Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 41)

F. Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: T. Irving, Conquest of Florida by De Soto.

Discovery and Conquest of Terra Florida; written by a Gentleman of Elvas (Hakluyt Society).

J. W. Monette, Discovery and Settlement of the Mississippi Valley, chapters 1-4.

J. G. Shea, Ancient Florida (Narrative and Critical History of America, volume 2, chapter 4).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1562-1563. First colonizing attempt of the French Huguenots.

About the middle of the 16th century, certain of the Protestants of France began to turn their thoughts to the New World as a possible place of refuge from the persecutions they were suffering at home. "Some of the French sea-ports became strong-holds of the Huguenots. Their most prominent supporter, Coligny, was high admiral of France. These Huguenots looked toward the new countries as the proper field in which to secure a retreat from persecution, and to found a new religious commonwealth. Probably many of the French 'corsarios' following the track of the Portuguese and Spaniards to the West Indies and the coasts of Brazil, were Huguenots. … The first scheme for a Protestant colony in the new world was suggested by Admiral Coligny in 1554, and intended for the coast of Brazil, to which an expedition, under Durand de Villegagnon, was sent with ships and colonists. This expedition arrived at the Bay of Rio de Janeiro in 1555, and founded there the first European settlement. {1149} It was followed the next year by another expedition. But the whole enterprise came to an end by divisions among the colonists, occasioned by the treacherous, despotic, and cruel proceedings of its commander, a reputed Catholic. The colony was finally subverted by the Portuguese, who, in 1560, sent out an armament against it, and took possession of the Bay of Rio de Janeiro. … After the unfortunate end of the French enterprise to South America, Admiral Coligny, who may be styled the Raleigh of France, turned his attention to the eastern shores of North America; the whole of which had become known in France from the voyage of Verrazano, and the French expeditions to Canada and the Banks of Newfoundland." In February, 1562, an expedition, fitted out by Coligny, sailed from Havre de Grace, under Jean Ribault, with Réné de Laudonnière forming one of the company. Ribault arrived on the Florida coast in the neighborhood of the present harbor of St. Augustine, and thence sailed north. "At last, in about 32° 30' North he found an excellent broad and deep harbor, which he named Port Royal, which probably is the present Broad River, or Port Royal entrance. … He found this port and the surrounding country so advantageous and of such 'singular beauty,' that he resolved to leave here a part of his men in a small fort. … A pillar with the arms of France was therefore erected, and a fort constructed, furnished with cannon, ammunition, and provisions, and named 'Charlesfort.' Thirty volunteers were placed in it, and it became the second European settlement ever attempted upon the east coast of the United States. Its position was probably not far from the site of the present town of Beaufort, on Port Royal River. Having accomplished this, and made a certain captain, Albert de la Pieria, 'a soldier of great experience,' commander of Charlesfort, he took leave of his countrymen, and left Port Royal on the 11th day of June," arriving in France on the 20th of July. "On his arrival in France, Ribault found the country in a state of great commotion. The civil war between the Huguenots and the Catholics was raging, and neither the king nor the admiral had time to listen to Ribault's solicitations, to send relief to the settlers left in 'French Florida.' Those colonists remained, therefore, during the remainder of 1562, and the following winter, without assistance from France; and after many trials and sufferings, they were at last forced, in 1563, to abandon their settlement and the new country." Having constructed a ship, with great difficulty, they put to sea; but suffered horribly on the tedious voyage, from want of food and water, until they were rescued by an English vessel and taken to England.

J_. G. Kohl, History of the Discovery of Maine (Maine Historical Society Collection, 2d series, volume 1), chapter 11._

ALSO IN: F. Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, chapter 3.

Father Charlevoix, History of New France; translated by J. G. Shea, book 3 (volume 1).

T. E. V. Smith, Villegaignon (American Society of Church History, volume 3).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1564-1565. The second Huguenot colony, and the cry in Spain against it.

"After the treacherous peace between Charles IX. and the Huguenots, Coligny renewed his solicitations for the colonization of Florida. The king gave consent; in 1564 three ships were conceded for the service; and Laudonnière, who, in the former voyage, had been upon the American coast, a man of great intelligence, though a seaman rather than a soldier, was appointed to lead forth the colony. … A voyage of 60 days brought the fleet, by the way of the Canaries and the Antilles, to the shores of Florida in June. The harbor of Port Royal, rendered gloomy by recollections of misery, was avoided; and, after searching the coast, and discovering places which were so full of amenity that melancholy itself could not but change its humor as it gazed, the followers of Calvin planted themselves on the banks of the river May [now called the St. John's], near St. John's bluff. They sung a psalm of thanksgiving, and gathered courage from acts of devotion. The fort now erected was called Carolina. … The French were hospitably welcomed by the natives; a monument, bearing the arms of France, was crowned with laurels, and its base encircled with baskets of corn. What need is there of minutely relating the simple manners of the red men, the dissensions of rival tribes, the largesses offered to the strangers to secure their protection or their alliance, the improvident prodigality with which careless soldiers wasted the supplies of food; the certain approach of scarcity; the gifts and the tribute levied from the Indians by entreaty, menace or force? By degrees the confidence of the red men was exhausted; they had welcomed powerful guests, who promised to become their benefactors, and who now robbed their humble granaries. But the worst evil in the new settlement was the character of the emigrants. Though patriotism and religious enthusiasm had prompted the expedition, the inferior class of the colonists was a motley group of dissolute men. Mutinies were frequent. The men were mad with the passion for sudden wealth; and in December a party, under the pretence of desiring to escape from famine, compelled Laudonnière to sign an order permitting their embarkation for New Spain. No sooner were they possessed of this apparent sanction of the chief than they began a career of piracy against the Spaniards. The act of crime and temerity was soon avenged. The pirate vessel was taken, and most of the men disposed of as prisoners or slaves. The few that escaped in a boat sought shelter at Fort Carolina, where Laudonnière sentenced the ringleaders to death. During these events the scarcity became extreme; and the friendship of the natives was forfeited by unprofitable severity. March of 1565 was gone, and there were no supplies from France; April passed away, and the expected recruits had not arrived; May brought nothing to sustain the hopes of the exiles, and they resolved to attempt a return to Europe. In August, Sir John Hawkins, the slave merchant, arrived from the West Indies. He came fresh from the sale of a cargo of Africans, whom he had kidnapped with signal ruthlessness; and he now displayed the most generous sympathy, not only furnishing a liberal supply of provisions, but relinquishing a vessel from his own fleet. The colony was on the point of embarking when sails were descried. Ribault had arrived to assume the command, bringing with him supplies of every kind, emigrants with their families, garden-seeds, implements of husbandry, and the various kinds of domestic animals. The French, now wild with joy, seemed about to acquire a home, and Calvinism to become fixed in the inviting regions of Florida. {1150} But Spain had never abandoned her claim to that territory, where, if she had not planted colonies, she had buried many hundreds of her bravest sons. … There had appeared at the Spanish court a commander well fitted for reckless acts. Pedro Melendez [or Menendez] de Aviles … had acquired wealth in Spanish America, which was no school of benevolence, and his conduct there had provoked an inquiry, which, after a long arrest, ended in his conviction. … Philip II. suggested the conquest and colonization of Florida; and in May, 1565, a compact was framed and confirmed by which Melendez, who desired an opportunity to retrieve his honor, was constituted the hereditary governor of a territory of almost unlimited extent. On his part he stipulated, at his own cost, in the following May, to invade Florida with 500 men; to complete its conquest within three years; to explore its currents and channels, the dangers of its coasts, and the depth of its havens; to establish a colony of at least 500 persons, of whom 100 should be married men; with 12 ecclesiastics, besides four Jesuits. … Meantime, news arrived, as the French writers assert through the treachery of the court of France, that the Huguenots had made a plantation in Florida, and that Ribault was preparing to set sail with re-enforcements. The cry was raised that the heretics must be extirpated; and Melendez readily obtained the forces which he required."

G. Bancroft, History of the United States (author's last revision), part 1, chapter 4.

ALSO IN: G. R. Fairbanks, History of Florida, chapters 7-8.

W. G. Simms, History of South Carolina, book 1.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1565. The Spanish capture of Fort Caroline and massacre of the Huguenots. Founding of St. Augustine.

