VOLUME XI SLICE I Franciscans to French Language (continued 2)

Fortunately for the Prussians, Moltke at Mainz took a different view. Receiving absolutely no intelligence from the front during the 7th, he telegraphed orders to the I. and II. armies (10.25 P.M.) to halt on the 8th, and impressed on Steinmetz the necessity of employing his cavalry to clear up the situation. The I. army had already begun the marches ordered by Steinmetz. It was now led back practically to its old bivouacs amongst the unburied dead. Prince Frederick Charles only conformed to Moltke’s order with the III. and X. corps; the remainder executed their concentration towards the south and east.

During the night of the 7th of August Moltke decided that the French army must be in retreat towards the Moselle and forthwith busied himself with the preparation of fresh tables of march for the two armies, his object being to swing up the left wing to outflank the enemy from the south. This work, and the transfer of headquarters to Homburg, needed time, hence no fresh orders were issued to either army, and neither commander would incur the responsibility of moving without any. The I. army therefore spent a fourth night in bivouac on the battlefield. But Constantin von Alvensleben, commanding the III. corps, a man of very different stamp from his colleagues, hearing at first hand that the French had evacuated St Avold, set his corps in motion early in the morning of the 10th August down the St Avold-Metz road, reached St Avold and obtained conclusive evidence that the French were retreating.

During the 9th the orders for the advance to the Moselle were issued. These were based, not on an exact knowledge of where the French army actually stood, but on the opinion Advance to the Moselle. Moltke had formed as to where it ought to have been on military grounds solely, overlooking the fact that the French staff were not free to form military decisions but were compelled to bow to political expediency.

Actually on the 7th of August the emperor had decided to attack the Germans on the 8th with the whole Rhine Army, but this decision was upset by alarmist reports from the beaten army of MacMahon. He then decided to retreat to the Moselle, as Moltke had foreseen, and there to draw to himself the remnants of MacMahon’s army (now near Lunéville). At the same time he assigned the executive command over the whole Rhine Army to Marshal Bazaine. This retreat was begun during the course of the 8th and 9th of August; but on the night of the 9th urgent telegrams from Paris induced the emperor to suspend the movement, and during the 10th the whole army took up a strong position on the French Nied.

Meanwhile the II. German army had received its orders to march in a line of army corps on a broad front in the general direction of Pont-à-Mousson, well to the south of Metz. The I. army was to follow by short marches in échelon on the right; only the III. corps was directed on Falkenberg, a day’s march farther towards Metz along the St Avold-Metz road. The movement was begun on the 10th, and towards evening the French army was located on the right front of the III. corps. This entirely upset Moltke’s hypothesis, and called for a complete modification of his plans, as the III. corps alone could not be expected to resist the impact of Bazaine’s five corps. The III. corps therefore received orders to stand fast for the moment, and the remainder of the II. army was instructed to wheel to the right and concentrate for a great battle to the east of Metz on the 16th or 17th.

Before, however, these orders had been received the sudden retreat of the French completely changed the situation. The Germans therefore continued their movement towards the Moselle. On the 13th the French took up a fresh position 5 m. to the east of Metz, where they were located by the cavalry and the advanced guards of the I. army.

Again Moltke ordered the I. army to observe and hold the enemy, whilst the II. was to swing round to the north. The cavalry was to scout beyond the Moselle and intercept all communication with the heart of France (see Metz). Battle of Colombey-Borny. By this time the whole German army had imbibed the idea that the French were in full retreat and endeavouring to evade a decisive struggle. When therefore during the morning of the 14th their outposts observed signs of retreat in the French position, their impatience could no longer be restrained; as at Wörth and Spicheren, an outpost commander brought up his guns, and at the sound of their fire, every unit within reach spontaneously got under arms (battle of Colombey-Borny). In a short time, with or without orders, the I., VII., VIII. and IX. corps were in full march to the battle-field. But the French too turned back to fight, and an obstinate engagement ensued, at the close of which the Germans barely held the ground and the French withdrew under cover of the Metz forts.

Still, though the fighting had been indecisive, the conviction of victory remained with the Germans, and the idea of a French retreat became an obsession. To this idea Moltke gave expression in his orders issued early on the 15th, in which he laid down that the “fruits of the victory” of the previous evening could only be reaped by a vigorous pursuit towards the passages of the Meuse, where it was hoped the French might yet be overtaken. This order, however, did not allow for the hopeless inability of the French staff to regulate the movement of congested masses of men, horses and vehicles, such as were now accumulated in the streets and environs of Metz. Whilst Bazaine had come to no definite decision whether to stand and fight or continue to retreat, and was merely drifting under the impressions of the moment, the Prussian leaders, in particular Prince Frederick Charles, saw in imagination the French columns in rapid orderly movement towards the west, and calculated that at best they could not be overtaken short of Verdun.

In this order of ideas the whole of the II. army, followed on its right rear by two-thirds of the I. army (the I. corps being detached to observe the eastern side of the fortress), were pushed on towards the Moselle, the cavalry far in advance towards the Meuse, whilst only the 5th cavalry division was ordered to scout towards the Metz-Verdun road, and even that was disseminated over far too wide an area.

Later in the day (15th) Frederick Charles sent orders to the III. corps, which was on the right flank of his long line of columns and approaching the Moselle at Corny and Novéant, to march via Gorze to Mars-la-Tour on the Metz-Verdun road; to the X. corps, strung out along the road from Thiaucourt to Pont-à-Mousson, to move to Jarny; and for the remainder to push on westward to seize the Meuse crossings. No definite information as to the French army reached him in time to modify these instructions.

Meanwhile the 5th (Rheinbaben’s) cavalry division, at about 3 P.M. in the afternoon, had come into contact with the French cavalry in the vicinity of Mars-la-Tour, and gleaned intelligence enough to show that no French infantry had as yet reached Rezonville. The commander of the X. corps at Thiaucourt, informed of this, became anxious for the security of his flank during the next day’s march and decided to push out a strong flanking detachment under von Caprivi, to support von Rheinbaben and maintain touch with the III. corps marching on his right rear.

Von Alvensleben, to whom the 6th cavalry division had meanwhile been assigned, seems to have received no local intelligence whatsoever; and at daybreak on the 16th he began his march in two columns, the 6th division on Mars-la-Tour, the 5th Battle of Vionville-Mars-la-Tour. towards the Rezonville-Vionville plateau. And shortly after 9.15 A.M. he suddenly discovered the truth. The entire French army lay on his right flank, and his nearest supports were almost a day’s march distant. In this crisis he made up his mind at once to attack with every available man, and to continue to attack, in the conviction that his audacity would serve to conceal his weakness. All day long, therefore, the Brandenburgers of the III. corps, supported ultimately by the X. corps and part of the IX., attacked again and again. The enemy was thrice their strength, but very differently led, and made no adequate use of his superiority (battle of Vionville-Mars-la Tour).

Meanwhile Prince Frederick Charles, at Pont-à-Mousson, was still confident in the French retreat to the Meuse, and had even issued orders for the 17th on that assumption. Firing had been heard since 9.15 A.M., and about noon Alvensleben’s first report had reached him, but it was not till after 2 that he realized the situation. Then, mounting his horse, he covered the 15 m. to Flavigny over crowded and difficult roads within the hour, and on his arrival abundantly atoned for his strategic errors by his unconquerable determination and tactical skill. When darkness put a stop to the fighting, he considered the position. Cancelling all previous orders, he called all troops within reach to the battle-field and resigned himself to wait for them. The situation was indeed critical. The whole French army of five corps, only half of which had been engaged, lay in front of him. His own army lay scattered over an area of 30 m. by 20, and only some 20,000 fresh troops—of the IX. corps—could The 17th of August. reach the field during the forenoon of the 17th. He did not then know that Moltke had already intervened and had ordered the VII., VIII. and II. corps3 to his assistance. Daylight revealed the extreme exhaustion of both men and horses. The men lay around in hopeless confusion amongst the killed and wounded, each where sleep had overtaken him, and thus the extent of the actual losses, heavy enough, could not be estimated. Across the valley, bugle sounds revealed the French already alert, and presently a long line of skirmishers approached the Prussian position. But they halted just beyond rifle range, and it was soon evident that they were only intended to cover a further withdrawal. Presently came the welcome intelligence that the reinforcements were well on their way.

About noon the king and Moltke drove up to the ground, and there was an animated discussion as to what the French would do next. Aware of their withdrawal from his immediate front, Prince Frederick Charles reverted to his previous idea and insisted that they were in full retreat towards the north, and that their entrenchments near Point du Jour and St Hubert (see map in article Metz) were at most a rearguard position. Moltke was inclined to the same view, but considered the alternative possibility of a withdrawal towards Metz, and about 2 P.M. orders were issued to meet these divergent opinions. The whole army was to be drawn up at 6 A.M. on the 18th in an échelon facing north, so as to be ready for action in either direction. The king and Moltke then drove to Pont-à-Mousson, and the troops bivouacked in a state of readiness. The rest of the 17th was spent in restoring order in the shattered III. and X. corps, and by nightfall both corps were reported fit for action. Strangely enough, there were no organized cavalry reconnaissances, and no intelligence of importance was collected during the night of the 17th-18th.

Early on the 18th the troops began to move into position in the following order from left to right: XII. (Saxons), Guards, IX., VIII. and VII. The X. and III. were retained in reserve.

The idea of the French retreat was still uppermost in the prince’s mind, and the whole army therefore moved north. But between 10 and 11 A.M. part of the truth—viz. that the French had their backs to Metz and stood in battle order Battle of Gravelotte-Saint Privat. from St Hubert northwards—became evident, and the II. army, pivoting on the I., wheeled to the right and moved eastward. Suddenly the IX. corps fell right on the centre of the French line (Amanvillers), and a most desperate encounter began, superior control, as before, ceasing after the guns had opened fire. Prince Frederick Charles, however, a little farther north, again asserted his tactical ability, and about 7 P.M. he brought into position no less than five army corps for the final attack. The sudden collapse of French resistance, due to the frontal attack of the Guards (St Privat) and the turning movement of the Saxons (Roncourt), rendered the use of this mass unnecessary, but the resolution to use it was there. On the German right (I. army), about Gravelotte, all superior leading ceased quite early in the afternoon, and at night the French still showed an unbroken front. Until midnight, when the prince’s victory was reported, the suspense at headquarters was terrible. The I. army was exhausted, no steps had been taken to ensure support from the III. army, and the IV. corps (II. army) lay inactive 30 m. away.

