000) in the area Beaumont—Maubeuge and the centre (24,000) about Guise. In the aggregate the allied field armies numbered 139,000 men, those of the French 203,000. Tactically the disproportion was sufficient to give the latter the victory, if, strategically, it could be made effective at a given time and place. But the French had mobility as a remedy for over-extension, and though their close massing on the extreme flanks left no more than equal forces opposite Coburg in the centre, the latter felt unable either to go forward or to close to one flank when on his right the storm was brewing at Menin and Tournai, and on his left Kaunitz reported the gathering of important masses of the French around Beaumont.

Thus the initiative passed over to the French, but they missed their opportunity, as Coburg had missed his in 1793. Pichegru’s right was ordered to march on Mons, and his left to master the navigation of the Scheldt so as to reduce the Allies to wagon-drawn supplies—the latter an objective dear to the 18th-century general; while Jourdan’s task, as we know, was to conquer the Liége or Namur country without unduly stripping the cordon on the Saar and the Moselle. Jourdan’s orders and original purpose were to get Beaulieu out of his way by the usual strategical tricks, and to march through the Ardennes as rapidly as possible, living on what supplies he could pick up from the enemy or the inhabitants. But he had scarcely started when Beaulieu made his existence felt by attacking a French post at Bouillon. Thereupon Jourdan made the active enemy, instead of Namur, his first object.

The movement of the operative portion of the Army of the Moselle began on the 21st of May from Longwy through Arlon towards Neufchâteau. Irregular fighting, sometimes with the Austrians, sometimes with the bitterly hostile inhabitants, marked its progress. Beaulieu was nowhere forced into a battle. But fortune was on Jourdan’s side. The Austrians were a detachment of Coburg’s army, not an independent force, and when threatened they retired towards Ciney, drawing Jourdan after them in the very direction in which he desired to go. On the 28th the French, after a vain detour made in the hope of forcing Beaulieu to fight—“les esclaves n’osent pas se mesurer avec des hommes libres,” wrote Jourdan in disgust,—reached Ciney, and there heard that the enemy had fallen back to a strongly entrenched position on the east bank of the Meuse near Namur. Jourdan was preparing to attack them there, when considerations of quite another kind intervened to change his direction, and thereby to produce the drama of Charleroi and Fleurus—which military historians have asserted to be the foreseen result of the initial plan.

The method of “living on the country” had failed lamentably in the Ardennes, and Jourdan, though he had spoken of changing his line of supply from Arlon to Carignan, then to Mézières and so on as his march progressed, was still actually living from hand to mouth on the convoys that arrived intermittently from his original base. When he sought to take what he needed from the towns on the Meuse, he infringed on the preserves of the Army of the Ardennes.6 The advance, therefore, came for the moment to a standstill, while Beaulieu, solicitous for the safety of Charleroi—in which fortress he had a magazine—called up the outlying troops left behind on the Moselle to rejoin him by way of Bastogne. At the same moment (29th) Jourdan received new orders from Paris—(a) to take Dinant and Charleroi and to clear the country between the Meuse and the Sambre, and (b) to attack Namur, either by assault or by regular siege. In the latter case the bulk of the forces were to form a covering army beyond the place, to demonstrate towards Nivelles, Louvain and Liége, and to serve at need as a support to the right flank of the Ardennes Army. From these orders and from the action of the enemy the campaign at last took a definite shape.

When the Army of the Moselle passed over to the left bank of the Meuse, it was greeted by the distant roar of guns towards Charleroi and by news that the Army of the Ardennes, which had already twice been defeated by Kaunitz, Charleroi. was for the third time deeply and unsuccessfully engaged beyond the Sambre. The resumption of the march again complicated the supply question, and it was only slowly that the army advanced towards Charleroi, sweeping the country before it and extending its right towards Namur. But at last on the 3rd of June the concentration of parts of three armies on the Sambre was effected. Jourdan took command of the united force (Army of the Sambre and Meuse) with a strong hand, the 40,000 new-comers inspired fresh courage in the beaten Ardennes troops, and in the sudden dominating enthusiasm of the moment pillaging and straggling almost ceased. Troops that had secured bread shared it with less fortunate comrades, and even the Liégois peasantry made free gifts of supplies. “We must believe,” says the French general staff of to-day, “that the idea symbolized by the Tricolour, around which marched ever these sansculottes, shoeless and hungry, unchained a mysterious force that preceded our columns and aided the achievement of military success.”

Friction, however, arose between Jourdan and the generals of the Ardennes Army, to whom the representatives thought it well to give a separate mission. This detachment of 18,000 men was followed by another, of 16,000, to keep touch with Maubeuge. Deducting another 6000 for the siege of Charleroi, when this should be made, the covering army destined to fight the Imperialists dwindled to 55,000 out of 96,000 effectives. Even now, we see, the objective was not primarily the enemy’s army. The Republican leaders desired to strike out beyond the Sambre, and as a preliminary to capture Charleroi. They would not, however, risk the loss of their connexion with Maubeuge before attaining the new foothold.

Meanwhile, Tourcoing and Tournai had at last convinced Coburg that Pichegru was his most threatening opponent, and he had therefore, though with many misgivings, decided to move towards his right, leaving the prince of Orange with not more than 45,000 men on the side of Maubeuge-Charleroi-Namur.

Jourdan crossed the Sambre on the 12th of June, practically unopposed. Charleroi was rapidly invested and the covering army extended in a semicircular position. For the fourth time the Allies counter-attacked successfully, and after a severe struggle the French had to abandon their positions and their siege works and to recross the Sambre (June 16). But the army was not beaten. On the contrary, it was only desirous of having its revenge for a stroke of ill-fortune, due, the soldiers said, to 181 the fog and to the want of ammunition. The fierce threats of St Just (who had joined the army) to faire tomber les têtes if more energy were not shown were unnecessary, and within two days the army was advancing again. On the 18th Jourdan’s columns recrossed the river and extended around Charleroi in the same positions as before. This time, having in view the weariness of his troops and their heavy losses on the 16th, the prince of Orange allowed the siege to proceed. His reasons for so doing furnish an excellent illustration of the different ideas and capacities of a professional army and a “nation in arms.” “The Imperial troops,” wrote General Alvintzi, “are very fatigued. We have fought nine times since the 10th of May, we have bivouacked constantly, and made forced marches. Further, we are short of officers.” All this, it need hardly be pointed out, applied equally to the French.

Charleroi, garrisoned by less than 3000 men, was intimidated into surrender (25th) when the third parallel was barely established. Thus the object of the first operations was achieved. As to the next neither Jourdan nor the representatives seem to have had anything further in view than the capture of more fortresses. But within twenty-four hours events had decided for them.

Coburg had quickly abandoned his intention of closing on his right wing, and (after the usual difficulties with his Allies on that side) had withdrawn 12,000 Austrians from the centre of his cordon opposite Pichegru, and made forced marches to join the prince of Orange. On the 24th of June he had collected 52,000 men at various points round Charleroi, and on the 25th he set out to relieve the little fortress. But he was in complete ignorance of the state of affairs at Charleroi. Signal guns were fired, but the woods drowned even the roar of the siege batteries, and at last a party under Lieutenant Radetzky made its way through the covering army and discovered that the place had fallen. The party was destroyed on its return, but Radetzky was reserved for greater things. He managed, though twice wounded, to rejoin Coburg with his bad news in the midst of the battle of Fleurus.

On the 26th Jourdan’s army (now some 73,000 strong) was still posted in a semicircle of entrenched posts, 20 m. in extent, round the captured town, pending the removal of the now unnecessary pontoon bridge at Marchiennes and the selection of a shorter line of defence.

Coburg was still more widely extended. Inferior in numbers as he was, he proposed to attack on an equal front, and thus gave himself, for the attack of an entrenched position, an order of battle of three men to every two yards of Fleurus. front, all reserves included. The Allies were to attack in five columns, the prince of Orange from the west and north-west towards Trazegnies and Monceau wood, Quasdanovich from the north on Gosselies, Kaunitz from the north-east, the archduke Charles from the east through Fleurus, and finally Beaulieu towards Lambusart. The scheme was worked out in such minute detail and with so entire a disregard of the chance of unforeseen incidents, that once he had given the executive command to move, the Austrian general could do no more. If every detail worked out as planned, victory would be his; if accidents happened he could do nothing to redress them, and unless these righted themselves (which was improbable in the case of the stiffly organized old armies) he could only send round the order to break off the action and retreat.

In these circumstances the battle of Fleurus is the sum rather than the product of the various fights that took place between each allied column and the French division that it met. The prince of Orange attacked at earliest dawn and gradually drove in the French left wing to Courcelles, Roux and Marchiennes, but somewhat after noon the French, under the direction for the most part of Kléber, began a series of counterstrokes which recovered the lost ground, and about 5, without waiting for Coburg’s instructions, the prince retired north-westward off the battlefield. The French centre division, under Morlot, made a gradual fighting retreat on Gosselies, followed up by the Quasdanovich column and part of Kaunitz’s force. No serious impression was made on the defenders, chiefly because the brook west of Mellet was a serious obstacle to the rigid order of the Allies and had to be bridged before their guns could be got over. Kaunitz’s column and Championnet’s division met on the battlefield of 1690. The French were gradually driven in from the outlying villages to their main position between Heppignies and Wangenies. Here the Allies, well led and taking every advantage of ground and momentary chances, had the best of it. They pressed the French hard, necessitated the intervention of such small reserves as Jourdan had available, and only gave way to the defenders’ counterstroke at the moment they received Coburg’s orders for a general retreat.

On the allied left wing the fighting was closer and more severe than at any point. Beaulieu on the extreme left advanced upon Velaine and the French positions in the woods to the south in several small groups of all arms. Here were the divisions of the Army of the Ardennes, markedly inferior in discipline and endurance to the rest, and only too mindful of their four previous reverses. For six hours, more or less, they resisted the oncoming Allies, but then, in spite of the example and the despairing appeals of their young general Marceau, they broke and fled, leaving Beaulieu free to combine with the archduke Charles, who carried Fleurus after obstinate fighting, and then pressed on towards Campinaire. Beaulieu took command of all the allied forces on this side about noon, and from then to 5 P.M. launched a series of terrible attacks on the French (Lefebvre’s division, part of the general reserve, and the remnant of Marceau’s troops) above Campinaire and Lambusart. The disciplined resolution of the imperial battalions, and the enthusiasm of the French Revolutionaries, were each at their height. The Austrians came on time after time over ground that was practically destitute of cover. Villages, farms and fields of corn caught fire. The French grew more and more excited—“No retreat to-day!” they called out to their leaders, and finally, clamouring to be led against the enemy, they had their wish. Lefebvre seized the psychological moment when the fourth attack of the Allies had failed, and (though he did not know it) the order to retreat had come from Coburg. The losses of the unit that delivered it were small, for the charge exactly responded to the moral conditions of the moment, but the proportion of killed to wounded (55 to 81) is good evidence of the intensity of the momentary conflict.

So ended the battle. Coburg had by now learned definitely that Charleroi had surrendered, and while the issue of the battle was still doubtful—for though the prince of Orange was beaten, Beaulieu was in the full tide of success—he gave (towards 3 P.M.) the order for a general retreat. This was delivered to the various commanders between 4 and 5, and these, having their men in hand even in the heat of the engagement, were able to break off the battle without undue confusion. The French were far too exhausted to pursue them (they had lost twice as many men as the Allies), and their leader had practically no formed body at hand to follow up the victory, thanks to the extraordinary dissemination of the army.

Tourcoing, Tournay and Fleurus represent the maximum result achievable under the earlier Revolutionary system of making war, and show the men and the leaders at the highest point of combined steadiness and enthusiasm they ever reached—that is, as a “Sansculotte” army. Fleurus was also the last great victory of the French, in point of time, prior to the advent of Napoleon, and may therefore be considered as illustrating the general conditions of warfare at one of the most important points in its development.

The sequel of these battles can be told in a few words. The Austrian government had, it is said, long ago decided to evacuate the Netherlands, and Coburg retired over the Meuse, practically unpursued, while the duke of York’s forces fell back in good order, though pursued by Pichegru through Flanders. The English contingent embarked for home, the rest retired through Holland into Hanoverian territory, leaving the Dutch troops to surrender to the victors. The last phase of the pursuit reflected great glory on Pichegru, for it was conducted in midwinter through a country bare of supplies and densely intersected with dykes and meres. The crowning incident was the dramatic capture of the Dutch fleet, frozen in at the Texel, by a handful of hussars who rode over the ice and browbeat the crews of the well-armed battleships into surrender. It was many years before a prince of Orange ruled again in the United provinces, while the Austrian whitecoats never again mounted guard in Brussels.

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The Rhine campaign of 1794, waged as before chiefly by the Prussians, was not of great importance. General v. Möllendorf won a victory at Kaiserslautern on the 23rd of May, but operations thereafter became spasmodic, and were soon complicated by Coburg’s retreat over the Meuse. With this event the offensive of the Allies against the French Revolution came to an inglorious end. Poland now occupied the thoughts of European statesmen, and Austria began to draw her forces on to the east. England stopped the payment of subsidies, and Prussia made the Peace of Basel on the 5th of April 1795. On the Spanish frontier the French under General Dugommier (who was killed in the last battle) were successful in almost every encounter, and Spain, too, made peace. Only the eternal enemies, France and Austria, were left face to face on the Rhine, and elsewhere, of all the Allies, Sardinia alone (see below under Italian Campaigns) continued the struggle in a half-hearted fashion.

The operations of 1795 on the Rhine present no feature of the Revolutionary Wars that other and more interesting campaigns fail to show. Austria had two armies on foot under the general command of Clerfayt, one on the upper Rhine, the other south of the Main, while Mainz was held by an army of imperial contingents. The French, Jourdan on the lower; Pichegru on the upper Rhine, had as usual superior numbers at their disposal. Jourdan combined a demonstrative frontal attack on Neuwied with an advance in force via Düsseldorf, reunited his wings beyond the river near Neuwied, and drove back the Austrians in a series of small engagements to the Main, while Pichegru passed at Mannheim and advanced towards the Neckar. But ere long both were beaten, Jourdan at Höchst and Pichegru at Mannheim, and the investment of Mainz had to be abandoned. This was followed by the invasion of the Palatinate by Clerfayt and the retreat of Jourdan to the Moselle. The position was further compromised by secret negotiations between Pichegru and the enemy for the restoration of the Bourbons. The meditated treason came to light early in the following year, and the guilty commander disappeared into the obscure ranks of the royalist secret agents till finally brought to justice in 1804.

The Campaign of 1796 in Germany

The wonder of Europe now transferred itself from the drama of the French Revolution to the equally absorbing drama of a great war on the Rhine. “Every day, for four terrible years,” wrote a German pamphleteer early in 1796, “has surpassed the one before it in grandeur and terror, and to-day surpasses all in dizzy sublimity.” That a manœuvre on the Lahn should possess an interest to the peoples of Europe surpassing that of the Reign of Terror is indeed hardly imaginable, but there was a good reason for the tense expectancy that prevailed everywhere. France’s policy was no longer defensive. She aimed at invading and “revolutionizing” the monarchies and principalities of old Europe, and to this end the campaign of 1796 was to be the great and conclusive effort. The “liberation of the oppressed” had its part in the decision, and the glory of freeing the serf easily merged itself in the glory of defeating the serf’s masters. But a still more pressing motive for carrying the war into the enemy’s country was the fact that France and the lands she had overrun could no longer subsist her armies. The Directory frankly told its generals, when they complained that their men were starving and ragged, that they would find plenty of subsistence beyond the Rhine.

On her part, Austria, no longer fettered by allied contingents nor by the expenses of a far distant campaign, could put forth more strength than on former campaigns, and as war came nearer home and the citizen saw himself threatened by “revolutionizing” and devastating armies, he ceased to hamper or to swindle the troops. Thus the duel took place on the grandest scale then known in the history of European armies. Apart from the secondary theatre of Italy, the area embraced in the struggle was a vast triangle extending from Düsseldorf to Basel and thence to Ratisbon, and Carnot sketched the outlines in accordance with the scale of the picture. He imagined nothing less than the union of the armies of the Rhine and the Riviera before the walls of Vienna. Its practicability cannot here be discussed, but it is worth contrasting the attitude of contemporaries and of later strategical theorists towards it. The former, with their empirical knowledge of war, merely thought it impracticable with the available means, but the latter have condemned it root and branch as “an operation on exterior lines.”

The scheme took shape only gradually. The first advance was made partly in search of food, partly to disengage the Palatinate, which Clerfayt had conquered in 1795. “If you have reason to believe that you would find some supplies on the Lahn, hasten thither with the greater part of your forces,” wrote the Directory to Jourdan (Army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, 72,000) on the 29th of March. He was to move at once, before the Austrians could concentrate, and to pass the Rhine at Düsseldorf, thereby bringing back the centre of the Jourdan and Moreau. enemy over the river. He was, further, to take every advantage of their want of concentration to deliver blow after blow, and to do his utmost to break them up completely. A fortnight later Moreau (Army of the Rhine-and-Moselle, 78,000) was ordered to take advantage of Jourdan’s move, which would draw most of the Austrian forces to the Mainz region, to enter the Breisgau and Suabia. “You will attack Austria at home, and capture her magazines. You will enter a new country, the resources of which, properly handled, should suffice for the needs of the Army of the Rhine-and-Moselle.”

Jourdan, therefore, was to take upon himself the destruction of the enemy, Moreau the invasion of South Germany. The first object of both was to subsist their armies beyond the Rhine, the second to defeat the armies and terrorize the populations of the empire. Under these instructions the campaign opened. Jourdan crossed at Düsseldorf and reached the Lahn, but the enemy concentrated against him very swiftly and he had to retire over the river. Still, if he had not been able to “break them up completely,” he had at any rate drawn on himself the weight of the Austrian army, and enabled Moreau to cross at Strassburg without much difficulty.

The Austrians were now commanded by the archduke Charles, who, after all detachments had been made, disposed of some 56,000 men. At first he employed the bulk of this force against Jourdan, but on hearing of Moreau’s progress he returned to the Neckar country with 20,000 men, leaving Feldzeugmeister v. Wartensleben with 36,000 to observe Jourdan. In later years he admitted himself that his own force was far too small to deal with Moreau, who, he probably thought, would retire after a few manœuvres.

But by now the two French generals were aiming at something more than alternate raids and feints. Carnot had set before them the ideal of a decisive battle as the great object. Jourdan was instructed, if the archduke turned on The archduke’s plan. Moreau, to follow him up with all speed and to bring him to action. Moreau, too, was not retreating but advancing. The two armies, Moreau’s and the archduke’s, met in a straggling and indecisive battle at Malsch on the 9th of July, and soon afterwards Charles learned that Jourdan had recrossed the Rhine and was driving Wartensleben before him. He thereupon retired both armies from the Rhine valley into the interior, hoping that at least the French would detach large forces to besiege the river fortresses. Disappointed of this, and compelled to face a very grave situation, he resorted to an expedient which may be described in his own words: “to retire both armies step by step without committing himself to a battle, and to seize the first opportunity to unite them so as to throw himself with superior or at least equal strength on one of the two hostile enemies.” This is the ever-recurring idea of “interior lines.” It was not new, for Frederick the Great had used similar means in similar circumstances, as had Souham at Tourcoing and even Dampierre at Valenciennes. Nor was it differentiated, as were Napoleon’s operations in this same year, by the deliberate use of a small containing force at one point to obtain relative superiority at another. A general of the 18th century did not believe in the efficacy of superior numbers—had not Frederick the Great disproved it?—and for him operations on “interior lines” were simply successive blows at successive targets, the efficacy of the blow in each case being dependent chiefly on his own personal qualities and skill as a general on the field of battle. In the present case the point to be observed is not the expedient, which was dictated by the circumstances, but the courage of the young general, who, unlike Wartensleben and the rest of his generals, unlike, too, Moreau and 183 Jourdan themselves, surmounted difficulties instead of lamenting them.

On the other side, Carnot, of course, foresaw this possibility. He warned the generals not to allow the enemy to “use his forces sometimes against one, sometimes against the other, as he did in the last campaign,” and ordered them to go forward respectively into Franconia and into the country of the upper Neckar, with a view to seeking out and defeating the enemy’s army. But the plan of operations soon grew bolder. Jourdan was informed on the 21st of July that if he reached the Regnitz without meeting the enemy, or if his arrival there forced the latter to retire rapidly to the Danube, he was not to hesitate to advance to Ratisbon and even to Passau if the disorganization of the enemy admitted it, but in these contingencies he was to detach a force into Bohemia to levy contributions. “We presume that the enemy is too weak to offer a successful resistance and will have united his forces on the Danube; we hope that our two armies will act in unison to rout him completely. Each is, in any case, strong enough to attack by itself, and nothing is so pernicious as slowness in war.” Evidently the fear that the two Austrian armies would unite against one of their assailants had now given place to something like disdain.

This was due in all probability to the rapidity with which Moreau was driving the archduke before him. After a brief stand on the Neckar at Cannstadt, the Austrians, only 25,000 strong, fell back to the Rauhe Alb, where they halted again, to cover their magazines at Ulm and Günzburg, towards the end of July. Wartensleben was similarly falling back before Jourdan, though the latter, starting considerably later than Moreau, had not advanced so far. The details of the successive positions occupied by Wartensleben need not be stated; all that concerns the general development of the campaign is the fact that the hitherto independent leader of the “Lower Rhine Army” resented the loss of his freedom of action, and besides lamentations opposed a dull passive resistance to all but the most formal orders of the prince. Many weeks passed before this was overcome sufficiently for his leader even to arrange for the contemplated combination, and in these weeks the archduke was being driven back day by day, and the German principalities were falling away one by one as the French advanced and preached the revolutionary formula. In such circumstances as these—the general facts, if not the causes, were patent enough—it was natural that the confident Paris strategists should think chiefly of the profits of their enterprise and ignore the fears of the generals at the front. But the latter were justified in one important respect; their operating armies had seriously diminished in numbers, Jourdan disposing of not more than 45,000 and Moreau of about 50,000. The archduke had now, owing to the arrival of a few detachments from the Black Forest and elsewhere, about 34,000 men, Wartensleben almost exactly the same, and the former, for some reason which has never been fully explained but has its justification in psychological factors, suddenly turned Neresheim. and fought a long, severe and straggling battle above Neresheim (August 11). This did not, however, give him much respite, and on the 12th and 13th he retired over the Danube. At this date Wartensleben was about Amberg, almost as far away from the other army as he had been on the Rhine, owing to the necessity of retreating round instead of through the principality of Bayreuth, which was a Prussian possession and could therefore make its neutrality respected.

Hitherto Charles had intended to unite his armies on the Danube against Moreau. His later choice of Jourdan’s army as the objective of his combination grew out of circumstances and in particular out of the brilliant reconnaissance work of a cavalry brigadier of the Lower Rhine Army, Nauendorff. This general’s reports—he was working in the country south and south-east of Nürnberg, Wartensleben being at Amberg—indicated first an advance of Jourdan’s army from Forchheim through Nürnberg to the south, and induced the archduke, on the 12th, to begin a concentration of his own army towards Ingolstadt. This was a purely defensive measure, but Nauendorff reported on the 13th and 14th that the main columns of the French were swinging away to the east against Wartensleben’s front and inner flank, and on the 14th he boldly suggested the idea that decided the campaign. “If your Royal Highness will or can advance 12,000 men against Jourdan’s rear, he is lost. We could not have a better opportunity.” When this message arrived at headquarters the archduke had already issued orders to the same effect. Lieutenant Field Marshal Count Latour, with 30,000 men, was to keep Moreau occupied—another expedient of the moment, due to the very close pressure of Moreau’s advance, and the failure of the attempt to put him out of action at Neresheim. The small remainder of the army, with a few detachments gathered en route, in all about 27,000 men, began to recross the Danube on the 14th, and slowly advanced north on a broad front, its leader being now sure that at some point on his line he would encounter the French, whether they were heading for Ratisbon or Amberg. Meanwhile, the Directory had, still acting on the theory of the archduke’s weakness, ordered Moreau to combine the operations with those of Bonaparte in Italian Tirol, and Jourdan to turn both flanks of his immediate opponent, and thus to prevent his joining the archduke, as well as his retreat into Bohemia. And curiously enough it was this latter, and not Moreau’s move, which suggested to the archduke that his chance had come. The chance was, in fact, one dear to the 18th century general, catching his opponent in the act of executing a manœuvre. So far from “exterior lines” being fatal to Jourdan, it was not until the French general began to operate against Wartensleben’s inner flank that the archduke’s opportunity came.

The decisive events of the campaign can be described very briefly, the ideas that directed them having been made clear. The long thin line of the archduke wrapped itself round Jourdan’s right flank near Amberg, while Wartensleben Amberg and Würzburg. fought him in front. The battle (August 24) was a series of engagements between the various columns that met; it was a repetition in fact of Fleurus, without the intensity of fighting spirit that redeems that battle from dulness. Success followed, not upon bravery or even tactics, but upon the pre-existing strategical conditions. At the end of the day the French retired, and next morning the archduke began another wide extension to his left, hoping to head them off. This consumed several days. In the course of it Jourdan attempted to take advantage of his opponent’s dissemination to regain the direct road to Würzburg, but the attempt was defeated by an almost fortuitous combination of forces at the threatened point. More effective, indeed, than this indirect pursuit was the very active hostility of the peasantry, who had suffered in Jourdan’s advance and retaliated so effectually during his retreat that the army became thoroughly demoralized, both by want of food and by the strain of incessant sniping. Defeated again at Würzburg on the 3rd of September, Jourdan continued his retreat to the Lahn, and finally withdrew the shattered army over the Rhine, partly by Düsseldorf, partly by Neuwied. In the last engagement on the Lahn the young and brilliant Marceau was mortally wounded. Far away in Bavaria, Moreau had meantime been driving Latour from one line of resistance to another. On receiving the news of Jourdan’s reverses, however, he made a rapid and successful retreat to Strassburg, evading the prince’s army, which had ascended the Rhine valley to head him off, in the nick of time.

This celebrated campaign is pre-eminently strategical in its character, in that the positions and movements anterior to the battle preordained its issue. It raised the reputation of the archduke Charles to the highest point, and deservedly, for he wrested victory from the most desperate circumstances by the skilful and resolute employment of his one advantage. But this was only possible because Moreau and Jourdan were content to accept strategical failure without seeking to redress the balance by hard fighting. The great question of this campaign is, why did Moreau and Jourdan fail against inferior numbers, when in Italy Bonaparte with a similar army against a similar opponent won victory after victory against equal and superior forces? The answer will not be supplied by any theory of “exterior and 184 interior lines.” It lies far deeper. So far as it is possible to summarize it in one phrase, it lies in the fact that though the Directory meant this campaign to be the final word on the Revolutionary War, for the nation at large this final word had been said at Fleurus. The troops were still the nation; they no longer fought for a cause and for bare existence, and Moreau and Jourdan were too closely allied in ideas and sympathies with the misplaced citizen soldiers they commanded to be able to dominate their collective will. In default of a cause, however, soldiers will fight for a man, and this brings us by a natural sequence of ideas to the war in Italy.

The War in Italy 1793-97

Hitherto we have ignored the operations on the Italian frontier, partly because they were of minor importance and partly because the conditions out of which Napoleon’s first campaign arose can be best considered in connexion with that campaign itself, from which indeed the previous operations derive such light as they possess. It has been mentioned that in 1792 the French overran Savoy and Nice. In 1793 the Sardinian army and a small auxiliary corps of Austrians waged a desultory mountain warfare against the Army of the Alps about Briançon and the Army of Italy on the Var. That furious offensive on the part of the French, which signalized the year 1793 elsewhere, was made impossible here by the counter-revolution in the cities of the Midi.

In 1794, when this had been crushed, the intention of the French government was to take the offensive against the Austro-Sardinians. The first operation was to be the capture of Oneglia. The concentration of large forces in the lower Rhone valley had naturally infringed upon the areas told off for the provisioning of the Armies of the Alps (Kellermann) and of Italy (Dumerbion); indeed, the sullen population could hardly be induced to feed the troops suppressing the revolt, still less the distant frontier armies. Thus the only source of supply was the Riviera of Genoa: “Our connexion with this district is imperilled by the corsairs of Oneglia (a Sardinian town) owing to the cessation of our operations afloat. The army is living from hand to mouth,” wrote the younger Robespierre in September 1793. Vessels bearing supplies from Genoa could not avoid the corsairs by taking the open sea, for there the British fleet was supreme. Carnot therefore ordered the Army of Italy to capture Oneglia, and 21,000 men (the rest of the 67,000 effectives were held back for coast defence) began operations in April. The French left moved against the enemy’s positions on the main road over the Col di Tenda, the centre towards Ponte di Nava, and the right Saorgio. along the Riviera. All met with success, thanks to Masséna’s bold handling of the centre column. Not only was Oneglia captured, but also the Col di Tenda. Napoleon Bonaparte served in these affairs on the headquarter staff. Meantime the Army of the Alps had possessed itself of the Little St Bernard and Mont Cenis, and the Republicans were now masters of several routes into Piedmont (May). But the Alpine roads merely led to fortresses, and both Carnot and Bonaparte—Napoleon had by now captivated the younger Robespierre and become the leading spirit in Dumerbion’s army—considered that the Army of the Alps should be weakened to the profit of the Army of Italy, and that the time had come to disregard the feeble neutrality of Genoa, and to advance over the Col di Tenda.

Napoleon’s first suggestion for a rapid condensation of the French cordon, and an irresistible blow on the centre of the Allies by Tenda-Coni,7 came to nothing owing to the waste of time in negotiations between the generals and the Napoleon in 1794. distant Committee, and meanwhile new factors came into play. The capture of the pass of Argentera by the right wing of the Army of the Alps suggested that the main effort should be made against the barrier fortress of Demonte, but here again Napoleon proposed a concentration of effort on the primary and economy of force in the secondary objective. About the same time, in a memoir on the war in general, he laid down his most celebrated maxim: “The principles of war are the same as those of a siege. Fire must be concentrated on one point, and as soon as the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken and the rest is nothing.” In the domain of tactics he was and remains the principal exponent of the art of breaking the equilibrium, and already he imagined the solution of problems of policy and strategy on the same lines. “Austria is the great enemy; Austria crushed, Germany, Spain, Italy fall of themselves. We must not disperse, but concentrate our attack.” Napoleon argued that Austria could be effectively wounded by an offensive against Piedmont, and even more effectively by an ulterior advance from Italian soil into Germany. In pursuance of the single aim he asked for the appointment of a single commander-in-chief to hold sway from Bayonne to the Lake of Geneva, and for the rejection of all schemes for “revolutionizing” Italy till after the defeat of the arch-enemy.

Operations, however, did not after all take either of these forms. The younger Robespierre perished with his brother in the coup d’état of 9th Thermidor, the advance was suspended, and Bonaparte, amongst other leading spirits of the Army of Italy, was arrested and imprisoned. Profiting by this moment, Austria increased her auxiliary corps. An Austrian general took command of the whole of the allied forces, and pronounced a threat from the region of Cairo (where the Austrians took their place on the left wing of the combined army) towards the Riviera. The French, still dependent on Genoa for supplies, had to take the offensive at once to save themselves from starvation, and the result was the expedition of Dego, planned chiefly by Napoleon, who had been released from prison and was at headquarters, though unemployed. The movement began on the 17th of September; and although the Austrian general Colloredo repulsed an attack at Dego (Sept. 21) he retreated to Acqui, and the incipient offensive of the Allies ended abruptly.

The first months of the winter of 1794-1795 were spent in re-equipping the troops, who stood in sore need after their rapid movements in the mountains. For the future operations, the enforced condensation of the army on its right wing with the object of protecting its line of supply to Genoa and the dangers of its cramped situation on the Riviera suggested a plan roughly resembling one already recommended by Napoleon, who had since the affair of Dego become convinced that the way into Italy was through the Apennines and not the Alps. The essence of this was to anticipate the enemy by a very early and rapid advance from Vado towards Carcare by the Ceva road, the only good road of which the French disposed and which they significantly called the chemin de canon.

The plan, however, came to nothing; the Committee, which now changed its personnel at fixed intervals, was in consequence wavering and non-committal, troops were withdrawn for a projected invasion of Corsica, and in November Schérer and Kellermann. 1794 Dumerbion was replaced by Schérer, who assembled only 17,000 of his 54,000 effectives for field operations, and selected as his line of advance the Col di Tenda-Coni road. Schérer, besides being hostile to any suggestion emanating from Napoleon, was impressed with the apparent danger to his right wing concentrated in the narrow Riviera, which it was at this stage impossible to avert by a sudden and early assumption of the offensive. After a brief tenure Schérer was transferred to the Spanish frontier, but Kellermann, who now received command of the Army of Italy in addition to his own, took the same view as his predecessor—the view of the ordinary general. But not even the Schérer plan was put into execution, for spring had scarcely arrived when the prospect of renewed revolts in the south of France practically paralysed the army.

This encouraged the enemy to deliver the blow that had so long been feared. The combined forces, under Devins,—the Sardinians, the Austrian auxiliary corps and the newly arrived Austrian main army,—advanced together and forced the French right wing to evacuate Vado and the Genoese littoral. But at this juncture the conclusion of peace with Spain released the Pyrenees armies, and Schérer returned to the Army of Italy at the head of reinforcements. He was faced with a difficult situation, 185 but he had the means wherewith to meet it, as Napoleon promptly pointed out. Up to this, Napoleon said, the French commanded the mountain crest, and therefore covered Savoy and Nice, and also Oneglia, Loano and Vado, the ports of the Riviera. But now that Vado was lost the breach was made. Genoa was cut off, and the south of France was the only remaining resource for the army commissariat. Vado must therefore be retaken and the line reopened to Genoa, and to do this it was essential first to close up the over-extended cordon—and with the greatest rapidity, lest the enemy, with the shorter line to move on, should gather at the point of contact before the French—and to advance on Vado. Further, knowing (as every one knew) that the king of Sardinia was not inclined to continue the struggle indefinitely, he predicted that this ruler would make peace once the French army had established itself in his dominions, and for this the way into the interior, he asserted, was the great road Savona-Ceva. But Napoleon’s mind ranged beyond the immediate future. He calculated that once the French advanced the Austrians would seek to cover Lombardy, the Piedmontese Turin, and this separation, already morally accomplished, it was to be the French general’s task to accentuate in fact. Next, Sardinia having been coerced into peace, the Army of Italy would expel the Austrians from Lombardy, and connect its operations with those of the French in South Germany by way of Tirol. The supply question, once the soldiers had gained the rich valley of the Po, would solve itself.

This was the essence of the first of four memoranda on this subject prepared by Napoleon in his Paris office. The second indicated the means of coercing Sardinia—first the Austrians were to be driven or scared away towards Loano. Alessandria, then the French army would turn sharp to the left, driving the Sardinians eastward and north-eastward through Ceva, and this was to be the signal for the general invasion of Piedmont from all sides. In the third paper he framed an elaborate plan for the retaking of Vado, and in the fourth he summarized the contents of the other three. Having thus cleared his own mind as to the conditions and the solution of the problem, he did his best to secure the command for himself.

The measures recommended by Napoleon were translated into a formal and detailed order to recapture Vado. To Napoleon the miserable condition of the Army of Italy was the most urgent incentive to prompt action. In Schérer’s judgment, however, the army was unfit to take the field, and therefore ex hypothesi to attack Vado, without thorough reorganization, and it was only in November that the advance was finally made. It culminated, thanks once more to the resolute Masséna, in the victory of Loano (November 23-24). But Schérer thought more of the destitution of his own army than of the fruits of success, and contented himself with resuming possession of the Riviera.

Meanwhile the Mentor whose suggestions and personality were equally repugnant to Schérer had undergone strange vicissitudes of fortune—dismissal from the headquarters’ staff, expulsion from the list of general officers, and then the “whiff of grapeshot” of 13th Vendémiaire, followed shortly by his marriage with Josephine, and his nomination to command the Army of Italy. These events had neither shaken his cold resolution nor disturbed his balance.

The Army of Italy spent the winter of 1795-1796 as before in the narrow Riviera, while on the one side, just over the mountains, lay the Austro-Sardinians, and on the other, out of range of the coast batteries but ready to pounce on the Napoleon in command. supply ships, were the British frigates. On Bonaparte’s left Kellermann, with no more than 18,000, maintained a string of posts between Lake Geneva and the Argentera as before. Of the Army of Italy, 7000 watched the Tenda road and 20,000 men the coast-line. There remained for active operations some 27,000 men, ragged, famished and suffering in every way in spite of their victory of Loano. The Sardinian and Austrian auxiliaries (Colli), 25,000 men, lay between Mondovi and Ceva, a force strung out in the Alpine valleys opposed Kellermann, and the main Austrian army (commanded by Beaulieu), in widely extended cantonments between Acqui and Milan, numbered 27,000 field troops. Thus the short-lived concentration of all the allied forces for the battle against Schérer had ended in a fresh separation. Austria was far more concerned with Poland than with the moribund French question, and committed as few of her troops as possible to this distant and secondary theatre of war. As for Piedmont, “peace” was almost the universal cry, even within the army. All this scarcely affected the regimental spirit and discipline of the Austrian squadrons and battalions, which had now recovered from the defeat of Loano. But they were important factors for the new general-in-chief on the Riviera, and formed the basis of his strategy.

Napoleon’s first task was far more difficult than the writing of memoranda. He had to grasp the reins and to prepare his troops, morally and physically, for active work. It was not merely that a young general with many enemies, a political favourite of the moment, had been thrust upon the army. The army itself was in a pitiable condition. Whole companies with their officers went plundering in search of mere food, the horses had never received as much as half-rations for a year past, and even the generals were half-starved. Thousands of men were barefooted and hundreds were without arms. But in a few days he had secured an almost incredible ascendancy over the sullen, starved, half-clothed army.

“Soldiers,” he told them, “you are famished and nearly naked. The government owes you much, but can do nothing for you. Your patience, your courage, do you honour, but give you no glory, no advantage. I will lead you into the most fertile plains of the world. There you will find great towns, rich provinces. There you will find honour, glory and riches. Soldiers of Italy, will you be wanting in courage?”

Such words go far, and little as he was able to supply material deficiencies—all he could do was to expel rascally contractors, sell a captured privateer for £5000 and borrow £2500 from Genoa—he cheerfully told the Directory on the 28th of March that “the worst was over.” He augmented his army of operations to about 40,000, at the expense of the coast divisions, and set on foot also two small cavalry divisions, mounted on the half-starved horses that had survived the winter. Then he announced that the army was ready and opened the campaign.

The first plan, emanating from Paris, was that, after an expedition towards Genoa to assist in raising a loan there, the army should march against Beaulieu, previously neutralizing the Sardinians by the occupation of Ceva. When Beaulieu was beaten it was thought probable that the Piedmontese would enter into an alliance with the French against their former comrades. A second plan, however, authorized the general to begin by subduing the Piedmontese to the extent necessary to bring about peace and alliance, and on this Napoleon acted. If the present separation of the Allies continued, he proposed to overwhelm the Sardinians first, before the Austrians could assemble from winter quarters, and then to turn on Beaulieu. If, on the other hand, the Austrians, before he could strike his blow, united with Colli, he proposed to frighten them into separating again by moving on Acqui and Alessandria. Hence Carcare, where the road from Acqui joined the “cannon-road,” was the first objective of his march, and from there he could manœuvre and widen the breach between the allied armies. His scattered left wing would assist in the attack on the Sardinians as well as it could—for the immediate attack on the Austrians its co-operation would of course have been out of the question. In any case he grudged every week spent in administrative preparation. The delay due to this, as a matter of fact, allowed a new situation to develop. Beaulieu was himself the first to move, and he moved towards Genoa instead of towards his Allies. The gap between the two allied wings was thereby widened, but it was no longer possible for the French to use it, for their plan of destroying Colli while Beaulieu was ineffective had collapsed.

In connexion with the Genoese loan, and to facilitate the movement of supply convoys, a small French force had been pushed forward to Voltri. Bonaparte ordered it back as soon as he arrived at the front, but the alarm was given. The Austrians 186 broke up from winter quarters at once, and rather than lose the food supplies at Voltri, Bonaparte actually reinforced Masséna at that place, and gave him orders to hold on as long as possible, cautioning him only to watch his left rear (Montenotte). But he did not abandon his purpose. Starting from the new conditions, he devised other means, as we shall see, for reducing Beaulieu to ineffectiveness. Meanwhile Beaulieu’s plan of offensive operations, such as they were, developed. The French advance to Voltri had not only spurred him into activity, but convinced him that the bulk of the French army lay east of Savona. He therefore made Voltri the objective of a converging Opening movements. attack, not with the intention of destroying the French army but with that of “cutting its communications with Genoa,” and expelling it from “the only place in the Riviera where there were sufficient ovens to bake its bread.” (Beaulieu to the Aulic Council, 15 April.) The Sardinians and auxiliary Austrians were ordered to extend leftwards on Dego to close the gap that Beaulieu’s advance on Genoa-Voltri opened up, which they did, though only half-heartedly and in small force, for, unlike Beaulieu, they knew that masses of the enemy were still in the western stretch of the Riviera. The rightmost of Beaulieu’s own columns was on the road between Acqui and Savona with orders to seize Monte Legino as an advanced post, the others were to converge towards Voltri from the Genoa side and the mountain passes about Campofreddo and Sassello. The wings were therefore so far connected that Colli wrote to Beaulieu on this day “the enemy will never dare to place himself between our two armies.” The event belied the prediction, and the proposed minor operation against granaries and bakeries became the first act of a decisive campaign.

On the night of the 9th of April the French were grouped as follows: brigades under Garnier and Macquard at the Finestre and Tenda passes, Sérurier’s division and Rusca’s brigade east of Garessio; Augereau’s division about Loano, Meynier’s at Finale, Laharpe’s at Savona with an outpost on the Monte Legino, and Cervoni’s brigade at Voltri. Masséna was in general charge of the last-named units. The cavalry was far in rear beyond Loano. Colli’s army, excluding the troops in the valleys that led into Dauphiné, was around Coni and Mondovi-Ceva, the latter group connecting with Beaulieu by a detachment under Provera between Millesimo and Carcare. Of Beaulieu’s army, Argenteau’s division, still concentrating to the front in many small bodies, extended over the area Acqui-Dego-Sassello. Vukassovich’s brigade was equally extended between Ovada and the mountain-crests above Voltri, and Pittoni’s division was grouped around Gavi and the Bocchetta, the two last units being destined for the attack on Voltri. Farther to the rear was Sebottendorf’s division around Alessandria-Tortona.

On the afternoon of the 10th Beaulieu delivered his blow at Voltri, not, as he anticipated, against three-quarters of the French army, but against Cervoni’s detachment. This, after a long irregular fight, slipped away in the night to Savona. Discovering his mistake next morning, Beaulieu sent back some of his battalions to join Argenteau. But there was no road by which they could do so save the détour through Acqui and Dego, and long before they arrived Argenteau’s advance on Monte Legino had forced on the crisis. On the 11th (a day behind time), this general drove in the French outposts, but he soon came on three battalions under Colonel Rampon, who threw himself into some old earthworks that lay near, and said to his men, “We must win or die here, my friends.” His redoubt and his men stood the trial well, and when day broke on the 12th Bonaparte was ready to deliver his first “Napoleon-stroke.”

The principle that guided him in the subsequent operations may be called “superior numbers at the decisive point.” Touch had been gained with the enemy all along the long line between the Tenda and Voltri, and he decided to Montenotte. concentrate swiftly upon the nearest enemy—Argenteau. Augereau’s division, or such part of it as could march at once, was ordered to Mallare, picking up here and there on the way a few horsemen and guns. Masséna, with 9000 men, was to send two brigades in the direction of Carcare and Altare, and with the third to swing round Argenteau’s right and to head for Montenotte village in his rear. Laharpe with 7000 (it had become clear that the enemy at Voltri would not pursue their advantage) was to join Rampon, leaving only Cervoni and two battalions in Savona. Sérurier and Rusca were to keep the Sardinians in front of them occupied. The far-distant brigades of Garnier and Macquard stood fast, but the cavalry drew eastward as quickly as its condition permitted. In rain and mist on the early morning of the 12th the French marched up from all quarters, while Argenteau’s men waited in their cold bivouacs for light enough to resume their attack on Monte Legino. About 9 the mists cleared, and heavy fighting began, but Laharpe held the mountain, and the vigorous Masséna with his nearest brigade stormed forward against Argenteau’s right. A few hours later, seeing Augereau’s columns heading for their line of retreat, the Austrians retired, sharply pressed, on Dego. The threatened intervention of Provera was checked by Augereau’s presence at Carcare.

Montenotte was a brilliant victory, and one can imagine its effects on the but lately despondent soldiers of the Army of Italy, for all imagined that Beaulieu’s main body had been defeated. This was far from being the case, however, and although the French spent the night of the battle at Cairo-Carcare-Montenotte, midway between the allied wings, only two-thirds of Argenteau’s force, and none of the other divisions, had been beaten, and the heaviest fighting was to come. This became evident on the afternoon of the 13th, but meanwhile Bonaparte, eager to begin at once the subjugation of the Piedmontese (for which purpose he wanted to bring Sérurier and Rusca into play) sent only Laharpe’s division and a few details of Masséna’s, under the latter, towards Dego. These were to protect the main attack from interference by the forces that had been Millesimo. engaged at Montenotte (presumed to be Beaulieu’s main body), the said main attack being delivered by Augereau’s division, reinforced by most of Masséna’s, on the positions held by Provera. The latter, only 1000 strong to Augereau’s 9000, shut himself in the castle of Cossaria, which he defended à la Rampon against a series of furious assaults. Not until the morning of the 14th was his surrender secured, after his ammunition and food had been exhausted.

Argenteau also won a day’s respite on the 13th, for Laharpe did not join Masséna till late, and nothing took place opposite Dego but a little skirmishing. During the day Bonaparte saw 187 for himself that he had overrated the effects of Montenotte. Beaulieu, on the other hand, underrated them, treating it as a mishap which was more than counterbalanced by his own success in “cutting off the French from Genoa.” He began to reconstruct his line on the front Dego-Sassello, trusting to Colli to harry the French until the Voltri troops had finished their détour through Acqui and rejoined Argenteau. This, of course, presumed that Argenteau’s troops were intact and Colli’s able to move, which was not the case with either. Not until the afternoon of the 14th did Beaulieu place a few extra battalions at Argenteau’s disposal “to be used only in case of extreme necessity,” and order Vukassovich from the region of Sassello to “make a diversion” against the French right with two battalions.

Thus Argenteau, already shaken, was exposed to destruction. On the 14th, after Provera’s surrender, Masséna and Laharpe, reinforced until they had nearly a two-to-one superiority, stormed Dego and killed or captured 3000 of Dego. Argenteau’s 5500 men, the remnant retreating in disorder to Acqui. But nothing was done towards the accomplishment of the purpose of destroying Colli on that day, save that Sérurier and Rusca began to close in to meet the main body between Ceva and Millesimo. Moreover, the victory at Dego had produced its usual results on the wild fighting swarms of the Republicans, who threw themselves like hungry wolves on the little town, without pursuing the beaten enemy or even placing a single outpost on the Acqui road. In this state, during the early hours of the 15th, Vukassovich’s brigade,8 marching up from Sassello, surprised them, and they broke and fled in an instant. The whole morning had to be spent in rallying them at Cairo, and Bonaparte had for the second time to postpone his union with Sérurier and Rusca, who meanwhile, isolated from one another and from the main army, were groping forward in the mountains. A fresh assault on Dego was ordered, and after very severe fighting, Masséna and Laharpe succeeded late in the evening in retaking it. Vukassovich lost heavily, but retired steadily and in order on Spigno. The killed and wounded numbered probably about 1000 French and 1500 Austrians, out of considerably less than 10,000 engaged on each side—a loss which contrasted very forcibly with those suffered in other battles of the Revolutionary Wars, and by teaching the Army of Italy to bear punishment, imbued it with self-confidence. But again success bred disorder, and there was a second orgy in the houses and streets of Dego which went on till late in the morning and paralysed the whole army.

This was perhaps the crisis of the campaign. Even now it was not certain that the Austrians had been definitively pushed aside, while it was quite clear that Beaulieu’s main body was intact and Colli was still more an unknown quantity. But Napoleon’s intention remained the same, to attack the Piedmontese as quickly and as heavily as possible, Beaulieu being held in check by a containing force under Masséna and Laharpe. The remainder of the army, counting in now Rusca and Sérurier, was to move westward towards Ceva. This disposition, while it illustrates the Napoleonic principle of delivering a heavy blow on the selected target and warding off interference at other points, shows also the difficulty of rightly apportioning the available means between the offensive mass and the defensive system, for, as it turned out, Beaulieu was already sufficiently scared, and thought of nothing but self-defence on the line Acqui-Ovada-Bocchetta, while the French offensive mass was very weak compared with Colli’s unbeaten and now fairly concentrated army about Ceva and Montezemolo.

On the afternoon of the 16th the real advance was begun by Augereau’s division, reinforced by other troops. Rusca joined Augereau towards evening, and Sérurier approached Ceva from the south. Colli’s object was now to spin out time, and having repulsed a weak attack by Augereau, and feeling able to repeat these tactics on each successive spur of the Apennines, he retired in the night to a new position behind the Cursaglia. On the 17th, reassured by the absence of fighting on the Dego side, and by the news that no enemy remained at Sassello, Bonaparte released Masséna from Dego, leaving only Laharpe there, and brought him over towards the right of the main body, which thus on the evening of the 17th formed a long straggling line on both sides of Ceva, Sérurier on the left, écheloned forward, Augereau, Joubert and Rusca in the centre, and Masséna, partly as support, partly as flank guard, on Augereau’s right rear. Sérurier had been bidden to extend well out and to strive to get contact with Masséna, i.e. to encircle the enemy. There was no longer any idea of waiting to besiege Ceva, although the artillery train had been ordered up from the Riviera by the “cannon-road” for eventual use there. Further, the line of supply, as an extra guarantee against interference, was changed from that of Savona-Carcare to that of Loano-Bardinetto. When this was accomplished, four clear days could be reckoned on with certainty in which to deal with Colli.

The latter, still expecting the Austrians to advance to his assistance, had established his corps (not more than 12,000 muskets in all) in the immensely strong positions of the Cursaglia, with a thin line of posts on his left San Michele. stretching towards Cherasco, whence he could communicate, by a roundabout way, with Acqui. Opposite this position the long straggling line of the French arrived, after many delays due to the weariness of the troops, on the 19th. A day of irregular fighting followed, everywhere to the advantage of the defenders. Napoleon, fighting against time, ordered a fresh attack on the 20th, and only desisted when it became evident that the army was exhausted, and, in particular, when Sérurier reported frankly that without bread the soldiers would not march. The delay thus imposed, however, enabled him to clear the “cannon-road” of all vehicles, and to bring up the Dego detachment to replace Masséna in the valley of the western Bormida, the latter coming in to the main army. Further, part at any rate of the convoy service was transferred still farther westward to the line Albenga-Garessio-Ceva. Nelson’s fleet, that had so powerfully contributed to force the French inland, was becoming less and less innocuous. If leadership and force of character could overcome internal friction, all the success he had hoped for was now within the young commander’s grasp.

Twenty-four thousand men, for the first time with a due proportion of cavalry and artillery, were now disposed along Colli’s front and beyond his right flank. Colli, outnumbered by two to one and threatened with envelopment, Mondovi. decided once more to retreat, and the Republicans occupied the Cursaglia lines on the morning of the 21st without firing a shot. But Colli halted again at Vico, half-way to Mondovi (in order, it is said, to protect the evacuation of a small magazine he had there), and while he was in this unfavourable situation the pursuers came on with true Republican swiftness, lapped round his flanks and crushed him. A few days later (27th April), the armistice of Cherasco put an end to the campaign before the Austrians moved a single battalion to his assistance.

The interest of the campaign being above all Napoleonic, its moral must be found by discovering the “Napoleon touch” that differentiated it from other Revolutionary campaigns. A great deal is common to all, on both sides. The Austrians The “Napoleon touch.” and Sardinians worked together at least as effectively as the Austrians, Prussians, British and Dutch in the Netherlands. Revolutionary energy was common to the Army of Italy and to the Army of the North. Why, therefore, when the war dragged on from one campaign to another in the great plains of the Meuse and Rhine countries, did Napoleon bring about so swift a decision in these cramped valleys? The answer is to be found partly in the exigencies of the supply service, but still more in Napoleon’s own personality and the strategy born of it. The first, as we have seen, was at the end of its resources when Beaulieu placed himself across the Genoa road. Action of some sort was the plain alternative to starvation, and at this point Napoleon’s personality intervened. He would have no quarter-rations on the Riviera, but plenty and to spare beyond the mountains. If there were many thousand soldiers who marched unarmed and shoeless in the ranks, it was towards “the Promised Land” that he led them. He looked always to the end, and 188 met each day as if with full expectation of attaining it before sunset. Strategical conditions and “new French” methods of war did not save Bonaparte in the two crises—the Dego rout and the sullen halt of the army at San Michele—but the personality which made the soldiers, on the way to Montenotte, march barefoot past a wagon-load of new boots.

We have said that Napoleon’s strategy was the result of this personal magnetism. Later critics evolved from his success the theory of “interior lines,” and then accounted for it by applying the criterion they had evolved. Actually, the form in which the will to conquer found expression was in many important respects old. What, therefore, in the theory or its application was the product of Napoleon’s own genius and will-power? A comparison with Souham’s campaign of Tourcoing will enable us to answer this question. To begin with, Souham found himself midway between Coburg and Clerfayt almost by accident, and his utilization of the advantages of his position was an expedient for the given case. Napoleon, however, placed himself deliberately and by fighting his way thither, in an analogous situation at Carcare and Cairo. Military opinion of the time considered it dangerous, as indeed it was, for no theory can alter the fact that had not Napoleon made his men fight harder and march farther than usual, he would have been destroyed. The effective play of forces on interior lines depends on the two conditions that the outer enemies are not so near together as to give no time for the inner mass to defeat one before the arrival of the other, and that they are not so far apart that before one can be brought to action the other has inflicted serious damage elsewhere.

Neither condition was fully met at any time in the Montenotte campaign. On the 11th Napoleon knew that the attack on Voltri had been made by a part only of the Austrian forces, yet he flung his own masses on Montenotte. On the 13th he thought that Beaulieu’s main body was at Dego and Colli’s at Millesimo, and on this assumption had to exact the most extraordinary efforts from Augereau’s troops at Cossaria. On the 19th and 20th he tried to exclude the risks of the Austrians’ intervention, and with this the chances of a victory over them to follow his victory over Colli, by transferring the centre of gravity of his army to Ceva and Garessio, and fighting it out with Colli alone.

It was not, in fact, to gain a position on interior lines—with respect to two opponents—that Napoleon pushed his army to Carcare. Before the campaign began he hoped by using the “cannon-road” to destroy the Piedmontese before the Austrians were in existence at all as an army. But on the news from Voltri and Monte Legino he swiftly “concentrated fire, made the breach, and broke the equilibrium” at the spot where the interests and forces of the two Allies converged and diverged. The hypothesis in the first case was that the Austrians were practically non-existent, and the whole object in the second was to breach the now connected front of the Allies (“strategic penetration”) and to cause them to break up into two separate systems. More, having made the breach, he had the choice (which he had not before) of attacking either the Austrians or the Sardinians, as every critic has pointed out. Indeed the Austrians offered by far the better target. But he neither wanted nor used the new alternative. His purpose was to crush Piedmont. “My enemies saw too much at once,” said Napoleon. Singleness of aim and of purpose, the product of clear thinking and of “personality,” was the foundation-stone of the new form of strategy.

In the course of subduing the Sardinians, Napoleon found himself placed on interior lines between two hostile masses, and another new idea, that of “relative superiority.” reveals itself. Whereas Souham had been in superior force (90,000 against 70,000), Napoleon (40,000 against 50,000) was not, and yet the Army of Italy was always placed in a position of relative superiority (at first about 3 to 2 and ultimately 2 to 1) to the immediate antagonist. “The essence of strategy,” said Napoleon in 1797, “is, with a weaker army, always to have more force at the crucial point than the enemy. But this art is taught neither by books nor by practice; it is a matter of tact.” In this he expressed the result of his victories on his own mind rather than a preconceived formula which produced those victories. But the idea, though undefined, and the method of practice, though imperfectly worked out, were in his mind from the first. As soon as he had made the breach, he widened it by pushing out Masséna and Laharpe on the one hand and Augereau on the other. This is mere common sense. But immediately afterwards, though preparing to throw all available forces against Colli, he posted Masséna and Laharpe at Dego to guard, not like Vandamme on the Lys against a real and pressing enemy, but against a possibility, and he only diminished the strength and altered the position of this containing detachment in proportion as the Austrian danger dwindled. Later in his career he defined this offensive-defensive system as “having all possible strength at the decisive point,” and “being nowhere vulnerable,” and the art of reconciling these two requirements, in each case as it arose, was always the principal secret of his generalship. At first his precautions (judged by events Relative superiority. and not by the probabilities of the moment) were excessive, and the offensive mass small. But the latter was handled by a general untroubled by multiple aims and anxieties, and if such self-confidence was equivalent to 10,000 men on the battlefield, it was legitimate to detach 10,000 men to secure it. These 10,000 were posted 8 m. out on the dangerous flank, not almost back to back with the main body as Vandamme had been,9 and although this distance was but little compared to those of his later campaigns, when he employed small armies for the same purpose, it sufficed in this difficult mountain country, where the covering force enjoyed the advantage of strong positions. Of course, if Colli had been better concentrated, or if Beaulieu had been more active, the calculated proportions between covering force and main body might have proved fallacious, and the system on which Napoleon’s relative superiority rested might have broken down. But the point is that such a system, however rough its first model, had been imagined and put into practice.

This was Napoleon’s individual art of war, as raiding bakeries and cutting communications were Beaulieu’s speciality. Napoleon made the art into a science, and in our own time, with modern conditions of effective, armament and communications, it is more than possible that Moreaus and Jourdans will prove able to practise it with success. But in the old conditions it required a Napoleon. “Strategy,” said Moltke, “is a system of expedients.” But it was the intense personal force, as well as the genius, of Napoleon that forged these expedients into a system.

The first phase of the campaign satisfactorily settled, Napoleon was free to turn his attention to the “arch-enemy” to whom he was now considerably superior in numbers (35,000 to 25,000). The day after the signature of the armistice of Cherasco he began preparing for a new advance and also for the rôle of arbiter of the destinies of Italy. Many whispers there were, even in his own army, as to the dangers of passing on without “revolutionizing” aristocratic Genoa and monarchical Piedmont, and of bringing Venice, the pope and the Italian princes into the field against the French. But Bonaparte, flushed with victory, and better informed than the malcontents of the real condition of Italy, never hesitated. His first object was to drive out Beaulieu, his second to push through Tirol, and his only serious restriction the chance that the armistice with Piedmont would not result in a definitive treaty. Beaulieu had fallen back into Lombardy, and now bordered the Po right and left of Valenza. To achieve further progress, Napoleon had first to cross that river, and the point and method of crossing was the immediate problem, a problem the more difficult as Napoleon had no bridge train and could only make use of such existing bridges as he could seize intact.10 If he crossed above Valenza, he would be confronted by one river-line after another, on one of which at least Beaulieu would probably stand to fight. But quite apart from the immediate problem, Napoleon’s intention was less to beat the Austrians than to dislodge them. He needed a foothold in Lombardy which would make him independent of, and even a menace to, Piedmont. If this were assured, he could for a few weeks entirely ignore his communications with France and strike out against Beaulieu, dethrone the king of Sardinia, or revolutionize Parma, Modena and the papal states according to circumstances.

Milan, therefore, was his objective, and Tortona-Piacenza his route thither. To give himself every chance, he had stipulated with the Piedmontese authorities for the right of passing at Valenza, and he had the satisfaction of Piacenza. seeing Beaulieu fall into the trap and concentrate opposite that part of the river. The French meantime had moved to the region Alessandria-Tortona. Thence on the 6th of May Bonaparte, with a picked body of troops, set out for a forced march on Piacenza, and that night the advanced guard was 30 m. on the way, at Castel San Giovanni, and Laharpe’s and the cavalry divisions at Stradella, 10 m. behind them. Augereau was at Broni, Masséna at Sale and Sérurier near Valenza, the whole forming a rapidly extending fan, 50 m. from point to point. If the Piacenza detachment succeeded in crossing, the army was to follow rapidly in its track. If, on the other hand, Beaulieu fell 189 back to oppose the advanced guard, the Valenza divisions would take advantage of his absence to cross there. In either case, be it observed, the Austrians were to be evaded, not brought to action.

On the morning of the 7th, the swift advanced guard under General Dallemagne crossed at Piacenza,11 and, hearing of this, Bonaparte ordered every division except Sérurier’s thither with all possible speed. In the exultation of the moment he mocked at Beaulieu’s incapacity, but the old Austrian was already on the alert. This game of manœuvres he understood; already one of his divisions had arrived in close proximity to Dallemagne and the others were marching eastward by all available roads. It was not until the 8th that the French, after a series of partial encounters, were securely established on the left bank of the Po, and Beaulieu had given up the idea of forcing their most advanced troops to accept battle at a disadvantage. The success of the French was due less to their plan than to their mobility, which enabled them first to pass the river before the Austrians (who had actually started a day in advance of them) put in an appearance, and afterwards to be in superior numbers at each point of contact. But the episode was destined after all to culminate in a great event, which Napoleon himself indicated as the turning-point of his life. “Vendémiaire and even Montenotte did not make me think myself a superior being. It was after Lodi that the idea came to me.... That first kindled the spark of boundless ambition.”

The idea of a battle having been given up, Beaulieu retired to the Adda, and most of his troops were safely beyond it before the French arrived near Lodi, but he felt it necessary to leave a strong rearguard on the river opposite that Lodi. place to cover the reassembly of his columns after their scattered march. On the afternoon of the 10th of May, Bonaparte, with Dallemagne, Masséna and Augereau, came up and seized the town. But 200 yds. of open ground had to be passed from the town gate to the bridge, and the bridge itself was another 250 in length. A few hundred yards beyond it stood the Austrians, 9000 strong with 14 guns. Napoleon brought up all his guns to prevent the enemy from destroying the bridge. Then sending all his cavalry to turn the enemy’s right by a ford above the town, he waited two hours, employing the time in cannonading the Austrian lines, resting his advanced infantry and closing up Masséna’s and Augereau’s divisions. Finally he gave the order to Dallemagne’s 4000 grenadiers, who were drawn up under cover of the town wall, to rush the bridge. As the column, not more than thirty men broad, made its appearance, it was met by the concentrated fire of the Austrian guns, and half way across the bridge it checked, but Bonaparte himself and Masséna rushed forward, the courage of the soldiers revived, and, while some jumped off the bridge and scrambled forward in the shallow water, the remainder stormed on, passed through the guns and drove back the infantry. This was, in bare outline, the astounding passage of the Bridge of Lodi. It was not till after the battle that Napoleon realized that only a rearguard was in front of him. When he launched his 4000 grenadiers he thought that on the other side there were four or five times that number of the enemy. No wonder, then, that after the event he recognized in himself the flash of genius, the courage to risk everything, and the “tact” which, independent of, and indeed contrary to all reasoned calculations, told him that the moment had come for “breaking the equilibrium.” Lodi was a tactical success in the highest sense, in that the principles of his tactics rested on psychology—on the “sublime” part of the art of war as Saxe had called it long ago. The spirit produced the form, and Lodi was the prototype of the Napoleonic battle—contact, manœuvre, preparation, and finally the well-timed, massed and unhesitating assault. The absence of strategical results mattered little. Many months elapsed before this bold assertion of superiority ceased to decide the battles of France and Austria.

