The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

CHAPTER IX.

THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE.

The process by which a great power grew up to the west of the Western Empire has something in common with the process by which the powers spoken of in the later sections of the last Chapter split off from the Western Empire. As in the case of Switzerland and the United Provinces, so in the case of France, a land which had formed part of the dominions of Charles the Great became independent of his successors. ♦Comparison with Austria.♦ As in the case of Austria to the east, so in the case of France to the west, a duchy of the old Empire grew into a power distinct from the Empire, and tried to attach to itself the old Imperial titles and traditions. ♦Different nature of the Austrian and the French territories.♦ But there is more than one point of difference between the two cases. As a matter of geography, the power of the Austrian house has for some centuries largely rested on the possession of dominions beyond the boundaries of the Carolingian Empire, while it has been only for a moment, and that chiefly by the annexation of territory from Austria itself, that France has ever held any European possessions beyond the Carolingian frontier.[18] ♦Difference in the process of separation.♦ But the true difference lies in the date and circumstances of the separation. ♦The other powers split off after the Empire has become German.♦ The Swabian, Lotharingian, Frisian, and Austrian lands which gradually split off from the Empire to form distinct states split off after the Empire had been finally annexed to the crown of Germany, indeed after Germany and the Empire had come to mean nearly the same thing. But France can hardly be said to have split off from the German kingdom or from the Empire itself. The first prince of the Western Francia who bore the kingly title was indeed the man of the King of the East-Franks.[19] But no lasting relation, such as afterwards bound the princes of the Empire to its head, sprang out of his homage. Again from 887 to 963 the Imperial dignity was not finally attached to any one kingdom. It fluctuated between Germany and Italy; it might have passed to Burgundy; it might have passed to Karolingia, as it had once already done in the person of Charles the Bald. ♦The Empire divided into four kingdoms, of which three are again united, while one remains distinct.♦ The truer way of putting the matter is to say that in 887 the Empire split up into four kingdoms, of which three came together again, and formed the Empire in a new shape. The fourth kingdom remained separate; it can hardly be said to have split off from the Empire, but its separation hindered the full reconstruction of the Empire. It has had a distinct history, a history which made it the special rival of the Empire. ♦Karolingia receives the name of France.♦ This was Karolingia, the kingdom of the West-Franks, to which, through the results of the change of dynasty in 987, the name of France gradually came to be applied.

But there is yet another distinction of greater practical importance. France was so early detached from the rest of the elder Frankish dominions that it was able to form from the first a nation as well as a power. Its separation happened at the time when the European nations were forming. The other powers did not split off till long after those nations were formed, and they did not in any strict sense form nations. But France is a nation in the fullest sense. Its history is therefore different from the history of Austria, of Burgundy, of Switzerland, or even of Italy. As a state which had become wholly distinct from the Empire, which was commonly the rival and enemy of the Empire, which largely grew at the expense of the Empire, above all, as a state which won for itself a most distinct national being, France fully deserves a chapter, and not a mere section. Still that chapter is in some sort an appendage to that which deals with the Imperial kingdoms of the West. It naturally follows on our survey of those kingdoms, before we go on further to deal with the European powers which arose out of the dismemberment of the Empire of the East.

We left Karolingia or the Western Kingdom at that point where the modern French state took its real beginning under the kings of the house of Paris. Their duchy of France had since its foundation been cut short by the great grant of Normandy, and by the practical independence which had been won by the counts of Anjou, Maine, and Chartres. By their election to the kingdom the Dukes of the French added to their duchy the small territory which up to that time had still been in the immediate possession of the West-Frankish Kings at Laon. And, with the crown and the immediate territory of those kings, the French kings at Paris also inherited their claim to superiority over all the states which had arisen within the bounds of the Western Kingdom. ♦Definition of the word France.♦ But the name France, as it was used in the times with which we are dealing, means only the immediate territory of the King. ♦Two forms of growth; annexation of fiefs of the French crown and of lands altogether beyond the kingdom.♦ The use of the name spreads with every increase of that territory, whether that increase was made by the incorporation of a fief or by the annexation of territory wholly foreign to the kingdom. These two processes must be carefully distinguished. Both went on side by side for some centuries; but the incorporation of the vassal states naturally began before the annexation of altogether foreign territory.