This seems a fitting place to discuss the much-disputed point of Bazaine’s conduct in allowing himself to be driven back into Metz when fortune had thrown into his hands the great opportunity of the 16th and 17th of August. He Bazaine in Metz. had been appointed to command on the 10th, but the presence of the emperor, who only left the front early on the 16th, and their dislike of Bazaine, exercised a disturbing influence on the headquarters staff officers. During the retreat to Metz the marshal had satisfied himself as to the inability of his corps commanders to handle their troops, and also as to the ill-will of the staff. In the circumstances he felt that a battle in the open field could only end in disaster; and, since it was proved that the Germans could outmarch him, his army was sure to be overtaken and annihilated if he ventured beyond the shelter of the fortress. But near Metz he could at least inflict very severe punishment on his assailants, and in any case his presence in Metz would neutralize a far superior force of the enemy for weeks or months. What use the French government might choose to make of the breathing space thus secured was their business, not his; and subsequent events showed that, had they not forced MacMahon’s hand, the existence of the latter’s nucleus army of trained troops might have prevented the investment of Paris. Bazaine was condemned by court-martial after the war, but if the case were reheard to-day it is certain that no charge of treachery could be sustained.

On the German side the victory at St Privat was at once followed up by the headquarters. Early on the 19th the investment of Bazaine’s army in Metz was commenced. A new army, the Army of the Meuse (often called the IV.), was as soon as possible formed of all troops not required for the maintenance of the investment, and marched off under the command of the crown prince of Saxony to discover and destroy the remainder of the French field army, which at this moment was known to be at Châlons.

The operations which led to the capture of MacMahon’s army in Sedan call for little explanation. Given seven corps, each capable of averaging 15 m. a day for a week in succession, opposed to four corps only, shaken by defeat Campaign of Sedan. and unable as a whole to cover more than 5 m. a day, the result could hardly be doubtful. But Moltke’s method of conducting operations left his opponent many openings which could only be closed by excessive demands on the marching power of the men. Trusting only to his cavalry screen to secure information, he was always without any definite fixed point about which to manœuvre, for whilst the reports of the screen and orders based thereon were being transmitted, the enemy was free to move, and generally their movements were dictated by political expediency, not by calculable military motives.

Thus whilst the German army, on a front of nearly 50 m., was marching due west on Paris, MacMahon, under political pressure, was moving parallel to them, but on a northerly route, to attempt the relief of Metz.

So unexpected was this move and so uncertain the information which called attention to it, that Moltke did not venture to change at once the direction of march of the whole army, but he directed the Army of the Meuse northward on Damvillers and ordered Prince Frederick Charles to detach two corps from the forces investing Metz to reinforce it. For the moment, therefore, MacMahon’s move had succeeded, and the opportunity existed for Bazaine to break out. But at the critical moment the hopeless want of real efficiency in MacMahon’s army compelled the latter so to delay his advance that it became evident to the Germans that there was no longer any necessity for the III. army to maintain the direction towards Paris, and that the probable point of contact between the Meuse army and the French lay nearer to the right wing of the III. army than to Prince Frederick Charles’s investing force before Metz.

The detachment from the II. army was therefore countermanded, and the whole III. army changed front to the north, while the Meuse army headed the French off from the east. The latter came into contact with the head of the French columns, during the 29th, about Nouart, and on the 30th at Buzancy (battle of Beaumont); and the French, yielding to the force of numbers combined with superior moral, were driven north-westward upon Sedan (q.v.), right across the front of the III. army, which was now rapidly coming up from the south.

During the 31st the retreat practically became a rout, and the morning of the 1st of September found the French crowded around the little fortress of Sedan, with only one line of retreat to the north-west still open. By 11 A.M. the XI. corps (III. army) had already closed that line, and about noon the Saxons (Army of the Meuse) moving round between the town and the Belgian frontier joined hands with the XI., and the circle of investment was complete. The battle of Sedan was closed about 4.15 P.M. by the hoisting of the white flag. Terms were agreed upon during the night, and the whole French army, with the emperor, passed into captivity.

(F. N. M.)

Thus in five weeks one of the French field armies was imprisoned in Metz, the other destroyed, and the Germans were free to march upon Paris. This seemed easy. There could be no organized opposition to their progress,4 and Paris, Later operations. if not so defenceless as in 1814, was more populous. Starvation was the best method of attacking an overcrowded fortress, and the Parisians were not thought to be proof against the deprivation of their accustomed luxuries. Even Moltke hoped that by the end of October he would be “shooting hares at Creisau,” and with this confidence the German III. and IV. armies left the vicinity of Sedan on the 4th of September. The march called for no more than good staff arrangements, and the two armies arrived before Paris a fortnight later and gradually encircled the place—the III. army on the south, the IV. on the north side—in the last days of September. Headquarters were established at Versailles. Meanwhile the Third Empire had fallen, giving place on the 4th of September to a republican Government of National Defence, which made its appeal to, and evoked, the spirit of 1792. Henceforward the French nation, which had left the conduct of the war to the regular army and had been little more than an excited spectator, took the burden upon itself.

The regular army, indeed, still contained more than 500,000 men (chiefly recruits and reservists), and 50,000 sailors, marines, douaniers, &c., were also available. But the Garde Mobile, framed by Marshal Niel in 1868, doubled this figure, and the addition of the Garde Nationale, called into existence on the 15th of September, and including all able-bodied men of from 31 to 60 years of age, more than trebled it. The German staff had of course to reckon on the Garde Mobile, and did so beforehand, but they wholly underestimated both its effective members and its willingness, while, possessing themselves a system in which all the military elements of the German nation stood close behind the troops of the active army, they ignored the potentialities of the Garde Nationale.

Meanwhile, both as a contrast to the events that centred on Paris and because in point of time they were decided for the most part in the weeks immediately following Sedan, we must briefly allude to the sieges conducted by the Germans—Paris (q.v.), Metz (q.v.) and Belfort (q.v.) excepted. Old and ruined as many of them were, the French fortresses possessed considerable importance in the eyes of the Germans. Strassburg, in particular, the key of Alsace, the standing menace to South Germany and the most conspicuous of the spoils of Louis XIV.’s Raubkriege, was an obvious target. Operations were begun on the 9th of August, three days after Wörth, General v. Werder’s corps (Baden troops and Prussian Landwehr) making the siege. The French commandant, General Uhrich, surrendered after a stubborn resistance on the 28th of September. Of the smaller fortresses many, being practically unarmed and without garrisons, capitulated at once. Toul, defended by Major Huck with 2000 mobiles, resisted for forty days, and drew upon itself the efforts of 13,000 men and 100 guns. Verdun, commanded by General Guérin de Waldersbach, held out till after the fall of Metz. Some of the fortresses lying to the north of the Prussian line of advance on Paris, e.g. Mézières, resisted up to January 1871, though of course this was very largely due to the diminution of pressure caused by the appearance of new French field armies in October. On the 9th of September a strange incident took place at the surrender of Laon. A powder magazine was blown up by the soldiers in charge and 300 French and a few German soldiers were killed by the explosion. But as the Germans advanced, their lines of communication were thoroughly organized, and the belt of country between Paris and the Prussian frontier subdued and garrisoned. Most of these fortresses were small town enceintes, dating from Vauban’s time, and open, under the new conditions of warfare, to concentric bombardment from positions formerly out of range, upon which the besieger could place as many guns as he chose to employ. In addition they were usually deficient in armament and stores and garrisoned by newly-raised troops. Belfort, where the defenders strained every nerve to keep the besiegers out of bombarding range, and Paris formed the only exceptions to this general rule.

The policy of the new French government was defined by Jules Favre on the 6th of September. “It is for the king of Prussia, who has declared that he is making war on the Empire and not on France, to stay his hand; we The “Défense Nationale.” shall not cede an inch of our territory or a stone of our fortresses.” These proud words, so often ridiculed as empty bombast, were the prelude of a national effort which re-established France in the eyes of Europe as a great power, even though provinces and fortresses were ceded in the peace that that effort proved unable to avert. They were translated into action by Léon Gambetta, who escaped from Paris in a balloon on the 7th of October, and established the headquarters of the defence at Tours, where already the “Delegation” of the central government—which had decided to remain in Paris—had concentrated the machinery of government. Thenceforward Gambetta and his principal assistant de Freycinet directed the whole war in the open country, co-ordinating it, as best they could with the precarious means of communication at their disposal, with Trochu’s military operations in and round the capital. His critics—Gambetta’s personality was such as to ensure him numerous enemies among the higher civil and military officials, over whom, in the interests of La Patrie, he rode rough-shod—have acknowledged the fact, which is patent enough in any case, that nothing but Gambetta’s driving energy enabled France in a few weeks to create and to equip twelve army corps, representing thirty-six divisions (600,000 rifles and 1400 guns), after all her organized regular field troops had been destroyed or neutralized. But it is claimed that by undue interference with the generals at the front, by presuming to dictate their plans of campaign, and by forcing them to act when the troops were unready, Gambetta and de Freycinet nullified the efforts of themselves and the rest of the nation and subjected France to a humiliating treaty of peace. We cannot here discuss the justice or injustice of such a general condemnation, or even whether in individual instances Gambetta trespassed too far into the special domain of the soldier. But even the brief narrative given below must at least suggest to the reader the existence amongst the generals and higher officials of a dead weight of passive resistance to the Delegation’s orders, of unnecessary distrust of the qualities of the improvised troops, and above all of the utter fear of responsibility that twenty years of literal obedience had bred. The closest study of the war cannot lead to any other conclusion than this, that whether or not Gambetta as a strategist took the right course in general or in particular cases, no one else would have taken any course whatever.

On the approach of the enemy Paris hastened its preparations for defence to the utmost, while in the provinces, out of reach of the German cavalry, new army corps were rapidly organized out of the few constituted regular units not involved in the previous catastrophes, the depot troops and the mobile national guard. The first-fruits of these efforts were seen in Beauce, where early in October important masses of French troops prepared not only to bar the further progress of the invader but actually to relieve Paris. The so-called “fog of war”—the armed inhabitants, francs-tireurs, sedentary national guard and volunteers—prevented the German cavalry from venturing far out from the infantry camps around Paris, and behind this screen the new 15th army corps assembled on the Loire. But an untimely demonstration of force alarmed the Germans, all of whom, from Moltke downwards, had hitherto disbelieved in the existence of the French new formations, and the still unready 15th corps found itself the target of an expedition of the I. Bavarian corps, which drove the defenders out of Orleans after a sharp struggle, while at the same time another expedition swept the western part of Beauce, sacked Châteaudun as a punishment for its brave defence, and returned via Chartres, which was occupied.