Next day, still under the vivid tactical impressions of the Bridge of Lodi, he postponed his occupation of the Milanese and set off in pursuit of Beaulieu, but the latter was now out of reach, and during the next few days the Milan. French divisions were installed at various points in the area Pavia-Milan-Pizzighetone, facing outwards in all dangerous directions, with a central reserve at Milan. Thus secured, Bonaparte turned his attention to political and military administration. This took the form of exacting from the neighbouring princes money, supplies and objects of art, and the once famished Army of Italy revelled in its opportunity. Now, however, the Directory, suspicious of the too successful and too sanguine young general, ordered him to turn over the command in Upper Italy to Kellermann, and to take an expeditionary corps himself into the heart of the Peninsula, there to preach the Republic and the overthrow of princes. Napoleon absolutely refused, and offered his resignation. In the end (partly by bribery) he prevailed, but the incident reawakened his desire to close with Beaulieu. This indeed he could now do with a free hand, since not only had the Milanese been effectively occupied, but also the treaty with Sardinia had been ratified.

But no sooner had he resumed the advance than it was interrupted by a rising of the peasantry in his rear. The exactions of the French had in a few days generated sparks of discontent which it was easy for the priests and the nobles to fan into open flames. Milan and Pavia as well as the countryside broke into insurrection, and at the latter place the mob forced the French commandant to surrender. Bonaparte acted swiftly and ruthlessly. Bringing back a small portion of the army with him, he punished Milan on the 25th, sacked and burned Binasco on the 26th, and on the evening of the latter day, while his cavalry swept the open country, he broke his way into Pavia with 1500 men and beat down all resistance. Napoleon’s cruelty was never purposeless. He deported several scores of hostages to France, executed most of the mob leaders, and shot the French officer who had surrendered. In addition, he gave his 1500 men three hours’ leave to pillage. Then, as swiftly as they had come, they returned to the army on the Oglio. From this river Napoleon advanced to the banks of the Mincio, where the remainder of the Italian campaign was fought out, both sides contemptuously disregarding Venetian neutrality.

It centred on the fortress of Mantua, which Beaulieu, too weak to keep the field, and dislodged from the Mincio in the action of Borghetto (May 30), strongly garrisoned before retiring into Tirol. Beaulieu was soon afterwards replaced by Dagobert Siegmund, count von Wurmser (b. 1724), who brought considerable reinforcements from Germany.

At this point, mindful of the narrow escape he had had of losing his command, Bonaparte thought it well to begin the resettlement of Italy. The scheme for co-operating with Moreau on the Danube was indefinitely postponed, and the Army of Italy (now reinforced from the Army of the Alps and counting 42,000 effectives) was again disposed in a protective “zone of manœuvre,” with a strong central reserve. Over 8000 men, however, garrisoned the fortresses of Piedmont and Lombardy, and the effective blockade of Mantua and political expeditions into the heart of the Peninsula soon used up the whole of this reserve.

Moreover, no siege artillery was available until the Austrians in the citadel of Milan capitulated, and thus it was not till the 18th of July that the first parallel was begun. Almost at the same moment Wurmser began his advance from Trent with 55,000 men to relieve Mantua.

The protective system on which his attack would fall in the first instance was now as follows:—Augereau (6000) about Legnago, Despinoy (8000) south-east of Verona, Masséna (13,000) at Verona and Peschiera, with Siege of Mantua. outposts on the Monte Baldo and at La Corona, Sauret (4500) at Salo and Gavardo. Sérurier (12,000) was besieging Mantua, and the only central reserve was the cavalry (2000) under Kilmaine. The main road to Milan passed by Brescia. Sauret’s brigade, therefore, was practically a detached 190 post on the line of communication, and on the main defensive front less than 30,000 men were disposed at various points between La Corona and Legnago (30 m. apart), and at a distance of 15 to 20 m. from Mantua. The strength of such a disposition depended on the fighting power and handiness of the troops, who in each case would be called upon to act as a rearguard to gain time. Yet the lie of the country scarcely permitted a closer grouping, unless indeed Bonaparte fell back on the old-time device of a “circumvallation,” and shut himself up, with the supplies necessary for the calculated duration of the siege, in an impregnable ring of earthworks round Mantua. This, however, he could not have done even if he had wished, for the wave of revolt radiating from Milan had made accumulations of food impossible, and the lakes above and below the fortress, besides being extremely unhealthy, would have extended the perimeter of the circumvallation so greatly that the available forces would not suffice to man it. It was not in this, but in the absence of an important central reserve that Bonaparte’s disposition is open to criticism, which indeed could impugn the scheme in its entirety, as overtaxing the available resources, more easily than it could attack its details.

If Bonaparte has occasionally been criticized for his defensive measures, Wurmser’s attack procedure has received almost universal condemnation, as to the justice of which it may be pointed out12 that the object of the expedition was not to win a battle by falling on the disunited French with a well-concentrated army, but to overpower one, any one, of the corps covering the siege, and to press straight forward to the relief of Mantua, i.e. to the destruction of Bonaparte’s batteries and the levelling of his trench work. The old principle that a battle was a grave event of doubtful issue was reinforced in the actual case by Beaulieu’s late experiences of French élan, and as a temporary victory at one point would suffice for the purpose in hand, there was every incentive to multiply the points of contact. The soundness of Wurmser’s plan was proved by the event. New ideas and new forces, undiscernible to a man of seventy-two years of age, obliterated his achievement by surpassing it, but such as it was—a limited use of force for a limited object—the venture undeniably succeeded.

The Austrians formed three corps, one (Quasdanovich, 18,000 men) marching round the west side of the Lake of Garda on Gavardo, Salo and the Brescia road, the second (under Wurmser, about 30,000) moving directly down the Adige, and the third (Davidovich, 6000) making a détour by the Brenta valley and heading for Verona by Vicenza.

On the 29th Quasdanovich attacked Sauret at Salo, drove him towards Desenzano, and pushed on to Gavardo and thence into Brescia. Wurmser expelled Masséna’s advanced guard from La Corona, and captured in succession the Monte Baldo and Rivoli posts. The Brenta column approached Verona with little or no fighting. News of this column led Napoleon early in the day to close up Despinoy, Masséna and Kilmaine at Castelnuovo, and to order Augereau from Legnago to advance on Montebello (19 m. east of Verona) against Davidovich’s left rear. But after these orders had been despatched came the news of Sauret’s defeat, and this moment was one of the most anxious in Napoleon’s career. He could not make up his mind to give up the siege of Mantua, but he hurried Augereau back to the Mincio, and sent order after order to the officers on the lines of communication to send all convoys by the Cremona instead of by the Brescia road. More, he had the baggage, the treasure and the sick set in motion at once for Marcaria, and wrote to Sérurier a despatch which included the words “perhaps we shall recover ourselves ... but I must take serious measures for a retreat.” On the 30th he wrote: “The enemy have broken through our line in three places ... Sauret has evacuated Salo ... and the enemy has captured Brescia. You see that our communications with Milan and Verona are cut.” The reports that came to him during the morning of the 30th enabled him to place the main body of the enemy opposite Masséna, and this, without in the least alleviating the gravity of the situation, helped to make his course less doubtful. Augereau was ordered to hold the line of the Molinella, in case Davidovich’s attack, the least-known factor, should after all prove to be serious; Masséna to reconnoitre a road from Peschiera through Castiglione towards Orzinovi, and to stand fast at Castelnuovo opposite Wurmser as long as he could. Sauret and Despinoy were concentrated at Desenzano with orders on the 31st to clear the main line of retreat and to recapture Brescia. The Austrian movements were merely the continuation of those of the 29th. Quasdanovich wheeled inwards, his right finally resting on Montechiaro and his left on Salo. Wurmser drove back Masséna to the west side of the Mincio. Davidovich made a slight advance.

In the late evening Bonaparte held a council of war at Roverbella. The proceedings of this council are unknown, but it at any rate enabled Napoleon to see clearly and to act. Hitherto he had been covering the siege of Mantua with Relief of Mantua. various detachments, the defeat of any one of which might be fatal to the enterprise. Thus, when he had lost his main line of retreat, he could assemble no more than 8000 men at Desenzano to win it back. Now, however, he made up his mind that the siege could not be continued, and bitter as the decision must have been, it gave him freedom. At this moment of crisis the instincts of the great captain came into play, and showed the way to a victory that would more than counterbalance the now inevitable failure. Sérurier was ordered to spike the 140 siege guns that had been so welcome a few days before, and, after sending part of his force to Augereau, to establish himself with the rest at Marcaria on the Cremona road. The field forces were to be used on interior lines. On the 31st Sauret, Despinoy, Augereau and Kilmaine advanced westward against Quasdanovich. The first two found the Austrians at 191 Salo and Lonato and drove them back, while with Augereau and the cavalry Bonaparte himself made a forced march on Brescia, never halting night or day till he reached the town and recovered his depots. Meantime Sérurier had retired (night of July 31), Masséna had gradually drawn in towards Lonato, and Wurmser’s advanced guard triumphantly entered the fortress (August 1).

The Austrian general now formed the plan of crushing Bonaparte between Quasdanovich and his own main body. But meantime Quasdanovich had evacuated Brescia under the threat of Bonaparte’s advance and was now fighting a long irregular action with Despinoy and Sauret about Gavardo and Salo, and Bonaparte, having missed his expected target, had brought Augereau by another severe march back to Montechiaro on the Chiese. Masséna was now assembled between Lonato and Ponte San Marco, and Sérurier was retiring quietly on Marcaria. Wurmser’s main body, weakened by the detachment sent to Mantua, crossed the Mincio about Valeggio and Goito on the 2nd, and penetrated as far as Castiglione, whence Masséna’s rearguard was expelled. But a renewed advance of Quasdanovich, ordered by Wurmser, which drove Sauret and Despinoy Lonato and Castiglione. back on Brescia and Lonato, in the end only placed a strong detachment of the Austrians within striking distance of Masséna, who on the 3rd attacked it, front to front, and by sheer fighting destroyed it, while at the same time Augereau recaptured Castiglione from Wurmser. On the 4th Sauret and Despinoy pressed back Quasdanovich beyond Salo and Gavardo. One of the Austrian columns, finding itself isolated and unable to retreat with the others, turned back to break its way through to Wurmser, and was annihilated by Masséna in the neighbourhood of Lonato. On this day Augereau fought his way towards Solferino, and Wurmser, thinking rightly or wrongly that he could not now retire to the Mincio without a battle, drew up his whole force, close on 30,000 men, in the plain between Solferino and Medole. The finale may be described in very few words. Bonaparte, convinced that no more was to be feared from Quasdanovich, and seeing that Wurmser meant to fight, called in Despinoy’s division to the main body and sent orders to Sérurier, then far distant on the Cremona road, to march against the left flank of the Austrians. On the 5th the battle of Castiglione was fought. Closely contested in the first hours of the frontal attack till Sérurier’s arrival decided the day, it ended in the retreat of the Austrians over the Mincio and into Tirol whence they had come.

Thus the new way had failed to keep back Wurmser, and the old had failed to crush Napoleon. Each was the result of its own conditions. In former wars a commander threatened as Napoleon was, would have fallen back at once to the Adda, abandoning the siege in such good time that he would have been able to bring off his siege artillery. Instead of this Bonaparte hesitated long enough to lose it, which, according to accepted canons was a waste, and held his ground, which was, by the same rules, sheer madness. But Revolutionary discipline was not firm enough to stand a retreat. Once it turned back, the army would have streamed away to Milan and perhaps to the Alps (cf. 1799), and the only alternative to complete dissolution therefore was fighting.

As to the manner of this fighting, even the principle of “relative superiority” failed him so long as he was endeavouring to cover the siege and again when his chief care was to protect his new line of retreat and to clear his old. In this period, viz. up to his return from Brescia on the 2nd of August, the only “mass” he collected delivered a blow in the air, while the covering detachments had to fight hard for bare existence. Once released from its trammels, the Napoleonic principle had fair play. He stood between Wurmser and Quasdanovich, ready to fight either or both. The latter was crushed, thanks to local superiority and the resolute leading of Masséna, but at Castiglione Wurmser actually outnumbered his opponent till the last of Napoleon’s precautionary dispositions had been given up, and Sérurier brought back from the “alternative line of retreat” to the battlefield. The moral is, again, that it was not the mere fact of being on interior lines that gave Napoleon the victory, but his “tact,” his fine appreciation of the chances in his favour, measured in terms of time, space, attacking force and containing power. All these factors were greatly influenced by the ground, which favoured the swarms and columns of the French and deprived the brilliant Austrian cavalry of its power to act. But of far greater importance was the mobility that Napoleon’s personal force imparted to the French. Napoleon himself rode five horses to death in three days, and Augereau’s division marched from Roverbella to Brescia and back to Montechiaro, a total distance of nearly 50 m., in about thirty-six hours. This indeed was the foundation of his “relative superiority,” for every hour saved in the time of marching meant more freedom to destroy one corps before the rest could overwhelm the covering detachments and come to its assistance.

Wurmser’s plan for the relief of Mantua, suited to its purpose, succeeded. But when he made his objective the French field army, he had to take his own army as he found it, disposed for an altogether different purpose. A properly, combined attack of convergent columns framed ab initio by a good staff officer, such as Mack, might indeed have given good results. But the success of such a plan depends principally on the assailant’s original possession of the initiative, and not on the chances of his being able to win it over to his own side when operations, as here, are already in progress. When the time came to improvise such a plan, the initiative had passed over to Napoleon, and the plan was foredoomed.

By the end of the second week in August the blockade of Mantua had been resumed, without siege guns. But still under the impression of a great victory gained, Bonaparte was planning a long forward stride. He thought that by advancing past Mantua directly on Trieste and thence onwards to the Semmering he could impose a peace on the emperor. The Directory, however, which had by now focussed its attention on the German campaign, ordered him to pass through Tirol and to co-operate with Moreau, and this plan, Bonaparte, though protesting against an Alpine venture being made so late in the year, prepared to execute, drawing in reinforcements and collecting great quantities of supplies in boats on the Adige and Lake Garda. Wurmser was thought to have posted his main body near Trent, and to have detached one division to Bassano “to cover Trieste.” The French advanced northward on the 2nd, in three disconnected columns (precisely as Wurmser had done in the reverse direction at the end of July)—Masséna (13,000) from Rivoli to Ala, Augereau (9000) from Verona by hill roads, keeping on his right rear, Vaubois (11,000) round the Lake of Garda by Riva and Torbole. Sahuguet’s division (8000) remained before Mantua. The French divisions successfully combined and drove the enemy before them to Trent.

There, however, they missed their target. Wurmser had already drawn over the bulk of his army (22,000) into the Val Sugana, whence, with the Bassano division as his advanced guard, he intended once more to relieve Mantua, while Davidovich with 13,000 (excluding detachments) was to hold Tirol against any attempt of Bonaparte to join forces with Moreau.

Thus Austria was preparing to hazard a second (as in the event she hazarded a third and a fourth) highly trained and expensive professional army in the struggle for the preservation of a fortress, and we must conclude that there were weighty reasons which actuated so notoriously cautious a body as the Council of War in making this unconditional venture. While Mantua stood, Napoleon, for all his energy and sanguineness, could not press forward into Friuli and Carniola, and immunity from a Republican visitation was above all else important for the Vienna statesmen, governing as they did more or less discontented and heterogeneous populations that had not felt the pressure of war for a century and more. The Austrians, so far as is known, desired no more than to hold their own. They no longer possessed the superiority of moral that guarantees victory to one side when both are materially equal. There was therefore nothing to be gained, commensurate with the risk involved, by fighting a battle in the open field. In Italien siegt nicht die Kavallerie was an old saying in the Austrian army, and therefore the Austrians could not hope to win a victory of the first magnitude. The only practicable alternative was to strengthen Mantua as opportunities offered themselves, and to prolong the passive resistance as much as possible. Napoleon’s own practice in providing for secondary theatres of war was to economize forces and to delay a decision, and the fault of the Austrians, viewed from a purely military standpoint, was that they squandered, instead of economizing, their forces to gain time. If we neglect pure theory, and regard strategy as the handmaiden of statesmanship—which fundamentally it is—we 192 cannot condemn the Vienna authorities unless it be first proved that they grossly exaggerated the possible results of Bonaparte’s threatened irruption. And if their capacity for judging the political situation be admitted, it naturally follows that their object was to preserve Mantua at all costs—which object Wurmser, though invariably defeated in action, did in fact accomplish.

When Masséna entered Trent on the morning of the 5th of September, Napoleon became aware that the force in his front was a mere detachment, and news soon came in that Wurmser was in the Val Sugana about Primolano and Bassano. at Bassano. This move he supposed to be intended to cover Trieste, being influenced by his own hopes of advancing in that direction, and underestimating the importance, to the Austrians, of preserving Mantua. He therefore informed the Directory that he could not proceed with the Tirol scheme, and spent one more day in driving Davidovich well away from Trent. Then, leaving Vaubois to watch him, Napoleon marched Augereau and Masséna, with a rapidity he scarcely ever surpassed, into the Val Sugana. Wurmser’s rearguard was attacked and defeated again and again, and Wurmser himself felt compelled to stand and fight, in the hope of checking the pursuit before going forward into the plains. Half his army had already reached Montebello on the Verona road, and with the rear half he posted himself at Bassano, where on the 8th he was attacked and defeated with heavy losses. Then began a strategic pursuit or general chase, and in this the mobility of the French should have finished the work so well begun by their tactics.

But Napoleon directed the pursuers so as to cut off Wurmser from Trieste, not from Mantua. Masséna followed up the Austrians to Vicenza, while Augereau hurried towards Padua, and it was not until late on the 9th that Bonaparte realized that his opponent was heading for Mantua via Legnago. On the 10th Masséna crossed the Adige at Ronco, while Augereau from Padua reached Montagnara. Sahuguet from Mantua and Kilmaine from Verona joined forces at Castellaro on the 11th, with orders to interpose between Wurmser and the fortress. Wurmser meantime had halted for a day at Legnago, to restore order, and had then resumed his march. It was almost too late, for in the evening, after having to push aside the head of Masséna’s column at Cerea, he had only reached Nogara, some miles short of Castellaro, and close upon his rear was Augereau, who reached Legnago that night. On the 12th, eluding Sahuguet by a detour to the southward, he reached Mantua, with all the columns of the French, weary as most of them were, in hot pursuit. After an attempt to keep the open field, defeated in a general action on the 15th, the relieving force was merged in the garrison, now some 28,000 in all. So ended the episode of Bassano, the most brilliant feature of which as usual was the marching power of the French infantry. This time it sufficed to redeem even strategical misconceptions and misdirections. Between the 5th and the 11th, besides fighting three actions, Masséna had marched 100 m. and Augereau 114.

Feldzeugmeister Alvintzi was now appointed to command a new army of relief. This time the mere distribution of the troops imposed a concentric advance of separate columns, for practically the whole of the fresh forces available were in Carniola, the Military Frontier, &c., while Davidovich was still in Tirol. Alvintzi’s intention was to assemble his new army (29,000) in Friuli, and to move on Bassano, which was to be occupied on the 4th of November. Meantime Davidovich (18,000) was to capture Trent, and the two columns were to connect by the Val Sugana. All being well, Alvintzi and Davidovich, still separate, were then to converge on the Adige between Verona and Legnago. Wurmser was to co-operate by vigorous sorties. At this time Napoleon’s protective system was as follows: Kilmaine (9000) investing Mantua, Vaubois (10,000) at Trent, and Masséna (9000) at Bassano and Treviso, Augereau (9000) and Macquard (3000) at Verona and Villafranca constituting, for the first time in these operations, important mobile reserves. Hearing of Alvintzi’s approach in good time, he meant first to drive back Davidovich, then with Augereau, Masséna, Macquard and 3000 of Vaubois’s force to fall upon Alvintzi, who, he calculated, would at this stage have reached Bassano, and finally to send back a large force through the Val Sugana to attack Davidovich. This plan practically failed.

Instead of advancing, Vaubois was driven steadily backward. By the 6th, Davidovich had fought his way almost to Roveredo, and Alvintzi had reached Bassano and was there successfully repelling the attacks of Masséna and Caldiero. Augereau. That night Napoleon drew back to Vicenza. On the 7th Davidovich drove in Vaubois to Corona and Rivoli, and Alvintzi came within 5 m. of Vicenza. Napoleon watched carefully for an opportunity to strike out, and on the 8th massed his troops closely around the central point of Verona. On the 9th, to give himself air, he ordered Masséna to join Vaubois, and to drive back Davidovich at all costs. But before this order was executed, reports came in to the effect that Davidovich had suspended his advance. The 10th and 11th were spent by both sides in relative inaction, the French waiting on events and opportunities, the Austrians resting after their prolonged exertions. Then, on the afternoon of the 11th, being informed that Alvintzi was approaching, Napoleon decided to attack him. On the 12th the advanced guard of Alvintzi’s army was furiously assailed in the position of Caldiero. But the troops in rear came up rapidly, and by 4 P.M. the French were defeated all along the line and in retreat on Verona. Napoleon’s situation was now indeed precarious. He was on “interior lines,” it is true, but he had neither the force nor the space necessary for the delivery of rapid radial blows. Alvintzi was in superior numbers, as the battle of Caldiero had proved, and at any moment Davidovich, who had twice Vaubois’s force, might advance to the attack of Rivoli. The reserves had proved insufficient, and Kilmaine had to be called up from Mantua, which was thus for the third time freed from the blockaders. Again the alternatives were retreat, in whatever order was possible to Republican armies, and beating the nearest enemy at any sacrifice. Napoleon chose the latter, though it was not until the evening of the 14th that he actually issued the fateful order.

The Austrians, too, had selected the 15th as the date of their final advance on Verona, Davidovich from the north, Alvintzi via Zevio from the south. But Napoleon was no longer there; leaving Vaubois to hold Davidovich as best he might, and posting only 3000 men in Verona, he had collected the rest of his small army between Albaro and Ronco. His plan seems to have been to cross the Adige well in rear of the Austrians, to march north on to the Verona-Vicenza highway, and there, supplying himself from their convoys, to fight to the last. On the 15th he had written to the Directory, “The weakness and the exhaustion of the army causes me to fear the worst. We are perhaps on the eve of losing Italy.” In this extremity of danger the troops passed the Adige in three columns near Ronco and Albaredo, and marched forward along the dikes, with deep marshes and pools on either hand. If Napoleon’s intention was to reach the dry open ground of S. Bonifacio in rear of the Austrians, it was not realized, for the Austrian army, instead of being at the gates of Verona, was still between Caldiero and S. Bonifacio, heading, as we know, for Zevio. Thus Alvintzi was able, easily and swiftly, to wheel to the south.

The battle of Arcola almost defies description. The first day passed in a series of resultless encounters between the heads of the columns as they met on the dikes. In the evening Bonaparte withdrew over the Adige, expecting Arcola. at every moment to be summoned to Vaubois’s aid. But Davidovich remained inactive, and on the 16th the French again crossed the river. Masséna from Ronco advanced on Porcile, driving the Austrians along the causeway thither, but on the side of Arcola, Alvintzi had deployed a considerable part of his forces on the edge of the marshes, within musket shot of the causeway by which Bonaparte and Augereau had to pass, along the Austrian front, to reach the bridge of Arcola. In these circumstances the second day’s battle was more murderous and no more decisive than the first, and again the French retreated to Ronco. But Davidovich again stood still, and with incredible obstinacy Bonaparte ordered a third assault for the 17th, using 193 indeed more tactical expedients than before, but calculating chiefly on the fighting powers of his men and on the exhaustion of the enemy. Masséna again advanced on Porcile, Robert’s brigade on Arcola, but the rest, under Augereau, were to pass the Alpone near its confluence with the Adige, and joining various small bodies which passed the main stream lower down, to storm forward on dry ground to Arcola. The Austrians, however, themselves advanced from Arcola, overwhelmed Robert’s brigade on the causeway and almost reached Ronco. This was perhaps the crisis of the battle, for Augereau’s force was now on the other side of the stream, and Masséna, with his back to the new danger, was approaching Porcile. But the fire of a deployed regiment stopped the head of the Austrian column; Masséna, turning about, cut into its flank on the dike; and Augereau, gathering force, was approaching Arcola from the south. The bridge and the village were evacuated soon afterwards, and Masséna and Augereau began to extend in the plain beyond. But the Austrians still sullenly resisted. It was at this moment that Bonaparte secured victory by a mere ruse, but a ruse which would have been unprofitable and ridiculous had it not been based on his fine sense of the moral conditions. Both sides were nearly fought out, and he sent a few trumpeters to the rear of the Austrian army to sound the charge. They did so, and in a few minutes the Austrians were streaming back to S. Bonifacio. This ended the drama of Arcola, which more than any other episode of these wars, perhaps of any wars in modern history, centres on the personality of the hero. It is said that the French fought without spirit on the first day, and yet on the second and third Bonaparte had so thoroughly imbued them with his own will to conquer that in the end they prevailed over an enemy nearly twice their own strength.

The climax was reached just in time, for on the 17th Vaubois was completely defeated at Rivoli and withdrew to Peschiera, leaving the Verona and Mantua roads completely open to Davidovich. But on the 19th Napoleon turned upon him, and combining the forces of Vaubois, Masséna and Augereau against him, drove him back to Trent. Meantime Alvintzi returned from Vicenza to San Bonifacio and Caldiero (November 21st), and Bonaparte at once stopped the pursuit of Davidovich. On the return of the French main body to Verona, Alvintzi finally withdrew, Wurmser, who had emerged from Mantua on the 23rd, was driven in again, and this epilogue of the great struggle came to a feeble end because neither side was now capable of prolonging the crisis.

Alvintzi renewed his advance in January 1797 with all the forces that could be assembled for a last attempt to save Mantua. At this time 8000 men under Sérurier blockaded Mantua, Masséna (9000) was at Verona, Joubert (Vaubois’s successor) at Rivoli with 10,000, Augereau at Legnago with 9000. In reserve were Rey’s division (4000) between Brescia and Montechiaro, and Victor’s brigade at Goito and Castelnuovo. On the other side, Alvintzi had 9000 men under Provera at Padua, 6000 under Bayalič at Bassano, and he himself with 28,000 men stood in the Tirol about Trent. This time he intended to make his principal effort on the Rivoli side. Provera was to capture Legnago on the 9th of January, and Bayalič Verona on the 12th, while the main army was to deliver its blow against the Rivoli position on the 13th.

The first marches of this scheme were duly carried out, and several days elapsed before Napoleon was able to discern the direction of the real attack. Augereau fell back, skirmishing a little, as Provera’s and Bayalič’s advance Rivoli. developed. On the 11th, when the latter was nearing Verona, Alvintzi’s leading troops appeared in front of the Rivoli position. On the 12th Bayalič with a weak force (he had sent reinforcements to Alvintzi by the Val Pantena) made an unsuccessful attack on Verona, Provera, farther south, remaining inactive. On the 13th Napoleon, still in doubt, launched Masséna’s division against Bayalič, who was driven back to San Bonifacio; but at the same time definite news came from Joubert that Alvintzi’s main army was in front of La Corona. From this point begins the decisive, though by no means the most intense or dramatic, struggle of the campaign. Once he felt sure of the situation Napoleon acted promptly. Joubert was ordered to hold on to Rivoli at all costs. Rey was brought up by a forced march to Castelnuovo, where Victor joined him, and ahead of them both Masséna was hurried on to Rivoli. Napoleon himself joined Joubert on the night of the 13th. There he saw the watch-fires of the enemy in a semicircle around him, for Alvintzi, thinking that he had only to deal with one division, had begun a widespread enveloping attack. The horns of this attack were as yet so far distant that Napoleon, instead of extending on an equal front, only spread out a few regiments to gain an hour or two and to keep the ground for Masséna and Rey, and on the morning of January 14th, with 10,000 men in hand against 26,000, he fell upon the central columns of the enemy as they advanced up the steep broken slopes of the foreground. The fighting was severe, but Bonaparte had the advantage. Masséna arrived at 9 A.M., and a little later the column of Quasdanovich, which had moved along the Adige and was now attempting to gain a foothold on the plateau in rear of Joubert, was crushed by the converging fire of Joubert’s right brigade and by Masséna’s guns, their rout being completed by the charge of a handful of cavalry under Lasalle. The right horn of Alvintzi’s attack, when at last it swung in upon Napoleon’s rear, was caught between Masséna and the advancing troops of Rey and annihilated, and even before this the dispirited Austrians were in full retreat. A last alarm, caused by the appearance of a French infantry regiment in their rear (this had crossed the lake in boats from Salo), completed their demoralization, and though less than 2000 had been killed and wounded, some 12,000 Austrian prisoners were left in the hands of the victors. Rivoli was indeed a moral triumph. After the ordeal of Arcola, the victory of the French was a foregone conclusion at each point of contact. Napoleon hesitated, or rather refrained from striking, so long as his information was incomplete, but he knew now from experience that his covering detachment, if well led, could not only hold its own without assistance until it had gained the necessary information, but could still give the rest of the army time to act upon it. Then, when the centre of gravity had been ascertained, the French divisions hurried thither, caught the enemy in the act of manœuvring and broke them up. And if that confidence in success which made all this possible needs a special illustration, it may be found in Napoleon’s sending Murat’s regiment over the lake to place a mere two thousand bayonets across the line of retreat of a whole army. Alvintzi’s manœuvre was faulty neither strategically in the first instance nor tactically as regards the project of enveloping Joubert on the 14th. It failed because Joubert and his men were better soldiers than his own, and because a French division could move twice as fast as an Austrian, and from these two factors a new form of war was evolved, the essence of which was that, for a given time and in a given area, a small force of the French should engage and hold a much larger force of the enemy.

The remaining operations can be very briefly summarized. Provera, still advancing on Mantua, joined hands there with Wurmser, and for a time held Sérurier at a disadvantage. But hearing of this, Napoleon sent back Masséna from the field of Rivoli, and that general, with Augereau and Sérurier, not only forced Wurmser to retire again into the fortress, but compelled Provera to lay down his arms. On the 2nd of February 1797, after a long and honourable defence, Mantua, and with it what was left of Wurmser’s army, surrendered.

The campaign of 1797, which ended the war of the First Coalition, was the brilliant sequel of these hard-won victories. Austria had decided to save Mantua at all costs, and had lost her armies in the attempt, a loss which was not compensated by the “strategic” victories of the archduke. Thus the Republican “visitation” of Carinthia and Carniola was one swift march—politically glorious, if dangerous from a purely military standpoint—of Napoleon’s army to the Semmering. The archduke, who was called thither from Germany, could do no more than fight a few rearguard actions, and make threats against Napoleon’s rear, which the latter, with his usual “tact,” ignored. On the Rhine, as in 1795 and 1796, the armies of the Sambre-and-Meuse (Hoche) and the Rhine-and-Moselle (Moreau) were opposed by the armies of the Lower Rhine (Werneck) and of the Upper Rhine (Latour). Moreau crossed the river near Strassburg and fought a series of minor actions. Hoche, like his predecessors, crossed at Düsseldorf and Neuwied and fought his 194 way to the Lahn, where for the last time in the history of these wars, there was an irregular widespread battle. But Hoche, in this his last campaign, displayed the brilliant energy of his first, and delivered the “series of incessant blows” that Carnot had urged upon Jourdan the year before. Werneck was driven with ever-increasing losses from the lower Lahn to Wetzlar and Giessen. Thence, pressed hard by the French left wing under Championnet, he retired on the Leoben. Nidda, only to find that Hoche’s right had swung completely round him. Nothing but the news of the armistice of Leoben saved him from envelopment and surrender. This general armistice was signed by Bonaparte, on his own authority and to the intense chagrin of the Directory and of Hoche, on the 18th of April, and was the basis of the peace of Campo Formio.

Napoleon in Egypt

Within the scope of this article, yet far more important from its political and personal than from its general military interest, comes the expedition of Napoleon to Egypt and its sequel (see also Egypt: History; Napoleon, &c.). A very brief summary must here suffice. Napoleon left Toulon on the 19th of May 1798, at the same time as his army (40,000 strong in 400 transports) embarked secretly at various ports. Nelson’s fleet was completely evaded, and, capturing Malta en route, the armada reached the coast of Egypt on the 1st of July. The republicans stormed Alexandria on the 2nd. Between Embabeh and Gizeh, on the left bank of the Nile, 60,000 Mamelukes were defeated and scattered on the 21st (battle of the Pyramids), the French for the most part marching and fighting in the chequer of infantry squares that afterwards became the classical formation for desert warfare. While his lieutenants pursued the more important groups of the enemy, Napoleon entered Cairo in triumph, and proceeded to organize Egypt as a French protectorate. Meantime Nelson, though too late to head off the expedition, had annihilated the squadron of Admiral Brueys. This blow severed the army from the home country, and destroyed all hope of reinforcements. But to eject the French already in Egypt, military invasion of that country was necessary. The first attempts at this were made in September by the Turks as overlords of Egypt. Napoleon—after suppressing a revolt in Cairo—marched into Syria to meet them, and captured El Arish and Jaffa (at the latter place the prisoners, whom he could afford neither to feed, to release, nor to guard, were shot by his order). But he was brought to a standstill (March 17-May 20) before the half-defensible fortifications of Acre, held by a Turkish garrison and animated by the leadership of Sir W. Sidney Smith (q.v.). In May, though meantime a Turkish relieving army had been severely beaten in the battle of Mount Tabor (April 16, 1799), Napoleon gave up his enterprise, and returned to Egypt, where he won a last victory in annihilating at Aboukir, with 6000 of his own men, a Turkish army 18,000 strong that had landed there (July 25, 1799). With this crowning tactical success to set against the Syrian reverses, he handed over the command to Kléber and returned to France (August 22) to ride the storm in a new coup d’état, the “18th Brumaire.” Kléber, attacked by the English and Turks, concluded the convention of El Arish (January 27, 1800), whereby he secured free transport for the army back to France. But this convention was disavowed by the British government, and Kléber prepared to hold his ground. On the 20th of March 1800 he thoroughly defeated the Turkish army at Heliopolis and recovered Cairo, and French influence was once more in the ascendant in Egypt, when its director was murdered by a fanatic on the 14th of June, the day of Marengo. Kléber’s successor, the incompetent Menou, fell an easy victim to the British expeditionary force under Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1801. The British forced their way ashore at Aboukir on the 8th of March. On the 21st, Abercromby won a decisive battle, and himself fell in the hour of victory (see Alexandria: Battle of 1801). His successor, General Hely Hutchinson, slowly followed up this advantage, and received the surrender of Cairo in July and of Alexandria in August, the débris of the French army being given free passage back to France. Meantime a mixed force of British and native troops from India, under Sir David Baird, had landed at Kosseir and marched across the desert to Cairo.

The War of the Second Coalition

In the autumn of 1798, while Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition was in progress, and the Directory was endeavouring at home to reduce the importance and the predominance of the army and its leaders, the powers of Europe once more allied themselves, not now against the principles of the Republic, but against the treaty of Campo Formio. Russia, Austria, England, Turkey, Portugal, Naples and the Pope formed the Second Coalition. The war began with an advance into the Roman States by a worthless and ill-behaved Neapolitan army (commanded, much against his will, by Mack), which the French troops under Championnet destroyed with ease. Championnet then revolutionized Naples. After this unimportant prelude the curtain rose on a general European war. The Directory which now had at its command neither numbers nor enthusiasm, prepared as best it could to meet the storm. Four armies, numbering only 160,000, were set on foot, in Holland (Brune, 24,000); on the Upper Rhine (Jourdan, 46,000); in Switzerland, which had been militarily occupied in 1798 (Masséna, 30,000); and in upper Italy (Schérer, 60,000). In addition there was Championnet’s army, now commanded by Macdonald, in southern Italy. All these forces the Directory ordered, in January and February 1799, to assume the offensive.

Jourdan, in the Constance and Schaffhausen region, had only 40,000 men against the archduke Charles’s 80,000, and was soon brought to a standstill and driven back on Stokach. The archduke had won these preliminary successes Stokach. with seven-eighths of his army acting as one concentrated mass. But as he had only encountered a portion of Jourdan’s army, he became uneasy as to his flanks, checked his bold advance, and ordered a reconnaissance in force. This practically extended his army while Jourdan was closing his, and thus the French began the battle of Stokach (March 25) in superior numbers, and it was not until late in the day that the archduke brought up sufficient strength (60,000) to win a victory. This was a battle of the “strategic” type, a widespread straggling combat in which each side took fifteen hours to inflict a loss of 12% on the other, and which ended in Jourdan accepting defeat and drawing off, unpursued by the magnificent Austrian cavalry, though these counted five times as many sabres as the French.

The French secondary army in Switzerland was in the hands of the bold and active Masséna. The forces of both sides in the Alpine region were, from a military point of view, mere flank guards to the main armies on the Rhine and the Adige. But unrest, amounting to civil war, among the Swiss and Grison peoples tempted both governments to give these flank guards considerable strength.13

The Austrians in the Vorarlberg and Grisons were under Hotze, who had 13,000 men at Bregenz, and 7000 commanded by Auffenberg around Chur, with, between them, 5000 men at Feldkirch and a post of 1000 in the strong Masséna in Switzerland. position of the Luziensteig near Mayenfeld. Masséna’s available force was about 20,000, and he used almost the whole of it against Auffenberg. The Rhine was crossed by his principal column near Mayenfeld, and the Luziensteig stormed (March 6), while a second column from the Zürich side descended upon Disentis and captured its defenders. In three days, thanks to Masséna’s energy and the ardent attacking spirit of his men, Auffenberg’s division was broken up, Oudinot meanwhile holding off Hotze by a hard-fought combat at Feldkirch (March 7). But a second attack on Feldkirch made on the 23rd by Masséna with 15,000 men was repulsed and the advance of his left wing came to a standstill.

Behind Auffenberg and Hotze was Bellegarde in Tirol with some 47,000 men. Most of these were stationed north of Innsbruck and Landeck, probably as a sort of strategic reserve to the archduke. The rest, with the assistance of the Tirolese themselves, were to ward off irruptions from Italy. Here the French offensive was entrusted to two columns, one from Masséna’s command under Lecourbe, the other from the Army of Italy under Dessolle. Simultaneously with Masséna, Lecourbe marched from Bellinzona with 10,000 men, by the San Bernadino pass into the Splügen valley, and thence over the Julier pass into the upper Engadine. A small Austrian force under Major-General Loudon attacked him near Zernetz, but was after three days of rapid manœuvres and bold tactics driven back to Martinsbrück, with considerable losses, especially in prisoners. But ere long the country people flew to arms, and Lecourbe found himself between two fires, the levies occupying Zernetz and Loudon’s regulars Martinsbrück. But though he had only some 5000 of his original force left, he was not disconcerted, and, by driving back the levies into the high valleys whence they had come, and constantly threatening Loudon, 195 he was able to maintain himself and to wait for Dessolles. The latter, moving up the Valtelline, by now fought his way to the Stelvio pass, but beyond it the defile of Tauffers (S.W. of Glurns) was entrenched by Loudon, who thus occupied a position midway between the two French columns, while his irregulars beset all the passes and ways giving access to the Vintschgau and the lower Engadine. In this situation the French should have been destroyed in detail. But as usual their speed and dash gave them the advantage in every manœuvre and at every point of contact.

On the 25th Lecourbe and Dessolles attacked Loudon at Nauders in the Engadine and Tauffers in the Vintschgau respectively. At Nauders the French passed round the flanks of the defence by scrambling along the high Lecourbe and Dessolles in Tirol. mountain crests adjacent, while at Tauffers the assailants, only 4500 strong, descended into a deep ravine, debouched unnoticed in the Austrians’ rear, and captured 6000 men and 16 guns. The Austrian leader with a couple of companies made his way through Glurns to Nauders, and there, finding himself headed off by Lecourbe, he took to the mountains. His corps, like Auffenberg’s, was annihilated.

This ended the French general offensive. Jourdan had been defeated by the archduke and forced or induced to retire over the Rhine. Masséna was at a standstill before the strong position of Feldkirch, and the Austrians of Hotze were still massed at Bregenz, but the Grisons were revolutionized, two strong bodies of Austrians numbering in all about 20,000 men had been destroyed, and Lecourbe and Dessolles had advanced far into Tirol. A pause followed. The Austrians in the mountains needed time to concentrate and to recover from their astonishment. The archduke fell ill, and the Vienna war council forbade his army to advance lest Tirol should be “uncovered,” though Bellegarde and Hotze still disposed of numbers equal to those of Masséna and Lecourbe. Masséna succeeded Jourdan in general command on the French side and promptly collected all available forces of both armies in the hilly non-Alpine country between Basel, Zürich and Schaffhausen, thereby directly barring the roads into France (Berne-Neuchâtel-Pontarlier and Basel-Besançon) which the Austrians appeared to desire to conquer. The protection of Alsace and the Vosges was left to the fortresses. There was no suggestion, it would appear, that the Rhine between Basel and Schaffhausen was a flank position sufficient of itself to bar Alsace to the enemy.

It is now time to turn to events in Italy, where the Coalition intended to put forth its principal efforts. At the beginning of March the French had 80,000 men in Upper Italy and some 35,000 in the heart of the Peninsula, the latter engaged chiefly in supporting newly-founded republics. Of the former, 53,000 formed the field army on the Mincio under Schérer. The Austrians, commanded by Kray, numbered in all 84,000, but detachments reduced this figure to 67,000, of whom, moreover, 15,000 had not yet arrived when operations began. They were to be joined by a Russian contingent under the celebrated Suvárov, who was to command the whole on arrival, and whose extraordinary personality gives the campaign its special interest. Kray himself was a resolute soldier, and when the French, obeying the general order to advance, crossed the Adige, he defeated them in a severely fought battle at Magnano near Verona (March 5), the French losing 4000 killed and wounded and 4500 taken, out of 41,000. The Austrians lost some 3800 killed and wounded and 1500 prisoners, out of 46,000 engaged. The war, however, was undertaken not to annihilate, but to evict the French, and, probably under orders from Vienna, Kray allowed the beaten enemy to depart.

Suvárov appeared with 17,000 Russians on the 4th of April. His first step was to set Russian officers to teach the Austrian troops—whose feelings can be imagined—how to attack with the bayonet, his next to order the whole Suvárov. army forward. The Allies broke camp on the 17th, 18th and 19th of April, and on the 20th, after a forced march of close on 30 m., they passed the Chiese. Brescia had a French garrison, but Suvárov soon cowed it into surrender by threats of a massacre, which no one doubted that he would carry into execution. At the same time, dissatisfied with the marching of the Austrian infantry, he sent the following characteristic reproof to their commander: “The march was in the service of the Kaiser. Fair weather is for my lady’s chamber, for dandies, for sluggards. He who dares to cavil against his high duty (der Grosssprecher wider den hohen Dienst) is, as an egoist, instantly to vacate his command. Whoever is in bad health can stay behind. The so-called reasoners (raisonneurs) do no army any good....” One day later, under this unrelenting pressure, the advanced posts of the Allies reached Cremona and the main body the Oglio. The pace became slower in the following days, as many bridges had to be made, and meanwhile Moreau, Schérer’s successor, prepared with a mere 20,000 men to defend Lodi, Cassano and Lecco on the Adda. On the 26th the Russian hero attacked him all along the line. The moral supremacy had passed over to the Allies. Melas, under Suvárov’s stern orders, flung his battalions regardless of losses against the strong position of Cassano. The story of 1796 repeated itself with the rôles reversed. The passage was carried, and the French rearguard under Sérurier was surrounded and captured by an inferior corps of Austrians. The Austrians (the Russians at Lecco were hardly engaged) lost 6000 men, but they took 7000 prisoners, and in all Moreau’s little army lost half its numbers and retreated in many disconnected bodies to the Ticino, and thence to Alessandria. Everywhere the Italians turned against the French, mindful of the exactions of their commissaries. The strange Cossack cavalry that western Europe had never yet seen entered Milan on the 29th of April, eleven days after passing the Mincio, and next day the city received with enthusiasm the old field marshal, whose exploits against the Turks had long invested him with a halo of romance and legend. Here, for the moment, his offensive culminated. He desired to pass into Switzerland and to unite his own, the archduke’s, Hotze’s and Bellegarde’s armies in one powerful mass. But the emperor would not permit the execution of this scheme until all the fortresses held by the enemy in Upper Italy should have been captured. In any case, Macdonald’s army in southern Italy, cut off from France by the rapidity of Suvárov’s onslaught, and now returning with all speed to join Moreau by force or evasion, had still to be dealt with.

Suvárov’s mobile army, originally 90,000 strong, had now dwindled, by reason of losses and detachments for sieges, to half that number, and serious differences arose between the Vienna government and himself. If he offended the pride of the Austrian army, he was at least respected as a leader who gave it victories, but in Vienna he was regarded as a madman who had to be kept within bounds. But at last, when he was becoming thoroughly exasperated by this treatment, Macdonald came within striking distance and the active campaign recommenced. In the second week of June, Moreau, who had retired into the Apennines about Gavi, advanced with the intention of drawing upon himself troops that would otherwise have been employed against Macdonald. He succeeded, for Suvárov with his usual rapidity collected 40,000 men at Alessandria, only to learn that Macdonald with 35,000 men was coming up on the Parma road. When this news arrived, Macdonald had already engaged an Austrian detachment at Modena and driven it back, and Suvárov found himself between Moreau and Macdonald with barely enough men under his hand to enable him to play the game of “interior lines.” But at the crisis the rough energetic warrior who despised “raisonneurs,” displayed generalship of the first order, and taking in hand all his scattered detachments, he manœuvred them in the Napoleonic fashion.

On the 14th Macdonald was calculated to be between Modena, Reggio and Carpi, but his destination was uncertain. Would he continue to hug the Apennines to join Moreau, or would he strike out northwards against Kray, who The Trebbia. with 20,000 men was besieging Mantua? From Alessandria it is four marches to Piacenza and nine to Mantua, while from Reggio these places are four and two marches respectively. Piacenza, therefore, was the crucial point if 196 Macdonald continued westward, while, in the other case, nothing could save Kray but the energetic conduct of Hohenzollern’s detachment, which was posted near Reggio. This latter, however, was soon forced over the Po, and Ott, advancing from Cremona to join it, found himself sharply pressed in turn. The field marshal had hoped that Ott and Hohenzollern together would be able to win him time to assemble at Parma, where he could bring on a battle whichever way the French took. But on receipt of Ott’s report he was convinced that Macdonald had chosen the western route, and ordering Ott to delay the French as long as possible by stubborn rearguard actions and to put a garrison into Piacenza under a general who was to hold out “on peril of his life and honour,” he collected what forces were ready to move and hurried towards Piacenza, the rest being left to watch Moreau. He arrived just in time. When after three forced marches the main body (only 26,000 strong) reached Castel San Giovanni, Ott had been driven out of Piacenza, but the two joined forces safely. Both Suvárov and Macdonald spent the 17th in closing up and deploying for battle. The respective forces were Allies 30,000, French 35,000. Suvárov believed the enemy to be only 26,000 strong, and chiefly raw Italian regiments, but his temperament would not have allowed him to stand still even had he known his inferiority. He had already issued one of his peculiar battle-orders, which began with the words, “The hostile army will be taken prisoners” and continued with directions to the Cossacks to spare the surrendered enemy. But Macdonald too was full of energy, and believed still that he could annihilate Ott before the field marshal’s arrival. Thus the battle of the Trebbia (June 17-19) was fought by both sides in the spirit of the offensive. It was one of the severest struggles in the Republican wars, and it ended in Macdonald’s retreat with a loss of 15,000 men—probably 6000 in the battle and 9000 killed and prisoners when and after the equilibrium was broken—for Suvárov, unlike other generals, had the necessary surplus of energy after all the demands made upon him by a great battle, to order and to direct an effective pursuit. The Allies lost about 7000. Macdonald retreated to Parma and Modena, harassed by the peasantry, and finally recrossed the Apennines and made his way to Genoa. The battle of the Trebbia is one of the most clearly-defined examples in military history of the result of moral force—it was a matter not merely of energetic leading on the battlefield, but far more of educating the troops beforehand to meet the strain, of ingraining in the soldier the determination to win at all costs. “It was not,” says Clausewitz, “a case of losing the key of the position, of turning a flank or breaking a centre, of a mistimed cavalry charge or a lost battery ... it is a pure trial of strength and expense of force, and victory is the sinking of the balance, if ever so slightly, in favour of one side. And we mean not merely physical, but even more moral forces.”

To return now to the Alpine region, where the French offensive had culminated at the end of March. Their defeated left was behind the Rhine in the northern part of Switzerland, the half-victorious centre athwart the Rhine between Mayenfeld and Chur, and their wholly victorious right far within Tirol between Glurns, Nauders and Landeck. But neither the centre nor the right could maintain itself. The forward impulse given by Suvárov spread along the whole Austrian front from left to right. Dessolles’ column (now under Loison) was forced back to Chiavenna. Bellegarde drove Lecourbe from position to position towards the Rhine during April. There Lecourbe added to the remnant of his expeditionary column the outlying bodies of Masséna’s right wing, but even so he had only 8000 men against Bellegarde’s 17,000, and he was now exposed to the attack of Hotze’s 25,000 as well. The Luziensteig fell to Hotze and Chur to Bellegarde, but the defenders managed to escape from the converging Austrian columns into the valley of the Reuss. Having thus reconquered all the lost ground and forced the French into the interior of Switzerland, Bellegarde and Hotze parted company, the former marching with the greater part of his forces to join Suvárov, the latter moving to his right to reinforce the archduke. Only a chain of posts was left in the Rhine Valley between Disentis and Feldkirch. The archduke’s operations now recommenced.

Charles and Hotze stood, about the 15th of May, at opposite ends of the lake of Constance. The two together numbered about 88,000 men, but both had sent away numerous detachments to the flanks, and the main bodies dwindled to 35,000 for the archduke and 20,000 for Hotze. Masséna, with 45,000 men in all, retired slowly from the Rhine to the Thur. The archduke crossed the Rhine at Stein, Hotze at Balzers, and each then cautiously felt his way towards the other. Their active opponent attempted to take advantage of their separation, and an irregular fight took place in the Thur valley (May 25), but Masséna, finding Hotze close on his right flank, retired without attempting to force a decision. On the 27th, having joined forces, the Austrians dislodged Masséna from his new position on the Töss without difficulty, and this process was repeated from time to time in the Action of Zürich. next few days, until at last Masséna halted in the position he had prepared for defence at Zürich. He had still but 25,000 of his 45,000 men in hand, for he maintained numerous small detachments on his right, behind the Zürcher See and the Wallen See, and on his left towards Basel. These 25,000 occupied an entrenched position 5 m. in length; against which the Austrians, detaching as usual many posts to protect their flanks and rear, deployed only 42,000 men, of whom 8000 were sent on a wide turning movement and 8000 held in reserve 4 m. in rear of the battlefield. Thus the frontal attack was made with forces not much greater than those of the defence and it failed accordingly (June 4). But Masséna, fearing perhaps to strain the loyalty of the Swiss to their French-made constitution by exposing their town to assault and sack, retired on the 5th.

He did not fall back far, for his outposts still bordered the Limmat and the Linth, while his main body stood in the valley of the Aar between Baden and Lucerne. The archduke pressed Masséna as little as he had pressed Jourdan after Stokach (though in this case he had less to gain by pursuit), and awaited the arrival of a second Russian army, 30,000 strong, under Korsákov, before resuming the advance, meantime throwing out covering detachments towards Basel, where Masséna had a division. Thus for two months operations, elsewhere than in Italy, were at a standstill, while Masséna drew in reinforcements and organized the fractions of his forces in Alsace as a skeleton army, and the Austrians distributed arms to the peasantry of South Germany.

In the end, under pressure from Paris, it was Masséna who resumed active movements. Towards the middle of August, Lecourbe, who formed a loose right wing of the French army in the Reuss valley, was reinforced to a strength of 25,000 men, and pounced upon the extended left wing of the enemy, which had stretched itself, to keep pace with Suvárov, as far westward as the St Gothard. The movement began on the 14th, and in two days the Austrians were driven back from the St Gothard and the Furka to the line of the Linth, with the loss of 8000 men and many guns. At the same time an attempt to take advantage of Masséna’s momentary weakness by forcing the Aar at Döttingen near its mouth failed completely (August 16-17). Only 200 men guarded the point of passage, but the Austrian engineers had neglected to make a proper examination of the river, and unlike the French, the Austrian generals had no authority to waste their expensive battalions in forcing the passage in boats. No one regarded this war as a struggle for existence, and no one but Suvárov possessed the iron strength of character to send thousands of men to death for the realization of a diplomatic success—for ordinary men, the object of the Coalition was to upset the treaty of Campo Formio. This was the end of the archduke’s campaign in Switzerland. Though he would have preferred to continue it, the Vienna government desired him to return to Germany. An Anglo-Russian expedition was about to land in Holland,14 and the French were assembling fresh forces on the Rhine, and, with the double object of preventing an invasion of 197 South Germany and of inducing the French to augment their forces in Alsace at the expense of those in Holland, the archduke left affairs in Switzerland to Hotze and Korsákov, and marched away with 35,000 men to join the detachment of Sztarray (20,000) that he had placed in the Black Forest before entering Switzerland. His new campaign never rose above the level of a war of posts and of manœuvres about Mannheim and Philippsburg. In the latter stage of it Lecourbe commanded the French and obtained a slight advantage.

Suvárov’s last exploit in Italy coincided in time, but in no other respect, with the skirmish at Döttingen. Returning swiftly from the battlefield of the Trebbia, he began to drive back Moreau to the Riviera. At this point Joubert succeeded to the command on the French side, and against the advice of his generals, gave battle. Equally against the advice of his own subordinates, the field marshal accepted it, and won his last great victory at Novi on the 13th of August, Joubert being killed. This was followed by another rapid march against a new French “Army of the Alps” (Championnet) which had entered Italy by way of the Mont Cenis. But immediately after this he left all further operations in Italy to Melas with 60,000 men and himself with the Russians and an Austrian corps marched away, via Varese, for the St Gothard to combine operations against Masséna with Hotze and Korsákov. It was with a heavy heart that he left the scene of his battles, in which the force of his personality had carried the old-fashioned “linear” armies for the last time to complete victory. In the early summer he had himself suggested, eagerly and almost angrily, the concentration of his own and the archduke’s armies in Switzerland with a view, not to conquering that country, but to forcing Jourdan and Masséna into a grand decisive battle. But, as we have seen, the Vienna government would not release him until the last Italian fortress had been reoccupied, and when finally he received the order that a little while before he had so ardently desired, it was too late. The archduke had already left Switzerland, and he was committed to a resultless warfare in the high mountains, with an army which was a mere detachment Suvárov ordered to Switzerland. and in the hope of co-operating with two other detachments far away on the other side of Switzerland. As for the reasons which led to the issue of such an order, it can only be said that the bad feeling known to exist between the Austrians and Russians induced England to recommend, as the first essential of further operations, the separate concentration of the troops of each nationality under their own generals. Still stranger was the reason which induced the tsar to give his consent. It was alleged that the Russians would be healthier in Switzerland than the men of the southern plains! From such premises as these the Allied diplomats evolved a new plan of campaign, by which the Anglo-Russians under the duke of York were to reconquer Holland and Belgium, the Archduke Charles to operate on the Middle Rhine, Suvárov in Switzerland and Melas in Piedmont—a plan destitute of every merit but that of simplicity.

It is often said that it is the duty of a commander to resign rather than undertake an operation which he believes to be faulty. So, however, Suvárov did not understand it. In the simplicity of his loyalty to the formal order of his sovereign he prepared to carry out his instructions to the letter. Masséna’s command (77,000 men) was distributed, at the beginning of September, along an enormous S, from the Simplon, through the St Gothard and Glarus, and along the Linth, the Züricher See and the Limmat to Basel. Opposite the lower point of this S, Suvárov (28,000) was about to advance. Hotze’s corps (25,000 Austrians), extending from Utznach by Chur to Disentis, formed a thin line roughly parallel to the lower curve of the S, Korsákov’s Russians (30,000) were opposite the centre at Zürich, while Nauendorff with a small Austrian corps at Waldshut faced the extreme upper point. Thus the only completely safe way in which Suvárov could reach the Zürich region was by skirting the lower curve of the S, under protection of Hotze. But this detour would be long and painful, and the ardent old man preferred to cross the mountains once for all at the St Gothard, and to follow the valley of the Reuss to Altdorf and Schwyz—i.e. to strike vertically upward to the centre of the S—and to force his way through the French cordon to Zürich, and if events, so far as concerned his own corps, belied his optimism, they at any rate justified his choice of the shortest route. For, aware of the danger gathering in his rear, Masséna gathered up all his forces within reach towards his centre, leaving Lecourbe to defend the St Gothard Battle of Zürich. and the Reuss valley and Soult on the Linth. On the 24th he forced the passage of the Limmat at Dietikon. On the 25th, in the second battle of Zürich, he completely routed Korsákov, who lost 8000 killed and wounded, large numbers of prisoners and 100 guns. All along the line the Allies fell back, one corps after another, at the moment when Suvárov was approaching the foot of the St Gothard.

On the 21st the field marshal’s headquarters were at Bellinzona, where he made the final preparations. Expecting to be four days en route before he could reach the nearest friendly magazine, he took his trains with him, which inevitably Suvárov in the Alps. augmented the difficulties of the expedition. On the 24th Airolo was taken, but when the far greater task of storming the pass itself presented itself before them, even the stolid Russians were terrified, and only the passionate protests of the old man, who reproached his “children” with deserting their father in his extremity, induced them to face the danger. At last after twelve hours’ fighting, the summit was reached. The same evening Suvárov pushed on to Hospenthal, while a flanking column from Disentis made its way towards Amsteg over the Crispalt. Lecourbe was threatened in rear and pressed in front, and his engineers, to hold off the Disentis column, had broken the Devil’s Bridge. Discovering this, he left the road, threw his guns into the river and made his way by fords and water-meadows to Göschenen, where by a furious attack he cleared the Disentis troops off his line of retreat. His rearguard meantime held the ruined Devil’s Bridge. This point and the tunnel leading to it, called the Urner Loch, the Russians attempted to force, with the most terrible losses, battalion after battalion crowding into the tunnel and pushing the foremost ranks into the chasm left by the broken bridge. But at last a ford was discovered and the bridge, cleared by a turning movement, was repaired. More broken bridges lay beyond, but at last Suvárov joined the Disentis column near Göschenen. When Altdorf was reached, however, Suvárov found not only Lecourbe in a threatening position, but an entire absence of boats on the Lake of the Four Cantons. It was impossible (in those days the Axenstrasse did not exist) to take an army along the precipitous eastern shore, and thus passing through one trial after another, each more severe than the last, the Russians, men and horses and pack animals in an interminable single file, ventured on the path leading over the Kinzig pass into the Muotta Thal. The passage lasted three days, the leading troops losing men and horses over the precipices, the rearguard from the fire of the enemy, now in pursuit. And at last, on arrival in the Muotta Thal, the field marshal received definite information that Korsákov’s army was no longer in existence. Yet even so it was long before he could make up his mind to retreat, and the pursuers gathered on all sides. Fighting, sometimes severe, and never altogether ceasing, went on day after day as the Allied column, now reduced to 15,000 men, struggled on over one pass after another, but at last it reached Ilanz on the Vorder Rhine (October 8). The Archduke Charles meanwhile had, on hearing of the disaster of Zürich, brought over a corps from the Neckar, and for some time negotiations were made for a fresh combined operation against Masséna. But these came to nothing, for the archduke and Suvárov could not agree, either as to their own relations or as to the plan to be pursued. Practically, Suvárov’s retreat from Altdorf to Ilanz closed the campaign. It was his last active service, and formed a gloomy but grand climax to the career of the greatest soldier who ever wore the Russian uniform.

Marengo and Hohenlinden

The disasters of 1799 sealed the fate of the Directory, and placed Bonaparte, who returned from Egypt with the prestige of a recent victory, in his natural place as civil and military 198 head of France. In the course of the campaign the field strength of the French had been gradually augmented, and in spite of losses now numbered 227,000 at the front. These were divided into the Army of Batavia, Brune (25,000), the Army of the Rhine, Moreau (146,000), the Army of Italy, Masséna (56,000), and, in addition, there were some 100,000 in garrisons and depots in France.

Most of these field armies were in a miserable condition owing to the losses and fatigues of the last campaign. The treasury was empty and credit exhausted, and worse still—for spirit and enthusiasm, as in 1794, would have remedied material deficiencies—the conscripts obtained under Jourdan’s law of 1798 (see Conscription) came to their regiments most unwillingly. Most of them, indeed, deserted on the way to join the colours. A large draft sent to the Army of Italy arrived with 310 men instead of 10,250, and after a few such experiences, the First Consul decided that the untrained men were to be assembled in the fortresses of the interior and afterwards sent to the active battalions in numerous small drafts, which they could more easily assimilate. Besides accomplishing the immense task of reorganizing existing forces, he created new ones, including the Consular Guard, and carried out at this moment of crisis two such far-reaching reforms as the replacement of the civilian drivers of the artillery by soldiers, and of the hired teams by horses belonging to the state, and the permanent grouping of divisions in army corps.

As early as the 25th of January 1800 the First Consul provided for the assembly of all available forces in the interior in an “Army of Reserve.” He reserved to himself the command of this army,15 which gradually came into The Army of Reserve. being as the pacification of Vendée and the return of some of Brune’s troops from Holland set free the necessary nucleus troops. The conscription law was stringently reenforced, and impassioned calls were made for volunteers (the latter, be it said, did not produce five hundred useful men). The district of Dijon, partly as being central with respect to the Rhine and Italian Armies, partly as being convenient for supply purposes, was selected as the zone of assembly. Chabran’s division was formed from some depleted corps of the Army of Italy and from the depots of those in Egypt. Chambarlhac’s, chiefly of young soldiers, lost 5% of its numbers on the way to Dijon from desertion—a loss which appeared slight and even satisfactory after the wholesale débandade of the winter months. Lechi’s Italian legion was newly formed from Italian refugees. Boudet’s division was originally assembled from some of the southern garrison towns, but the units composing it were frequently changed up to the beginning of May. The cavalry was deficient in saddles, and many of its units were new formations. The Consular Guard of course was a corps d’élite, and this and two and a half infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade coming from the veteran “Army of the West” formed the real backbone of the army. Most of the newer units were not even armed till they had left Dijon for the front.

Such was the first constitution of the Army of Reserve. We can scarcely imagine one which required more accurate and detailed staff work to assemble it—correspondence with the district commanders, with the adjutant-generals of the various armies, and orders to the civil authorities on the lines of march, to the troops themselves and to the arsenals and magazines. No one but Napoleon, even aided by a Berthier, could have achieved so great a task in six weeks, and the great captain, himself doing the work that nowadays is apportioned amongst a crowd of administrative staff officers, still found time to administer France’s affairs at home and abroad, and to think out a general plan of campaign that embraced Moreau’s, Masséna’s and his own armies.

