Histoire de France

History of France Histoire de France ('History of France') is the 19-volume magnum opus of Jules Michelet, first published in 1867. The first volume deals with early French history up to the death of Charlemagne; the second with the flourishing time of feudal France; the third with the thirteenth century; the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes with the Hundred Years' War; the seventh and eighth with the establishment of the royal power under Charles VII and Louis XI. The 16th and 17th centuries have four volumes apiece, much of which is very distantly connected with French history proper, especially in the two volumes entitled Renaissance and Reforme. The last three volumes carry on the history of the eighteenth century to the outbreak of the Revolution. Jules Michelet, History of France, tr. G. H. Smith (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1882), vols. i and ii Quotes The most sympathetic and perfectible of the races of man. Vol I, "Celts and Iberians", p. 33 The genius of these Gauls or Celts is at first a mere restless activity, prompting to attack and conquest: it was through war that the nations of antiquity came into contact and intermingled. A warring and noisy race, they overrun the world, sword in hand, led on, it would seem, less by greed, than by a vain and uneasy desire to see, know, and busy themselves with every thing; bursting and destroying through mere inability to create. With their large, fair, soft, and succulent bodies, they are the infants of the nascent world; elastic and impulsive, but neither enduring nor persevering; fierce in their joys, vast in their hopes, and vain — for as yet nothing has withstood them. Vol. I, "Celts and Iberians", p. 33 A new Celtic tribe, the Cymry or Cumry, . . . who settled for the most part in the centre of France, on the Seine and the Loire, were, it appears, of more serious and stable character. Less indisposed to restraint, they were governed by a sacerdotal corporation — the Druids. The primitive religion of the Gauls, which yielded to the Cymric Druidism, was a natural religion, gross undoubtedly, and far from having reached that systematic form which it subsequently acquired among the Irish Gael. That of the Cymric Druids, as far as it is discernible . . . , had a far loftier moral tendency: they taught the immortality of the soul. Yet was the genius of the race too material to admit of such doctrines bearing early fruit. The Druids could not transport it out of its clannish life. The material principle, the influence of its military chieftains, co-existed with the government of the priests. Cymric Gaul was only imperfectly, Gallic Gaul not in the least, organized; and escaping the Druids, it flowed over the Rhine and the Alps, to flood the world. Vol. I, "The Cymri", p. 35 The heretical Church was fully organized, and had its hierarchy, its priests, its bishops, and its pope. Their general council was held at Toulouse, which city would undoubtedly have been their Rome, and its capitol have replaced the other in case of ultimate triumph. Vol. I, "Critical Position of the Church", p. 274 Many had been shocked by the oriental wildness of Manicheism. To recognise two principles, that of good and that of evil, seemed to be an admission of two Almighties, to elevate Satan to heaven, and throne him by the side of God. Vol. I, "Critical Position of the Church", p. 274 The people of the North saw the mercenary soldiers, the routiers, . . . realizing among themselves all that was told of the impiety of the South. . . . They maltreated the priests all the same as the peasants, dressed up their women in the consecrated vestments, beat the clergymen, and made them sing mock mass. Another of their delights was to pollute and break in pieces the images of Christ, to break their arms and legs, and ill-use them worse than the Jews did in the Passion. These routiers were dear to princes, precisely on account pf their impiety, which rendered them insensible to ecclesiastical censures. War, carried on by men without creed, and without country, against whom the Church herself was no longer an asylum, impious as we moderns, and fierce as barbarians — war so carried on was fearful. It was more particularly in the breathing time between wars, when they were without pay and without chiefs, that they most oppressed the land, robbing, ransoming, and murdering at random. Vol. I, "Antipathy between the North and South", pp. 274–275 Their very food tended to estrange the two races. The eaters of garlic, oil, and figs, reminded the crusaders of the impurity of Moorish and Jewish blood; and Languedoc seemed to them another Judea. Vol. I, "Antipathy between the North and South", p. 275 The South went mad on the eve of its ruin, as