After these events the French forces disappeared from German eyes for some weeks. D’Aurelle de Paladines, the commander of the “Army of the Loire” (15th and 16th corps), improvised a camp of instruction at Salbris in Sologne, several marches out of reach, and subjected his raw troops to a stern régime of drill and discipline. At the same time an “Army of the West” began to gather on the side of Le Mans. This army was almost imaginary, yet rumours of its existence and numbers led the German commanders into the gravest errors, for they soon came to suspect that the main army lay on that side and not on the Loire, and this mistaken impression governed the German dispositions up to the very eve of the decisive events around Orleans in December. Thus when at last D’Aurelle took the offensive from Tours (whither he had transported his forces, now 100,000 strong) against the position of the I. Bavarian corps near Orleans, he found his task easy. The Bavarians, outnumbered and unsupported, were defeated with heavy losses in the battle of Coulmiers (November 9), and, had it not been for the inexperience, want of combination, and other technical weaknesses of the French, they would have been annihilated. What the results of such a victory as Coulmiers might have been, had it been won by a fully organized, smoothly working army of the same strength, it is difficult to overestimate. As it was, the retirement of the Bavarians rang the alarm bell all along the line of the German positions, and that was all.

Then once again, instead of following up its success, the French army disappeared from view. The victory had emboldened the “fog of war” to make renewed efforts, and resistance to the pressure of the German cavalry grew day by day. The Bavarians were reinforced by two Prussian divisions and by all available cavalry commands, and constituted as an “army detachment” under the grand-duke Friedrich Franz of Mecklenburg-Schwerin to deal with the Army of the Loire, the strength of which was far from being accurately known. Meantime the capitulation of Metz on the 28th of October had set free the veterans of Prince Frederick Charles, the best troops in the German army, for field operations. The latter were at first misdirected to the upper Seine, and yet another opportunity arose for the French to raise the siege of Paris. But D’Aurelle utilized the time he had gained in strengthening the army and in imparting drill and discipline to the new units which gathered round the original nucleus of the 15th and 16th corps. All this was, however, unknown and even unsuspected at the German headquarters, and the invaders, feeling the approaching crisis, became more than uneasy as to their prospects of maintaining the siege of Paris.

At this moment, in the middle of November, the general situation was as follows: the German III. and Meuse armies, investing Paris, had had to throw off important detachments to protect the enterprise, which they had The Orleans campaign. undertaken on the assumption that no further field armies of the enemy were to be encountered. The maintenance of their communications with Germany, relatively unimportant when the struggle took place in the circumstances of field warfare, had become supremely necessary, now that the army had come to a standstill and undertaken a great siege, which required heavy guns and constant replenishment of ammunition and stores. The rapidity of the German invasion had left no time for the proper organization and full garrisoning of these communications, which were now threatened, not merely by the Army of the Loire, but by other forces assembling on the area protected by Langres and Belfort. The latter, under General Cambriels, were held in check and no more by the Baden troops and reserve units (XIV. German corps) under General Werder, and eventually without arousing attention they were able to send 40,000 men to the Army of the Loire. This army, still around Orleans, thus came to number perhaps 150,000 men, and opposed to it, about the 14th of November, the Germans had only the Army Detachment of about 40,000, the II. army being still distant. It was under these conditions that the famous Orleans campaign took place. After many vicissitudes of fortune, and with many misunderstandings between Prince Frederick Charles, Moltke and the grand-duke, the Germans were ultimately victorious, thanks principally to the brilliant fighting of the X. corps at Beaune-la-Rolande (28th of November), which was followed by the battle of Loigny-Poupry on the 2nd of December and the second capture of Orleans after heavy fighting on the 4th of December.

The result of the capture of Orleans was the severance of the two wings of the French army, henceforward commanded respectively by Chanzy and Bourbaki. The latter fell back at once and hastily, though not closely pursued, to Bourges. But Chanzy, opposing the Detachment between Beaugency and the Forest of Marchenoir, was of sterner metal, and in the five days’ general engagement around Beaugency (December 7-11) the Germans gained little or no real advantage. Indeed their solitary material success, the capture of Beaugency, was due chiefly to the fact that the French there were subjected to conflicting orders from the military and the governmental authorities. Chanzy then abandoned little but the field of battle, and on the grand-duke’s representations Prince Frederick Charles, leaving a mere screen to impose upon Bourbaki (who allowed himself to be deceived and remained inactive), hurried thither with the II. army. After that Chanzy was rapidly driven north-westward, though always presenting a stubborn front. The Delegation left Tours and betook itself to Bordeaux, whence it directed the government for the rest of the war. But all this continuous marching and fighting, and the growing severity of the weather, compelled Prince Frederick Charles to call a halt for a few days. About the 19th of December, therefore, the Germans (II. army and Detachment) were closed up in the region of Chartres, Orleans, Auxerre and Fontainebleau, Chanzy along the river Sarthe about Le Mans and Bourbaki still passive towards Bourges.

During this, as during other halts, the French government and its generals occupied themselves with fresh plans of campaign, the former with an eager desire for results, the latter (Chanzy excepted) with many misgivings. Ultimately, and fatally, it was decided that Bourbaki, whom nothing could move towards Orleans, should depart for the south-east, with a view to relieving Belfort and striking perpendicularly against the long line of the Germans’ communications. This movement, bold to the point of extreme rashness judged by any theoretical rules of strategy, seems to have been suggested by de Freycinet. As the execution of it fell actually into incapable hands, it is difficult to judge what would have been the result had a Chanzy or a Faidherbe been in command of the French. At any rate it was vicious in so far as immediate advantages were sacrificed to hopes of ultimate success which Gambetta and de Freycinet did wrong to base on Bourbaki’s powers of generalship. Late in December, for good or evil, Bourbaki marched off into Franche-Comté and ceased to be a factor in the Loire campaign. A mere calculation of time and space sufficed to show the German headquarters that the moment had arrived to demolish the stubborn Chanzy.

Prince Frederick Charles resumed the interrupted offensive, pushing westward with four corps and four cavalry divisions which converged on Le Mans. There on the 10th, 11th and 12th of January 1871 a stubbornly contested Le Mans. battle ended with the retreat of the French, who owed their defeat solely to the misbehaviour of the Breton mobiles. These, after deserting their post on the battlefield at a mere threat of the enemy’s infantry, fled in disorder and infected with their terrors the men in the reserve camps of instruction, which broke up in turn. But Chanzy, resolute as ever, drew off his field army intact towards Laval, where a freshly raised corps joined him. The prince’s army was far too exhausted to deliver another effective blow, and the main body of it gradually drew back into better quarters, while the grand duke departed for the north to aid in opposing Faidherbe. Some idea of the strain to which the invaders had been subjected may be gathered from the fact that army corps, originally 30,000 strong, were in some cases reduced to 10,000 and even fewer bayonets. And at this moment Bourbaki was at the head of 120,000 men! Indeed, so threatening seemed the situation on the Loire, though the French south of that river between Gien and Blois were mere isolated brigades, that the prince hurried back from Le Mans to Orleans to take personal command. A fresh French corps, bearing the number 25, and being the twenty-first actually raised during the war, appeared in the field towards Blois. Chanzy was again at the head of 156,000 men. He was about to take the offensive against the 40,000 Germans left near Le Mans when to his bitter disappointment he received the news of the armistice. “We have still France,” he had said to his staff, undeterred by the news of the capitulation of Paris, but now he had to submit, for even if his improvised army was still cheerful, there were many significant tokens that the people at large had sunk into apathy and hoped to avoid worse terms of peace by discontinuing the contest at once.

So ended the critical period of the “Défense nationale.” It may be taken to have lasted from the day of Coulmiers to the last day of Le Mans, and its central point was the battle of Beaune-la-Rolande. Its characteristics were, on the German side, inadequacy of the system of strategy practised, which became palpable as soon as the organs of reconnaissance met with serious resistance, misjudgment of and indeed contempt for the fighting powers of “new formations,” and the rise of a spirit of ferocity in the man in the ranks, born of his resentment at the continuance of the war and the ceaseless sniping of the franc-tireur’s rifle and the peasant’s shot-gun. On the French side the continual efforts of the statesmen to stimulate the generals to decisive efforts, coupled with actual suggestions as to the plans of the campaign to be followed (in default, be it said, of the generals themselves producing such plans), and the professional soldiers’ distrust of half-trained troops, acted and reacted upon one another in such a way as to neutralize the powerful, if disconnected and erratic, forces that the war and the Republic had unchained. As for the soldiers themselves, their most conspicuous qualities were their uncomplaining endurance of fatigues and wet bivouacs, and in action their capacity for a single great effort and no more. But they were unreliable in the hands of the veteran regular general, because they were heterogeneous in recruiting, and unequal in experience and military qualities, and the French staff in those days was wholly incapable of moving masses of troops with the rapidity demanded by the enemy’s methods of war, so that on the whole it is difficult to know whether to wonder more at their missing success or at their so nearly achieving it.

The decision, as we have said, was fought out on the Loire and the Sarthe. Nevertheless the glorious story of the “Défense nationale” includes two other important campaigns—that of Faidherbe in the north and that of Bourbaki in the east.