The Army of the Rhine, by far the strongest and best equipped, lay on the upper Rhine. The small and worn-out Army of Italy was watching the Alps and the Apennines from Mont Blanc to Genoa. Between them Switzerland, secured by the victory of Zürich, offered a starting-point for a turning movement on either side—this year the advantage of the flank position was recognized and acted upon. The Army of Reserve was assembling around Dijon, within 200 m. of either theatre of war. The general plan was that the Army of Reserve should march through Switzerland to close on the right wing of the Army of the Rhine. Thus supported to whatever degree might prove to be necessary, Moreau was to force the passage of the Rhine about Schaffhausen, to push back the Austrians rapidly beyond the Lech, and then, if they took the offensive in turn, to hold them in check for ten or twelve days. During this period of guaranteed freedom the decisive movement was to be made. The Army of Reserve, augmented by one large corps of the Army of the Rhine, was to descend by the Splügen (alternatively by the St Gothard and even by Tirol) into the plains of Lombardy. Magazines were to be established at Zürich and Lucerne (not at Chur, lest the plan should become obvious from the beginning), and all likely routes reconnoitred in advance. The Army of Italy was at first to maintain a strict defensive, then to occupy the Austrians until the entry of the Reserve Army into Italy was assured, and finally to manœuvre to join it.

Moreau, however, owing to want of horses for his pontoon train and also because of the character of the Rhine above Basel, preferred to cross below that place, especially as in Alsace there were considerably greater supply facilities than in a country which had already been fought over and stripped bare. With the greatest reluctance Bonaparte let him have his way, and giving up the idea of using the Splügen and the St Gothard, began to turn his attention to the more westerly passes, the St Bernard and the Simplon. It was not merely Moreau’s scruples that led to this essential modification in the scheme. At the beginning of April the enemy took the offensive against Masséna. On the 8th Melas’s right wing dislodged the French from the Mont Cenis, and most of the troops that had then reached Dijon were shifted southward to be ready for emergencies. By the 25th Berthier reported that Masséna was seriously attacked and that he might have to be supported by the shortest route. Bonaparte’s resolution was already taken. He waited no longer for Moreau 199 (who indeed so far from volunteering assistance, actually demanded it for himself). Convinced from the paucity of news that Masséna’s army was closely pressed and probably severed from France, and feeling also that the Austrians were deeply committed to their struggle with the Army of Italy, he told Berthier to march with 40,000 men at once by way of the St Bernard unless otherwise advised. Berthier protested that he had only 25,000 effectives, and the equipment and armament was still far from complete—as indeed it remained to the end—but the troops marched, though their very means of existence were precarious from the time of leaving Geneva to the time of reaching Milan, for nothing could extort supplies and money from the sullen Swiss.

At the beginning of May the First Consul learned of the serious plight of the Army of Italy. Masséna with his right wing was shut up in Genoa, Suchet with the left wing driven back to the Var. Meanwhile Moreau had won Napoleon’s plan of campaign. a preliminary victory at Stokach, and the Army of Reserve had begun its movement to Geneva. With these data the plan of campaign took a clear shape at last—Masséna to resist as long as possible; Suchet to resume the offensive, if he could do so, towards Turin; the Army of Reserve to pass the Alps and to debouch into Piedmont by Aosta; the Army of the Rhine to send a strong force into Italy by the St Gothard. The First Consul left Paris on the 6th of May. Berthier went forward to Geneva, and still farther on the route magazines were established at Villeneuve and St-Pierre. Gradually, and with immense efforts, the leading troops of the long column16 were passed over the St Bernard, drawing their artillery on sledges, on the 15th and succeeding days. Driving away small posts of the Austrian army, the advance guard entered Aosta on the 16th and Châtillon on the 18th and the alarm was given. Melas, committed as he was to his Riviera campaign, began to look to his right rear, but he was far from suspecting the seriousness of his opponent’s purpose.

Infinitely more dangerous for the French than the small detachment that Melas opposed to them, or even the actual crossing of the pass, was the unexpected stopping power of the little fort of Bard. The advanced guard Bard. of the French appeared before it on the 19th, and after three wasted days the infantry managed to find a difficult mountain by-way and to pass round the obstacle. Ivrea was occupied on the 23rd, and Napoleon hoped to assemble the whole army there by the 27th. But except for a few guns that with infinite precautions were smuggled one by one through the streets of Bard, the whole of the artillery, as well as a detachment (under Chabran) to besiege the fort, had to be left behind. Bard surrendered on the 2nd of June, having delayed the infantry of the French army for four days and the artillery for a fortnight.

The military situation in the last week of May, as it presented itself to the First Consul at Ivrea, was this. The Army of Italy under Masséna was closely besieged in Genoa, where provisions were running short, and the population so hostile that the French general placed his field artillery to sweep the streets. But Masséna was no ordinary general, and the First Consul knew that while Masséna lived the garrison would resist to the last extremity. Suchet was defending Nice and the Var by vigorous minor operations. The Army of Reserve, the centre of which had reached at Ivrea the edge of the Italian plains, consisted of four weak army corps under Victor, Duhesme, Lannes and Murat. There were still to be added to this small army of 34,000 effectives, Turreau’s division, which had passed over the Mont Cenis and was now in the valley of the Dora Riparia, Moncey’s corps of the Army of the Rhine, which had at last been extorted from Moreau and was due to pass the St Gothard before the end of May, Chabran’s division left to besiege Bard, and a small force under Béthencourt, which was to cross the Simplon and to descend by Arona (this place proved in the event a second Bard and immobilized Béthencourt until after the decisive battle). Thus it was only the simplest part of Napoleon’s task to concentrate half of his army at Ivrea, and he had yet to bring in the rest. The problem was to reconcile the necessity for time, which he wanted to ensure the maximum force being brought over the Alps, with the necessity for haste, in view of the impending fall of Genoa and the probability that once this conquest was achieved, Melas would bring back his 100,000 men into the Milanese to deal with the Army of Reserve. As early as the 14th of May he had informed Moncey that from Ivrea the Army of Reserve would move on Milan. On the 25th of May, in response to Berthier’s request for guidance, the First Consul ordered Lannes (advanced guard) to push out on the Turin road, “in order to deceive the enemy and to obtain news of Turreau,” and Duhesme’s and Murat’s corps to proceed along the Milan road. On the 27th, after Lannes had on the 26th defeated an Austrian column near Chivasso, the main body was already advancing on Vercelli.

Very few of Napoleon’s acts of generalship have been more criticized than this resolution to march on Milan, which abandoned Genoa to its fate and gave Melas a week’s leisure to assemble his scattered forces. The account of his motives The march to Milan. he dictated at St Helena (Nap. Correspondence, v. 30, pp. 375-377), in itself an unconvincing appeal to the rules of strategy as laid down by the theorists—which rules his own practice throughout transcended—gives, when closely examined, some at least of the necessary clues. He says in effect that by advancing directly on Turin he would have “risked a battle against equal forces without an assured line of retreat, Bard being still uncaptured.” It is indeed strange to find Napoleon shrinking before equal forces of the enemy, even if we admit without comment that it was more difficult to pass Bard the second time than the first. The only incentive to go towards Turin was the chance of partial victories over the disconnected Austrian corps that would be met in that direction, and this he deliberately set aside. Having done so, for reasons that will appear in the sequel, he could only defend it by saying in effect that he might have been defeated—which was true, but not the Napoleonic principle of war. Of the alternatives, one was to hasten to Genoa; this in Napoleon’s eyes would have been playing the enemy’s game, for they would have concentrated at Alessandria, facing west “in their natural position.” It is equally obvious that thus the enemy would have played his game, supposing that this was to relieve Genoa, and the implication is that it was not. The third course, which Napoleon took, and in this memorandum defended, gave his army the enemy’s depots at Milan, of which it unquestionably stood in sore need, and the reinforcement of Moncey’s 15,000 men from the Rhine, while at the same time Moncey’s route offered an “assured line of retreat” by the Simplon17 and the St Gothard. He would in fact make for himself there a “natural position” without forfeiting the advantage of being in Melas’s rear. Once possessed of Milan, Napoleon says, he could have engaged Melas with a light heart and with confidence in the greatest possible results of a victory, whether the Austrians sought to force their way back to the east by the right or the left bank of the Po, and he adds that if the French passed on and concentrated south of the Po there would be no danger to the Milan-St Gothard line of retreat, as this was secured by the rivers Ticino and Sesia. In this last, as we shall see, he is shielding an undeniable mistake, but considering for the moment only the movement to Milan, we are justified in assuming that his object was not the relief of Genoa, but the most thorough defeat of Melas’s field army, to which end, putting all sentiment aside, he treated the hard-pressed Masséna as a “containing force” to keep Melas occupied during the strategical deployment of the Army of Reserve. In the beginning he had told Masséna that he would “disengage” him, even if he had to go as far east as Trent to find a way into Italy. From the first, then, no direct relief was intended, and when, on hearing bad news from the Riviera, he altered his route to the more westerly passes, it was probably because he felt that Masséna’s containing power was almost exhausted, and that the passage and reassembly of the Reserve Army must be brought about in the minimum time and by the shortest way. But the object was still the defeat of Melas, and for this, as the Austrians possessed an enormous numerical superiority, the assembly of all forces, including Moncey’s, was indispensable. One essential condition of this was that the points of passage used should be out of reach of the enemy. The more westerly the passes chosen, the more dangerous was the whole operation—in fact the Mont Cenis column never reached him at all—and though his expressed objections to the St Bernard line seem, as we have said, to be written after the event, to disarm his critics, there is no doubt that at the time he disliked it. It was a pis aller forced upon him by Moreau’s delay and Masséna’s extremity, and from the moment at which he arrived at Milan he did, as a fact, abandon it altogether in favour of the St Gothard. Lastly, so strongly was he impressed with the necessity of completing the deployment of all his forces, that though he found the Austrians on the Turin side much scattered and could justifiably expect a series of rapid 200 partial victories, Napoleon let them go, and devoted his whole energy to creating for himself a “natural” position about Milan. If he sinned, at any rate he sinned handsomely, and except that he went to Milan by Vercelli instead of by Lausanne and Domodossola18 (on the safe side of the mountains), his march is logistically beyond cavil.

Napoleon’s immediate purpose, then, was to reassemble the Army of Reserve in a zone of manœuvre about Milan. This was carried out in the first days of June. Lannes at Chivasso stood ready to ward off a flank attack until the main army had filed past on the Vercelli road, then leaving a small force to combine with Turreau (whose column had not been able to advance into the plain) in demonstrations towards Turin, he moved off, still acting as right flank guard to the army, in the direction of Pavia. The main body meanwhile, headed by Murat, advanced on Milan by way of Vercelli and Magenta, forcing the passage of the Ticino on the 31st of May at Turbigo and Buffalora. On the same day the other divisions closed up to the Ticino,19 and faithful to his principles Napoleon had an examination made of the little fortress of Novara, intending to occupy it as a place du moment to help in securing his zone of manœuvre. On the morning of the 2nd of June Murat occupied Milan, and in the evening of the same day the headquarters entered the great city, the Austrian detachment under Vukassovich (the flying right wing of Melas’s general cordon system in Piedmont) retiring to the Adda. Duhesme’s corps forced that river at Lodi, and pressed on with orders to organize Crema and if possible Orzinovi as temporary fortresses. Lechi’s Italians were sent towards Bergamo and Brescia. Lannes meantime had passed Vercelli, and on the evening of the 2nd his cavalry reached Pavia, where, as at Milan, immense stores of food, equipment and warlike stores were seized.

Napoleon was now safe in his “natural” position, and barred one of the two main lines of retreat open to the Austrians. But his ambitions went further, and he intended to cross the Po and to establish himself on the other likewise, thus establishing across the plain a complete barrage between Melas and Mantua. Here his end outranged his means, as we shall see. But he gave himself every chance that rapidity could afford him, and the moment that some sort of a “zone of manœuvre” had been secured between the Ticino and the Oglio, he pushed on his main body—or rather what was left after the protective system had been provided for—to the Po. He would not wait even for his guns, which had at last emerged from the Bard defile and were ordered to come to Milan by a safe and circuitous route along the foot of the Alps.

At this point the action of the enemy began to make itself felt. Melas had not gained the successes that he had expected in Piedmont and on the Riviera, thanks to Masséna’s obstinacy and to Suchet’s brilliant defence of the Var. Melas’s movements. These operations had led him very far afield, and the protection of his over-long line of communications had caused him to weaken his large army by throwing off many detachments to watch the Alpine valleys on his right rear. One of these successfully opposed Turreau in the valley of the Dora Riparia, but another had been severely handled by Lannes at Chivasso, and a third (Vukassovich) found itself, as we know, directly in the path of the French as they moved from Ivrea to Milan, and was driven far to the eastward. He was further handicapped by the necessity of supporting Ott before Genoa and Elsnitz on the Var, and hearing of Lannes’s bold advance on Chivasso and of the presence of a French column with artillery (Turreau) west of Turin, he assumed that the latter represented the main body of the Army of Reserve—in so far indeed as he believed in the existence of that army at all.20 Next, when Lannes moved away towards Pavia, Melas thought for a moment that fate had delivered his enemy into his hands, and began to collect such troops as were at hand at Turin with a view to cutting off the retreat of the French on Ivrea while Vukassovich held them in front. It was only when news came of Moncey’s arrival in Italy and of Vukassovich’s fighting retreat on Brescia that the magnitude and purpose of the French column that had penetrated by Ivrea became evident. Melas promptly decided to give up his western enterprises, and to concentrate at Alessandria, preparatory to breaking his way through the network of small columns—as the disseminated Army of Reserve still appeared to be—which threatened to bar his retreat. But orders circulated so slowly that he had to wait in Turin till the 8th of June for Elsnitz, whose retreat was, moreover, sharply followed up and made exceedingly costly by the enterprising Suchet. Ott, too, in spite of orders to give up the siege of Genoa at once and to march with all speed to hold the Alessandria-Piacenza road, waited two days to secure the prize, and agreed (June 4) to allow Masséna’s army to go free and to join Suchet. And lastly, the cavalry of O’Reilly, sent on ahead from Alessandria to the Stradella defile, reached that point only to encounter the French. The barrage was complete, and it remained for Melas to break it with the mass that he was assembling, with all these misfortunes and delays, about Alessandria. His chances of doing so were anything but desperate.

On the 5th of June Murat, with his own corps and part of Duhesme’s, had moved on Piacenza, and stormed the bridge-head there. Duhesme with one of his divisions pushed out on Crema and Orzinovi and also towards Pizzighetone. Moncey’s leading regiments approached Milan, and Berthier thereupon sent on Victor’s corps to support Murat and Lannes. Meantime the half abandoned line of operations, Ivrea-Vercelli, was briskly attacked by the Austrians, who had still detachments on the side of Turin, waiting for Elsnitz to rejoin, and the French artillery train was once more checked. On the 6th Lannes from Pavia, crossing the Po at San Cipriano, encountered and defeated a large force, (O’Reilly’s column), and barred the Alessandria-Parma main road. Opposite Piacenza Murat had to spend the day in gathering material for his passage, as the pontoon bridge had been cut by the retreating garrison of the bridge-head. On the eastern border of the “zone of manœuvre” Duhesme’s various columns moved out towards Brescia and Cremona, pushing back Vukassovich. Meantime the last divisions of the Army of Reserve (two of Moncey’s excepted) were hurried towards Lannes’s point of passage, as Murat had not yet secured Piacenza. On the 7th, while Duhesme continued to push back Vukassovich and seized Cremona, Murat at last captured Piacenza, finding there immense magazines. Meantime the army, division by division, passed over, slowly owing to a sudden flood, near Belgiojoso, and Lannes’s advanced guard was ordered to open communication with Murat along the main road Stradella-Piacenza. “Moments are precious” said the First Consul. He was aware that Elsnitz was retreating before Suchet, that Melas had left Turin for Alessandria, and that heavy forces of the enemy were at or east of Tortona. He knew, too, that Murat had been engaged with certain regiments recently before Genoa and (wrongly) assumed O’Reilly’s column, beaten by Lannes at San Cipriano, to have come from the same quarter. Whether this meant the deliverance or the surrender of Genoa he did not yet know, but it was certain that Masséna’s holding action was over, and that Melas was gathering up his forces to recover his communications. Hence Napoleon’s great object was concentration. “Twenty thousand men at Stradella,” in his own words, was the goal of his efforts, and with the accomplishment of this purpose the campaign enters on a new phase.

On the 8th of June, Lannes’s corps was across, Victor following as quickly as the flood would allow. Murat was at Piacenza, but the road between Lannes and Murat was not known to be clear, and the First Consul made the establishment of the Napoleon’s dispositions. 201 connexion, and the construction of a third point of passage midway between the other two, the principal objects of the day’s work. The army now being disseminated between the Alps, the Apennines, the Ticino and the Chiese, it was of vital importance to connect up the various parts into a well-balanced system. But the Napoleon of 1800 solved the problem that lay at the root of his strategy, “concentrate, but be vulnerable nowhere,” in a way that compares unfavourably indeed with the methods of the Napoleon of 1806. Duhesme was still absent at Cremona. Lechi was far away in the Brescia country, Béthencourt detained at Arona. Moncey with about 15,000 men had to cover an area of 40 m. square around Milan, which constituted the original zone of manœuvre, and if Melas chose to break through the flimsy cordon of outposts on this side (the risk of which was the motive for detaching Moncey at all) instead of at the Stradella, it would take Moncey two days to concentrate his force on any battlefield within the area named, and even then he would be outnumbered by two to one. As for the main body at the Stradella, its position was wisely chosen, for the ground was too cramped for the deployment of the superior force that Melas might bring up, but the strategy that set before itself as an object 20,000 men at the decisive point out of 50,000 available, is, to say the least, imperfect. The most serious feature in all this was the injudicious order to Lannes to send forward his advanced guard, and to attack whatever enemy he met with on the road to Voghera. The First Consul, in fact, calculated that Melas could not assemble 20,000 men at Alessandria before the 12th of June, and he told Lannes that if he met the Austrians towards Voghera, they could not be more than 10,000 strong. A later order betrays some anxiety as to the exactitude of these assumptions, warns Lannes not to let himself be surprised, indicates his line of retreat, and, instead of ordering him to advance on Voghera, authorizes him to attack any corps that presented itself at Stradella. But all this came too late. Acting on the earlier order Lannes fought the battle of Montebello on the 9th. This Montebello. was a very severe running fight, beginning east of Casteggio and ending at Montebello, in which the French drove the Austrians from several successive positions, and which culminated in a savage fight at close quarters about Montebello itself. The singular feature of the battle is the disproportion between the losses on either side—French, 500 out of 12,000 engaged; Austrians, 2100 killed and wounded and 2100 prisoners out of 14,000. These figures are most conclusive evidence of the intensity of the French military spirit in those days. One of the two divisions (Watrin’s) was indeed a veteran organization, but the other, Chambarlhac’s, was formed of young troops and was the same that, in the march to Dijon, had congratulated itself that only 5% of its men had deserted. On the other side the soldiers fought for “the honour of their arms”—not even with the courage of despair, for they were ignorant of the “strategic barrage” set in front of them by Napoleon, and the loss of their communications had not as yet lessened their daily rations by an ounce.

Meanwhile, Napoleon had issued orders for the main body to stand fast, and for the detachments to take up their definitive covering positions. Duhesme’s corps was directed, from its eastern foray, to Piacenza, to join the main body. Moncey was to provide for the defence of the Ticino line, Lechi to form a “flying camp” in the region of Orzinovi-Brescia and Cremona, and another mixed brigade was to control the Austrians in Pizzighetone and in the citadel of Piacenza. On the other side of the Po, between Piacenza and Montebello, was the main body (Lannes, Murat and part of Victor’s and Duhesme’s corps), and a flank guard was stationed near Pavia, with orders to keep on the right of the army as it advanced (this is the first and only hint of any intention to go westward) and to fall back fighting should Melas come on by the left bank. One division was to be always a day’s march behind the army on the right bank, and a flotilla was to ascend the Po, to facilitate the speedy reinforcement of the flank guard. Farther to the north was a small column on the road Milan-Vercelli. All the protective troops, except the division of the main body detailed as an eventual support for the flank guard, was to be found by Moncey’s corps (which had besides to watch the Austrians in the citadel of Milan) and Chabran’s and Lechi’s weak commands. On this same day Bonaparte tells the Minister of War, Carnot, that Moncey has only brought half the expected reinforcements and that half of these are unreliable. As to the result of the impending contest Napoleon counts greatly upon the union of 18,000 men under Masséna and Suchet to crush Melas against the “strategic barrage” of the Army of Reserve, by one or other bank of the Po, and he seems equally confident of the result in either case. If Genoa had held out three days more, he says, it would have been easy to count the number of Melas’s men who escaped. The exact significance of this last notion is difficult to establish, and all that could be written about it would be merely conjectural. But it is interesting to note that, without admitting it, Napoleon felt that his “barrage” might not stand before the flood. The details of the orders of the 9th to the main body (written before the news of Montebello arrived at headquarters) tend to the closest possible concentration of the main body towards Casteggio, in view of a decisive battle on the 12th or 13th.

But another idea had begun to form itself in his mind. Still believing that Melas would attack him on the Stradella side, and hastening his preparations to meet this, he began to allow for the contingency of Melas giving up or failing in his Napoleon’s advance. attempt to re-establish his communication with the Mantovese, and retiring on Genoa, which was now in his hands and could be provisioned and reinforced by sea. On the 10th Napoleon ordered reserve ammunition to be sent from Pavia, giving Serravalle, which is south of Novi, as its probable destination. But this was surmise, and of the facts he knew nothing. Would the enemy move east on the Stradella, north-east on the Ticino or south on Genoa? Such reports as were available indicated no important movements whatever, which happened to be true, but could hardly appear so to the French headquarters. On the 11th, though he thereby forfeited the reinforcements coming up from Duhesme’s corps at Cremona, Napoleon ordered the main body to advance to the Scrivia. Lapoype’s division (the right flank guard), which was observing the Austrian posts towards Casale, was called to the south bank of the Po, the zone around Milan was stripped so bare of troops that there was no escort for the prisoners taken at Montebello, while information sent by Chabran (now moving up from Ivrea) as to the construction of bridges at Casale (this was a feint made by Melas on the 10th) passed unheeded. The crisis was at hand, and, clutching at the reports collected by Lapoype as to the quietude of the Austrians toward Valenza and Casale, Bonaparte and Berthier strained every nerve to bring up more men to the 202 Voghera side in the hope of preventing the prey from slipping away to Genoa.

On the 12th, consequently, the army (the ordre de bataille of which had been considerably modified on the 11th) moved to the Scrivia, Lannes halting at Castelnuovo, Desaix (who had just joined the army from Egypt) at Pontecurone, Victor at Tortona with Murat’s cavalry in front towards Alessandria. Lapoype’s division, from the left bank of the Po, was marching in all haste to join Desaix. Moncey, Duhesme, Lechi and Chabran were absent. The latter represented almost exactly half of Berthier’s command (30,000 out of 58,000), and even the concentration of 28,000 men on the Scrivia had only been obtained by practically giving up the “barrage” on the left bank of the Po. Even now the enemy showed nothing but a rearguard, and the old questions reappeared in a new and acute form. Was Melas still in Alessandria? Was he marching on Valenza and Casale to cross the Po? or to Acqui against Suchet, or to Genoa to base himself on the British fleet? As to the first, why had he given up his chances of fighting on one of the few cavalry battlegrounds in north Italy—the plain of Marengo—since he could not stay in Alessandria for any indefinite time? The second question had been answered in the negative by Lapoype, but his latest information was thirty-six hours old. As for the other questions, no answer whatever was forthcoming, and the only course open was to postpone decisive measures and to send forward the cavalry, supported by infantry, to gain information.

On the 13th, therefore, Murat, Lannes and Victor advanced into the plain of Marengo, traversed it without difficulty and carrying the villages held by the Austrian rearguard, established themselves for the night within a mile of Marengo. the fortress. But meanwhile Napoleon, informed we may suppose of their progress, had taken a step that was fraught with the gravest consequences. He had, as we know, no intention of forcing on a decision until his reconnaissance produced the information on which to base it, and he had therefore kept back three divisions under Desaix at Pontecurone. But as the day wore on without incident, he began to fear that the reconnaissance would be profitless, and unwilling to give Melas any further start, he sent out these divisions right and left to find and to hold the enemy, whichever way the latter had gone. At noon Desaix with one division was despatched southward to Rivalta to head off Melas from Genoa and at 9 A.M. on the 14th,21 Lapoype was sent back over the Po to hold the Austrians should they be advancing from Valenza towards the Ticino. Thus there remained in hand only 21,000 men when at last, in the forenoon of the 14th the whole of Melas’s army, more than 40,000 strong, moved out of Alessandria, not southward nor northward, but due west into the plain of Marengo (q.v.). The extraordinary battle that followed is described elsewhere. The outline of it is simple enough. The Austrians advanced slowly and in the face of the most resolute opposition, until their attack had gathered weight, and at last they were carrying all before them, when Desaix returned from beyond Rivalta and initiated a series of counterstrokes. These were brilliantly successful, and gave the French not only local victory but the supreme self-confidence that, next day, enabled them to extort from Melas an agreement to evacuate all Lombardy as far as the Mincio. And though in this way the chief prize, Melas’s army, escaped after all, Marengo was the birthday of the First Empire.

One more blow, however, was required before the Second Coalition collapsed, and it was delivered by Moreau. We have seen that he had crossed the upper Rhine and defeated Kray at Stokach. This was followed by other partial victories, and Kray then retired to Ulm, where he reassembled his forces, hitherto scattered in a long weak line from the Neckar to Schaffhausen. Moreau continued his advance, extending his forces up to and over the Danube below Ulm, and winning several combats, of which the most important was that of Höchstädt, fought on the famous battlegrounds of 1703 and 1704, and memorable for the death of La Tour d’Auvergne, the “First Grenadier of France” (June 19). Finding himself in danger of envelopment, Kray now retired, swiftly and skilfully, across the front of the advancing French, and reached Ingolstadt in safety. Thence he retreated over the Inn, Moreau following him to the edge of that river, and an armistice put an end for the moment to further operations.

This not resulting in a treaty of peace, the war was resumed both in Italy and in Germany. The Army of Reserve and the Army of Italy, after being fused into one, under Masséna’s command, were divided again into a fighting army under Brune, who opposed the Austrians (Bellegarde) on the Mincio, and a political army under Murat, which re-established French influence in the Peninsula. The former, extending on a wide front as usual, won a few strategical successes without tactical victory, the only incidents of which worth recording are the gallant fight of Dupont’s division, which had become isolated during a manœuvre, at Pozzolo on the Mincio (December 25) and the descent of a corps under Macdonald from the Grisons by way of the Splügen, an achievement far surpassing Napoleon’s and even Suvárov’s exploits, in that it was made after the winter snows had set in.

In Germany the war for a moment reached the sublime. Kray had been displaced in command by the young archduke John, who ordered the denunciation of the armistice and a general advance. His plan, or that of his Hohenlinden. advisers, was to cross the lower Inn, out of reach of Moreau’s principal mass, and then to swing round the French flank until a complete chain was drawn across their rear. But during the development of the manœuvre, Moreau also moved, and by rapid marching made good the time he had lost in concentrating his over-dispersed forces. The weather was appalling, snow and rain succeeding one another until the roads were almost impassable. On the 2nd of December the Austrians were brought to a standstill, but the inherent mobility of the Revolutionary armies enabled them to surmount all difficulties, and thanks to the respite afforded him by the archduke’s halt, Moreau was able to see clearly into the enemy’s plans and dispositions. On the 3rd of December, while the Austrians in many disconnected columns were struggling through the dark and muddy forest paths about Hohenlinden, Moreau struck the decisive blow. While Ney and Grouchy held fast the head of the Austrian main column at Hohenlinden, Richepanse’s corps was directed on its left flank. In the forest Richepanse unexpectedly met a subsidiary Austrian column which actually cut his column in two. But profiting by the momentary confusion he drew off that part of his forces which had passed beyond the point of contact and continued his march, striking the flank of the archduke’s main column, most of which had not succeeded in deploying opposite Ney, at the village of Mattempost. First the baggage train and then the artillery park fell into his hands, and lastly he reached the rear of the troops engaged opposite Hohenlinden, whereupon the Austrian main body practically dissolved. The rear of Richepanse’s corps, after disengaging itself from the Austrian column it had met in the earlier part of the day, arrived at Mattempost in time to head off thousands of fugitives who had escaped from the carnage at Hohenlinden. The other columns of the unfortunate army were first checked and then driven back by the French divisions they met, which, moving more swiftly and fighting better in the broken ground and the woods, were able to combine two brigades against one wherever a fight developed. On this disastrous day the Austrians lost 20,000 men, 12,000 of them being prisoners, and 90 guns.

Marengo and Hohenlinden decided the war of the Second Coalition as Rivoli had decided that of the First, and the Revolutionary Wars came to an end with the armistice of Steyer (December 25, 1800) and the treaty of Lunéville (February 9, 1801). But only the first act of the great drama was accomplished. After a short respite Europe entered upon the Napoleonic Wars.

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Bibliography.—By far the most important modern works are A. Chuquet’s Guerres de la Révolution (11 monographs forming together a complete history of the campaigns of 1792-93), and the publications of the French General Staff. The latter appear first, as a rule, in the official “Revue d’histoire” and are then republished in separate volumes, of which every year adds to the number. V. Dupuis’ L’Armée du nord 1793; Coutanceau’s L’Armée du nord 1794; J. Colin’s Éducation militaire de Napoléon and Campagne de 1793 en Alsace; and C. de Cugnac’s Campagne de l’armée de réserve 1800 may be specially named. Among other works of importance the principal are C. von B(inder)-K(rieglstein), Geist und Stoff im Kriege (Vienna, 1896); E. Gachot’s works on Masséna’s career (containing invaluable evidence though written in a somewhat rhetorical style); Ritter von Angeli, Erzherzog Karl (Vienna, 1896); F. N. Maude, Evolution of Modern Strategy; G. A. Furse, Marengo and Hohenlinden; C. von Clausewitz, Feldzug 1796 in Italien and Feldzug 1799 (French translations); H. Bonnal, De Rosbach à Ulm; Krebs and Moris, Campagnes dans les Alpes (Paris, 1891-1895); Yorck von Wartenburg, Napoleon als Feldherr (English and French translations); F. Bouvier, Bonaparte en Italie 1796; Kuhl, Bonaparte’s erster Feldzug; J. W. Fortescue, Hist. of the British Army, vol. iv.; G. D. v. Scharnhorst, Ursache des Glücks der Franzosen 1793-1794 (reprinted in A. Weiss’s Short German Military Readings, London, 1892); E. D’Hauterive, L’Armée sous la Révolution; C. Rousset, Les Volontaires; Max Jähns, Das französische Heer; Shadwell, Mountain Warfare; works of Colonel Camon (Guerre Napoléonienne, &c.); Austrian War Office, Krieg gegen die franz. Revolution 1792-1797 (Vienna, 1905); Archduke Charles, Grundsätze der Strategie (1796 campaign in Germany), and Gesch. des Feldzuges 1799 in Deutschl. und der Schweiz; v. Zeissberg, Erzherzog Karl; the old history called Victoires et conquêtes des Français (27 volumes, Paris, 1817-1825); M. Hartmann, Anteil der Russen am Feldzug 1799 in der Schweiz (Zürich, 1892); Danélewski-Miliutin, Der Krieg Russlands gegen Frankreich unter Paul I. (Munich, 1858); German General Staff, “Napoleons Feldzug 1796-1797” (Suppl. Mil. Wochenblatt, 1889), and Pirmasens und Kaiserslautern (“Kriegsgesch. Einzelschriften,” 1893).

(C. F. A.)

Naval Operations

The naval side of the wars arising out of the French Revolution was marked by unity, and even by simplicity. France had but one serious enemy, Great Britain, and Great Britain had but one purpose, to beat down France. Other states were drawn into the strife, but it was as the allies, the enemies and at times the victims, of the two dominating powers. The field of battle was the whole expanse of the ocean and the landlocked seas. The weapons, the methods and the results were the same. When a general survey of the whole struggle is taken, its unity is manifest. The Revolution produced a profound alteration in the government of France, but none in the final purposes of its policy. To secure for France its so-called “natural limits”—the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees and the ocean; to protect both flanks by reducing Holland on the north and Spain on the south to submission; to confirm the mighty power thus constituted, by the subjugation of Great Britain, were the objects of the Republic and of Napoleon, as they had been of Louis XIV. The naval war, like the war on land, is here considered in the first of its two phases—the Revolutionary (1792-99). (For the Napoleonic phase (1800-15), see Napoleonic Campaigns.)

The Revolutionary war began in April 1792. In the September of that year Admiral Truguet sailed from Toulon to co-operate with the French troops operating against the Austrians and their allies in northern Italy. In December Latouche Tréville was sent with another squadron to cow the Bourbon rulers of Naples. The extreme feebleness of their opponents alone saved the French from disaster. Mutinies, which began within ten days of the storming of the Bastille (14th of July 1789), had disorganized their navy, and the effects of these disorders continued to be felt so long as the war lasted. In February 1793 war broke out with Great Britain and Holland. In March Spain was added to the list of the powers against which France declared war. Her resources at sea were wholly inadequate to meet the coalition she had provoked. The Convention did indeed order that fifty-two ships of the line should be commissioned in the Channel, but it was not able in fact to do more than send out a few diminutive and ill-appointed squadrons, manned by mutinous crews, which kept close to the coast. The British navy was in excellent order, but the many calls made on it for the protection of world-wide commerce and colonial possessions caused the operations in the Channel to be somewhat languid. Lord Howe cruised in search of the enemy without being able to bring them to action. The severe blockade which in the later stages of the war kept the British fleet permanently outside of Brest was not enforced in the earlier stages. Lord Howe preferred to save his fleet from the wear and tear of perpetual cruising by maintaining his headquarters at St Helens, and keeping watch on the French ports by frigates. The French thus secured a freedom of movement which in the course of 1794 enabled them to cover the arrival of a great convoy laden with food from America (see First of June, Battle of). This great effort was followed by a long period of languor. Its internal defects compelled the French fleet in the Channel to play a very poor part till the last days of 1796. Squadrons were indeed sent a short way to sea, but their inefficiency was conspicuously displayed when, on the 17th of June 1795, a much superior number of their line of battle ships failed to do any harm to the small force of Cornwallis, and when on the 22nd of the same month they fled in disorder before Lord Bridport at the Isle de Groix.

Operations of a more decisive character had in the meantime taken place both in the Mediterranean and in the West Indies. In April 1793 the first detachment of a British fleet, which was finally raised to a strength of 21 sail of the line, under the command of Lord Hood, sailed for the Mediterranean. By August the admiral was off Toulon, acting in combination with a Spanish naval force. France was torn by the contentions of Jacobins and Girondins, and its dissensions led to the surrender of the great arsenal to the British admiral and his Spanish colleague Don Juan de Lángara, on the 27th of August. The allies were joined later by a contingent from Naples. But the military forces were insufficient to hold the land defences against the army collected to expel them. High ground commanding the anchorage was occupied by the besieging force, and on the 18th of December 1793 the allies retired. They carried away or destroyed thirty-three French vessels, of which thirteen were of the line. But partly through the inefficiency and partly through the ill-will of the Spaniards, who were indisposed to cripple the French, whom they considered as their only possible allies against Great Britain, the destruction was not so complete as had been intended. Twenty-five ships, of which eighteen were of the line, were left to serve as the nucleus of an active fleet in later years. Fourteen thousand of the inhabitants fled with the allies to escape the vengeance of the victorious Jacobins. Their sufferings, and the ferocious massacre perpetrated on those who remained behind by the conquerors, form one of the blackest pages of the French Revolution. The Spanish fleet took no further part in the war. Lord Hood now turned to the occupation of Corsica, where the intervention of the British fleet was invited by the patriotic party headed by Pascual Paoli. The French ships left at Toulon were refitted and came to sea in the spring of 1794, but Admiral Martin who commanded them did not feel justified in giving battle, and his sorties were mere demonstrations. From the 25th of January 1794 till November 1796 the British fleet in the Mediterranean was mainly occupied in and about Corsica, securing the island, watching Toulon and co-operating with the allied Austrians and Piedmontese in northern Italy. It did much to hamper the coastwise communications of the French. But neither Lord Hood, who went home at the end of 1794, nor his indolent successor Hotham, was able to deliver an effective blow at the Toulon squadron. The second of these officers fought two confused actions with Admiral Martin in the Gulf of Lyons on the 16th of March and the 12th of July 1795, but though three French ships were cut off and captured, the baffling winds and the placid disposition of Hotham united to prevent decisive results. A new spirit was introduced into the command of the British fleet when Sir John Jervis, afterwards Earl Saint Vincent, succeeded Hotham in November 1795.

Jervis came to the Mediterranean with a high reputation, which had been much enhanced by his recent command in the West Indies. In every war with France it was the natural policy 204 of the British government to seize on its enemy’s colonial possessions, not only because of their intrinsic value, but because they were the headquarters of active privateers. The occupation of the little fishing stations of St Pierre and Miquelon (14th May 1793) and of Pondicherry in the East Indies (23rd Aug. 1793) were almost formal measures taken at the beginning of every war. But the French West Indian islands possessed intrinsic strength which rendered their occupation a service of difficulty and hazard. In 1793 they were torn by dissensions, the result of the revolution in the mother country. Tobago was occupied in April, and the French part of the great island of San Domingo was partially thrown into British hands by the Creoles, who were threatened by their insurgent slaves. During 1794 a lively series of operations, in which there were some marked alternations of fortune, took place in and about Martinique and Guadaloupe. The British squadron, and the contingent of troops it carried, after a first repulse, occupied them both in March and April, together with Santa Lucia. A vigorous counter-attack was carried out by the Terrorist Victor Hugues with ability and ferocity. Guadaloupe and Santa Lucia were recovered in August. Yet on the whole the British government was successful in its policy of destroying the French naval power in distant seas. The seaborne commerce of the Republic was destroyed.

The naval supremacy of Great Britain was limited, and was for a time menaced, in consequence of the advance of the French armies on land. The invasion of Holland in 1794 led to the downfall of the house of Orange, and the establishment of the Batavian Republic. War with Great Britain under French dictation followed in January 1795. In that year a British expedition under the command of Admiral Keith Elphinstone (afterwards Lord Keith) occupied the Dutch colony at the Cape (August-September) and their trading station in Malacca. The British colonial empire was again extended, and the command of the sea by its fleet confirmed. But the necessity to maintain a blockading force in the German Ocean imposed a fresh strain on its naval resources, and the hostility of Holland closed a most important route to British commerce in Europe. In 1795 Spain made peace with France at Basel, and in September 1796 re-entered the war as her ally. The Spanish navy was most inefficient, but it required to be watched and therefore increased the heavy strain on the British fleet. At the same time the rapid advance of the French arms in Italy began to close the ports of the peninsula to Great Britain. Its ships were for a time withdrawn from the Mediterranean. Poor as it was in quality, the Spanish fleet was numerous. It was able to facilitate the movements of French squadrons sent to harass British commerce in the Atlantic, and a concentration of forces became necessary.

It was the more important because the cherished French scheme for an attack on the heart of the British empire began to take shape. While Spain occupied one part of the British fleet to the south, and Holland another in the north, a French expedition, which was to have been aided by a Dutch expedition from the Texel, was prepared at Brest. The Dutch were confined to harbour by the vigilant blockade of Admiral Duncan, afterwards Lord Camperdown. But in December 1796 a French fleet commanded by Admiral Morard de Galle, carrying 13,000 troops under General Hoche, was allowed to sail from Brest for Ireland, by the slack management of the blockade under Admiral Colpoys. Being ill-fitted, ill-manned and exposed to constant bad weather the French ships were scattered. Some reached their destination, Bantry Bay, only to be driven out again by north-easterly gales. The expedition finally returned after much suffering, and in fragments, to Brest. Yet the year 1797 was one of extreme trial to Great Britain. The victory of Sir John Jervis over the Spaniards near Cape Saint Vincent on the 14th of February (see Saint Vincent, Battle of) disposed of the Spanish fleet. In the autumn of the year the Dutch, having put to sea, were defeated at Camperdown by Admiral Duncan on the 11th of October. Admiral Duncan had the more numerous force, sixteen ships to fifteen, and they were on the average heavier. Attacking from windward he broke through the enemy’s line and concentrated on his rear and centre. Eight line of battleships and two frigates were taken, but the good gunnery and steady resistance of the Dutch made the victory costly. Between these two battles the British fleet was for a time menaced in its very existence by a succession of mutinies, the result of much neglect of the undoubted grievances of the sailors. The victory of Camperdown, completing what the victory of Cape Saint Vincent had begun, seemed to put Great Britain beyond fear of invasion. But the government of the Republic was intent on renewing the attempt. The successes of Napoleon at the head of the army of Italy had reduced Austria to sign the peace of Campo Formio, on the 17th of October 1797, and he was appointed commander of the new army of invasion. It was still thought necessary to maintain the bulk of the British fleet in European waters, within call in the ocean. The Mediterranean was left free to the French, whose squadrons cruised in the Levant, where the Republic had become possessed of the Ionian Islands by the plunder of Venice. The absence of a British force in the Mediterranean offered to the government of the French Republic an alternative to an invasion of Great Britain or Ireland, which promised to be less hazardous and equally effective. It was induced largely by the persuasion of Napoleon himself, and the wish of the politicians who were very willing to see him employed at a distance. The expedition to Egypt under his command sailed on the 19th of May 1798, having for its immediate purpose the occupation of the Nile valley, and for its ultimate aim an attack on Great Britain “from behind” in India (see Nile, Battle of the). The British fleet re-entered the Mediterranean to pursue and baffle Napoleon. The destruction of the French squadron at the anchorage of Aboukir on the 1st of August gave it the complete command of the sea. A second invasion of Ireland on a smaller scale was attempted and to some extent carried out, while the great attack by Egypt was in progress. One French squadron of four frigates carrying 1150 soldiers under General Humbert succeeded in sailing from Rochefort on the 6th of August. On the 22nd Humbert was landed at Killala Bay, but after making a vigorous raid he was compelled to surrender at Ballinamuck on the 8th of September. Eight days after his surrender, another French squadron of one sail of the line and eight frigates carrying 3000 troops, sailed from Brest under Commodore Bompart to support Humbert. It was watched and pursued by frigates, and on the 12th of October was overtaken and destroyed by a superior British force commanded by Sir John Borlase Warren, near Tory Island.

From the close of 1798 till the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire (9th November) 1799, which established Napoleon as First Consul and master of France, the French navy had only one object—to reinforce and relieve the army cut off in Egypt by the battle of the Nile. The relief of the French garrison in Malta was a subordinate part of the main purpose. But the supremacy of the British navy was by this time so firmly founded that neither Egypt nor Malta could be reached except by small ships which ran the blockade. On the 25th of April, Admiral Bruix did indeed leave Brest, after baffling the blockading fleet of Lord Bridport, which was sent on a wild-goose chase to the south of Ireland by means of a despatch sent out to be captured and to deceive. Admiral Bruix succeeded in reaching Toulon, and his presence in the Mediterranean caused some disturbance. But, though his twenty-five sail of the line formed the best-manned fleet which the French had sent to sea during the war, and though he escaped being brought to battle, he did not venture to steer for the eastern Mediterranean. On the 13th of August he was back at Brest, bringing with him a Spanish squadron carried off as a hostage for the fidelity of the government at Madrid to its disastrous alliance with France. On the day on which Bruix re-entered Brest, the 13th of August 1799, a combined Russian and British expedition sailed from the Downs to attack the French army of occupation in the Batavian Republic. The military operations were unsuccessful, and terminated in the withdrawal of the allies. But the naval part was well executed. Vice-admiral Mitchell forced the entrance to the Texel, and on the 30th of August received the surrender of the remainder of the 205 Dutch fleet—thirteen vessels in the Nieuwe Diep—the sailors having refused to fight for the republic. In spite of the failure on land, the expedition did much to confirm the naval supremacy of Great Britain by the entire suppression of the most seamanlike of the forces opposed to it.

Authorities.—Chevalier, Histoire de la marine française sous la première République (Paris, 1886); James’s Naval History (London, 1837); Captain Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and the Empire (London, 1892). The French schemes of invasion are exhaustively dealt with in Captain E. Desbrière’s Projets et tentatives de débarquements aux Îles Britanniques (Paris, 1900, &c.).

(D. H.)

1 For the following operations see map in Spanish Succession War.

2 Coburg refrained from a regular siege of Condé. He wished to gain possession of the fortress in a defensible state, intending to use it as his own depot later in the year. He therefore reduced it by famine. During the siege of Valenciennes the Allies appear to have been supplied from Mons.

3 Henceforth to the end of 1794 both armies were more or less “in cordon,” the cordon possessing greater or less density at any particular moment or place, according to the immediate intentions of the respective commanders and the general military situation.

4 In the course of this the column from Bouchain, 4500 strong, was caught in the open at Avesnes-le-Sec by 5 squadrons of the allied cavalry and literally annihilated.

5 One of the generals at Maubeuge, Chancel, was guillotined.

6 Each of the fifteen armies on foot had been allotted certain departments as supply areas, Jourdan’s being of course far away in Lorraine.

7 Liguria was not at this period thought of, even by Napoleon, as anything more than a supply area.

8 Vukassovich had received Beaulieu’s order to demonstrate with two battalions, and also appeals for help from Argenteau. He therefore brought most of his troops with him.

9 We have seen that after Tourcoing, taught by experience, Souham posted Vandamme’s covering force 14 or 15 m. out. But Napoleon’s disposition was in advance of experience.

10 The proposed alliance with the Sardinians came to nothing. The kings of Sardinia had always made their alliance with either Austria or France conditional on cessions of conquered territory. But, according to Thiers, the Directory only desired to conquer the Milanese to restore it to Austria in return for the definitive cession of the Austrian Netherlands. If this be so, Napoleon’s proclamations of “freedom for Italy” were, if not a mere political expedient, at any rate no more than an expression of his own desires which he was not powerful enough to enforce.

11 On entering the territory of the duke of Parma Bonaparte imposed, besides other contributions, the surrender of twenty famous pictures, and thus began a practice which for many years enriched the Louvre and only ceased with the capture of Paris in 1814.

12 See C. von B.-K., Geist und Stoff, pp. 449-451.

13 The assumption by later critics (Clausewitz even included) that the “flank position” held by these forces relatively to the main armies in Italy and Germany was their raison d’être is unsupported by contemporary evidence.

14 For this expedition, which was repulsed by Brune in the battle of Castricum, see Fortescue’s Hist. of the British Army, vol. iv., and Sachot’s Brune en Hollande.

15 He afterwards appointed Berthier to command the Army of Reserve, but himself accompanied it and directed it, using Berthier as chief of staff.

16 Only one division of the main body used the Little St Bernard.

17 When he made his decision he was unaware that Béthencourt had been held up at Arona.

18 This may be accounted for by the fact that Napoleon’s mind was not yet definitively made up when his advanced guard had already begun to climb the St Bernard (12th). Napoleon’s instructions for Moncey were written on the 14th. The magazines, too, had to be provided and placed before it was known whether Moreau’s detachment would be forthcoming.

19 Six guns had by now passed Fort Bard and four of these were with Murat and Duhesme, two with Lannes.

20 It is supposed that the foreign spies at Dijon sent word to their various employers that the Army was a bogy. In fact a great part of it never entered Dijon at all, and the troops reviewed there by Bonaparte were only conscripts and details. By the time that the veteran divisions from the west and Paris arrived, either the spies had been ejected or their news was sent off too late to be of use.

21 On the strength of a report, false as it turned out, that the Austrian rearguard had broken the bridges of the Bormida.

FRENCH WEST AFRICA (L’Afrique occidentale française), the common designation of the following colonies of France:—(1) Senegal, (2) Upper Senegal and Niger, (3) Guinea, (4) the Ivory Coast, (5) Dahomey; of the territory of Mauretania, and of a large portion of the Sahara. The area is estimated at nearly 2,000,000 sq. m., of which more than half is Saharan territory. The countries thus grouped under the common designation French West Africa comprise the greater part of the continent west of the Niger delta (which is British territory) and south of the tropic of Cancer. It embraces the upper and middle course of the Niger, the whole of the basin of the Senegal and the south-western part of the Sahara. Its most northern point on the coast is Cape Blanco, and it includes Cape Verde, the most westerly point of Africa. Along the Guinea coast the French possessions are separated from one another by colonies of Great Britain and other powers, but in the interior they unite not only with one another but with the hinterlands of Algeria and the French Congo.

(Click to enlarge.)

In physical characteristics French West Africa presents three types: (1) a dense forest region succeeding a narrow coast belt greatly broken by lagoons; (2) moderately elevated and fertile plateaus, generally below 2000 ft., such as the region enclosed in the great bend of the Niger; (3) north of the Senegal and Niger, the desert lands forming part of the Sahara (q.v.). The most elevated districts are Futa Jallon, whence rise the Senegal, Gambia and Niger, and Gon—both massifs along the south-western edge of the plateau lands, containing heights of 5000 to 6000 ft. or more. Among the chief towns are Timbuktu and Jenné on the Niger, Porto Novo in Dahomey, and St Louis and Dakar in Senegal, Dakar being an important naval and commercial port. The inhabitants are for the most part typical Negroes, with in Senegal and in the Sahara an admixture of Berber and Arab tribes. In the upper Senegal and Futa Jallon large numbers of the inhabitants are Fula. The total population of French West Africa is estimated at about 13,000,000. The European inhabitants number about 12,000.

The French possessions in West Africa have grown by the extension inland of coast colonies, each having an independent origin. They were first brought under one general government in 1895, when they were placed under the supervision of the governor of Senegal, whose title was altered to meet the new situation. Between that date and 1905 various changes in the areas and administrations of the different colonies were made, involving the disappearance of the protectorates and military territories known as French Sudan and dependent on Senegal. These were partly absorbed in the coast colonies, whilst the central portion became the colony of Upper Senegal and Niger. At the same time the central government was freed from the direct administration of the Senegal and Niger countries (Decrees of Oct. 1902 and Oct. 1904). Over the whole of French West Africa is a governor-general, whose headquarters are at Dakar.1 He is assisted by a government council, composed of high functionaries, including the lieutenant-governors of all colonies under his control. The central government, like all other French colonial administrations, is responsible, not to the colonists, but to the home government, and its constitution is alterable at will by presidential decree save in matters on which the chambers have expressly legislated. To it is confided financial control over the colonies, responsibility for the public debt, the direction of the departments of education and agriculture, and the carrying out of works of general utility. It alone communicates with the home authorities. Its expenses are met by the duties levied on goods and vessels entering and leaving any port of French West Africa. It may make advances to the colonies under its care, and may, in case of need, demand from them contributions to the central exchequer. The administration of justice is centralized and uniform for all French West Africa. The court of appeal sits at Dakar. There is also a uniform system of land registration adopted in 1906 and based on that in force in Australia. Subject to the limitations indicated the five colonies enjoy autonomy. The territory of Mauretania is administered by a civil commissioner under the direct control of the governor-general. The colony of Senegal is represented in the French parliament by one deputy.

Since the changes in administration effected in 1895 the commerce of French West Africa has shown a steady growth, the volume of external trade increasing in the ten years 1895-1904 from £3,151,094 to £6,238,091. In 1907 the value of the trade was £7,097,000; of this 53% was with France. Apart from military expenditure, about £600,000 a year, which is borne by France, French West Africa is self-supporting. The general budget for 1906 balanced at £1,356,000. There is a public debt of some £11,000,000, mainly incurred for works of general utility.

See Senegal, French Guinea, Ivory Coast and Dahomey. For Anglo-French boundaries east of the Niger see Sahara and Nigeria. For the constitutional connexion between the colonies and France see France: Colonies. An account of the economic situation of the colonies is given by G. François in Le Gouvernement général de l’Afrique occidentale française (Paris, 1908). Consult also the annual Report on the Trade, Agriculture, &c. of French West Africa issued by the British foreign office. A map of French West Africa by A. Meunier and E. Barralier (6 sheets on the scale 1:2,000,000) was published in Paris, 1903.

1 The organization of the new government was largely the work of E. N. Roume (b. 1858), governor-general 1902-1907, an able and energetic official, formerly director of Asian affairs at the colonial ministry.

FRENTANI, one of the ancient Samnite tribes which formed an independent community on the east coast of Italy. They entered the Roman alliance after their capital, Frentrum, was taken by the Romans in 305 or 304 B.C. (Livy ix. 16. 45). This town either changed its name or perished some time after the middle of the 3rd century B.C., when it was issuing coins of its own with an Oscan legend. The town Larinum, which belonged to the same people (Pliny, Nat. Hist. iii. 103), became latinized before 200 B.C., as its coins of that epoch bear a legend—LARINOR(VM)—which cannot reasonably be treated as anything but Latin. Several Oscan inscriptions survive from the neighbourhood of Vasto (anc. Histonium), which was in the Frentane area.

On the forms of the name, and for further details see R. S. Conway, Italic Dialects, p. 206 ff and p. 212: for the coins id. No. 195-196.

FREPPEL, CHARLES ÉMILE (1827-1891), French bishop and politician, was born at Oberehnheim (Obernai), Alsace, on the 1st of June 1827. He was ordained priest in 1849 and for a short time taught history at the seminary of Strassburg, where he had previously received his clerical training. In 1854 he was appointed professor of theology at the Sorbonne, and became known as a successful preacher. He went to Rome in 1869, at the instance of Pius IX., to assist in the steps preparatory to the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility. He was consecrated bishop of Angers in 1870. During the Franco-German war Freppel organized a body of priests to minister to the French prisoners in Germany, and penned an eloquent protest to the emperor William I. against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. In 1880 he was elected deputy for Brest and continued to represent it until his death. Being the only priest in the Chamber of Deputies since the death of Dupanloup, he became the chief parliamentary champion of the Church, and, though no orator, was a frequent speaker. On all ecclesiastical affairs Freppel voted with the Royalist and Catholic party, yet on questions in which French colonial prestige was involved, such as the expedition to Tunis, Tong-King, Madagascar (1881, 1883-85), he supported the government of the day. He always remained a staunch Royalist and went so far as to oppose Leo XIII.’s policy 206 of conciliating the Republic. He died at Angers on the 12th of December 1891. Freppel’s historical and theological works form 30 vols., the best known of which are: Les Pères apostoliques et leur époque (1859); Les Apologistes chrétiens au IIe siècle (2 vols., 1860); Saint Irénée et l’éloquence chrétienne dans la Gaule aux deux premiers siècles (1861); Tertullien (2 vols., 1863); Saint Cyprien et l’Église d’Afrique (1864); Clément d’Alexandrie (1865); Origène (2 vols., 1867).

There are interesting lives by E. Cornut (Paris, 1893) and F. Charpentier (Angers, 1904).

FRERE, SIR HENRY BARTLE EDWARD (1815-1884), British administrator, born at Clydach in Brecknockshire, on the 29th of March 1815, was the son of Edward Frere, a member of an old east county family, and a nephew of John Hookham Frere, of Anti-Jacobin and Aristophanes fame. After leaving Haileybury, Bartle Frere was appointed a writer in the Bombay civil service in 1834, and went out to India by way of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea in an open boat from Kosseir to Mokha, and sailing thence to Bombay in an Arab dhow. Having passed his examination in the native languages, he was appointed assistant collector at Poona in 1835. There he did valuable work and was in 1842 chosen as private secretary to Sir George Arthur, governor of Bombay. Two years later he became political resident at the court of the rajah of Satara, where he did much to benefit the country by the development of its communications. On the rajah’s death in 1848 he administered the province both before and after its formal annexation in 1849. In 1850 he was appointed chief commissioner of Sind, and took ample advantage of the opportunities afforded him of developing the province. He pensioned off the dispossessed amirs, improved the harbour at Karachi, where he also established municipal buildings, a museum and barracks, instituted fairs, multiplied roads, canals and schools.

Returning to India in 1857 after a well-earned rest, Frere was greeted at Karachi with news of the mutiny. His rule had been so successful that he felt he could answer for the internal peace of his province. He therefore sent his only European regiment to Multan, thus securing that strong fortress against the rebels, and sent further detachments to aid Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab. The 178 British soldiers who remained in Sind proved sufficient to extinguish such insignificant outbreaks as occurred. His services were fully recognized by the Indian authorities, and he received the thanks of both houses of parliament and was made K.C.B. He became a member of the viceroy’s council in 1859, and was especially serviceable in financial matters. In 1862 he was appointed governor of Bombay, where he effected great improvements, such as the demolition of the old ramparts, and the erection of handsome public offices upon a portion of the space, the inauguration of the university buildings and the improvement of the harbour. He established the Deccan College at Poona, as well as a college for instructing natives in civil engineering. The prosperity—due to the American Civil War—which rendered these developments possible brought in its train a speculative mania, which led eventually to the disastrous failure of the Bombay Bank (1866), an affair in which, from neglecting to exercise such means of control as he possessed, Frere incurred severe and not wholly undeserved censure. In 1867 he returned to England, was made G.C.S.I., and received honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge; he was also appointed a member of the Indian council.

In 1872 he was sent by the foreign office to Zanzibar to negotiate a treaty with the sultan, Seyyid Burghash, for the suppression of the slave traffic. In 1875 he accompanied the prince of Wales to Egypt and India. The tour was beyond expectation successful, and to Frere, from Queen Victoria downwards, came acknowledgments of the service he had rendered in piloting the expedition. He was asked by Lord Beaconsfield to choose between being made a baronet or G.C.B. He chose the former, but the queen bestowed both honours upon him. But the greatest service that Frere undertook on behalf of his country was to be attempted not in Asia, but in Africa. Sir Bartle landed at Cape Town as high commissioner of South Africa on the 31st of March 1877. He had been chosen by Lord Carnarvon in the previous October as the statesman most capable of carrying his scheme of confederation into effect, and within two years it was hoped that he would be the first governor of the South African Dominion. He went out in harmony with the aims and enthusiasm of his chief, “hoping to crown by one great constructive effort the work of a bright and noble life.” In this hope he was disappointed. As he stated at the close of his high commissionership, a great mistake seemed to have been made in trying to hasten what could only result from natural growth, and the state of South Africa during Frere’s tenure of office was inimical to such growth.

Discord or a policy of blind drifting seemed to be the alternatives presented to Frere upon his arrival at the Cape. He chose the former as the less dangerous, and the first year of his sway was marked by a Kaffir war on the one hand and by a rupture with the Cape (Molteno-Merriman) ministry on the other. The Transkei Kaffirs were subjugated early in 1878 by General Thesiger (the 2nd Lord Chelmsford) and a small force of regular and colonial troops. The constitutional difficulty was solved by Frere dismissing his obstructive cabinet and entrusting the formation of a ministry to Mr (afterwards Sir) Gordon Sprigg. Frere emerged successfully from a year of crisis, but the advantage was more than counterbalanced by the resignation of Lord Carnarvon early in 1878, at a time when Frere required the steadiest and most unflinching support. He had reached the conclusion that there was a widespread insurgent spirit pervading the natives, which had its focus and strength in the celibate military organization of Cetywayo and in the prestige which impunity for the outrages he had committed had gained for the Zulu king in the native mind. That organization and that evil prestige must be put an end to, if possible by moral pressure, but otherwise by force. Frere reiterated these views to the colonial office, where they found a general acceptance. When, however, Frere undertook the responsibility of forwarding, in December 1878, an ultimatum to Cetywayo, the home government abruptly discovered that a native war in South Africa was inopportune and raised difficulties about reinforcements. Having entrusted to Lord Chelmsford the enforcement of the British demands, Frere’s immediate responsibility ceased. On the 11th of January 1879 the British troops crossed the Tugela, and fourteen days later the disaster of Isandhlwana was reported; and Frere, attacked and censured in the House of Commons, was but feebly defended by the government. Lord Beaconsfield, it appears, supported Frere; the majority of the cabinet were inclined to recall him. The result was the unsatisfactory compromise by which he was censured and begged to stay on. Frere wrote an elaborate justification of his conduct, which was adversely commented on by the colonial secretary (Sir Michael Hicks Beach), who “did not see why Frere should take notice of attacks; and as to the war, all African wars had been unpopular.” Frere’s rejoinder was that no other sufficient answer had been made to his critics, and that he wished to place one on record. “Few may now agree with my view as to the necessity of the suppression of the Zulu rebellion. Few, I fear, in this generation. But unless my countrymen are much changed, they will some day do me justice. I shall not leave a name to be permanently dishonoured.”

The Zulu trouble and the disaffection that was brewing in the Transvaal reacted upon each other in the most disastrous manner. Frere had borne no part in the actual annexation of the Transvaal, which was announced by Sir Theophilus Shepstone a few days after the high commissioner’s arrival at Cape Town. The delay in giving the country a constitution afforded a pretext for agitation to the malcontent Boers, a rapidly increasing minority, while the reverse at Isandhlwana had lowered British prestige. Owing to the Kaffir and Zulu wars Sir Bartle had hitherto been unable to give his undivided attention to the state of things in the Transvaal. In April 1879 he was at last able to visit that province, and the conviction was forced upon him that the government had been unsatisfactory in many ways. The country was very unsettled. A large camp, numbering 207 4000 disaffected Boers, had been formed near Pretoria, and they were terrorizing the country. Frere visited them unarmed and practically alone. Even yet all might have been well, for he won the Boers’ respect and liking. On the condition that the Boers dispersed, Frere undertook to present their complaints to the British government, and to urge the fulfilment of the promises that had been made to them. They parted with mutual good feeling, and the Boers did eventually disperse—on the very day upon which Frere received the telegram announcing the government’s censure. He returned to Cape Town, and his journey back was in the nature of a triumph. But bad news awaited him at Government House—on the 1st of June 1879 the prince imperial had met his death in Zululand—and a few hours later Frere heard that the government of the Transvaal and Natal, together with the high commissionership in the eastern part of South Africa, had been transferred from him to Sir Garnet Wolseley.

When Gladstone’s ministry came into office in the spring of 1880, Lord Kimberley had no intention of recalling Frere. In June, however, a section of the Liberal party memorialized Gladstone to remove him, and the prime minister weakly complied (1st August 1880). Upon his return Frere replied to the charges relating to his conduct respecting Afghanistan as well as South Africa, previously preferred in Gladstone’s Midlothian speeches, and was preparing a fuller vindication when he died at Wimbledon from the effect of a severe chill on the 29th of May 1884. He was buried in St Paul’s, and in 1888 a statue of Frere upon the Thames embankment was unveiled by the prince of Wales. Frere edited the works of his uncle, Hookham Frere, and the popular story-book, Old Deccan Days, written by his daughter, Mary Frere. He was three times president of the Royal Asiatic Society.

His Life and Correspondence, by John Martineau, was published in 1895. For the South African anti-confederation view, see P. A. Molteno’s Life and Times of Sir John Charles Molteno (2 vols., London 1900). See also South Africa: History.