"The expedition under Menendez consisted of an army of 2,600 soldiers and officers. He sailed straight for Florida, intending to attack Fort Caroline with no delay. In fact he sighted the mouth of the port [Sept. 4, 1565] two months after starting; but, considering the position occupied by the French ships, he judged it prudent to defer the attack, and make it, if possible, from the land. A council of war was held in Fort Caroline, presided over by Ribaut. Laudonnière proposed that, while Ribaut held the fort with the ships, he, with his old soldiers, who knew the country well, aided by the Floridans as auxiliaries, should engage the Spaniards in the woods, and harass them by perpetual combats in labyrinths to which they were wholly unaccustomed. The advice was good, but it was not followed. Ribaut proposed to follow the Spanish fleet with his own—lighter and more easily handled—fall on the enemy when the soldiers were all disembarked, and, after taking and burning the ships, to attack the army. In the face of remonstrances from all the officers, he persisted in this project. Disaster followed the attempt. A violent gale arose. The French ships were wrecked upon the Floridan coast; the men lost their arms, their powder, and their clothes; they escaped with their bare lives. There was no longer the question of conquering the Spaniards, but of saving themselves. The garrison of Caroline consisted of 150 soldiers, of whom 40 were sick. The rest of the colony was composed of sick and wounded Protestant ministers, workmen, royal commissioners,' and so forth. Laudonnière was in command. They awaited the attack for several days, yet the Spaniards came not. They were wading miserably through the marshes in the forests, under tropical rains, discouraged, and out of heart." But when, at length, the exhausted and despairing Spaniards, toiling through the marshes, from St. Augustine, where they had landed and established their settlement, reached the French fort (Sept. 20), "there was actually no watch on the ramparts. Three companies of Spaniards simultaneously rushed from the forest, and attacked the fortress on the south, the west and the south-west. There was but little resistance from the surprised garrison. There was hardly time to grasp a sword. About 20 escaped by flight, including the Captain, Laudonnière; the rest were every one massacred. None were spared except women and children under fifteen; and, in the first rage of the onslaught, even these were murdered with the rest. There still lay in the port three ships, commanded by Jacques Ribaut, brother [son] of the unfortunate Governor. One of these was quickly sent to the bottom by the cannon of the fort; the other two cut their cables, and slipped out of reach into the roadstead, where they lay, waiting for a favourable wind, for three days. They picked up the fugitives who had been wandering half-starved in the woods, and then set sail from this unlucky land. … There remained, however, the little army, under Ribaut, which had lost most of its arms in the wreck, and was now wandering along the Floridan shore." When Ribaut and his men reached Fort Caroline and saw the Spanish flag flying, they turned and retreated southward. Not many days later, they were intercepted by Menendez, near St. Augustine, to which post he had returned. The first party of the French who came up, 200 in number, and who were in a starving state, surrendered to the Spaniard, and laid down their arms. "They were brought across the river in small companies, and their hands tied behind their backs. On landing, they were asked if they were Catholics. Eight out of the 200 professed allegiance to that religion; the rest were all Protestants.' Menendez traced out a line on the ground with his cane. The prisoners were marched up one by one to the line; on reaching it, they were stabbed. Next day, Ribaut arrived with the rest of the army. The same pourparlers began. But this time a blacker treachery was adopted." An officer, sent by Menendez, pledged his honor to the French that the lives of all should be spared if they laid down their arms. "It is not clear how many of the French accepted the conditions. A certain number refused them, and escaped into the woods. What is certain is, that Ribaut, with nearly all his men, were tied back to back, four together. Those who said they were Catholics, were set on one side; the rest were all massacred as they stood. … Outside the circle of the slaughtered and the slaughterers stood the priest, Mendoza, encouraging, approving, exhorting the butchers."

W. Besant, Gaspard de Coligny, chapter 7.

The long dispatch in which Menendez reported his fiendish work to the Spanish king has been brought to light in the archives at Seville, and there is this endorsement on it, in the hand-writing of Philip II.: "Say to him that, as to those he has killed, he has done well; and as to those he has saved, they shall be sent to the galleys."

F. Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, chapters 7-8.

{1151}

ALSO IN: C. W. Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America, volume 1, introduction.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1567-1568. The vengeance of Dominic de Gourgues.

"As might have been expected, all attempts to rouse the French court into demanding redress were vain. Spain, above all other nations, knew the arts by which a corrupt court might be swayed, and the same intrigues which, fifty years later, sent Raleigh to the block and well-nigh ended the young colony of Virginia, now kept France quiet. But though the court refused to move, an avenger was not wanting. Dominic de Gourgues had already known as a prisoner of war the horrors of the Spanish galleys. Whether he was a Huguenot is uncertain. Happily in France, as the history of that and all later ages proved, the religion of the Catholic did not necessarily deaden the feelings of the patriot. Seldom has there been a deed of more reckless daring than that which Dominic de Gourgues now undertook. With the proceeds of his patrimony he bought three small ships, manned by eighty sailors and a hundred men-at-arms. He then obtained a commission as a slaver on the coast of Guinea, and in the summer of 1567 set sail. With these paltry resources he aimed at overthrowing a settlement which had already destroyed a force of twenty times his number, and which might have been strengthened in the interval. … To the mass of his followers he did not reveal the true secret of his voyage till he had reached the West Indies. Then he disclosed his real purpose. His men were of the same spirit as their leader. Desperate though the enterprise seemed, De Gourgues' only difficulty was to restrain his followers from undue haste. Happily for their attempt, they had allies on whom they had not reckoned. The fickle savages had at first welcomed the Spaniards, but the tyranny of the new comers soon wrought a change, and the Spaniards in Florida, like the Spaniards in every part of the New World, were looked on as hateful tyrants. So when De Gourgues landed he at once found a ready body of allies. … Three days were spent in making ready, and then De Gourgues, with a hundred and sixty of his own men and his Indian allies, marched against the enemy. In spite of the hostility of the Indians, the Spaniards seem to have taken no precaution against a sudden attack. Menendez himself had left the colony. The Spanish force was divided between three forts, and no proper precautions were taken for keeping up the communications between them. Each was successively seized, the garrison slain or made prisoners, and, as each fort fell, those in the next could only make vague guesses as to the extent of the danger. Even when divided into three the Spanish force outnumbered that of De Gourgues, and savages with bows and arrows would have counted for little against men with fire arms and behind walls. But after the downfall of the first fort a panic seemed to seize the Spaniards, and the French achieved an almost bloodless victory. After the death of Ribault and his followers nothing could be looked for but merciless retaliation, and De Gourgues copied the severity, though not the perfidy of his enemies. The very details of Menendez' act were imitated, and the trees on which the prisoners were hung bore the inscription: 'Not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers, and murderers.' Five weeks later De Gourgues anchored under the walls of Rochelle. … His attack did not wholly extirpate the Spanish power in Florida. Menendez received the blessing of the Pope as a chosen instrument for the conversion of the Indians, returned to America and restored his settlement. As before, he soon made the Indians his deadly enemies. The Spanish settlement held on, but it was not till two centuries later that its existence made itself remembered by one brief but glorious episode in the history of the English colonies."

J. A. Doyle, The English in America: Virginia, &c., chapter 5.

ALSO IN: W. W. Dewhurst, History of St. Augustine, Florida, chapter 9.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1628. Claimed by France, and placed, with New France, under the control of the Company of the Hundred Associates.

See CANADA: A. D. 1616-1628.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1629. Claimed in part by England and embraced in the Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1629.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1680. Attack on the English of Carolina.

See SOUTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1680.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1702. Adjustment of western boundary with the French of Louisiana.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1698-1712.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1740. Unsuccessful attack on St. Augustine by the English of Georgia and Carolina.

See GEORGIA: A. D. 1738-1743.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (February). Ceded to Great Britain by Spain in the Treaty of Paris.

See SEVEN YEARS WAR.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (July). Possession taken by the English.

"When, in July [1763], possession was taken of Florida, its inhabitants, of every age and sex, men, women, children, and servants, numbered but 3,000; and, of these, the men were nearly all in the pay of the Catholic king. The possession of it had cost him nearly $230,000 annually; and now it was accepted by England as a compensation for Havana. Most of the people, receiving from the Spanish treasury indemnity for their losses, had migrated to Cuba, taking with them the bones of their saints and the ashes of their distinguished dead. The western province of Florida extended to the Mississippi, on the line of latitude of 31°. On the 20th of October, the French surrendered the post of Mobile, with its brick fort, which was fast crumbling to ruins. A month later, the slight stockade at Tombigbee, in the west of the Chocta country, was delivered up. In a congress of the Catawbas, Cherokees, Creeks, Chicasas, and Choctas, held on the 10th of November, at Augusta, the governors of Virginia and the colonies south of it were present, and the peace with the Indians of the South and South-west was ratified."

G. Bancroft, History of the United States (Author's last revision.), volume 3, page 64.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (October). English provinces, East and West, constituted by the King's proclamation.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1763.

{1152}

FLORIDA: A. D. 1779-1781. Reconquest of West Florida by the Spanish commander at New Orleans.

"In the summer of 1779 Spain had declared war against Great Britain. Galvez [the Spanish commander at New Orleans] discovered that the British were planning the surprise of New Orleans, and, under cover of preparations for defense, made haste to take the offensive. Four days before the time he had appointed to move, a hurricane destroyed a large number of houses in the town, and spread ruin to crops and, dwellings up and down the 'coast,' and sunk his gun flotilla. … Repairing his disasters as best he could, and hastening his ostensibly defensive preparations, he marched, on the 22d of August, 1779, against the British forts on the Mississippi. His … little army of 1,434 men was without tents, other military furniture, or a single engineer. The gun fleet followed in the river abreast of their line of march along its shores, carrying one 24-pounder, five 18-pounders, and four 4-pounders. With this force, in the space of about three weeks, Fort Bute on bayou Manchac, Baton Rouge and Fort Panmure. 8 vessels, 556 regulars, and a number of sailors, militia-men, and free blacks, fell into the hands of the Spaniards. The next year, 1780, re-enforced from Havana, Galvez again left New Orleans by way of the Balize with 2,000 men, regulars, militia, and free blacks, and on the 15th of March took Fort Charlotte on Mobile river. Galvez next conceived the much larger project of taking Pensacola. Failing to secure re-enforcements from Havana by writing for them, he sailed to that place in October, to make his application in person, intending to move with them directly on the enemy. After many delays and disappointments he succeeded, and early in March, 1781, appeared before Pensacola with a ship of the line, two frigates, and transports containing 1,400 soldiers well furnished with artillery and ammunition. Here he was joined by such troops as could be spared from Mobile, and by Don Estevan Mirò from New Orleans, at the head of the Louisiana forces, and on the afternoon of the 16th of March, though practically unsupported by the naval fleet, until dishonor was staring its jealous commanders in the face, moved under hot fire, through a passage of great peril, and took up a besieging position. … It is only necessary to state that, on the 9th of May, 1781, Pensacola, with a garrison of 800 men, and the whole of West Florida, were surrendered to Galvez. Louisiana had heretofore been included under one domination with Cuba, but now one of the several rewards bestowed upon her governor was the captain-generalship of Louisiana and West Florida."