Among the fiefs which were gradually annexed a distinction must be drawn between the great princes who were really national chiefs owing an external homage to the French crown, and the lesser counts whose dominions had been cut off from the original duchy of France. And a distinction must be again drawn between these last and the immediate tenants of the Crown within its own domains, vassals of the Duke as well as of the King. ♦The great vassals.♦ To the first class belong the Dukes and Counts of Burgundy, Aquitaine, Toulouse, and Flanders; to the second the Counts of Anjou, Chartres, and Champagne. ♦Special character of Normandy.♦ Historically, Normandy belongs to the second class, as the original grant to Rolf was undoubtedly cut off from the French duchy. But the whole circumstances of the Norman duchy made it a truly national state, owing to the French crown the merest external homage. ♦Britanny.♦ Britanny, yet more distinct in every way, was held to owe its immediate homage to the Duke of the Normans. ♦The Twelve Peers.♦ The so-called Twelve Peers of France seem to have been devised by Philip Augustus out of the romances of Charlemagne; but the selection shows who were looked on as the greatest vassals of the crown in his day. The six lay peers were the Dukes of Burgundy, Normandy, and Aquitaine, the Counts of Flanders, Toulouse, and Champagne. ♦Champagne.♦ This last was the only one of the six who could not be looked upon as a national sovereign. His dominions were French in a sense in which Normandy or Aquitaine could not be called French. ♦Different position of the Bishops in the Eastern and Western kingdom.♦ The six ecclesiastical peers offer a marked contrast to the ecclesiastical electors of the Empire. The German bishops became princes, holding directly of the Empire. But the bishops within the dominions of the great vassals of the French crown were the subjects of their immediate sovereigns. The Archbishop of Rouen or the Archbishop of Bourdeaux stood in no relation to the King of the French. The ecclesiastical peerage of France consisted only of certain bishops who were immediate vassals of the King in his character of King, among whom was only one prelate of the first rank, the Archbishop and Duke of Rheims. The others were the Bishops and Dukes of Langres and Laon, and the Bishops and Counts of Beauvais, Noyon, and Châlons. As the bishops within the dominions of the great feudatories had no claim to rank as peers of the kingdom, neither had those prelates who were actually within the King’s immediate territory, vassals therefore of the Duke of the French as well as of the King. Thus the Bishop of Paris and his metropolitan the Archbishop of Sens had no place among the twelve peers.

§ 1. Incorporation of the Vassal States.

At the accession of the Parisian dynasty, the royal domain took in the greater part of the later Isle of France, the territory to which the old name specially clung, the greater part of the later government of Orleans, besides some outlying fiefs holding immediately of the King. ♦Chief vassals within the royal domain.♦ Within this territory the counties of Clermont, Dreux, Moulins, Valois, and Gatinois, are of the greatest historical importance. Two of the great rivers of Gaul, the Seine and the Loire, flowed through the royal dominions; but the King was wholly cut off from the sea by the great feudatories who commanded the lower course of the rivers. ♦States on the Channel and♦ The coast of the channel was held by the princes of Britanny, Normandy, and Flanders, and the smaller county of Ponthieu, which lay between Normandy and Flanders and fluctuated in its homage between the two. ♦on the Ocean;♦ The ocean coast was held by the rulers of Britanny, of Poitou and Aquitaine united under a single sovereign, and of Gascony to the south of them. ♦on the Mediterranean coast.♦ That small part of the Mediterranean coast which nominally belonged to the Western Kingdom was held by the counts of Toulouse and Barcelona. ♦Neighbours of the royal domain.♦ Of these great feudatories, the princes of Flanders, Burgundy, Normandy, and Champagne, were all immediate neighbours of the King. To the west of the royal domain lay several states of the second rank which played a great part in the history of France and Normandy. ♦Chartres and Blois. 1125-1152.♦ These were the counties of Chartres and Blois, which were for a while united with Champagne. ♦Anjou and Touraine united. 1044.
Maine.♦ Beyond these, besides some smaller counties, were Anjou and Touraine, and Maine, the great borderland of Normandy and France. Thus surrounded by their own vassals, the early Kings of the house of Paris had far less dealings with powers beyond their own kingdom than their Karolingian predecessors. They were thus able to make themselves the great power of Gaul before they stood forth on a wider field as one of the great powers of Europe.

As regards their extent of territory, the Kings of the French at the beginning of the eleventh century had altogether fallen away from the commanding position which had been held by the Dukes of the French in the middle of the tenth. But this seeming loss of power was fully outweighed by the fact that there were now Kings and not merely Dukes, lords and no longer vassals. ♦Advantage of the kingly position.♦ As feudal principles grew, opportunities were constantly found for annexing the lands of the vassal to the lands of his lord. ♦First advances of the Kings.
Gatinois. 1068.
Viscounty of Bourges. 1100.♦ Towards the end of the eleventh century the royal domain had already begun to increase by the acquisition of the Gatinois and of the viscounty of Bourges, a small part only of the later province of Berry, but an addition which made France and Aquitaine more clearly neighbours than before. Towards the end of the twelfth century began a more important advance to the north-east. The first aggrandizement of France at the expense of Flanders was the beginning of an important chain of events in European history. ♦Amiens and Vermandois. 1183.
Valois. 1185.♦ In the early years of Philip Augustus the counties of Amiens and Vermandois were united to the crown, as was the county of Valois two years later. ♦Artois. 1180-1187.♦ So for a while was the more important land of Artois. Later in the reign of the same prince came an annexation on a far greater scale, which did not happen till the first years of the thirteenth century, but which was the result of causes which had been going on ever since the eleventh.