FRERE, JOHN HOOKHAM (1769-1846), English diplomatist and author, was born in London on the 21st of May 1769. His father, John Frere, a gentleman of a good Suffolk family, had been educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and would have been senior wrangler in 1763 but for the redoubtable competition of Paley; his mother, daughter of John Hookham, a rich London merchant, was a lady of no small culture, accustomed to amuse her leisure with verse-writing. His father’s sister Eleanor, who married Sir John Fenn (1739-1794), the learned editor of the Paston Letters, wrote various educational works for children under the pseudonyms “Mrs Lovechild” and “Mrs Teachwell.” Young Frere was sent to Eton in 1785, and there began an intimacy with Canning which greatly affected his after life. From Eton he went to his father’s college at Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1792 and M.A. in 1795. He entered public service in the foreign office under Lord Grenville, and sat from 1796 to 1802 as member of parliament for the close borough of West Looe in Cornwall.

From his boyhood he had been a warm admirer of Pitt, and along with Canning he entered heart and soul into the defence of his government, and contributed freely to the pages of the Anti-Jacobin, edited by Gifford. He contributed, in collaboration with Canning, “The Loves of the Triangles,” a clever parody of Darwin’s “Loves of the Plants,” “The Needy Knife-Grinder” and “The Rovers.” On Canning’s removal to the board of trade in 1799 he succeeded him as under-secretary of state; in October 1800 he was appointed envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Lisbon; and in September 1802 he was transferred to Madrid, where he remained for two years. He was recalled on account of a personal disagreement he had with the duke of Alcudia, but the ministry showed its approval of his action by a pension of £1700 a year. He was made a member of the privy council in 1805; in 1807 he was appointed plenipotentiary at Berlin, but the mission was abandoned, and Frere was again sent to Spain in 1808 as plenipotentiary to the Central Junta. The condition of Spain rendered his position a very responsible and difficult one. When Napoleon began to advance on Madrid it became a matter of supreme importance to decide whether Sir John Moore, who was then in the north of Spain, should endeavour to anticipate the occupation of the capital or merely make good his retreat, and if he did retreat whether he should do so by Portgual or by Galicia. Frere was strongly of opinion that the bolder was the better course, and he urged his views on Sir John Moore with an urgent and fearless persistency that on one occasion at least overstepped the limits of his commission. After the disastrous retreat to Corunna, the public accused Frere of having by his advice endangered the British army, and though no direct censure was passed upon his conduct by the government, he was recalled, and the marquess of Wellesley was appointed in his place.

Thus ended Frere’s public life. He afterwards refused to undertake an embassy to St Petersburg, and twice declined the honour of a peerage. In 1816 he married Elizabeth Jemima, dowager countess of Erroll, and in 1820, on account of her failing health, he went with her to the Mediterranean. There he finally settled in Malta, and though he afterwards visited England more than once, the rest of his life was for the most part spent in the island of his choice. In quiet retirement he devoted himself to literature, studied his favourite Greek authors, and taught himself Hebrew and Maltese. His hospitality was well known to many an English guest, and his charities and courtesies endeared him to his Maltese neighbours. He died at the Pietà Valetta on the 7th of January 1846. Frere’s literary reputation now rests entirely upon his spirited verse translations of Aristophanes, which remain in many ways unrivalled. The principles according to which he conducted his task were elucidated in an article on Mitchell’s Aristophanes, which he contributed to The Quarterly Review, vol. xxiii. The translations of The Acharnians, The Knights, The Birds, and The Frogs were privately printed, and were first brought into general notice by Sir G. Cornewall Lewis in the Classical Museum for 1847. They were followed some time after by Theognis Restitutus, or the personal history of the poet Theognis, reduced from an analysis of his existing fragments. In 1817 he published a mock-heroic Arthurian poem entitled Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers, intended to comprise the most interesting particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table. William Tennant in Anster Fair had used the ottava rima as a vehicle for semi-burlesque poetry five years earlier, but Frere’s experiment is interesting because Byron borrowed from it the measure that he brought to perfection in Don Juan.

Frere’s complete works were published in 1871, with a memoir by his nephews, W. E. and Sir Bartle Frere, and reached a second edition in 1874. Compare also Gabrielle Festing, J. H. Frere and his Friends (1899).

FRÈRE, PIERRE ÉDOUARD (1819-1886), French painter, studied under Delaroche, entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1836 and exhibited first at the Salon in 1843. The marked sentimental tendency of his art makes us wonder at Ruskin’s enthusiastic eulogy which finds in Frère’s work “the depth of Wordsworth, the grace of Reynolds, and the holiness of Angelico.” What we can admire in his work is his accomplished craftsmanship and the intimacy and tender homeliness of his conception. Among his chief works are the two paintings, “Going to School” and “Coming from School,” “The Little Glutton” (his first exhibited picture) and “L’Exercice” (Mr Astor’s collection). A journey to Egypt in 1860 resulted in a small series of Orientalist subjects, but the majority of Frère’s paintings deal with the life of the kitchen, the workshop, the dwellings of the humble, and mainly with the pleasures and little troubles of the young, which the artist brings before us with humour and sympathy. He was one of the most popular painters of domestic genre in the middle of the 19th century.

FRÈRE-ORBAN, HUBERT JOSEPH WALTHER (1812-1896), Belgian statesman, was born at Liége on the 24th of April 1812. His family name was Frère, to which on his marriage he added his wife’s name of Orban. After studying law in Paris, he 208 practised as a barrister at Liége, took a prominent part in the Liberal movement, and in June 1847 was returned to the Chamber as member for Liége. In August of the same year he was appointed minister of public works in the Rogier cabinet, and from 1848 to 1852 was minister of finance. He founded the Banque Nationale and the Caisse d’Épargne, abolished the newspaper tax, reduced the postage, and modified the customs duties as a preliminary to a decided free-trade policy. The Liberalism of the cabinet, in which Frère-Orban exercised an influence hardly inferior to that of Rogier, was, however, distasteful to Napoleon III. Frère-Orban, to facilitate the negotiations for a new commercial treaty, conceded to France a law of copyright, which proved highly unpopular in Belgium, and he resigned office, soon followed by the rest of the cabinet. His work La Mainmorte et la charité (1854-1857), published under the pseudonym of “Jean van Damme,” contributed greatly to restore his party to power in 1857, when he again became minister of finance. He now embodied his free-trade principles in commercial treaties with England and France, and abolished the octroi duties and the tolls on the national roads. He resigned in 1861 on the gold question, but soon resumed office, and in 1868 succeeded Rogier as prime minister. In 1869 he defeated the attempt of France to gain control of the Luxemburg railways, but, despite this service to his country, fell from power at the elections of 1870. He returned to office in 1878 as president of the council and foreign minister. He provoked the bitter opposition of the Clerical party by his law of 1879 establishing secular primary education, and in 1880 went so far as to break off diplomatic relations with the Vatican. He next found himself at variance with the Radicals, whose leader, Janson, moved the introduction of universal suffrage. Frère-Orban, while rejecting the proposal, conceded an extension of the franchise (1883); but the hostility of the Radicals, and the discontent caused by a financial crisis, overthrew the government at the elections of 1884. Frère-Orban continued to take an active part in politics as leader of the Liberal opposition till 1894, when he failed to secure re-election. He died at Brussels on the 2nd of January 1896. Besides the work above mentioned, he published La Question monétaire (1874); La Question monétaire en Belgique in 1889; Échange de vues entre MM. Frère-Orban et E. de Laveleye (1890); and La Révision constitutionnelle en Belgique et ses conséquences (1894). He was also the author of numerous pamphlets, among which may be mentioned his last work, La Situation présente (1895).

FRÉRET, NICOLAS (1688-1749), French scholar, was born at Paris on the 15th of February 1688. His father was procureur to the parlement of Paris, and destined him to the profession of the law. His first tutors were the historian Charles Rollin and Father Desmolets (1677-1760). Amongst his early studies history, chronology and mythology held a prominent place. To please his father he studied law and began to practise at the bar; but the force of his genius soon carried him into his own path. At nineteen he was admitted to a society of learned men before whom he read memoirs on the religion of the Greeks, on the worship of Bacchus, of Ceres, of Cybele and of Apollo. He was hardly twenty-six years of age when he was admitted as pupil to the Academy of Inscriptions. One of the first memoirs which he read was a learned and critical discourse, Sur l’origine des Francs (1714). He maintained that the Franks were a league of South German tribes and not, according to the legend then almost universally received, a nation of free men deriving from Greece or Troy, who had kept their civilization intact in the heart of a barbarous country. These sensible views excited great indignation in the Abbé Vertot, who denounced Fréret to the government as a libeller of the monarchy. A lettre de cachet was issued, and Fréret was sent to the Bastille. During his three months of confinement he devoted himself to the study of the works of Xenophon, the fruit of which appeared later in his memoir on the Cyropaedia. From the time of his liberation in March 1715 his life was uneventful. In January 1716 he was received associate of the Academy of Inscriptions, and in December 1742 he was made perpetual secretary. He worked without intermission for the interests of the Academy, not even claiming any property in his own writings, which were printed in the Recueil de l’académie des inscriptions. The list of his memoirs, many of them posthumous, occupies four columns of the Nouvelle Biographie générale. They treat of history, chronology, geography, mythology and religion. Throughout he appears as the keen, learned and original critic; examining into the comparative value of documents, distinguishing between the mythical and the historical, and separating traditions with an historical element from pure fables and legends. He rejected the extreme pretensions of the chronology of Egypt and China, and at the same time controverted the scheme of Sir Isaac Newton as too limited. He investigated the mythology not only of the Greeks, but of the Celts, the Germans, the Chinese and the Indians. He was a vigorous opponent of the theory that the stories of mythology may be referred to historic originals. He also suggested that Greek mythology owed much to the Phoenicians and Egyptians. He was one of the first scholars of Europe to undertake the study of the Chinese language; and in this he was engaged at the time of his committal to the Bastille. He died in Paris on the 8th of March 1749.

Long after his death several works of an atheistic character were falsely attributed to him, and were long believed to be his. The most famous of these spurious works are the Examen critique des apologistes de la religion chrétienne (1766), and the Lettre de Thrasybule à Leucippe, printed in London about 1768. A very defective and inaccurate edition of Fréret’s works was published in 1796-1799. A new and complete edition was projected by Champollion-Figeac, but of this only the first volume appeared (1825). It contains a life of Fréret. His manuscripts, after passing through many hands, were deposited in the library of the Institute. The best account of his works is “Examen critique des ouvrages composés par Fréret” in C. A. Walckenaer’s Recueil des notices, &c. (1841-1850). See also Quérard’s France littéraire.

FRÉRON, ÉLIE CATHERINE (1719-1776), French critic and controversialist, was born at Quimper in 1719. He was educated by the Jesuits, and made such rapid progress in his studies that before the age of twenty he was appointed professor at the college of Louis-le-Grand. He became a contributor to the Observations sur les écrits modernes of the abbé Guyot Desfontaines. The very fact of his collaboration with Desfontaines, one of Voltaire’s bitterest enemies, was sufficient to arouse the latter’s hostility, and although Fréron had begun his career as one of his admirers, his attitude towards Voltaire soon changed. Fréron in 1746 founded a similar journal of his own, entitled Lettres de la Comtesse de.... It was suppressed in 1749, but he immediately replaced it by Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps, which, with the exception of a short suspension in 1752, on account of an attack on the character of Voltaire, was continued till 1754, when it was succeeded by the more ambitious Année littéraire. His death at Paris on the 10th of March 1776 is said to have been hastened by the temporary suppression of this journal. Fréron is now remembered solely for his attacks on Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, and by the retaliations they provoked on the part of Voltaire, who, besides attacking him in epigrams, and even incidentally in some of his tragedies, directed against him a virulent satire, Le Pauvre diable, and made him the principal personage in a comedy L’Écossaise, in which the journal of Fréron is designated L’Âne littéraire. A further attack on Fréron entitled Anecdotes sur Fréron ... (1760), published anonymously, is generally attributed to Voltaire.

Fréron was the author of Ode sur la bataille de Fontenoy (1745); Histoire de Marie Stuart (1742, 2 vols.); and Histoire de l’empire d’Allemagne, (1771, 8 vols.). See Ch. Nisard, Les Ennemis de Voltaire (1853); Despois, Journalistes et journaux du XVIIIe siècle; Barthélemy, Les confessions de Fréron: Ch. Monselet, Fréron, ou l’illustre critique (1864); Fréron, sa vie, souvenirs, &c. (1876).

FRÉRON, LOUIS MARIE STANISLAS (1754-1802), French revolutionist, son of the preceding, was born at Paris on the 17th of August 1754. His name was, on the death of his father, attached to L’Année littéraire, which was continued till 1790 and edited successively by the abbés G. M. Royou and J. L. Geoffroy. On the outbreak of the revolution Fréron, who was a schoolfellow of Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, established 209 the violent journal L’Orateur du peuple. Commissioned, along with Barras in 1793, to establish the authority of the convention at Marseilles and Toulon, he distinguished himself in the atrocity of his reprisals, but both afterwards joined the Thermidoriens, and Fréron became the leader of the jeunesse dorée and of the Thermidorian reaction. He brought about the accusation of Fouquier-Tinville, and of J. B. Carrier, the deportation of B. Barère, and the arrest of the last Montagnards. He made his paper the official journal of the reactionists, and being sent by the Directory on a mission of peace to Marseilles he published in 1796 Mémoire historique sur la réaction royale et sur les malheurs du midi. He was elected to the council of the Five Hundred, but not allowed to take his seat. Failing as suitor for the hand of Pauline Bonaparte, one of Napoleon’s sisters, he went in 1799 as commissioner to Santo Domingo and died there in 1802. General V. M. Leclerc, who had married Pauline Bonaparte, also received a command in Santo Domingo in 1801, and died in the same year as his former rival.

FRESCO (Ital. for cool, “fresh”), a term introduced into English, both generally (as in such phrases as al fresco, “in the fresh air”), and more especially as a technical term for a sort of mural painting on plaster. In the latter sense the Italians distinguished painting a secco (when the plaster had been allowed to dry) from a fresco (when it was newly laid and still wet). The nature and history of fresco-painting is dealt with in the article Painting.

FRESCOBALDI, GIROLAMO (1583-1644), Italian musical composer, was born in 1583 at Ferrara. Little is known of his life except that he studied music under Alessandro Milleville, and owed his first reputation to his beautiful voice. He was organist at St Peter’s in Rome from 1608 to 1628. According to Baini no less than 30,000 people flocked to St Peter’s on his first appearance there. On the 20th of November 1628 he went to live in Florence, becoming organist to the duke. From December 1633 to March 1643 he was again organist at St Peter’s. But in the last year of his life he was organist in the parish church of San Lorenzo in Monte. He died on the 2nd of March 1644, being buried at Rome in the Church of the Twelve Apostles. Frescobaldi also excelled as a teacher, Frohberger being the most distinguished of his pupils. Frescobaldi’s compositions show the consummate art of the early Italian school, and his works for the organ more especially are full of the finest devices of fugal treatment. He also wrote numerous vocal compositions, such as canzone, motets, hymns, &c., a collection of madrigals for five voices (Antwerp, 1608) being among the earliest of his published works.

FRESENIUS, KARL REMIGIUS (1818-1897), German chemist, was born at Frankfort-on-Main on the 28th of December 1818. After spending some time in a pharmacy in his native town, he entered Bonn University in 1840, and a year later migrated to Giessen, where he acted as assistant in Liebig’s laboratory, and in 1843 became assistant professor. In 1845 he was appointed to the chair of chemistry, physics and technology at the Wiesbaden Agricultural Institution, and three years later he became the first director of the chemical laboratory which he induced the Nassau government to establish at that place. Under his care this laboratory continuously increased in size and popularity, a school of pharmacy being added in 1862 (though given up in 1877) and an agricultural research laboratory in 1868. Apart from his administrative duties Fresenius occupied himself almost exclusively with analytical chemistry, and the fullness and accuracy of his text-books on that subject (of which that on qualitative analysis first appeared in 1841 and that on quantitative in 1846) soon rendered them standard works. Many of his original papers were published in the Zeitschrift für analytische Chemie, which he founded in 1862 and continued to edit till his death. He died suddenly at Wiesbaden on the 11th of June 1897. In 1881 he handed over the directorship of the agricultural research station to his son, Remigius Heinrich Fresenius (b. 1847), who was trained under H. Kolbe at Leipzig. Another son, Theodor Wilhelm Fresenius (b. 1856), was educated at Strassburg and occupied various positions in the Wiesbaden laboratory.

FRESHWATER, a watering place in the Isle of Wight, England, 12 m. W. by S. of Newport by rail. Pop.(1901) 3306. It is a scattered township lying on the peninsula west of the river Var, which forms the western extremity of the island. The portion known as Freshwater Gate fronts the English Channel from the strip of low-lying coast interposed between the cliffs of the peninsula and those of the main part of the island. The peninsula rises to 397 ft. in Headon Hill, and the cliffs are magnificent. The western promontory is flanked on the north by the picturesque Alum Bay, and the lofty detached rocks known as the Needles lie off it. Farringford House in the parish was for some time the home of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who is commemorated by a tablet in All Saints’ church and by a great cross on the high downs above the town. There are golf links on the downs.

FRESNEL, AUGUSTIN JEAN (1788-1827), French physicist, the son of an architect, was born at Broglie (Eure) on the 10th of May 1788. His early progress in learning was slow, and when eight years old he was still unable to read. At the age of thirteen he entered the École Centrale in Caen, and at sixteen and a half the École Polytechnique, where he acquitted himself with distinction. Thence he went to the École des Ponts et Chaussées. He served as an engineer successively in the departments of Vendée, Drôme and Ille-et-Villaine; but his espousal of the cause of the Bourbons in 1814 occasioned, on Napoleon’s reaccession to power, the loss of his appointment. On the second restoration he obtained a post as engineer in Paris, where much of his life from that time was spent. His researches in optics, continued until his death, appear to have been begun about the year 1814, when he prepared a paper on the aberration of light, which, however, was not published. In 1818 he read a memoir on diffraction for which in the ensuing year he received the prize of the Académie des Sciences at Paris. He was in 1823 unanimously elected a member of the academy, and in 1825 he became a member of the Royal Society of London, which in 1827, at the time of his last illness, awarded him the Rumford medal. In 1819 he was nominated a commissioner of lighthouses, for which he was the first to construct compound lenses as substitutes for mirrors. He died of consumption at Ville-d’Avray, near Paris, on the 14th of July 1827.

The undulatory theory of light, first founded upon experimental demonstration by Thomas Young, was extended to a large class of optical phenomena, and permanently established by his brilliant discoveries and mathematical deductions. By the use of two plane mirrors of metal, forming with each other an angle of nearly 180°, he avoided the diffraction caused in the experiment of F. M. Grimaldi (1618-1663) on interference by the employment of apertures for the transmission of the light, and was thus enabled in the most conclusive manner to account for the phenomena of interference in accordance with the undulatory theory. With D. F. J. Arago he studied the laws of the interference of polarized rays. Circularly polarized light he obtained by means of a rhomb of glass, known as “Fresnel’s rhomb,” having obtuse angles of 126°, and acute angles of 54°. His labours in the cause of optical science received during his lifetime only scant public recognition, and some of his papers were not printed by the Académie des Sciences till many years after his decease. But, as he wrote to Young in 1824, in him “that sensibility, or that vanity, which people call love of glory” had been blunted. “All the compliments,” he says, “that I have received from Arago, Laplace and Biot never gave me so much pleasure as the discovery of a theoretic truth, or the confirmation of a calculation by experiment.”

See Duleau, “Notice sur Fresnel,” Revue ency. t. xxxix.; Arago, Œuvres complètes, t. i.; and Dr G. Peacock, Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Young, vol. i.

FRESNILLO, a town of the state of Zacatecas, Mexico, 37 m. N.W. of the city of Zacatecas on a branch of the Santiago river. Pop. (1900) 6309. It stands on a fertile plain between the Santa Cruz and Zacatecas ranges, about 7700 ft. above sea-level, has a temperate climate, and is surrounded by an agricultural district producing Indian corn and wheat. It is a clean, well-built 210 town, whose chief distinction is its school of mines founded in 1853. Fresnillo has large amalgam works for the reduction of silver ores. Its silver mines, located in the neighbouring Proaño hill, were discovered in 1569, and were for a time among the most productive in Mexico. Since 1833, when their richest deposits were reached, the output has greatly decreased. There is a station near on the Mexican Central railway.

FRESNO, a city and the county-seat of Fresno county, California, U.S.A., situated in the San Joaquin valley (altitude about 300 ft.) near the geographical centre of the state. Pop. (1880) 1112; (1890) 10,818; (1900) 12,470, of whom 3299 were foreign-born and 1279 were Asiatics; (1910 census) 24,892. The city is served by the Southern Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé railways. The county is mainly a vast expanse of naturally arid plains and mountains. The valley is the scene of an extensive irrigation system, water being brought (first in 1872-1876) from King’s river, 20 m. distant; in 1905 500 sq. m. were irrigated. Fresno is in a rich farming country, producing grains and fruit, and is the only place in America where Smyrna figs have been grown with success; it is the centre of the finest raisin country of the state, and has extensive vineyards and wine-making establishments. The city’s principal manufacture is preserved (dried) fruits, particularly raisins; the value of the fruits thus preserved in 1905 was $6,942,440, being 70.5% of the total value of the factory product in that year ($9,849,001). In 1900-1905 the factory product increased 257.9%, a ratio of increase greater than that of any other city in the state. In the mountains, lumbering and mining are important industries; lumber is carried from Shaver in the mountains to Clovis on the plains by a V-shaped flume 42 m. long, the waste water from which is ditched for irrigation. The petroleum field of the county is one of the richest in California. Fresno is the business and shipping centre of its county and of the surrounding region. The county was organized in 1856. In 1872 the railway went through, and Fresno was laid out and incorporated. It became the county-seat in 1874 and was chartered as a city in 1885.

FRESNOY, CHARLES ALPHONSE DU (1611-1665), French painter and writer on his art, was born in Paris, son of an apothecary. He was destined for the medical profession, and well educated in Latin and Greek; but, having a natural propensity for the fine arts, he would not apply to his intended vocation, and was allowed to learn the rudiments of design under Perrier and Vouet. At the age of twenty-one he went off to Rome, with no resources; he drew ruins and architectural subjects. After two years thus spent he re-encountered his old fellow-student Pierre Mignard, and by his aid obtained some amelioration of his professional prospects. He studied Raphael and the antique, went in 1633 to Venice, and in 1656 returned to France. During two years he was now employed in painting altar-pieces in the château of Raincy, landscapes, &c. His death was caused by an attack of apoplexy followed by palsy; he expired at Villiers le Bel, near Paris. He never married. His pictorial works are few; they are correct in drawing, with something of the Caracci in design, and of Titian in colouring, but wanting fire and expression, and insufficient to keep his name in any eminent repute. He is remembered now almost entirely as a writer rather than painter. His Latin poem, De arte graphica, was written during his Italian sojourn, and embodied his observations on the art of painting; it may be termed a critical treatise on the practice of the art, with general advice to students. The precepts are sound according to the standard of his time; the poetical merits slender enough. The Latin style is formed chiefly on Lucretius and Horace. This poem was first published by Mignard, and has been translated into several languages. In 1684 it was turned into French by Roger de Piles; Dryden translated the work into English prose; and a rendering into verse by Mason followed, to which Sir Joshua Reynolds added some annotations.

FRET. (1) (From O. Eng. fretan, a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages; cf. Ger. fressen, to eat greedily), properly to devour, hence to gnaw, so used of the slow corroding action of chemicals, water, &c., and hence, figuratively, to chafe or irritate. Possibly connected with this word, in sense of rubbing, is the use of “fret” for a bar on the fingerboard of a banjo, guitar, or similar musical instruments to mark the fingering. (2) (Of doubtful origin; possibly from the O. Eng. frætive, ornaments, but its use is paralleled by the Fr. frette, trellis or lattice), network, a term used in heraldry for an interlaced figure, but best known as applied to the decoration used by the Greeks in their temples and vases: the Greek fret consists of a series of narrow bands of different lengths, placed at right angles to one another, and of great variety of design. It is an ornament which owes its origin to woven fabrics, and is found on the ceilings of the Egyptian tombs at Benihasan, Siout and elsewhere. In Greek work it was painted on the abacus of the Doric capital and probably on the architraves of their temples; when employed by the Romans it was generally carved; the Propylaea of the temple at Damascus and the temple at Atil being examples of the 2nd century. It was carved in large dimensions on some of the Mexican temples, as for instance on the palace at Mitla with other decorative bands, all of which would seem to have been reproductions of woven patterns, and had therefore an independent origin. It is found in China and Japan, and in the latter country when painted on lacquer is employed as a fret-diaper, the bands not being at right angles to one another but forming acute and obtuse angles. In old English writers a wider signification was given to it, as it was applied to raised patterns in plaster oh roofs or ceilings, which were not confined to the geometrical fret but extended to the modelling of flowers, leaves and fruit; in such cases the decoration was known as fret-work. In France the fret is better known as the “meander.”

FREUDENSTADT, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Württemberg, on the right bank of the Murg, 40 m. S.W. from Stuttgart, on the railway to Hochdorf. Pop. 7000. It has a Protestant and a Roman Catholic church, some small manufactures of cloth, furniture, knives, nails and glass, and is frequented as a climatic health resort. It was founded in 1599 by Protestant refugees from Salzburg.

FREUND, WILHELM (1806-1894), German philologist and lexicographer, was born at Kempen in the grand duchy of Posen on the 27th of January 1806. He studied at Berlin, Breslau and Halle, and was for twenty years chiefly engaged in private tuition. From 1855-1870 he was director of the Jewish school at Gleiwitz in Silesia, and subsequently retired to Breslau, where he died on the 4th of June 1894. Although chiefly known for his philological labours, Freund took an important part in the movement for the emancipation of his Prussian co-religionists, and the Judengesetz of 1847 was in great measure the result of his efforts. The work by which he is best known is his Wörterbuch der lateinischen Sprache (1834-1845), practically the basis of all Latin-English dictionaries. His Wie studiert man klassische Philologie? (6th ed., 1903) and Triennium philologicum (2nd ed., 1878-1885) are valuable aids to the classical student.

FREWEN, ACCEPTED (1588-1664), archbishop of York, was born at Northiam, in Sussex, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where in 1612 he became a fellow. In 1617 and 1621 the college allowed him to act as chaplain to Sir John Digby, ambassador in Spain. At Madrid he preached a sermon which pleased Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I., and the latter on his accession appointed Frewen one of his chaplains. In 1625 he became canon of Canterbury and vice-president of Magdalen College, and in the following year he was elected president. He was vice-chancellor of the university in 1628 and 1629, and again in 1638 and 1639. It was mainly by his instrumentality that the university plate was sent to the king at York in 1642. Two years later he was consecrated bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and resigned his presidentship. Parliament declared his estates forfeited for treason in 1652, and Cromwell afterwards set a price on his head. The proclamations, however, designated him Stephen Frewen, and he was consequently able to escape into France. At the Restoration he reappeared in public, and in 1660 he was consecrated archbishop of York. In 1661 he acted as chairman of the Savoy conference.

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FREY (Old Norse, Freyr) son of Njord, one of the chief deities in the northern pantheon and the national god of the Swedes. He is the god of fruitfulness, the giver of sunshine and rain, and thus the source of all prosperity. (See Teutonic Peoples, ad fin.)

FREYBURG [Freyburg an der Unstrut], a town of Germany, in Prussian Saxony, in an undulating vine-clad country on the Unstrut, 6 m. N. from Naumberg-on-the-Saale, on the railway to Artern. Pop. 3200. It has a parish church, a mixture of Gothic and Romanesque architecture, with a handsome tower. It is, however, as being the “Mecca” of the German gymnastic societies that Freyburg is best known. Here Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852), the father of German gymnastic exercises, lies buried. Over his grave is built the Turnhalle, with a statue of the “master,” while hard by it the Jahn Museum in Romanesque style, erected in 1903. Freyburg produces sparkling wine of good quality and has some other small manufactures. On a hill commanding the town is the castle of Neuenburg, built originally in 1062 by Louis the Leaper, count in Thuringia, but in its present form mainly the work of the dukes of Saxe-Weissenfels.

FREYCINET, CHARLES LOUIS DE SAULCES DE (1828-  ), French statesman, was born at Foix on the 14th of November 1828. He was educated at the École Polytechnique, and entered the government service as a mining engineer. In 1858 he was appointed traffic manager to the Compagnie de chemins de fer du Midi, a post in which he gave proof of his remarkable talent for organization, and in 1862 returned to the engineering service (in which he attained in 1886 the rank of inspector-general). He was sent on a number of special scientific missions, among which may be mentioned one to England, on which he wrote a notable Mémoire sur le travail des femmes et des enfants dans les manufactures de l’Angleterre (1867). On the establishment of the Third Republic in September 1870, he offered his services to Gambetta, was appointed prefect of the department of Tarn-et-Garronne, and in October became chief of the military cabinet. It was mainly his powers of organization that enabled Gambetta to raise army after army to oppose the invading Germans. He showed himself a strategist of no mean order; but the policy of dictating operations to the generals in the field was not attended with happy results. The friction between him and General d’Aurelle de Paladines resulted in the loss of the advantage temporarily gained at Orleans, and he was responsible for the campaign in the east, which ended in the destruction of Bourbaki’s army. In 1871 he published a defence of his administration under the title of La Guerre en province pendant le siège de Paris. He entered the Senate in 1876 as a follower of Gambetta, and in December 1877 became minister of public works in the Dufaure cabinet. He carried a great scheme for the gradual acquisition of the railways by the state and the construction of new lines at a cost of three milliards, and for the development of the canal system at a further cost of one milliard. He retained his post in the ministry of Waddington, whom he succeeded in December 1879 as president of the council and minister for foreign affairs. He passed an amnesty for the Communists, but in attempting to steer a middle course on the question of the religious associations, lost the support of Gambetta, and resigned in September 1880. In January 1882 he again became president of the council and minister for foreign affairs. His refusal to join England in the bombardment of Alexandria was the death-knell of French influence in Egypt. He attempted to compromise by occupying the Isthmus of Suez, but the vote of credit was rejected in the Chamber by 417 votes to 75, and the ministry resigned. He returned to office in April 1885 as foreign minister in the Brisson cabinet, and retained that post when, in January 1886, he succeeded to the premiership. He came into power with an ambitious programme of internal reform; but except that he settled the question of the exiled pretenders, his successes were won chiefly in the sphere of colonial extension. In spite of his unrivalled skill as a parliamentary tactician, he failed to keep his party together, and was defeated on 3rd December 1886. In the following year, after two unsuccessful attempts to construct new ministries he stood for the presidency of the republic; but the radicals, to whom his opportunism was distasteful, turned the scale against him by transferring the votes to M. Sadi Carnot.

In April 1888 he became minister of war in the Floquet cabinet—the first civilian since 1848 to hold that office. His services to France in this capacity were the crowning achievement of his life, and he enjoyed the conspicuous honour of holding his office without a break for five years through as many successive administrations—those of Floquet and Tirard, his own fourth ministry (March 1890-February 1892), and the Loubet and Ribot ministries. To him were due the introduction of the three-years’ service and the establishment of a general staff, a supreme council of war, and the army commands. His premiership was marked by heated debates on the clerical question, and it was a hostile vote on his Bill against the religious associations that caused the fall of his cabinet. He failed to clear himself entirely of complicity in the Panama scandals, and in January 1893 resigned the ministry of war. In November 1898 he once more became minister of war in the Dupuy cabinet, but resigned office on 6th May 1899. He has published, besides the works already mentioned, Traité de mécanique rationnelle (1858); De l’analyse infinitésimale (1860, revised ed., 1881); Des pentes économiques en chemin de fer (1861); Emploi des eaux d’égout en agriculture (1869); Principes de l’assainissement des villes and Traité d’assainissement industriel (1870); Essai sur la philosophie des sciences (1896); La Question d’Égypte (1905); besides some remarkable “Pensées” contributed to the Contemporain under the pseudonym of “Alceste.” In 1882 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1890 to the French Academy in succession to Émile Augier.

FREYCINET, LOUIS CLAUDE DESAULSES DE (1779-1842), French navigator, was born at Montélimart, Drôme, on the 7th of August 1779. In 1793 he entered the French navy. After taking part in several engagements against the British, he joined in 1800, along with his brother Louis Henri Freycinet (1777-1840), who afterwards rose to the rank of admiral, the expedition sent out under Captain Baudin in the “Naturaliste” and “Géographe” to explore the south and south-west coasts of Australia. Much of the ground already gone over by Flinders was revisited, and new names imposed by this expedition, which claimed credit for discoveries really made by the English navigator. An inlet on the coast of West Australia, in 26° S., is called Freycinet Estuary; and a cape near the extreme south-west of the same coast also bears the explorer’s name. In 1805 he returned to Paris, and was entrusted by the government with the work of preparing the maps and plans of the expedition; he also completed the narrative, and the whole work appeared under the title of Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes (Paris, 1807-1816). In 1817 he commanded the “Uranie,” in which Arago and others went to Rio de Janeiro, to take a series of pendulum measurements. This was only part of a larger scheme for obtaining observations, not only in geography and ethnology, but in astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, and meteorology, and for the collection of specimens in natural history. On this expedition the hydrographic operations were conducted by Louis Isidore Duperry (1786-1865) who in 1822 was appointed to the command of the “Coquille,” and during the next three years carried out scientific explorations in the southern Pacific and along the coast of South America. For three years Freycinet cruised about, visiting Australia, the Marianne, Sandwich, and other Pacific islands, South America, and other places, and, notwithstanding the loss of the “Uranie” on the Falkland Islands during the return voyage, returned to France with fine collections in all departments of natural history, and with voluminous notes and drawings which form an important contribution to a knowledge of the countries visited. The results of this voyage were published under Freycinet’s supervision, with the title of Voyage autour du monde sur les corvettes “l’Uranie” et “la Physicienne” in 1824-1844, in 13 quarto volumes and 4 folio volumes of fine plates and maps. Freycinet was admitted into the Academy of Sciences in 1825, and was one 212 of the founders of the Paris Geographical Society. He died at Freycinet, Drôme, on the 18th of August 1842.

FREYIA, the sister of Frey, and the most prominent goddess in Northern mythology. Her character seems in general to have resembled that of her brother. (See Teutonic Peoples, ad fin.)

FREYTAG, GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH (1788-1861), German philologist, was born at Lüneburg on the 19th of September 1788. After attending school he entered the university of Göttingen as a student of philology and theology; here from 1811 to 1813 he acted as a theological tutor, but in the latter year accepted an appointment as sub-librarian at Königsberg. In 1815 he became a chaplain in the Prussian army, and in that capacity visited Paris. On the proclamation of peace he resigned his chaplaincy, and returned to his researches in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, studying at Paris under De Sacy. In 1819 he was appointed to the professorship of oriental languages in the new university of Bonn, and this post he continued to hold until his death on the 16th of November 1861.

Besides a compendium of Hebrew grammar (Kurzgefasste Grammatik der hebräischen Sprache, 1835), and a treatise on Arabic versification (Darstellung der arabischen Verskunst, 1830), he edited two volumes of Arabic songs (Hamasae carmina, 1828-1852) and three of Arabic proverbs (Arabum proverbia, 1838-1843). But his principal work was the laborious and praiseworthy Lexicon Arabico-latinum (Halle, 1830-1837), an abridgment of which was published in 1837.

FREYTAG, GUSTAV (1816-1895), German novelist, was born at Kreuzburg, in Silesia, on the 13th of July 1816. After attending the gymnasium at Öls, he studied philology at the universities of Breslau and Berlin, and in 1838 took the degree with a remarkable dissertation, De initiis poëseos scenicae apud Germanos. In 1839 he settled at Breslau, as Privatdocent in German language and literature, but devoted his principal attention to writing for the stage, and achieved considerable success with the comedy Die Brautfahrt, oder Kunz von der Rosen (1844). This was followed by a volume of unimportant poems, In Breslau (1845) and the dramas Die Valentine (1846) and Graf Waldemar (1847). He at last attained a prominent position by his comedy, Die Journalisten (1853), one of the best German comedies of the 19th century. In 1847 he migrated to Berlin, and in the following year took over, in conjunction with Julian Schmidt, the editorship of Die Grenzboten, a weekly journal which, founded in 1841, now became the leading organ of German and Austrian liberalism. Freytag helped to conduct it until 1861, and again from 1867 till 1870, when for a short time he edited a new periodical, Im neuen Reich. His literary fame was made universal by the publication in 1855 of his novel, Soll und Haben, which was translated into almost all the languages of Europe. It was certainly the best German novel of its day, impressive by its sturdy but unexaggerated realism, and in many parts highly humorous. Its main purpose is the recommendation of the German middle class as the soundest element in the nation, but it also has a more directly patriotic intention in the contrast which it draws between the homely virtues of the Teuton and the shiftlessness of the Pole and the rapacity of the Jew. As a Silesian, Freytag had no great love for his Slavonic neighbours, and being a native of a province which owed everything to Prussia, he was naturally an earnest champion of Prussian hegemony over Germany. His powerful advocacy of this idea in his Grenzboten gained him the friendship of the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, whose neighbour he had become, on acquiring the estate of Siebleben near Gotha. At the duke’s request Freytag was attached to the staff of the crown prince of Prussia in the campaign of 1870, and was present at the battles of Wörth and Sedan. Before this he had published another novel, Die verlorene Handschrift (1864), in which he endeavoured to do for German university life what in Soll und Haben he had done for commercial life. The hero is a young German professor, who is so wrapt up in his search for a manuscript by Tacitus that he is oblivious to an impending tragedy in his domestic life. The book was, however, less successful than its predecessor. Between 1859 and 1867 Freytag published in five volumes Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit, a most valuable work on popular lines, illustrating the history and manners of Germany. In 1872 he began a work with a similar patriotic purpose, Die Ahnen, a series of historical romances in which he unfolds the history of a German family from the earliest times to the middle of the 19th century. The series comprises the following novels, none of which, however, reaches the level of Freytag’s earlier books. (1) Ingo und Ingraban (1872), (2) Das Nest der Zaunkönige (1874), (3) Die Brüder vom deutschen Hause (1875), (4) Marcus König (1876), (5) Die Geschwister (1878), and (6) in conclusion, Aus einer kleinen Stadt (1880). Among Freytag’s other works may be noticed Die Technik des Dramas (1863); an excellent biography of the Baden statesman Karl Mathy (1869); an autobiography (Erinnerungen aus meinen Leben, 1887); his Gesammelte Aufsätze, chiefly reprinted from the Grenzboten (1888); Der Kronprinz und die deutsche Kaiserkrone; Erinnerungsblätter (1889). He died at Wiesbaden on the 30th of April 1895.

Freytag’s Gesammelte Werke were published in 22 vols. at Leipzig (1886-1888); his Vermischte Aufsätze have been edited by E. Elster, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1901-1903). On Freytag’s life see, besides his autobiography mentioned above, the lives by C. Alberti (Leipzig, 1890) and F. Seiler (Leipzig, 1898).

FRIAR (from the Lat. frater, through the Fr. frère), the English generic name for members of the mendicant religious orders. Formerly it was the title given to individual members of these orders, as Friar Laurence (in Romeo and Juliet), but this is not now common. In England the chief orders of friars were distinguished by the colour of their habit: thus the Franciscans or Minors were the Grey Friars; the Dominicans or Preachers were the Black Friars (from their black mantle over a white habit), and the Carmelites were the White Friars (from their white mantle over a brown habit): these, together with the Austin Friars or Hermits, formed the four great mendicant orders—Chaucer’s “alle the ordres foure.” Besides the four great orders of friars, the Trinitarians (q.v.), though really canons, were in England called Trinity Friars or Red Friars; the Crutched or Crossed Friars were often identified with them, but were really a distinct order; there were also a number of lesser orders of friars, many of which were suppressed by the second council of Lyons in 1274. Detailed information on these orders and on their position in England is given in separate articles. The difference between friars and monks is explained in article Monasticism. Though the usage is not accurate, friars, and also canons regular, are often spoken of as monks and included among the monastic orders.

See Fr. Cuthbert, The Friars and how they came to England, pp. 11-32 (1903); also F. A. Gasquet, English Monastic Life, pp. 234-249 (1904), where special information on all the English friars is conveniently brought together.

(E. C. B.)

FRIBOURG [Ger. Freiburg], one of the Swiss Cantons, in the western portion of the country, and taking its name from the town around which the various districts that compose it gradually gathered. Its area is 646.3 sq. m., of which 568 sq. m. are classed as “productive” (forests covering 119 sq. m. and vineyards .8 sq. m.); it boasts of no glaciers or eternal snow. It is a hilly, not mountainous, region, the highest summits (of which the Vanil Noir, 7858 ft., is the loftiest) rising in the Gruyère district at its south-eastern extremity, the best known being probably the Moléson (6582 ft.) and the Berra (5653 ft.). But it is the heart of pastoral Switzerland, is famed for its cheese and cattle, and is the original home of the “Ranz des Vaches,” the melody by which the herdsmen call their cattle home at milking time. It is watered by the Sarine or Saane river (with its tributaries the Singine or Sense and the Glâne) that flows through the canton from north to south, and traverses its capital town. The upper course of the Broye (like the Sarine, a tributary of the Aar) and that of the Veveyse (flowing to the Lake of Geneva) are in the southern portion of the canton. A small share of the lakes of Neuchâtel and of Morat belongs to the canton, wherein the largest sheet of water is the Lac Noir or Schwarzsee. A sulphur spring rises near the last-named lake, and there are other such springs in the canton at Montbarry and at Bonn, near the capital. There are about 150 m. of railways in the canton, the main line from Lausanne to Bern past Fribourg running through 213 it; there are also lines from Fribourg to Morat and to Estavayer, while from Romont (on the main line) a line runs to Bulle, and in 1904 was extended to Gessenay or Saanen near the head of the Sarine or Saane valley. The population of the canton amounted in 1900 to 127,951 souls, of whom 108,440 were Romanists, 19,305 Protestants, and 167 Jews. The canton is on the linguistic frontier in Switzerland, the line of division running nearly due north and south through it, and even right through its capital. In 1900 there were 78,353 French-speaking inhabitants, and 38,738 German-speaking, the latter being found chiefly in the north-western (Morat region) and north-eastern (Singine valley) portions, as well as in the upper valley of the Jogne or Jaun in the south-east. Besides the capital, Fribourg (q.v.), the only towns of any importance are Bulle (3330 inhabitants), Châtel St Denis (2509 inhabitants), Morat (q.v.) or Murten (2263 inhabitants), Romont (2110 inhabitants), and Estavayer le Lac or Stäffis am See (1636 inhabitants).

The canton is pre-eminently a pastoral and agricultural region, tobacco, cheese and timber being its chief products. Its industries are comparatively few: straw-plaiting, watch-making (Semsales), paper-making (Marly), lime-kilns, and, above all, the huge Cailler chocolate factory at Broc. It forms part of the diocese of Lausanne and Geneva, the bishop living since 1663 at Fribourg. It is a stronghold of the Romanists, and still contains many monasteries and nunneries, such as the Carthusian monks at Valsainte, and the Cistercian nuns at La Fille Dieu and at Maigrauge. The canton is divided into 7 administrative districts, and contains 283 communes. It sends 2 members (named by the cantonal legislature) to the Federal Ständerath, and 6 members to the Federal Nationalrath. The cantonal constitution has scarcely been altered since 1857, and is remarkable as containing none of the modern devices (referendum, initiative, proportional representation) save the right of “initiative” enjoyed by 6000 citizens to claim the revision of the cantonal constitution. The executive council of 7 members is named for 5 years by the cantonal legislature, which consists of members (holding office for 5 years) elected in the proportion of one to every 1200 (or fraction over 800) of the population.

(W. A. B. C.)

FRIBOURG [Ger. Freiburg], the capital of the Swiss canton of that name. It is built almost entirely on the left bank of the Sarine, the oldest bit (the Bourg) of the town being just above the river bank, flanked by the Neuveville and Auge quarters, these last (with the Planche quarter on the right bank of the river) forming the Ville Basse. On the steeply rising ground to the west of the Bourg is the Quartier des Places, beyond which, to the west and south-west, is the still newer Pérolles quarter, where are the railway station and the new University; all these (with the Bourg) constituting the Ville Haute. In 1900 the population of the town was 15,794, of whom 13,270 were Romanists and 109 Jews, while 9701 were French-speaking, and 5595 German-speaking, these last being mainly in the Ville Basse. Its linguistic history is curious. Founded as a German town, the French tongue became the official language during the greater part of the 14th and 15th centuries, but when it joined the Swiss Confederation in 1481 the German influence came to the fore, and German was the official language from 1483 to 1798, becoming thus associated with the rule of the patricians. From 1798 to 1814, and again from 1830 onwards, French prevailed, as at present, though the new University is a centre of German influence.

Fribourg is on the main line of railway from Bern (20 m.) to Lausanne (41 m.). The principal building in the town is the collegiate church of St Nicholas, of which the nave dates from the 13th-14th centuries, while the choir was rebuilt in the 17th century. It is a fine building, remarkable in itself, as well as for its lofty, late 15th century, bell-tower (249 ft. high), with a fine peal of bells; its famous organ was built between 1824 and 1834 by Aloys Mooser (a native of the town), has 7800 pipes, and is played daily in summer for the edification of tourists. The numerous monasteries in and around the town, its old-fashioned aspect, its steep and narrow streets, give it a most striking appearance. One of the most conspicuous buildings in the town is the college of St Michael, while in front of the 16th century town hall is an ancient lime tree stated (but this is very doubtful) to have been planted on the day of the victory of Morat (June 22, 1476). In the Lycée is the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, wherein, besides many interesting objects, is the collection of paintings and statuary bequeathed to the town in 1879 by Duchess Adela Colonna (a member of the d’Affry family of Fribourg), by whom many were executed under the name of “Marcello.” The deep ravine of the Sarine is crossed by a very fine suspension bridge, constructed 1832-1834 by M. Chaley, of Lyons, which is 167 ft. above the Sarine, has a span of 808 ft., and consists of 6 huge cables composed of 3294 strands. A loftier suspension bridge is thrown over the Gotteron stream just before it joins the Sarine: it is 590 ft. long and 246 ft. in height, and was built in 1840. About 3 m. north of the town is the great railway viaduct or girder bridge of Grandfey, constructed in 1862 (1092 ft. in length, 249 ft. high) at a cost of 2¾ million francs. Immediately above the town a vast dam (591 ft. long) was constructed across the Sarine by the engineer Ritter in 1870-1872, the fall thus obtained yielding a water-power of 2600 to 4000 horse-power, and forming a sheet of water known as the Lac de Pérolles. A motive force of 600 horse-power, secured by turbines in the stream, is conveyed to the plateau of Pérolles by “telodynamic” cables of 2510 ft. in length, for whose passage a tunnel has been pierced in the rock. On the Pérolles plateau is the International Catholic University founded in 1889.

History.—In 1178 the foundation of the town (meant to hold in check the turbulent nobles of the neighbourhood) was completed by Berchthold IV., duke of Zähringen, whose father Conrad had founded Freiburg in Breisgau in 1120, and whose son, Berchthold V., was to found Bern in 1191. The spot was chosen for purposes of military defence, and was situated in the Uechtland or waste land between Alamannian and Burgundian territory. He granted it many privileges, modelled on the charters of Cologne and of Freiburg in Breisgau, though the oldest existing charter of the town dates from 1249. On the extinction of the male line of the Zähringen dynasty, in 1218, their lands passed to Anna, the sister of the last duke and wife of Count Ulrich of Kyburg. That house kept Fribourg till it too became extinct, in 1264, in the male line. Anna, the heiress, married about 1273 Eberhard, count of Habsburg-Laufenburg, who sold Fribourg in 1277 for 3000 marks to his cousin Rudolf, the head of the house of Habsburg as well as emperor. The town had to fight many a hard battle for its existence against Bern and the count of Savoy, especially between 1448 and 1452. Abandoned by the Habsburgs, and desirous of escaping from the increasing power of Bern, Fribourg in 1452 finally submitted to the count of Savoy, to whom it had become indebted for vast sums of money. Yet, despite all its difficulties, it was in the first half of the 15th century that Fribourg exported much leather and cloth to France, Italy and Venice, as many as 10,000 to 20,000 bales of cloth being stamped with the seal of the town. When Yolande, dowager duchess of Savoy, entered into an alliance with Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, Fribourg joined Bern, and helped to gain the victories of Grandson and of Morat (1476).

In 1477 the town was finally freed from the rule of Savoy, while in 1481 (with Soleure) it became a member of the Swiss Confederation, largely, it is said, through the influence of the holy man, Bruder Klaus (Niklaus von der Flüe). In 1475 the town had taken Illens and Arconciel from Savoy, and in 1536 won from Vaud much territory, including Romont, Rue, Châtel St Denis, Estavayer, St Aubin (by these two conquests its dominion reached the Lake of Neuchâtel), as well as Vuissens and Surpierre, which still form outlying portions (physically within the canton of Vaud) of its territory, while in 1537 it took Bulle from the bishop of Lausanne. In 1502-1504 the lordship of Bellegarde or Jaun was bought, while in 1555 it acquired (jointly with Bern) the lands of the last count of the Gruyère, and thus obtained the rich district of that name. From 1475 it ruled (with Bern) the bailiwicks of Morat, Grandson, Orbe and 214 Echallens, just taken from Savoy, but in 1798 Morat was incorporated with (finally annexed in 1814) the canton of Fribourg, the other bailiwicks being then given to the canton of Léman (later of Vaud). In the 16th century the original democratic government gradually gave place to the oligarchy of the patrician families. Though this government caused much discontent it continued till it was overthrown on the French occupation of 1798.

From 1803 (Act of Mediation) to 1814, Fribourg was one of the six cantons of the Swiss Confederation. But, on the fall of the new régime, in 1814, the old patrician rule was partly restored, as 108 of the 144 seats in the cantonal legislature were assigned to members of the patrician families. In 1831 the Radicals gained the power and secured the adoption of a more liberal constitution. In 1846 Fribourg (where the Conservatives had regained power in 1837) joined the Sonderbund and, in 1847, saw the Federal troops before its walls, and had to surrender to them. The Radicals now came back to power, and again revised the cantonal constitution in a liberal sense. The Catholic and Conservative party made several attempts to recover their supremacy, but their chiefs were driven into exile. In 1856 the Conservatives regained the upper hand at the general cantonal election, secured the adoption in 1857 of a new cantonal constitution, and have ever since maintained their rule, which some dub “clerical,” while others describe it as “anti-radical.”

Authorities.—Archives de la Société d’histoire du Canton de F., from 1850; F. Buomberger, Bevölkerungs- u. Vermögensstatistik in d. Stadt u. Landschaft F. um die Mitte d. 15ten Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1900); A. Daguet, Histoire de la ville et de la seigneurie de F., to 1481 (Fribourg, 1889); A. Dellion, Dictionnaire historique et statistique des paroisses catholiques du C. de F. (12 vols., Fribourg, 1884-1903); Freiburger Geschichtsblätter, from 1894; Fribourg artistique (fine plates), from 1890; E. Heyck, Geschichte der Herzoge von Zähringen (Freiburg i. Br., 1891); F. Kuenlin, Der K. Freiburg (St Gall and Bern, 1834); Mémorial de F. (6 vols., 1854-1859); Recueil diplomatique du Cant. de F. (original documents) (8 vols., Fribourg, 1839-1877); F. E. Welti, Beiträge zur Geschichte des älteren Stadtrechtes von Freiburg im Uechtland (Bern, 1908); J. Zemp, L’Art de la ville de Fribourg au moyen âge (Fribourg, 1905); J. Zimmerli, Die deutsch-französische Sprachgrenze in d. Schweiz (Basel and Geneva, 1895), vol. ii., pp. 72 seq.; Les Alpes fribourgeoises (Lausanne, 1908).

(W. A. B. C.)

FRICTION (from Lat. fricare, to rub), in physical and mechanical science, the term given to the resistance which every material surface presents to the sliding of any other such surface upon it. This resistance is due to the roughness of the surfaces; the minute projections upon each enter more or less into the minute depressions on the other, and when motion occurs these roughnesses must either be worn off, or continually lifted out of the hollows into which they have fallen, or both, the resistance to motion being in either case quite perceptible and measurable.

Friction is preferably spoken of as “resistance” rather than “force,” for a reason exactly the same as that which induces us to treat stress rather as molecular resistance (to change of form) than as force, and which may be stated thus: although friction can be utilized as a moving force at will, and is continually so used, yet it cannot be a primary moving force; it can transmit or modify motion already existing, but cannot in the first instance cause it. For this some external force, not friction, is required. The analogy with stress appears complete; the motion of the “driving link” of a machine is communicated to all the other parts, modified or unchanged as the case may be, by the stresses in those parts; but the actual setting in motion of the driving link itself cannot come about by stress, but must have for its production force obtained directly from the expenditure of some form of energy. It is important, however, that the use of the term “resistance” should not be allowed to mislead. Friction resists the motion of one surface upon another, but it may and frequently does confer the motion of the one upon the other, and in this way causes, instead of resists, the motion of the latter. This may be made more clear, perhaps, by an illustration. Suppose we have a leather strap A passing over a fixed cylindrical drum B, and let a pulling force or effort be applied to the strap. The force applied to A can act on B only at the surfaces of contact between them. There it becomes an effort tending either to move A upon B, or to move the body B itself, according to the frictional conditions. In the absence of friction it would simply cause A to slide on B, so that we may call it an effort tending to make A slide on B. The friction is the resistance offered by the surface of B to any such motion. But the value of this resistance is not in any way a function of the effort itself,—it depends chiefly upon the pressure normal to the surfaces and the nature of the surfaces. It may therefore be either less or greater than the effort. If less, A slides over B, the rate of motion being determined by the excess of the effort over the resistance (friction). But if the latter be greater no sliding can occur, i.e. A cannot, under the action of the supposed force, move upon B. The effort between the surfaces exists, however, exactly as before,—and it must now tend to cause the motion of B. But the body B is fixed,—or, in other words, we suppose its resistance to motion greater than any effort which can tend to move it,—hence no motion takes place. It must be specially noticed, however, that it is not the friction between A and B that has prevented motion, this only prevented A moving on B,—it is the force which keeps B stationary, whatever that may be, which has finally prevented any motion taking place. This can be easily seen. Suppose B not to be fixed, but to be capable of moving against some third body C (which might, e.g., contain cylindrical bearings, if B were a drum with its shaft), itself fixed,—and further, suppose the frictional resistance between B and C to be the only resistance to B’s motion. Then if this be less than the effort of A upon B, as it of course may be, this effort will cause the motion of B. Thus friction causes motion, for had there been no frictional resistance between the surfaces of A and of B, the latter body would have remained stationary, and A only would have moved. In the case supposed, therefore, the friction between A and B is a necessary condition of B receiving any motion from the external force applied to A.

Without entering here on the mathematical treatment of the subject of friction, some general conclusions may be pointed out which have been arrived at as the results of experiment. The “laws” first enunciated by C. A. Coulomb (1781), and afterwards confirmed by A. J. Morin (1830-1834), have been found to hold good within very wide limits. These are: (1) that the friction is proportional to the normal pressure between the surfaces of contact, and therefore independent of the area of those surfaces, and (2) that it is independent of the velocity with which the surfaces slide one on the other. For many practical purposes these statements are sufficiently accurate, and they do in fact sensibly represent the results of experiment for the pressures and at the velocities most commonly occurring. Assuming the correctness of these, friction is generally measured in terms simply of the total pressure between the surfaces, by multiplying it by a “coefficient of friction” depending on the material of the surfaces and their state as to smoothness and lubrication. But beyond certain limits the “laws” stated are certainly incorrect, and are to be regarded as mere practical rules, of extensive application certainly, but without any pretension to be looked at as really general laws. Both at very high and very low pressures the coefficient of friction is affected by the intensity of pressure, and, just as with velocity, it can only be regarded as independent of the intensity and proportional simply to the total load within more or less definite limits.

Coulomb pointed out long ago that the resistance of a body to be set in motion was in many cases much greater than the resistance which it offered to continued motion; and since his time writers have always distinguished the “friction of rest,” or static friction, from the “friction of motion,” or kinetic friction. He showed also that the value of the former depended often both upon the intensity of the pressure and upon the length of time during which contact had lasted, both of which facts quite agree with what we should expect from our knowledge of the physical nature, already mentioned, of the causes of friction. It seems not unreasonable to expect that the influence of time upon friction should show itself in a comparison of very slow with very rapid motion, as well as in a comparison of starting (i.e. motion after a long time of rest) with continued 215 motion. That the friction at the higher velocities occurring in engineering practice is much less than at common velocities has been shown by several modern experiments, such as those of Sir Douglas Galton (see Report Brit. Assoc., 1878, and Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng., 1878, 1879) on the friction between brake-blocks and wheels, and between wheels and rails. But no increase in the coefficient of friction had been detected at slow speeds, until the experiments of Prof. Fleeming Jenkin (Phil. Trans., 1877, pt. 2) showed conclusively that at extremely low velocities (the lowest measured was about .0002 ft. per second) there is a sensible increase of frictional resistance in many cases, most notably in those in which there is the most marked difference between the friction of rest and that of motion. These experiments distinctly point to the conclusion, although without absolutely proving it, that in such cases the coefficient of kinetic friction gradually increases as the velocity becomes extremely small, and passes without discontinuity into that of static friction.

(A. B. W. K.; W. E. D.)

FRIDAY (A.S. frige-dæg, fr. frige, gen. of frigu, love, or the goddess of love—the Norse Frigg,—the dæg, day; cf. Icelandic frjádagr, O.H. Ger. friatag, frigatag, mod. Ger. Freitag), the sixth day of the week, corresponding to the Roman Dies Veneris, the French Vendredi and Italian Venerdi. The ill-luck associated with the day undoubtedly arose from its connexion with the Crucifixion; for the ancient Scandinavian peoples regarded it as the luckiest day of the week. By the Western and Eastern Churches the Fridays throughout the year, except when Christmas falls on that day, have ever been observed as days of fast in memory of the Passion. The special day on which the Passion of Christ is annually commemorated is known as Good Friday (q.v.). According to Mahommedan tradition, Friday, which is the Moslem Sabbath, was the day on which Adam was created, entered Paradise and was expelled, and it was the day of his repentance, the day of his death, and will be the Day of Resurrection.

FRIEDBERG, the name of two towns in Germany.

1. A small town in Upper Bavaria, with an old castle, known mainly as the scene of Moreau’s victory of the 24th of August 1796 over the Austrians.

2. Friedberg in der Wetterau, in the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, on an eminence above the Usa, 14 m. N. of Frankfort-on-Main, on the railway to Cassel and at the junction of a line to Hanau. Pop. (1905) 7702. It is a picturesque town, still surrounded by old walls and towers, and contains many medieval buildings, of which the beautiful Gothic town church (Evangelical) and the old castle are especially noteworthy. The grand-ducal palace has a beautiful garden. The schools include technical and agricultural academies and a teachers’ seminary. It has manufactures of sugar, gloves and leather, and breweries. Friedberg is of Roman origin, but is first mentioned as a town in the 11th century. In 1211 it became a free imperial city, but in 1349 was pledged to the counts of Schwarzburg, and subsequently often changed hands, eventually in 1802 passing to Hesse-Darmstadt.

See Dieffenbach, Geschichte der Stadt und Burg Friedberg (Darms., 1857).

FRIEDEL, CHARLES (1832-1899), French chemist and mineralogist, was born at Strassburg on the 12th of March 1832. After graduating at Strassburg University he spent a year in the counting-house of his father, a banker and merchant, and then in 1851 went to live in Paris with his maternal grandfather, Georges Louis Duvernoy (1777-1855), professor of natural history and, from 1850, of comparative anatomy, at the Collège de France. In 1854 he entered C. A. Wurtz’s laboratory, and in 1856, at the instance of H. H. de Sénarmont (1808-1862), was appointed conservator of the mineralogical collections at the École des Mines. In 1871 he began to lecture in place of A. L. O. L. Des Cloizeaux (1817-1897) at the École Normale, and in 1876 he became professor of mineralogy at the Sorbonne, but on the death of Wurtz in 1884 he exchanged that position for the chair of organic chemistry. He died at Montauban on the 20th of April 1899. Friedel achieved distinction both in mineralogy and organic chemistry. In the former he was one of the leading workers, in collaboration from 1879 to 1887 with Émile Edmond Sarasin (1843-1890), at the formation of minerals by artificial means, particularly in the wet way with the aid of heat and pressure, and he succeeded in reproducing a large number of the natural compounds. In 1893, as the result of an attempt to make diamond by the action of sulphur on highly carburetted cast iron at 450°-500° C. he obtained a black powder too small in quantity to be analysed but hard enough to scratch corundum. He also devoted much attention to the pyroelectric phenomena of crystals, which served as the theme of one of the two memoirs he presented for the degree of D.Sc. in 1869, and to the determination of crystallographic constants. In organic chemistry, his study of the ketones and aldehydes, begun in 1857, provided him with the subject of his other doctoral thesis. In 1862 he prepared secondary propyl alcohol, and in 1863, with James Mason Crafts (b. 1839), for many years a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, he obtained various organometallic compounds of silicon. A few years later further work, with Albert Ladenburg, on the same element yielded silicochloroform and led to a demonstration of the close analogy existing between the behaviour in combination of silicon and carbon. In 1871, with R. D. da Silva (b. 1837) he synthesized glycerin, starting from propylene. In 1877, with Crafts, he made the first publication of the fruitful and widely used method for synthesizing benzene homologues now generally known as the “Friedel and Crafts reaction.” It was based on an accidental observation of the action of metallic aluminium on amyl chloride, and consists in bringing together a hydrocarbon and an organic chloride in presence of aluminium chloride, when the residues of the two compounds unite to form a more complex body. Friedel was associated with Wurtz in editing the latter’s Dictionnaire de chimie, and undertook the supervision of the supplements issued after 1884. He was the chief founder of the Revue générale de chimie in 1899. His publications include a Notice sur la vie et les travaux de Wurtz (1885), Cours de chimie organique (1887) and Cours de minéralogie (1893). He acted as president of the International Congress held at Geneva in 1892 for revising the nomenclature of the fatty acid series.

See a memorial lecture by J. M. Crafts, printed in the Journal of the London Chemical Society for 1900.

FRIEDLAND, a town of Bohemia, Austria, 103 m. N.E. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 6229. Besides the old town, which is still surrounded by walls, it contains three suburbs. The principal industry is the manufacture of woollen and linen cloth. Friedland is chiefly remarkable for its old castle, which occupies an imposing situation on a small hill commanding the town. A round watch-tower is said to have been built on its site as early as 1014; and the present castle dates from the 13th century. It was several times besieged in the Thirty Years’ and Seven Years’ Wars. In 1622 it was purchased by Wallenstein, who took from it his title of duke of Friedland. After his death it was given to Count Mathias Gallas by Ferdinand II., and since 1757 it has belonged to the Count Clam Gallas. It was magnificently restored in 1868-1869.

FRIEDLAND, the name of seven towns in Germany. The most important now is that in the grand duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, on the Mühlenteich, 35 m. N.E. of Strelitz by the railway to Neu-Brandenburg. Pop. 7000. It possesses a fine Gothic church and a gymnasium, and has manufactures of woollen and linen cloth, leather and tobacco. Friedland was founded in 1244 by the margraves John and Otto III. of Brandenburg.