G. E. Waring, Jr., and G. W. Cable, History of New Orleans (United States Tenth Census, volume 19).

ALSO IN: C. Gayarré, History of Louisiana: Spanish Domination, chapter 3.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1783-1787. The question of boundaries between Spain and the United States, and the question of the navigation of the Mississippi.

"By the treaty of 1783 between Great Britain on the one part and the United States and her allies, France and Spain, on the other, Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the colonies, and recognized as a part of their southern boundary a line drawn due east from a point in the Mississippi River, in latitude 31° north, to the middle of the Appalachicola; and at the same time she ceded to Spain by a separate agreement the two Floridas, but without defining their northern boundaries. This omission gave rise to a dispute between Spain and the United States as to their respective limits. On the part of Spain it was contended that by the act of Great Britain, of 1764, the northern boundary of West Florida had been fixed at the line running due east from the mouth of the Yazoo to the Chattahoochee, and that all south of that line had been ceded to her; whilst on the other hand, the United States as strenuously maintained that the act fixing and enlarging the limits of West Florida was superseded by the recent treaty, which extended their southern boundary to the 31st degree of north latitude, a hundred and ten miles further south than the line claimed by Spain. Spain, however, had possession of the disputed territory by right of conquest, and evidently had no intention of giving it up. She strengthened her garrisons at Baton Rouge and Natchez, and built a fort at Vicksburg, and subsequently one at New Madrid, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, just below the mouth of the Ohio; and of the latter she made a port of entry where vessels from the Ohio were obliged to land and declare their cargoes. She even denied the right of the United States to the region between the Mississippi and the Alleghany Mountains, which had been ceded to them by Great Britain, on the ground that the conquests made by Governor Galvez, of West Florida, and by Don Eugenio Pierre, of Fort St. Joseph, 'near the sources of the Illinois,' had vested the title to all this country in her; and she insisted that what she did not own was possessed by the Indians, and could not therefore belong to the United States. Even as late as 1795, she claimed to have bought from the Chickasaws the bluffs which bear their name, and which are situated on the east bank of the Mississippi some distance north of the most northerly boundary ever assigned by Great Britain to West Florida. Here, then, was cause for 'a very pretty quarrel,' and to add to the ill feeling which grew out of it, Spain denied the right of the people of the United States to the 'free navigation of the Mississippi,'—a right which had been conceded to them by Great Britain with all the formalities with which she had received it from France. … What was needed to make the right of any value to the people of the Ohio valley was the additional right to take their produce into a Spanish port, New Orleans, and either sell it then and there, or else store it, subject to certain conditions, until such time as it suited them to transfer it to sea-going vessels. This right Spain would not concede; and as the people of the Ohio valley were determined to have it, cost what it might, it brought on a series of intrigues between the Spanish governors of Louisiana and certain influential citizens west of the Alleghanies which threatened the stability of the American Union almost before it was formed."

L. Carr, Missouri, chapter 4.

ALSO IN: E. Schuyler, American Diplomacy, chapter 6.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1810-1813. Continued occupation of West Florida by the Spaniards. Revolt of the inhabitants. Possession taken by the Americans from the Mississippi to the Perdido.

"The success of the French in Spain, and the probability of that kingdom being obliged to succumb, had given occasion to revolutionary movements in several of the Spanish American provinces. This example … had been followed also in that portion of the Spanish province of West Florida bordering on the Mississippi. The inhabitants, most of whom were of British or American birth, had seized the fort at Baton Rouge, had met in convention, and had proclaimed themselves independent, adopting a single star for their flag, the same symbol afterward assumed by the republic of Texas. {1153} Some struggles took place between the adherents of the Spanish connection and these revolutionists, who were also threatened with attack from Mobile, still held by a Spanish garrison. In this emergency they applied, through Holmes, governor of the Mississippi Territory, for aid and recognition by the United States. … The president, however, preferred to issue a proclamation, taking possession of the east bank of the Mississippi, occupation of which, under the Louisiana treaty, had been so long delayed, not, it was said, from any defect of title, but out of conciliatory views toward Spain. … Claiborne, governor of the Orleans Territory, then at Washington, was dispatched post-haste to take possession." The following January Congress passed an act in secret session "authorizing the president to take possession as well of East as of West Florida, under any arrangement which had been or might be entered into with the local authorities; or, in case of any attempted occupation by any foreign government, to take and to maintain possession by force. Previously to the passage of this act, the occupation of the east bank of the Mississippi had been already completed by Governor Claiborne; not, however, without some show of resistance. … Captain Gaines presently appeared before Mobile with a small detachment of American regulars, and demanded its surrender. Colonel Cushing soon arrived from New Orleans with several gun-boats, artillery, and a body of troops. The boats were permitted to ascend the river toward Fort Stoddard without opposition. But the Spanish commandant refused to give up Mobile, and no attempt was made to compel him." By an act of Congress passed in April, 1812, "that part of Florida recently taken possession of, as far east as Pearl River, was annexed to the new state [of Louisiana]. The remaining territory, as far as the Perdido, though Mobile still remained in the hands of the Spaniards, was annexed, by another act, to the Mississippi Territory." A year later, in April, 1813, General Wilkinson was instructed to take possession of Mobile, and to occupy all the territory claimed, to the Perdido, which he accordingly did, without bloodshed.

R. Hildreth, History of the United States, 2d series, chapters 23, 24, 26 (volume 3).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818. The fugitive negroes and the first Seminole War. Jackson's campaign.

"The tranquillity of Monroe's administration was soon seriously threatened by the renewal of trouble with the Southern Indians [the Seminoles, and the refugee Creeks]. … The origin of the difficulty was twofold: first, the injustice which has always marked the treatment of Indian tribes whose lands were coveted by the whites; and secondly, the revival of the old grievance, that Florida was a refuge for the fugitive slaves of Georgia and South Carolina. … The Seminoles had never withheld a welcome to the Georgia negro who preferred their wild freedom to the lash of an overseer on a cotton or rice plantation. The Georgians could never forget that the grand-children of their grandfathers' fugitive slaves were roaming about the Everglades of Florida. … So long as there were Seminoles in Florida, and so long as Florida belonged to Spain, just so long would the negroes of Georgia find an asylum in Florida with the Seminoles. … A war with the Indians of Florida, therefore, was always literally and emphatically a slave-hunt. A reclamation for fugitives was always repulsed by the Seminoles and the Spaniards, and, as they could be redeemed in no other way, Georgia was always urging the Federal Government to war."

W. C. Bryant and S. H. Gay, Popular History of the United States, volume 4, chapter 10.

During the War of 1812-14, the English, who were permitted by Spain to make use of Florida with considerable freedom, and who received no little assistance from the refugee negroes and Creek Indians, "had built a fort on the Appalachicola River, about 15 miles from its mouth, and had collected there an immense amount of arms and ammunition. … When the war ended, the English left the arms and ammunition in the fort. The negroes seized the fort, and it became known as the 'Negro Fort.' The authorities of the United States sent General Gaines to the Florida frontier with troops, to establish peace on the border. The Negro Fort was a source of anxiety both to the military authorities and to the slave-owners of Georgia," and a pretext was soon found—whether valid or not seems uncertain—for attacking it. "A hot shot penetrated one of the magazines, and the whole fort was blown to pieces, July 27, 1816. There were 300 negro men, women and children, and 20 Choctaws in the fort; 270 were killed. Only three came out unhurt, and these were killed by the allied Indians. … During 1817 there were frequent collisions on the frontiers between Whites and Indians. … On the 20th of November, General Gaines sent a force of 250 men to Fowltown, the headquarters of the chief of the 'Redsticks,' or hostile Creeks. They approached the town in the early morning, and were fired on. An engagement followed. The town was taken and burned. … The Indians of that section, after this, began general hostilities, attacked the boats which were ascending the Appalachicola, and massacred the persons in them. … In December, on receipt of intelligence of the battle at Fowltown and the attack on the boats, Jackson was ordered to take command in Georgia. He wrote to President Monroe: 'Let it be signified to me through any channel (say Mr. J. Rhea) that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished.' Much was afterwards made to depend on this letter. Monroe was ill when it reached Washington, and he did not see or read it until a year afterwards, when some reference was made to it. Jackson construed the orders which he received from Calhoun with reference to this letter. … He certainly supposed, however, that he had the secret concurrence of the administration in conquering Florida. … He advanced through Georgia with great haste and was on the Florida frontier in March, 1818. He … immediately advanced to St. Mark's, which place he captured. On his way down the Appalachicola he found the Indians and negroes at work in the fields, and unconscious of any impending attack. Some of them fled to St. Mark's. His theory, in which he supposed that he was supported by the administration, was that he was to pursue the Indians until he caught them, wherever they might go; that he was to respect Spanish rights as far as he could consistently with that purpose; and that the excuse for his proceedings was that Spain could not police her own territory, or restrain the Indians. {1154} Jackson's proceedings were based on two positive but arbitrary assumptions: (1) That the Indians got aid and encouragement from St. Mark's and Pensacola. (This the Spaniards always denied, but perhaps a third assumption of Jackson might be mentioned: that the word of a Spanish official was of no value.) (2) That Great Britain kept paid emissaries employed in Florida to stir up trouble for the United States. This latter assumption was a matter of profound belief generally in the United States." Acting upon it with no hesitation, Jackson caused a Scotch trader named Arbuthnot, whom he found at St. Mark's, and an English ex-lieutenant of marines, Ambrister by name, who was taken prisoner among the Seminoles, to be condemned by court martial and executed, although no substantial evidence of their being in any way answerable for Indian hostilities was adduced. "It was as a mere incident of his homeward march that Jackson turned aside and captured Pensacola, May 24, 1818, because he was told that some Indians had taken refuge there. He deposed the Spanish government, set up a new one, and established a garrison. He then continued his march homewards. "Jackson's performances in Florida were the cause of grave perplexities to his government, which finally determined "that Pensacola and St. Mark's should be restored to Spain, but that Jackson's course should be approved and defended on the grounds that he pursued his enemy to his refuge, and that Spain could not do the duty which devolved on her."