In the course of the twelfth century a power grew up within the bounds of the Western Kingdom which in extent of territory threw the dominions of the French King into insignificance. The two great powers of northern and southern Gaul, Normandy and Aquitaine, each carrying with it a crowd of smaller states, were united in the hands of a single prince, and that a prince who was also the king of a powerful foreign kingdom. The Aquitanian duchy contained, besides the county of Poitou, a number of fiefs, of which the most important were those of Perigueux, Limoges, the dauphiny of Auvergne, and the county of Marche which gave kings to Jerusalem and Cyprus. ♦Union of Aquitaine and Gascony. 1052.♦ To these, in the eleventh century, the duchy of Gascony, with its subordinate fiefs, was added, and the dominions of the lord of Poitiers stretched to the Pyrenees. ♦Conquests of William of Normandy. Ponthieu. 1056.
Domfront. 1049.
Maine. 1063.♦ Meanwhile Duke William of Normandy, before his conquest of England, had increased his continental dominions, by acquiring the superiority of Ponthieu and the immediate dominion, first of the small district of Domfront and then of the whole of Maine. Maine was presently lost by his successor, and passed in the end to the house of Anjou. ♦Union of Maine and Anjou. 1110.♦ But the union of several lines in descent in the same person united England, Normandy, Anjou, and Maine in the person of Henry the Second.

For a moment it seemed as if, instead of the northern and southern powers being united in opposition to the crown, one of them was to be itself incorporated with the crown. ♦Momentary union of France and Aquitaine. 1137.♦ The marriage of Lewis the Seventh with Eleanor of Aquitaine united his kingdom and her duchy. A king of Paris for the first time reigned on the Garonne and at the foot of the Pyrenees. ♦Their separation. 1152.
Union of Aquitaine, Normandy, and Anjou. 1152-1154.♦ But the divorce of Lewis and Eleanor and her immediate re-marriage with the Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou again severed the southern duchy from the kingdom, and united the great powers of northern and southern Gaul. Then their common lord won a crown beyond the sea and became the first Angevin king of England. ♦Britanny. 1169.♦ Another marriage brought Britanny, long the nominal fief of Normandy, under the practical dominion of its Duke. The House of Anjou thus suddenly rose to a dominion on Gaulish soil equal to that of the French king and his other vassals put together, a dominion which held the mouths of the three great rivers, and which was further strengthened by the possession of the English kingdom. But a favourable moment soon came which enabled the King to add to his own dominions the greater part of the estates of his dangerous vassal. ♦Claims of Arthur of Britanny.♦ On the death of Richard, first of England and fourth of Normandy, Normandy and England passed to his brother John, while in the other continental dominions of the Angevin princes the claims of his nephew Arthur, the heir of Britanny, were asserted. ♦Possible effects of his success.♦ The success of Arthur would have given the geography of Gaul altogether a new shape. The Angevin possessions on the continent, instead of being held by a king of England, would have been held by a Duke of Britanny, the prince of a state which, though not geographically cut off like England, was even more foreign to France. ♦Annexation of Normandy, Anjou, &c. 1202-1205.♦ On the fall of Arthur, Philip, by the help of a jurisprudence devised for the purpose, was able to declare all the fiefs which John held of the French crown to be forfeited to that crown, a sentence which did not apply to the fiefs of his mother Eleanor. In the space of two years Philip was able to carry that sentence into effect everywhere on the mainland. ♦1258.♦ Continental Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Touraine, were joined to the dominions of the French crown, and by a later treaty they were formally surrendered by John’s son Henry. Poitou went with them, and all these lands may from this time be looked on as forming part of France. ♦Character and effects of the annexation.♦ Thus far the process of annexation was little more than the restoration of an earlier state of things. For all these lands, except Poitou, had formed part of the old French duchy. ♦Territories kept by the English kings.♦ The Kings of England still kept the duchy of Aquitaine with Gascony. ♦The Norman Islands.♦ They kept also the insular Normandy, the Norman islands which have ever since remained distinct states attached to the English crown. ♦Aquitaine.♦ Aquitaine was now no longer part of the continental dominions of a prince who was equally at home on both sides of the Channel. It was now a remote dependency of the insular kingdom, a dependency whose great cities clave to the English connexion, while its geographical position and the feelings of its feudal nobility tended to draw it towards France.

The result of this great and sudden acquisition of territory was to make the King of the French incomparably greater on Gaulish ground than any of his own vassals. France had now a large sea-board on the Channel and a small sea-board on the Ocean. And now another chain of events incorporated a large territory with which the crown had hitherto stood in no practical relation, and which gave the kingdom a third sea-board on the Mediterranean.