FRIEDLAND, a town of Prussia, on the Alle, 27 m. S.E. of Königsberg (pop. 3000), famous as the scene of the battle fought between the French under Napoleon and the Russians commanded by General Bennigsen, on the 14th of June 1807 (see Napoleonic Campaigns). The Russians had on the 13th driven the French cavalry outposts from Friedland to the westward, and Bennigsen’s main body began to occupy the town in the night. The army of Napoleon was set in motion for Friedland, but it was still dispersed on its various march routes, and the 216 first stage of the engagement was thus, as usual, a pure “encounter-battle.” The corps of Marshal Lannes as “general advanced guard” was first engaged, in the Sortlack Wood and in front of Posthenen (2.30-3 A.M. on the 14th). Both sides now used their cavalry freely to cover the formation of lines of battle, and a race between the rival squadrons for the possession of Heinrichsdorf resulted in favour of the French under Grouchy. Lannes in the meantime was fighting hard to hold Bennigsen, for Napoleon feared that the Russians meant to evade him again. Actually, by 6 A.M. Bennigsen had nearly 50,000 men across the river and forming up west of Friedland. His infantry, in two lines, with artillery, extended between the Heinrichsdorf-Friedland road and the upper bends of the river. Beyond the right of the infantry, cavalry and Cossacks extended the line to the wood N.E. of Heinrichsdorf, and small bodies of Cossacks penetrated even to Schwonau. The left wing also had some cavalry and, beyond the Alle, batteries were brought into action to cover it. A heavy and indecisive fire-fight raged in the Sortlack Wood between the Russian skirmishers and some of Lannes’s troops. The head of Mortier’s (French and Polish) corps appeared at Heinrichsdorf and the Cossacks were driven out of Schwonau. Lannes held his own, and by noon, when Napoleon arrived, 40,000 French troops were on the scene of action. His orders were brief: Ney’s corps was to take the line between Posthenen and the Sortlack Wood, Lannes closing on his left, to form the centre, Mortier at Heinrichsdorf the left wing. Victor and the Guard were placed in reserve behind Posthenen. Cavalry masses were collected at Heinrichsdorf. The main attack was to be delivered against the Russian left, which Napoleon saw at once to be cramped in the narrow tongue of land between the river and the Posthenen mill-stream. Three cavalry divisions were added to the general reserve. The course of the previous operations had been such that both armies had still large detachments out towards Königsberg. The afternoon was spent by the emperor in forming up the newly arrived masses, the deployment being covered by an artillery bombardment. At 5 o’clock all was ready, and Ney, preceded by a heavy artillery fire, rapidly carried the Sortlack Wood. The attack was pushed on toward the Alle. One of Ney’s divisions (Marchand) drove part of the Russian left into the river at Sortlack. A furious charge of cavalry against Marchand’s left was repulsed by the dragoon division of Latour-Maubourg. Soon the Russians were huddled together in the bends of the Alle, an easy target for the guns of Ney and of the reserve. Ney’s attack indeed came eventually to a standstill; Bennigsen’s reserve cavalry charged with great effect and drove him back in disorder. As at Eylau, the approach of night seemed to preclude a decisive success, but in June and on firm ground the old mobility of the French reasserted its value. The infantry division of Dupont advanced rapidly from Posthenen, the cavalry divisions drove back the Russian squadrons into the now congested masses of foot on the river bank, and finally the artillery general Sénarmont advanced a mass of guns to case-shot range. It was the first example of the terrible artillery preparations of modern warfare, and the Russian defence collapsed in a few minutes. Ney’s exhausted infantry were able to pursue the broken regiments of Bennigsen’s left into the streets of Friedland. Lannes and Mortier had all this time held the Russian centre and right on its ground, and their artillery had inflicted severe losses. When Friedland itself was seen to be on fire, the two marshals launched their infantry attack. Fresh French troops approached the battlefield. Dupont distinguished himself for the second time by fording the mill-stream and assailing the left flank of the Russian centre. This offered a stubborn resistance, but the French steadily forced the line backwards, and the battle was soon over. The losses incurred by the Russians in retreating over the river at Friedland were very heavy, many soldiers being drowned. Farther north the still unbroken troops of the right wing drew off by the Allenburg road; the French cavalry of the left wing, though ordered to pursue, remaining, for some reason, inactive. The losses of the victors were reckoned at 12,100 out of 86,000, or 14%, those of the Russians at 10,000 out of 46,000, or 21% (Berndt, Zahl im Kriege).

FRIEDMANN, MEIR (1831-1908), Hungarian Jewish scholar. His editions of the Midrash are the standard texts. His chief editions were the Sifre (1864), the Mekhilta (1870), Pesiqla Rabbathi (1880). At the time of his death he was editing the Sifra. Friedmann, while inspired with regard for tradition, dealt with the Rabbinic texts on modern scientific methods, and rendered conspicuous service to the critical investigation of the Midrash and to the history of early homilies.

(I. A.)

FRIEDRICH, JOHANN (1836-  ), German theologian, was born at Poxdorf in Upper Franconia on the 5th of May 1836, and was educated at Bamberg and at Munich, where in 1865 he was appointed professor extraordinary of theology. In 1869 he went to the Vatican Council as secretary to Cardinal Hohenlohe, and took an active part in opposing the dogma of papal infallibility, notably by supplying the opposition bishops with historical and theological material. He left Rome before the council closed. “No German ecclesiastic of his age appears to have won for himself so unusual a repute as a theologian and to have held so important a position, as the trusted counsellor of the leading German cardinal at the Vatican Council. The path was fairly open before him to the highest advancement in the Church of Rome, yet he deliberately sacrificed all such hopes and placed himself in the van of a hard and doubtful struggle” (The Guardian, 1872, p. 1004). Sentence of excommunication was passed on Friedrich in April 1871, but he refused to acknowledge it and was upheld by the Bavarian government. He continued to perform ecclesiastical functions and maintained his academic position, becoming ordinary professor in 1872. In 1882 he was transferred to the philosophical faculty as professor of history. By this time he had to some extent withdrawn from the advanced position which he at first occupied in organizing the Old Catholic Church, for he was not in agreement with its abolition of enforced celibacy.

Friedrich was a prolific writer; among his chief works are: Johann Wessel (1862); Die Lehre des Johann Hus (1862); Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands (1867-1869); Tagebuch während des Vatikan. Concils geführt (1871); Zur Verteidigung meines Tagebuchs (1872); Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte des 18ten Jahrh. (1876); Geschichte des Vatikan. Konzils (1877-1886); Beiträge zur Gesch. des Jesuitenordens (1881); Das Papsttum (1892); I. v. Döllinger (1899-1901).

FRIEDRICHRODA, a summer resort in the duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Germany, at the north foot of the Thuringian Forest, 13 m. by rail S.W. from Gotha. Pop. 4500. It is surrounded by fir-clad hills and possesses numerous handsome 217 villa residences, a Kurhaus, sanatorium, &c. In the immediate neighbourhood is the beautiful ducal hunting seat of Reinhardsbrunn, built out of the ruins of the famous Benedictine monastery founded in 1085.

FRIEDRICHSDORF, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, on the southern slope of the Taunus range, 3 m. N.E. from Homburg. Pop. 1300. It has a French Reformed church, a modern school, dyeworks, weaving mills, tanneries and tobacco manufactures. Friedrichsdorf was founded in 1687 by Huguenot refugees and the inhabitants still speak French. There is a monument to Philipp Reis (1834-1874), who in 1860 first constructed the telephone while a science master at the school.

FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Württemberg, on the east shore of the Lake of Constance, at the junction of railways to Bretten and Lindau. Pop. 4600. It consists of the former imperial town of Buchhorn and the monastery and village of Hofen. The principal building is the palace, formerly the residence of the provosts of Hofen, and now the summer residence of the royal family. To the palace is attached the Evangelical parish church. The town has a hydropathic establishment and is a favourite tourist resort. Here are also the natural history and antiquarian collections of the Lake Constance Association. Buchhorn is mentioned (as Buachihorn or Puchihorn) in documents of 837 and was the seat of a powerful countship. The line of counts died out in 1089, and the place fell first to the Welfs and in 1191 to the Hohenstaufen. In 1275 it was made a free imperial city by King Rudolph I. In 1802 it lost this status and was assigned to Bavaria, and in 1810 to Württemberg. The monastery of Hofen was founded in 1050 as a convent of Benedictine nuns, but was changed in 1420 into a provostship of monks. It was suppressed in 1802 and in 1805 came to Württemberg. King Frederick I., who caused the harbour to be made, amalgamated Buchhorn and Hofen under the new name of Friedrichshafen.

FRIEDRICHSRUH, a village in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, 15 m. S.E. of Hamburg, with a station on the main line of railway to Berlin. It gives its name to the famous country seat of the Bismarck family. The house is a plain unpretentious structure, but the park and estate, forming a portion of the famous Sachsenwald, are attractive. Close by, on a knoll, the Schneckenberg, stands the mausoleum in which the remains of Prince Otto von Bismarck were entombed on the 16th of March 1899.

FRIENDLY 1 SOCIETIES. These organizations, according to the comprehensive definition of the Friendly Societies Act 1896, which regulates such societies in Great Britain and Ireland, are “societies for the purpose of providing by voluntary subscriptions of the members thereof, with or without the aid of donations, for the relief or maintenance of the members, their husbands, wives, children, fathers, mothers, brothers or sisters, nephews or nieces, or wards being orphans, during sickness or other infirmity, whether bodily or mental, in old age, or in widowhood, or for the relief or maintenance of the orphan children of members during minority; for insuring money to be paid on the birth of a member’s child, or on the death of a member, or for the funeral expenses of the husband, wife, or child of a member, or of the widow of a deceased member, or, as respects persons of the Jewish persuasion, for the payment of a sum of money during the period of confined mourning; for the relief or maintenance of the members when on travel in search of employment or when in distressed circumstances, or in case of shipwreck, or loss or damage of or to boats or nets; for the endowment of members or nominees of members at any age; for the insurance against fire to any amount not exceeding £15 of the tools or implements of the trade or calling of the members”—and are limited in their contracts for assurance of annuities to £52 (previous to the Friendly Societies Act 1908 the sum was £50), and for insurance of a gross sum to £300 (previous to the act of 1908 the sum was £200). They may be described in a more popular and condensed form of words as the mutual insurance societies of the poorer classes, by which they seek to aid each other in the emergencies arising from sickness and death and other causes of distress. A phrase in the first act for the encouragement and relief of friendly societies, passed in 1793, designating them “societies of good fellowship,” indicates another useful phase of their operations.

The origin of the friendly society is, probably in all countries, the burial club. It has been the policy of every religion, if indeed it is not a common instinct of humanity, to surround the disposal of a dead body with circumstances of pomp and expenditure, often beyond the means of the surviving relatives. The appeal for help to friends and neighbours which necessarily follows is soon organized into a system of mutual aid, that falls in naturally with the religious ceremonies by which honour is done to the dead. Thus in China there are burial societies, termed “long-life loan companies,” in almost all the towns and villages. Among the Greeks the ἔρανοι combined the religious with the provident element (see Charity and Charities). From the Greeks the Romans derived their fraternities of a similar kind. The Teutons in like manner had their gilds. Whether the English friendly society owes its origin in the higher degree to the Roman or the Teutonic influence can hardly be determined. The utility of providing by combination for the ritual expenditure upon burial having been ascertained, the next step—to render mutual assistance in circumstances of distress generally—was an easy one, and we find it taken by the Greek ἔρανοι and by the English gilds. Another modification—that the societies should consist not so much of neighbours as of persons having the same occupation—soon arises; and this is the germ of our trade unions and our city companies in their original constitution. The interest, however, that these inquiries possess is mainly antiquarian. The legal definition of a friendly society quoted above points to an organization more complex than those of the ancient fraternities and gilds, and proceeding upon different principles. It may be that the one has grown out of the other. The common element of a provision for a contingent event by a joint contribution is in both; but the friendly society alone has attempted to define with precision what is the risk against which it intends to provide, and what should be the contributions of the members to meet that risk.

United Kingdom.—It would be curious to endeavour to trace how, after the suppression of the religious gilds in the 16th century, and the substitution of an organized system of relief by the poor law of Elizabeth for the more voluntary and casual means of relief that previously existed, the modern system of friendly societies grew up. The modern friendly society, particularly in rural districts, clings with fondness to its annual feast and procession to church, its procession of all the brethren on the occasion of the funeral of one of them, and other incidents which are almost obviously survivals of the customs of medieval gilds. The last recorded gild was in existence in 1628, and there are records of friendly societies as early as 1634 and 1639. The connecting links, however, cannot be traced. With the exception of a society in the port of Borrowstounness on the Firth of Forth, no existing friendly society is known to be able to trace back its history beyond a date late in the 17th century, and no records remain of any that might have existed in the latter half of the 16th century or the greater part of the 17th. One founded in 1666 was extant in 1850, but it has since ceased to exist. This is not so surprising as it might appear. Documents which exist in manuscript only are much less likely to have been preserved since the invention of printing than they were before; and such would be the simple rules and records of any society that might have existed during this interval—if, indeed, many of them kept records at all. On the whole, it seems probable therefore that the friendly society is a lineal descendant of the ancient gild—the idea never having wholly died out, but having been kept up from generation to generation in a succession of small and scattered societies.

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At the same time, it seems probable that the friendly society of the present day owes its revival to a great extent to the Protestant refugees of Spitalfields, one of whose societies was founded in 1703, and has continued among descendants of the same families, whose names proclaim their Norman origin. This society has distinguished itself by the intelligence with which it has adapted its machinery to the successive modifications of the law, and it completely reconstructed its rules under the provisions of the Friendly Societies Acts 1875 and 1876.

Another is the society of Lintot, founded in London in 1708, in which the office of secretary was for more than half a century filled by persons of the name of Levesque, one of whom published a translation of its original rules. No one was to be received into the society who was not a member, or the descendant of a member, of the church of Lintot, of recognized probity, a good Protestant, and well-intentioned towards the queen [Anne] and faithful to the government of the country. No one was to be admitted below the age of eighteen, or who had not been received at holy communion and become member of a church. A member should not have a claim to relief during his first year’s membership, but if he fell sick within the year a collection should be made for him among the members. The foreign names still borne by a large proportion of the members show that the connexion with descendants of the refugees is maintained.

The example of providence given by these societies was so largely followed that Rose’s Act in 1793 recognized the existence of numerous societies, and provided encouragement for them in various ways, as well as relief from taxation to an extent which in those days must have been of great pecuniary value, and exemption from removal under the poor law. The benefits offered by this statute were readily accepted by the societies, and the vast number of societies which speedily became enrolled shows that Rose’s Act met with a real public want. In the county of Middlesex alone nearly a thousand societies were enrolled within a very few years after the passing of the act, and the number in some other counties was almost as great. The societies then formed were nearly all of a like kind—small clubs, in which the feature of good fellowship was in the ascendant, and that of provident assurance for sickness and death merely accessory. This is indicated by one provision which occurs in many of the early enrolled rules, viz. that the number of members shall be limited to 61, 81 or 101, as the case may be. The odd 1 which occurs in these numbers probably stands for the president or secretary, or is a contrivance to ensure a clear majority. Several of these old societies are still in existence, and can point to a prosperous career based rather upon good luck than upon scientific calculation. Founded among small tradesmen or persons in the way to thrive, the claims for sickness were only made in cases where the sickness was accompanied by distress, and even the funeral allowance was not always demanded.

The societies generally not being established upon any scientific principle, those which met with this prosperity were the exception to the rule; and accordingly the cry that friendly societies were failing in all quarters was as great in 1819 as in 1869. A writer of that time speaks of the instability of friendly societies as “universal”; and the general conviction that this was so resulted in the passing of the act of 1819. It recites that “the habitual reliance of poor persons upon parochial relief, rather than upon their own industry, tends to the moral deterioration of the people and to the accumulation of heavy burthens upon parishes; and it is desirable, with a view as well to the reduction of the assessment made for the relief of the poor as to the improvement of the habits of the people, that encouragement should be afforded to persons desirous of making provision for themselves or their families out of the fruits of their own industry. By the contributions of the savings of many persons to one common fund the most effectual provision may be made for the casualties affecting all the contributors; and it is therefore desirable to afford further facilities and additional security to persons who may be willing to unite in appropriating small sums from time to time to a common fund for the purposes aforesaid, and it is desirable to protect such persons from the effects of fraud or miscalculation.” This preamble went on to recite that the provisions of preceding acts had been found insufficient for these purposes, and great abuses had prevailed in many societies established under their authority. By this statute a friendly society was defined as “an institution, whereby it is intended to provide, by contribution, on the principle of mutual insurance, for the maintenance or assistance of the contributors thereto, their wives or children, in sickness, infancy, advanced age, widowhood or any other natural state or contingency, whereof the occurrence is susceptible of calculation by way of average.” It will be seen that this act dealt exclusively with the scientific aspect of the societies, and had nothing to say to the element of good fellowship. Rules and tables were to be submitted by the persons intending to form a society to the justices, who, before confirming them, were to satisfy themselves that the contingencies which the society was to provide against were within the meaning of the act, and that the formation of the society would be useful and beneficial, regard being had to the existence of other societies in the same district. No tables or rules connected with calculation were to be confirmed by the justices until they had been approved by two persons at least, known to be professional actuaries or persons skilled in calculation, as fit and proper, according to the most correct calculation of which the nature of the case would admit. The justices in quarter sessions were also by this act authorized to publish general rules for the formation and government of friendly societies within their county. The practical effect of this statute in requiring that the societies formed under it should be established on sound principles does not appear to have been as great as might have been expected. The justices frequently accepted as “persons skilled in calculation” local schoolmasters and others who had no real knowledge of the technical difficulties of the subject, while the restrictions upon registry served only to increase the number of societies established without becoming registered.

In 1829 the law relating to friendly societies was entirely reconstructed by an act of that year, and a barrister was appointed under that act to examine the rules of societies, and ascertain that they were in conformity to law and to the provisions of the act. The barrister so appointed was John Tidd Pratt (1797-1870); and no account of friendly societies would be complete that did not do justice to the remarkable public service rendered by this gentleman. For forty years, though he had by statute really very slight authority over the societies, his name exercised the widest influence, and the numerous reports and publications by which he endeavoured to impress upon the public mind sound principles of management of friendly societies, and to expose those which were managed upon unsound principles, made him a terror to evil-doers. On the other hand, he lent with readiness the aid of his legal knowledge and great mental activity to assisting well-intentioned societies in coming within the provisions of the acts, and thus gave many excellent schemes a legal organization.

By the act of 1829, in lieu of the discretion as to whether the formation of the proposed society would be useful and beneficial, and the requirement of the actuarial certificate to the tables, it was enacted that the justices were to satisfy themselves that the tables proposed to be used might be adopted with safety to all parties concerned. This provision, of course, became a dead letter and was repealed in 1834. Thenceforth, societies were free to establish themselves upon what conditions and with what rates they chose, provided only they satisfied the barrister that the rules were “calculated to carry into effect the intention of the parties framing them,” and were “in conformity to law.”

By an act of 1846 the barrister certifying the rules was constituted “Registrar of Friendly Societies,” and the rules of all societies were brought together under his custody. An actuarial certificate was to be obtained before any society could be registered “for the purpose of securing any benefit dependent on the laws of sickness and mortality.” In 1850 the acts were again repealed and consolidated with amendments. Societies were divided into two classes, “certified” and “registered.” The certified societies were such as obtained a 219 certificate to their tables by an actuary possessing a given qualification, who was required to set forth the data of sickness and mortality upon which he proceeded, and the rate of interest assumed in the calculations. All other societies were to be simply registered. Very few societies were constituted of the “certified” class. The distinction of classes was repealed and the acts were again consolidated in 1855. Under this act, which admitted of all possible latitude to the framers of rules of societies, 21,875 societies were registered, a large number of them being lodges or courts of affiliated orders, and the act continued in force till the end of 1875.

The Friendly Societies Act 1875 and the several acts amending it are still, in effect, the law by which these societies are regulated, though in form they have been replaced by two consolidating acts, viz. the Friendly Societies Act 1896 and the Collecting Societies and Industrial Assurance Companies Act 1896. This legislation still bears the permissive and elastic character which marked the more successful of the previous acts, but it provides ampler means to members of ascertaining and remedying defects of management and of restraining fraud. The business of registry is under the control of a chief registrar, who has an assistant registrar in each of the three countries, with an actuary. An appeal to the chief registrar in the case of the refusal of an assistant registrar to register a society or an amendment of rules, and in the case of suspension or cancelling of registry, is interposed before appeal is to be made to the High Court. Registry under a particular name may be refused if in the opinion of the registrar the name is likely to deceive the members or the public as to the nature of the society or as to its identity. It is the duty of the chief registrar, among other things, to require from every society a return in proper form each year of its receipts and expenditure, funds and effects; and also once every five years a valuation of its assets and liabilities. Upon the application of a certain proportion of the members, varying according to the magnitude of the society, the chief registrar may appoint an inspector to examine into its affairs, or may call a general meeting of the members to consider and determine any matter affecting its interests. These are powers which have been used with excellent effect. Cases have occurred in which fraud has been detected and punished by this means that could not probably have been otherwise brought to light. In others a system of mismanagement has been exposed and effectually checked. The power of calling special meetings has enabled societies to remedy defects in their rules, to remove officers guilty of misconduct, &c., where the procedure prescribed by the rules was for some reason or other inapplicable. Upon an application of a like proportion of members the chief registrar may, if he finds that the funds of a society are insufficient to meet the existing claims thereon, or that the rates of contribution are insufficient to cover the benefits assured (upon which he consults his actuary), order the society to be dissolved, and direct how its funds are to be applied. Authority is given to the chief registrar to direct the expense (preliminary, incidental, &c.) of an inspection or special meeting to be defrayed by the members or officers, or former members or officers, of a society, if he does not think they should be defrayed either by the applicants or out of the society’s funds. He is also empowered, with the approval of the treasury, to exempt any friendly society from the provisions of the Collecting Societies Act if he considers it to be one to which those provisions ought not to apply. Every society registered after 1895, to which these provisions do apply, is to use the words “Collecting Society” as the last words of its name.

The law as to the membership of infants has been altered three times. The act of 1875 allowed existing societies to continue any rule or practice of admitting children as members that was in force at its passing, and prohibited membership under sixteen years of age in any other case, except the case of a juvenile society composed wholly of members under that age. The treasury made special regulations for the registry of such juvenile societies. In 1887 the maximum age of their members was extended to twenty-one. In 1895 it was enacted that no society should have any members under one year of age, whether authorized by an existing rule or not; and that every society should be entitled to make a rule admitting members at any age over one year, but by the Friendly Societies Act 1908 membership was permitted to minors under the age of one year. The Treasury, upon the enactment of 1895 coming into operation, rescinded its regulations for the registry of juvenile societies; and though it is still the practice to submit for registry societies wholly composed of persons under twenty-one, these societies in no way differ from other societies, except in the circumstances that they are obliged to seek officers and a committee of management from outside, as no member of the committee of any society can be under twenty-one years of age. In order to promote the discontinuance of this anomalous proceeding of creating societies under the Friendly Societies Act, which, by the conditions of their existence, are unable to be self-governing, the act provides an easy method of amalgamating juvenile societies and ordinary societies or branches, or of distributing the members and the funds of a juvenile society among a number of branches. The liability of schoolboys and young working lads to sickness is small, and these societies frequently accumulate funds, which, as their membership is temporary, remain unclaimed and are sometimes misapplied.

The legislation of 1875 and 1876 was the result of the labours of a royal commission of high authority, presided over by Sir Stafford Northcote (afterwards Lord Iddesleigh), which sat from 1870 to 1874, and prosecuted an exhaustive inquiry into the organization and condition of the various classes of friendly societies. Their reports occupy more than a dozen large bluebooks. They divided registered friendly societies into 13 classes.

The first class included the affiliated societies or “orders,” such as the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows, the Ancient Order of Foresters, the Rechabites, Druids, &c. These societies have a central body, either situated in some large town, as in the case of the Manchester Unity, or moving from place to place, as in that of the Foresters. Under this central body, the country is (in most cases) parcelled out into districts, and these districts again consist each of a number of independent branches, called “lodges,” “courts,” “tents,” or “divisions,” having a separate fund administered by themselves, but contributing also to a fund under the control of the central body. Besides these great orders, there were smaller affiliated bodies, each having more than 1000 members; and the affiliated form of society appears to have great attraction. Indeed, in the colony of Victoria, Australia, all the existing friendly societies are of this class. The orders have their “secrets,” but these, it may safely be said, are of a very innocent character, and merely serve the purpose of identifying a member of a distant branch by his knowledge of the “grip,” and of the current password, &c. Indeed they are now so far from being “secret societies” that their meetings are attended by reporters and the debates published in the newspapers, and the Order of Foresters has passed a wise resolution expunging from its publications all affectation of mystery.

Most of the lodges existing before 1875 have converted themselves into registered branches. The requirement that for that purpose a vote of three-fourths should be necessary was altered in 1895 to a bare majority vote. The provisions as to settlement of disputes were extended in 1885 to every description of dispute between branches and the central body, and in 1895 it was provided that the forty days after which a member may apply to the court to settle a dispute where the society fails to do so, shall not begin to run until application has been made in succession to all the tribunals created by the order for the purpose. In 1887 it was enacted that no body which had been a registered branch should be registered as a separate society except upon production of a certificate from the order that it had seceded or been expelled; and in 1895 it was further enacted that no such body should, after secession or expulsion, use any name or number implying that it is still a branch of the order. The orders generally, especially the greater ones, have carefully supervised the valuations of their branches, and have urged and, as far as circumstances have rendered it practicable, have enforced upon the branches measures for diminishing the deficiencies which the valuations have disclosed. They have organized plans by which branches disposed to make an effort to help themselves in this matter may be assisted out of a central fund. The second class was made up of “general societies,” principally existing in London, of which the commissioners enumerated 8 with nearly 60,000 members, and funds amounting to a quarter of a million.

The third class included the “county societies.” These societies have been but feebly supported by those for whose benefit they are instituted, having all exacted high rates of contribution, in order to secure financial soundness.

Class 4, “local town societies,” is a very numerous one. Among some of the larger societies may be mentioned the “Chelmsford Provident,” the “Brighton and Sussex Mutual,” the “Cannon Street, Birmingham,” the “Birmingham General Provident.” In 220 this group might also be included the interesting societies which are established among the Jewish community. They differ from ordinary friendly societies partly in the nature of the benefits granted upon death, which are intended to compensate for loss of employment during the time of ceremonial seclusion enjoined by the Jewish law, which is called “sitting shiva.” They also provide a cab for the mourners and rabbi, and a tombstone for the departed, and the same benefits as an ordinary friendly society during sickness. Some also provide a place of worship. Of these the “Pursuers of Peace” (enrolled in December 1797), the “Bikhur Cholim, or Visitors of the Sick” (April 1798), the “Hozier Holim” (1804), may be mentioned.

Class 5 was “local village and country societies,” including the small public-house clubs which abound in the villages and rural districts, a large proportion of which are unregistered.

Class 6 was formed of “particular trade societies.”

Class 7 was “dividing societies.” These were before 1875 unauthorized by law, though they were very attractive to the members. Their practice is usually to start afresh every January, paying a subscription somewhat in excess of that usually charged by an ordinary friendly society, out of which a sick allowance is granted to any member who may fall sick during the year, and at Christmas the balance not so applied is divided among the members equally, with the exception of a small sum left to begin the new year with. The mischief of the system is that, as there is no accumulation of funds, the society cannot provide for prolonged sickness or old age, and must either break up altogether or exclude its sick and aged members at the very time when they most need its help. This, however, has not impaired the popularity of the societies, and the act of 1875, framed on the sound principle that the protection of the law should not be withheld from any form of association, enables a society to be registered with a rule for dividing its funds, provided only that all existing claims upon the society are to be met before a division takes place.

Class 8, “deposit friendly societies,” combine the characteristics of a savings bank with those of a friendly society. They were devised by the Hon. and Rev. S. Best, on the principle that a certain proportion of the sick allowance is to be raised out of a member’s separate deposit account, which, if not so used, is retained for his benefit. Their advantages are in the encouragement they offer to saving, and in meeting the selfish objection sometimes raised to friendly societies, that the man who is not sick gets nothing for his money; their disadvantage is in their failing to meet cases of sickness so prolonged as to exhaust the whole of the member’s own deposit.

Class 9, “collecting societies,” are so called because their contributions are received through a machinery of house-to-house collection. These were the subject of much laborious investigation and close attention on the part of the commissioners. They deal with a lower class of the community, both with respect to means and to intelligence, than that from which the members of ordinary friendly societies are drawn. The large emoluments gained by the officers and collectors, the high percentage of expenditure (often exceeding half the contributions), and the excessive frequency of lapsing of insurances point to mischiefs in their management. “The radical evil of the whole system (the commissioners remark) appears to us to lie in the employment of collectors, otherwise than under the direct supervision and control of the members, a supervision and control which we fear to be absolutely unattainable in burial societies that are not purely local.” On the other hand, it must be conceded that these societies extend the benefits of life insurance to a class which the other societies cannot reach, namely, the class that will not take the trouble to attend at an office, but must be induced to effect an insurance by a house-to-house canvasser, and be regularly visited by the collector to ensure their paying the contributions. To many such persons these societies, despite all their errors of constitution and management, have been of great benefit. The great source of these errors lies in a tendency on the part of the managers of the societies to forget that they are simply trustees, and to look upon the concern as their own personal property to be managed for their own benefit. These societies are of two kinds, local and general. For the general societies the act of 1875 made certain stringent provisions. Each member was to be furnished with a copy of the rules for one penny, and a signed policy for the same charge. Forfeiture of benefit for non-payment is not to be enforced without fourteen days’ written notice. The transfer of a member from one society to another was not to be made without his written consent and notice to the society affected. No collector is to be a manager, or vote or take part at any meeting. At least one general meeting was to be held every year, of which notice must be given either by advertisement or by letter or post card to each member. The balance-sheet is to be open for inspection seven days before the meeting, and to be certified by a public accountant, not an officer of the society. Disputes could be settled by justices, or county courts, notwithstanding anything in the rules of the society to the contrary. Closely associated with the question of the management of these societies is that of the risk incurred by infant life, through the facilities offered by these societies for making insurances on the death of children. That this is a real risk is certain from the records of the assizes, and from many circumstances of suspicion; but the extent of it cannot be measured, and has probably been exaggerated. It has never been lawful to assure more than £6 on the death of a child under five years of age, or more than £10 on the death of one under ten. Previous to the act of 1875, however, there was no machinery for ascertaining that the law was complied with, or for enforcing it. This is supplied by that act, though still somewhat imperfectly. When the bill went up to the House of Lords, an amendment was made, reducing the limit of assurance on a child under three years of age to £3, but this amendment was unfortunately disagreed with by the House of Commons.

Class 10, annuity societies, prevail in the west of England. These societies are few, and their business is diminishing. Most of them originated at the time when government subsidized friendly societies by allowing them £4 : 11 : 3% per annum interest. Now annuities may be purchased direct from the National Debt commissioners. These societies are more numerous, however, in Ireland.

Class 11, female societies, are numerous. Many of them resemble affiliated orders at least in name, calling themselves Female Foresters, Odd Sisters, Loyal Orangewomen, Comforting Sisters and so forth. In their rules may be found such a provision as that a member shall be fined who does not “behave as becometh an Orangewoman.” Many are unregistered. In the northern counties of England they are sometimes termed “life boxes,” doubtless from the old custom of placing the contributions in a box. The trustees, treasurer, and committee are usually females, but very frequently the secretary is a man, paid a small salary.

Under Class 12 the commissioners included the societies for various purposes which were authorized by the secretary of state to be registered under the Friendly Societies Act of 1855, comprising working-men’s clubs, and certain specially authorized societies, as well as others that are now defined to be friendly societies. Among these purposes are assisting members in search of employment; assisting members during slack seasons of trade; granting temporary relief to members in distressed circumstances; purchase of coals and other necessaries to be supplied to members; relief or maintenance in case of lameness, blindness, insanity, paralysis, or bodily hurt through accidents; also, the assurance against loss by disease or death of cattle employed in trade or agriculture; relief in case of shipwreck or loss or damage to boats or nets; and societies for social intercourse, mutual helpfulness, mental and moral improvement, rational recreation, &c., called working-men’s clubs.

Class 13 was composed of cattle insurance societies.

These are the thirteen classes into which the commissioners divided registered friendly societies. There were 26,034 societies enrolled or certified under the various acts for friendly societies in force between 1793 and 1855; and, as we have seen, 21,875 societies registered under the act of 1855 before the 1st January 1876, when the act of 1875 came into operation. The total therefore of societies to which a legal constitution had been given was 47,909. Of these 26,087 were presumed to be in existence when the registrar called for his annual return, but only 11,282 furnished the return required. These had 3,404,187 members, and £9,336,946 funds. Twenty-two societies returned over 10,000 members each; nine over 30,000. One society (the Royal Liver Friendly Society, Liverpool, the largest of the collecting societies) returned 682,371 members. The next in order was one of the same class, the United Assurance Society, Liverpool, with 159,957 members; but in all societies of this class the membership consists very largely of infants. The average of members in the 11,260 societies with less than 10,000 members each was only 171.

Such were the registered societies; but there remained behind a large body of unregistered societies. With increased knowledge of the advantages of registration,2 and of the true principles upon which friendly societies should be established, the number of unregistered societies, in comparison with those registered, ought to become much less.

On the actuarial side it is in the highest degree essential to the interests of their members that friendly societies should be financially sound,—in other words, that they should throughout their existence be able to meet the engagements into which they have entered with their members. For this purpose it is necessary that the members’ contributions should be so fixed as to prove adequate, with proper management, to provide the benefits promised to the members. These benefits almost entirely depend upon the contingencies of health and life; that is, they take the form of payments to members when sick, of payments to members upon attaining given ages, or of payments upon members’ deaths, and frequently a member is 221 assured for all these benefits, viz. a weekly payment if at any time sick before attaining a certain age, a weekly payment for the remainder of life after attaining that age, and a sum to be paid upon his death. Of course the object of the allowance in sickness is to provide a substitute for the weekly wage lost in consequence of being unable to work, and the object of the weekly payment after attaining a certain age, when the member will probably be too infirm to be able to earn a living by the exercise of his calling or occupation, is to provide him with the necessaries of life, and so enable him to be independent of poor relief. There is every reason to believe that, when a large group of persons of the same age and calling are observed, there will be found to prevail among them, taken one with another, an average number of days’ sickness, as well as an average rate of mortality, in passing through each year of life, which can be very nearly predicted from the results furnished by statistics based upon observations previously made upon similarly circumstanced groups. Assuming, therefore, the necessary statistics to be attainable, the computation of suitable rates of contribution to be paid by the members of a society in return for certain allowances during sickness, or upon attaining a certain age, or upon death, can be readily made by an actuarial expert. Accordingly, to furnish these statistics, the act of 1875, in continuation of an enactment which first appeared in a statute passed in 1829, required every registered society to make quinquennial returns of the sickness and mortality experienced by its members. By the year 1880 ten periods of five years had been completed, and at the end of each of them a number of returns had been received. Some of these had been tabulated by actuaries, the latest tabulation being of those for the five years ending 1855. There remained untabulated five complete sets of returns for the five subsequent quinquennial periods. It was resolved that these should be tabulated once for all, and it was considered that they would afford sufficient material for the construction of tables of sickness and mortality that might be adopted for the future as standard tables for friendly societies; and that it would be inexpedient to impose any longer on the societies the burden of making such returns. This requirement of the act was accordingly repealed in 1882. The result of the tabulation appeared in 1896, in a bluebook of 1367 folio pages, containing tables based upon the experience of nearly four and a half million years of life. These tables showed generally, as compared with previous observations, an increased liability to sickness. This inference has been confirmed by the observations of Mr Alfred W. Watson, actuary to the Independent Order of Oddfellows, Manchester Unity Friendly Society, on his investigation of the sickness and mortality experience of that society during the five years 1893-1897, which extended over 800,000 individuals, more than 3,000,000 years of life and 7,000,000 weeks of sickness.

The establishment of the National Conference of Friendly Societies by the orders and a few other societies has been of great service in obtaining improvements in the law, and in enabling the societies strongly to represent to the government and the legislature any grievance entertained by them. A complaint that membership of a shop club was made by certain employers a condition of employment, and that the rules of the club required the members to withdraw from other societies, led to the appointment of a departmental committee, who recommended that such a condition of employment should be made illegal, except in certain cases, and that in every case it should be illegal to make the withdrawal from a society a condition of employment. In 1902 an act was passed based upon this recommendation.

It is an increasing practice among societies of combining together to obtain medical attendance and medicine for their members by the formation of medical associations. In 1895 trade unions were enabled to join in such associations, and it was provided that a contributing society or union should not withdraw from an association except upon three months’ notice. The working of these associations has been viewed with dissatisfaction by members of the medical profession, and it has been suggested that a board of conciliation should be formed consisting of representatives of the Conference of Friendly Societies and of an equal number of medical men.

The following figures are derived from returns of registered societies and branches of registered societies to the beginning of 1905:

| Number of Returns. | Number of Members. | Amount of Funds.
Ordinary Friendly Societies (classes 2 to 8, 10 and 11) | 6,938 | 3,132,065 | £17,042,398
Societies having Branches (class 1) | 20,819 | 2,606,029 | 23,446,330
Collecting Friendly Societies (class 9) | 45 | 7,448,549 | 7,862,569
Benevolent Societies (class 12) | 75 | 26,509 | 317,913
Working Men’s Clubs (class 12) | 913 | 236,298 | 318,945
Specially Authorized Societies (class 12) | 122 | 75,089 | 628,759
Specially Authorized Loan Societies (class 12) | 517 | 115,511 | 771,578
Medical Societies (see last paragraph) | 95 | 324,145 | 62,049
Cattle Insurance Societies (class 13) | 57 | 3,736 | 7,746
Shop Clubs (under act of 1902) | 7 | 10,859 | 773
| 29,588 | 13,978,790 | £50,459,060

British Empire.—In many of the British colonies legislation on the subject similar to that of the mother-country has been adopted. In those forming the Commonwealth of Australia and in New Zealand the affiliated orders hold the field, there being few, if any, independent friendly societies. The state of Victoria has more than 1000 lodges with more than 100,000 members and nearly 1½ million pounds funds, averaging nearly £14 per member. Besides the registrar there is a government actuary for friendly societies, by whom the liabilities and accounts of all societies are valued every five years, a method which ensures uniformity in the processes of valuation. The friendly societies in the other Australasian states are not so numerous nor so wealthy, but are in each case under the supervision of vigilant public officials. In New Zealand a friendly society was established at New Plymouth in 1841, the first year of that settlement. The formation of a society at Nelson was resolved upon by the emigrants on shipboard on their passage out, and the first meeting was held among the tall fern near the beach a few days after they landed. The societies have now a registrar, an actuary, a revising barrister and two public valuers. Investigations have been made into their sickness experience, with results which compare favourably with those of the Manchester Unity and the registry office in the mother-country until the higher ages, when greater sickness appears to result from lower mortality. The average funds per member are £19, 10s. Nearly four-fifths are invested in the purchase or on mortgage of real estate.

In Cape Colony no society is allowed to register unless it be shown to the satisfaction of the registrar that the contributions which it proposes to charge are adequate to provide for the benefits which it undertakes to grant. The consequence is that little more than one-third of the existing societies are registered.

In the Dominion of Canada, province of Ontario, extensive powers of control are given to the registrar, and societies are not admitted to registry without strict proof of their compliance with the conditions of registry imposed by the law. Very full returns of their transactions are required and published, and registry is cancelled when any of the conditions of registry cease to be observed. These conditions apply not only to societies existing in Ontario, but to foreign societies transacting business there.

In several of the West Indian Islands statutes have been passed on the model of British legislation and registrars have been appointed.

European Countries.—In foreign countries the development of friendly societies has proceeded upon different lines. Belgium has a Commission royale permanente des sociétés de secours mutuel. Under laws passed in 1851 and 1894 societies are divided into two classes, recognized and not recognized. The recognized societies were in 1886 only about half as many as the unrecognized. There were in 1904 nearly 7000 recognized societies with 700,000 members. They enjoy the privileges of incorporation, exemption from stamp duty, gratuitous announcement in the official Moniteur and may have free postage.

In France under the second empire a scheme was prepared for assisting friendly societies by granting them collective insurances under government security. The societies have the privilege of investing their funds in the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, corresponding to the English National Debt commission. The dual classification of societies in France is into those “authorized” and those “approved.” By a law of the 1st of April 1898 a friendly society may be established by merely depositing a copy of its rules and list of officers with the sousprefet. Approved societies are entitled to certain state subventions for assisting in the purchase of old-age pensions and otherwise. A higher council has been established to advise on their working.

In Germany a law was passed on 222 the 7th of April 1876 (amended on the 1st of June 1884) which prescribed for registered friendly societies many things which in England are left to the discretion of their founders; and it provided for an amount of official interference in their management that is wholly unknown here. The superintending authority had a right to inspect the books of every society, whether registered or not, and to give formal notice to a society to call in arrears, exclude defaulters, pay benefits or revoke illegal resolutions. A higher authority might, in certain cases, order societies to be dissolved. These provisions related to voluntary societies; but it was competent for communal authorities also to order the formation of a friendly society, and to make a regulation compelling all workmen not already members of a society to join it. Since then the great series of imperial statutes has been passed, commencing in 1883 with that for sickness insurance, followed in 1884 by that for workmen’s accident insurance, extended to sickness insurance in 1885, developed in the laws relating to accident and sickness insurance of persons engaged in agricultural and forestry pursuits in 1886, of persons engaged in the building trade and of seamen and others engaged in seafaring pursuits in 1887, and crowned by the law relating to infirmity and old-age insurance in 1889. Mr H. Unger, a distinguished actuary, remarks that the whole German workman’s insurance and its executive bodies (sickness funds, trade associations, insurance institutions) are constantly endeavouring to improve the position of the workmen in a social and sanitary aspect, to the benefit of internal peace and the welfare of the German empire.

In Holland it is stated that the number of burial clubs and sickness benefit societies appears to be greater in proportion to the population than in any other country; but that the burial clubs do not rest upon a scientific basis, and have an unfavourable influence upon infant mortality. Half the population are insured in some burial club or other. The sick benefit societies are, as in England, some in a good and some in a bad financial condition; and legislation follows the English system of compulsory publicity, combined with freedom of competition.

In Spain friendly societies have grown out of the religious gilds. They are regulated by an act of 1887. Their actuarial condition appears to be backward, but to show indications of improvement.

(E. W. B.)

United States.—Under the title of fraternal societies are included in the United States what are known in England as friendly societies, having some basis of mutual help to members, mutual insurance associations and benefit associations of all kinds. There are various classes and a great variety of forms of fraternal associations. It is therefore difficult to give a concrete historical statement of their origin and growth; but, dealing with those having benefit features for the payment of certain amounts in case of sickness, accident or death, it is found that their history in the United States is practically within the last half of the 19th century. The more important of the older organizations are the Improved Order of Red Men, founded in 1771 and reorganized in 1834; Ancient Order of Foresters, 1836; Ancient Order of Hibernians of America, 1836; United Ancient Order of Druids, 1839; Independent Order of Rechabites, 1842; Independent Order of B’nai B’rith, founded in 1843; Order of the United American Mechanics, 1845; Independent Order of Free Sons of Israel, 1849; Junior Order of United American Mechanics, 1853. A very large proportion, probably more than one-half, of the societies which have secret organizations pay benefits in case of sickness, accident, disability, and funeral expenses in case of death. This class of societies grew out of the English friendly societies and have masonic characteristics. The Freemasons and other secret societies, while not all having benefit features in their distinctive organizations, have auxiliary societies with such features. There is also a class of secret societies, based largely on masonic usages, that have for their principal object the payment of benefits in some form. These are the Oddfellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Knights of Honour, the Royal Arcanum and some others. Many trade unions have now adopted benefit features, especially the Typographical Union, while many subordinate unions and great publishing houses have mutual relief associations purely of a local character, and some of the more important newspapers have such mutual relief or benefit societies. The New York trade unions, taken as a whole, have paid out large sums of money in benefits where members have been out of work, or are sick, or are on strike or have died. The total paid in one year for all these benefits was over $500,000.

It is impossible to give the membership of all the fraternal associations in the United States; but, including Oddfellows, Freemasons, purely benefit associations and all the class of the larger fraternal organizations, the membership is over 6,000,000. Among the more important, so far as membership is concerned, are the Knights of Pythias, the Oddfellows, the Modern Woodmen of America, the Ancient Order of United Workmen, Improved Order of Red Men, Royal Arcanum, Knights of the Maccabees, Junior Order of United American Mechanics, Foresters of America, Independent Order of Foresters, &c. These and other organizations pay out a vast amount of money every year in the various forms.

Since about the year 1870 a new form of benefit organization has come into existence. This is a life insurance based on the assessment plan, assessments being levied whenever a member dies; or, as more recently, regular assessments being made in Assessment insurance. advance of death, as post-mortem assessments have proved a fallacious method of securing the means of paying death benefits. There are about 200 mutual benefit insurance companies or associations in the United States conducted on the “lodge system”; that is to say, they have regular meetings for social purposes and for general improvement, and in their work there is found the mysticism, forms and ceremonies which belong to secret societies generally. These elements have proved a very strong force in keeping this class of associations fairly intact. The “work” of the lodges in the initiation of members and their passing through various degrees is attractive to many people, and in small places, remote from the amusements of the city, these lodges constitute a resort where members can give play to their various talents. In most of them the features of the Masonic ritual are prominent. The amount of insurance which a single member can carry in such associations is small. In the Knights of Honour, one of the first of this class, policies ranging from $500 to $2000 are granted. In the Royal Arcanum the maximum is $3000. This form of insurance may be called co-operative, and has many elements which make the organizations practising it stronger than the ordinary assessment insurance companies having no stated meetings of members. These co-operative insurance societies are organized on the federal plan—as the Knights of Honour, for instance—having local assemblies, where the lodge-room element is in force; state organizations, to which the local bodies send delegates, and the national organization, which conducts all the insurance business through its executive officers. The local societies pay a certain given amount towards the support of the state and national offices, and while originally they paid death assessments, as called for, they now pay regular monthly assessments, in order to avoid the weakness of the post-mortem assessment. The difficulty which these organizations have in conducting the insurance business is in keeping the average age of membership at a low point, for with an increase in the average the assessments increase, and many such organizations have had great trouble to convince younger members that their assessments should be increased to make up for the heavy losses among the older members. The experience of these purely insurance associations has not been sufficient yet to demonstrate their absolute soundness or desirability, but they have enabled a large number of persons of limited means to carry insurance at a very low rate. They have not materially interfered with regular level premium insurance enterprises, for they have stimulated the people to understand the benefits of insurance, and have really been an educational force in this direction.

A modern method of benefit association is found in the railway relief departments of some of the large railway corporations. These departments are organized upon a different plan from the benefit features of labour organizations and secret societies, Railway relief departments. providing the members not only with payments on account of death, but also with assistance of definite amounts in case of sickness or accident, the railway companies contributing to the funds, partly from philanthropic and partly from financial motives. The principal railway companies in the United States which have established these relief departments are the Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia & Reading, the Baltimore & Ohio, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Plant System. The relief department benefits the employés, the railways, and the public, because it is based upon the sound principle that the “interests and welfare of labour, capital and society are common and harmonious, and can be promoted more by co-operation of effort than by antagonism and strife.” 223 The railway employés support one-twentieth of the entire population, and most of their associations maintain organizations to provide their members with relief and insurance. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Order of Railway Conductors of America, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, the Brotherhood of Railway Trackmen, the Switchmen’s Union, the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, and the Order of Railway Telegraphers, all have relief and benefit features. The oldest and largest of these is the International Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, founded at Detroit in August 1863. Like other labour organizations of the higher class of workmen, the objects of the brotherhoods of railway employés are partly social and partly educational, but in addition to these great purposes they seek to protect their members through relief and benefit features. Of course the relief departments of the railway companies are competitors of the relief and insurance features of the railway employés orders, but both methods of providing assistance have proved successful and beneficial.

For a history of the various American organizations, see Albert C. Stevens, The Cyclopaedia of Fraternities (New York, 1899); Facts for Fraternalists, published by the Fraternal Monitor, Rochester, N.Y.; for annual statements, “The World Almanac,” “Railway Relief Departments,” “Brotherhood Relief and Insurance of Railway Employés,” “Mutual Relief and Benefit Associations in the Printing Trade,” “Benefit Features of American Trade Unions,” Bulletins Nos. 8, 17, 19 and 22 of the U.S. Department of Labour.

(C. D. W.)

1 The word “friend” (O.E. freond, Ger. Freund, Dutch Vriend) is derived from an old Teutonic verb meaning to love. While used generally as the opposite to enemy, it is specially the term which connotes any degree, but particularly a high degree, of personal goodwill, affection or regard, from which the element of sexual love is absent.

2 These may be briefly summed up thus:—(1) power to hold land and vesting of property in trustees by mere appointment; (2) remedy against misapplication of funds; (3) priority in bankruptcy or on death of officer; (4) transfer of stock by direction of chief registrar; (5) exemption from stamp duties; (6) membership of minors; (7) certificates of birth and death at reduced cost; (8) investment with National Debt Commissioners; (9) reduction of fines on admission to copyholds; (10) discharge of mortgages by mere receipt; (11) obligation on officers to render accounts; (12) settlement of disputes; (13) insurance of funeral expenses for wives and children without insurable interest; (14) nomination at death; (15) payment without administration; (16) services of public auditors and valuers; (17) registry of documents, of which copies may be put in evidence.

FRIENDS, SOCIETY OF, the name adopted by a body of Christians, who, in law and general usage, are commonly called Quakers. Though small in number, the Society occupies a position of singular interest. To the student of ecclesiastical history it is remarkable as exhibiting a form of Christianity widely divergent from the prevalent types, being a religious fellowship which has no formulated creed demanding definite subscription, and no liturgy, priesthood or outward sacrament, and which gives to women an equal place with men in church organization. The student of English constitutional history will observe the success with which Friends have, by the mere force of passive resistance, obtained, from the legislature and the courts, indulgence for all their scruples and a legal recognition of their customs. In American history they occupy an important place because of the very prominent part which they played in the colonization of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The history of Quakerism in England may be divided into three periods:—(1) from the first preaching of George Fox in 1647 to the Toleration Act 1689; (2) from 1689 to the evangelical movement in 1835; (3) from 1835 to the present time.

1. Period 1647-1689.—George Fox (1624-1691), the son of a weaver of Drayton-in-the-Clay (now called Fenny Drayton) in Leicestershire, was the founder of the Society. He began his public ministry in 1647, but there is no George Fox. evidence to show that he set out to form a separate religious body. Impressed by the formalism and deadness of contemporary Christianity (of which there is much evidence in the confessions of the Puritan writers themselves) he emphasized the importance of repentance and personal striving after the truth. When, however, his preaching attracted followers, a community began to be formed, and traces of organization and discipline may be noted in very early times. In 1652 a number of people in Westmorland and north Lancashire who had separated from the common national worship,1 came under the influence of Fox, and it was this community (if it can be so called) at Preston Patrick which formed the nucleus of the Quaker church. For two years the movement spread rapidly throughout the north of England, and in 1654 more than sixty ministers went to Norwich, London, Bristol, the Midlands, Wales and other parts. Fox and his fellow-preachers spoke whenever opportunity offered,—sometimes in churches (declining, for the most part, to occupy the pulpit), sometimes in barns, sometimes at market crosses. The insistence on an inward spiritual experience was the great contribution made by Friends to the religious life of the time, and to thousands it came as a new revelation. There is evidence to show that the arrangement for this “publishing of Truth” rested mainly with Fox, and that the expenses of it and of the foreign missions were borne out of a common fund. Margaret Fell (1614-1702), wife of Thomas Fell (1598-1658), vice-chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and afterwards of George Fox, opened her house, Swarthmore Hall near Ulverston, to these preachers and probably contributed largely to this fund.

Their insistence on the personal aspect of religious experience made it impossible for Friends to countenance the setting apart of any man or building for the purpose of divine worship to the exclusion of all others. The operation of the Spirit was in no way limited to time, or individual or place. The great stress which they laid upon this aspect of Christian truth caused them to be charged with unbelief in the current orthodox views as to the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the person and work of Christ, a charge which they always denied. Contrary to the Puritan teaching of the time, they insisted on the possibility, in this life, of complete victory over sin. Robert Barclay, writing some twenty years later, admits of degrees of perfection, and the possibility of a fall from it (Apology, Prop. viii.). Such teaching necessarily brought Fox and his friends into conflict with all the religious bodies of England, and they were continually engaged in strife with the Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, Episcopalians and the wilder sectaries, such as the Ranters and the Muggletonians. The strife was often conducted on both sides with a zeal and bitterness of language which were characteristic of the period. Although there was little or no stress laid on either the joys or the terrors of a future life, the movement was not infrequently accompanied by most of those physical symptoms which usually go with vehement appeals to the conscience and emotions of a rude multitude. It was owing to these physical manifestations that the name “Quaker” was either first given or was regarded as appropriate when given for another reason (see Fox’s Journal concerning Justice Bennet at Derby in 1650 and Barclay’s Apology, Prop. ii, § 8). The early Friends definitely asserted that those who did not know quaking and trembling were strangers to the experience of Moses, David and other saints.

Some of the earliest adherents indulged in extravagances of no measured kind. Some of them imitated the Hebrew prophets in the performance of symbolic acts of denunciation, foretelling or warning, going barefoot, or in sackcloth or undress, and, in a few cases, for brief periods, altogether naked; even women in some cases distinguished themselves by extravagance of conduct. The case of James Nayler (1617?-1660), who, in spite of Fox’s grave warning, allowed Messianic homage to be paid to him, is the best known of these instances; they are to be explained partly by mental disturbance, resulting from the undue prominence of a single idea, and partly by the general religious excitement of the time and the rudeness of manners prevailing in the classes of society from which many of these individuals came. It must be remembered that at this time, and for long after, there was no definite or formal membership or system of admission to the society, and it was open to any one by attending the meetings to gain the reputation of being a Quaker.

The activity of the early Friends was not confined to England or even to the British Isles. Fox and others travelled in America and the West India Islands; another reached Jerusalem and preached against the superstition of the monks; Mary Fisher (fl. 1652-1697), “a religious maiden,” visited Smyrna, the Morea and the court of Mahommed IV. at Adrianople; Alexander Parker (1628-1689) went to Africa; others made their way to Rome; two women were imprisoned by the Inquisition at Malta; two men passed into Austria and Hungary; and William Penn, George Fox and several others preached in Holland and Germany.

It was only gradually that the Quaker community clothed itself with an organization. The beginning of this appears to be due to William Dewsbury (1621-1688) and George Fox; it was not until 1666 that a complete system of church organization 224 was established. The introduction of an ordered system and discipline was, naturally, viewed with some suspicion by people taught to believe that the inward light of each individual man was the only true guide for his conduct. The project met with determined opposition for about twenty years (1675-1695) from persons of considerable repute in the body. John Wilkinson and John Story of Westmorland, together with William Rogers of Bristol, raised a party against Fox concerning the management of the affairs of the society, regarding with suspicion any fixed arrangement for meetings for conducting church business, and in fact hardly finding a place for such meetings at all. They stood for the principle of Independency against the Presbyterian form of church government which Fox had recently established in the “Monthly Meetings” (see below). They opposed all arrangement for the orderly distribution of travelling ministers to different localities, and even for the payment of their expenses (see above); they also strongly objected to any disciplinary power being entrusted to the women’s separate meetings for business, which had become of considerable importance after the Plague (1665) and the Fire of London (1666) in consequence of the need for poor relief. They also claimed the right to meet secretly for worship in time of persecution (see below). They drew a considerable following away with them and set up a rival organization, but before long a number returned to their original leader. William Rogers set forth his views in The Christian Quaker, 1680; the story of the dissension is told, to some extent, in The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, by R. Barclay (not the “Apologist”); the best account is given in a pamphlet entitled Micah’s Mother by John S. Rowntree.

Robert Barclay (q.v.), a descendant of an ancient Scottish family, who had received a liberal education, principally in Paris, at the Scots College, of which his uncle was rector, joined the Quakers about 1666, and William Penn (q.v.) came to them about two years later. The Quakers had always been active controversialists, and a great body of tracts and papers was issued by them; but hitherto these had been of small account from a literary point of view. Now, however, a more logical and scholarly aspect was given to their literature by the writings of Barclay, especially his Apology for the True Christian Divinity published in Latin (1676) and in English (1678), and by the works of Penn, amongst which No Cross No Crown and the Maxims or Fruits of Solitude are the best known.

During the whole time between their rise and the passing of the Toleration Act 1689, the Quakers were the object of almost continuous persecution which they endured with extraordinary constancy and patience; they insisted Persecution. on the duty of meeting openly in time of persecution, declining to hold secret assemblies for worship as other Nonconformists were doing. The number who died in prison approached 400, and at least 100 more perished from violence and ill-usage. A petition to the first parliament of Charles II. stated that 3179 had been imprisoned; the number rose to 4500 in 1662, the Fifth Monarchy outbreak, in which Friends were in no way concerned, being largely responsible for this increase. There is no evidence to show that they were in any way connected with any of the plots of the Commonwealth or Restoration periods. A petition to James II. in 1685 stated that 1460 were then in prison. Under the Quaker Act of 1662 and the Conventicle Act of 1664 a number were transported out of England, and under the last-named act and that of 1670 (the second Conventicle Act) hundreds of households were despoiled of all their goods. The penal laws under which Friends suffered may be divided chronologically into those of the Commonwealth and the Restoration periods. Under the former there were a few charges of plotting against the government. Several imprisonments, including that of George Fox at Derby in 1650-1651, were brought about under the Blasphemy Act of 1650, which inflicted penalties on any one who asserted himself to be very God or equal with God, a charge to which the Friends were peculiarly liable owing to their doctrine of perfection. After a royalist insurrection in 1655, a proclamation was issued announcing that persons suspected of Roman Catholicism would be required to take an oath abjuring the papal authority and transubstantiation. The Quakers, accused as they were of being Jesuits, and refusing to take the oath, suffered under this proclamation and under the more stringent act of 1656. A considerable number were flogged under the Vagrancy Acts (39 Eliz. c. 4; 7 Jac. I. c. 4), which were strained to cover the case of itinerant Quaker preachers. They also came under the provisions of the acts of 1644, 1650 and 1656 directed against travelling on the Lord’s day. The interruption of preachers when celebrating divine service rendered the offender liable to three months’ imprisonment under a statute of the first year of Mary, but Friends generally waited to speak till the service was over.2 The Lord’s Day Act 1656 also enacted penalties against any one disturbing the service, but apart from statute many Friends were imprisoned for open contempt of ministers and magistrates. At the Restoration 700 Friends, imprisoned for contempt and some minor offences, were set at liberty. After the Restoration there began a persecution of Friends and other Nonconformists as such, notwithstanding the king’s Declaration of Breda which had proclaimed liberty for tender consciences as long as no disturbance of the peace was caused. Among the most common causes of imprisonment was the practice adopted by judges and magistrates of tendering to Friends (particularly when no other charge could be proved against them) the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance (5 Eliz. c. 1 & 7 Jac. I. c. 6). The refusal in any circumstance to take an oath led to much suffering. The Act 3 Jac. I. c. 4, passed in consequence of the Gunpowder Plot, against Roman Catholics for not attending church, was put in force against Friends, and under it enormous fines were levied. The Quaker Act 1662 and the Conventicle Acts of 1664 and 1670, designed to enforce attendance at church, and inflicting severe penalties on those attending other religious gatherings, were responsible for the most severe persecution of all. The act of 1670 gave to informers a pecuniary interest (they were to have one-third of the fine imposed) in hunting down Nonconformists who broke the law, and this and other statutes were unduly strained to secure convictions. A somewhat similar act of 35 Eliz. c. 1., enacting even more severe penalties, had never been repealed, and was sometimes put in force against Friends. The Militia Act 1663 (14 Car. II. c. 3), enacting fines against those who refused to find a man for the militia, was occasionally put in force. The refusal to pay tithes and other ecclesiastical demands led to continuous and heavy distraints, under the various laws made in that behalf. This state of things continued to some extent into the 19th century. For further information see “The Penal Laws affecting Early Friends in England” (from which the foregoing summary is taken) by Wm. Chas. Braithwaite in The First Publishers of Truth. On the 15th of March 1672 Charles II. issued his declaration suspending the penal laws in ecclesiastical matters, and shortly afterwards, by pardon under the great seal, he released nearly 500 Quakers from prison, remitted their fines and released such of their estates as were forfeited by praemunire. It is of interest to note that, although John Bunyan was bitterly opposed to Quakers, his friends, on hearing of the petition contemplated by them, requested them to insert his name on the list, and in this way he gained his freedom. The dissatisfaction which this exercise of the royal prerogative aroused induced the king, in the following year, to withdraw his proclamation, and, notwithstanding appeals to him, the persecution continued intermittently throughout his reign. On the accession of James II. the Quakers addressed him (see above) with some hope on account of his known friendship for William Penn, and the king not long afterwards directed a stay of proceedings in all matters pending in the exchequer against Quakers on the ground of non-attendance at the national worship. In 1687 came his declaration for liberty of conscience, and, after the Revolution of 1688, the Toleration Act 1689 put an end to the persecution of Quakers (along with other Dissenters) for non-attendance at church. 225 For many years after this they were liable to imprisonment for non-payment of tithes, and, together with other Dissenters, they remained under various civil disabilities, the gradual removal of which is part of the general history of England. In the years succeeding the Toleration Act at least twelve of their number were prosecuted (often more than once in the spiritual and other courts) for keeping school without a bishop’s licence. It is coming to be recognized that the growth of religious toleration owed much to the early Quakers who, with the exception of a few Baptists at the first, stood almost alone among Dissenters in holding their public meetings openly and regularly.

The Toleration Act was not the only law of William and Mary which benefited Quakers. The legislature has continually had regard to their refusal to take oaths, and not only the said act but also another of the same reign, and numerous others, subsequently passed, have respected the peculiar scruples of Friends (see Davis’s Digest of Legislative Enactments relating to Friends, Bristol, 1820).

2. Period 1689-1835.—From the beginning of the 18th century the zeal of the Quaker body abated. Although many “General” and other meetings were held in different parts of the country for the purpose of setting forth Period of Decline. Quakerism, the notion that the whole Christian church would be absorbed in it, and that the Quakers were, in fact, the church, gave place to the conception that they were “a peculiar people” to whom, more than to others, had been given an understanding of the will of God. The Quakerism of this period was largely of a traditional kind; it dwelt with increasing emphasis on the peculiarities of its dress and language; it rested much upon discipline, which developed and hardened into rigorous forms; and the correction or exclusion of its members occupied more attention than did the winning of converts.