W. G. Sumner, Andrew Jackson as a public man, chapter 3.

ALSO IN: J. Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, volume 2, chapters 31-39.

J. R. Giddings, The Exiles of Florida, chapters 1-4.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1819-1821. Cession by Spain to the United States.

"Jackson's vigorous proceedings in Florida would seem not to have been without effect. Pending the discussion in Congress on his conduct, the Spanish minister, under new instructions from home, signed a treaty for the cession of Florida, in extinction of the various American claims, for the satisfaction of which the United States agreed to pay to the claimants $5,000,000. The Louisiana boundary, as fixed by this treaty, was a compromise between the respective offers heretofore made, though leaning a good deal to the American side: the Sabine to the 32d degree of north latitude; thence a north meridian line to the Red River; the course of that river to the 100th degree of longitude east [? west] from Greenwich; thence north by that meridian to the Arkansas; up that river to its head, and to the 42d degree of north latitude; and along that degree to the Pacific. This treaty was immediately ratified by the Senate," but it was not until February, 1821, that the ratification of the Spanish government was received.

R. Hildreth, History of the United States, 2d series, chapters 31-32 (volume 3).

ALSO IN: J. T. Morse, John Quincy Adams, pages 109-125.

Treaties and Conventions between the United States and other countries (edition of 1880), pages 1016-1022.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1835-1843. The Second Seminole War.

"The conflict with the Seminoles was one of the legacies left by Jackson to Van Buren; it lasted as long as the Revolutionary War, cost thirty millions of dollars, and baffled the efforts of several generals and numerous troops, who had previously shown themselves equal to any in the world. … As is usually the case in Indian wars there had been wrong done by each side; but in this instance we were the more to blame, although the Indians themselves were far from being merely harmless and suffering innocents. The Seminoles were being deprived of their lands in pursuance of the general policy of removing all the Indians [to] west of the Mississippi. They had agreed to go, under pressure, and influenced, probably, by fraudulent representations; but they declined to fulfill their agreement. If they had been treated wisely and firmly they might probably have been allowed to remain without serious injury to the surrounding whites. But no such treatment was attempted, and as a result we were plunged in one of the most harassing Indian wars we ever waged. In their gloomy, tangled swamps, and among the unknown and untrodden recesses of the everglades, the Indians found a secure asylum; and they issued from their haunts to burn and ravage almost all the settled parts of Florida, fairly depopulating five counties. … The great Seminole leader, Osceola, was captured only by deliberate treachery and breach of faith on our part, and the Indians were worn out rather than conquered. This was partly owing to their remarkable capacities as bush-fighters, but infinitely more to the nature of their territory. Our troops generally fought with great bravery; but there is very little else in the struggle, either as regards its origin or the manner in which it was carried on, to which an American can look back with any satisfaction."

T. Roosevelt, Life of Thomas H. Benton, chapter 10.

ALSO IN: J. R. Giddings, The Exiles of Florida, chapters 7-21.

J. T. Sprague, The Florida War.

See also, AMERICAN ABORIGINES: SEMINOLES.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1845. Admission into the Union.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1845.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1861 (JANUARY). Secession from the Union.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1862 (February-April). Temporary Union conquests and occupation. Discouragement of Unionists.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (FEBRUARY-APRIL: GEORGIA-FLORIDA).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1864. Unsuccessful National attempt to occupy the State. Battle of Olustee.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY: FLORIDA).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1865 (JULY). Provisional government set up under President Johnson's plan of Reconstruction.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY).

FLORIDA: A. D. 1865-1868. Reconstruction.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY), and after, to 1868-1870.

—————FLORIDA: End—————

FLORIN, The.

"The Republic of Florence, in the year 1252, coined its golden florin, of 24 carats fine, and of the weight of one drachm. It placed the value under the guarantee of publicity, and of commercial good faith; and that coin remained unaltered, as the standard for all other values, as long as the republic itself endured."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics, chapter 4.

FLOTA, The.

See PERU: A. D. 1550-1816.

FLOYD, JOHN B., Treachery of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1860 (DECEMBER).

FLUSHING: A. D. 1807. Ceded to France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808 (NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY).

{1155}

FLUSHING: A. D. 1809. Taken and abandoned by the English.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1809 (JULY-DECEMBER).

FOCKSHANI, Battle of (1789).

See TURKS: A. D. 1776-1792.

FODHLA.

See IRELAND: THE NAME.

FŒDERATI OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

The bodies of barbarians who were taken in the military service of the Roman empire, during the period of its decline, serving "under their hereditary chiefs, using the arms which were proper to them, from preserving their language, their manners and their customs, were designated by the name of frederati" (confederates or allies).

J. C. L. de Sismondi, The French under the Merovingians, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: T. Hodgkin, The dynasty of Theodosius, chapter 4.

FOIX, Rise of the Counts of.

See BURGUNDY: A. D. 1032.

FOIX, The house in Navarre.

See NAVARRE: A. D. 1442-1521.

FOLCLAND. FOLKLAND.

Public land, among the early English. "It comprised the whole area that was not at the original allotment assigned to individuals or communities, and that was not subsequently divided into estates of bookland [bocland]. The folkland was the standing treasury of the country; no alienation of any part of it could be made without the consent of the national council; but it might be allowed to individuals to hold portions of it subject to rents and other services to the state."

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 5, section 36.

The theory here stated is questioned by Prof. Vinogradoff, who says: "I venture to suggest that folkland need not mean the land owned by the people. Bookland is land that is held by bookright; folkland is land that is held by folkright. The folkland is what our scholars have called ethel, and alod, and family-land, and yrfeland; it is land held under the old restrictive common-law, the law which keeps land in families, as contrasted with land which is held under a book, under a 'privilegium,' modelled on Roman precedents, expressed in Latin words, armed with ecclesiastical sanctions, and making for free alienation and individualism."

P. Vinogradoff, Folkland (English History Rev., January, 1893).

ALSO IN: J. M. Kemble, The Saxons in England, book 1, chapter 11.

See, also, ALOD.

FOLIGNO, Treaty of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (JUNE-FEBRUARY).

FOLKLAND.

See FOLCLAND.

FOLKMOOT.

See HUNDRED: also SHIRE; also WITENAGEMOT; also TOWNSHIP AND TOWN-MEETING, THE NEW ENGLAND.

FOLKTHING. FOLKETING, The.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (DENMARK-ICELAND): A. D. 1849-1874.

FOLKUNGAS, The.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1018-1397.

FOMORIANS, OR FORMORIANS, The.

A people mentioned in Irish legends as sea-rovers. Mr. Sullivan, in his article on "Celtic Literature" in the Encyclopædia Britannica advances the opinion that the Romans were the people alluded to; but the general view is quite different.

See IRELAND: THE PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS; also, NEMEDIANS.

FONTAINE FRANĆAISE, Battle of (1595).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1593-1598.

FONTAINEBLEAU: A. D. 1812-1814. Residence of the captive Pope.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814.

FONTAINEBLEAU, Treaties of (1807).

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1807, and SPAIN: A. D.1807-1808.

FONTAINEBLEAU, Treaties of (1814).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (MARCH-APRIL).

FONTAINEBLEAU DECREE, The.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1806-1810.

FONTARABIA, Siege and Battle (1638).

See SPAIN: A. D. 1637-1640.

FONTENAILLES, OR FONTENAY, Battle of, A. D. 841.

In the civil war between the three grandsons of Charlemagne, which resulted in the partition of his empire and the definite separation of Germany and France, the decisive battle was fought, June 25, 841, at Fontenailles, or Fontenay (Fontanetum), near Auxerre. It was one of the fiercest and bloodiest fights of mediæval times, and 80,000 men are said to have died on the field.

Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, book 1, chapter 2.

See FRANKS (CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE): A. D. 814-962.

FONTENOY, Battle of(1745).

See NETHERLANDS (AUSTRIAN PROVINCES): A. D. 1745.

FOOT, The Roman.

"The unit of lineal measure [with the Romans] was the Pes, which occupied the same place in the Roman system as the Foot does in our own. According to the most accurate researches, the Pes was equal to, about 11.64 inches imperial measure, or .97 of an English foot. The Pes being supposed to represent the length of the foot in a well proportioned man, various divisions and multiples of the Pes were named after standards derived from the human frame. Thus: Pes=16 Digiti, i. e. finger-breadths, [or] 4 Palmi, i. e. hand-breadths; Sesquipes=l cubitus, i. e. length from elbow to extremity of middle finger. The Pes was also divided into 12 Pollices, i. e. thumb-joint-lengths, otherwise called Unciae (whence our word 'inch')."

W. Ramsay, Manual of Roman Antiquity, chapter 13.

FOOTE, Commodore. Gun-boat campaign on the western rivers.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY: KENTUCKY-TENNESSEE); (MARCH-APRIL: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

FORBACH, OR SPICHERN, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1870 (JULY-AUGUST).

FORCE BILL, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1871 (APRIL).

FORESTS, Charter of.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1216-1274.

FORLI, Battle of (1423).

See ITALY: A. D. 1412-1447.

FORMORIANS.

See FOMORIANS.

FORMOSUS, Pope, A. D. 891-896.

FORNUOVA, Battle of (1495).

See ITALY: A. D. 1494-1496.

FORT EDWARD. FORT ERIE. FORT FISHER, ETC.

See EDWARD, FORT; ERIE, FORT, ETC.

FORTRENN, Men of.

A Pictish people who figure in early Scottish history, and whom Mr. Rhys derives from the tribe known to the Romans as Verturiones. The western part of Fife was embraced in their kingdom.