While north-western and south-western Gaul were united in the hands of an insular king, the king of a peninsular kingdom became only less powerful in south-eastern Gaul. ♦Counts of Toulouse.♦ Hitherto the greatest princes in this region had been the counts of Toulouse, who, besides their fiefs of the French crown, had also possessions in the Burgundian kingdom beyond the Rhone. But during the latter part of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth, the Counts of Barcelona, and the kings of Aragon who succeeded them, acquired by various means a number of Tolosan fiefs, both French and Imperial. Carcassonne, Albi, and Nîmes were all under the lordship of the Aragonese crown. ♦The Albigensian War. 1207-1229.♦ The Albigensian war seemed at first likely to lead to the establishment of the house of Montfort as the chief power of Southern Gaul. ♦Simon of Montfort at Toulouse.♦ But the struggle ended in a vast increase of the power of the French crown, at the expense alike of the house of Toulouse and of the house of Aragon. ♦Settlement of Meaux.♦ The dominions of the Count of Toulouse were divided. ♦Annexation of Narbonne, 1229;♦ A number of fiefs, Beziers, Narbonne, Nîmes, Albi, and some other districts, were at once annexed to the crown. ♦of Toulouse, 1270.♦ The capital itself and its county passed to the crown fifty years later. By a settlement with Aragon, the domains of the French king were increased, while the French kingdom itself was nominally cut short. ♦Roussillon and Barcelona released from homage. 1258.♦ Two of the Aragonese fiefs, the counties of Roussillon and Barcelona, were relieved from even nominal homage. The name of Toulouse, except as the name of the city itself, now passed away, and the new acquisitions of France came in the end to be known by the name of the tongue which was common to them with Aquitaine and Imperial Burgundy. ♦Province of Languedoc.♦ Under the name of Languedoc they became one of the greatest and most valuable provinces of the French kingdom.

The great growth of the crown during the reign of Saint Lewis was thus in the south; but he also extended his borders nearer home. ♦Purchase of Blois and Chartres. 1234.
Escheat of Perche. 1257.♦ He won back part of the old French duchy when he purchased the superiority of Blois and Chartres, to which Perche was afterwards added by escheat. ♦Annexation of Macon, 1239.♦ Further off, he added Macon to the crown, a possession which afterwards passed away to the House of Burgundy.

Thus, during the reigns of Philip Augustus and his grandson, the royal possessions had been enlarged by the annexations of two of the chief vassal states, two of the lay peerages, annexations which gave the French King a sea-board on two seas and which brought him into immediate connexion with the affairs of the Spanish peninsula. ♦Marriage of Philip the Fair, 1284, with the heiress of Champagne and Navarre.♦ Later in the thirteenth century, the marriage of Philip the Fair with the heiress of Champagne not only extinguished another peerage, but made the French kings for awhile actually Spanish sovereigns, and made France an immediate neighbour of the German kingdom. The county of Champagne had for two generations been united with the kingdom of Navarre. These dominions were held in right of their wives by three kings of France. ♦Separation of Navarre. 1328.
Union of Champagne, 1335; incorporation, 1361.♦ Then Navarre, though it passed to a French prince, was wholly separated from France, while Champagne was incorporated with the kingdom. This last annexation gave France a considerable frontier towards Germany, and especially brought the kingdom into the immediate neighbourhood of the Lotharingian bishoprics. These acquisitions, of Normandy and the states connected with it, of Toulouse and the rest of Languedoc, and now of Champagne, were the chief cases of incorporation of vassal states with the royal domain up to the middle of the fourteenth century. ♦Appanages.♦ The mere grants and recoveries of appanages hardly concern geography. We now turn to two great struggles which, in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Kings of France had to wage with two of their chief vassals who were also powerful foreign princes. In both cases, events which seemed likely to bring about the utter humiliation of France did in the end bring to it a large increase of territory.

The former of these struggles was the great war between England and France, called by French writers the Hundred Years’ War. This war might be called either a war for the annexation of France to England or a war for the annexation of Aquitaine to France. ♦Designs of the French kings on Aquitaine.♦ By the peace between Henry the Third and Saint Lewis, Aquitaine became a land held by the king of England as a vassal of the French crown. From that time it was one main object of the French kings to change their feudal superiority over this great duchy into an actual possession. This object had been once obtained for a moment by the marriage of Eleanor and Lewis the Seventh. ♦Momentary occupation by Philip the Fair. 1294.♦ It was again obtained for a moment by the negotiations between Edward the First and Philip the Fair. The Hundred Years’ war began through the attempts of Philip of Valois on the Aquitanian dominions of Edward the Third. ♦1337.♦ Then the King of England found it politic to assume the title of King of France. ♦1339.♦ But the real nature of the controversy was shown by the first great settlement. ♦Peace of Bretigny. 1360.♦ At the Peace of Bretigny Edward gave up all claim to the crown of France, in exchange for the independent sovereignty of his old fiefs and of some of his recent conquests. Aquitaine and Gascony, including Poitou but not including Auvergne, together with the districts on the Channel, Calais with Guines and the county of Ponthieu, were made over to the King of England without the reservation of any homage or superiority of any kind. These lands became a territory as foreign to the French kingdom as the territory of her German and Spanish neighbours. ♦Renewal of the war. 1370-1374.
Losses of the English.♦ But in a few years the treaty was broken on the French side, and the actual possessions of England beyond the sea were cut down to Calais and Guines, with some small parts of Aquitaine adjoining the cities of Bourdeaux and Bayonne. ♦Conquests of Henry the Fifth.♦ Then the tide turned at the invasion of Henry the Fifth. ♦Treaty of Troyes. 1420.♦ The Treaty of Troyes united the crowns of England and France. ♦1431.♦ Aquitaine and Normandy were won back; Paris saw the crowning of an English king, and only the central part of the country obeyed the heir of the Parisian kingdom, no longer king of Paris but only of Bourges. ♦Conquest of Aquitaine. 1451-1453.♦ But the final result of the war was the driving out of the English from all Aquitaine and France, except the single district of Calais. The geographical aspect of the change is that Aquitaine, which had been wholly cut off from the kingdom by the Peace of Bretigny, was finally incorporated with the kingdom. ♦Final union of Aquitaine with France.♦ The French conquest of Aquitaine, the result of the Hundred Years’ War, was in form the conquest of a land which had ceased to stand in any relation to the French crown. Practically it was the incorporation with the French crown of its greatest fief, balanced by the loss of a small territory the value of which was certainly out of all proportion to its geographical extent. In its historical aspect the annexation of Aquitaine was something yet more. The first foreshadowing of the modern French kingdom was made by the addition of Aquitaine to Neustria, of southern to northern Gaul.[20] Now, after so many strivings, the two were united for ever. Aquitaine was merged in France. The grant to Charles the Bald took effect after six hundred years. ♦Beginning of the modern Kingdom of France.♦ France, in the sense which the word bears in modern use, may date its complete existence from the addition of Bourdeaux to the dominions of Charles the Seventh.