Excluded from political and municipal life by the laws which required either the taking of an oath or joining in the Lord’s Supper according to the rites of the Established Church, excluding themselves not only from the frivolous pursuits of pleasure, but from music and art in general, attaining no high average level of literary culture (though producing some men of eminence in science and medicine), the Quakers occupied themselves mainly with trade, the business of their Society, and the calls of philanthropy. From early times George Fox and many others had taken a keen interest in education, and in 1779 there was founded at Ackworth, near Pontefract, a school for boys and girls; this was followed by the reconstitution, in 1808, of a school at Sidcot in the Mendips, and in 1811, of one in Islington Road, London; it was afterwards removed to Croydon, and, later, to Saffron Walden. Others have since been established at York and in other parts of England and Ireland. None of them are now reserved exclusively for the children of Friends.

During this period Quakerism was sketched from the outside by two very different men. Voltaire (Dictionnaire Philosophique, “Quaker,” “Toleration”) described the body, which attracted his curiosity, his sympathy and his sneers, with all his brilliance. Thomas Clarkson (Portraiture of Quakerism) has given an elaborate and sympathetic account of the Quakers as he knew them when he travelled amongst them from house to house on his crusade against the slave trade.

3. From 1835.—During the 18th century the doctrine of the Inward Light acquired such exclusive prominence as to bring about a tendency to disparage, or, at least, to neglect, the written word (the Scriptures) as being “outward” and non-essential. In the early part of the 19th century an American Friend, Elias Hicks, pressed this doctrine to its furthest limits, and, in doing so, he laid stress on “Christ within” in such a way as practically to take little account of the person and work of the “outward,” i.e. the historic Christ. The result was a separation of the Society in America into two divisions which persist to the present day (see below, “Quakerism in America”). This led to a counter movement in England, known as the Beacon Controversy, from the name of a warning publication issued by Isaac Crewdson of Manchester in 1835, advocating views of a pronounced “evangelical” type. Much controversy ensued, and a certain number of Friends (Beaconites as they are sometimes called) departed from the parent stock. They left behind them, however, many influential members, who may be described as a middle party, and who strove to give a more “evangelical” tone to Quaker doctrine. Joseph John Gurney of Norwich, a brother of Elizabeth Fry, by means of his high social position and his various writings (some published before 1835), was the most prominent actor in this movement. Those who quitted the Society maintained, for some little time, a separate organization of their own, but sooner or later most of them joined the Evangelical Church or the Plymouth Brethren.

Other causes have been at work modifying the Quaker society. The repeal of the Test Act, the admission of Quakers to Parliament in consequence of their being allowed to affirm instead of taking the oath (1832, when Joseph Pease was elected for South Durham), the establishment of the University of London, and, more recently, the opening of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to Nonconformists, have all had their effect upon the body. It has abandoned its peculiarities of dress and language, as well as its hostility to music and art, and it has cultivated a wider taste in literature. In fact, the number of men, either Quakers or of Quaker origin and proclivities, who occupy positions of influence in English life is large in proportion to the small body with which they are connected. During the 19th century the interests of Friends became widened and they are no longer a close community.

Doctrine.—It is not easy to state with certainty the doctrines of a body which (in England at least) has never demanded subscription to any creed, and whose views have undoubtedly undergone more or less definite changes. There is not now the sharp distinction which formerly existed between Friends and other non-sacerdotal evangelical bodies; these have, in theory at least, largely accepted the spiritual message of Quakerism. By their special insistence on the fact of immediate communion between God and man, Friends have been led into those views and practices which still mark them off from their fellow-Christians.

Nearly all their distinctive views (e.g. their refusal to take oaths, their testimony against war, their disuse of a professional ministry, and their recognition of women’s ministry) were being put forward in England, by various individuals or sects, in the strife which raged during the intense religious excitement of the middle of the 17th century. Nevertheless, before the rise of the Quakers, these views were nowhere found in conjunction as held by any one set of people; still less were they regarded as the outcome of any one central belief or principle. It is rather in their emphasis on this thought of Divine communion, in their insistence on its reasonable consequences (as it seems to them), that Friends constitute a separate community. The appointment of one man to preach, to the exclusion of others, whether he feels a divine call so to do or not, is regarded as a limitation of the work of the Spirit and an undue concentration of that responsibility which ought to be shared by a wider circle. For the same reason they refuse to occupy the time of worship with an arranged programme of vocal service; they meet in silence, Public worship. desiring that the service of the meeting shall depend on spiritual guidance. Thus it is left to any man or woman to offer vocal prayer, to read the Scriptures, or to utter such exhortation or teaching as may seem to be called for. Of late years, in certain of their meetings on Sunday evening, it has become customary for part of the time to be occupied with set addresses for the purpose of instructing the members of the congregation, or of conveying the Quaker message to others who may be present, all their meetings for worship being freely open to the public. In a few meetings hymns are occasionally sung, very rarely as part of any arrangement, but almost always upon the request of some individual for a particular hymn appropriate to the need of the congregation. The periods of silence are regarded as times of worship equally with those occupied with vocal service, inasmuch as Friends hold that robustness of spiritual life is best promoted by earnest striving on the part of each one to know the will of God for 226 himself, and to be drawn into Christian fellowship with the other worshippers. The points on which special stress is laid are:—(1) the share of responsibility resting on each individual, whether called to vocal service or not, for the right spiritual atmosphere of the Meeting, and for the welfare of the congregation; (2) the privilege which may be enjoyed by each worshipper of waiting upon the Lord without relying on spoken words, however helpful, or on other outward matters; (3) freedom for each individual (whether a Friend or not) to speak, for the help of others, such message as he or she may feel called to utter; (4) a fresh sense of a divine call to deliver the message on that particular occasion, whether previous thought has been given to it or not. The idea which ought to underlie a Friends’ meeting is thus set forth by Robert Barclay: “When I came into the silent assemblies of God’s people, I felt a secret power among them, which touched my heart, and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me and the good raised up” (Apology, xi. 7). In many places Friends have felt the need of bringing spiritual help to those who are unable to profit by the somewhat severe discipline of their ordinary manner of worship. To meet this need they hold (chiefly on Sunday evenings) meetings which are not professedly “Friends’ meetings for worship,” but which are services conducted on lines similar to those of other religious bodies, with, in some cases, a portion of time set apart for silent worship, and freedom for any one of the congregation to utter words of exhortation or prayer.

From the beginning Friends have not practised the outward ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, even in a non-sacerdotal spirit. They attach, however, supreme value to the realities of which the observances are reminders or types—on the Baptism which is more than putting away the filth of the flesh, and on the vital union with Christ which is behind any outward ceremony. Their testimony is not primarily against these outward observances; their disuse of them is due to a sense of the danger of substituting the shadow for the reality. They believe that an experience of more than 250 years gives ample warrant for the belief that Christ did not command them as a perpetual outward ordinance; on the contrary, they hold that it was alien to His method to lay down minute, outward rules for all time, but that He enunciated principles which His Church should, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, apply to the varying needs of the day. Their contention that every event of life may be turned into a sacrament, a means of grace, is summed up in the words of Stephen Grellet: “I very much doubt whether, since the Lord by His grace brought me into the faith of His dear Son, I have ever broken bread or drunk wine, even in the ordinary course of life, without the remembrance of, and some devout feeling regarding, the broken body and the blood-shedding of my dear Lord and Saviour.”

When the ministry of any man or woman has been found to be helpful to the congregation, the Monthly Meeting (see below) may, after solemn consideration, record the fact that it believes the individual to have a divine call to the Ministers. ministry, and that it encourages him or her to be faithful to the gift. Such ministers are said to be “acknowledged” or “recorded”; they are emphatically not appointed to preach, and the fact of their acknowledgment is not regarded as conferring any special status upon them. The various Monthly Meetings appoint Elders, or some body of Friends, to give advice of encouragement or restraint as may be needed, and, generally, to take the ministry under their care.

With regard to the ministry of women, Friends hold that there is no evidence that the gifts of prophecy and teaching are confined to one sex. On the contrary, they see that a Women. manifest blessing has rested on women’s preaching, and they regard its almost universal prohibition as a relic of the seclusion of women which was customary in the countries where Christianity took its rise. The particular prohibition of Paul (1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35) they regard as due to the special circumstances of time and place.

Friends have always held that war is contrary to the precepts and spirit of the Gospel, believing that it springs from the lower impulses of human nature, and not from the seed of divine life with its infinite capacity of response to the Spirit of God. Their War. testimony is not based primarily on any objection to the use of force in itself, or even on the fact that war involves suffering and loss of life; their root objection is based on the fact that war is both the outcome and the cause of ambition, pride, greed, hatred and everything that is opposed to the mind of Christ; and that no end to be attained can justify the use of such means. While not unaware that with this, as with all moral questions, there may be a certain borderland of practical difficulty, Friends endeavour to bring all things to the test of the Realities which, though not seen, are eternal, and to hold up the ideal, set forth by George Fox, of living in the virtue of that life and power which takes away the occasion of war.

Friends have always held that the attempt to enforce truth-speaking by means of an oath, in courts of law and elsewhere, tends to create a double standard of truth. They find Scripture warrant for this belief in Matt. v. 33-37 and Oaths. James v. 12. Their testimony in this respect is the better understood when we bear in mind the large amount of perjury in the law courts, and profane swearing in general which prevailed at the time when the Society took its rise. “People swear to the end that they may speak truth; Christ would have men speak truth to the end they might not swear” (W. Penn, A Treatise of Oaths).

With regard to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, the belief of the Society of Friends does not essentially differ from that of other Christian bodies. At the same time their avoidance of exact definition embodied in a rigid Theology. creed, together with their disuse of the outward ordinances of Baptism and the Supper, has laid them open to considerable misunderstanding. As will have been seen, they hold an exalted view of the divinity and work of Christ as the Word become flesh and the Saviour of the world; but they have always shrunk from rigid Trinitarian definitions. They believe that the same Spirit who gave forth the Scriptures still guides men to a right understanding of them. “You profess the Holy Scriptures: but what do you witness and experience? What interest have you in them? Can you set to your seal that they are true by the work of the same spirit in you that gave them forth in the holy ancients?” (William Penn, A Summons or Call to Christendom). At certain periods this doctrine, pushed to an extreme, has led to a practical undervaluing of the Scriptures, but of late times it has enabled Friends to face fearlessly the conclusions of modern criticism, and has contributed to a largely increased interest in Bible study. During the past few years a new movement has been started in the shape of lecture schools, lasting for longer or shorter periods, for the purpose of studying Biblical, ecclesiastical and social subjects. In 1903 there was established at Woodbrooke, an estate at Selly Oak on the outskirts of Birmingham, a permanent settlement for men and women, for the study of these questions on modern lines. The outward beginning of this movement was the Manchester Conference of 1895, a turning-point in Quaker history. Speaking generally, it may be noted that the Society includes various shades of opinion, from that known as “evangelical,” with a certain hesitation in receiving modern thought, to the more “advanced” position which finds greater freedom to consider and adopt new suggestions of scientific, religious or other thinkers. The differences, however, are seldom pressed, and rarely become acute. Apart from points of doctrine which can be more or less definitely stated (not always with unanimity) Quakerism is an atmosphere, a manner of life, a method of approaching questions, a habit and attitude of mind.

Quakerism in Scotland.—Quakerism was preached in Scotland very soon after its rise in England; but in the north and south of Scotland there existed, independently of and before this preaching, groups of persons who were dissatisfied with the national form of worship and who met together in silence for devotion. They naturally fell into this Society. In Aberdeen the Quakers took considerable hold, and were there joined by 227 some persons of influence and position, especially Alexander Jaffray, sometime provost of Aberdeen, and Colonel David Barclay of Ury and his son Robert, the author of the Apology. Much light has been thrown on the history of the Quakers in Aberdeenshire by the discovery in 1826 at Ury of a MS. Diary of Jaffray, since published with elucidations (2nd ed., London, 1836).

Ireland.—The father of Quakerism in Ireland was William Edmondson; his preaching began in 1653-1654. The History of the Quakers in Ireland (from 1653 to 1752), by Wight and Rutty, may be consulted. Dublin Yearly Meeting, constituted in 1670, is independent of London Yearly Meeting (see below).

America.—In July 1656 two women Quakers, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, arrived at Boston. Under the general law against heresy their books were burnt by the hangman, they were searched for signs of witchcraft, they were imprisoned for five weeks and then sent away. During the same year eight others were sent back to England.

In 1656, 1657 and 1658 laws were passed to prevent the introduction of Quakers into Massachusetts, and it was enacted that on the first conviction one ear should be cut off, on the second the remaining ear, and that on the third conviction the tongue should be bored with a hot iron. Fines were laid upon all who entertained these people or were present at their meetings. Thereupon the Quakers, who were perhaps not without the obstinacy of which Marcus Aurelius complained in the early Christians, rushed to Massachusetts as if invited, and the result was that the general court of the colony banished them on pain of death, and four of them, three men and one woman, were hanged for refusing to depart from the jurisdiction or for obstinately returning within it. That the Quakers were, at times, irritating cannot be denied: some of them appear to have publicly mocked the institutions and the rulers of the colony and to have interrupted public worship; and a few of their men and women acted with the fanaticism and disorder which frequently characterized the religious controversies of the time. The particulars of the proceedings of Governor Endecott and the magistrates of New England as given in Besse’s Sufferings of the Quakers (see below) are startling to read. On the Restoration of Charles II. a memorial was presented to him by the Quakers in England stating the persecutions which their fellow-members had undergone in New England. Even the careless Charles was moved to issue an order to the colony which effectually stopped the hanging of the Quakers for their religion, though it by no means put an end to the persecution of the body in New England.

It is not wonderful that the Quakers, persecuted and oppressed at home and in New England, should turn their eyes to the unoccupied parts of America, and cherish the hope of founding, amidst their woods, some refuge from oppression, and some likeness of a city of God upon earth. As early as 1660 George Fox was considering the question of buying land from the Indians. In 1671-1673 he had visited the American plantations from Carolina to Rhode Island and had preached alike to Indians and to settlers; in 1674 a portion of New Jersey (q.v.) was sold by Lord Berkeley to John Fenwicke in trust for Edward Byllynge. Both these men were Quakers, and in 1675 Fenwicke with a large company of his co-religionists crossed the Atlantic, sailed up Delaware Bay, and landed at a fertile spot which he called Salem. Byllynge, having become embarrassed in his circumstances, placed his interest in the land in the hands of Penn and others as trustees for his creditors; they invited buyers, and companies of Quakers in Yorkshire and London were amongst the largest purchasers. In 1677-1678 five vessels with eight hundred emigrants, chiefly Quakers, arrived in the colony (then separated from the rest of New Jersey, under the name of West New Jersey), and the town of Burlington was established. In 1677 the fundamental laws of West New Jersey were published, and recognized in a most absolute form the principles of democratic equality and perfect freedom of conscience. Notwithstanding certain troubles from claims of the governor of New York and of the duke of York, the colony prospered, and in 1681 the first legislative assembly of the colony, consisting mainly of Quakers, was held. They agreed to raise an annual sum of £200 for the expenses of their commonwealth; they assigned their governor a salary of £20; they prohibited the sale of ardent spirits to the Indians and imprisonment for debt. (See New Jersey.)

But beyond question the most interesting event in connexion with Quakerism in America is the foundation by William Penn (q.v.) of the colony of Pennsylvania, where he hoped to carry into effect the principles of his sect—to found William Penn. and govern a colony without armies or military power, to reduce the Indians by justice and kindness to civilization and Christianity, to administer justice without oaths, and to extend an equal toleration to all persons who professed a belief in God. The history of this is part of the history of America and of Pennsylvania (q.v.) in particular. The chief point of interest in the history of Friends in America during the 18th century is their effort to clear themselves of complicity in slavery and the slave trade. As early as 1671 George Fox when in Barbados counselled kind treatment of slaves and ultimate liberation of them. William Penn provided for the freedom of slaves after fourteen years’ service. In 1688 the German Friends of Germantown, Philadelphia, raised the first official protest uttered by any religious body against slavery. In 1711 a law was passed in Pennsylvania prohibiting the importation of slaves, but it was rejected by the Council in England. The prominent anti-slavery workers were Ralph Sandiford, Benjamin Lay, Anthony Benezet and John Woolman.3 By the end of the 18th century slavery was practically extinct among Friends, and the Society as a whole laboured for its abolition, which came about in 1865, the poet Whittier being one of the chief writers and workers in the cause. From early times up to the present day Friends have laboured for the welfare of the North American Indians. The history of the 19th century is largely one of division. Elias Hicks (q.v.), of Long Island, N.Y., propounded doctrines inconsistent with the orthodox views concerning Christ and the Scriptures, and a separation resulted in 1827-1828 (see above). His followers are known as “Hicksites,” a name not officially used by themselves, and only assented to for purposes of description under some protest. They have their own organization, being divided into seven yearly meetings numbering about 20,000 members, but these meetings form no part of the official organization which links London Yearly Meeting with other bodies of Friends on the American continent. This separation led to strong insistence on “evangelical” views (in the usual sense of the term) concerning Christ, the Atonement, imputed righteousness, the Scriptures, &c. This showed itself in the Beaconite controversy in England (see above), and in a further division in America. John Wilbur, a minister of New England, headed a party of protest against the new evangelicalism, laying extreme stress on the “Inward Light”; the result was a further separation of “Wilburites” or “the smaller body,” who, like the “Hicksites,” have a separate independent organization of their own. In 1907 they were divided into seven yearly meetings (together with some smaller independent bodies, the result of extreme emphasis laid on individualism), with a membership of about 5000. Broadly speaking, the “smaller body” is characterized by a rigid adherence to old forms of dress and speech, to a disapproval of music and art, and to an insistence on the “Inward Light” which, at times, leaves but little room for the Scriptures or the historic Christ, although with no definite or intended repudiation of them. In 1908 the number of “orthodox” yearly meetings in America, including one in Canada, was fifteen, with a total membership of about 100,000. They have, for the most part, adopted, to a greater or less degree, the “pastoral system,” i.e. the appointment of one man or woman in each congregation to “conduct” the meeting for worship and to carry on pastoral work. In most cases the pastor receives a salary. A few of them demand from their ministers definite subscription to a specific body of doctrine, mostly of the ordinary “evangelical” type. In the matters of 228 organization, disuse of the outward ordinances (this point is subject to some slight exception, principally in Ohio), and women’s ministry, they do not differ from English Friends. The yearly meetings of Baltimore and Philadelphia have not adopted the pastoral system; the latter contains a very strong conservative element, and, contrary to the practice of London and the other “orthodox” yearly meetings, it officially regards the meetings of “the smaller body” (see above) as meetings of the Society of Friends. In 1902 the “orthodox” yearly meetings in the United States established a “Five Years’ Meeting,” a representative body meeting once every five years to consider matters affecting the welfare of all, and to further such philanthropic and religious work as may be undertaken in common, e.g. matters concerning foreign missions, temperance and peace, and the welfare of negroes and Indians. Two yearly meetings remain outside the organization, that of Ohio on ultra-evangelical grounds, while that of Philadelphia has not taken the matter into consideration. Canada joined at the first, and having withdrawn, again joined in 1907.

See James Bowden, History of the Society of Friends in America (1850-1854); Allan C. and Richard H. Thomas, The History of Friends in America (4th edition, 1905); Isaac Sharpless, History of Quaker Government in Pennsylvania (1898, 1899); R. P. Hallowell, The Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts (1887), and The Pioneer Quakers (1887).

Organization and Discipline.—The duty of watching over one another for good was insisted on by the early Friends, and has been embodied in a system of discipline. Its objects embrace (a) admonition to those who fail in the payment of their just debts, or otherwise walk contrary to the standard of Quaker ethics, and the exclusion of obstinate or gross offenders from the body, and, as incident to this, the hearing of appeals from individuals or meetings considering themselves aggrieved; (b) the care and maintenance of the poor and provision for the Christian education of their children, for which purpose the Society has established boarding schools in different parts of the country; (c) the amicable settlement of “all differences about outward things,” either by the parties in controversy or by the submission of the dispute to arbitration, and the restraint of all proceedings at law between members except by leave; (d) the “recording” of ministers (see above); (e) the cognizance of all steps preceding marriage according to Quaker forms; (f) the registration of births, deaths and marriages and the admission of members; (g) the issuing of certificates or letters of approval granted to ministers travelling away from their homes, or to members removing from one meeting to another; and (h) the management of the property belonging to the Society. The meetings for business further concern themselves with arrangements for spreading the Quaker doctrine, and for carrying out various religious, philanthropic and social activities not necessarily confined to the Society of Friends.

The present organization of the Quaker church is essentially democratic; every person born of Quaker parents is a member, and, together with those who have been admitted on their own request, is entitled to take part in the business assemblies Periodic “meetings.” of any meeting of which he or she is a member. The Society is organized as a series of subordinated meetings which recall to the mind the Presbyterian model. The “Preparative Meeting” usually consists of a single congregation; next in order comes the “Monthly Meeting,” the executive body, usually embracing several Preparative Meetings called together, as its name indicates, monthly (in some cases less often); then the “Quarterly Meeting,” embracing several Monthly Meetings; and lastly the “Yearly Meeting,” embracing the whole of Great Britain (but not Ireland). After several yearly or “general” meetings had been held in different places at irregular intervals as need arose, the first of an uninterrupted series met in 1668. From that date until 1904 it was held in London. In 1905 it met in Leeds, and in 1908 in Birmingham. Its official title is “London Yearly Meeting.” It is the legislative body of Friends in Great Britain. It considers questions of policy, and some of its sittings are conferences for the consideration of reports on religious, philanthropic, educational and social work which is carried on. Its sessions occupy a week in May of each year. Representatives are sent from each inferior to each superior meeting, but they have no precedence over others, and all Friends may attend any meeting and take part in any of which they are members. Formerly the system was double, the men and women meeting separately for their own appointed business. Of late years the meetings have been, for the most part, held jointly, with equal liberty for all men and women to state their opinions, and to serve on all committees and other appointments. The mode of conducting these meetings is noteworthy. A secretary or “clerk,” as he is called, acts as chairman or president; there are no formal resolutions; and there is no voting or applause. The clerk ascertains what he considers to be the judgment of the assembly, and records it in a minute. The permanent standing committee of the Society is known as the “Meeting for Sufferings” (established in 1675), which took its rise in the days when the persecution of many Friends demanded the Christian care and material help of those who were able to give it. It is composed of representatives (men and women) sent by the quarterly meetings, and of all recorded Ministers and Elders. Its work is not confined to the interests of Friends; it is sensitive to the call of oppression and distress (e.g. a famine) in all parts of the world, it frequently raises large sums of money to alleviate the same, and intervenes, often successfully, and mostly without publicity, with those in authority who have the power to bring about an amelioration.

The offices known to the Quaker body are: (1) that of minister (the term “office” is not strictly applicable, see above as to “recording”); (2) of elder, whose duty it is “to encourage and help young ministers, and advise others as they, in the wisdom of God, see occasion”; (3) of overseer, to whom is especially entrusted that duty of Christian care for and interest in one another which Quakers recognize as obligatory in all the members of a church. In most Monthly Meetings the care of the poor is committed to the overseers. These officers hold, from time to time, meetings separate from the general assemblies of the members, but the special organization for many years known as the Meeting of Ministers and Elders, reconstituted in 1876 as the Meeting on Ministry and Oversight, came to an end in 1906-1907.

This present form both of organization and of discipline has been reached only by a process of development. As early as 1652-1654 there is evidence of some slight organization for dealing with marriages, poor relief, “disorderly walkers,” matters of arbitration, &c. The Quarterly or “General” meetings of the different counties seem to have been the first unions of separate congregations. In 1666 Fox established Monthly Meetings; in 1727 elders were first appointed; in 1752 overseers were added; and in 1737 the right of children of Quakers to be considered as members was fully recognized. Concerning the 18th century in general, see above.

Of late years the stringency of the Quaker discipline has been relaxed: the peculiarities of dress and language have been abandoned; marriage with a non-member or between two non-members is now possible at a Quaker meeting-house; and marriage elsewhere has ceased to involve exclusion from the body. Above all, many of its members have come to “the conviction, which is not new, but old, that the virtues which can be rewarded and the vices which can be punished by external discipline are not as a rule the virtues and the vices that make or mar the soul” (Hatch, Bampton Lectures, 81).

A genuine vein of philanthropy has always existed in the Quaker body. In nothing has this been more conspicuous than in the matter of slavery. George Fox and William Penn laboured to secure the religious teaching of slaves. As Philanthropic interests. early as 1676 the assembly of Barbados passed “An Act to prevent the people called Quakers from bringing negroes to their meetings.” On the attitude of Friends in America to slavery, see the section “Quakerism in America” (above). In 1783 the first petition to the House of Commons for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery went up from the Quakers; and in the long agitation which ensued the Society took a prominent part.

In 1798 Joseph Lancaster, himself a Friend, opened his first school for the education of the poor; and the cause of unsectarian religious education found in the Quakers steady support. They also took an active part in Sir Samuel Romilly’s efforts to ameliorate the penal code, in prison reform, with which the name of Elizabeth Fry (a Friend) is especially connected, and in the efforts to ameliorate the condition of lunatics in England (the Friends’ Retreat at York, founded in 1792, was the earliest example in England of kindly treatment of the insane). It is noteworthy that Quaker efforts for the education of the poor and philanthropy in general, though they have always been Christian in character, have not been undertaken primarily for the purpose of bringing proselytes within the body, and have not done so to any great extent.

By means of the Adult Schools, Friends have been able to exercise a religious influence beyond the borders of their own Society. The movement began in Birmingham in 1845, in an attempt to help the loungers at street corners; reading and Education. writing were the chief inducements offered. The schools are unsectarian in character and mainly democratic in government: the aim is to draw out what is best in men and to induce them to act for the help of their fellows. Whilst the work is essentially religious in character, a well-equipped school also caters for the social, intellectual and physical parts of a man’s nature. Bible teaching is the central part of the school session: the lessons are mainly concerned with life’s practical problems. The spirit of brotherliness which prevails is largely the secret of the success of the movement. At the end of 1909 there were in connexion with the “National Council of Adult-School Associations” 1818 “schools” for men with 229 a membership of about 113,789; and 402 for women with a membership of about 27,000. The movement, which is no longer exclusively under the control of Friends, is rapidly becoming one of the chief means of bringing about a religious fellowship among a class which the organized churches have largely failed to reach. The effect of the work upon the Society itself may be summarized thus: some addition to membership; the creation of a sphere of usefulness for the younger and more active members; a general stirring of interest in social questions.4

A strong interest in Sunday schools for children preceded the Adult School movement. The earliest schools which are still existing were formed at Bristol, for boys in 1810 and for girls in the following year. Several isolated efforts were made earlier than this; it is evident that there was a school at Lothersdale near Skipton in 1800 “for the preservation of the youth of both sexes, and for their instruction in useful learning”; and another at Nottingham. Even earlier still were the Sunday and day schools in Rossendale, Lancashire, dating from 1793. At the end of 1909 there were in connexion with the Friends’ First-Day School Association 240 schools with 2722 teachers and 25,215 scholars, very few of whom were the children of Friends. Not included in these figures are classes for children of members and “attenders,” which are usually held before or during a portion of the time of the morning meeting for worship; in these distinctly denominational teaching is given. Monthly organ, Teachers and Taught.

A “provisional committee” of members of the Society of Friends was formed in 1865 to deal with offers of service in foreign lands. In 1868 this developed into the Friends’ Foreign Mission Association, which now undertakes Missionary work in Foreign missions. India (begun 1866), Madagascar (1867), Syria (1869), China (1886), Ceylon (1896). In 1909 the number of missionaries (including wives) was 113; organized churches, 194; members and adherents, 21,085; schools, 135; pupils, 7042; hospitals and dispensaries, 17; patients treated, 6865; subscriptions raised from Friends in Great Britain and Ireland, £26,689, besides £3245 received in the fields of work. Quarterly organ, Our Missions.

Statistics of Quakerism.—At the close of 1909 there were 18,686 Quakers (the number includes children) in Great Britain; and “associates” and habitual “attenders” not in membership, 8586; number of congregations regularly meeting, 390. Ireland—members, 2528; habitual attenders not in membership, 402.

The central offices and reference library of the Society of Friends are situate at Devonshire House, Bishopsgate Without, London.

Bibliography.—The writings of the early Friends are very numerous: the most noteworthy are the Journals of George Fox and of Thomas Ellwood, both autobiographies, the Apology and other works of Robert Barclay, and the works of Penn and Penington. Early in the 18th century William Sewel, a Dutch Quaker, wrote a history of the Society and published an English translation; modern (small) histories have been written by T. Edmund Harvey (The Rise of the Quakers) and by Mrs Emmott (The Story of Quakerism). The Sufferings of the Quakers by Joseph Besse (1753) gives a detailed account of the persecution of the early Friends in England and America. An excellent portraiture of early Quakerism is given in William Tanner’s Lectures on Friends in Bristol and Somersetshire. The Book of Discipline in its successive printed editions from 1783 to 1906 contains the working rules of the organization, and also a compilation of testimonies borne by the Society at different periods, to important points of Christian truth, and often called forth by the special circumstances of the time. The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth (London, 1876) by Robert Barclay, a descendant of the Apologist, contains much curious information about the Quakers. See also “Quaker” in the index to Masson’s Life of Milton. Joseph Smith’s Descriptive Catalogue of Friends’ Books (London, 1867) gives the information which its title promises; the same author has also published a catalogue of works hostile to Quakerism. For an exposition of Quakerism on its spiritual side many of the poems by Whittier may be referred to, also Quaker Strongholds and Light Arising by Caroline E. Stephen; The Society of Friends, its Faith and Practice, and other works by John Stephenson Rowntree, A Dynamic Faith and other works by Rufus M. Jones; Authority and the Light Within and other works by Edw. Grubb, and the series of “Swarthmore Lectures” as well as the histories above mentioned. Much valuable information will be found in John Stephenson Rowntree: His Life and Work (1908). The history of the modern forward movement may be studied in Essays and Addresses by John Wilhelm Rowntree, and in Present Day Papers edited by him. The social life of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th is portrayed in Records of a Quaker Family, the Richardsons of Cleveland, by Mrs Boyce, and The Diaries of Edward Pease, the Father of English Railways, edited by Sir A. E. Pease. Other works which may usefully be consulted are the Journals of John Woolman, Stephen Grellet and Elizabeth Fry; also The First Publishers of Truth, a reprint of contemporary accounts of the rise of Quakerism in various districts. The periodicals issued (not officially) in connexion with the Quaker body are The Friend (weekly), The British Friend (monthly), The Friends’ Witness, The Friendly Messenger, The Friends’ Fellowship Papers, The Friends’ Quarterly Examiner, Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society. Officially issued: The Book of Meetings and The Friends’ Year Book. See also works mentioned at the close of sections on Adult Schools and on Quakerism in America, Scotland and Ireland, and elsewhere in this article; also Fox, George.

(A. N. B.)

1 At the time referred to, and during the Commonwealth, the pulpits of the cathedrals and churches were occupied by Episcopalians of the Richard Baxter type, Presbyterians, Independents and a few Baptists. It is these, and not the clergy of the Church of England, who are continually referred to by George Fox as “priests.”

2 On the whole subject of preaching “after the priest had done,” see Barclay’s Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, ch. xii.

3 Woolman’s Journal and Works are remarkable. He had a vision of a political economy based not on selfishness but on love, not on desire but on self-denial.

4 See A History of the Adult School Movement by J. W. Rowntree and H. B. Binns. The organ of the movement is One and All, published monthly. See also The Adult School Year Book.

FRIES, ELIAS MAGNUS (1794-1878), Swedish botanist, was born at Femsjö, Småland, on the 15th of August 1794. From his father, the pastor of the church at Femsjö, he early acquired an extensive knowledge of flowering plants. In 1811 he entered the university of Lund, where in 1814 he was elected docent of botany and in 1824 professor. In 1834 he became professor of practical economy at Upsala, and in 1844 and 1848 he represented the university of that city in the Rigsdag. On the death of Göran Wahlenberg (1780-1851) he was appointed professor of botany at Upsala, where he died on the 8th of February 1878. Fries was admitted a member of the Swedish Royal Academy in 1847, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1875.

As an author on the Cryptogamia he was in the first rank. He wrote Novitiae florae Suecicae (1814 and 1823); Observationes mycologicae (1815); Flora Hollandica (1817-1818); Systema mycologicum (1821-1829); Systema orbis vegetabilis, not completed (1825); Elenchus fungorum (1828); Lichenographia Europaea (1831); Epicrisis systematis mycologici (1838; 2nd ed., or Hymenomycetes Europaei, 1874); Summa vegetabilium Scandinaviae (1846); Sveriges ätliga och giftiga Svampar, with coloured plates (1860); Monographia hymenomycetum Suecicae (1863), with the Icones hymenomycetum, vol. i. (1867), and pt. i. vol. ii. (1877).

FRIES, JAKOB FRIEDRICH (1773-1843), German philosopher, was born at Barby, Saxony, on the 23rd of August 1773. Having studied theology in the academy of the Moravian brethren at Niesky, and philosophy at Leipzig and Jena, he travelled for some time, and in 1806 became professor of philosophy and elementary mathematics at Heidelberg. Though the progress of his psychological thought compelled him to abandon the positive theology of the Moravians, he always retained an appreciation of its spiritual or symbolic significance. His philosophical position with regard to his contemporaries he had already made clear in the critical work Reinhold, Fichte und Schelling (1803; reprinted in 1824 as Polemische Schriften), and in the more systematic treatises System der Philosophie als evidente Wissenschaft (1804), Wissen, Glaube und Ahnung (1805, new ed. 1905). His most important treatise, the Neue oder anthropologische Kritik der Vernunft (2nd ed., 1828-1831), was an attempt to give a new foundation of psychological analysis to the critical theory of Kant. In 1811 appeared his System der Logik (ed. 1819 and 1837), a very instructive work, and in 1814 Julius und Evagoras, a philosophical romance. In 1816 he was invited to Jena to fill the chair of theoretical philosophy (including mathematics and physics, and philosophy proper), and entered upon a crusade against the prevailing Romanticism. In politics he was a strong Liberal and Unionist, and did much to inspire the organization of the Burschenschaft. In 1816 he had published his views in a brochure, Vom deutschen Bund und deutscher Staatsverfassung, dedicated to “the youth of Germany,” and his influence gave a powerful impetus to the agitation which led in 1819 to the issue of the Carlsbad Decrees by the representatives of the German governments. Karl Sand, the murderer of Kotzebue, was one of his pupils; and a letter of his, found on another student, warning the lad against participation in secret societies, was twisted by the suspicious authorities into evidence of his guilt. He was condemned by the Mainz Commission; the grand-duke of Weimar was compelled to deprive him of his professorship; and he was forbidden to lecture on philosophy. The grand-duke, however, continued to pay him his stipend, and in 1824 he was recalled to Jena as professor of mathematics and physics, receiving permission also to lecture on philosophy in his own rooms to a select number of students. Finally, in 1838, the unrestricted right of lecturing was restored to him. He died on the 10th of August 1843.

The most important of the many works written during his Jena professorate are the Handbuch der praktischen Philosophie (1817-1832), the Handbuch der psychischen Anthropologie (1820-1821, 2nd ed. 1837-1839), Die mathematische Naturphilosophie (1822), 230 System der Metaphysik (1824), Die Geschichte der Philosophie (1837-1840). Fries’s point of view in philosophy may be described as a modified Kantianism, an attempt to reconcile the criticism of Kant and Jacobi’s philosophy of belief. With Kant he regarded Kritik, or the critical investigation of the faculty of knowledge, as the essential preliminary to philosophy. But he differed from Kant both as regards the foundation for this criticism and as regards the metaphysical results yielded by it. Kant’s analysis of knowledge had disclosed the a priori element as the necessary complement of the isolated a posteriori facts of experience. But it did not seem to Fries that Kant had with sufficient accuracy examined the mode in which we arrive at knowledge of this a priori element. According to him we only know these a priori principles through inner or psychical experience; they are not then to be regarded as transcendental factors of all experience, but as the necessary, constant elements discovered by us in our inner experience. Accordingly Fries, like the Scotch school, places psychology or analysis of consciousness at the foundation of philosophy, and called his criticism of knowledge an anthropological critique. A second point in which Fries differed from Kant is the view taken as to the relation between immediate and mediate cognitions. According to Fries, the understanding is purely the faculty of proof; it is in itself void; immediate certitude is the only source of knowledge. Reason contains principles which we cannot demonstrate, but which can be deduced, and are the proper objects of belief. In this view of reason Fries approximates to Jacobi rather than to Kant. His most original idea is the graduation of knowledge into knowing, belief and presentiment. We know phenomena, how the existence of things appears to us in nature; we believe in the true nature, the eternal essence of things (the good, the true, the beautiful); by means of presentiment (Ahnung) the intermediary between knowledge and belief, we recognize the supra-sensible in the sensible, the being in the phenomenon.

See E. L. Henke, J. F. Fries (1867); C. Grapengiesser, J. F. Fries, ein Gedenkblatt and Kant’s “Kritik der Vernunft” und deren Fortbildung durch J. F. Fries (1882); H. Strasosky, J. F. Fries als Kritiker der Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie (1891); articles in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie and Allgemeine deutsche Biographie; J. E. Erdmann, Hist. of Philos. (Eng. trans., London, 1890), vol. ii. § 305.

FRIES, JOHN (c. 1764-1825), American insurgent leader, was born in Pennsylvania of “Dutch” (German) descent about 1764. As an itinerant auctioneer he became well acquainted with the Germans in the S.E. part of Pennsylvania. In July 1798, during the troubles between the United States and France, Congress levied a direct tax (on dwelling-houses, lands and slaves) of $2,000,000, of which Pennsylvania was called upon to contribute $237,000. There were very few slaves in the state, and the tax was accordingly assessed upon dwelling-houses and land, the value of the houses being determined by the number and size of the windows. The inquisitorial nature of the proceedings aroused strong opposition among the Germans, and many of them refused to pay. Fries, assuming leadership, organized an armed band of about sixty men, who marched about the country intimidating the assessors and encouraging the people to resist. At last the governor called out the militia (March 1799) and the leaders were arrested. Fries and two others were twice tried for treason (the second time before Samuel Chase) and were sentenced to be hanged, but they were pardoned by President Adams in April 1800, and a general amnesty was issued on 21st May. The affair is variously known as the “Fries Rebellion,” the “Hot-Water Rebellion”—because hot water was used to drive assessors from houses—, and the “Home Tax Rebellion.” Fries died in Philadelphia in 1825.

See T. Carpenter, Two Trials of John Fries ... Taken in Shorthand (Philadelphia, 1800); the second volume of McMaster’s History of the United States (New York, 1883); and W. W. H. Davis, The Fries Rebellion (Doylestown, Pa., 1899).

FRIESLAND, or Vriesland, a province of Holland, bounded S.W., W. and N. by the Zuider Zee and the North Sea, E. by Groningen and Drente, and S.E. by Overysel. It also includes the islands of Ameland and Schiermonnikoog (see Frisian Islands). Area, 1281 sq. m.; pop. (1900) 340,262. The soil of Friesland falls naturally into three divisions consisting of sea-clay in the north and north-west, of low-fen between the south-west and north-east, and of a comparatively small area of high-fen in the south-east. The clay and low-fen furnish a luxuriant meadow-land for the principal industries of the province—cattle-rearing and cheese- and butter-making. Horse-breeding has also been practised for centuries, and the breed of black Frisian horse is well known. On the clay lands agriculture is also extensively practised. In the high-fen district peat-digging is the chief occupation. The effect of this industry, however, is to lay bare a subsoil of diluvial sand which offers little inducement for subsequent cultivation. Despite the general productiveness of the soil, however, the social condition of Friesland has remained in a backward state and poverty is rife in many districts. The ownership of property being largely in the hands of absentee landlords, the peasantry have little interest in the land, the profits from which go to enrich other provinces. Moreover, the nature of the fertility of the meadow-lands is such as to require little manual labour, and other industrial means of subsistence have hardly yet come into existence. This state of affairs has given rise to a social-democratic outcry on account of which Friesland is sometimes regarded as the “Ireland of Holland.” The water system of the province comprises a few small rivers (now largely canalized) in the high lands in the east, and the vast network of canals, waterways and lakes of the whole north and west. The principal lakes are Tjeuke Meer, Sloter Meer, De Fluessen and Sneeker Meer. The tides being lowest on the north coast of the province, the scheme of the Waterstaat, the government department (dating from 1879), provides for the largest removal of superfluous surface water into the Lauwerszee. But owing to the long distance which the water must travel from certain parts of the province, and the continual recession of the Lauwerszee, the drainage problem is a peculiarly difficult one, and floods are sometimes inevitable.

The population of the province is evenly distributed in small villages. The principal market centres are Leeuwarden, the chief towns, Sneek, Bolsward, Franeker (qq.v.), Dokkum (4053) and Heerenveen (5011). With the exception of Franeker and Heerenveen all these towns originally arose on the inlet of the Middle Sea. The seaport towns are more or less decayed; they include Stavoren (820), Hindeloopen (1030), Workum (3428), Harlingen (q.v.) and Makkum (2456).

For history see Frisians.

FRIEZE. 1. (Through the Fr. frise, and Ital. fregio, from the Lat. Phrygium, sc. opus, Phrygian or embroidered work), a term given in architecture to the central division of the entablature of an order (see Order), but also applied to any oblong horizontal feature, introduced for decorative purposes and enriched with carving. The Doric frieze had a structural origin as the triglyphs suggest vertical support. The Ionic frieze was purely decorative and probably did not exist in the earliest examples, if we may judge by the copies found in the Lycian tombs carved in the rock. There is no frieze in the Caryatide portico of the Erechtheum, but in the Ionic temples its introduction may have been necessitated in consequence of more height being required in the entablature to carry the beams supporting the lacunaria over the peristyle. In the frieze of the Erechtheum the figures (about 2 ft. high) were carved in white marble and affixed by clamps to a background of black Eleusinian marble. The frieze of the Choragic monument of Lysicrates (10 in. high) was carved with figures representing the story of Dionysus and the pirates. The most remarkable frieze ever sculptured was that on the outside of the wall of the cella of the Parthenon representing the procession of the celebrants of the Panathenaic Festival. It was 40 in. in height and 525 ft. long, being carried round the whole building under the peristyle. Nearly the whole of the western frieze exists in situ; of the remainder, about half is in the British Museum, and as much as remains is either in Athens or in other museums. In some of the Roman temples, as in the temple of Antoninus and Faustina and the temple of the Sun, the frieze is elaborately carved and in later work is made convex, to which the term “pulvinated” is given.

2. (Probably connected with “frizz,” to curl; there is no historical reason to connect the word with Friesland), a thick, rough woollen cloth, of very lasting quality, and with a heavy nap, forming small tufts or curls. It is largely manufactured in Ireland.

FRIGATE (Fr. frégate, Span. and Port. fragata; the etymology of the word is obscure; it has been derived from the Late Lat. 231 fabricata, and the use of the Fr. bâtiment, for a vessel as well as a building is compared; another suggestion derives the word from the Gr. ἄφρακτος, unfenced or unguarded), originally a small swift, undecked vessel, propelled by oars or sails, in use on the Mediterranean. The word is thus used of the large open boats, without guns, used for war purposes by the Portuguese in the East Indies during the 16th and 17th centuries. The French first applied the term to a particular type of ships of war during the second quarter of the 18th century. The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) marked the definite adoption of the “frigate” as a standard class of vessel, coming next to ships of the line, and used for cruising and scouting purposes. They were three-masted, fully rigged, fast vessels, with the main armament carried on a single deck, and additional guns on the poop and forecastle. The number of guns varied from 24 to 50, but between 30 and 40 guns was the usual amount carried. “Frigate” continued to be used as the name for this type of ship, even after the introduction of steam and of ironclad vessels, but the class is now represented by that known as “cruiser.”

FRIGATE-BIRD, the name commonly given by English sailors, on account of the swiftness of its flight, its habit of cruising about near other species and of daringly pursuing them, to a large sea-bird1—the Fregata aquila of most ornithologists—the Fregatte of French and the Rabihorcado of Spanish mariners. It was placed by Linnaeus in the genus Pelecanus, and its assignment to the family Pelecanidae had hardly ever been doubted till Professor St George Mivart declared (Trans. Zool. Soc. x. p. 364) that, as regards the postcranial part of its axial skeleton, he could not detect sufficiently good characters to unite it with that family in the group named by Professor J. F. Brandt Steganopodes. There seems to be no ground for disputing this decision so far as separating the genus Fregata from the Pelecanidae goes, but systematists will probably pause before they proceed to abolish the Steganopodes, and the result will most likely be that the frigate-birds will be considered to form a distinct family (Fregatidae) in that group. In one very remarkable way the osteology of Fregata differs from that of all other birds known. The furcula coalesces firmly at its symphysis with the carina of the sternum, and also with the coracoids at the upper extremity of each of its rami, the anterior end of each coracoid coalescing also with the proximal end of the scapula. Thus the only articulations in the whole sternal apparatus are where the coracoids meet the sternum, and the consequence is a bony framework which would be perfectly rigid did not the flexibility of the rami of the furcula permit a limited amount of motion. That this mechanism is closely related to the faculty which the bird possesses of soaring for a considerable time in the air with scarcely a perceptible movement of the wings can hardly be doubted.

Two species of Fregata are considered to exist, though they differ in little but size and geographical distribution. The larger, F. aquila, has a wide range all round the world within the tropics and at times passes their limits. The smaller, F. minor, appears to be confined to the eastern seas, from Madagascar to the Moluccas, and southward to Australia, being particularly abundant in Torres Strait,—the other species, however, being found there as well. Having a spread of wing equal to a swan’s and a very small body, the buoyancy of these birds is very great. It is a beautiful sight to watch one or more of them floating overhead against the deep blue sky, the long forked tail alternately opening and shutting like a pair of scissors, and the head, which is of course kept to windward, inclined from side to side, while the wings are to all appearance fixedly extended, though the breeze may be constantly varying in strength and direction. Equally fine is the contrast afforded by these birds when engaged in fishing, or, as seems more often to happen, in robbing other birds, especially boobies, as they are fishing. Then the speed of their flight is indeed seen to advantage, as well as the marvellous suddenness with which they can change their rapid course as their victim tries to escape from their attack. Before gales frigate-birds are said often to fly low, and their appearance near or over land, except at their breeding-time, is supposed to portend a hurricane.2 Generally seen singly or in pairs, except when the prospect of prey induces them to congregate, they breed in large companies, and O. Salvin has graphically described (Ibis, 1864, p. 375) one of their settlements off the coast of British Honduras, which he visited in May 1862. Here they chose the highest mangrove-trees3 on which to build their frail nests, and seemed to prefer the leeward side. The single egg laid in each nest has a white and chalky shell very like that of a cormorant’s. The nestlings are clothed in pure white down, and so thickly as to resemble puff-balls. When fledged, the beak, head, neck and belly are white, the legs and feet bluish-white, but the body is dark above. The adult females retain the white beneath, but the adult males lose it, and in both sexes at maturity the upper plumage is of a very dark chocolate brown, nearly black, with a bright metallic gloss, while the feet in the females are pink, and black in the males—the last also acquiring a bright scarlet pouch, capable of inflation, and being perceptible when on the wing. The habits of F. minor seem wholly to resemble those of F. aquila. According to J. M. Bechstein, an example of this last species was obtained at the mouth of the Weser in January 1792.

(A. N.)

1 “Man-of-war-bird” is also sometimes applied to it, and is perhaps the older name; but it is less distinctive, some of the larger Albatrosses being so called, and, in books at least, has generally passed out of use.

2 Hence another of the names—“hurricane-bird”—by which this species is occasionally known.

3 Captain Taylor, however, found their nests as well on low bushes of the same tree in the Bay of Fonseca (Ibis, 1859, pp. 150-152).

FRIGG, the wife of the god Odin (Woden) in northern mythology. She was known also to other Teutonic peoples both on the continent (O. H. Ger. Friia, Langobardic Frea) and in England, where her name still survives in Friday (O. E. Frigedæg). She is often wrongly identified with Freyia. (See Teutonic Peoples, ad fin.)

FRIGIDARIUM, the Latin term (from frigidus, cold) applied to the open area of the Roman thermae, in which there was generally a cold swimming bath, and sometimes to the bath (see Baths). From the description given by Aelius Spartianus (A.D. 297) it would seem that portions of the frigidarium were covered over by a ceiling formed of interlaced bars of gilt bronze, and this statement has been to a certain extent substantiated by the discovery of many tons of T-shaped iron found in the excavations under the paving of the frigidarium of the thermae of Caracalla. Dr J. H. Middleton in The Remains of Ancient Rome (1892) points out that in the part of the enclosure walls are deep sinkings to receive the ends of the great girders. He suggests that the panels of the lattice-work ceiling were filled in with concrete made of light pumice stone.

FRIIS, JOHAN (1494-1570), Danish statesman, was born in 1494, and was educated at Odense and at Copenhagen, completing his studies abroad. Few among the ancient Danish nobility occupy so prominent a place in Danish history as Johan Friis, who exercised a decisive influence in the government of the realm during the reign of three kings. He was one of the first of the magnates to adhere to the Reformation and its promoter King Frederick I. (1523-1533), his apostasy being so richly rewarded out of the spoils of the plundered Church that his heirs had to restore property of the value of 1,000,000 kroner. Friis succeeded Claus Gjoodsen as imperial chancellor in 1532, and held that dignity till his death. During the ensuing interregnum he powerfully contributed, at the head of the nobles of Funen and Jutland, to the election of Christian III. (1533-1559), but in the course of the “Count’s War” he was taken prisoner by Count Christopher, the Catholic candidate for the throne, and forced to do him homage. Subsequently by judicious bribery he contrived to escape to Germany, and from thence rejoined Christian III. He was one of the plenipotentiaries who concluded peace with Lübeck at the congress of Hamburg, and subsequently took an active part in the great work of national reconstruction necessitated by the Reformation, acting as mediator between the Danish and the German parties who were contesting for 232 supremacy during the earlier years of Christian III. This he was able to do, as a moderate Lutheran, whose calmness and common sense contrasted advantageously with the unbridled violence of his contemporaries. As the first chancellor of the reconstructed university of Copenhagen, Friis took the keenest interest in spiritual and scientific matters, and was the first donor of a legacy to the institution. He also enjoyed the society of learned men, especially of “those who could talk with him concerning ancient monuments and their history.” He encouraged Hans Svaning to complete Saxo’s history of Denmark, and Anders Vedel to translate Saxo into Danish. His generosity to poor students was well known; but he could afford to be liberal, as his share of spoliated Church property had made him one of the wealthiest men in Denmark. Under King Frederick II. (1559-1588), who understood but little of state affairs, Friis was well-nigh omnipotent. He was largely responsible for the Scandinavian Seven Years’ War (1562-70), which did so much to exacerbate the relations between Denmark and Sweden. Friis died on the 5th of December 1570, a few days before the peace of Stettin, which put an end to the exhausting and unnecessary struggle.

FRIMLEY, an urban district in the Chertsey parliamentary division of Surrey, England, 33 m. W.S.W. from London by the London & South-Western railway, and 1 m. N. of Farnborough in Hampshire. Pop. (1901) 8409. Its healthy climate, its position in the sandy heath-district of the west of Surrey, and its proximity to Aldershot Camp have contributed to its growth as a residential township. To the east the moorland rises in the picturesque elevation of Chobham Ridges; and 3 m. N.E. is Bagshot, another village growing into a residential town, on the heath of the same name extending into Berkshire. Bisley Camp, to which in 1890 the meetings of the National Rifle Association were removed from Wimbledon, is 4 m. E. Coniferous trees and rhododendrons are characteristic products of the soil, and large nurseries are devoted to their cultivation.

FRIMONT, JOHANN MARIA PHILIPP, Count of Palota, Prince of Antrodocco (1759-1831), Austrian general, entered the Austrian cavalry as a trooper in 1776, won his commission in the War of the Bavarian Succession, and took part in the Turkish wars and in the early campaigns against the French Revolutionary armies, in which he frequently earned distinction. At Frankenthal in 1796 he won the cross of Maria Theresa. In the campaign of 1800 he distinguished himself greatly as a cavalry leader at Marengo (14th of June), and in the next year became major-general. In the war of 1805 he was again employed in Italy and won further renown by his gallantry at the battle of Caldiero. In 1809 he again saw active service in Italy in the rank of lieutenant field marshal, and in 1812 led the cavalry of Schwarzenberg’s corps in the Russian campaign. He served in the campaigns of 1813-14 in high command, and rendered conspicuous service at Brienne-La Rothière and at Arcis-sur-Aube. In 1815 he was commander-in-chief of the Austrians in Italy, and his army penetrated France as far as Lyons, which was entered on the 11th of July. With the army of occupation he remained in France for some years, and in 1819 he commanded at Venice. In 1821 he led the Austrian army which was employed against the Neapolitan rebels, and by the 24th of March he had victoriously entered Naples. His reward from King Ferdinand of Naples was the title of prince of Antrodocco and a handsome sum of money, and from his own master the rank of general of cavalry. After this he commanded in North Italy, and was called upon to deal with many outbreaks of the Italian patriots. He became president of the Aulic council in 1831, but died a few months later.

FRISCHES HAFF, a lagoon on the Baltic coast of Germany, within the provinces East and West Prussia, between Danzig and Königsberg. It is 52 m. in length, from 4 to 12 m. broad, 332 sq. m. in area, and is separated from the Baltic by a narrow spit or bank of land. This barrier was torn open by a storm in 1510, and the channel thus formed, now dredged out to a depth of 22 ft., affords a navigable passage for vessels. Into the Haff flow the Nogat, the Elbing, the Passarge, the Pregel and the Frisching, from the last of which the name Frisches Haff probably arose.

FRISCHLIN, PHILIPP NIKODEMUS (1547-1590), German philologist and poet, was born on the 22nd of September 1547 at Balingen in Württemberg, where his father was parish minister. He was educated at the university of Tübingen, where in 1568 he was promoted to the chair of poetry and history. In 1575 for his comedy of Rebecca, which he read at Regensburg before the emperor Maximilian II., he was rewarded with the laureateship, and in 1577 he was made a count palatine (comes palatinus) or Pfalzgraf. In 1582 his unguarded language and reckless life made it necessary that he should leave Tübingen, and he accepted a mastership at Laibach in Carniola, which he held for about two years. Shortly after his return to the university in 1584, he was threatened with a criminal prosecution on a charge of immoral conduct, and the threat led to his withdrawal to Frankfort-on-Main in 1587. For eighteen months he taught in the Brunswick gymnasium, and he appears also to have resided occasionally at Strassburg, Marburg and Mainz. From the last-named city he wrote certain libellous letters, which led to his being arrested in March 1590. He was imprisoned in the fortress of Hohenurach, near Reutlingen, where, on the night of the 29th of November 1590, he was killed by a fall in attempting to let himself down from the window of his cell.

Frischlin’s prolific and versatile genius produced a great variety of works, which entitle him to some rank both among poets and among scholars. In his Latin verse he often successfully imitated the classical models; his comedies are not without freshness and vivacity; and some of his versions and commentaries, particularly those on the Georgics and Bucolics of Virgil, though now well-nigh forgotten, were important contributions to the scholarship of his time. There is no collected edition of his works, but his Opera poëtica were published twelve times between 1535 and 1636. Among those most widely known may be mentioned the Hebraeis (1590), a Latin epic based on the Scripture history of the Jews; the Elegiaca (1601), his collected lyric poetry, in twenty-two books; the Opera scenica (1604) consisting of six comedies and two tragedies (among the former, Julius Caesar redivivus, completed 1584); the Grammatica Latina (1585); the versions of Callimachus and Aristophanes; and the commentaries on Persius and Virgil. See the monograph of D. F. Strauss (Leben und Schriften des Dichters und Philologen Frischlin, 1856).

FRISI, PAOLO (1728-1784), Italian mathematician and astronomer, was born at Milan on the 13th of April 1728. He was educated at the Barnabite monastery and afterwards at Padua. When twenty-one years of age he composed a treatise on the figure of the earth, and the reputation which he soon acquired led to his appointment by the king of Sardinia to the professorship of philosophy in the college of Casale. His friendship with Radicati, a man of liberal opinions, occasioned Frisi’s removal by his clerical superiors to Novara, where he was compelled to do duty as a preacher. In 1753 he was elected a corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, and shortly afterwards he became professor of philosophy in the Barnabite College of St Alexander at Milan. An acrimonious attack by a young Jesuit, about this time, upon his dissertation on the figure of the earth laid the foundation of his animosity against the Jesuits, with whose enemies, including J. d’Alembert, J. A. N. Condorcet and other Encyclopedists, he later closely associated himself. In 1756 he was appointed by Leopold, grand-duke of Tuscany, to the professorship of mathematics in the university of Pisa, a post which he held for eight years. In 1757 he became an associate of the Imperial Academy of St Petersburg, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, and in 1758 a member of the Academy of Berlin, in 1766 of that of Stockholm, and in 1770 of the Academies of Copenhagen and of Bern. From several European crowned heads he received, at various times, marks of special distinction, and the empress Maria Theresa granted him a yearly pension of 100 sequins (£50). In 1764 he was created professor of mathematics in the palatine schools at Milan, and obtained from Pope Pius VI. release from ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and authority to become a secular priest. In 1766 he visited France and England, and in 1768 Vienna. In 1777 he became director of a school of architecture at Milan. His knowledge of hydraulics 233 caused him to be frequently consulted with respect to the management of canals and other watercourses in various parts of Europe. It was through his means that lightning-conductors were first introduced into Italy for the protection of buildings. He died on the 22nd of November 1784.

His publications include:—Disquisitio mathematica in causam physicam figurae et magnitudinis terrae (Milan, 1751); Saggio della morale filosofia (Lugano, 1753); Nova electricitatis theoria (Milan, 1755); Dissertatio de motu diurno terrae (Pisa, 1758); Dissertationes variae (2 vols. 4to, Lucca, 1759, 1761); Del modo di regolare i fiumi e i torrenti (Lucca, 1762); Cosmographia physica et mathematica (Milan, 1774, 1775, 2 vols. 4to, his chief work); Dell’ architettura, statica e idraulica (Milan, 1777); and other treatises.

See Verri, Memorie ... del signor dom Paolo Frisi (Milan, 1787), 4to; Fabbroni, “Elogi d’ illustri Italiani,” Atti di Milano, vol. ii.; J. C. Poggendorff, Biograph. litterar. Handwörterbuch, vol. i.

FRISIAN ISLANDS, a chain of islands, lying from 3 to 20 m. from the mainland, and stretching from the Zuider Zee E. and N. as far as Jutland, along the coasts of Holland and Germany. They are divided into three groups:—(1) The West Frisian, (2) the East Frisian, and (3) the North Frisian.

The chain of the Frisian Islands marks the outer fringe of the former continental coast-line, and is separated from the mainland by shallows, known as Wadden or Watten, answering to the maria vadosa of the Romans. Notwithstanding the protection afforded by sand-dunes and earthen embankments backed by stones and timber, the Frisian Islands are slowly but surely crumbling away under the persistent attacks of storm and flood, and the old Frisian proverb “de nich will diken mut wiken” (“who will not build dikes must go away”) still holds good. Many of the Frisian legends and folk-songs deal with the submerged villages and hamlets, which lie buried beneath the treacherous waters of the Wadden. Heinrich Heine made use of these legends in his Nordseebilder, composed during a visit to Norderney in 1825. The Prussian and Dutch governments annually expend large sums for the protection of the islands, and in some cases the erosion on the seaward side is counterbalanced by the accretion of land on the inner side, fine sandy beaches being formed well suited for sea-bathing, which attract many visitors in summer. The inhabitants of these islands support themselves by seafaring, pilotage, grazing of cattle and sheep, fishing and a little agriculture, chiefly potato-growing.

The islands, though well lighted, are dangerous to navigation, and a glance at a wreck chart will show the entire chain to be densely dotted. One of the most remarkable disasters was the loss of H.M.S. “La Lutine,” 32 guns, which was wrecked off Vlieland in October 1799, only one hand being saved, who died before reaching England. “La Lutine,” which had been captured from the French by Admiral Duncan, was carrying a large quantity of bullion and specie, which was underwritten at Lloyd’s. The Dutch government claimed the wreck and granted one-third of the salvage to bullion-fishers. Occasional recoveries were made of small quantities which led to repeated disputes and discussions, until eventually the king of the Netherlands ceded to Great Britain, for Lloyd’s, half the remainder of the wreck. A Dutch salvage company, which began operations in August 1857, recovered £99,893 in the course of two years, but it was estimated that some £1,175,000 are still unaccounted for. The ship’s rudder, which was recovered in 1859, has been fashioned into a chair and a table, now in the possession of Lloyd’s.

The West Frisian Islands belong to the kingdom of the Netherlands, and embrace Texel or Tessel (71 sq. m.), Vlieland (19 sq. m.), Terschelling (41 sq. m.), Ameland (23 sq. m.), Schiermonnikoog (19 sq. m.), as well as the much smaller West Frisian. islands of Boschplaat and Rottum, which are practically uninhabited. The northern end of Texel is called Eierland, or “island of eggs,” in reference to the large number of sea-birds’ eggs which are found there. It was joined to Texel by a sand-dike in 1629-1630, and is now undistinguishable from the main island. Texel was already separated from the mainland in the 8th century, but remained a Frisian province and countship, which once extended as far as Alkmaar in North Holland, until it came into the possession of the counts of Holland. The island was occupied by British troops from August to December 1799. The village of Oude Schild has a harbour. The island of Terschelling once formed a separate lordship, but was sold to the states of Holland. The principal village of West-Terschelling has a harbour. As early as the beginning of the 9th century Ameland was a lordship of the influential family of Cammingha who held immediately of the emperor, and in recognition of their independence the Amelanders were in 1369 declared to be neutral in the fighting between Holland and Friesland, while Cromwell made the same declaration in 1654 with respect to the war between England and the United Netherlands. The castle of the Camminghas in the village of Ballum remained standing till 1810, and finally disappeared in 1829 after four centuries. This island is joined to the mainland of Friesland by a stone dike constructed in 1873 for the purpose of promoting the deposit of mud. The island of Schiermonnikoog has a village and a lighthouse. Rottum was once the property of the ancient abbey at Rottum, 8 m. N. of Groningen, of which there are slight remains.

With the exception of Wangeroog, which belongs to the grand duchy of Oldenburg, the East Frisian Islands belong to Prussia. They comprise Borkum (12½ sq. m.), with two lighthouses and connected by steamer with Emden and East Frisian. Leer; Memmert; Juist (2¼ sq. m.), with two lifeboat stations, and connected by steamer with Norddeich and Greetsiel; Norderney (5½ sq. m.); Baltrum, with a lifeboat station; Langeoog (8 sq. m.), connected by steamer with the adjacent islands, and with Bensersiel on the mainland; Spiekeroog (4 sq. m.), with a tramway for conveyance to the bathing beach, and connected by steamer with Carolinenziel; and Wangeroog (2 sq. m.), with a lighthouse and lifeboat station. All these islands are visited for sea-bathing. In the beginning of the 18th century Wangeroog comprised eight times its present area. Borkum and Juist are two surviving fragments of the original island of Borkum (computed at 380 sq. m.), known to Drusus as Fabaria, and to Pliny as Burchana, which was rent asunder by the sea in 1170. Neuwerk and Scharhörn, situated off the mouth of the Elbe, are islands belonging to the state of Hamburg. Neuwerk, containing some marshland protected by dikes, has two lighthouses and a lifeboat station. At low water it can be reached from Duhnen by carriage.