In the north the organization of the new formations was begun by Dr Testelin and General Farre. Bourbaki held the command for a short time in November before proceeding to Tours, but the active command in field Faidherbe’s campaign. operations came into the hands of Faidherbe, a general whose natural powers, so far from being cramped by years of peace routine and court repression, had been developed by a career of pioneer warfare and colonial administration. General Farre was his capable chief of staff. Troops were raised from fugitives from Metz and Sedan, as well as from depot troops and the Garde Mobile, and several minor successes were won by the national troops in the Seine valley, for here, as on the side of the Loire, mere detachments of the investing army round Paris were almost powerless. But the capitulation of Metz came too soon for the full development of these sources of military strength, and the German I. army under Manteuffel, released from duty at Metz, marched north-eastward, capturing the minor fortresses on its way. Before Faidherbe assumed command, Farre had fought several severe actions near Amiens, but, greatly outnumbered, had been defeated and forced to retire behind the Somme. Another French general, Briand, had also engaged the enemy without success near Rouen. Faidherbe assumed the command on the 3rd of December, and promptly moved forward. A general engagement on the little river Hallue (December 23), east-north-east of Amiens, was fought with no decisive results, but Faidherbe, feeling that his troops were only capable of winning victories in the first rush, drew them off on the 24th. His next effort, at Bapaûme (January 2-3, 1871), was more successful, but its effects were counterbalanced by the surrender of the fortress of Péronne (January 9) and the consequent establishment of the Germans on the line of the Somme. Meanwhile the Rouen troops had been contained by a strong German detachment, and there was no further chance of succouring Paris from the north. But Faidherbe, like Chanzy, was far from despair, and in spite of the deficiencies of his troops in equipment (50,000 pairs of shoes, supplied by English contractors, proved to have paper soles), he risked a third great battle at St Quentin (January 19). This time he was severely defeated, though his loss in killed and wounded was about equal to that of the Germans, who were commanded by Goeben. Still the attempt of the Germans to surround him failed and he drew off his forces with his artillery and trains unharmed. The Germans, who had been greatly impressed by the solidity of his army, did not pursue him far, and Faidherbe was preparing for a fresh effort when he received orders to suspend hostilities.

The last episode is Bourbaki’s campaign in the east, with its mournful close at Pontarlier. Before the crisis of the last week of November, the French forces under General Crémer, Cambriels’ successor, had been so far successful in minor enterprises that, as mentioned above, the right wing of the Loire army, severed from the left by the battle of Orleans and subsequently held inactive at Bourges and Nevers, was ordered to Franche Comté to take the offensive against the XIV. corps and other German troops there, to relieve Belfort and to strike a blow across the invaders’ line of communications. But there were many delays in execution. The staff work, which was at no time satisfactory in the French armies of 1870, was complicated by the snow, the bad state of the roads, and the mountainous nature of the country, and Bourbaki, a brave general of division in action, but irresolute and pretentious as a commander in chief, was not the man to cope with the situation. Only the furious courage and patient endurance of hardships of the rank and file, and the good qualities of some of the generals, such as Clinchant, Crémer and Billot, and junior staff officers such as Major Brugère (afterwards generalissimo of the French army), secured what success was attained.

Werder, the German commander, warned of the imposing concentration of the French, evacuated Dijon and Dôle just in time to avoid the blow and rapidly drew together his forces behind the Ognon above Vesoul. A furious The campaign in the East. attack on one of his divisions at Villersexel (January 9) cost him 2000 prisoners as well as his killed and wounded, and Bourbaki, heading for Belfort, was actually nearer to the fortress than the Germans. But at the crisis more time was wasted, Werder (who had almost lost hope of maintaining himself and had received both encouragement and stringent instructions to do so) slipped in front of the French, and took up a long weak line of defence on the river Lisaine, almost within cannon shot of Belfort. The cumbrous French army moved up and attacked him there with 150,000 against 60,000 (January 15-17, 1871). It was at last repulsed, thanks chiefly to Bourbaki’s inability to handle his forces, and, to the bitter disappointment of officers and men alike, he ordered a retreat, leaving Belfort to its fate.

Ere this, so urgent was the necessity of assisting Werder, Manteuffel had been placed at the head of a new Army of the South. Bringing two corps from the I. army opposing Faidherbe and calling up a third from the armies around Paris, and a fourth from the II. army, Manteuffel hurried southward by Langres to the Saône. Then, hearing of Werder’s victory on the Lisaine, he deflected the march so as to cut off Bourbaki’s retreat, drawing off the left flank guard of the latter (commanded with much éclat and little real effect by Garibaldi) by a sharp feint attack on Dijon. The pressure of Werder in front and Manteuffel in flank gradually forced the now thoroughly disheartened French forces towards the Swiss frontier, and Bourbaki, realizing at once the ruin of his army and his own incapacity to re-establish its efficiency, shot himself, though not fatally, on the 26th of January. Clinchant, his successor, acted promptly enough to remove the immediate danger, but on the 29th he was informed of the armistice without at the same time being told that Belfort and the eastern theatre of war had been on Jules Favre’s demand expressly excepted from its operation.5 Thus the French, the leaders distracted by doubts and the worn-out soldiers fully aware that the war was practically over, stood still, while Manteuffel completed his preparations for hemming them in. On the 1st of February General Clinchant led his troops into Switzerland, where they were disarmed, interned and well cared for by the authorities of the neutral state. The rearguard fought a last action with the advancing Germans before passing the frontier. On the 16th, by order of the French government, Belfort capitulated, but it was not until the 11th of March that the Germans took possession of Bitche, the little fortress on the Vosges, where in the early days of the war de Failly had illustrated so signally the want of concerted action and the neglect of opportunities which had throughout proved the bane of the French armies.

The losses of the Germans during the whole war were 28,000 dead and 101,000 wounded and disabled, those of the French, 156,000 dead (17,000 of whom died, of sickness and wounds, as prisoners in German hands) and 143,000 wounded and disabled. 720,000 men surrendered to the Germans or to the authorities of neutral states, and at the close of the war there were still 250,000 troops on foot, with further resources not immediately available to the number of 280,000 more. In this connexion, and as evidence of the respective numerical yields of the German system working normally and of the French improvised for the emergency, we quote from Berndt (Zahl im Kriege) the following comparative figures:—

End of July French 250,000, Germans 384,000 under arms.

Middle of November ” 600,000 ” 425,000 ”

After the surrender of Paris and the disarmament of Bourbaki’s army ” 534,000 ” 835,000 ”

The date of the armistice was the 28th of January, and that of the ratification of the treaty of Frankfurt the 23rd of May 1871.

Bibliography.—The literature of the war is ever increasing in volume, and the following list only includes a very short selection made amongst the most important works.

General.—German official history, Der deutsch-französische Krieg (Berlin, 1872-1881; English and French translations); monographs of the German general staff (Kriegsgesch. Einzelschriften); Moltke, Gesch. des deutsch-französ. Krieges (Berlin, 1891; English translation) and Gesammelte Schriften des G. F. M. Grafen v. Moltke (Berlin, 1900- ); French official history, La Guerre de 1870-1871 (Paris, 1902- ) (the fullest and most accurate account); P. Lehautcourt (General Palat), Hist. de la guerre de 1870-1871 (Paris, 1901-1907); v. Verdy du Vernois, Studien über den Krieg ... auf Grundlage 1870-1871 (Berlin, 1892-1896); G. Cardinal von Widdern, Kritische Tage 1870-1871 (French translation, Journées critiques). Events preceding the war are dealt with in v. Bernhardi, Zwischen zwei Kriegen; Baron Stoffel, Rapports militaires 1866-1870 (Paris, 1871; English translation); G. Lehmann, Die Mobilmachung 1870-1871 (Berlin, 1905).

For the war in Lorraine: Prince Kraft of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, Briefe über Strategie (English translation, Letters on Strategy); F. Foch, Conduite de la guerre, pt. ii.; H. Bonnal, Manœuvre de Saint Privat (Paris, 1904-1906); Maistre, Spicheren (Paris, 1908); v. Schell, Die Operationen der I. Armee unter Gen. von Steinmetz (Berlin, 1872; English translation); F. Hoenig, Taktik der Zukunft (English translation), and 24 Stunden Moltke’schen Strategie (Berlin, 1892; English and French translations).

For the war in Alsace and Champagne: H. Kunz, Schlacht von Wörth (Berlin, 1891), and later works by the same author; H. Bonnal, Fröschweiler (Paris, 1899); Hahnke, Die Operationen des III. Armee bis Sedan (Berlin, 1873; French translation).

For the war in the Provinces: v. der Goltz, Léon Gambetta und seine Armeen (Berlin, 1877); Die Operationen der II. Armee an die Loire (Berlin, 1875); Die sieben Tage von Le Mans (Berlin, 1873); Kunz, Die Zusammensetzung der französ. Provinzialheeren; de Freycinet, La Guerre en province (Paris, 1871); L. A. Hale, The People’s War (London, 1904); Hoenig, Volkskrieg an die Loire (Berlin, 1892); Blume, Operationen v. Sedan bis zum Ende d. Kriegs (Berlin, 1872; English translation); v. Schell, Die Operationen der I. Armee unter Gen. v. Goeben (Berlin, 1873; English translation); Count Wartensleben, Feldzug der Nordarmee unter Gen. v. Manteuffel (Berlin, 1872), Operationen der Sudarmee (Berlin, 1872; English translation); Faidherbe, Campagne de l’armée du nord (Paris, 1872).

For the sieges: Frobenius, Kriegsgesch. Beispiele d. Festungskriegs aus d. deutsch.-franz. Kg. (Berlin, 1899-1900); Goetze, Tätigkeit der deutschen Ingenieuren (Berlin, 1871; English translation).

The most useful bibliography is that of General Palat (“P. Lehautcourt”).

(C. F. A.)

1 This was the celebrated “baptême de feu” of the prince imperial.

2 The II. corps had not yet arrived from Germany.

3 Of the I. army the I. corps was retained on the east side of Metz. The II. corps belonged to the II. army, but had not yet reached the front.

4 The 13th corps (Vinoy), which had followed MacMahon’s army at some distance, was not involved in the catastrophe of Sedan, and by good luck as well as good management evaded the German pursuit and returned safely to Paris.