J. Rhys, Celtic Britain, pages 158-159.

FORTUNATE ISLANDS.

See CANARY ISLANDS, DISCOVERY OF.

{1156}

FORTY-FIVE, The.

The Jacobite rebellion of 1745 is often referred to as "the Forty-five."

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1745.

FORTY-SHILLING FREEHOLDERS.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1884-1885.

FORUM, The Julian, and its extensions.

"From the entrance of the Suburra branched out the long streets which penetrated the hollows between the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline to the gates pierced in the mound of Servius. It was in this direction that Cæsar effected the first extension of the Forum, by converting the site of certain streets into an open space which he surrounded with arcades, and in the centre of which he erected his temple of Venus. By the side of the Julian Forum, or perhaps in its rear, Augustus constructed a still ampler inclosure, which he adorned with the temple of Mars the Avenger. Succeeding emperors … continued to work out the same idea, till the Argiletum on the one hand, and the saddle of the Capitoline and Quirinal, excavated for the purpose, on the other, were both occupied by these constructions, the dwellings of the populace being swept away before them; and a space running nearly parallel to the length of the Roman Forum, and exceeding it in size, was thus devoted to public use, extending from the pillar of Trajan to the basilica of Constantine."

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 40.

FORUM BOARIUM AND VELABRUM OF ANCIENT ROME, The.

"The Velabrum, the Forum Boarium, the Vicus Tuscus, and the Circus Maximus are names rich in reminiscences of the romantic youth and warlike manhood of the Roman people. The earliest dawn of Roman history begins with the union of the Capitoline and Palatine hills into one city. In those far-distant times, however, no population was settled in the Velabrum or Circus valley; for, as we have seen, until the drainage was permanently provided for by the cloacæ, these districts were uninhabited swamps; and the name Velabrum itself is said to have been derived from the boats used in crossing from one hill to the other. Perhaps such may not have been the case with the Forum Boarium, which lay between the Velabrum and the river. … The limits of the Forum Boarium can be clearly defined. It was separated from the Velabrum at the Arch of the Goldsmiths. … On the south-eastern side the Carceres of the Circus, and the adjoining temple on the site of S. Maria in Cosmedin, bounded the district, on the western the Tiber, and on the north western the wall of Servius. … The immediate neighbourhood of the river, the Forum, the Campus Martius, and the Palace of the Cæsars would naturally render this quarter one of the most crowded thoroughfares of Rome. … The Forum itself, which gave the name to the district, was probably an open space surrounded by shops and public buildings, like the Forum Romanum, but on a smaller scale. In the centre stood the bronze figure of a bull, brought from Ægina, either as a symbol of the trade in cattle to which the place owed its name, or, as Tacitus observes, to mark the supposed spot whence the plough of Romulus, drawn by a bull and a cow, first started in tracing out the Palatine pomœrium."

R. Burn, Rome and the Campagna, chapter 12.

FORUM GALLORUM, Battle of (B. C. 43).

See ROME: B. C. 44-42.

FORUM JULII.

A Roman colony and naval station (modern Frejus) founded on the Mediterranean coast of Gaul by Augustus.

FORUM ROMANUM, The.

"The older Forum, or Forum Romanum, as it was called, to distinguish it from the later Fora, which were named after their respective builders [Forum of Julius Cæsar, of Augustus, of Nerva, of Vespasian, of Trajan, etc.], was an open space of an oblong shape, which extended in a south-easterly direction from near the depression or intermontium between the two summits of the Capitoline hill to a point opposite the still extant temple of Antoninus and Faustina. … Round this confined space were grouped the most important buildings of Republican Rome."

R. Burn, Rome and the Campagna, chapter 6, part 1.

"Forum, in the literal sense of the word merely a marketplace, derives its name 'á ferendo,' (from bringing, getting, purchasing). … Narrow is the arena on which so great a drama was enacted in the Republican and Imperial City! the ascertainable measurements of this region, according to good authorities, being 671 English feet in the extreme length; 202 in the extreme breadth, and 117 feet at the narrower, the south-eastern, side. A wildly picturesque marshy vale, overshadowed by primæval forests, and shut in by rugged heights, was that low ground between the Palatine and Capitoline hills when the 'Roma Quadrata,' ascribed to Romulus, was founded about seven centuries and a half before our era. After the wars and finally confirmed alliance between Romans and Sabines … the colonists agreed to unite under the same government, and to surround the two cities and two hills with a wider cincture of fortifying walls than those the still extant ruins of which are before us on the Palatine. Now was the swampy waste rendered serviceable for civic purposes; the forest was cut down; the stagnant marshes were drained, the clayey hollows filled up; the wild valley became the appointed arena for popular assemblage; though Dionysius tells us it was for some time on a spot sacred to Vulcan (the 'Vulcanale'), probably a terrace on the slope of the Palatine overlooking the Forum, that the people used to meet for political affairs, elections, etc. During many ages there were, it appears, no habitations save on the hills. … The Forum, as an enclosed public place amidst buildings, and surrounded by graceful porticos, may be said to have owed its origin to Tarquinius Priscus, between the years 616 and 578 B. C. That king (Livius tells us) was the first who erected porticos around this area, and also divided the ground into lots, where private citizens might build for their own uses. Booths, probably wooden (the 'tabernæ veteres'), were the first rude description of shops here seen. … Uncertain is the original place of the 'Rostra Veteres'—the ancient tribunal for orators. No permanent tribunal for such purpose is known to have been placed in the Forum till the year of the city 417. … In the year 336 B. C., the Romans having gained a naval victory over the citizens' of Antium, several of those enemies' ships were burnt, others transported to the Roman docks, and the bronzed prows of the latter were used to decorate a pulpit, now raised for public speaking, probably near the centre of the Forum."

C. I. Hemans, Historic and Monumental Rome, chapter 6.

ALSO IN: R. Lanciani, Ancient Rome, pages 75-82.

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FORUM TREBONII, Battle of (A. D. 251).

See GOTHS, FIRST INVASIONS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

FOSI, The.

See CHAUCI.

FOSSA.

See CASTRA.

FOSSE, The.

One of the great Roman roads in Britain, which ran from Lincoln southwestwardly into Cornwall.

See ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

FOSTAT.

The original name of Cairo, Egypt, signifying "the Encampment."

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 640-646.

FOTHERINGAY CASTLE, Mary Stuart's execution at.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1561-1568; and ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1587.

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH, Ponce de Leon's quest of the.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1512.

FOUR HUNDRED AND FIVE THOUSAND AT ATHENS.

See ATHENS: B. C. 413-411.

FOUR HUNDRED AT ATHENS, The.

See ATHENS: B. C. 594.

FOUR MASTERS, The.

Four Irish antiquaries of 17th century, who compiled the mixed collection of legend and history called the "Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland," are commonly known as the Four Masters. They were Michael O'Clery, a lay brother of the order of St. Francis; Conaire O'Clery, brother of Michael; Cucogry or Peregrine O'Clery, head of the Tirconnell sept of the O'Clerys, to which Michael and Conaire belonged; and Ferfeasa O'Mulconry, of whom nothing is known, except that he was a native of the county of Roscommon. The "Annals" of the Four Masters have been translated into English from the Irish tongue by John O'Donovan.

J. O'Donovan, Introduction to Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters.

FOUR MILE STRIP, Cession of the.

See PONTIAC'S WAR.

FOURMIGNY, Battle of (1449).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1431-1453.

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865-1866 (DECEMBER-APRIL); 1866 (JUNE); 1866-1867 (OCTOBER-MARCH).

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT: The enforcement of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1871 (APRIL).

—————FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT: End—————

FOURTH OF JULY.

The anniversary of the adoption of the American Declaration of Independence.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (JULY).

FOWEY, Essex's surrender at.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1644 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).

FOWLTOWN, Battle of (1817).

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818.

FOX AND NORTH COALITION, The.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1782; 1783; and 1783-1787.

FOX INDIANS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY, and SACS, &c.

For an account of the massacre of Fox Indians at Detroit in 1712,

See CANADA: A. D. 1711-1713.

For an account of the Black Hawk War,

See ILLINOIS: A. D. 1832.

FRANCE: Gallic and Roman.

See GAUL. A. D. 481-843.

FRANCE: Under the Franks, to the division of the Empire of Charlemagne.

See FRANKS.

FRANCE: A. D. 841-911. Ravages and settlements of the Northmen.

See NORMANS: A. D. 841 to 876-911.

FRANCE: 9th Century. Introduction of the modern name.

At the time of the division of the empire of Charlemagne between his three grand-sons, which was made a definite and lasting political separation by the Treaty of Verdun, A. D. 843, "the people of the West [western Europe] had come to be divided, with more and more distinctness, into two classes, those composed of Franks and Germans, who still adhered to the Teutonic dialects, and those, composed of Franks, Gallo-Romans, and Aquitanians, who used the Romance dialects, or the patois which had grown out of a corrupted Latin. The former clung to the name of Germans, while the latter, not to lose all share in the glory of the Frankish name, began to call themselves Franci, and their country Francia Nova, or New France. … Francia was the Latin name of Frankenland, and had long before been applied to the dominions of the Franks on both sides of the Rhine. Their country was then divided into East and West Francia; but in the time of Karl the Great [Charlemagne] and Ludwig Pious, we find the monk of St. Gall using the terms Francia Nova, in opposition to the Francia, 'quæ dicitur antiqua.'"

P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, chapter 18, with note.

"As for the mere name of Francia, like other names of the kind, it shifted its geographical use according to the wanderings of the people from whom it was derived. After many such changes of meaning, it gradually settled down as the name for those parts of Germany and Gaul where it still abides. There are the Teutonic or Austrian [or Austrasian] Francia, part of which still keeps the name of Franken or Franconia, and the Romance or Neustrian Francia, which by various annexations has grown into modern France."