About the year 1250 the area of the North Frisian Islands was estimated at 1065 sq. m.; by 1850 this had diminished to only 105 sq. m. This group embraces the islands of Nordstrand (17¼ sq. m.), which up to 1634 formed one North Frisian. larger island with the adjoining Pohnshallig and Nordstrandisch-Moor; Pellworm (16¼ sq. m.), protected by a circle of dikes and connected by steamer with Husum on the mainland; Amrum (10½ sq. m.); Föhr (32 sq. m.); Sylt (38 sq. m.); Röm (16 sq. m.), with several villages, the principal of which is Kirkeby; Fanö (21 sq. m.); and Heligoland (¼ sq. m.). With the exception of Fanö, which is Danish, all these islands belong to Prussia. In the North Frisian group there are also several smaller islands called Halligen. These rise generally only a few feet above the level of the sea, and are crowned by a single house standing on an artificial mound and protected by a surrounding dike or embankment.

Bibliography.—Staring, De Bodem van Nederland (1856); Blink, Nederland en zijne Bewoners (1892); P. H. Witkamp, Aardrijkskundig Woordenboek van Nederland (1895); P. W. J. Teding van Berkhout, De Landaanwinning op de Friesche Wadden (1869); J. de Vries and T. Focken, Ostfriesland (1881); Dr D. F. Buitenrust Hettema, Fryske Bybleteek (Utrecht, 1895); Dr Eugen Traeger, Die Halligen der Nordsee (Stuttgart, 1892); also Globus, vol. lxxviii. (1900), No. 15; P. Axelsen, in Deut. Rundschau für Geog. u. Statistik (1898); Christian Jensen, Vom Dünenstrand der Nordsee und vom Wattenmeer (Schleswig, 1901), which contains a bibliography; Osterloh, Wangeroog und sein Seebad (Emden, 1884); Zwickert, Führer durch das Nordseebad Wangeroog (Oldenburg, 1894); Nellner, Die Nordseeinsel Spickeroog (Emden, 1884); Tongers, Die Nordseeinsel Langeoog (2nd ed., Norden, 1892); Meier, Die Nordseeinsel Borkum (10th ed., Emden, 1894); Herquet, Die Insel Borkum, &c. (Emden, 1886); Scherz, Die Nordseeinsel Juist (2nd ed., Norden, 1893); von Bertouch, Vor 40 Jahren: Natur und Kultur auf der Insel Nordstrand (Weimar, 1891); W. G. Black, Heligoland and the Islands of the North Sea (Glasgow, 1888).

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FRISIANS (Lat. Frisii; in Med. Lat. Frisones, Frisiones, Fresones; in their own tongue Frêsa, Frêsen), a people of Teutonic (Low-German) stock, who in the first century of our era were found by the Romans in occupation of the coast lands stretching from the mouth of the Scheldt to that of the Ems. They were nearly related both by speech and blood to the Saxons and Angles, and other Low German tribes, who lived to the east of the Ems and in Holstein and Schleswig. The first historical notices of the Frisians are found in the Annals of Tacitus. They were rendered (or a portion of them) tributary by Drusus, and became socii of the Roman people. In A.D. 28 the exactions of a Roman official drove them to revolt, and their subjection was henceforth nominal. They submitted again to Cn. Domitius Corbulo in the year 47, but shortly afterwards the emperor Claudius ordered the withdrawal of all Roman troops to the left bank of the Rhine. In 58 they attempted unsuccessfully to appropriate certain districts between the Rhine and the Yssel, and in 70 they took part in the campaign of Claudius Civilis. From this time onwards their name practically disappears. As regards their geographical position Ptolemy states that they inhabited the coast above the Bructeri as far as the Ems, while Tacitus speaks of them as adjacent to the Rhine. But there is some reason for believing that the part of Holland which lies to the west of the Zuider Zee was at first inhabited by a different people, the Canninefates, a sister tribe to the Batavi. A trace of this people is perhaps preserved in the name Kennemerland or Kinnehem, formerly applied to the same district. Possibly, therefore, Tacitus’s statement holds good only for the period subsequent to the revolt of Civilis, when we hear of the Canninefates for the last time.

In connexion with the movements of the migration period the Frisians are hardly ever mentioned, though some of them are said to have surrendered to the Roman prince Constantius about the year 293. On the other hand we hear very frequently of Saxons in the coast regions of the Netherlands. Since the Saxons (Old Saxons) of later times were an inland people, one can hardly help suspecting either that the two nations have been confused or, what is more probable, that a considerable mixture of population, whether by conquest or otherwise, had taken place. Procopius (Goth. iv. 20) speaks of the Frisians as one of the nations which inhabited Britain in his day, but we have no evidence from other sources to bear out his statement. In Anglo-Saxon poetry mention is frequently made of a Frisian king named Finn, the son of Folcwalda, who came into conflict with a certain Hnaef, a vassal of the Danish king Healfdene, about the middle of the 5th century. Hnaef was killed, but his followers subsequently slew Finn in revenge. The incident is obscure in many respects, but it is perhaps worth noting that Hnaef’s chief follower, Hengest, may quite possibly be identical with the founder of the Kentish dynasty. About the year 520 the Frisians are said to have joined the Frankish prince Theodberht in destroying a piratical expedition which had sailed up the Rhine under Chocilaicus (Hygelac), king of the Götar. Towards the close of the century they begin to figure much more prominently in Frankish writings. There is no doubt that by this time their territories had been greatly extended in both directions. Probably some Frisians took part with the Angles and Saxons in their sea-roving expeditions, and assisted their neighbours in their invasions and subsequent conquest of England and the Scottish lowlands.

The rise of the power of the Franks and the advance of their dominion northwards brought on a collision with the Frisians, who in the 7th century were still in possession of the whole of the seacoast, and apparently ruled over the greater part of modern Flanders. Under the protection of the Frankish king Dagobert (622-638), the Christian missionaries Amandus (St Amand) and Eligius (St Eloi) attempted the conversion of these Flemish Frisians, and their efforts were attended with a certain measure of success; but farther north the building of a church by Dagobert at Trajectum (Utrecht) at once aroused the fierce hostility of the heathen tribesmen of the Zuider Zee. The “free” Frisians could not endure this Frankish outpost on their borders. Utrecht was attacked and captured, and the church destroyed. The first missionary to meet with any success among the Frisians was the Englishman Wilfrid of York, who, being driven by a storm upon the coast, was hospitably received by the king, Adgild or Adgisl, and was allowed to preach Christianity in the land. Adgild appears to have admitted the overlordship of the Frankish king, Dagobert II. (675). Under his successor, however, Radbod (Frisian Rêdbâd), an attempt was made to extirpate Christianity and to free the Frisians from the Frankish subjection. He was, however, beaten by Pippin of Heristal in the battle of Dorstadt (689), and was compelled to cede West Frisia (Frisia citerior) from the Scheldt to the Zuider Zee to the conqueror. On Pippin’s death Radbod again attacked the Franks and advanced as far as Cologne, where he defeated Charles Martel, Pippin’s natural son. Eventually, however, Charles prevailed and compelled the Frisians to submit. Radbod died in 719, but for some years his successors struggled against the Frankish power. A final defeat was, however, inflicted upon them by Charles Martel in 734, which secured the supremacy of the Franks in the north, though it was not until the days of Charles the Great (785) that the subjection of the Frisians was completed. Meanwhile Christianity had been making its conquests in the land, mainly through the lifelong labours and preaching of the Englishman Willibrord, who came to Frisia in 692 and made Utrecht his headquarters. He was consecrated (695) at Rome archbishop of the Frisians, and on his return founded a number of bishoprics in the northern Netherlands, and continued his labours unremittingly until his death in 739. It is an interesting fact that both Wilfrid and Willibrord appear to have found no difficulty from the first in preaching to the Frisians in their native dialect, which was so nearly allied to their own Anglo-Saxon tongue. The see of Utrecht founded by Willibrord has remained the chief see of the Northern Netherlands from his day to our own. Friesland was likewise the scene of a portion of the missionary labours of a greater than Willibrord, the famous Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans, also an Englishman. It was at Dokkum in Friesland that he met a martyr’s death (754).

Charles the Great granted the Frisians important privileges under a code known as the Lex Frisionum, based upon the ancient laws of the country. They received the title of freemen and were allowed to choose their own podestat or imperial governor. In the Lex Frisionum three districts are clearly distinguished: West Frisia from the Zwin to the Flie; Middle Frisia from the Flie to the Lauwers; East Frisia from the Lauwers to the Weser. At the partition treaty of Verdun (843) Frisia became part of Lotharingia or Lorraine; at the treaty of Mersen (870) it was divided between the kingdoms of the East Franks (Austrasia) and the West Franks (Westrasia); in 880 the whole country was united to Austrasia; in 911 it fell under the dominion of Charles the Simple, king of the West Franks, but the districts of East Frisia asserted their independence and for a long time governed themselves after a very simple democratic fashion. The history of West Frisia gradually loses itself in that of the countship of Holland and the see of Utrecht (see Holland and Utrecht).

The influence of the Frisians during the interval between the invasion of Britain and the loss of their independence must have been greater than is generally recognized. They were a seafaring people and engaged largely in trade, especially perhaps the slave trade, their chief emporium being Wyk te Duurstede. During the period in question there is considerable archaeological evidence for intercourse between the west coast of Norway and the regions south of the North Sea, and it is worth noting that this seems to have come to an end early in the 9th century. Probably it is no mere accident that the first appearance, or rather reappearance, of Scandinavian pirates in the west took place shortly after the overthrow of the Frisians. Since Radbod’s dominions extended from Duerstede to Heligoland his power must have been by no means inconsiderable.

Besides the Frisians discussed above there is a people called North Frisians, who inhabit the west coast of Schleswig. At present a Frisian dialect is spoken only between Tondern and 235 Husum, but formerly it extended farther both to the north and south. In historical times these North Frisians were subjects of the Danish kingdom and not connected in any way with the Frisians of the empire. They are first mentioned by Saxo Grammaticus in connexion with the exile of Knud V. Saxo recognized that they were of Frisian origin, but did not know when they had first settled in this region. Various opinions are still held with regard to the question; but it seems not unlikely that the original settlers were Frisians who had been expelled by the Franks in the 8th century. Whether the North Frisian language is entirely of Frisian origin is somewhat doubtful owing to the close relationship which Frisian bears to English. The inhabitants of the neighbouring islands, Sylt, Amrum and Föhr, who speak a kindred dialect, have apparently never regarded themselves as Frisians, and it is the view of many scholars that they are the direct descendants of the ancient Saxons.

In 1248 William of Holland, having become emperor, restored to the Frisians in his countship their ancient liberties in reward for the assistance they had rendered him in the siege of Aachen; but in 1254 they revolted, and William lost his life in the contest which ensued. After many struggles West Friesland became completely subdued, and was henceforth virtually absorbed in the county of Holland. But the Frieslanders east of the Zuider Zee obstinately resisted repeated attempts to bring them into subjection. In the course of the 14th century the country was in a state of anarchy; petty lordships sprang into existence, the interests of the common weal were forgotten or disregarded, and the people began to be split up into factions, and these were continually carrying on petty warfare with one another. Thus the Fetkoopers (Fatmongers) of Oostergoo had endless feuds with the Schieringers (Eelfishers) of Westergoo.

This state of affairs favoured the attempts of the counts of Holland to push their conquests eastward, but the main body of the Frisians was still independent when the countship of Holland passed into the hands of Philip the Good of Burgundy. Philip laid claim to the whole country, but the people appealed to the protection of the empire, and Frederick III., in August 1457, recognized their direct dependence on the empire and called on Philip to bring forward formal proof of his rights. Philip’s successor, Charles the Bold, summoned an assembly of notables at Enkhuizen in 1469, in order to secure their homage; but the conference was without result, and the duke’s attention was soon absorbed by other and more important affairs. The marriage of Maximilian of Austria with the heiress of Burgundy was to be productive of a change in the fortunes of that part of Frisia which lies between the Vlie and the Lauwers. In 1498 Maximilian reversed the policy of his father Frederick III., and detached this territory, known afterwards as the province of Friesland, from the empire. He gave it as a fief to Albert of Saxony, who thoroughly crushed out all resistance. In 1523 it fell with all the rest of the provinces of the Netherlands under the strong rule of the emperor Charles, the grandson of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy.

That part of Frisia which lies to the east of the Lauwers had a divided history. The portion which lies between the Lauwers and the Ems after some struggles for independence had, like the rest of the country, to submit itself to Charles. It became ultimately the province of the town and district of Groningen (Stadt en Landen) (see Groningen). The easternmost part between the Ems and the Weser, which had since 1454 been a county, was ruled by the descendants of Edzard Cirksena, and was attached to the empire. The last of the Cirksenas, Count Charles Edward, died in 1744 and in default of heirs male the king of Prussia took possession of the county.

The province of Friesland was one of the seven provinces which by the treaty known as the Union of Utrecht bound themselves together to resist the tyranny of Spain. From 1579 to 1795 Friesland remained one of the constituent parts of the republic of the United Provinces, but it always jealously insisted on its sovereign rights, especially against the encroachments of the predominant province of Holland. It maintained throughout the whole of the republican period a certain distinctiveness of nationality, which was marked by the preservation of a different dialect and of a separate stadtholder. Count William Lewis of Nassau-Siegen, nephew and son-in-law of William the Silent, was chosen stadtholder, and through all the vicissitudes of the 17th and 18th centuries the stadtholdership was held by one of his descendants. Frederick Henry of Orange was stadtholder of six provinces, but not of Friesland, and even during the stadtholderless periods which followed the deaths of William II. and William III. of Orange the Frisians remained stanch to the family of Nassau-Siegen. Finally, by the revolution of 1748, William of Nassau-Siegen, stadtholder of Friesland (who, by default of heirs male of the elder line, had become William IV., prince of Orange), was made hereditary stadtholder of all the provinces. His grandson in 1815 took the title of William I., king of the Netherlands. The male line of the “Frisian” Nassaus came to an end with the death of King William III. in 1890.

Bibliography—See Tacitus, Ann. iv. 72 f., xi. 19 f., xiii. 54; Hist. iv. 15 f.; Germ. 34; Ptolemy, Geogr. ii. 11, § 11; Dio Cassius liv. 32; Eumenius, Paneg. iv. 9; the Anglo-Saxon poems, Finn, Beowulf and Widsith; Fredegarii Chronici continuatio and various German Annals; Gesta regum Francorum; Eddius, Vita Wilfridi, cap. 25 f.; Bede, Hist. Eccles, iv. 22, v. 9 f.; Alcuin, Vita Willebrordi; I. Undset, Aarbger for nordisk Oldkyndighed (1880), p. 89 ff. (cf. E. Mogk in Paul’s Grundriss d. germ. Philologie ii. p. 623 ff.); Ubbo Emmius, Rerum Frisicarum historia (Leiden, 1616); Pirius Winsemius, Chronique van Vriesland (Franoker, 1822); C. Scotanus, Beschryvinge end Chronyck van des Heerlickheydt van Frieslandt (1655); Groot Placaat en Charter-boek van Friesland (ed. Baron C. F. zu Schwarzenberg) (5 vols., Leeuwarden, 1768-1793); T. D. Wiarda, Ost-frieschische Gesch. (vols. i.-ix., Aurich, 1791) (vol. x., Bremen, 1817); J. Dirks, Geschiedkundig onderzoek van den Koophandel der Friezen (Utrecht, 1846); O. Klopp, Gesch. Ostfrieslands (3 vols., Hanover, 1854-1858); Hooft van Iddekinge, Friesland en de Friezen in de Middeleeuwen (Leiden, 1881); A. Telting, Het Oudfriesche Stadrecht (The Hague, 1882); P. J. Blok, Friesland im Mittelalter (Leer, 1891).

FRITH (or Fryth), JOHN (c. 1503-1533), English Reformer and Protestant martyr, was born at Westerham, Kent. He was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, where Gardiner, afterwards bishop of Winchester, was his tutor. At the invitation of Cardinal Wolsey, after taking his degree he migrated (December 1525) to the newly founded college of St Frideswide or Cardinal College (now Christ Church), Oxford. The sympathetic interest which he showed in the Reformation movement in Germany caused him to be suspected as a heretic, and led to his imprisonment for some months. Subsequently he appears to have resided chiefly at the newly founded Protestant university of Marburg, where he became acquainted with several scholars and reformers of note, especially Patrick Hamilton (q.v.). Frith’s first publication was a translation of Hamilton’s Places, made shortly after the martyrdom of its author; and soon afterwards the Revelation of Antichrist, a translation from the German, appeared, along with A Pistle to the Christen Reader, by “Richard Brightwell” (supposed to be Frith), and An Antithesis wherein are compared togeder Christes Actes and our Holye Father the Popes, dated “at Malborow in the lande of Hesse,” 12th July 1529. His Disputacyon of Purgatorye, a treatise in three books, against Rastell, Sir T. More and Fisher (bishop of Rochester) respectively, was published at the same place in 1531. While at Marburg, Frith also assisted Tyndale, whose acquaintance he had made at Oxford (or perhaps in London) in his literary labours. In 1532 he ventured back to England, apparently on some business in connexion with the prior of Reading. Warrants for his arrest were almost immediately issued at the instance of Sir T. More, then lord chancellor. Frith ultimately fell into the hands of the authorities at Milton Shore in Essex, as he was on the point of making his escape to Flanders. The rigour of his imprisonment in the Tower was somewhat abated when Sir T. Audley succeeded to the chancellorship, and it was understood that both Cromwell and Cranmer were disposed to show great leniency. But the treacherous circulation of a manuscript “lytle treatise” on the sacraments, which Frith had written for the information of a friend, and without any view to publication, served further to excite the 236 hostility of his enemies. In consequence of a sermon preached before him against the “sacramentaries,” the king ordered that Frith should be examined; he was afterwards tried and found guilty of having denied, with regard to the doctrines of purgatory and of transubstantiation, that they were necessary articles of faith. On the 23rd of June 1533 he was handed over to the secular arm, and at Smithfield on the 4th of July following he was burnt at the stake. During his captivity he wrote, besides several letters of interest, a reply to More’s letter against Frith’s “lytle treatise”; also two tracts entitled A Mirror or Glass to know thyself, and A Mirror or Looking-glass wherein you may behold the Sacrament of Baptism.

Frith is an interesting and so far important figure in English ecclesiastical history as having been the first to maintain and defend that doctrine regarding the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, which ultimately came to be incorporated in the English communion office. Twenty-three years after Frith’s death as a martyr to the doctrine of that office, that “Christ’s natural body and blood are in Heaven, not here,” Cranmer, who had been one of his judges, went to the stake for the same belief. Within three years more, it had become the publicly professed faith of the entire English nation.

See A. à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (ed. P. Bliss, 1813), i. p. 74; John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (ed. G. Townshend, 1843-1849), v. pp. 1-16 (also Index); G. Burnet, Hist. of the Reformation of the Church of England (ed. N. Pocock, 1865), i. p. 273; L. Richmond, The Fathers of the English Church, i. (1807); Life and Martyrdom of John Frith (London, 1824), published by the Church of England Tract Society; Deborah Alcock, Six Heroic Men (1906).

FRITH, WILLIAM POWELL (1819-1909), English painter, was born at Aldfield, in Yorkshire, on the 9th of January 1819. His parents moved in 1826 to Harrogate, where his father became landlord of the Dragon Inn, and it was then that the boy began his general education at a school at Knaresborough. Later he went for about two years to a school at St Margaret’s, near Dover, where he was placed specially under the direction of the drawing-master, as a step towards his preparation for the profession which his father had decided on as the one that he wished him to adopt. In 1835 he was entered as a student in the well-known art school kept by Henry Sass in Bloomsbury, from which he passed after two years to the Royal Academy schools. His first independent experience was gained in 1839, when he went about for some months in Lincolnshire executing several commissions for portraits; but he soon began to attempt compositions, and in 1840 his first picture, “Malvolio, cross-gartered before the Countess Olivia,” appeared at the Royal Academy. During the next few years he produced several notable paintings, among them “Squire Thornhill relating his town adventures to the Vicar’s family,” and “The Village Pastor,” which established his reputation as one of the most promising of the younger men of that time. This last work was exhibited in 1845, and in the autumn of that year he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. His promotion to the rank of Academician followed in 1853, when he was chosen to fill the vacancy caused by Turner’s death. The chief pictures painted by him during his tenure of Associateship were: “An English Merry-making in the Olden Time,” “Old Woman accused of Witchcraft,” “The Coming of Age,” “Sancho and Don Quixote,” “Hogarth before the Governor of Calais,” and the “Scene from Goldsmith’s ’Good-natured Man,’” which was commissioned in 1850 by Mr Sheepshanks, and bequeathed by him to the South Kensington Museum. Then came a succession of large compositions which gained for the artist an extraordinary popularity. “Life at the Seaside,” better known as “Ramsgate Sands,” was exhibited in 1854, and was bought by Queen Victoria; “The Derby Day,” in 1858; “Claude Duval,” in 1860; “The Railway Station,” in 1862; “The Marriage of the Prince of Wales,” painted for Queen Victoria, in 1865; “The Last Sunday of Charles II.,” in 1867; “The Salon d’Or,” in 1871; “The Road to Ruin,” a series, in 1878; a similar series, “The Race for Wealth,” shown at a gallery in King Street, St James’s, in 1880; “The Private View,” in 1883; and “John Knox at Holyrood,” in 1886. Frith also painted a considerable number of portraits of well-known people. In 1889 he became an honorary retired academician. His “Derby Day” is in the National Gallery of British Art. In his youth, in common with the men by whom he was surrounded, he had leanings towards romance, and he scored many successes as a painter of imaginative subjects. In these he proved himself to be possessed of exceptional qualities as a colourist and manipulator, qualities that promised to earn for him a secure place among the best executants of the British School. But in his middle period he chose a fresh direction. Fascinated by the welcome which the public gave to his first attempts to illustrate the life of his own times, he undertook a considerable series of large canvases, in which he commented on the manners and morals of society as he found it. He became a pictorial preacher, a painter who moralized about the everyday incidents of modern existence; and he sacrificed some of his technical variety. There remained, however, a remarkable sense of characterization, and an acute appreciation of dramatic effect. Frith died on the 2nd of November 1909.

Frith published his Autobiography and Reminiscences in 1887, and Further Reminiscences in 1889.

FRITILLARY (Fritillaria: from Lat. fritillus, a chess-board, so called from the chequered markings on the petals), a genus of hardy bulbous plants of the natural order Liliaceae, containing about 50 species widely distributed in the northern hemisphere. The genus is represented in Britain by the fritillary or snake’s head, which occurs in moist meadows in the southern half of England, especially in Oxfordshire. A much larger plant is the crown imperial (F. imperialis), a native of western Asia and well known in gardens. This grows to a height of about 3 ft., the lower part of the stoutish stem being furnished with leaves, while near the top is developed a crown of large pendant flowers surmounted by a tuft of bright green leaves like those of the lower part of the stem, only smaller. The flowers are bell-shaped, yellow or red, and in some of the forms double. The plant grows freely in good garden soil, preferring a deep well-drained loam, and is all the better for a top-dressing of manure as it approaches the flowering stage. Strong clumps of five or six roots of one kind have a very fine effect. It is a very suitable subject for the back row in mixed flower borders, or for recesses in the front part of shrubbery borders. It flowers in April or early in May. There are a few named varieties, but the most generally grown are the single and double yellow, and the single and double red, the single red having also two variegated varieties, with the leaves striped respectively with white and yellow.

“Fritillary” is also the name of a kind of butterfly.

FRITZLAR, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Cassel, on the left bank of the Eder, 16 m. S.W. from Cassel, on the railway Wabern-Wildungen. Pop. (1905) 3448. It is a prettily situated old-fashioned place, with an Evangelical and two Roman Catholic churches, one of the latter, that of St Peter, a striking medieval edifice. As early as 732 Boniface, the apostle of Germany, established the church of St Peter and a small Benedictine monastery at Frideslar, “the quiet home” or “abode of peace.” Before long the school connected with the monastery became famous, and among its earlier scholars it numbered Sturm, abbot of Fulda, and Megingod, second bishop of Würzburg. When Boniface found himself unable to continue the supervision of the society himself, he entrusted the office to Wigbert of Glastonbury, who thus became the first abbot of Fritzlar. In 774 the little settlement was taken and burnt by the Saxons; but it evidently soon recovered from the blow. For a short time after 786 it was the seat of the bishopric of Buraburg, which had been founded by Boniface in 741. At the diet of Fritzlar in 919 Henry I. was elected German king. In the beginning of the 13th century the village received municipal rights; in 1232 it was captured and burned by the landgrave Conrad of Thuringia and his allies; in 1631 it was taken by William of Hesse; in 1760 it was successfully defended by General Luckner against the French; and in 1761 it was occupied by the French and unsuccessfully bombarded by the Allies. As a principality Fritzlar continued subject to the archbishopric 237 of Mainz till 1802, when it was incorporated with Hesse. From 1807 to 1814 it belonged to the kingdom of Westphalia; and in 1866 passed with Hesse Cassel to Prussia.

FRIULI (in the local dialect, Furlanei), a district at the head of the Adriatic Sea, at present divided between Italy and Austria, the Italian portion being included in the province of Udine and the district of Portogruaro, and the Austrian comprising the province of Görz and Gradiska, and the so-called Idrian district. In the north and east Friuli includes portions of the Julian and Carnic Alps, while the south is an alluvial plain richly watered by the Isonzo, the Tagliamento, and many lesser streams which, although of small volume during the dry season, come down in enormous floods after rain or thaw. The inhabitants, known as Furlanians, are mainly Italians, but they speak a dialect of their own which contains Celtic elements. The area of the country is about 3300 sq. m.; it contains about 700,000 inhabitants.

Friuli derives its name from the Roman town of Forum Julii, or Forojulium, the modern Cividale, which is said by Paulus Diaconus to have been founded by Julius Caesar. In the 2nd century B.C. the district was subjugated by the Romans, and became part of Gallia Transpadana. During the Roman period, besides Forum Julii, its principal towns were Concordia, Aquileia and Vedinium. On the conquest of the country by the Lombards during the 6th century it was made one of their thirty-six duchies, the capital being Forum Julii or, as they called it, Civitas Austriae. It is needless to repeat the list of dukes of the Lombard line, from Gisulf (d. 611) to Hrothgaud, who fell a victim to his opposition to Charlemagne about 776; their names and exploits may be read in the Historia Langobardorum of Paulus Diaconus, and they were mainly occupied in struggles with the Avars and other barbarian peoples, and in resisting the pretensions of the Lombard kings. The discovery, however, of Gisulf’s grave at Cividale, in 1874, is an interesting proof of the historian’s authenticity. Charlemagne filled Hrothgaud’s place with one of his own followers, and the frontier position of Friuli gave the new line of counts, dukes or margraves (for they are variously designated) the opportunity of acquiring importance by exploits against the Bulgarians, Slovenians and other hostile peoples to the east. After the death of Charlemagne Friuli shared in general in the fortunes of northern Italy. In the 11th century the ducal rights over the greater part of Friuli were bestowed by the emperor Henry IV. on the patriarch of Aquileia; but towards the close of the 14th century the nobles called in the assistance of Venice, which, after defeating the archbishop, afforded a new illustration of Aesop’s well-known fable, by securing possession of the country for itself. The eastern part of Friuli was held by the counts of Görz till 1500, when on the failure of their line it was appropriated by the German king, Maximilian I., and remained in the possession of the house of Austria until the Napoleonic wars. By the peace of Campo Formio in 1797 the Venetian district also came to Austria, and on the formation of the Napoleonic kingdom of Italy in 1805 the department of Passariano was made to include the whole of Venetian and part of Austrian Friuli, and in 1809 the rest was added to the Illyrian provinces. The title of duke of Friuli was borne by Marshal Duroc. In 1815 the whole country was recovered by the emperor of Austria, who himself assumed the ducal title and coat of arms; and it was not till 1866 that the Venetian portion was again ceded to Italy by the peace of Prague. The capital of the country is Udine, and its arms are a crowned eagle on a field azure.

See Manzano, Annali del Friuli (Udine, 1858-1879); and Compendio di storia friulana (Udine, 1876); Antonini, Il Friuli orientale (Milan, 1865); von Zahn, Friaulische Studien (Vienna, 1878); Pirona, Vocabolario friulino (Venice, 1869); and L. Fracassetti, La Statistica etnografica del Friuli (Udine, 1903).

(T. As.)

FROBEN [Frobenius], JOANNES (c. 1460-1527), German printer and scholar, was born at Hammelburg in Bavaria about the year 1460. After completing his university career at Basel, where he made the acquaintance of the famous printer Johannes Auerbach (1443-1513), he established a printing house in that city about 1491, and this soon attained a European reputation for accuracy and for taste. In 1500 he married the daughter of the bookseller Wolfgang Lachner, who entered into partnership with him. He was on terms of friendship with Erasmus (q.v.), who not only had his own works printed by him, but superintended Frobenius’s editions of St Jerome, St Cyprian, Tertullian, Hilary of Poitiers and St Ambrose. His Neues Testament in Greek (1516) was used by Luther for his translation. Frobenius employed Hans Holbein to illuminate his texts. It was part of his plan to print editions of the Greek Fathers. He did not, however, live to carry out this project, but it was very creditably executed by his son Jerome and his son-in-law Nikolaus Episcopius. Frobenius died in October 1527. His work in Basel made that city in the 16th century the leading centre of the German book trade. An extant letter of Erasmus, written in the year of Frobenius’s death, gives an epitome of his life and an estimate of his character; and in it Erasmus mentions that his grief for the death of his friend was far more poignant than that which he had felt for the loss of his own brother, adding that “all the apostles of science ought to wear mourning.” The epistle concludes with an epitaph in Greek and Latin.

FROBISHER, SIR MARTIN (c. 1535-1594), English navigator and explorer, fourth child of Bernard Frobisher of Altofts in the parish of Normanton, Yorkshire, was born some time between 1530 and 1540. The family came originally from North Wales. At an early age he was sent to a school in London and placed under the care of a kinsman, Sir John York, who in 1544 placed him on board a ship belonging to a small fleet of merchantmen sailing to Guinea. By 1565 he is referred to as Captain Martin Frobisher, and in 1571-1572 as being in the public service at sea off the coast of Ireland. He married in 1559. As early as 1560 or 1561 Frobisher had formed a resolution to undertake a voyage in search of a North-West Passage to Cathay and India. The discovery of such a route was the motive of most of the Arctic voyages undertaken at that period and for long after, but Frobisher’s special merit was in being the first to give to this enterprise a national character. For fifteen years he solicited in vain the necessary means to carry his project into execution, but in 1576, mainly by help of the earl of Warwick, he was put in command of an expedition consisting of two tiny barks, the “Gabriel” and “Michael,” of about 20 to 25 tons each, and a pinnace of 10 tons, with an aggregate crew of 35.

He weighed anchor at Blackwall, and, after having received a good word from Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich, set sail on the 7th of June, by way of the Shetland Islands. Stormy weather was encountered in which the pinnace was lost, and some time afterwards the “Michael” deserted; but stoutly continuing the voyage alone, on the 28th of July the “Gabriel” sighted the coast of Labrador in lat. 62° 2′ N. Some days later the mouth of Frobisher Bay was reached, and a farther advance northwards being prevented by ice and contrary winds, Frobisher determined to sail westward up this passage (which he conceived to be a strait) to see “whether he mighte carrie himself through the same into some open sea on the backe syde.” Butcher’s Island was reached on the 18th of August, and some natives being met with here, intercourse was carried on with them for some days, the result being that five of Frobisher’s men were decoyed and captured, and never more seen. After vainly trying to get back his men, Frobisher turned homewards, and reached London on the 9th of October.

Among the things which had been hastily brought away by the men was some “black earth,” and just as it seemed as if nothing more was to come of this expedition, it was noised abroad that the apparently valueless “black earth” was really a lump of gold ore. It is difficult to say how this rumour arose, and whether there was any truth in it, or whether Frobisher was a party to a deception, in order to obtain means to carry out the great idea of his life. The story, at any rate, was so far successful; the greatest enthusiasm was manifested by the court and the commercial and speculating world of the time; and next year a much more important expedition than the former was fitted out, the queen 238 lending the “Aid” from the royal navy and subscribing £1000 towards the expenses of the expedition. A Company of Cathay was established, with a charter from the crown, giving the company the sole right of sailing in every direction but the east; Frobisher was appointed high admiral of all lands and waters that might be discovered by him. On the 26th of May 1577 the expedition, consisting, besides the “Aid,” of the ships “Gabriel” and “Michael,” with boats, pinnaces and an aggregate complement of 120 men, including miners, refiners, &c., left Blackwall, and sailing by the north of Scotland reached Hall’s Island at the mouth of Frobisher Bay on the 17th of July. A few days later the country and the south side of the bay was solemnly taken possession of in the queen’s name. Several weeks were now spent in collecting ore, but very little was done in the way of discovery, Frobisher being specially directed by his commission to “defer the further discovery of the passage until another time.” There was much parleying and some skirmishing with the natives, and earnest but futile attempts made to recover the men captured the previous year. The return was begun on the 23rd of August, and the “Aid” reached Milford Haven on the 23rd of September; the “Gabriel” and “Michael,” having separated, arrived later at Bristol and Yarmouth.

Frobisher was received and thanked by the queen at Windsor. Great preparations were made and considerable expense incurred for the assaying of the great quantity of “ore” (about 200 tons) brought home. This took up much time, and led to considerable dispute among the various parties interested. Meantime the faith of the queen and others remained strong in the productiveness of the newly discovered territory, which she herself named Meta Incognita, and it was resolved to send out a larger expedition than ever, with all necessaries for the establishment of a colony of 100 men. Frobisher was again received by the queen at Greenwich, and her Majesty threw a fine chain of gold around his neck. On the 31st of May 1578 the expedition, consisting in all of fifteen vessels, left Harwich, and sailing by the English Channel on the 20th of June reached the south of Greenland, where Frobisher and some of his men managed to land. On the 2nd of July the foreland of Frobisher Bay was sighted, but stormy weather and dangerous ice prevented the rendezvous from being gained, and, besides causing the wreck of the barque “Dennis” of 100 tons, drove the fleet unwittingly up a new (Hudson) strait. After proceeding about 60 m. up this “mistaken strait,” Frobisher with apparent reluctance turned back, and after many bufferings and separations the fleet at last came to anchor in Frobisher Bay. Some attempt was made at founding a settlement, and a large quantity of ore was shipped; but, as might be expected, there was much dissension and not a little discontent among so heterogeneous a company, and on the last day of August the fleet set out on its return to England, which was reached in the beginning of October. Thus ended what was little better than a fiasco, though Frobisher himself cannot be held to blame for the result; the scheme was altogether chimerical, and the “ore” seems to have been not worth smelting.

In 1580 Frobisher was employed as captain of one of the queen’s ships in preventing the designs of Spain to assist the Irish insurgents, and in the same year obtained a grant of the reversionary title of clerk of the royal navy. In 1585 he commanded the “Primrose,” as vice-admiral to Sir F. Drake in his expedition to the West Indies, and when soon afterwards the country was threatened with invasion by the Spanish Armada, Frobisher’s name was one of four mentioned by the lord high admiral in a letter to the queen of “men of the greatest experience that this realm hath,” and for his signal services in the “Triumph,” in the dispersion of the Armada, he was knighted. He continued to cruise about in the Channel until 1590, when he was sent in command of a small fleet to the coast of Spain. In 1591 he visited his native Altofts, and there married his second wife, a daughter of Lord Wentworth, becoming at the same time a landed proprietor in Yorkshire and Notts. He found, however, little leisure for a country life, and the following year took charge of the fleet fitted out by Sir Walter Raleigh to the Spanish coast, returning with a rich prize. In November 1594 he was engaged with a squadron in the siege and relief of Brest, when he received a wound at Fort Crozon from which he died at Plymouth on the 22nd of November. His body was taken to London and buried at St Giles’, Cripplegate. Though he appears to have been somewhat rough in his bearing, and too strict a disciplinarian to be much loved, Frobisher was undoubtedly one of the most able seamen of his time and justly takes rank among England’s great naval heroes.

See Hakluyt’s Voyages; the Hakluyt Society’s Three Voyages of Frobisher; Rev. F. Jones’s Life of Frobisher (1878); Julian Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy (1898).

FROCK, originally a long, loose gown with broad sleeves, more especially that worn by members of the religious orders. The word is derived from the O. Fr. froc, of somewhat obscure origin; in medieval Lat. froccus appears also as floccus, which, if it is the original, as Du Cange suggests (literula mutata), would connect the word with “flock” (q.v.), properly a tuft of wool. Another suggestion refers the word to the German Rock, a coat (cf. “rochet”), which in some rare instances is found as hrock. The formal stripping off of the frock became part of the ceremony of degradation or deprivation in the case of a condemned monk; hence the expression “to unfrock” (med. Lat. defrocare, Fr. défroquer) used of the degradation of monks and of priests from holy orders. In the middle ages “frock” was also used of a long loose coat worn by men and of a coat of mail, the “frock of mail.” In something of this sense the word survived into the 19th century for a coat with long skirts, now called the “frock coat.” The word in now chiefly used in English for a child’s or young girl’s dress, of body and skirt, but is frequently used of a woman’s dress. Du Cange (Glossarium, s.v. flocus) quotes an early use of the word for a woman’s garment (Miracula S. Udalrici, ap. Mabillon, Acta Sanctorum Benedict, saec. v. p. 466). Here a woman, possessed of a devil, is cured, and sends her garments to the tomb of the saint, and a dalmatic is ordered to be made out of the flocus or frocus. “Frock” also appears in the “smock frock,” once the typical outer garment of the English peasant. It consists of a loose shirt of linen or other material, worn over the other clothes and hanging to about the knee; its characteristic feature is the “smocking,” a puckered honeycomb stitching round the neck and shoulders.

FROEBEL, FRIEDRICH WILHELM AUGUST (1782-1852), German philosopher, philanthropist and educational reformer, was born at Oberweissbach, a village of the Thuringian forest, on the 21st of April 1782. Like Comenius, with whom he had much in common, he was neglected in his youth, and the remembrance of his own early sufferings made him in after life the more eager in promoting the happiness of children. His mother he lost in his infancy, and his father, the pastor of Oberweissbach and the surrounding district, attended to his parish but not to his family. Friedrich soon had a stepmother, and neglect was succeeded by stepmotherly attention; but a maternal uncle took pity on him, and gave him a home for some years at Stadt-Ilm. Here he went to the village school, but like many thoughtful boys he passed for a dunce. Throughout life he was always seeking for hidden connexions and an underlying unity in all things. Nothing of the kind was to be perceived in the piecemeal studies of the school, and Froebel’s mind, busy as it was for itself, would not work for the masters. His half-brother was therefore thought more worthy of a university education, and Friedrich was apprenticed for two years to a forester (1797-1799).

Left to himself in the Thuringian forest, Froebel began to study nature, and without scientific instruction he obtained a profound insight into the uniformity and essential unity of nature’s laws. Years afterwards the celebrated Jahn (the “Father Jahn” of the German gymnasts) told a Berlin student of a queer fellow he had met, who made out all sorts of wonderful things from stones and cobwebs. This queer fellow was Froebel; and the habit of making out general truths from the observation of nature, especially from plants and trees, dated from the solitary rambles in the forest. No training could have been better suited to strengthen his inborn tendency to mysticism; and when he 239 left the forest at the early age of seventeen, he seems to have been possessed by the main ideas which influenced him all his life. The conception which in him dominated all others was the unity of nature; and he longed to study natural sciences that he might find in them various applications of nature’s universal laws. With great difficulty he got leave to join his elder brother at the university of Jena, and there for a year he went from lecture-room to lecture-room hoping to grasp that connexion of the sciences which had for him far more attraction than any particular science in itself. But Froebel’s allowance of money was very small, and his skill in the management of money was never great, so his university career ended in an imprisonment of nine weeks for a debt of thirty shillings. He then returned home with very poor prospects, but much more intent on what he calls the course of “self-completion” (Vervollkommnung meines selbst) than on “getting on” in a worldly point of view. He was sent to learn farming, but was recalled in consequence of the failing health of his father. In 1802 the father died, and Froebel, now twenty years old, had to shift for himself. It was some time before he found his true vocation, and for the next three and a half years we find him at work now in one part of Germany now in another—sometimes land-surveying, sometimes acting as accountant, sometimes as private secretary; but in all this his “outer life was far removed from his inner life,” and in spite of his outward circumstances he became more and more conscious that a great task lay before him for the good of humanity. The nature of the task, however, was not clear to him, and it seemed determined by accident. While studying architecture in Frankfort-on-Main, he became acquainted with the director of a model school, who had caught some of the enthusiasm of Pestalozzi. This friend saw that Froebel’s true field was education, and he persuaded him to give up architecture and take a post in the model school. In this school Froebel worked for two years with remarkable success, but he then retired and undertook the education of three lads of one family. In this he could not satisfy himself, and he obtained the parents’ consent to his taking the boys to Yverdon, near Neuchâtel, and there forming with them a part of the celebrated institution of Pestalozzi. Thus from 1807 till 1809 Froebel was drinking in Pestalozzianism at the fountain-head, and qualifying himself to carry on the work which Pestalozzi had begun. For the science of education had to deduce from Pestalozzi’s experience principles which Pestalozzi himself could not deduce. And “Froebel, the pupil of Pestalozzi, and a genius like his master, completed the reformer’s system; taking the results at which Pestalozzi had arrived through the necessities of his position, Froebel developed the ideas involved in them, not by further experience but by deduction from the nature of man, and thus he attained to the conception of true human development and to the requirements of true education” (Schmidt’s Geschichte der Pädagogik).

Holding that man and nature, inasmuch as they proceed from the same source, must be governed by the same laws, Froebel longed for more knowledge of natural science. Even Pestalozzi seemed to him not to “honour science in her divinity.” He therefore determined to continue the university course which had been so rudely interrupted eleven years before, and in 1811 he began studying at Göttingen, whence he proceeded to Berlin. But again his studies were interrupted, this time by the king of Prussia’s celebrated call “to my people.” Though not a Prussian, Froebel was heart and soul a German. He therefore responded to the call, enlisted in Lützow’s corps, and went through the campaign of 1813. But his military ardour did not take his mind off education. “Everywhere,” he writes, “as far as the fatigues I underwent allowed, I carried in my thoughts my future calling as educator; yes, even in the few engagements in which I had to take part. Even in these I could gather experience for the task I proposed to myself.” Froebel’s soldiering showed him the value of discipline and united action, how the individual belongs not to himself but to the whole body, and how the whole body supports the individual.

Froebel was rewarded for his patriotism by the friendship of two men whose names will always be associated with his, Langethal and Middendorff. These young men, ten years younger than Froebel, became attached to him in the field, and were ever afterwards his devoted followers, sacrificing all their prospects in life for the sake of carrying out his ideas.

At the peace of Fontainebleau (signed in May 1814) Froebel returned to Berlin, and became curator of the museum of mineralogy under Professor Weiss. In accepting this appointment from the government he seemed to turn aside from his work as educator; but if not teaching he was learning. More and more the thought possessed him that the one thing needful for man was unity of development, perfect evolution in accordance with the laws of his being, such evolution as science discovers in the other organisms of nature. He at first intended to become a teacher of natural science, but before long wider views dawned upon him. Langethal and Middendorff were in Berlin, engaged in tuition. Froebel gave them regular instruction in his theory, and at length, counting on their support, he resolved to set about realizing his own idea of “the new education.” This was in 1816. Three years before one of his brothers, a clergyman, had died of fever caught from the French prisoners. His widow was still living in the parsonage at Griesheim, a village on the Ilm. Froebel gave up his post, and set out for Griesheim on foot, spending his very last groschen on the way for bread. Here he undertook the education of his orphan niece and nephews, and also of two more nephews sent him by another brother. With these he opened a school and wrote to Middendorff and Langethal to come and help in the experiment. Middendorff came at once, Langethal a year or two later, when the school had been moved to Keilhau, another of the Thuringian villages, which became the Mecca of the new faith. In Keilhau Froebel, Langethal, Middendorff and Barop, a relation of Middendorff’s, all married and formed an educational community. Such zeal could not be fruitless, and the school gradually increased, though for many years its teachers, with Froebel at their head, were in the greatest straits for money and at times even for food. After fourteen years’ experience he determined to start other institutions to work in connexion with the parent institution at Keilhau, and being offered by a private friend the use of a castle on the Wartensee, in the canton of Lucerne, he left Keilhau under the direction of Barop, and with Langethal he opened the Swiss institution. The ground, however, was very ill chosen. The Catholic clergy resisted what they considered as a Protestant invasion, and the experiment on the Wartensee and at Willisau in the same canton, to which the institution was moved in 1833, never had a fair chance. It was in vain that Middendorff at Froebel’s call left his wife and family at Keilhau, and laboured for four years in Switzerland without once seeing them. The Swiss institution never flourished. But the Swiss government wished to turn to account the presence of the great educator; so young teachers were sent to Froebel for instruction, and finally Froebel moved to Burgdorf (a Bernese town of some importance, and famous from Pestalozzi’s labours there thirty years earlier) to undertake the establishment of a public orphanage and also to superintend a course of teaching for schoolmasters. The elementary teachers of the canton were to spend three months every alternate year at Burgdorf, and there compare experiences, and learn of distinguished men such as Froebel and Bitzius. In his conferences with these teachers Froebel found that the schools suffered from the state of the raw material brought into them. Till the school age was reached the children were entirely neglected. Froebel’s conception of harmonious development naturally led him to attach much importance to the earliest years, and his great work on The Education of Man, published as early as 1826, deals chiefly with the child up to the age of seven. At Burgdorf his thoughts were much occupied with the proper treatment of young children, and in scheming for them a graduated course of exercises, modelled on the games in which he observed them to be most interested. In his eagerness to carry out his new plans he grew impatient of official restraints; so he returned to Keilhau, and soon afterwards opened the first Kindergarten or “Garden of Children,” in the neighbouring village of Blankenburg (1837). Firmly convinced of the importance of 240 the Kindergarten for the whole human race, Froebel described his system in a weekly paper (his Sonntagsblatt) which appeared from the middle of 1837 till 1840. He also lectured in great towns; and he gave a regular course of instruction to young teachers at Blankenburg. But although the principles of the Kindergarten were gradually making their way, the first Kindergarten was failing for want of funds. It had to be given up, and Froebel, now a widower (he had lost his wife in 1839), carried on his course for teachers first at Keilhau, and from 1848, for the last four years of his life, at or near Liebenstein, in the Thuringian forest, and in the duchy of Meiningen. It is in these last years that the man Froebel will be best known to posterity, for in 1849 he attracted within the circle of his influence a woman of great intellectual power, the baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow, who has given us in her Recollections of Friedrich Froebel the only lifelike portrait we possess.

These seemed likely to be Froebel’s most peaceful days. He married again in 1851, and having now devoted himself to the training of women as educators, he spent his time in instructing his class of young female teachers. But trouble came upon him from a quarter whence he least expected it. In the great year of revolutions (1848) Froebel had hoped to turn to account the general eagerness for improvement, and Middendorff had presented an address on Kindergartens to the German parliament. Besides this, a nephew of Froebel’s, Professor Karl Froebel of Zürich, published books which were supposed to teach socialism. True, the uncle and nephew differed so widely that the “new Froebelians” were the enemies of “the old,” but the distinction was overlooked, and Friedrich and Karl Froebel were regarded as the united advocates of some new thing. In the reaction which soon set in, Froebel found himself suspected of socialism and irreligion, and in 1851 the “cultus-minister” Von Raumer issued an edict forbidding the establishment of schools “after Friedrich and Karl Froebel’s principles” in Prussia. This was a heavy blow to the old man, who looked to the government of the “Cultus-staat” Prussia for support, and was met with denunciation. Whether from the worry of this new controversy, or from whatever cause, Froebel did not long survive the decree. His seventieth birthday was celebrated with great rejoicings in May 1852, but he died on the 21st of June, and was buried at Schweina, a village near his last abode, Marienthal, near Bad-Liebenstein.

“All education not founded on religion is unproductive.” This conviction followed naturally from Froebel’s conception of the unity of all things, a unity due to the original Unity from whom all proceed and in whom all “live, move and have their being.” As man and nature have one origin they must be subject to the same laws. Hence Froebel, like Comenius two centuries before him, looked to the course of nature for the principles of human education. This he declares to be his fundamental belief: “In the creation, in nature and the order of the material world, and in the progress of mankind, God has given us the true type (Urbild) of education.” As the cultivator creates nothing in the trees and plants, so the educator creates nothing in the children,—he merely superintends the development of inborn faculties. So far Froebel agrees with Pestalozzi; but in one respect he went beyond him. Pestalozzi said that the faculties were developed by exercise. Froebel added that the function of education was to develop the faculties by arousing voluntary activity. Action proceeding from inner impulse (Selbsttätigkeit) was the one thing needful.

The prominence which Froebel gave to action, his doctrine that man is primarily a doer and even a creator, and that he learns only through “self-activity,” has its importance all through education. But it was to the first stage of life that Froebel paid the greatest attention. He held with Rousseau that each age has a completeness of its own, and that the perfection of the later stage can be attained only through the perfection of the earlier. If the infant is what he should be as an infant, and the child as a child, he will become what he should be as a boy, just as naturally as new shoots spring from the healthy plant. Every stage, then, must be cared for and tended in such a way that it may attain its own perfection. Impressed with the immense importance of the first stage, Froebel like Pestalozzi devoted himself to the instruction of mothers. But he would not, like Pestalozzi, leave the children entirely in the mother’s hands. Pestalozzi held that the child belonged to the family; Fichte, on the other hand, claimed it for society and the state. Froebel, whose mind delighted in harmonizing apparent contradictions, and who taught that “all progress lay through opposites to their reconciliation,” maintained that the child belonged both to the family and to society, and he would therefore have children spend some hours of the day in a common life and in well-organized common employments. These assemblies of children he would not call schools, for the children in them ought not to be old enough for schooling. So he invented the name Kindergarten, garden of children, and called the superintendents “children’s gardeners.” He laid great stress on every child cultivating its own plot of ground, but this was not his reason for the choice of the name. It was rather that he thought of these institutions as enclosures in which young human plants are nurtured. In the Kindergarten the children’s employment should be play. But any occupation in which children delight is play to them; and Froebel invented a series of employments, which, while they are in this sense play to the children, have nevertheless, as seen from the adult point of view, a distinct educational object. This object, as Froebel himself describes it, is “to give the children employment in agreement with their whole nature, to strengthen their bodies, to exercise their senses, to engage their awakening mind, and through their senses to bring them acquainted with nature and their fellow creatures; it is especially to guide aright the heart and the affections, and to lead them to the original ground of all life, to unity with themselves.”

Froebel’s own works are: Menschenerziehung (“Education of Man”), (1826), which has been translated into French and English; Pädagogik d. Kindergartens; Kleinere Schriften and Mutter- und Koselieder; collected editions have been edited by Wichard Lange (1862) and Friedrich Seidel (1883).

A. B. Hauschmann’s Friedrich Fröbel is a lengthy and unsatisfactory biography. An unpretentious but useful little book is F. Froebel, a Biographical Sketch, by Matilda H. Kriege, New York (Steiger). A very good account of Froebel’s life and thoughts is given in Karl Schmidt’s Geschichte d. Pädagogik, vol. iv.; also in Adalbert Weber’s Geschichte d. Volksschulpäd. u. d. Kleinkindererziehung (Weber carefully gives authorities). For a less favourable account see K. Strack’s Geschichte d. deutsch. Volksschulwesens. Frau von Marenholtz-Bülow published her Erinnerungen an F. Fröbel (translated by Mrs. Horace Mann, 1877). This lady, the chief interpreter of Froebel, has expounded his principles in Das Kind u. sein Wesen and Die Arbeit u. die neue Erziehung. H. Courthope Bowen has written a memoir (1897) in the “Great Educators” series. In England Miss Emily A. E. Shirreff has published Principles of Froebel’s System, and a short sketch of Froebel’s life. See also Dr Henry Barnard’s Papers on Froebel’s Kindergarten (1881); R. H. Quick, Educational Reformers (1890).

(R. H. Q.)

FROG,1 a name in zoology, of somewhat wide application, strictly for an animal belonging to the family Ranidae, but also used of some other families of the order Ecaudata or the sub-class Batrachia (q.v.).

Frogs proper are typified by the common British species, Rana temporaria, and its allies, such as the edible frog, R. esculenta, and the American bull-frog R. catesbiana. The genus Rana may be defined as firmisternal Ecaudata with cylindrical transverse processes to the sacral vertebra, teeth in the upper jaw and on the vomer, a protrusible tongue which is free and forked behind, a horizontal pupil and more or less webbed toes. It includes about 200 species, distributed over the whole world 241 with the exception of the greater part of South America and Australia. Some of the species are thoroughly aquatic and have fully webbed toes, others are terrestrial, except during the breeding season, others are adapted for burrowing, by means of the much-enlarged and sharp-edged tubercle at the base of the inner toe, whilst not a few have the tips of the digits dilated into disks by which they are able to climb on trees. In most of the older classifications great importance was attached to these physiological characters, and a number of genera were established which, owing to the numerous annectent forms which have since been discovered, must be abandoned. The arboreal species were thus associated with the true tree-frogs, regardless of their internal structure. We now know that such adaptations are of comparatively small importance, and cannot be utilized for establishing groups higher than genera in a natural or phylogenetic classification. The tree-frogs, Hylidae, with which the arboreal Ranidae were formerly grouped, show in their anatomical structure a close resemblance to the toads, Bufonidae, and are therefore placed far away from the true frogs, however great the superficial resemblance between them.

Some frogs grow to a large size. The bull-frog of the eastern United States and Canada, reaching a length of nearly 8 in. from snout to vent, long regarded as the giant of the genus, has been surpassed by the discovery of Rana guppyi (8½ in.) in the Solomon Islands, and of Rana goliath (10 in.) in South Cameroon.

The family Ranidae embraces a large number of genera, some of which are very remarkable. Among these may be mentioned the hairy frog of West Africa, Trichobatrachus robustus, some specimens of which have the sides of the body and of the hind limbs covered with long villosities, the function of which is unknown, and its ally Gampsosteonyx batesi, in which the last phalanx of the fingers and toes is sharp, claw-like and perforates the skin. To this family also belong the Rhacophorus of eastern Asia, arboreal frogs, some of which are remarkable for the extremely developed webs between the fingers and toes, which are believed to act as a parachute when the frog leaps from the branches of trees (flying-frog of A. R. Wallace), whilst others have been observed to make aerial nests between leaves overhanging water, a habit which is shared by their near allies the Chiromantis of tropical Africa. Dimorphognathus, from West Africa, is the unique example of a sexual dimorphism in the dentition, the males being provided with a series of large sharp teeth in the lower jaw, which in the female, as in most other members of the family, is edentulous. The curious horned frog of the Solomon Islands, Ceratobatrachus guentheri, which can hardly be separated from the Ranidae, has teeth in the lower jaw in both sexes, whilst a few forms, such as Dendrobates and Cardioglossa, which on this account have been placed in a distinct family, have no teeth at all, as in toads. These facts militate strongly against the importance which was once attached to the dentition in the classification of the tailless batrachians.

1 The word “frog” is in O.E. frocga or frox, cf. Dutch vorsch, Ger. Frosch; Skeat suggests a possible original source in the root meaning “to jump,” “to spring,” cf. Ger. froh, glad, joyful and “frolic.” The term is also applied to the following objects: the horny part in the center of a horse’s hoof; an attachment to a belt for suspending a sword, bayonet, &c.; a fastening for the front of a coat, still used in military uniforms, consisting of two buttons on opposite sides joined by ornamental looped braids; and, in railway construction, the point where two rails cross. These may be various transferred applications of the name of the animal, but the “frog” of a horse was also called “frush,” probably a corruption of the French name fourchette, lit. little fork. The ornamental braiding is also more probably due to “frock,” Lat. floccus.

FROG-BIT, in botany, the English name for a small floating herb known botanically as Hydrocharis Morsus-Ranae, a member of the order Hydrocharideae, a family of Monocotyledons. The plant has rosettes of roundish floating leaves, and multiplies like the strawberry plant by means of runners, at the end of which new leaf-rosettes develop. Staminate and pistillate flowers are borne on different plants; they have three small green sepals and three broadly ovate white membranous petals. The fruit, which is fleshy, is not found in Britain. The plant occurs in ponds and ditches in England and is rare in Ireland.

FROGMORE, a mansion within the royal demesne of Windsor, England, in the Home Park, 1 m. S.E. of Windsor Castle. It was occupied by George III.’s queen, Charlotte, and later by the duchess of Kent, mother of Queen Victoria, who died here in 1861. The mansion, a plain building facing a small lake, has in its grounds the mausoleum of the duchess of Kent and the royal mausoleum. The first is a circular building surrounded with Ionic columns and rising in a dome, a lower chamber within containing the tomb, while in the upper chamber is a statue of the duchess. There is also a bust of Princess Hohenlohe-Langenberg, half-sister of Queen Victoria; and before the entrance is a memorial erected by the queen to Lady Augusta Stanley (d. 1876), wife of Dean Stanley. The royal mausoleum, a cruciform building with a central octagonal lantern, richly adorned within with marbles and mosaics, was erected (1862-1870) by Queen Victoria over the tomb of Albert, prince consort, by whose side the queen herself was buried in 1901. There are also memorials to Princess Alice and Prince Leopold in the mausoleum. To the south of the mansion are the royal gardens and dairy.

FRÖHLICH, ABRAHAM EMANUEL (1796-1865), Swiss poet, was born on the 1st of February 1796 at Brugg in the canton of Aargau, where his father was a teacher. After studying theology at Zürich he became a pastor in 1817 and returned as teacher to his native town, where he lived for ten years. He was then appointed professor of the German language and literature in the cantonal school at Aarau, which post he lost, however, in the political quarrels of 1830. He afterwards obtained the post of teacher and rector of the cantonal college, and was also appointed assistant minister at the parish church. He died at Baden in Aargau on the 1st of December 1865. His works are—170 Fabeln (1825); Schweizerlieder (1827); Das Evangelium St Johannis, in Liedern (1830); Elegien an Wieg’ und Sarg (1835); Die Epopöen; Ulrich Zwingli (1840); Ulrich von Hutten (1845); Auserlesene Psalmen und geistliche Lieder für die Evangelisch-reformirte Kirche des Cantons Aargau (1844); Über den Kirchengesang der Protestanten (1846); Trostlieder (1852); Der Junge Deutsch-Michel (1846); Reimsprüche aus Staat, Schule, und Kirche (1820). An edition of his collected works, in 5 vols., was published at Frauenfeld in 1853. Fröhlich is best known for his two heroic poems, Ulrich Zwingli and Ulrich von Hutten, and especially for his fables, which have been ranked with those of Hagedorn, Lessing and Gellert.

See the Life by R. Fäsi (Zürich, 1907).

FROHSCHAMMER, JAKOB (1821-1893), German theologian and philosopher, was born at Illkofen, near Regensburg, on the 6th of January 1821. Destined by his parents for the Roman Catholic priesthood, he studied theology at Munich, but felt an ever-growing attraction to philosophy. Nevertheless, after much hesitation, he took what he himself calls the most mistaken step of his life, and in 1847 entered the priesthood. His keenly logical intellect, and his impatience of authority where it clashed with his own convictions, quite unfitted him for that unquestioning obedience which the Church demanded. It was only after open defiance of the bishop of Regensburg that he obtained permission to continue his studies at Munich. He at first devoted himself more especially to the study of the history of dogma, and in 1850 published his Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte, which was placed on the Index Expurgatorius. But he felt that his real vocation was philosophy, and after holding for a short time an extraordinary professorship of theology, he became professor of philosophy in 1855. This appointment he owed chiefly to his work, Über den Ursprung der menschlichen Seelen (1854), in which he maintained that the human soul was not implanted by a special creative act in each case, but was the result of a secondary creative act on the part of the parents: that soul as well as body, therefore, was subject to the laws of heredity. This was supplemented in 1855 by the controversial Menschenseele und Physiologie. Undeterred by the offence which these works gave to his ecclesiastical superiors, he published in 1858 the Einleitung in die Philosophie und Grundriss der Metaphysik, in which he assailed the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, that philosophy was the handmaid of theology. In 1861 appeared Über die Aufgabe der Naturphilosophie und ihr Verhältnis zur Naturwissenschaft, which was, he declared, directed against the purely mechanical conception of the universe, and affirmed the necessity of a creative Power. In the same year he published Über die Freiheit der Wissenschaft, in which he maintained the independence of science, whose goal was truth, against authority, and reproached the excessive respect for the latter in the Roman Church with the insignificant part played by the German Catholics in literature and philosophy. He was denounced by the pope himself in an apostolic brief of the 11th of December 1862, and students of theology were forbidden to attend his lectures. 242 Public opinion was now keenly excited; he received an ovation from the Munich students, and the king, to whom he owed his appointment, supported him warmly. A conference of Catholic savants, held in 1863 under the presidency of Döllinger, decided that authority must be supreme in the Church. When, however, Döllinger and his school in their turn started the Old Catholic movement, Frohschammer refused to associate himself with their cause, holding that they did not go far enough, and that their declaration of 1863 had cut the ground from under their feet. Meanwhile he had, in 1862, founded the Athenäum as the organ of Liberal Catholicism. For this he wrote the first adequate account in German of the Darwinian theory of natural selection, which drew a warm letter of appreciation from Darwin himself. Excommunicated in 1871, he replied with three articles, which were reproduced in thousands as pamphlets in the chief European languages: Der Fels Petri in Rom (1873), Der Primat Petri und des Papstes (1875), and Das Christenthum Christi und das Christenthum des Papstes (1876). In Das neue Wissen und der neue Glaube (1873) he showed himself as vigorous an opponent of the materialism of Strauss as of the doctrine of papal infallibility. His later years were occupied with a series of philosophical works, of which the most important were: Die Phantasie als Grundprincip des Weltprocesses (1877), Über die Genesis der Menschheit und deren geistige Entwicklung in Religion, Sittlichkeit und Sprache (1883), and Über die Organisation und Cultur der menschlichen Gesellschaft (1885). His system is based on the unifying principle of imagination (Phantasie), which he extends to the objective creative force of Nature, as well as to the subjective mental phenomena to which the term is usually confined. He died at Bad Kreuth in the Bavarian Highlands on the 14th of June 1893.