5 Jules Favre, it appears, neglected to inform Gambetta of the exception.

FRANÇOIS DE NEUFCHÂTEAU, NICOLAS LOUIS, Count (1750-1828), French statesman and poet, was born at Saffais near Rozières in Lorraine on the 17th of April 1750, the son of a school-teacher. He studied at the Jesuit college of Neufchâteau in the Vosges, and at the age of fourteen published a volume of poetry which obtained the approbation of Rousseau and of Voltaire. Neufchâteau conferred on him its name, and he was elected member of some of the principal academies of France. In 1783 he was named procureur-général to the council of Santo Domingo. He had previously been engaged on a translation of Ariosto, which he finished before his return to France five years afterwards, but it perished during the shipwreck which occurred during his voyage home. After the Revolution he was elected deputy suppléant to the National Assembly, was charged with the organization of the Department of the Vosges, and was elected later to the Legislative Assembly, of which he first became secretary and then president. In 1793 he was imprisoned on account of the political sentiments, in reality very innocent, of his drama Pamela ou la vertu récompensée (Théâtre de la Nation, 1st August 1793), but was set free a few days afterwards at the revolution of the 9th Thermidor. In 1797 he became minister of the interior, in which office he distinguished himself by the thoroughness of his administration in all departments. It is to him that France owes its system of inland navigation. He inaugurated the museum of the Louvre, and was one of the promoters of the first universal exhibition of industrial products. From 1804 to 1806 he was president of the Senate, and in that capacity the duty devolved upon him of soliciting Napoleon to assume the title of emperor. In 1808 he received the dignity of count. Retiring from public life in 1814, he occupied himself chiefly in the study of agriculture, until his death on the 10th of January 1828.

François de Neufchâteau had very multifarious accomplishments, and interested himself in a great variety of subjects, but his fame rests chiefly on what he did as a statesman for the encouragement and development of the industries of France. His maturer poetical productions did not fulfil the promise of those of his early years, for though some of his verses have a superficial elegance, his poetry generally lacks force and originality. He had considerable qualifications as a grammarian and critic, as is witnessed by his editions of the Provinciales and Pensées of Pascal (Paris, 1822 and 1826) and Gil Blas (Paris, 1820). His principal poetical works are Poésies diverses (1765); Ode sur les parlements (1771); Nouveaux Contes moraux (1781); Les Vosges (1796); Fables et contes (1814); and Les Tropes, ou les figures de mots (1817). He was also the author of a large number of works on agriculture.

See Recueil des lettres, circulaires, discours et autres actes publics émanés du Çte. François pendant ses deux exercices du ministère de l’intérieur (Paris, An. vii.-viii., 2 vols.); Notice biographique sur M. le comte François de Neufchâteau (1828), by A. F. de Sillery; H. Bonnelier, Mémoires sur François de Neufchâteau (Paris, 1829); J. Lamoureux, Notice historique et littéraire sur la vie et les écrits de François de Neufchâteau (Paris, 1843); E. Meaume, Étude historique et biographique sur les Lorrains révolutionnaires: Palissot, Grégoire, François de Neufchâteau (Nancy, 1882); Ch. Simian, François de Neufchâteau et les expositions (Paris, 1889).

FRANCONIA (Ger. Franken), the name of one of the stem-duchies of medieval Germany. It stretched along the valley of the Main from the Rhine to Bohemia, and was bounded on the north by Saxony and Thuringia, and on the south by Swabia and Bavaria. It also included a district around Mainz, Spires and Worms, on the left bank of the Rhine. The word Franconia, first used in a Latin charter of 1053, was applied like the words France, Francia and Franken, to a portion of the land occupied by the Franks.

About the close of the 5th century this territory was conquered by Clovis, king of the Salian Franks, was afterwards incorporated with the kingdom of Austrasia, and at a later period came under the rule of Charlemagne. After the treaty of Verdun in 843 it became the centre of the East Frankish or German kingdom, and in theory remained so for a long period, and was for a time the most important of the duchies which arose on the ruins of the Carolingian empire. The land was divided into counties, or gauen, which were ruled by counts, prominent among whom were members of the families of Conradine and Babenberg, by whose feuds it was frequently devastated. Conrad, a member of the former family, who took the title of “duke in Franconia” about the year 900, was chosen German king in 911 as the representative of the foremost of the German races. Conrad handed over the chief authority in Franconia to his brother Eberhard, who remained on good terms with Conrad’s successor Henry I. the Fowler, but rose against the succeeding king, Otto the Great, and was killed in battle in 939, when his territories were divided. The influence of Franconia began to decline under the kings of the Saxon house. It lacked political unity, had no opportunities for extension, and soon became divided into Rhenish Franconia (Francia rhenensis, Ger. Rheinfranken) and Eastern Franconia (Francia orientalis, Ger. Ostfranken). The most influential family in Rhenish Franconia was that of the Salians, the head of which early in the 10th century was Conrad the Red, duke of Lorraine, and son-in-law of Otto the Great. This Conrad, his son Otto and his grandson Conrad are sometimes called dukes of Franconia, and in 1024 his great-grandson Conrad, also duke of Franconia, was elected German king as Conrad II. and founded the line of Franconian or Salian emperors. Rhenish Franconia gradually became a land of free towns and lesser nobles, and under the earlier Franconian emperors sections passed to the count palatine of the Rhine, the archbishop of Mainz, the bishops of Worms and Spires and other clerical and lay nobles; and the name Franconia, or Francia orientalis as it was then called, was confined to the eastern portion of the duchy. Clerical authority was becoming predominant in this region. A series of charters dating from 822 to 1025 had granted considerable powers to the bishops of Würzburg, who, by the time of the emperor Henry II., possessed judicial authority over the whole of eastern Franconia. The duchy was nominally retained by the emperors in their own hands until 1115, when the emperor Henry V., wishing to curb the episcopal influence in this neighbourhood, appointed his nephew Conrad of Hohenstaufen as duke of Franconia. Conrad’s son Frederick took the title of duke of Rothenburg instead of duke of Franconia, but in 1196, on the death of Conrad of Hohenstaufen, son of the emperor Frederick I., the title fell into disuse. Meanwhile the bishop of Würzburg had regained his former power in the duchy, and this was confirmed in 1168 by the emperor Frederick I.

The title remained in abeyance until the early years of the 15th century, when it was assumed by John II., bishop of Würzburg, and retained by his successors until the bishopric was secularized in 1802. The greater part of the lands were united with Bavaria, and the name Franconia again fell into abeyance. It was revived in 1837, when Louis I., king of Bavaria, gave to three northern portions of his kingdom the names of Upper, Middle and Lower Franconia. In 1633 Bernhard, duke of Saxe-Weimar, hoping to create a principality for himself out of the ecclesiastical lands, had taken the title of duke of Franconia, but his hopes were destroyed by his defeat at Nördlingen in 1634. When Germany was divided into circles by the emperor Maximilian I. in 1500, the name Franconia was given to that circle which included the eastern part of the old duchy. The lands formerly comprised in the duchy of Franconia are now divided between the kingdoms of Bavaria and Württemberg, the grand-duchies of Baden and Hesse, and the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau.

See J. G. ab Eckhart, Commentarii de rebus Franciae orientalis et episcopatus Wirceburgensis (Würzburg, 1729); F. Stein, Geschichte Frankens (Schweinfurt, 1885-1886); T. Henner, Die herzogliche Gewalt der Bischöfe von Würzburg (Würzburg, 1874).

FRANCS-ARCHERS. The institution of the francs-archers was the first attempt at the formation of regular infantry in France. They were created by the ordinance of Montils-les-Tours on the 28th of August 1448, which prescribed that in each parish an archer should be chosen from among the most apt in the use of arms; this archer to be exempt from the taille and certain obligations, to practise shooting with the bow on Sundays and feast-days, and to hold himself ready to march fully equipped at the first signal. Under Charles VII. the francs-archers distinguished themselves in numerous battles with the English, and assisted the king to drive them from France. During the succeeding reigns the institution languished, and finally disappeared in the middle of the 16th century. The francs-archers were also called francs-taupins.

See Daniel, Histoire de la milice française (1721); and E. Boutaric, Institutions militaires de la France avant les armées permanentes (1863).

FRANCS-TIREURS (“Free-Shooters”), irregular troops, almost exclusively infantry, employed by the French in the war of 1870-1871. They were originally rifle clubs or unofficial military societies formed in the east of France at the time of the Luxemburg crisis of 1867. The members were chiefly concerned with the practice of rifle-shooting, and were expected in war to act as light troops. As under the then system of conscription the greater part of the nation’s military energy was allowed to run to waste, the francs-tireurs were not only popular, but efficient workers in their sphere of action. As they wore no uniforms, were armed with the best existing rifles and elected their own officers, the government made repeated attempts to bring the societies, which were at once a valuable asset to the armed strength of France and a possible menace to internal order, under military discipline. This was strenuously resisted by the societies, to their sorrow as it turned out, for the Germans treated captured francs-tireurs as irresponsible non-combatants found with arms in their hands and usually exacted the death penalty. In July 1870, at the outbreak of the war, the societies were brought under the control of the minister of war and organized for field service, but it was not until the 4th of November—by which time the levée en masse was in force—that they were placed under the orders of the generals in the field. After that they were sometimes organized in large bodies and incorporated in the mass of the armies, but more usually they continued to work in small bands, blowing up culverts on the invaders’ lines of communication, cutting off small reconnoitring parties, surprising small posts, &c. It is now acknowledged, even by the Germans, that though the francs-tireurs did relatively little active mischief, they paralysed large detachments of the enemy, contested every step of his advance (as in the Loire campaign), and prevented him from gaining information, and that their soldierly qualities improved with experience. Their most celebrated feats were the blowing up of the Moselle railway bridge at Fontenoy on the 22nd of January 1871 (see Les Chasseurs des Vosges by Lieut.-Colonel St Étienne, Toul, 1906), and the heroic defence of Châteaudun by Lipowski’s Paris corps and the francs-tireurs of Cannes and Nantes (October 18, 1870). It cannot be denied that the original members of the rifle clubs were joined by many bad characters, but the patriotism of the majority was unquestionable, for little mercy was shown by the Germans to those francs-tireurs who fell into their hands. The severity of the German reprisals is itself the best testimony to the fear and anxiety inspired by the presence of active bands of francs-tireurs on the flanks and in rear of the invaders.

FRANEKER, a town in the province of Friesland, Holland, 5 m. E. of Harlingen on the railway and canal to Leeuwarden. Pop. (1900) 7187. It was at one time a favourite residence of the Frisian nobility, many of whom had their castles here, and it possessed a celebrated university, founded by the Frisian estates in 1585. This was suppressed by Napoleon I. in 1811, and the endowments were diverted four years later to the support of an athenaeum, and afterwards of a gymnasium, with which a physiological cabinet and a botanical garden are connected. Franeker also possesses a town hall (1591), which contains a planetarium, made by one Eise Eisinga in 1774-1881. The fine observatory was founded about 1780. The church of St Martin (1420) contains several fine tombs of the 15th-17th centuries. The industries of the town include silk-weaving, woollen-spinning, shipbuilding and pottery-making. It is also a considerable market for agricultural produce.