did Pompeii the evening before it was swallowed up by Vesuvius. Vol. I, "Antipathy between the North and South", p. 275 The Latin conquest of Constantinople had familiarized men's minds to a holy war against Christians. The proximity, too, was tempting. There was no necessity to cross the sea; and paradise was offered to him who would pillage here below the rich champaigns and wealthy cities of Languedoc. Vol. I, "War of the Albigeois", p. 278 France is at this period a legist in cuirass, a lawyer barred in iron; and has recourse to feudal force to carry into execution the sentence of the Roman and canonical law. Obedient daughter of the Church, she takes possession both of Italy and the Church itself. If she beat the Church, it is as a daughter, obliged in conscience to correct her mother. Vol. I, "Philip the Fair", p. 343 Far be it from us to speak ill of gold. Compared with feudal property, with land, gold is a superior form of wealth. Of small compass, exchangeable, divisible, easily handled and concealed, it is wealth subtilized — I was about to say, spiritualized. So long as wealth was immoveable, man, bound and, as it were, rooted to the spot by it, had scarcely any more space for movement than the mere soil over which he crawled. Ownership was a dependency on the soil: the land took possession of the man. It is the reverse now-a-days: man carries off the land, concentrated and represented by gold. The docile metal subserves transactions of all kinds: facile and fluid, it adapts itself to every kind of circulation, commercial and administrative. Government, obliged to act rapidly on distant points, in a thousand different ways, finds the precious metals its most efficient agents. The sudden creation of a government at the beginning of the fifteenth century, created a sudden and insatiable want of gold and silver. Vol. I, "The Advent of Gold", p. 364 With Philippe-le-Bel is born the monster, the giant, — the exchequer; thirsty, hungry, and sharpset. It cries out as it is born, like Rabelais' Garagantua — meat, drink. This fearful infant, whose ravenous hunger cannot be satisfied, will, at need, eat flesh and drink blood. It is the Cyclops, the ogre, the devouring gargouille of the Seine. The grand council is the monster's head; its long claws are the parliaments; its stomach, the chamber of accounts, (Chambre des Comptes.) The only food that can satisfy it, is precisely that which the people cannot provide it with. Treasury and people have but one cry — gold. Vol. I, "The Advent of Gold", p. 364 The pious confidence of the middle age, which did not mistrust the immuring of a great lady along with her knights in the precincts of a castle, of a narrow tower [Tour de Nesle] — the vassalage which imposed on young men as a feudal duty the sweetest cares, was a dangerous trial for human nature, when the ties of religion were weakened. Vol. I, "Demonology, and Witchcraft", p. 393 Whether or no Philippe-le-Bel were a wicked man or a bad king, there is no mistaking his reign as the grand era of civil order in France, the foundation of the modern monarchy. St. Louis is still a feudal king. The advance from the one to the other, may be measured by a single word. St. Louis called together the deputies of the cities of the South; Philippe-le-Bel those of the states of France. The first drew up establishments for his domains; the second promulgated ordinances for the kingdom. Vol. I, "Policy of Philip the Fair", p. 395 It is curious to trace from year to year the lies and tergiversations of the royal false coiner. . . . No doubt . . . the king was convinced that he was only exercising his right, and that he considered the privilege of raising at will the value of his money, an attribute of his sovereign power. The laughable part of the business is to see this sovereign power, this divinity, obliged to temporize with the mistrust of the people. The nascent religion of royalty already has its unbelievers. Vol. I, "Policy of Philip the Fair", p. 397 Philippe assembled the States, and gained his cause, which, at bottom, was good, by absurd reasons. He alleged in his favor the old German law of the Franks, which excluded daughters from the Salic land; and maintained that the crown of France was too noble a fief to fall into hands used to the distaff ("pour tomber en quenouille") — a feudal argument, the effect of which was to ruin feudality. While the progress of civil equity and the introduction of the Roman law opened the right of inheritance to daughters, while fiefs were becoming feminine, and passing from one family to another, the crown, immoveable in the midst of universal nobility, did not go out of the same house. The house of France received from without the moveable and variable element — woman, but preserved