In addition to other treatises on theological subjects, Frohschammer was also the author of Monaden und Weltphantasie and Über die Bedeutung der Einbildungskraft in der Philosophie Kants und Spinozas (1879); Über die Principien der Aristotelischen Philosophie und die Bedeutung der Phantasie in derselben (1881); Die Philosophie als Idealwissenschaft und System (1884); Die Philosophie des Thomas von Aquino kritisch gewürdigt (1889); Über das Mysterium Magnum des Daseins (1891); System der Philosophie im Umriss, pt. i. (1892). His autobiography was published in A. Hinrichsen’s Deutsche Denker (1888). See also F. Kirchner, Über das Grundprincip des Weltprocesses (1882), with special reference to F.; E. Reich, Weltanschauung und Menschenleben; Betrachtungen über die Philosophie J. Frohschammers (1894); B. Münz, J. Frohschammer, der Philosoph der Weltphantasie (1894) and Briefe von und über J. Frohschammer (1897); J. Friedrich, Jakob Frohschammer (1896) and Systematische und kritische Darstellung der Psychologie J. Frohschammers (1899); A. Attensperger, J. Frohschammers philosophisches System im Grundriss (1899).

FROISSART, JEAN (1338-1410?), French chronicler and raconteur, historian of his own times. The personal history of Froissart, the circumstances of his birth and education, the incidents of his life, must all be sought in his own verses and chronicles. He possessed in his own lifetime no such fame as that which attended the steps of Petrarch; when he died it did not occur to his successors that a chapter might well be added to his Chronicle setting forth what manner of man he was who wrote it. The village of Lestines, where he was curé, has long forgotten that a great writer ever lived there. They cannot point to any house in Valenciennes as the lodging in which he put together his notes and made history out of personal reminiscences. It is not certain when or where he died, or where he was buried. One church, it is true, doubtfully claims the honour of holding his bones. It is that of St Monegunda of Chimay.

“Gallorum sublimis honos et fama tuorum, Hic Froissarde, jaces, si modo forte jaces.”

It is fortunate, therefore, that the scattered statements in his writings may be so pieced together as to afford a tolerably connected history of his life year after year. The personality of the man, independently of his adventures, may be arrived at by the same process. It will be found that Froissart, without meaning it, has portrayed himself in clear and well-defined outline. His forefathers were jurés (aldermen) of the little town of Beaumont, lying near the river Sambre, to the west of the forest of Ardennes. Early in the 14th century the castle and seigneurie of Beaumont fell into the hands of Jean, younger son of the count of Hainaut. With this Jean, sire de Beaumont, lived a certain canon of Liège called Jean le Bel, who fortunately was not content simply to enjoy life. Instigated by his seigneur he set himself to write contemporary history, to tell “la pure veriteit de tout li fait entièrement al manire de chroniques.” With this view, he compiled two books of chronicles. And the chronicles of Jean le Bel were not the only literary monuments belonging to the castle of Beaumont. A hundred years before him Baldwin d’Avernes, the then seigneur, had caused to be written a book of chronicles or rather genealogies. It must therefore be remembered that when Froissart undertook his own chronicles he was not conceiving a new idea, but only following along familiar lines.

Some 20 m. from Beaumont stood the prosperous city of Valenciennes, possessed in the 14th century of important privileges and a flourishing trade, second only to places like Bruges or Ghent in influence, population and wealth. Beaumont, once her rival, now regarded Valenciennes as a place where the ambitious might seek for wealth or advancement, and among those who migrated thither was the father of Foissart. He appears from a single passage in his son’s verses to have been a painter of armorial bearings. There was, it may be noted, already what may be called a school of painters at Valenciennes. Among them were Jean and Colin de Valenciennes and Andrè Beau-Neveu, of whom Froissart says that he had not his equal in any country.

The date generally adopted for his birth is 1338. In after years Froissart pleased himself by recalling in verse the scenes and pursuits of his childhood. These are presented in vague generalities. There is nothing to show that he was unlike any other boys, and, unfortunately, it did not occur to him that a photograph of a schoolboy’s life amid bourgeois surroundings would be to posterity quite as interesting as that faithful portraiture of courts and knights which he has drawn up in his Chronicle. As it is, we learn that he loved games of dexterity and skill rather than the sedentary amusements of chess and draughts, that he was beaten when he did not know his lessons, that with his companions he played at tournaments, and that he was always conscious—a statement which must be accepted with suspicion—that he was born

“Loer Dieu et servir le monde.”

In any case he was born in a place, as well as at a time, singularly adapted to fill the brain of an imaginative boy. Valenciennes was then a city extremely rich in romantic associations. Not far from its walls was the western fringe of the great forest of Ardennes, sacred to the memory of Pepin, Charlemagne, Roland and Ogier. Along the banks of the Scheldt stood, one after the other, not then in ruins, but bright with banners, the gleam of armour, and the liveries of the men at arms, castles whose seigneurs, now forgotten, were famous in their day for many a gallant feat of arms. The castle of Valenciennes itself was illustrious in the romance of Perceforest. There was born that most glorious and most luckless hero, Baldwin, first emperor of Constantinople. All the splendour of medieval life was to be seen in Froissart’s native city: on the walls of the Salle le Comte glittered—perhaps painted by his father—the arms and scutcheons beneath the banners and helmets of Luxembourg, Hainaut and Avesnes; the streets were crowded with knights and soldiers, priests, artisans and merchants; the churches were rich with stained glass, delicate tracery and precious carving; there were libraries full of richly illuminated manuscripts on which the boy could gaze with delight; every year there was the fête of the puy d’Amour de Valenciennes, at which he would hear the verses of the competing poets; there were festivals, masques, mummeries and moralities. And, whatever there might be elsewhere, in this happy city there was only the pomp, and not the misery, of war; the fields without were tilled, and the harvests reaped, in security; the workman within plied his craft unmolested for good wage. But the eyes of the boy were turned upon the castle and not upon the town; it was the splendour of the knights which dazzled him, insomuch that he 243 regarded and continued ever afterwards to regard a prince gallant in the field, glittering of apparel, lavish of largesse, as almost a god.

The moon, he says, rules the first four years of life; Mercury the next ten; Venus follows. He was fourteen when the last goddess appeared to him in person, as he tells us, after the manner of his time, and informed him that he was to love a lady, “belle, jone, et gente.” Awaiting this happy event, he began to consider how best to earn his livelihood. They first placed him in some commercial position—impossible now to say of what kind—which he simply calls “la marchandise.” This undoubtedly means some kind of buying and selling, not a handicraft at all. He very soon abandoned merchandise—“car vaut mieux science qu’argens”—and resolved on becoming a learned clerk. He then naturally began to make verses, like every other learned clerk. Quite as naturally, and still in the character of a learned clerk, he fulfilled the prophecy of Venus and fell in love. He found one day a demoiselle reading a book of romances. He did not know who she was, but stealing gently towards her, he asked her what book she was reading. It was the romance of Cleomades. He remarks the singular beauty of her blue eyes and fair hair, while she reads a page or two, and then—one would almost suspect a reminiscence of Dante—

“Adont laissames nous le lire.”

He was thus provided with that essential for soldier, knight or poet, a mistress—one for whom he could write verses. She was rich and he was poor; she was nobly born and he obscure; it was long before she would accept the devotion, even of the conventional kind which Froissart offered her, and which would in no way interfere with the practical business of her life. And in this hopeless way, the passion of the young poet remaining the same, and the coldness of the lady being unaltered, the course of this passion ran on for some time. Nor was it until the day of Froissart’s departure from his native town that she gave him an interview and spoke kindly to him, even promising, with tears in her eyes, that “Doulce Pensée” would assure him that she would have no joyous day until she should see him again.

He was eighteen years of age; he had learned all that he wanted to learn; he possessed the mechanical art of verse; he had read the slender stock of classical literature accessible; he longed to see the world. He must already have acquired some distinction, because, on setting out for the court of England, he was able to take with him letters of recommendation from the king of Bohemia and the count of Hainaut to Queen Philippa, niece of the latter. He was well received by the queen, always ready to welcome her own countrymen; he wrote ballades and virelays for her and her ladies. But after a year he began to pine for another sight of “la très douce, simple, et quoie,” whom he loved loyally. Good Queen Philippa, perceiving his altered looks and guessing the cause, made him confess that he was in love and longed to see his mistress. She gave him his congé on the condition that he was to return. It is clear that the young clerk had already learned to ingratiate himself with princes.

The conclusion of his single love adventure is simply and unaffectedly told in his Trettie de l’espinette amoureuse. It was a passion conducted on the well-known lines of conventional love; the pair exchanged violets and roses, the lady accepted ballads; Froissart became either openly or in secret her recognized lover, a mere title of honour, which conferred distinction on her who bestowed it, as well as upon him who received it. But the progress of the amour was rudely interrupted by the arts of “Malebouche,” or Calumny. The story, whatever it was, that Malebouche whispered in the ear of the lady led to a complete rupture. The damoiselle not only scornfully refused to speak to her lover or acknowledge him, but even seized him by the hair and pulled out a handful. Nor would she ever be reconciled to him again. Years afterwards, when Froissart writes the story of his one love passage, he shows that he still takes delight in the remembrance of her, loves to draw her portrait, and lingers with fondness over the thought of what she once was to him.

Perhaps to get healed of his sorrow, Froissart began those wanderings in which the best part of his life was to be consumed. He first visited Avignon, perhaps to ask for a benefice, perhaps as the bearer of a message from the bishop of Cambray to pope or cardinal. It was in the year 1360, and in the pontificate of Innocent VI. From the papal city he seems to have gone to Paris, perhaps charged with a diplomatic mission. In 1361 he returned to England after an absence of five years. He certainly interpreted his leave of absence in a liberal spirit, and it may have been with a view of averting the displeasure of his kind-hearted protector that he brought with him as a present a book of rhymed chronicles written by himself. He says that notwithstanding his youth, he took upon himself the task “à rimer et à dicter”—which can only mean to “turn into verse”—an account of the wars of his own time, which he carried over to England in a book “tout compilé,”—complete to date,—and presented to his noble mistress Philippa of Hainaut, who joyfully and gently received it of him. Such a rhymed chronicle was no new thing. One Colin had already turned the battle of Crécy into verse. The queen made young Froissart one of her secretaries, and he began to serve her with “beaux dittiés et traités amoureux.”

Froissart would probably have been content to go on living at ease in this congenial atmosphere of flattery, praise and caresses, pouring out his virelays and chansons according to demand with facile monotony, but for the instigation of Queen Philippa, who seems to have suggested to him the propriety of travelling in order to get information for more rhymed chronicles. It was at her charges that Froissart made his first serious journey. He seems to have travelled a great part of the way alone, or accompanied only by his servants, for he was fain to beguile the journey by composing an imaginary conversation in verse between his horse and his hound. This may be found among his published poems, but it does not repay perusal. In Scotland he met with a favourable reception, not only from King David but from William of Douglas, and from the earls of Fife, Mar, March and others. The souvenirs of this journey are found scattered about in the chronicles. He was evidently much impressed with the Scots; he speaks of the valour of the Douglas, the Campbell, the Ramsay and the Graham; he describes the hospitality and rude life of the Highlanders; he admires the great castles of Stirling and Roxburgh and the famous abbey of Melrose. His travels in Scotland lasted for six months. Returning southwards he rode along the whole course of the Roman wall, a thing alone sufficient to show that he possessed the true spirit of an archaeologist; he thought that Carlisle was Carlyon, and congratulated himself on having found King Arthur’s capital; he calls Westmorland, where the common people still spoke the ancient British tongue, North Wales; he rode down the banks of the Severn, and returned to London by way of Oxford—“l’escole d’Asque-Suffort.”

In London Froissart entered into the service of King John of France as secretary, and grew daily more courtly, more in favour with princes and great ladies. He probably acquired at this period that art, in which he has probably never been surpassed, of making people tell him all they knew. No newspaper correspondent, no American interviewer, has ever equalled this medieval collector of intelligence. From Queen Philippa, who confided to him the tender story of her youthful and lasting love for her great husband, down to the simplest knight—Froissart conversed with none beneath the rank of gentlemen—all united in telling this man what he wanted to know. He wanted to know everything: he liked the story of a battle from both sides and from many points of view; he wanted the details of every little cavalry skirmish, every capture of a castle, every gallant action and brave deed. And what was more remarkable, he forgot nothing. “I had,” he says, “thanks to God, sense, memory, good remembrance of everything, and an intellect clear and keen to seize upon the acts which I could learn.” But as yet he had not begun to write in prose.

At the age of twenty-nine, in 1366, Froissart once more left England. This time he repaired first to Brussels, whither were gathered together a great concourse of minstrels from all parts, 244 from the courts of the kings of Denmark, Navarre and Aragon, from those of the dukes of Lancaster, Bavaria and Brunswick. Hither came all who could “rimer et dicter.” What distinction Froissart gained is not stated; but he received a gift of money, as appears from the accounts: “uni Fritsardo, dictori, qui est cum regina Angliae, dicto die, VI. mottones.”

After this congress of versifiers, he made his way to Brittany, where he heard from eye-witnesses and knights who had actually fought there details of the battles of Cocherel and Auray, the Great Day of the Thirty and the heroism of Jeanne de Montfort. Windsor Herald told him something about Auray, and a French knight, one Antoine de Beaujeu, gave him the details of Cocherel. From Brittany he went southwards to Nantes, La Rochelle and Bordeaux, where he arrived a few days before the visit of Richard, afterwards second of that name. He accompanied the Black Prince to Dax, and hoped to go on with him into Spain, but was despatched to England on a mission. He next formed part of the expedition which escorted Lionel duke of Clarence to Milan, to marry the daughter of Galeazzo Visconti. Chaucer was also one of the prince’s suite. At the wedding banquet Petrarch was a guest sitting among the princes.

From Milan Froissart, accepting gratefully a cotte hardie with 20 florins of gold, set out upon his travels in Italy. At Bologna, then in decadence, he met Peter king of Cyprus, from whose follower and minister, Eustache de Conflans, he learned many interesting particulars of the king’s exploits. He accompanied Peter as far as Venice, where he left him after receiving a gift of 40 ducats. With them and his cotte hardie, still lined we may hope with the 20 florins, Froissart betook himself to Rome. The city was then at its lowest point: the churches were roofless; there was no pope; there were no pilgrims; there was no splendour; and yet, says Froissart sadly,

“Ce furent jadis en Rome Li plus preu et li plus sage homme, Car par sens tons les arts passèrent.”

It was at Rome that he learned of the death of his friend King Peter of Cyprus, and, worse still, an irreparable loss to him, that of the good Queen Philippa, of whom he writes, in grateful remembrance—

“Propices li soit Diex à l’âme! J’en suis bien tenus de pryer Et ses larghesces escuyer, Car elle me fist et créa.”

Philippa dead, Froissart looked around for a new patron. Then he hastened back to his own country and presented himself, with a new book in French, to the duchess of Brabant, from whom he received the sum of 16 francs, given in the accounts as paid uni Frissardo dictatori. The use of the word uni does not imply any meanness of position, but is simply an equivalent to the modern French sieur. Froissart may also have found a patron in Yolande de Bar, grandmother of King René of Anjou. In any case he received a substantial gift from some one in the shape of the benefice of Lestines, a village some three or four miles from the town of Binche. Also, in addition to his cure, he got placed upon the duke of Brabant’s pension list, and was entitled to a yearly grant of grain and wine, with some small sum in money.

It is clear, from Froissart’s own account of himself, that he was by no means a man who would at the age of four or five and thirty be contented to sit down at ease to discharge the duties of parish priest, to say mass, to bury the dead, to marry the villagers and to baptize the young. In those days, and in that country, it does not seem that other duties were expected. Preaching was not required, godliness of life, piety, good works, and the graces of a modern ecclesiastic were not looked for. Therefore, when Froissart complains to himself that the taverns of Lestines got 500 francs of his money, we need not at once set him down as either a bad priest or exceptionally given to drink. The people of the place were greatly addicted to wine; the taverniers de Lestines proverbially sold good wine; the Flemings were proverbially of a joyous disposition—

“Ceux de Hainaut chantent à pleines gorges.”

Froissart, the parish priest of courtly manners, no doubt drank with the rest, and listened if they sang his own, not the coarse country songs. Mostly he preferred the society of Gerard d’Obies, provost of Binche, and the little circle of knights within that town. Or—for it was not incumbent on him to be always in residence—he repaired to the court of Coudenberg, and became “moult frère et accointé” with the duke of Brabant. And then came Gui de Blois, one of King John’s hostages in London in the old days. He had been fighting in Prussia with the Teutonic knights, and now, a little tired of war, proposed to settle down for a time in his castle of Beaumont. This prince was a member of the great house of Chatillon. He was count of Blois, of Soissons and of Chimay. He had now, about the year 1374, an excellent reputation as a good captain. In him Froissart, who hastened to resume acquaintance, found a new patron. More than that, it was this sire de Beaumont, in emulation of his grandfather, the patron of Jean le Bel, who advised Froissart seriously to take in hand the history of his own time. Froissart was then in his thirty-sixth year. For twenty years he had been rhyming, for eighteen he had been making verses for queens and ladies. Yet during all this time he had been accumulating in his retentive brain the materials for his future work.

He began by editing, so to speak, that is, by rewriting with additions, the work of Jean le Bel; Gui de Blois, among others, supplied him with additional information. His own notes, taken from information obtained in his travels, gave him more details, and when in 1374 Gui married Marie de Namur, Froissart found in the bride’s father, Robert de Namur, one who had himself largely shared in the events which he had to relate. He, for instance, is the authority for the story of the siege of Calais and the six burgesses. Provided with these materials, Froissart remained at Lestines, or at Beaumont, arranging and writing his chronicles. During this period, too, he composed his Espinette amoureuse, and the Joli Buisson de jonesce, and his romance of Méliador. He also became chaplain to the count of Blois, and obtained a canonry of Chimay. After this appointment we hear nothing more of Lestines, which he probably resigned.

In these quiet pursuits he passed twelve years, years of which we hear nothing, probably because there was nothing to tell. In 1386 his travels began again, when he accompanied Gui to his castle at Blois, in order to celebrate the marriage of his son Louis de Dunois with Marie de Berry. He wrote a pastourelle in honour of the event. Then he attached himself for a few days to the duke of Berry, from whom he learned certain particulars of current events, and then, becoming aware of what promised to be the most mighty feat of arms of his time, he hastened to Sluys in order to be on the spot. At this port the French were collecting an enormous fleet, and making preparations of the greatest magnitude in order to repeat the invasion of William the Conqueror. They were tired of being invaded by the English and wished to turn the tables. The talk was all of conquering the country and dividing it among the knights, as had been done by the Normans. It is not clear whether Froissart intended to go over with the invaders; but as his sympathies are ever with the side where he happens to be, he exhausts himself in admiration of this grand gathering of ships and men. “Any one,” he says, “who had a fever would have been cured of his malady merely by going to look at the fleet.” But the delays of the duke of Berry, and the arrival of bad weather, spoiled everything. There was no invasion of England. In Flanders Froissart met many knights who had fought at Rosebeque, and could tell him of the troubles which in a few years desolated that country, once so prosperous. He set himself to ascertain the history with as much accuracy as the comparison of various accounts by eye-witnesses and actors would allow. He stayed at Ghent, among those ruined merchants and mechanics, for whom, as one of the same class, he felt a sympathy never extended to English or French, perhaps quite as unfortunate, and he devotes no fewer than 300 chapters to the Flemish troubles, an amount out of all proportion to the comparative importance of the events. This portion of the chronicle was written at Valenciennes. During this residence in his birthplace his verses were crowned at the “puys d’amour” of Valenciennes and Tournay.

245

This part of his work finished, he considered what to do next. There was small chance of anything important happening in Picardy or Hainault, and he determined on making a journey to the south of France in order to learn something new. He was then fifty-one years of age, and being still, as he tells us, in his prime, “of an age, strength, and limbs able to bear fatigue,” he set out as eager to see new places as when, 33 years before, he rode through Scotland and marvelled at the bravery of the Douglas. What he had, in addition to strength, good memory and good spirits, was a manner singularly pleasing and great personal force of character. This he does not tell us, but it comes out abundantly in his writings; and, which he does tell us, he took a singular delight in his book. “The more I work at it,” he says, “the better am I pleased with it.”

On this occasion he rode first to Blois; on the way he fell in with two knights who told him of the disasters of the English army in Spain; one of them also informed him of the splendid hospitalities and generosity of Gaston Phoebus, count of Foix, on hearing of which Froissart resolved to seek him out. He avoided the English provinces of Poitou and Guienne, and rode southwards through Berry, Auvergne and Languedoc. Arrived at Foix he discovered that the count was at Orthez, whither he proceeded in company with a knight named Espaing de Lyon, who, Froissart found, had not only fought, but could describe.

The account of those few days’ ride with Espaing de Lyon is the most charming, the most graphic, and the most vivid chapter in the whole of Froissart. Every turn of the road brings with it the sight of a ruined castle, about which this knight of many memories has a tale or a reminiscence. The whole country teems with fighting stories. Froissart never tires of listening nor the good knight of telling. “Sainte Marie!” cries Froissart in mere rapture. “How pleasant are your tales, and how much do they profit me while you relate them! And you shall not lose your trouble, for they shall all be set down in memory and remembrance in the history which I am writing.” Arrived at length at Orthez, Froissart lost no time in presenting his credentials to the count of Foix. Gaston Phoebus was at this time fifty-nine years of age. His wife, from whom he was separated, was that princess, sister of Charles of Navarre, with whom Guillaume de Machault carried on his innocent and poetical amour. The story of the miserable death of his son is well known, and may be read in Froissart. But that was already a tale of the past, and the state which the count kept up was that of a monarch. To such a prince such a visitor as Froissart would be in every way welcome. Mindful no doubt of those paid clerks who were always writing verses, Froissart introduced himself as a chronicler. He could, of course, rhyme, and in proof he brought with him his romance of Méliador; but he did not present himself as a wandering poet. The count received him graciously, speedily discovered the good qualities of his guest, and often invited him to read his Méliador aloud in the evening, during which time, says Froissart, “nobody dared to say a word, because he wished me to be heard, such great delight did he take in listening.” Very soon Froissart, from reader of a romance, became raconteur of the things he had seen and heard; the next step was that the count himself began to talk of affairs, so that the notebook was again in requisition. There was a good deal, too, to be learned of people about the court. One knight recently returned from the East told about the Genoese occupation of Famagosta; two more had been in the fray of Otterbourne; others had been in the Spanish wars.

Leaving Gaston at length, Froissart assisted at the wedding of the old duke of Berry with the youthful Jeanne de Bourbon, and was present at the grand reception given to Isabeau of Bavaria by the Parisians. He then returned to Valenciennes, and sat down to write his fourth book. A journey undertaken at this time is characteristic of the thorough and conscientious spirit in which he composed his work; it illustrates also his restless and curious spirit. While engaged in the events of the year 1385 he became aware that his notes taken at Orthez and elsewhere on the affairs of Castile and Portugal were wanting in completeness. He left Valenciennes and hastened to Bruges, where, he felt certain, he should find some one who would help him. There was, in fact, at this great commercial centre, a colony of Portuguese. From them he learned that a certain Portuguese knight, Dom Juan Fernand Pacheco, was at the moment in Middelburg on the point of starting for Prussia. He instantly embarked at Sluys, reached Middelburg in time to catch this knight, introduced himself, and conversed with him uninterruptedly for the space of six days, getting his information on the promise of due acknowledgment. During the next two years we learn little of his movements. He seems, however, to have had trouble with his seigneur Gui de Blois, and even to have resigned his chaplaincy. Froissart is tender with Gui’s reputation, mindful of past favours and remembering how great a lord he is. Yet the truth is clear that in his declining years the once gallant Gui de Blois became a glutton and a drunkard, and allowed his affairs to fall into the greatest disorder. So much was he crippled with debt that he was obliged to sell his castle and county of Blois to the king of France. Froissart lays all the blame on evil counsellors. “He was my lord and master,” he says simply, “an honourable lord and of great reputation; but he trusted too easily in those who looked for neither his welfare nor his honour.” Although canon of Chimay and perhaps curé of Lestines as well, it would seem as if Froissart was not able to live without a patron. He next calls Robert de Namur his seigneur, and dedicates to him, in a general introduction, the whole of his chronicles. We then find him at Abbeville, trying to learn all about the negotiations pending between Charles VI. and the English. He was unsuccessful, either because he could not get at those who knew what was going on, or because the secret was too well kept. He next made his last visit to England, where, after forty years’ absence, he naturally found no one who remembered him. Here he gave King Richard a copy of his “traités amoureux,” and got favour at court. He stayed in England some months, seeking information on all points from his friends Henry Chrystead and Richard Stury, from the dukes of York and Gloucester, and from Robert the Hermit.

On his return to France, he found preparations going on for that unlucky crusade, the end of which he describes in his Chronicle. It was headed by the count of Nevers. After him floated many a banner of knights, descendants of the crusaders, who bore the proud titles of duke of Athens, duke of Thebes, sire de Sidon, sire de Jericho. They were going to invade the sultan’s empire by way of Hungary; they were going to march south; they would reconquer the holy places. And presently we read how it all came to nothing, and how the slaughtered knights lay dead outside the city of Nikopoli. In almost the concluding words of the Chronicle the murder of Richard II. of England is described. His death ends the long and crowded Chronicle, though the pen of the writer struggles through a few more unfinished sentences.

The rest is vague tradition. He is said to have died at Chimay; it is further said that he died in poverty so great that his relations could not even afford to carve his name upon the headstone of his tomb; not one of his friends, not even Eustache Deschamps, writes a line of regret in remembrance; the greatest historian of his age had a reputation so limited that his death was no more regarded than that of any common monk or obscure priest. We would willingly place the date of his death, where his Chronicle stops, in the year 1400; but tradition assigns the date of 1410. What date more fitting than the close of the century for one who has made that century illustrious for ever?

Among his friends were Guillaume de Machault, Eustache Deschamps, the most vigorous poet of this age of decadence, and Cuvelier, a follower of Bertrand du Guesclin. These alliances are certain. It is probable that he knew Chaucer, with whom Deschamps maintained a poetical correspondence; there is nothing to show that he ever made the acquaintance of Christine de Pisan. Froissart was more proud of his poetry than his prose. Posterity has reversed this opinion, and though a selection of his verse has been published, it would be difficult to find an admirer, or even a reader, of his poems. The selection published by Buchon in 1829 consists of the Dit dou florin, half of which is a description of the power of money; the Débat dou cheval 246 et dou lévrier, written during his journey in Scotland; the Dittie de la flour de la Margherite; a Dittie d’amour called L’Orlose amoureus, in which he compares himself, the imaginary lover, with a clock; the Espinette amoureuse, which contains a sketch of his early life, freely and pleasantly drawn, accompanied by rondeaux and virelays; the Buisson de jonesce, in which he returns to the recollections of his own youth; and various smaller pieces. The verses are monotonous; the thoughts are not without poetical grace, but they are expressed at tedious length. It would be, however, absurd to expect in Froissart the vigour and verve possessed by none of his predecessors. The time was gone when Marie de France, Rutebœuf and Thibaut de Champagne made the 13th-century language a medium for verse of which any literature might be proud. Briefly, Froissart’s poetry, unless the unpublished portion be better than that before us, is monotonous and mechanical. The chief merit it possesses is in simplicity of diction. This not infrequently produces a pleasing effect.

As for the character of his Chronicle, little need be said. There has never been any difference of opinion on the distinctive merits of this great work. It presents a vivid and faithful drawing of the things done in the 14th century. No more graphic account exists of any age. No historian has drawn so many and such faithful portraits. They are, it is true, portraits of men as they seemed to the writer, not of men as they were. Froissart was uncritical; he accepted princes by their appearance. Who, for instance, would recognize in his portrait of Gaston Phoebus de Foix the cruel voluptuary, stained with the blood of his own son, which we know him to have been? Froissart, again, had no sense of historical responsibility; he was no judge to inquire into motives and condemn actions; he was simply a chronicler. He has been accused by French authors of lacking patriotism. Yet it must be remembered that he was neither a Frenchman nor an Englishman, but a Fleming. He has been accused of insensibility to suffering. Indignation against oppression was not, however, common in the 14th century; why demand of Froissart a quality which is rare enough even in our own time? Yet there are moments when, as in describing the massacre of Limoges, he speaks with tears in his voice.

Let him be judged by his own aims. “Before I commence this book,” he says, “I pray the Saviour of all the world, who created every thing out of nothing, that He will also create and put in me sense and understanding of so much worth, that this book, which I have begun, I may continue and persevere in, so that all those who shall read, see, and hear it may find in it delight and pleasance.” To give delight and pleasure, then, was his sole design.

As regards his personal character, Froissart depicts it himself for us. Such as he was in youth, he tells us, so he remained in more advanced life; rejoicing mightily in dances and carols, in hearing minstrels and poems; inclined to love all those who love dogs and hawks; pricking up his ears at the uncorking of bottles,—“Car au voire prens grand plaisir”; pleased with good cheer, gorgeous apparel and joyous society, but no commonplace reveller or greedy voluptuary,—everything in Froissart was ruled by the good manners which he set before all else; and always eager to listen to tales of war and battle. As we have said above, he shows, not only by his success at courts, but also by the whole tone of his writings, that he possessed a singularly winning manner and strong personal character. He lived wholly in the present, and had no thought of the coming changes. Born when chivalrous ideas were most widely spread, but the spirit of chivalry itself, as inculcated by the best writers, in its decadence, he is penetrated with the sense of knightly honour, and ascribes to all his heroes alike those qualities which only the ideal knight possessed.

The first edition of Froissart’s Chronicles was published in Paris. It bears no date; the next editions are those of the years 1505, 1514, 1518 and 1520. The edition of Buchon, 1824, was a continuation of one commenced by Dacier. The best modern editions are those of Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1863-1877) and Siméon Luce (Paris, 1869-1888); for bibliography see Potthast, Bibliotheca hist. medii aevi, i. (Berlin, 1896). An abridgment was made in Latin by Belleforest, and published in 1672. An English translation was made by Bouchier, Lord Berners, and published in London, 1525. See the “Tudor Translations” edition of Berners (Nutt, 1901), with introduction by W. P. Ker; and the “Globe” edition, with introduction by G. C. Macaulay. The translation by Thomas Johnes was originally published in 1802-1805. For Froissart’s poems see Scheler’s text in K. de Lettenhove’s complete edition; Méliador has been edited by Longnon for the Société des Anciens Textes (1895-1899). See also Madame Darmesteter (Duclaux), Froissart (1894).

(W. Be.)

FROME, a market town in the Frome parliamentary division of Somersetshire, England, 107 m. W. by S. of London by the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 11,057. It is unevenly built on high ground above the river Frome, which is here crossed by a stone bridge of five arches. It was formerly called Frome or Froome Selwood, after the neighbouring forest of Selwood; and the country round is still richly wooded and picturesque. The parish church of St John the Baptist, with its fine tower and spire, was built about the close of the 14th century, and, though largely restored, has a beautiful chancel, Lady chapel and baptistery. Fragments of Norman work are left; the interior is elaborately adorned with sculptures and stained glass. The market-hall, museum, school of art, and a free grammar school, founded under Edward VI., may be noted among buildings and institutions. The chief industries are brewing and art metal-working, also printing, metal-founding, and the manufacture of cloth, silk, tools and cards for wool-dressing. Dairy farming is largely practised in the neighbourhood. Selwood forest was long a favourite haunt of brigands, and even in the 18th century gave shelter to a gang of coiners and highwaymen.

The Saxon occupation of Frome (From) is the earliest of which there is evidence, the settlement being due to the foundation of a monastery by Aldhelm in 705. A witenagemot was held there in 934, so that Frome must already have been a place of some size. At the time of the Domesday Survey the manor was owned by King William. Local tradition asserts that Frome was a medieval borough, and the reeve of Frome is occasionally mentioned in documents after the reign of Edward I., but there is no direct evidence that Frome was a borough and no trace of any charter granted to it. It was not represented in parliament until given one member by the Reform Act of 1832. Separate representation ceased in 1885. Frome was never incorporated. A charter of Henry VII. to Edmund Leversedge, then lord of the manor, granted the right to have fairs on the 22nd of July and the 21st of September. In the 18th century two other fairs on the 24th of February and the 25th of November were held. Cattle fairs are now held on the last Wednesday in February and November, and a cheese fair on the last Wednesday in September. The Wednesday market is held under the charter of Henry VII. There is also a Saturday cattle market. The manufacture of woollen cloth has been established since the 15th century, Frome being the only Somerset town in which this staple industry has flourished continuously.

FROMENTIN, EUGÈNE (1820-1876), French painter, was born at La Rochelle in December 1820. After leaving school he studied for some years under Louis Cabat, the landscape painter. Fromentin was one of the earliest pictorial interpreters of Algeria, having been able, while quite young, to visit the land and people that suggested the subjects of most of his works, and to store his memory as well as his portfolio with the picturesque and characteristic details of North African life. In 1849 he obtained a medal of the second class. In 1852 he paid a second visit to Algeria, accompanying an archaeological mission, and then completed that minute study of the scenery of the country and of the habits of its people which enabled him to give to his after-work the realistic accuracy that comes from intimate knowledge. In a certain sense his works are not more artistic results than contributions to ethnological science. His first great success was produced at the Salon of 1847, by the “Gorges de la Chiffa.” Among his more important works are—“La Place de la brèche à Constantine” (1849); “Enterrement 247 Maure” (1853); “Bateleurs nègres” and “Audience chez un chalife” (1859); “Berger kabyle” and “Courriers arabes” (1861); “Bivouac arabe,” “Chasse au faucon,” “Fauconnier arabe” (now at Luxembourg) (1863); “Chasse au héron” (1865); “Voleurs de nuit” (1867); “Centaurs et arabes attaqués par une lionne” (1868); “Halte de muletiers” (1869); “Le Nil” and “Un Souvenir d’Esneh” (1875). Fromentin was much influenced in style by Eugène Delacroix. His works are distinguished by striking composition, great dexterity of handling and brilliancy of colour. In them is given with great truth and refinement the unconscious grandeur of barbarian and animal attitudes and gestures. His later works, however, show signs of an exhausted vein and of an exhausted spirit, accompanied or caused by physical enfeeblement. But it must be observed that Fromentin’s paintings show only one side of a genius that was perhaps even more felicitously expressed in literature, though of course with less profusion. “Dominique,” first published in the Revue des deux mondes in 1862, and dedicated to George Sand, is remarkable among the fiction of the century for delicate and imaginative observation and for emotional earnestness. Fromentin’s other literary works are—Visites artistiques (1852); Simples Pèlerinages (1856); Un Été dans le Sahara (1857); Une Année dans le Sahel (1858); and Les Maîtres d’autrefois (1876). In 1876 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Academy. He died suddenly at La Rochelle on the 27th of August 1876.

FROMMEL, GASTON (1862-1906), Swiss theologian, professor of theology in the university of Geneva from 1894 to 1906. An Alsatian by birth, he belonged mainly to French Switzerland, where he spent most of his life. He may best be described as continuing the spirit of Vinet (q.v.) amid the mental conditions marking the end of the 19th century. Like Vinet, he derived his philosophy of religion from a peculiarly deep experience of the Gospel of Christ as meeting the demands of the moral consciousness; but he developed even further than Vinet the psychological analysis of conscience and the method of verifying every doctrine by direct reference to spiritual experience. Both made much of moral individuality or personality as the crown and criterion of reality, believing that its correlation with Christianity, both historically and philosophically, was most intimate. But while Vinet laid most stress on the liberty from human authority essential to the moral consciousness, the changed needs of the age caused Frommel to develop rather the aspect of man’s dependence as a moral being upon God’s spiritual initiative, “the conditional nature of his liberty.” “Liberty is not the primary, but the secondary characteristic” of conscience; “before being free, it is the subject of obligation.” On this depends its objectivity as a real revelation of the Divine Will. Thus he claimed that a deeper analysis carried one beyond the human subjectivity of even Kant’s categorical imperative, since consciousness of obligation was “une expérience imposée sous le mode de l’absolu.” By his use of imposée Frommel emphasized the priority of man’s sense of obligation to his consciousness either of self or of God. Here he appealed to the current psychology of the subconscious for confirmation of his analysis, by which he claimed to transcend mere intellectualism. In his language on this fundamental point he was perhaps too jealous of admitting an ideal element as implicit in the feeling of obligation. Still he did well in insisting on priority to self-conscious thought as a mark of metaphysical objectivity in the case of moral, no less than of physical experience. Further, he found in the Christian revelation the same characteristics as belonged to the universal revelation involved in conscience, viz. God’s sovereign initiative and his living action in history. From this standpoint he argued against a purely psychological type of religion (agnosticisme religieux, as he termed it)—a tendency to which he saw even in A. Sabatier and the symbolo-fidéisme of the Paris School—as giving up a real and unifying faith. His influence on men, especially the student class, was greatly enhanced by the religious force and charm of his personality. Finally, like Vinet, he was a man of letters and a penetrating critic of men and systems.

Literature.—G. Godet, Gaston Frommel (Neuchâtel, 1906), a compact sketch, with full citation of sources; cf. H. Bois, in Sainte-Croix for 1906, for “L’Étudiant et le professeur.” A complete edition of his writings was begun in 1907.

(J. V. B.)

FRONDE, THE, the name given to a civil war in France which lasted from 1648 to 1652, and to its sequel, the war with Spain in 1653-59. The word means a sling, and was applied to this contest from the circumstance that the windows of Cardinal Mazarin’s adherents were pelted with stones by the Paris mob. Its original object was the redress of grievances, but the movement soon degenerated into a factional contest among the nobles, who sought to reverse the results of Richelieu’s work and to overthrow his successor Mazarin. In May 1648 a tax levied on judicial officers of the parlement of Paris was met by that body, not merely with a refusal to pay, but with a condemnation of earlier financial edicts, and even with a demand for the acceptance of a scheme of constitutional reforms framed by a committee of the parlement. This charter was somewhat influenced by contemporary events in England. But there is no real likeness between the two revolutions, the French parlement being no more representative of the people than the Inns of Court were in England. The political history of the time is dealt with in the article France: History, the present article being concerned chiefly with the military operations of what was perhaps the most costly and least necessary civil war in history.

The military record of the first or “parliamentary” Fronde is almost blank. In August 1648, strengthened by the news of Condé’s victory at Lens, Mazarin suddenly arrested the leaders of the parlement, whereupon Paris broke into insurrection and barricaded the streets. The court, having no army at its immediate disposal, had to release the prisoners and to promise reforms, and fled from Paris on the night of the 22nd of October. But the signing of the peace of Westphalia set free Condé’s army, and by January 1649 it was besieging Paris. The peace of Rueil was signed in March, after little blood had been shed. The Parisians, though still and always anti-cardinalist, refused to ask for Spanish aid, as proposed by their princely and noble adherents, and having no prospect of military success without such aid, submitted and received concessions. Thenceforward the Fronde becomes a story of sordid intrigues and half-hearted warfare, losing all trace of its first constitutional phase. The leaders were discontented princes and nobles—Monsieur (Gaston of Orléans, the king’s uncle), the great Condé and his brother Conti, the duc de Bouillon and his brother Turenne. To these must be added Gaston’s daughter, Mademoiselle de Montpensier (La grande Mademoiselle), Condé’s sister, Madame de Longueville, Madame de Chevreuse, and the astute intriguer Paul de Gondi, later Cardinal de Retz. The military operations fell into the hands of war-experienced mercenaries, led by two great, and many second-rate, generals, and of nobles to whom war was a polite pastime. The feelings of the people at large were enlisted on neither side.

This peace of Rueil lasted until the end of 1649. The princes, received at court once more, renewed their intrigues against Mazarin, who, having come to an understanding with Monsieur, Gondi and Madame de Chevreuse, suddenly arrested Condé, Conti and Longueville (January 14, 1650). The war which followed this coup is called the “Princes’ Fronde.” This time it was Turenne, before and afterwards the most loyal soldier of his day, who headed the armed rebellion. Listening to the promptings of his Egeria, Madame de Longueville, he resolved to rescue her brother, his old comrade of Freiburg and Nördlingen. It was with Spanish assistance that he hoped to do so; and a powerful army of that nation assembled in Artois under the archduke Leopold, governor-general of the Spanish Netherlands. But the peasants of the country-side rose against the invaders, the royal army in Champagne was in the capable hands of César de Choiseul, comte du Plessis-Praslin, who counted fifty-two years of age and thirty-six of war experience, and the little fortress of Guise successfully resisted the archduke’s attack. Thereupon, however, Mazarin drew upon Plessis-Praslin’s army 248 for reinforcements to be sent to subdue the rebellion in the south, and the royal general had to retire. Then, happily for France, the archduke decided that he had spent sufficient of the king of Spain’s money and men in the French quarrel. The magnificent regular army withdrew into winter quarters, and left Turenne to deliver the princes with a motley host of Frondeurs and Lorrainers. Plessis-Praslin by force and bribery secured the surrender of Rethel on the 13th of December 1650, and Turenne, who had advanced to relieve the place, fell back hurriedly. But he was a terrible opponent, and Plessis-Praslin and Mazarin himself, who accompanied the army, had many misgivings as to the result of a lost battle. The marshal chose nevertheless to force Turenne to a decision, and the battle of Blanc-Champ (near Somme-Py) or Rethel was the consequence. Both sides were at a standstill in strong positions, Plessis-Praslin doubtful of the trustworthiness of his cavalry, Turenne too weak to attack, when a dispute for precedence arose between the Gardes françaises and the Picardie regiment. The royal infantry had to be rearranged in order of regimental seniority, and Turenne, seeing and desiring to profit by the attendant disorder, came out of his stronghold and attacked with the greatest vigour. The battle (December 15, 1650) was severe and for a time doubtful, but Turenne’s Frondeurs gave way in the end, and his army, as an army, ceased to exist. Turenne himself, undeceived as to the part he was playing in the drama, asked and received the young king’s pardon, and meantime the court, with the maison du roi and other loyal troops, had subdued the minor risings without difficulty (March-April 1651). Condé, Conti and Longueville were released, and by April 1651 the rebellion had everywhere collapsed. Then followed a few months of hollow peace and the court returned to Paris. Mazarin, an object of hatred to all the princes, had already retired into exile. “Le temps est un galant homme,” he remarked, “laissons le faire!” and so it proved. His absence left the field free for mutual jealousies, and for the remainder of the year anarchy reigned in France. In December 1651 Mazarin returned with a small army. The war began again, and this time Turenne and Condé were pitted against one another. After the first campaign, as we shall see, the civil war ceased, but for several other campaigns the two great soldiers were opposed to one another, Turenne as the defender of France, Condé as a Spanish invader. Their personalities alone give threads of continuity to these seven years of wearisome manœuvres, sieges and combats, though for a right understanding of the causes which were to produce the standing armies of the age of Louis XIV. and Frederick the Great the military student should search deeply into the material and moral factors that here decided the issue.

The début of the new Frondeurs took place in Guyenne (February-March 1652), while their Spanish ally, the archduke Leopold William, captured various northern fortresses. On the Loire, whither the centre of gravity was soon transferred, the Frondeurs were commanded by intriguers and quarrelsome lords, until Condé’s arrival from Guyenne. His bold trenchant leadership made itself felt in the action of Bléneau (7th April 1652), in which a portion of the royal army was destroyed, but fresh troops came up to oppose him, and from the skilful dispositions made by his opponents Condé felt the presence of Turenne and broke off the action. The royal army did likewise. Condé invited the commander of Turenne’s rearguard to supper, chaffed him unmercifully for allowing the prince’s men to surprise him in the morning, and by way of farewell remarked to his guest, “Quel dommage que des braves gens comme nous se coupent la gorge pour un faquin”—an incident and a remark that thoroughly justify the iron-handed absolutism of Louis XIV. There was no hope for France while tournaments on a large scale and at the public’s expense were fashionable amongst the grands seigneurs. After Bléneau both armies marched to Paris to negotiate with the parlement, de Retz and Mlle de Montpensier, while the archduke took more fortresses in Flanders, and Charles IV., duke of Lorraine, with an army of plundering mercenaries, marched through Champagne to join Condé. As to the latter, Turenne manœuvred past Condé and planted himself in front of the mercenaries, and their leader, not wishing to expend his men against the old French regiments, consented to depart with a money payment and the promise of two tiny Lorraine fortresses. A few more manœuvres, and the royal army was able to hem in the Frondeurs in the Faubourg St Antoine (2nd July 1652) with their backs to the closed gates of Paris. The royalists attacked all along the line and won a signal victory in spite of the knightly prowess of the prince and his great lords, but at the critical moment Gaston’s daughter persuaded the Parisians to open the gates and to admit Condé’s army. She herself turned the guns of the Bastille on the pursuers. An insurrectional government was organized in the capital and proclaimed Monsieur lieutenant-general of the realm. Mazarin, feeling that public opinion was solidly against him, left France again, and the bourgeois of Paris, quarrelling with the princes, permitted the king to enter the city on the 21st of October 1652. Mazarin returned unopposed in February 1653.

The Fronde as a civil war was now over. The whole country, wearied of anarchy and disgusted with the princes, came to look to the king’s party as the party of order and settled government, and thus the Fronde prepared the way for the absolutism of Louis XIV. The general war continued in Flanders, Catalonia and Italy wherever a Spanish and a French garrison were face to face, and Condé with the wreck of his army openly and definitely entered the service of the king of Spain. The “Spanish Fronde” was almost purely a military affair and, except for a few outstanding incidents, a dull affair to boot. In 1653 France was so exhausted that neither invaders nor defenders were able to gather supplies to enable them to take the field till July. At one moment, near Péronne, Condé had Turenne at a serious disadvantage, but he could not galvanize the Spanish general Count Fuensaldana, who was more solicitous to preserve his master’s soldiers than to establish Condé as mayor of the palace to the king of France, and the armies drew apart again without fighting. In 1654 the principal incident was the siege and relief of Arras. On the night of the 24th-25th August the lines of circumvallation drawn round that place by the prince were brilliantly stormed by Turenne’s army, and Condé won equal credit for his safe withdrawal of the besieging corps under cover of a series of bold cavalry charges led by himself as usual, sword in hand. In 1655 Turenne captured the fortresses of Landrecies, Condé and St Ghislain. In 1656 the prince of Condé revenged himself for the defeat of Arras by storming Turenne’s circumvallation around Valenciennes (16th July), but Turenne drew off his forces in good order. The campaign of 1657 was uneventful, and is only to be remembered because a body of 6000 British infantry, sent by Cromwell in pursuance of his treaty of alliance with Mazarin, took part in it. The presence of the English contingent and its very definite purpose of making Dunkirk a new Calais, to be held by England for ever, gave the next campaign a character of certainty and decision which is entirely wanting in the rest of the war. Dunkirk was besieged promptly and in great force, and when Don Juan of Austria and Condé appeared with the relieving army from Furnes, Turenne advanced boldly to meet him. The battle of the Dunes, fought on the 14th of June 1658, was the first real trial of strength since the battle of the Faubourg St Antoine. Successes on one wing were compromised by failure on the other, but in the end Condé drew off with heavy losses, the success of his own cavalry charges having entirely failed to make good the defeat of the Spanish right wing amongst the Dunes. Here the “red-coats” made their first appearance on a continental battlefield, under the leadership of Sir W. Lockhart, Cromwell’s ambassador at Paris, and astonished both armies by the stubborn fierceness of their assaults, for they were the products of a war where passions ran higher and the determination to win rested on deeper foundations than in the dégringolade of the feudal spirit in which they now figured. Dunkirk fell, as a result of the victory, and flew the St George’s cross till Charles II. sold it to the king of France. A last desultory campaign followed in 1659—the twenty-fifth year of the Franco-Spanish War—and the peace of the Pyrenees was signed on the 5th of November. On the 27th of January 249 1660 the prince asked and obtained at Aix the forgiveness of Louis XIV. The later careers of Turenne and Condé as the great generals—and obedient subjects—of their sovereign are described in the article Dutch Wars.

For the many memoirs and letters of the time see the list in G. Monod’s Bibliographie de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1888). The Lettres du cardinal Mazarin have been collected in nine volumes (Paris, 1878-1906). See P. Adolphe Chéruel, Histoire de France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV (4 vols., 1879-1880), and his Histoire de France sous le ministère de Mazarin (3 vols., 1883); L. C. de Beaupoil de Sainte-Aulaire, Histoire de la Fronde (2nd ed., 2 vols., 1860); “Arvède Barine” (Mme Charles Vincens), La Jeunesse de la grande mademoiselle (Paris, 1902); Duc d’Aumale, Histoire des princes de Condé (Paris, 1889-1896, 7 vols.). The most interesting account of the military operations is in General Hardy de Périni’s Turenne et Condé (Batailles françaises, vol. iv.).

FRONTENAC ET PALLUAU, LOUIS DE BUADE, Comte de (1620-1698), French-Canadian statesman, governor and lieutenant-general for the French king in La Nouvelle France (Canada), son of Henri de Buade, colonel in the regiment of Navarre, was born in the year 1620. The details of his early life are meagre, as no trace of the Frontenac papers has been discovered. The de Buades, however, were a family of distinction in the principality of Béarn. Antoine de Buade, seigneur de Frontenac, grandfather of the future governor of Canada, attained eminence as a councillor of state under Henri IV.; and his children were brought up with the dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII. Louis de Buade entered the army at an early age. In the year 1635 he served under the prince of Orange in Holland, and fought with credit and received many wounds during engagements in the Low Countries and in Italy. He was promoted to the rank of colonel in the regiment of Normandy in 1643, and three years later, after distinguishing himself at the siege of Orbitello, where he had an arm broken, he was made maréchal de camp. His service seems to have been continuous until the conclusion of the peace of Westphalia in 1648, when he returned to his father’s house in Paris and married, without the consent of her parents, Anne de la Grange-Trianon, a girl of great beauty, who later became the friend and confidante of Madame de Montpensier. The marriage was not a happy one, and after the birth of a son incompatibility of temper led to a separation, the count retiring to his estate on the Indre, where by an extravagant course of living he became hopelessly involved in debt. Little is known of his career for the next fifteen years beyond the fact that he held a high position at court; but in the year 1669, when France sent a contingent to assist the Venetians in the defence of Crete against the Turks, Frontenac was placed in command of the troops on the recommendation of Turenne. In this expedition he won military glory; but his fortune was not improved thereby.

At this period the affairs of New France claimed the attention of the French court. From the year 1665 the colony had been successfully administered by three remarkable men—Daniel de Rémy de Courcelle, the governor, Jèan Talon, the intendant, and the marquis de Tracy, who had been appointed lieutenant-general for the French king in America; but a difference of opinion had arisen between the governor and the intendant, and each had demanded the other’s recall in the public interest. At this crisis in the administration of New France, Frontenac was appointed to succeed de Courcelle. The new governor arrived in Quebec on the 12th of September 1672. From the commencement it was evident that he was prepared to give effect to a policy of colonial expansion, and to exercise an independence of action that did not coincide with the views of the monarch or of his minister Colbert. One of the first acts of the governor, by which he sought to establish in Canada the three estates—nobles, clergy and people—met with the disapproval of the French court, and measures were adopted to curb his ambition by increasing the power of the sovereign council and by reviving the office of intendant. Frontenac, however, was a man of dominant spirit, jealous of authority, prepared to exact obedience from all and to yield to none. In the course of events he soon became involved in quarrels with the intendant touching questions of precedence, and with the ecclesiastics, one or two of whom ventured to criticize his proceedings. The church in Canada had been administered for many years by the religious orders; for the see of Quebec, so long contemplated, had not yet been erected. But three years after the arrival of Frontenac a former vicar apostolic, François Xavier de Laval de Montmorenci, returned to Quebec as bishop, with a jurisdiction over the whole of Canada. In this redoubtable churchman the governor found a vigorous opponent who was determined to render the state subordinate to the church. Frontenac, following in this respect in the footsteps of his predecessors, had issued trading licences which permitted the sale of intoxicants. The bishop, supported by the intendant, endeavoured to suppress this trade and sent an ambassador to France to obtain remedial action. The views of the bishop were upheld and henceforth authority was divided. Troubles ensued between the governor and the sovereign council, most of the members of which sided with the one permanent power in the colony—the bishop; while the suspicions and intrigues of the intendant, Duchesneau, were a constant source of vexation and strife. As the king and his minister had to listen to and adjudicate upon the appeals from the contending parties their patience was at last worn out, and both governor and intendant were recalled to France in the year 1682. During Frontenac’s first administration many improvements had been made in the country. The defences had been strengthened, a fort was built at Cataraqui (now Kingston), Ontario, bearing the governor’s name, and conditions of peace had been fairly maintained between the Iroquois on the one hand and the French and their allies, the Ottawas and the Hurons, on the other. The progress of events during the next few years proved that the recall of the governor had been ill-timed. The Iroquois were assuming a threatening attitude towards the inhabitants, and Frontenac’s successor, La Barre, was quite incapable of leading an army against such cunning foes. At the end of a year La Barre was replaced by the marquis de Denonville, a man of ability and courage, who, though he showed some vigour in marching against the western Iroquois tribes, angered rather than intimidated them, and the massacre of Lachine (5th of August 1689) must be regarded as one of the unhappy results of his administration.

The affairs of the colony were now in a critical condition; a man of experience and decision was needed to cope with the difficulties, and Louis XIV., who was not wanting in sagacity, wisely made choice of the choleric count to represent and uphold the power of France. When, therefore, on the 15th of October 1689, Frontenac arrived in Quebec as governor for the second time, he received an enthusiastic welcome, and confidence was at once restored in the public mind. Quebec was not long to enjoy the blessing of peace. On the 16th of October 1690 several New England ships under the command of Sir William Phipps appeared off the Island of Orleans, and an officer was sent ashore to demand the surrender of the fort. Frontenac, bold and fearless, sent a defiant answer to the hostile admiral, and handled so vigorously the forces he had collected as completely to repulse the enemy, who in their hasty retreat left behind a few pieces of artillery on the Beauport shore. The prestige of the governor was greatly increased by this event, and he was prepared to follow up his advantage by an attack on Boston from the sea, but his resources were inadequate for the undertaking. New France now rejoiced in a brief respite from her enemies, and during the interval Frontenac encouraged the revival of the drama at the Château St-Louis and paid some attention to the social life of the colony. The Indians, however, were not yet subdued, and for two years a petty warfare was maintained. In 1696 Frontenac decided to take the field against the Iroquois, although at this time he was seventy-six years of age. On the 6th of July he left Lachine at the head of a considerable force for the village of the Onondagas, where he arrived a month later. In the meantime the Iroquois had abandoned their villages, and as pursuit was impracticable the army commenced its return march on the 10th of August. The old warrior endured the fatigue of the march as well as the youngest soldier, and for his courage and prowess he received the cross of St 250 Louis. Frontenac died on the 28th of November 1698 at the Château St-Louis after a brief illness, deeply mourned by the Canadian people. The faults of the governor were those of temperament, which had been fostered by early environment. His nature was turbulent, and from his youth he had been used to command; but underlying a rough exterior there was evidence of a kindly heart. He was fearless, resourceful and decisive, and triumphed as few men could have done over the difficulties and dangers of a most critical position.

See Count Frontenac, by W. D. Le Sueur (Toronto, 1906); Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV, by Francis Parkman (Boston, 1878); Le Comte de Frontenac, by Henri Lorin (Paris, 1895); Frontenac et ses amis, by Ernest Myrand (Quebec, 1902).

(A. G. D.)

FRONTINUS, SEXTUS JULIUS (c. A.D. 40-103), Roman soldier and author. In 70 he was city praetor, and five years later was sent into Britain to succeed Petilius Cerealis as governor of that island. He subdued the Silures, and held the other native tribes in check till he was superseded by Agricola (78). In 97 he was appointed superintendant of the aqueducts (curator aquarum) at Rome, an office only conferred upon persons of very high standing. He was also a member of the college of augurs. His chief work is De aquis urbis Romae, in two books, containing a history and description of the water-supply of Rome, including the laws relating to its use and maintenance, and other matters of importance in the history of architecture. Frontinus also wrote a theoretical treatise on military science (De re militari) which is lost. His Strategematicon libri iii. is a collection of examples of military stratagems from Greek and Roman history, for the use of officers; a fourth book, the plan and style of which is different from the rest (more stress is laid on the moral aspects of war, e.g. discipline), is the work of another writer (best edition by G. Gundermann, 1888). Extracts from a treatise on land-surveying ascribed to Frontinus are preserved in Lachmann’s Gromatici veteres (1848).

A valuable edition of the De aquis (text and translation) has been published by C. Herschel (Boston, Mass., 1899). It contains numerous illustrations; maps of the routes of the ancient aqueducts and the city of Rome in the time of Frontinus; a photographic reproduction of the only MS. (the Monte Cassino); several explanatory chapters, and a concise bibliography, in which special reference is made to P. d Tissot, Étude sur la condition des agrimensores (1879). There is a complete edition of the works by A. Dederich (1855), and an English translation of the Strategematica by R. Scott (1816).

FRONTISPIECE (through the French, from Med. Lat. frontispicium, a front view, frons, frontis, forehead or front, and specere, to look at; the English spelling is a mistaken adaptation to “piece”), an architectural term for the principal front of a building, but more generally applied to a richly decorated entrance doorway, if projecting slightly only in front of the main wall, otherwise portal or porch would be a more correct term. The word, however, is more used for a decorative design or the representation of some subject connected with the substance of a book and placed as the first illustrated page. A design at the end of the chapter of a book is called a tail-piece.

FRONTO, MARCUS CORNELIUS (c. A.D. 100-170), Roman grammarian, rhetorician and advocate, was born of an Italian family at Cirta in Numidia. He came to Rome in the reign of Hadrian, and soon gained such renown as an advocate and orator as to be reckoned inferior only to Cicero. He amassed a large fortune, erected magnificent buildings and purchased the famous gardens of Maecenas. Antoninus Pius, hearing of his fame, appointed him tutor to his adopted sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. In 143 he was consul for two months, but declined the proconsulship of Asia on the ground of ill-health. His latter years were embittered by the loss of all his children except one daughter. His talents as an orator and rhetorician were greatly admired by his contemporaries, a number of whom formed themselves into a school called after him Frontoniani, whose avowed object it was to restore the ancient purity and simplicity of the Latin language in place of the exaggerations of the Greek sophistical school. However praiseworthy the intention may have been, the list of authors specially recommended does not speak well for Fronto’s literary taste. The authors of the Augustan age are unduly depreciated, while Ennius, Plautus, Laberius, Sallust are held up as models of imitation. Till 1815 the only extant works ascribed (erroneously) to Fronto were two grammatical treatises, De nominum verborumque differentíis and Exempla elocutionum (the last being really by Arusianus Messius). In that year, however, Angelo Mai discovered in the Ambrosian library at Milan a palimpsest manuscript (and, later, some additional sheets of it in the Vatican), on which had been originally written some of Fronto’s letters to his royal pupils and their replies. These palimpsests had originally belonged to the famous convent of St Columba at Bobbio, and had been written over by the monks with the acts of the first council of Chalcedon. The letters, together with the other fragments in the palimpsest, were published at Rome in 1823. Their contents falls far short of the writer’s great reputation. The letters consist of correspondence with Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, in which the character of Fronto’s pupils appears in a very favourable light, especially in the affection they both seem to have retained for their old master; and letters to friends, chiefly letters of recommendation. The collection also contains treatises on eloquence, some historical fragments, and literary trifles on such subjects as the praise of smoke and dust, of negligence, and a dissertation on Arion. “His style is a laborious mixture of archaisms, a motley cento, with the aid of which he conceals the poverty of his knowledge and ideas.” His chief merit consists in having preserved extracts from ancient writers which would otherwise have been lost.

The best edition of his works is by S. A. Naber (1867), with an account of the palimpsest; see also G. Boissier, “Marc-Aurèle et les lettres de F.,” in Revue des deux mondes (April 1868); R. Ellis, in Journal of Philology (1868) and Correspondence of Fronto and M. Aurelius (1904); and the full bibliography in the article by Brzoska in the new edition of Pauly’s Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, iv. pt. i. (1900).

FROSINONE (anc. Frusino), a town of Italy in the province of Rome, from which it is 53 m. E.S.E. by rail. Pop. (1901) town, 9530; commune, 11,029. The place is picturesquely situated on a hill of 955 ft. above sea-level, but contains no buildings of interest. Of the ancient city walls a small fragment alone is preserved, and no other traces of antiquity are visible, not even of the amphitheatre which it once possessed, for which a ticket (tessera) has been found (Th. Mommsen in Ber. d. Sächsischen Gesellschaft d. Wissenschaften, 1849, 286). It was a Volscian, not a Hernican, town; a part of its territory was taken from it about 306-303 B.C. by the Romans and sold. The town then became a praefectura, probably with the civitas sine suffragio, and later a colony, but we hear nothing important of it. It was situated just above the Via Latina.

(T. As.)

FROSSARD, CHARLES AUGUSTE (1807-1875), French general, was born on the 26th of April 1807, and entered the army from the École Polytechnique in 1827, being posted to the engineers. He took part in the siege of Rome in 1849 and in that of Sebastopol in 1855, after which he was promoted general of brigade. Four years later as general of division, and chief of engineers in the Italian campaign, he attracted the particular notice of the emperor Napoleon III., who made him in 1867 chief of his military household and governor to the prince imperial. He was one of the superior military authorities who in this period 1866-1870 foresaw and endeavoured to prepare for the inevitable war with Germany, and at the outbreak of war he was given by Napoleon the choice between a corps command and the post of chief engineer at headquarters. He chose the command of the II. corps. On the 6th of August 1870 he held the position of Spicheren against the Germans until the arrival of reinforcements for the latter, and the non-appearance of the other French corps compelled him to retire. After this he took part in the battles around Metz, and was involved with his corps in the surrender of Bazaine’s army. General Frossard published in 1872 a Rapport sur les opérations du 2e corps. He died at Château-Villain (Haute-Marne) on the 25th of August 1875.

FROST, WILLIAM EDWARD (1810-1877), English painter, was born at Wandsworth, near London, in September 1810. About 251 1825, through William Etty, R.A., he was sent to a drawing school in Bloomsbury, and after several years’ study there, and in the sculpture rooms at the British Museum, Frost was in 1829 admitted as a student in the schools of the Royal Academy. He won medals in all the schools, except the antique, in which he was beaten by Maclise. During those years he maintained himself by portrait-painting. He is said to have painted about this time over 300 portraits. In 1839 he obtained the gold medal of the Royal Academy for his picture of “Prometheus bound by Force and Strength.” At the cartoon exhibition at Westminster Hall in 1843 he was awarded a third-class prize of £100 for his cartoon of “Una alarmed by Fauns and Satyrs.” He exhibited at the Academy “Christ crowned with Thorns” (1843), “Nymphs dancing” (1844), “Sabrina” (1845), “Diana and Actaeon” (1846). In 1846 he was elected Associate of the Royal Academy. His “Nymph disarming Cupid” was exhibited in 1847; “Una and the Wood-Nymphs” of the same year was bought by the queen. This was the time of Frost’s highest popularity, which considerably declined after 1850. His later pictures are simply repetitions of earlier motives. Among them may be named “Euphrosyne” (1848), “Wood-Nymphs” (1851), “Chastity” (1854), “Il Penseroso” (1855), “The Graces” (1856), “Narcissus” (1857), “Zephyr with Aurora playing” (1858), “The Graces and Loves” (1863), “Hylas and the Nymphs” (1867). Frost was elected to full membership of the Royal Academy in December 1871. This dignity, however, he soon resigned. Frost had no high power of design, though some of his smaller and apparently less important works are not without grace and charm. Technically, his paintings are, in a sense, very highly finished, but they are entirely without mastery. He died on the 4th of June 1877.

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