FRANK, JAKOB (1726-1791), a Jewish theologian, who founded in Poland, in the middle of the 18th century, a sect which emanated from Judaism but ended by merging with Christianity. The sect was the outcome of the Messianic mysticism of Sabbetai Zebi. It was an antinomian movement in which the authority of the Jewish law was held to be superseded by personal freedom. The Jewish authorities, alarmed at the moral laxity which resulted from the emotional rites of the Frankists, did their utmost to suppress the sect. But the latter, posing as an anti-Talmudic protest in behalf of a spiritual religion, won a certain amount of public sympathy. There was, however, no deep sincerity in the tenets of the Frankists, for though in 1759 they were baptized en masse, amid much pomp, the Church soon became convinced that Frank was not a genuine convert. He was imprisoned on a charge of heresy, but on his release in 1763 the empress Maria Theresa patronized him, regarding him as a propagandist of Christianity among the Jews. He thenceforth lived in state as baron of Offenbach, and on his death (1791) his daughter Eva succeeded him as head of the sect. The Frankists gradually merged in the general Christian body, the movement leaving no permanent trace in the synagogue.

(I. A.)

FRANK-ALMOIGN (libera eleemosyna, free alms), in the English law of real property, a species of spiritual tenure, whereby a religious corporation, aggregate or sole, holds lands of the donor to them and their successors for ever. It was a tenure dating from Saxon times, held not on the ordinary feudal conditions, but discharged of all services except the trinoda necessitas. But “they which hold in frank-almoign are bound of right before God to make orisons, prayers, masses and other divine services for the souls of their grantor or feoffor, and for the souls of their heirs which are dead, and for the prosperity and good life and good health of their heirs which are alive. And therefore they shall do no fealty to their lord, because that this divine service is better for them before God than any doing of fealty” (Litt. s. 135). It was the tenure by which the greater number of the monasteries and religious houses held their lands; it was expressly exempted from the statute 12 Car. II. c. 24 (1660), by which the other ancient tenures were abolished, and it is the tenure by which the parochial clergy and many ecclesiastical and eleemosynary foundations hold their lands at the present day. As a form of donation, however, it came to an end by the passing of the statute Quia Emptores, for by that statute no new tenure of frank-almoign could be created, except by the crown.

See Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, where the history of frank-almoign is given at length.

FRANKEL, ZECHARIAS (1801-1875), Jewish theologian, one of the founders of the Breslau school of “historical Judaism.” This school attempts to harmonize critical treatment of the documents of religion with fidelity to traditional beliefs and observances. For a time at least, the compromise succeeded in staying the disintegrating effects of the liberal movement in Judaism. Frankel was the author of several valuable works, among them Septuagint Studies, an Introduction to the Mishnah (1859), and a similar work on the Palestinian Talmud (1870). He also edited the Monatsschrift, devoted to Jewish learning on modern lines. But his chief claim to fame rests on his headship of the Breslau Seminary. This was founded in 1854 for the training of rabbis who should combine their rabbinic studies with secular courses at the university. The whole character of the rabbinate has been modified under the influence of this, the first seminary of the kind.

(I. A.)

FRANKENBERG, a manufacturing town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony, on the Zschopau, 7 m. N.E. of Chemnitz, on the railway Niederwiesa-Rosswein. Pop. (1905) 13,303. The principal buildings are the large Evangelical parish church, restored in 1874-1875, and the town-hall. Its industries include I extensive woollen, cotton and silk weaving, dyeing, the manufacture of brushes, furniture and cigars, iron-founding and machine building. It is well provided with schools, including one of weaving.

FRANKENHAUSEN, a town of Germany, in the principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, on an artificial arm of the Wipper, a tributary of the Saale, 36 m. N.N.E. of Gotha. Pop. (1905) 6534. It consists of an old and a new town, the latter mostly rebuilt since a destructive fire in 1833, and has an old château of the princes of Schwarzburg, three Protestant churches, a seminary for teachers, a hospital and a modern town-hall. Its industries include the manufacture of sugar, cigars and buttons, and there are brine springs, with baths, in the vicinity. At Frankenhausen a battle was fought on the 15th of May 1525, in which the insurgent peasants under Thomas Münzer were defeated by the allied princes of Saxony and Hesse.

FRANKENSTEIN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia, on the Pausebach, 35 m. S. by W. of Breslau. Pop. (1905) 7890. It is still surrounded by its medieval walls, has two Evangelical and three Roman Catholic churches, among the latter the parish church with a curious overhanging tower, and a monastery. The industries include the manufacture of artificial manures, bricks, beer and straw hats. There are also mills for grinding the magnesite found in the neighbourhood.

FRANKENTHAL, a town of Germany, in the Bavarian Palatinate, on the Isenach, connected with the Rhine by a canal 3 m. in length, 6 m. N.W. from Mannheim, and on the railways Neunkirchen-Worms and Frankenthal-Grosskarlbach. Pop. (1905) 18,191. It has two Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, a fine medieval town-hall, two interesting old gates, remains of its former environing walls, several public monuments, including one to the veterans of the Napoleonic wars, and a museum. Its industries include the manufacture of machinery, casks, corks, soap, dolls and furniture, iron-founding and bell-founding—the famous “Kaiserglocke” of the Cologne cathedral was cast here. Frankenthal was formerly famous for its porcelain factory, established here in 1755 by Paul Anton Hannong of Strassburg, who sold it in 1762 to the elector palatine Charles Theodore. Its fame is mainly due to the modellers Konrad Link (1732-1802) and Johann Peter Melchior (d. 1796) (who worked at Frankenthal between 1779 and 1793). The best products of this factory are figures and groups representing contemporary life, or allegorical subjects in the rococo taste of the period, and they are surpassed only by those of the more famous factory at Meissen. In 1795 the factory was sold to Peter von Reccum, who removed it to Grünstadt.

Frankenthal (Franconodal) is mentioned as a village in the 8th century. A house of Augustinian canons established here in 1119 by Erkenbert, chamberlain of Worms, was suppressed in 1562 by the elector palatine Frederick III., who gave its possessions to Protestant refugees from the Netherlands. In 1577 this colony received town rights from the elector John Casimir, whose successor fortified the place. From 1623 until 1652, save for two years, it was occupied by the Spaniards, and in 1688-1689 it was stormed and burned by the French, the fortifications being razed. In 1697 it was reconstituted as a town, and under the elector Charles Theodore it became the capital of the Palatinate. From 1798 to 1814 it was incorporated in the French department of Mont Tonnerre.

See Wille, Stadt u. Festung Frankenthal während des dreissigjährigen Krieges (Heidelberg, 1877); Hildenbrand, Gesch. der Stadt Frankenthal (1893). For the porcelain see Heuser, Frankenthaler Gruppen und Figuren (Spires, 1899).

FRANKENWALD, a mountainous district of Germany, forming the geological connexion between the Fichtelgebirge and the Thuringian Forest. It is a broad well-wooded plateau, running for about 30 m. in a north-westerly direction, descending gently on the north and eastern sides towards the Saale, but more precipitously to the Bavarian plain in the west, and attaining its highest elevation in the Kieferle near Steinheid (2900 ft.). Along the centre lies the watershed between the basins of the Main and the Saale, belonging to the systems of the Rhine and Elbe respectively. The principal tributaries of the Main from the Frankenwald are the Rodach and Hasslach, and of the Saale, the Selbitz.

See H. Schmid, Führer durch den Frankenwald (Bamberg, 1894); Meyer, Thüringen und der Frankenwald (15th ed., Leipzig, 1900), and Gümbel, Geognostische Beschreibung des Fichtelgebirges mit dem Frankenwald (Gotha, 1879).

FRANKFORT, a city and the county-seat of Clinton county, Indiana, U.S.A., 40 m. N.W. of Indianapolis. Pop. (1890) 5919; (1900) 7100 (144 foreign-born); (1910) 8634. Frankfort is served by the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville, the Lake Erie & Western, the Vandalia, and the Toledo, St Louis & Western railways, and by the Indianapolis & North-Western Traction Interurban railway (electric). The city is a division point on the Toledo, St Louis & Western railway, which has large shops here. Frankfort is a trade centre for an agricultural and lumbering region; among its manufactures are handles, agricultural implements and foundry products. The first settlement in the neighbourhood was made in 1826; in 1830 the town was founded, and in 1875 it was chartered as a city. The city limits were considerably extended immediately after 1900.

FRANKFORT, the capital city of Kentucky, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Franklin county, on the Kentucky river, about 55 m. E. of Louisville. Pop. (1890) 7892; (1900) 9487, of whom 3316 were negroes; (1910 census) 10,465. The city is served by the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Louisville & Nashville, and the Frankfort & Cincinnati railways, by the Central Kentucky Traction Co. (electric), and by steamboat lines to Cincinnati, Louisville and other river ports. It is built among picturesque hills on both sides of the river, and is in the midst of the famous Kentucky “blue grass region” and of a rich lumber-producing region. The most prominent building is the Capitol, about 400 ft. long and 185 ft. wide, built of granite and white limestone in the Italian Renaissance style, with 70 large Ionic columns, and a dome 205 ft. above the terrace line, supported by 24 other columns. The Capitol was built in 1905-1907 at a cost of more than $2,000,000; in it are housed the state library and the library of the Kentucky State Historical Society. At Frankfort, also, are the state arsenal, the state penitentiary and the state home for feeble-minded children, and just outside the city limits is the state coloured normal school. The old capitol (first occupied in 1829) is still standing. In Franklin cemetery rest the remains of Daniel Boone and of Theodore O’Hara (1820-1867), a lawyer, soldier, journalist and poet, who served in the U.S. army in 1846-1848 during the Mexican War, took part in filibustering expeditions to Cuba, served in the Confederate army, and is best known as the author of “The Bivouac of the Dead,” a poem written for the burial in Frankfort of some soldiers who had lost their lives at Buena Vista. Here also are the graves of Richard M. Johnson, vice-president of the United States in 1837-1841, and the sculptor Joel T. Hart (1810-1877). The city has a considerable trade with the surrounding country, in which large quantities of tobacco and hemp are produced; its manufactures include lumber, brooms, chairs, shoes, hemp twine, canned vegetables and glass bottles. The total value of the city’s factory product in 1905 was $1,747,338, being 31.6% more than in 1900. Frankfort (said to have been named after Stephen Frank, one of an early pioneer party ambushed here by Indians) was founded in 1786 by General James Wilkinson, then deeply interested in trade with the Spanish at New Orleans, and in the midst of his Spanish intrigues. In 1792 the city was made the capital of the state. In 1862, during the famous campaign in Kentucky of General Braxton Bragg (Confederate) and General D. C. Buell (Federal), Frankfort was occupied for a short time by Bragg, who, just before being forced out by Buell, took part in the inauguration of Richard J. Hawes, chosen governor by the Confederates of the state. Hawes, however, never discharged the duties of his office. During the bitter contest for the governorship in 1900 between William Goebel (Democrat) and William S. Taylor (Republican), each of whom claimed the election, Goebel was assassinated at Frankfort. (See also Kentucky.) Frankfort received a city charter in 1839.