E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, volume 1, page 121.

"As late as the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, the name of Frank was still used, and used too with an air of triumph, as equivalent to the name of German. The Kings and kingdoms of this age had indeed no fixed titles, because all were still looked on as mere portions of the great Frankish realm. Another step has now been taken towards the creation of modern France; but the older state of things has not yet wholly passed away. Germany has no definite name; for a long time it is 'Francia Orientalis,' 'Francia Teutonica'; then it becomes 'Regnum Teutonicum,' 'Regnum Teutonicorum.' But it is equally clear that, within the limits of that Western or Latin France, Francia and Francus were fast getting their modern meanings of France and Frenchmen, as distinguished from Frank or German."

E. A. Freeman, The Franks and the Gauls (Historical Essays, 1st series, number 7).

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FRANCE: A. D. 843. The kingdom of Charles the Bald.

The first actual kingdom of France (Francia Nova—Francia Occidentalis), was formed in the partition of the empire of Charlemagne between his three grandsons, by the Treaty of Verdun, A. D. 843. It was assigned to Charles, called "the Bald," and comprised the Neustria of the older Frank divisions, together with Aquitaine. It "had for its eastern boundary, the Meuse, the Saône and the Rhone; which, nevertheless, can only be understood of the Upper Meuse, since Brabant was certainly not comprised in it"; and it extended southwards beyond the Pyrenees to the Ebro.

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 1, part 1, footnote.

"Charles and his successors have some claim to be accounted French. They rule over a large part of France, and are cut away from their older connexion with Germany. Still, in reality they are Germans and Franks. They speak German, they yearn after the old imperial name, they have no national feeling at all. On the other hand, the great lords of Neustria, as it used to be called, are ready to move in that direction, and to take the first steps towards a new national life. They cease to look back to the Rhine, and occupy themselves in a continual struggle with their kings. Feudal power is founded, and with it the claims of the bishops rise to their highest point. But we have not yet come to a kingdom of France. … It was no proper French kingdom; but a dying branch of the Empire of Charles the Great. … Charles the Bald, entering on his part of the Caroling Empire, found three large districts which refused to recognise him. These were Aquitaine, whose king was Pippin II.; Septimania, in the hands of Bernard; and Brittany under Nominoë. He attempted to reduce them; but Brittany and Septimania defied him, while over Aquitaine he was little more than a nominal suzerain."

G. W. Kitchin, History of France, volume 1, book 2, part 2, chapter 5.

ALSO IN: E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 6, section 1.

See, also, FRANKS (CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE): A. D. 814-962.

————————————————————

A Logical Outline of French History

(Red) Physical or material. (Blue) Ethnologilcal. (Green) Social and political. (Brown) Intellectual, moral and religious. (Black) Foreign.

IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.

The country known anciently as Gaul, and in modern times as France, is distinguished by no physical characteristics that will go far towards explaining its history. Lying within the middle degrees of the northern temperate zone, greatly diversified in its superficial features, and varied in the qualities of its soil, it represents a fair average of the more favorable conditions of human life.

The Gauls.

The inhabitants of the land when the Romans subdued it were a Celtic people, belonging to the race which has survived to the present day with least admixture or modification in the Bretons, the Welsh, the Celtic Irish and the Highland Scotch. The peculiar traits of the race in mind and temper are so visible in French history as to show that the nation has never ceased to be essentially Gallic in blood.

B. C. 51-A. D. 406; Roman Gaul.

Under the control and the teaching of Rome for four centuries and a half, the Gauls were perfected in her civilization and corrupted by the vices of her decay.

5th Century; Frank Conquest.

When the invasion of Teutonic barbarism broke the barrier of the Rhine, they were easily but not quickly overwhelmed, and sank under a conquest more complete than that from Rome had been; since the whole body of the conquerors came to dwell within the land, and to be neighbors and masters, at once. For the most part, these invaders preferred country to town, and carved estates for themselves in all the districts that were fertile and fair. The Gallo-Romans, or Romanized Gauls, were left to more freedom in their cities than outside; but their cities were blighted in industry and in trade by the common ruin around them. In the rural districts, few liberties or rights were preserved for the subjugated race.

Feudalism.

The form of society which the German conquerors brought with them into Gaul was broken by the change of circumstance, quite as much as the form of society which they overthrew. The camp gave place to the castle; the wandering war-chief acquired the firmer superiority of a great land-proprietor and lord; his warriors slipped in station from free followers to dependents, in divers degrees; the greater chiefs won the title of kings; the fiercer kings destroyed their rivals; and four or five centuries shaped, by slow processes that are traceable, indistinctly, the military structure of society called Feudal, which organized lawlessness with picturesque and destructive effects.

A. D. 481-752. Merovingian monarchy. A. D. 768-814. Empire of Charlemagne.

All authority withered, except the spiritual authority of the Church, which steadily grew. The royalty that had thrived for a time upon the distribution of lands, dignities and powers, lost prestige when it had expended the domains at its disposal, and when offices and estates were clutched in hereditary possession. Before it actually expired, there arose a family of remarkable men—great in four successive generations—who put its crown upon their own heads and made it powerful again. The last and greatest of these expanded the Frank kingdom into a new Roman Empire; but the energy of the achievement was wholly his own, and his empire fell to pieces when he died.

A. D. 987. Kingdom of Hugh Capet. 11th-12th centuries. Enfranchisement of the Communes.

In the part which became France, royalty dwindled once more; the great dukes and counts nominally subject to it, in the feudal sense, renewed and increased their power; until one of their number took the throne, and bequeathed it to his heirs.

This new line of kings won back by degrees the ascendancy of the crown. The small actual dominion, surrounding Paris, with which they began, was widened slowly by the strong, authoritative arm. They made themselves, in rude fashion, the champions of order and law. They took the people of the towns into alliance with them; for the towns were beginning to catch the spirit of the free cities of Italy, and the sturdy temper of the Flemish burghers, and to assume the name of "communes," or commons, casting off the feudal yoke that had been laid upon them. The kings lent their countenance to the communes, and the communes strengthened the hands of the kings. Between them and much helped by the stir of the Crusades, they loosened the roots of feudalism, until its decay set in. The king's courts and the king's officers pushed their jurisdiction into a widening realm, until the king's authority had become supreme, in fact as well as in name.

Even the measureless misery of a hundred years of war with English kings brought power, in the end, to the crown, by weakening the greater lords, and by bringing into existence a fixed military force.

A. D. 1337-1453. Hundred Years War.

Happy accidents, shrewd marriages, and cunning intrigues gathered the great dukedoms, one by one, into the royal domain, and the solidarity of modern France was attained.

16th-17th centuries. Aggrandisement of the Monarchy.

But People and King stood no longer side by side. The league of King and Commons against the Lords had proved less happy than the alliance in England of Commons and Lords against the King. Royalty emerged from the patient struggle alone in possession of sovereign power. It had used the communes and then abused them, breaking their charters—their liberties—their courage—their hopes—and widening the distance between class and class. The "estates" of the realm became a memory and a name. During five hundred years, while the Parliament of England grew in majesty and might, the States-General of France were assembled but thirteen times.

The Court.

When royalty, at last, invented the fatal enchantments of a "Court," then the blighting of all other powers was soon complete. It drew within its spell, from all the provinces of France, their nobles, their men of genius, their aspiring spirits, and assembled them to corrupt and debase them together—to make them its pensioners and hirelings, its sycophants, its jesters, its knaves.

Suppression of the Huguenots.

Neither Renaissance nor Reformation could undo the spell. Ideas from the one and a great faith from the other joined in league for the liberty of both, and the thoughtful among the people were rallied to them with craving eagerness. But bigotry and frivolity ruled the Court, and the Court proved stronger than France. Freedom of conscience, and every species of freedom with it, were destroyed; by massacre, by civil war, by oppressive government, by banishment, by corrupting bribes.

18th century. The "Ancien Régime."

And always the grandeur of the monarchy increased; its rule grew more absolute; its Court sucked the life-blood of the State more remorselessly. The People starved, that the King might be magnificent; they perished in a thousand battles, that his name might be "glorious;" they went into exile, carrying away the arts of France, that the piety of the King might not be shocked by their heresies. But always, too, there was growing in the world, around France and in France, a knowledge,—an understanding,—a modern spirit,—that rebelled against these infamies.

A. D. 1789-1799. Revolution. A. D. 1799-1815. Napoleon.

In due time there came an end. Court, and King, and Church, and all that even seemed to be a part of the evil old regime, were whirled into a red gulf of Revolution and disappeared. The people, unused to Liberty, were made drunken by it, and went mad. In breaking the gyves of feudalism they broke every other restraint, and wrecked society in all its forms. Then, in the stupor of their debauch, they gave themselves to a new despot—mean, conscienceless, detestable, but transcendent in the genius and the energy of his selfishness—who devoured them like a dragon, in the hunger of his insatiate ambition, and persuaded them to be proud of their fate.

A. D. 1815-1830. Bourbon Restoration. A. D. 1830-1848. Louis Phillippe A. D. 1848-1851. Second Republic. A. D. 1852-1870. Second Empire. A. D. 1870-. Third Republic.

Europe suppressed the intolerable adventurer, and France, for three-fourths of a century since, has been under an apprenticeship of experience, slowly learning the art of self-government by constitutional modes. Two monarchies, one republic, and a sham empire are the spoiled samples of her work. A third republic, now in hand, is promising better success. It rests with seeming stability on the support of the great class of peasant landowners, which the very miseries of her misgoverned past have created for France. Trained to pinching frugality by the hard conditions of the old regime; unspoiled by any ruinous philanthropy, like that of the English poor-laws; stimulated to land-buying by opportunities which came, first, from the impoverishment of extravagant nobles, and, later, from revolutionary confiscations; encouraged to the same acquisition by favorable laws of transfer and equal inheritance,—the landowning peasants of France constitute a Class powerful in numbers, invincible in conservatism, an profoundly interested in the preservation of social order.