Thus, in the course of somewhat less than four hundred years, the conquest of England by a vassal of France, followed by the union of a crowd of other French fiefs in the hands of a common sovereign of England and Normandy, had led to the union with France of all the continental possessions of the prince who thus reigned on both sides of the sea. Meanwhile, on the eastern side of the kingdom, the holder of a great French fief swelled into an European power, the special rival of his French overlord. ♦Escheat of the duchy of Burgundy. 1361.
Grant to Philip the Hardy. 1364.♦ The duchy of Burgundy, granted to a branch of the royal house in the earliest days of the Parisian kingdom, escheated to the crown in the fourteenth century, and was again granted out to a son of the reigning king. ♦Advance of the Valois Dukes.♦ A series of marriages, purchases, conquests, transactions of every kind, gathered together, in the hands of the Burgundian dukes, a crowd of fiefs both of France and of the Empire.[21] The duchy of Burgundy with the county of Charolois, and the counties of Flanders and Artois, were joined under a common ruler with endless Imperial fiefs in the Low Countries and with the Imperial County of Burgundy. ♦Advance to the Somme.♦ More than this, under Philip the Good and Charles the Bold, the Burgundian frontier was more than once advanced to the Somme, and Amiens was separated from the crown. ♦Annexations at the death of Charles the Bold. 1479.♦ The fall of Charles the Bold laid his dominions open to French annexation both on the Burgundian and on the Flemish frontier. ♦Momentary annexation of Artois and the County of Burgundy.♦ In the first moments of his success, Lewis the Eleventh possessed himself of a large part of the Imperial as well as the French fiefs of the fallen Duke. ♦Treaty of Arras. 1435.♦ But in the end Flanders and Artois remained French fiefs held by the House of Burgundy, which also kept the county of Burgundy and the isolated county of Charolois. ♦Incorporation of the duchy of Burgundy. 1479.♦ But France not only finally recovered the towns on the Somme, but incorporated the Burgundian duchy, one of the greatest fiefs of the crown. ♦French advance to the east.♦ This was the addition of a territory which the kings of France had never before ruled, and it marks an important stage in the advance of the French power towards the Imperial lands on its eastern border. By the marriage of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian of Austria, the remains of the Burgundian dominions passed to the House of Austria, and thereby in the end to Spain. The result was that a French king had for a moment an Emperor for his vassal in his character of Count of Flanders and Artois. ♦Flanders and Artois relieved from homage. 1525.♦ But by the treaty of Madrid Flanders and Artois were relieved from all homage to France, exactly as Aquitaine had been by the Peace of Bretigny. They now became lands wholly foreign to France, and, as foreign lands, large parts of them were afterwards conquered by France, just as Aquitaine was. But the history of their acquisition belongs to the story of the advance of France at the expense of the Empire.

Thus, by the end of the reign of Lewis the Eleventh, all the fiefs of the French crown which could make any claim to the character of separate sovereignties had, with a single exception, been added to the dominions of the crown. The one which had escaped was that one which, more than any other, represented a nationality altogether distinct from that of France. Britanny still remained distinct under its own Dukes. ♦1491-1499; incorporated 1532.♦ The marriages of its Duchess Anne with two successive French kings, Charles the Eighth and Lewis the Twelfth, added Britanny to France, and so completed the work. The whole of the Western Kingdom, except those parts which had become foreign ground—that is to say, insular Normandy and Calais, Barcelona, Flanders, and Artois—was now united under the kings of Paris. Their duchy of France had spread its power and its name over the whole kingdom. We have now to see how it also spread itself over lands which had never formed part of that kingdom.