FRANKFORT-ON-MAIN (Ger. Frankfurt am Main), a city of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, principally on the right bank of the Main, 24 m. above its confluence with the Rhine at Mainz, and 16 m. N. from Darmstadt. Always a place of great trading importance, long the place of election for the German kings, and until 1866, together with Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck, one of the four free cities of Germany, it still retains its position as one of the leading commercial centres of the German empire. Its situation in the broad and fertile valley of the Main, the northern horizon formed by the soft outlines of the Taunus range, is one of great natural beauty, the surrounding country being richly clad with orchard and forest.

Frankfort is one of the most interesting, as it is also one of the wealthiest, of German cities. Apart from its commercial importance, its position, close to the fashionable watering-places of Homburg, Nauheim and Wiesbaden, has rendered it “cosmopolitan” in the best sense of the term. The various stages in the development of the city are clearly indicated in its general plan and the surviving names of many of its streets. The line of the original 12th century walls and moat is marked by the streets of which the names end in -graben, from the Hirschgraben on the W. to the Wollgraben on the E. The space enclosed by these and by the river on the S. is known as the “old town” (Altstadt). The so-called “new town” (Neustadt), added in 1333, extends to the Anlagen, the beautiful gardens and promenades laid out (1806-1812) on the site of the 17th century fortifications, of which they faithfully preserve the general ground plan. Of the medieval fortifications the picturesque Eschenheimer Tor, a round tower 155 ft. high, dating from 1400 to 1428, the Rententurm (1456) on the Main and the Kuhhirtenturm (c. 1490) in Sachsenhausen, are the sole remains. Since the demolition of the fortifications the city has greatly expanded. Sachsenhausen on the south bank of the river, formerly the seat of a commandery of the Teutonic Order (by treaty with Austria in 1842 all property and rights of the order in Frankfort territory were sold to the city, except the church and house), is now a quarter of the city. In other directions also the expansion has been rapid; the village of Bornheim was incorporated in Frankfort in 1877, the former Hessian town of Bockenheim in 1895, and the suburbs of Niederrad, Oberrad and Seckbach in 1900.

The main development of the city has been to the north of the river, which is crossed by numerous bridges and flanked by fine quays and promenades. The Altstadt, though several broad streets have been opened through it, still preserves many of its narrow alleys and other medieval features. The Judengasse (Ghetto), down to 1806 the sole Jews’ quarter, has been pulled down, with the exception of the ancestral house of the Rothschild family—No. 148—which has been restored and retains its ancient façade. As the Altstadt is mainly occupied by artisans and petty tradesmen, so the Neustadt is the principal business quarter of the city, containing the chief public buildings and the principal hotels. The main arteries of the city are the Zeil, a broad street running from the Friedberger Anlage to the Rossmarkt and thence continued, by the Kaiserstrasse, through the fine new quarter built after 1872, to the magnificent principal railway station; and the Steinweg and Goethestrasse, which lead by the Bockenheimer Tor to the Bockenheimer Landstrasse, a broad boulevard intersecting the fashionable residential suburb to the N.W.

Churches.—The principal ecclesiastical building in Frankfort is the cathedral (Dom). Built of red sandstone, with a massive tower terminating in a richly ornamented cupola and 300 ft. in height, it is the most conspicuous object in the city. This building, in which the Roman emperors were formerly elected and, since 1562, crowned, was founded in 852 by King Louis the German, and was later known as the Salvator Kirche. After its reconstruction (1235-1239), it was dedicated to St Bartholomew. From this period date the nave and the side aisles; the choir was completed in 1315-1338 and the long transepts in 1346-1354. The cloisters were rebuilt in 1348-1447, and the electoral chapel, on the south of the choir, was completed in 1355. The tower was begun in 1415, but remained unfinished. On the 15th of August 1867 the tower and roof were destroyed by fire and considerable damage was done to the rest of the edifice. The restoration was immediately taken in hand, and the whole work was finished in 1881, including the completion of the tower, according to the plans of the 15th century architect, Hans von Ingelheim. In the interior is the tomb of the German king Günther of Schwarzburg, who died in Frankfort in 1349, and that of Rudolph, the last knight of Sachsenhausen, who died in 1371. Among the other Roman Catholic churches are the Leonhardskirche, the Liebfrauenkirche (church of Our Lady) and the Deutschordenskirche (14th century) in Sachsenhausen. The Leonhardskirche (restored in 1882) was begun in 1219, it is said on the site of the palace of Charlemagne. It was originally a three-aisled basilica, but is now a five-aisled Hallenkirche; the choir was added in 1314. It has two Romanesque towers. The Liebfrauenkirche is first mentioned in 1314 as a collegiate church; the nave was consecrated in 1340. The choir was added in 1506-1509 and the whole church thoroughly restored in the second half of the 18th century, when the tower was built (1770). Of the Protestant churches the oldest is the Nikolaikirche, which dates from the 13th century; the fine cast-iron spire erected in 1843 had to be taken down in 1901. The Paulskirche, the principal Evangelical (Lutheran) church, built between 1786 and 1833, is a red sandstone edifice of no architectural pretensions, but interesting as the seat of the national parliament of 1848-1849. The Katharinenkirche, built 1678-1681 on the site of an older building, is famous in Frankfort history as the place where the first Protestant sermon was preached in 1522. Among the more noteworthy of the newer Protestant churches are the Peterskirche (1892-1895) in the North German Renaissance style, with a tower 256 ft. high, standing north from the Zeil, the Christuskirche (1883) and the Lutherkirche (1889-1893). An English church, in Early English Gothic style, situated adjacent to the Bockenheimer Landstrasse, was completed and consecrated in 1906.

Of the five synagogues, the chief (or Hauptsynagoge), lying in the Börnestrasse, is an attractive building of red sandstone in the Moorish-Byzantine style.

Public Buildings.—Of the secular buildings in Frankfort, the Römer, for almost five hundred years the Rathaus (town hall) of the city, is of prime historical interest. It lies on the Römerberg, a square flanked by curious medieval houses. It is first mentioned in 1322, was bought with the adjacent hostelry in 1405 by the city and rearranged as a town hall, and has since, from time to time, been enlarged by the purchase of adjoining patrician houses, forming a complex of buildings of various styles and dates surmounted by a clock tower. The façade was rebuilt (1896-1898) in late Gothic style. It was here, in the Wahlzimmer (or election-chamber) that the electors or their plenipotentiaries chose the German kings, and here in the Kaisersaal (emperors’ hall) that the coronation festival was held, at which the new king or emperor dined with the electors after having shown himself from the balcony to the people. The Kaisersaal retained its antique appearance until 1843, when, as also again in 1904, it was restored and redecorated; it is now furnished with a series of modern paintings representing the German kings and Roman emperors from Charlemagne to Francis II., in all fifty-two, and a statue of the first German emperor, William I. New municipal buildings adjoining the “Römer” on the north side were erected in 1900-1903 in German Renaissance style, with a handsome tower 220 ft. high; beneath it is a public wine-cellar, and on the first storey a grand municipal hall. The palace of the princes of Thurn and Taxis in the Eschenheimer Gasse was built (1732-1741) from the designs of Robert de Cotte, chief architect to Louis XIV. of France. From 1806 to 1810 it was the residence of Karl von Dalberg, prince-primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, with whose dominions Frankfort had been incorporated by Napoleon. From 1816 to 1866 it was the seat of the German federal diet. It is now annexed to the principal post office (built 1892-1894), which lies close to it on the Zeil. The Saalhof, built on the site of the palace erected by Louis the Pious in 822, overlooking the Main, has a chapel of the 12th century, the substructure dating from Carolingian times. This is the oldest building in Frankfort. The façade of the Saalhof in the Saalgasse dates from 1604, the southern wing with the two gables from 1715 to 1717. Of numerous other medieval buildings may be mentioned the Leinwandhaus (linendrapers’ hall), a 15th century building reconstructed in 1892 as a municipal museum. In the Grosser Hirschgraben is the Goethehaus, a 16th century building which came into the possession of the Goethe family in 1733. Here Goethe lived from his birth in 1749 until 1775. In 1863 the house was acquired by the Freies deutsche Hochstift and was opened to the public. It has been restored, from Goethe’s account of it in Dichtung und Wahrheit, as nearly as possible to its condition in the poet’s day, and is now connected with a Goethemuseum (1897), with archives and a library of 25,000 volumes representative of the Goethe period of German literature.