————End: A Logical Outline of French History—————-

FRANCE: A. D. 861. Origin of the duchy and of the house of Capet.

In 861, Charles the Bald, king of that part of the dismembered empire of Charlemagne which grew into the kingdom of France, was struggling with many difficulties: defending himself against the hostile ambition of his brother, Louis the German; striving to establish his authority in Brittany and Aquitaine; harried and harassed by Norse pirates; surrounded by domestic treachery and feudal restiveness. All of his many foes were more or less in league against him, and the soul of their combination appears to have been a certain bold adventurer—a stranger of uncertain origin, a Saxon, as some say—who bore the name of Robert the Strong. In this alien enemy, King Charles, who never lacked shrewdness, discovered a possible friend. He opened negotiations with Robert the Strong, and a bargain was soon made which transferred the sword and the energy of the potent mercenary to the service of the king. "Soon after, a Placitum or Great Council was held at Compiègne. In this assembly, and by the assent of the Optimates, the Seine and its islands, and that most important island Paris, and all the country between Seine and Loire, were granted to Robert, the Duchy of France, though not yet so called, moreover the Angevine Marches, or County of Outre-Maine, all to be held by Robert-le-Fort as barriers against Northmen and Bretons, and by which cessions the realm was to be defended. Only a portion of this dominion owned the obedience of Charles: the Bretons were in their own country, the Northmen in the country they were making their own; the grant therefore was a license to Robert to win as much as he could, and to keep his acquisitions should he succeed. … Robert kept the Northmen in check, yet only by incessant exertion. He inured the future kings of France, his two young sons, Eudes and Robert, to the tug of war, making them his companions in his enterprises. The banks of the Loire were particularly guarded by him, for here the principal attacks were directed." Robert the Strong fought valiantly, as he had contracted to do, for five years, or more, and then, in an unlucky battle with the Danes, one summer day in 866, he fell. "Thus died the first of the Capets." All the honors and possessions which he had received from the king were then transferred, not to his sons, but to one Hugh, Count of Burgundy, who became also Duke or Marquis of France and Count of Anjou. Twenty years later, however, the older son of Robert, Eudes, turns up in history again as Count of Paris, and nothing is known of the means by which the family, soon to become royal, had recovered its footing and its importance.

Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1).

FRANCE: A. D. 877-987. The end of the Carolingian monarchy and the rise of the Capetian.

Charles the Bald died in 877 and was succeeded by his son Louis, called "the Stammerer," who reigned only two years. His two sons, Louis and Carloman, were joint kings for a short space, struggling with the Northmen and losing the provinces out of which Duke Boson of Provence, brother-in-law of Charles the Bald, formed the kingdom of Arles. Louis died in 882 and Carloman two years afterwards; thereupon Charles, surnamed "the Fat," king of Lombardy and Germany, and also emperor (nephew of Charles the Bald), became likewise king of France, and briefly reunited under his feebly handled sceptre the greater part of the old empire of Charlemagne: When he died, in 888, a party of the nobles, tired of his race, met and elected Count Eudes (or Odo), the valiant Count of Paris, who had just defended his city with obstinate courage against the Northmen, to be their king. The sovereignty of Eudes was not acknowledged by the nation at large. His opponents found a Carling to set up against him, in the person of the boy Charles,—youngest son of Louis "the Stammerer," born after his father's death,—who appears in history as Charles "the Simple." Eudes, after some years of war, gave up to Charles a small domain, between the Seine and the Meuse, acknowledged his feudal superiority and agreed that the whole kingdom should be surrendered to him on his (Eudes') death. In accordance with this agreement, Charles the Simple became sole king in 898, when Eudes died, and the country which acknowledged his nominal sovereignty fell into a more distracted state than ever. The Northmen established themselves in permanent occupation of the country on the lower Seine, and Charles, in 911, made a formal cession of it to their duke, Rollo, thus creating the great duchy of Normandy. In 922 the nobles grew once more disgusted with the feebleness of their king and crowned Duke Robert, brother of the late king Eudes, driving Charles into his stronghold of Laon. The Normans came to Charles' help and his rival Robert was killed in a battle. {1159} But Charles was defeated, was inveigled into the hands of one of the rebel Lords.—Herbert of Venmandois—and kept a prisoner until he died, in 929. One Rodolf of Burgundy had been chosen king, meantime, and reigned until his death, in 936. Then legitimacy triumphed again, and a young son of Charles the Simple, who had been reared in England, was sent for and crowned. This king—Louis IV.—his son, Lothair, and his grandson, Louis V., kept possession of the shaking throne for half-a-century; but their actual kingdom was much of the time reduced to little more than the royal city of Laon and its immediate territories. When Louis died, in 987, leaving no nearer heir than his uncle, Charles, Duke of Lorraine, there was no longer any serious attempt to keep up the Carolingian line. Hugh, Duke of France—whose grandfather Robert, and whose grand-uncle Eudes had been crowned kings, before him, and whose father, "Hugh the Great," had been the king-maker of the period since—was now called to the throne and settled himself firmly in the seat which a long line of his descendants would hold. He was known as Hugh Capet to his contemporaries, and it is thought that he got the name from his wearing of the hood, cap, or cape of St. Martin—he being the abbot of St. Martin at Tours, in addition to his other high dignities.

G. W. Kitchin, History of France, volume 1, book 2, part 2, chapter 5; book 3, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, book 1, chapter 5 (volume l).

C. F. Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom, chapters 11 and 13-15.

See, also, LAON.

FRANCE: A. D. 987. Accession of Hugh Capet. The kingdom of the early Capetians.

"On the accession of the third race [the Capetians], France, properly so called, only comprised the territory between the Somme and the Loire; it was bounded by the counties of Flanders and Vermandois on the north; by Normandy and Brittany on the west; by the Champagne on the east; by the duchy of Aquitaine on the south. The territory within these bounds was the duchy of France, the patrimonial possession of the Capets, and constituted the royal domain. The great fiefs of the crown, in addition to the duchy of France, were the duchy of Normandy, the duchy of Burgundy, nearly the whole of Flanders, formed into a county, the county of Champagne, the duchy of Aquitaine, and the county of Toulouse. … The sovereigns of these various states were the great vassals of the crown and peers of France; Lorraine and a portion of Flanders were dependent on the Germanic crown, while Brittany was a fief of the duchy of Normandy. … The county of Barcelona beyond the Alps was also one of the great fiefs of the crown of France."

E. de Bonnechose, History of France: second epoch, book 1, chapter 2.

"With the exception of the Spanish March and of part of Flanders, all these states have long been fully incorporated with the French monarchy. But we must remember that, under the earlier French Kings, the connexion of most of these provinces with their nominal suzerain was even looser than the connexion of the German princes after the Peace of Westphalia with the Viennese Emperors. A great French Duke was as independent within his own dominions as an Elector of Saxony or Bavaria, and there were no common institutions, no Diet or assembly of any kind, to bring him into contact either with his liege lord or with his fellow-vassals. Aquitaine and Toulouse … seem almost to have forgotten that there was any King of the French at all, or at all events that they had anything to do with him. They did not often even pay him the compliment of waging war upon him, a mode of recognition of his existence which was constantly indulged in by their brethren of Normandy and Flanders."

E. A. Freeman, The Franks and the Gauls (Historical Essays, 1st series, number 7).

"When France was detached from the Empire in the ninth century, of all three imperial regions she was the one which seemed least likely to form a nation. There was no unity in the country west of the Scheldt, the Meuse, and the Rhone. Various principalities, duchies, or counties were here formed, but each of them was divided into secular fiefs and ecclesiastical territories. Over these fiefs and territories the authority of the duke or the count, which was supposed to represent that of the king, was exercised only in case these seigneurs had sufficient power, derived from their own personal estates. Destitute of domains and almost starving, the king, in official documents, asked what means he might find on which to live with some degree of decency. From time to time, amid this chaos, he discussed the theory of his authority. He was a lean and solemn phantom, straying about among living men who were very rude and energetic. The phantom kept constantly growing leaner, but royalty did not vanish. People were accustomed to its existence, and the men of those days could not conceive of a revolution. By the election of Hugh Capet, in 987, royalty became a reality, because the king, as Duke of Francia, had lands, money, and followers. It would be out of place to seek a plan of conduct and a methodical line of policy in the actions of the Capetians, for they employed simultaneously every sort of expedient. During more than three centuries they had male offspring; thus the chief merit of the dynasty was that it endured. As always happens, out of the practice developed a law; and this happy accident produced a lawful hereditary succession, which was a great element of strength. Moreover the king had a whole arsenal of rights: old rights of Carolingian royalty, preserving, the remembrance of imperial power, which the study of the Roman law was soon to resuscitate, transforming these apparitions into formidable realities; old rights conferred by the coronation, which were impossible to define, and hence incontestable; and rights of suzerainty, newer and more real, which were definitely determined and codified as feudalism developed and which, joined to the other rights mentioned above, made the king proprietor of France. These are the elements that Capetian royalty contributed to the play of fortuitous circumstances."

E. Lavisse, General View of the Political History of Europe, chapter 3.

See, also, TWELVE PEERS OF FRANCE.

{1160}

FRANCE: A. D. 987-1327. The Feudal Period.