§ 2. Foreign Annexations of France.

When the Western Kingdom finally parted off from the body of the Empire, its only immediate neighbours were the Imperial kingdoms to the east, and the Spanish kingdoms to the south. ♦England.♦ The union of Normandy and England in some sort made England and France immediate neighbours. And the long retention of Aquitaine by England, the English possession of Calais for more than two hundred years and of the insular Normandy down to our own day, have all tended to keep them so. ♦Small acquisitions of France from England and Spain.♦ But the acquisitions of France from England, and from Spain, in its character as Spain, have been comparatively small. Indeed the separation of the Spanish March and the insular Normandy may be thought to turn the balance the other way. From England France has won Aquitaine and Calais, territories which had once been under the homage of the French King. ♦English conquest of Boulogne. 1544-1550.
1663.♦ So in the sixteenth century Boulogne was lost to England and won back again; so in the seventeenth century Dunkirk, which had become an English possession, was made over to France. Since the final loss of Aquitaine, the wars between England and France have made most important changes in the English and French possessions in distant parts of the world, but they have had no effect on the geography of England, and very little on that of France.

Nearly the same may be said of the geographical relations between France and Spain. The long wars between those countries have added to France a large part of the outlying dominions of Spain; but they have not greatly affected the boundaries of the two countries themselves. ♦Roussillon, its shiftings.♦ The only important exception is the county of Roussillon, the land which Aragon kept on the north side of the mountain range. ♦Finally becomes French. 1659.♦ United to France by Lewis the Eleventh, given back by Charles the Eighth, it was finally annexed to France by the Peace of the Pyrenees. Towards the other end of the mountain frontier, a small portion of Spanish territory has been annexed to France, perhaps quite unconsciously. ♦Navarre north of the Pyrenees.♦ The old kingdom of Navarre, though it lay chiefly south of the Pyrenees, contained a small territory to the north. ♦Union of France and Navarre. 1589.♦ The accidents of female succession had given Navarre to more than one King of France, and in the person of Henry the Fourth the crown of France passed to a King of Navarre who held only the part of his kingdom north of the Pyrenees. This little piece of Spain within the borders of Gaul was thus united with France. ♦Protectorate of Andorra.♦ On the other hand, the Kings of France, as successors of the Counts of Foix, and the other rulers of France after them, have held, not any dominion but certain rights as advocates or protectors, over the small commonwealth of Andorra on the Spanish side of the mountains.

Of far greater importance is the steady acquisition of territory by France at the expense of the Imperial kingdoms, and of the modern states by which those kingdoms are represented. ♦Burgundy.
1310-1860.♦ In the case of Burgundy, French annexation has taken the form of a gradual swallowing up of nearly the whole kingdom, a process which has been spread over more than five hundred years, from the annexation of Lyons by Philip the Fair to the last annexation of Savoy in our own day. ♦Annexations from Germany. 1552-1811.♦ The advance at the expense of the German kingdom did not begin till the greater part of the Burgundian kingdom was already swallowed up. ♦Late beginning of annexations from Germany.♦ The north-eastern frontier of the Western Kingdom changed but little from the accession of the Parisian house in the tenth century till the growth of the Dukes of Burgundy in the fifteenth. After Lotharingia finally became a part of the Eastern Kingdom, there was no doubt that the homage of Flanders was due to France, no doubt that the homage of the states which had formed the Lower Lotharingia was due to the Empire. The frontier towards the Upper Lotharingia and the Burgundian county also remained untouched. The Saône remained a boundary stream long after the Rhone had ceased to be one. ♦Effect of the Burgundian acquisitions of France;♦ It was on this latter river that the great Burgundian annexations of France began, annexations which gave France a wholly new European position.[22] ♦of the Dauphiny;
of Provence.♦ The acquisition of the Dauphiny of Viennois made France the immediate neighbour of Italy; the acquisition of Provence at once strengthened this last position and more than doubled her Mediterranean coast. ♦Relations with the Swiss.♦ Add to this that, though France and the Confederate territory did not yet actually touch, yet the Burgundian wars and many other events in the latter half of the fifteenth century enabled France to establish a close connexion with the power which had grown up north of Lake Leman. France had thus become a great Mediterranean and Alpine power, ready to threaten Italy in the next generation. Later acquisitions within the old border of the Burgundian kingdom had a somewhat different character. ♦Annexations at the expense of Savoy;♦ Annexations at the expense of Savoy, even when geographically Burgundian, were annexations at the cost of a power which was beginning to be Italian rather than Burgundian. ♦of the County of Burgundy.♦ The annexation of the County of Burgundy goes rather with the Alsatian annexations. It was territory won at the cost of the Empire and of the House of Austria. ♦Middle character of the Burgundian lands.♦ But the lands between the Rhone, the Alps, and the sea, still kept, negatively at least, their middle character. They were lands which at least were neither German, French, nor Italian. ♦They become French.♦ The events of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ruled that this intermediate region should become French. And none of the acquisitions of France ever helped more towards the real growth of her power.