in the succession of the males the fixed element of the family, the identity of the Pater-familias. The woman changes her name and penates. The man, inhabiting the abode of his ancestors, and reproducing their name, is led to follow in their track. This invariable transmission of the crown in the male line has imparted steadfastness to the policy of our kings, and usefully counterpoised the fickleness of our forgetful nation.By thus rejecting the right of the daughters at the very moment it was gradually triumphing over the fiefs, the crown acquired its character of receiving always without ever giving. Vol. I, "Philip the Tall", p. 402 The feudal spirit which resumed strength under the Valois in favor of private wars, led to fatal creations of appanages, and founded, to the advantage of the different branches of the royal family, a princely feudality as embarrassing to Charles VI and Louis XI, as the other had been to Philippe-le-Bel. Vol. I, "Philip the Tall", p. 402 The parliament, which . . . vigorously defends the honor of the king, is itself a true king in a judicial point of view. Its members wear the royal habit — the long robe, purple, and ermine. It is not, apparently, the shadow and effigy of the monarch, but rather, his thought, his constant, immutable, and truly royal will. The king wishes justice to pursue her course, "notwithstanding all concessions, ordinances, and letters-royal to the contrary." Thus, the monarch distrusts the monarch, and recognises himself better in his parliament than in himself. He distinguishes within himself a double character. He feels himself both king and man, and the king orders the man to be disobeyed — a fine confession of the twofold Homo, a to be respected and truly human inconsistency, which contains the whole mystery of our old monarchy. Vol. I, "Vigor of the Parliament", p. 403 In 1291 the Holy Land is lost, the age of the crusades over. In 1298, the Venetian, Marco Paolo, the Christopher Columbus of Asia, dictates the relation of his travels, and of a twenty years' sojourn in China and Japan. For the first time, Europe learns that twelve months' journey beyond Jerusalem, there exist kingdoms and well-ordered cities. Jerusalem is no longer the centre of the world, or of human thought. Europe loses the Holy Land, but sees the earth. Vol. I, "Philip of Valois", p. 408 The world . . . is commencing a great crusade, but of a thoroughly new kind. Less poetic than the first, it does not go in quest of the Holy Land, of the Graal, or of the empire of Trebizond. If we stop a vessel at sea, we shall no longer find a younger son of France who seeks a kingdom, but rather some Genoese or Venetian, who will willingly sell us sugar and cinnamon. Such is the hero of the modern world, no less heroical than the other: he will risk for the gain of a sequin as much as Richard Coeur-de-Lion for St. Jean d'Acre. The crusader of commerce performs his crusade in every sense of the word, and has his Jerusalem everywhere. Vol. I, "Rise of Commerce", pp. 408-9 To carry on commerce was no easy matter in those days. The merchant who had made a prosperous voyage from Alexandria to Venice without unlucky accident, had yet done nothing. To sell to good advantage, he was obliged to plunge into the north. He had to carry his merchandise through the Tyrol, and by the rugged banks of the Danube, to Augsburg or Vienna; he had to transport it safely through the midst of the gloomy forests and gloomy castles of the Rhine, and to take it on to Cologne, the holy city. It was here the merchant returned thanks to God. Here, the North and South met, and the merchants of the Hanse towns bargained with those of the Venetians. — Or, else, he deflected to the left. He penetrated into France, on the assurance of the good count of Champagne. He unpacked his bales at the old fairs of Troyes, and at those of Lagny, Bar-sur-Aube, and Provins. Thence, in a few days' journey, though not without risk, he could reach Bruges, the grand emporium of the Low Countries, the city of the seventeen nations. Vol. I, "Rise of Commerce", p. 409 Works cited in Histoire de France Alexis · Appian · William of Apulia · Ausonius · Julius Caesar (Bello Gallico) · Philippe de Commines · Diodorus Siculus · Ephorus · François Guizot · Henry Hallam · Ingulf · Riccobaldo of Ferrara · Jean Froissart · Nicholas of Jamsilla · Jean de Joinville · Guillaume de Nangis · Goffredo Malaterra · William of Malmesbury · Jean de Meun · Matthew Paris · William of Poitiers · Guillaume de Puylaurens · Orosius · Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay · Polybius · Posidonius · Marino Sanuto · Strabo · Giovanni Villani · Virgil · Jerónimo Zurita y Castro · Historia Augusta · Histoire générale de Languedoc External links Category:Histories