"The period in the history of France, of which we are about to write, began with the consecration of Hugues Capet, at Reims, the 3rd of July, 987, but it is a period which would but improperly take its name from the Capetians; for throughout this time royalty was, as it were, annihilated in France; the social bond was broken, and the country which extends from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, and from the English Channel to the Gulf of Lyon, was governed by a confederation of princes rarely under the influence of a common will, and united only by the Feudal System. While France was confederated under feudal administration, the legislative power was suspended. Hugues Capet and his successors, until the accession of St. Louis, had not the right of making laws; the nation had no diet, no regularly constituted assemblies whose authority it acknowledged. The Feudal System, tacitly adopted, and developed by custom, was solely acknowledged by the numerous sovereigns who divided the provinces among themselves. It replaced the social bond, the monarch, and the legislator. … The period … is therefore like a long interregnum, during which the royal authority was suspended, although the name of king was always preserved. He who bore this title in the midst of a republic of princes was only distinguished from them by some honorary prerogative, and he exercised over them scarcely any authority. Until very near the end of the 11th century, these princes were scarcely less numerous than the castles which covered France. No authority was acknowledged at a distance, and every fortress gave its lord rank among the sovereigns. The conquest of England by the Normans broke the equilibrium between the feudal lords; one of the confederate princes, become a king in 1066, gradually extended, until 1179, his domination over more than half of France; and although it was not he who bore the title of king of the French, it may be imagined that in time the rest of the country would also pass under his yoke. Philip the August and his son, during the forty-six last years of the same period, reconquered almost all the fiefs which the English kings had united, brought the other great vassals back to obedience, and changed the feudal confederation which had ruled France into a monarchy, which incorporated the Feudal System in its constitution."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, France Under the Feudal System (translated by W. Bellingham), chapter 1.

"The feudal period, that is, the period when the feudal system was the dominant fact of our country, … is comprehended between Hugh Capet and Philippe de Valois, that is, it embraces the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. … At the end of the 10th century, royalty and the commons were not visible, or at all events scarcely visible. At the commencement of the 14th century, royalty was the head of the state, the commons were the body of the nation. The two forces to which the feudal system was to succumb had then attained, not, indeed, their entire development, but a decided preponderance. … With the 14th century, the character of war changed. Then began the foreign wars; no longer a vassal against suzerain, or vassal against vassal, but nation against nation, government against government. On the accession of Philippe de Valois, the great wars between the French and the English broke out—the claims of the kings of England, not upon any particular fief, but upon the whole land, and upon the throne of France—and they continued up to Louis XI. They were no longer feudal, but national wars; a certain proof that the feudal period stopped at this limit, that another society had already commenced."

F. P. Guizot, History of Civilization, 2d course, lecture 1.

FRANCE: A. D. 996. Accession of King Robert II.

FRANCE: A. D. 1031. Accession of King Henry I.

FRANCE: A. D. 1060. Accession of King Philip I.

FRANCE: A. D. 1070-1125. Enfranchisement of Communes.

"The establishment of the commune of Mans, towards the year 1070, was not a fact, isolated, and without respect to what passed in the rest of France; it was, on the contrary, a symptom of the great revolution which was working in the opinions, the manners, and the condition of the mass of the people; a symptom which, bearing a certain date, must serve to establish the epoch of a crowd of analogous efforts made in the other towns of France. History has not preserved the memory of these different efforts, but it has shown us the results. During the two following centuries, the cities ceased not to obtain charters, to found or secure by legitimate authority, the immunities and franchises which constituted the communal rights. … All, or nearly all had, however, already conquered liberty; they had experienced how advantageous it was to be governed by themselves, and the high price which they put upon the favor they solicited, bears witness to their experience. The enfranchisement of the communes is almost universally reported in the … reign … of Louis the Fat; and the honor of this great revolution, which created the third estate [tiers-état], and liberty in France, has been given either to the generosity or the wise policy of that prince. There is doubtless some truth in this opinion, since we find in France no communal charter anterior to the reign of Louis VI., and he is also the first king who was seen to ally himself with the burgesses, to make war on the nobility. However, the idea which is formed of this event, when one attributes it to the act of the monarch's will, or the effect of his system, is completely erroneous. The French people owed whatever degree of liberty it enjoyed in the middle ages, to its own valor; it acquired it as liberty must always be acquired, at the sword's point; it profitted by the divisions, the imprudence, the weakness, or the crimes of its lords, lay or ecclesiastic, to seize it from and in spite of them. … The origin of every commune was, as indicated by the different names by which they are designated, a communion, a conjuration, or confederation, of the inhabitants of a town who were mutually engaged to defend each other. The first act of the commune was the occupation of a tower in which was set up a clock or belfry; and the first clause of the oath of all the communers, was to repair in arms, when the bell sounded, at the place assigned them, to defend each other. From this first engagement resulted that of submitting to magistrates named by the communers: it was the mayors, echevins, and juries, in northern France, and consuls or syndics in southern France, to whom the consent of all abandoned the sole right of directing the common efforts. Thus the militia was first created; the magistracy came afterwards. … The reign of Phillip I. had been but a long anarchy. During those forty-eight years the royal government had not existed, and no other had efficaciously taken its place. At the same time, greatly differing from the other feudal monarchies, all legislative power was suspended in France. There were no diets like those of the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, no parliament like that of England, no cortes like those of Spain, no field of March like that of the antient Frankish kings, no assemblages, in fine, which bound by their acts the great vassals and their subjects, and which could submit them to common laws. {1161} The French had not desired a participation in the sovereignty which they could only acquire by sacrificing their independence. Thus, two great vassals, or the subjects of two great vassals, could scarcely believe themselves compatriots. … The anarchy which was found in the great state of the French monarchy, because all the relations between the king and the count were relaxed, was found also in the petty state of the county of Paris, or of the duchy of France; for the lords and barons of the crown's domains no better obeyed or respected more the prerogatives of their lord, than the great vassals those of the suzerain. The anarchy was complete, the disorder seemed carried to its height, and never had the social bond in France been nearer to being broken: yet never had France made so real a progress as during these forty-eight years. Phillip, at his death, left his son quite another people to that which he had received from his father: the most active monarch would never have done so much for France as she had without him done for herself during his sleep. The towns were more numerous, more populous, more opulent, and more industrious; property had acquired a security unknown in the preceding centuries; justice was distributed between equals, and by equals; and the liberty of the burgesses, conquered by arms, was defended with energy."

J. C. L. S. de Sismondi, France under the Feudal System, chapters 9 and 12.

"Liberty … was to have its beginning in the towns, in the towns of the centre of France, which were to be called privileged towns, or communes, and which would either receive or extort their franchises. … All coveted a few franchises or privileges, and offered to purchase them; for, needy and wretched as they were, poor artisans, smiths and weavers, suffered to cluster for shelter at the foot of a castle, or fugitive serfs crowding round a church, they could manage to find money; and men of this stamp were the founders of our liberties. They willingly starved themselves to procure the means of purchase; and king and barons rivalled each other in selling charters which fetched so high a price. This revolution took place all over the kingdom under a thousand different forms, and with but little disturbance; so that it has only attracted notice with regard to some towns of the Oise and the Somme, which, placed in less favorable circumstances, and belonging to two different lords, one a layman, the other ecclesiastical, resorted to the king for a solemn guarantee of concessions often violated, and maintained a precarious liberty at the cost of several centuries of civil war. To these towns the name of communes has been more particularly applied; and the wars they had to wage form a slight but dramatic incident in this great revolution, which was operating silently and under different forms in all the towns of the north of France. 'Twas in brave and choleric Picardy, whose commons had so soundly beaten the Normans—in the country of Calvin, and of so many other revolutionary spirits—that these explosions took place. Noyon, Beauvais, Laon, three ecclesiastical lordships, were the first communes; to these may be added St. Quentin. Here the Church had laid the foundations of a powerful democracy. … The king has been said to be the founder of the communes; but the reverse is rather the truth: it is the communes that established the king. Without them, he could not have beaten off the Normans; and these conquerors of England and the Two Sicilies would probably have conquered France. It was the communes, or, to use a more general and exact term, the bourgeoisies, which, under the banner of the saint of the parish, enforced the common peace between the Oise and the Loire; while the king, on horseback, bore in front the banner of the abbey of St. Denys."

M. Michelet, History of France, book 4, chapter 4.

See, also, COMMUNES.

The following comments on the passages quoted above are made by a good authority: "The general view taken of this subject of the enfranchisement of the communes by historians who wrote at the middle of the century is now being seriously modified. The studies of Luchaire have shown, I think, that such statements as Sismondi's, which attribute everything to the people, are exaggerations. 'Liberty,' as it existed in the communes, was only corporate or aristocratic privilege. As for the national assemblages, there were great councils held, such as those which existed under the Norman monarchs in England, and they issued the 'assizes,' which was a common form of legislation in the Middle Ages. It was not, of course, legislation, in its modern sense. Michelet is quite too flowery, poetical, democratic, to be safely followed."

FRANCE: A. D. 1096. Departure of the First Crusaders.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1096-1099.

FRANCE: A. D. 1100. The extent of the kingdom.

"When Louis [VI.] was adopted by his father in 1100, the crown had as its own domain only the county of Paris, Hurepoix, the Gatinais, the Orléanis, half the county of Sens, the French Vexin, and Bourges, together with some ill-defined rights over the episcopal cities of Rheims, Beauvais, Laon, Noyon, Soissons, Amiens. And even within these narrow limits the royal power was but thinly spread over the surface. The barons in their castles were in fact independent, and oppressed the merchants and poor folk as they would. The king had also acknowledged rights of suzerainty over Champagne, Burgundy, Normandy, Brittany, Flanders, and Boulogne; but, in most cases, the only obedience the feudal lords stooped to was that of duly performing the act of homage to the king on first succession to a fief. He also claimed suzerainty, which was not conceded, over the South of France; over Provence and Lorraine he did not even put forth a claim of lordship."

G. W. Kitchin, History of France, volume 1, book 3, chapter 5.