Literary and Scientific Institutions.—Few cities of the same size as Frankfort are so richly endowed with literary, scientific and artistic institutions, or possess so many handsome buildings appropriated to their service. The opera-house, erected near the Bockenheimer Tor in 1873-1880, is a magnificent edifice in the style of the Italian Renaissance and ranks among the finest theatres in Europe. There are also a theatre (Schauspielhaus) in modern Renaissance style (1899-1902), devoted especially to drama, a splendid concert hall (Saalbau), opened in 1861, and numerous minor places of theatrical entertainment. The public picture gallery in the Saalhof possesses works by Hans Holbein, Grünewald, Van Dyck, Teniers, Van der Neer, Hans von Kulmbach, Lucas Cranach and other masters. The Städel Art Institute (Städel’sches Kunstinstitut) in Sachsenhausen, founded by the banker J. F. Städel in 1816, contains a picture gallery and a cabinet of engravings extremely rich in works of German art. The municipal library, with 300,000 volumes, boasts among its rarer treasures a Gutenberg Bible printed at Mainz between 1450 and 1455, another on parchment dated 1462, the Institutiones Justiniani (Mainz, 1468), the Theuerdank, with woodcuts by Hans Schäufelein, and numerous valuable autographs. It also contains a fine collection of coins. The Bethmann Museum owes its celebrity principally to Dannecker’s “Ariadne,” but it also possesses the original plaster model of Thorwaldsen’s “Entrance of Alexander the Great into Babylon.” There may also be mentioned the Industrial Art Exhibition of the Polytechnic Association and two conservatories of music. Among the scientific institutions the first place belongs to the Senckenberg’sches naturhistorische Museum, containing valuable collections of birds and shells. Next must be mentioned the Kunstgewerbe (museum of arts and crafts) and the Musical Museum, with valuable MSS. and portraits. Besides the municipal library (Stadtbibliothek) mentioned above there are three others of importance, the Rothschild, the Senckenberg and the Jewish library (with a well-appointed reading-room). There are numerous high-grade schools, musical and other learned societies and excellent hospitals. The last include the large municipal infirmary and the Senckenberg’sches Stift, a hospital and almshouses founded by a doctor, Johann C. Senckenberg (d. 1772). The Royal Institute for experimental therapeutics (Königl. Institut für experimentelle Therapie), moved to Frankfort in 1899, attracts numerous foreign students, and is especially concerned with the study of bacteriology and serums.

Bridges.—Seven bridges (of which two are railway) cross the Main. The most interesting of these is the Alte Mainbrücke, a red sandstone structure of fourteen arches, 815 ft. long, dating from the 14th century. On it are a mill, a statue of Charlemagne and an iron crucifix surmounted by a gilded cock. The latter commemorates, according to tradition, the fowl which was the first living being to cross the bridge and thus fell a prey to the devil, who in hope of a nobler victim had sold his assistance to the architect. Antiquaries, however, assert that it probably marks the spot where criminals were in olden times flung into the river. Other bridges are the Obermainbrücke of five iron arches, opened in 1878; an iron foot (suspension) bridge, the Untermainbrücke; the Wilhelmsbrücke, a fine structure, which from 1849 to 1890 served as a railway bridge and was then opened as a road bridge; and two new iron bridges at Gutleuthof and Niederrad (below the city), which carry the railway traffic from the south to the north bank of the Main, where all lines converge in a central station of the Prussian state railways. This station, which was built in 1883-1888 and has replaced the three stations belonging to private companies, which formerly stood in juxtaposition on the Anlagen (or promenades) near the Mainzer Tor, lies some half-mile to the west. The intervening ground upon which the railway lines and buildings stood was sold for building sites, the sum obtained being more than sufficient to cover the cost of the majestic central terminus (the third largest in the world), which, in addition to spacious and handsome halls for passenger accommodation, has three glass-covered spans of 180 ft. width each. Yet the exigencies of traffic demand further extensions, and another large station was in 1909 in process of construction at the east end of the city, devised to receive the local traffic of lines running eastward, while a through station for the north to south traffic was projected on a site farther west of the central terminus.

Frankfort lies at the junction of lines of railway connecting it directly with all the important cities of south and central Germany. Here cross and unite the lines from Berlin to Basel, from Cologne to Würzburg and Vienna, from Hamburg and Cassel, and from Dresden and Leipzig to France and Switzerland. The river Main has been dredged so as to afford heavy barge traffic with the towns of the upper Main and with the Rhine, and cargo boats load and unload alongside its busy quays. A well-devised system of electric tramways provides for local communication within the city and with the outlying suburbs.

Trade, Commerce and Industries.—Frankfort has always been more of a commercial than an industrial town, and though of late years it has somewhat lost its pre-eminent position as a banking centre it has counterbalanced the loss in increased industrial development. The suburbs of Sachsenhausen and Bockenheim have particularly developed considerable industrial activity, especially in publishing and printing, brewing and the manufacture of quinine. Other sources of employment are the cutting of hair for making hats, the production of fancy goods, type, machinery, soap and perfumery, ready-made clothing, chemicals, electro-technical apparatus, jewelry and metal wares. Market gardening is extensively carried on in the neighbourhood and cider largely manufactured. There are two great fairs held in the town,—the Ostermesse, or spring fair, and the Herbstmesse, or autumn fair. The former, which was the original nucleus of all the commercial prosperity of the city, begins on the second Wednesday before Easter; and the latter on the second Wednesday before the 8th of September. They last three weeks, and the last day save one, called the Nickelchestag, is distinguished by the influx of people from the neighbouring country. The trade in leather is of great and growing importance. A horse fair has been held twice a year since 1862 under the patronage of the agricultural society; and the wool market was reinstituted in 1872 by the German Trade Society (Deutscher Handelsverein). Frankfort has long been famous as one of the principal banking centres of Europe, and is now only second to Berlin, in this respect, among German cities, and it is remarkable for the large business that is done in government stock. In the 17th century the town was the seat of a great book-trade; but it has long been distanced in this department by Leipzig. The Frankfurter Journal was founded in 1615, the Postzeitung in 1616, the Neue Frankfurter Zeitung in 1859, and the Frankfurter Presse in 1866.

Of memorial monuments the largest and most elaborate in Frankfort is that erected in 1858 in honour of the early German printers. It was modelled by Ed. von der Launitz and executed by Herr von Kreis. The statues of Gutenberg, Fust and Schöffer form a group on the top; an ornamented frieze presents medallions of a number of famous printers; below these are figures representing the towns of Mainz, Strassburg, Venice and Frankfort; and on the corners of the pedestal are allegorical statues of theology, poetry, science and industry. The statue of Goethe (1844) in the Goetheplatz is by Ludwig von Schwanthaler. The Schiller statue, erected in 1863, is the work of a Frankfort artist, Johann Dielmann. A monument in the Bockenheim Anlage, dated 1837, preserves the memory of Guiollett, the burgomaster, to whom the town is mainly indebted for the beautiful promenades which occupy the site of the old fortifications; and similar monuments have been reared to Senckenberg (1863), Schopenhauer, Klemens Brentano the poet and Samuel Thomas Sömmerring (1755-1830), the anatomist and inventor of an electric telegraph. In the Opernplatz is an equestrian statue of the emperor Wilhelm I. by Buscher.

Cemeteries.—The new cemetery (opened in 1828) contains the graves of Arthur Schopenhauer and Feuerbach, of Passavant the biographer of Raphael, Ballenberger the artist, Hessemer the architect, Sömmerring, and Johann Friedrich Böhmer the historian. The Bethmann vault attracts attention by three bas-reliefs from the chisel of Thorwaldsen; and the Reichenbach mausoleum is a vast pile designed by Hessemer at the command of William II. of Hesse, and adorned with sculptures by Zwerger and von der Lausitz. In the Jewish section, which is walled off from the rest of the burying-ground, the most remarkable tombs are those of the Rothschild family.

Parks.—In addition to the park in the south-western district, Frankfort possesses two delightful pleasure grounds, which attract large numbers of visitors, the Palmengarten in the west and the zoological garden in the east of the city. The former is remarkable for the collection of palms purchased in 1868 from the deposed duke Adolph of Nassau.

Government.—The present municipal constitution of the city dates from 1867 and presents some points of difference from the ordinary Prussian system. Bismarck was desirous of giving the city, in view of its former freedom, a more liberal constitution than is usual in ordinary cases. Formerly fifty-four representatives were elected, but provision was made (in the constitution) for increasing the number, and they at present number sixty-four, elected for six years. Every two years a third of the number retire, but they are eligible for re-election. These sixty-four representatives elect twenty town-councillors, ten of whom receive a salary and ten do not. The chief burgomaster (Oberbürgermeister) is nominated by the emperor for twelve years, and the second burgomaster must receive the emperor’s approval.

Since 1885 the city has been supplied with water of excellent quality from the Stadtwald, Goldstein and Hinkelstein, and the favourable sanitary condition of the town is seen in the low death rate.

Population.—The population of Frankfort has steadily increased since the beginning of the 19th century; it amounted in 1817 to 41,458; (1840) 55,269; (1864) 77,372; (1871) 59,265; (1875) 103,136; (1890) 179,985; and (1905), including the incorporated suburban districts, 334,951, of whom 175,909 were Protestants, 88,457 Roman Catholics and 21,974 Jews.

History.—Excavations around the cathedral have incontestably proved that Frankfort-on-Main (Trajectum ad Moenum) was a settlement in Roman times and was probably founded in the 1st century of the Christian era. It may thus be accounted one of the earliest German—the so-called “Roman”—towns. Numerous places in the valley of the Main are mentioned in chronicles anterior to the time that Frankfort is first noticed. Disregarding popular tradition, which connects the origin of the town with a legend that Charlemagne, when retreating before the Saxons, was safely conducted across the river by a doe, it may be asserted that the first genuine historical notice of the town occurs in 793, when Einhard, Charlemagne’s biographer, tells us that he spent the winter in the villa Frankonovurd. Next year there is mention more than once of a royal palace here, and the early importance of the place is indicated by the fact that in this year it was chosen as the seat of the ecclesiastical council by which image-worship was condemned. The name Frankfort is also found in several official documents of Charlemagne’s reign; and from the notices that occur in the early chronicles and charters it would appear that the place was the most populous at least of the numerous villages of the Main district. During the Carolingian period it was the seat of no fewer than 16 imperial councils or colloquies. The town was probably at first built on an island in the river. It was originally governed by the royal officer or actor dominicus, and down even to the close of the Empire it remained a purely imperial or royal town. It gradually acquired various privileges, and by the close of the 14th century the only mark of dependence was the payment of a yearly tax. Louis the Pious dwelt more frequently at Frankfort than his father Charlemagne had done, and about 823 he built himself a new palace, the basis of the later Saalhof. In 822 and 823 two great diets were held in the palace, and at the former there were present deputies from the eastern Slavs, the Avars and the Normans. The place continued to be a favourite residence with Louis the German, who died there in 876, and was the capital of the East Frankish kingdom. By the rest of the Carolingian kings it was less frequently visited, and this neglect was naturally greater during the period of the Saxon and Salic emperors from 919 to 1137. Diets, however, were held in the town in 951, 1015, 1069 and 1109, and councils in 1000 and 1006. From a privilege of Henry IV., in 1074, granting the city of Worms freedom from tax in their trade with several royal cities, it appears that Frankfort was even then a place of some commercial importance.