It was while the later stages of this process were going on that the French kings added to their dominions the Aquitanian lands on one side and the Burgundian duchy on the other. The acquisition of Aquitaine has, besides its other characters, a third aspect which closely connects it with the annexations between the Rhone and the Alps. ♦Effect of French annexations on the Langue d’oc.♦ The strife between Northern and Southern Gaul, between the tongue of oil and the tongue of oc, now came to an end. Had the chief power in Gaul settled somewhere in Burgundy or Aquitaine, the tongue of oil might now pass for a patois of the tongue of oc. Had French dominion in Italy begun as soon and lasted as permanently as French dominion in Burgundy and Aquitaine, the tongue of si, as well as the tongue of oc, might now pass for a patois of the tongue of oil. But now it was settled that French, not Provençal, was to be the ruling speech of Gaul. The lands of the Southern speech which escaped were almost wholly portions of the dominions of other powers. There was no longer any separate state wholly of that speech, except the little principality of Orange. ♦Extinction of the Provençal speech and nation.♦ The work which the French kings had now ended amounted to little short of the extinction of an European nation. A tongue, once of at least equal dignity with the tongue of Paris and Tours, has sunk from the rank of a national language to the rank of a provincial dialect.

The next great conquests of France were made on Italian soil, but they are conquests which do not greatly concern geography. This distinguishes the relations of France towards Italy from her relations towards Burgundy. France has constantly interfered in Italian affairs; she has at various times held large Italian territories, and brought all Italy under French influence. But France has never permanently kept any large amount of Italian territory. The French possession of Naples and Milan was only temporary. ♦Not strictly extensions of France.♦ And, if it had been lasting, the possession of these isolated territories by the French king could hardly have been looked on as an extension of the actual French frontier. Those lands could never have been incorporated with France in the same way in which other French conquests had been. Their retention would in truth have given the later history of France quite a different character, a character more like that which actually belonged to Spain. The long occupation of Savoyard territory on both sides of the Alps[23] would, if it had lasted, have been a real extension of the French kingdom. But down to our own day, while the lands won by France from the Burgundian kingdom form a large proportion of the whole French territory, French acquisitions from Italy hardly go beyond the island of Corsica and the insignificant district of Mentone.

The great annexations of France at the expense of the German kingdom and the lands more closely connected with it begin in the middle of the sixteenth century. ♦Annexation of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. 1552.♦ The first great advance was the practical annexation of the three Lotharingian bishoprics, though their separation from the Empire was not formally acknowledged till the Peace of Westfalia. ♦Effect of isolated conquests.♦ This kind of conquest can hardly fail to lead to other conquests. France now held certain patches of territory which lay detached from one another and from the main body of the kingdom. Yet the rounding off of the frontier was not the next step taken in this direction. The cause was most likely the close connexion which for somewhile existed between the ruling houses of France and Lorraine.

Before the next French advance on German ground, the frontier had been extended in other directions. ♦Recovery of Calais, 1558;
of Boulogne, 1550.♦ Almost at the same time as the acquisition of the Three Bishoprics, Calais was won back from England—the short English possession of Boulogne had already come to an end. ♦Surrender of Saluzzo and annexation of Bresse, Bugey, and Gex.♦ The first year of the sixteenth century saw the surrender of Saluzzo, in exchange for Bresse, Bugey, and Gex. ♦Occupation of Pinerolo. 1630-1696.♦ Thirty years later came the renewed occupation of Italian territory at Pinerolo and other points in Piedmont, which lasted till nearly the end of the seventeenth century.

The next great advance was the work of the Thirty Years’ War and of the war with Spain which went on for eleven years longer. ♦The Bishoprics surrendered by the Empire.♦ Now came the legal cession of the Bishoprics and the further acquisition of the Alsatian dominions and rights of the House of Austria. The irregularities of the frontier, and the temptation to round off its angles, were increased tenfold. ♦French acquisitions in Elsass. 1648.♦ France received another and larger isolated territory lying to the east both of her earlier conquests and of the independent lands which surrounded them. A part of her dominion, itself sprinkled with isolated towns and districts which did not belong to her dominion, stretched out without any connexion into the middle of the Empire. The Duchy of Lorraine, dotted over by the French lands of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, lay between the old French land of Champagne and the new French land of Elsass or Alsace. ♦Breisach.♦ And while France was allowed, by the possession of Breisach, to establish herself at one point on the right bank of the Rhine, her new territory on the left bank was broken up by the continued independence of Strassburg and the other Alsatian towns and districts which were still left to the Empire. ♦France reaches the Rhine.♦ Such a frontier could hardly be lasting; now that France had reached and even crossed the Rhine, the annexation of the outlying Imperial lands to the west of that river was sure to follow.

But, even after this further advance into the heart of Germany, the gap was not filled up at the next stage of annexation. ♦Annexation of Bar. 1659.♦ At the Peace of the Pyrenees, France obtained the scattered lands of the duchy of Bar, which made the greater part of the Three Bishoprics continuous with her older possessions. ♦Bar restored. 1661.♦ But Bar was presently restored, and, though Lorraine was constantly occupied by French armies, it was not incorporated with France for another century. Up to this last change the Three Bishoprics still remained isolated French possessions surrounded by lands of the Empire. But France advanced at the expense of the outlying possessions of Spain, lands only nominally Imperial, as well as of the Spanish lands on her own southern frontier. ♦Annexation of Roussillon. 1659.♦ At the Peace of the Pyrenees Roussillon finally became French. No Spanish kingdom any longer stretched north of the great natural barrier of the peninsula. ♦Annexation in the Netherlands. 1659.♦ The same Treaty gave France her first acquisitions in Flanders and Artois since they had become wholly foreign ground, as well as her first acquisitions from Hainault, Liége, and Luxemburg, lands which had never owed her homage. Here again the frontier was of the same kind as the frontier towards Germany. ♦Isolated points held by each power.♦ Isolated points like Philippeville and Marienburg were held by France within Spanish or Imperial territory, and isolated points like Aire and St. Omer were still held by Spain in what had now become French territory. ♦Further annexations. 1668.♦ The furthest French advance that was recognized by any treaty was made by the earlier Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, when, amongst other places, Douay, Tournay, Lille, Oudenarde, and Courtray became French. ♦Changes at the Peace of Nimwegen. 1678.♦ By the Peace of Nimwegen the frontier again fell back in eastern Flanders, and Courtray and Oudenarde were restored. But in the districts more to the south France again advanced, gaining the outlying Spanish towns in Artois, Cambray and its district, and Valenciennes in Hainault. ♦1697.♦ The Peace of Ryswick left the frontier as it had been fixed by the Peace of Nimwegen. ♦Treaty of Utrecht and Barrier Treaty. 1713-1715.♦ Finally, the Treaty of Utrecht and the Barrier Treaty left France in possession of a considerable part of Flanders, and of much land which had been Imperial. ♦The Barrier Towns.♦ The Netherlands, formerly Spanish and now Austrian, kept a frontier protected by the barrier towns of Furnes, Ypres, Menin, Tournai, Mons, Charleroi, Namur. The French frontier on the other side had its series of barrier towns stretching from St. Omer to Charlemont on the Maes. The arrangements now made have, with very slight changes, lasted ever since, except during the French annexation of the whole of the Netherlands during the revolutionary wars.

The reign of Lewis the Fourteenth was also a time of at least equal advance on the part of France on her more strictly German frontier. The time was now come for serious attempts to consolidate the scattered possessions of France between Champagne and the Rhine. ♦Franche Comté conquered. 1668.
Conquered again. 1674.♦ Franche Comté, as the county of Burgundy was now more commonly called, with the city of Besançon, was twice seized by Lewis, and the second seizure was confirmed by the peace of Nimwegen. ♦Freiburg.♦ By that peace also France kept Freiburg-im-Breisgau on the right bank of the Rhine. A number of small places in Elsass were annexed after the peace of Nimwegen by the process known as Reunion. ♦Seizure of Strassburg 1681.♦ At last in 1681 Strassburg itself was seized in time of peace, and its possession was finally secured to France by the peace of Ryswick. ♦Restoration of Freiburg and Breisach.♦ But Freiburg and Breisach were restored, and Lorraine, held by France, though not formally ceded, was given back to its own Duke. ♦Peace of Rastadt. 1714.♦ The arrangements of Ryswick were again confirmed by the peace of Rastadt. ♦Annexation of Orange. 1714.♦ In the same year the principality of Orange was annexed to France, leaving the Papal possessions of Avignon and Venaissin surrounded by French territory, the last relic of the Burgundian realm between the Rhone and the Alps. ♦Effects of the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth.♦ France had thus obtained a good physical boundary towards Spain and Italy, and a boundary clearly marked on the map towards the now Austrian Netherlands. Her eastern frontier was still broken in upon by the duchy of Lorraine, by the districts in Elsass which had still escaped, by the county of Montbeliard, and by the detached territories of the commonwealth of Geneva. But France could now in a certain part of her territory call the Rhine her frontier. It was an easy inference that the Rhine ought to be her frontier through the whole of its course.

The next reign, that of Lewis the Fifteenth, in a manner completed the work of Henry the Second and Lewis the Fourteenth. The gap which had so long yawned between Champagne and Elsass was now filled up. ♦Arrangements as to Lorraine. 1735.
Its incorporation. 1766.♦ France obtained a reversionary right to the duchy of Lorraine, which was incorporated thirty-one years later. The lands of Metz, Toul, and Verdun were no longer isolated. Elsass, which, by the acquisition of Franche Comté, had ceased to be insular, now ceased to be even peninsular. Leaving out of sight a few spots of Imperial soil which were now wholly surrounded by France, the French territory now stretched as a solid and unbroken mass from the Ocean to the Rhine. ♦Thorough incorporation of French Conquests.♦ And it must be remembered that all the lands which the monarchy of Paris had gradually brought under its power were in the strictest sense incorporated with the kingdom. There were no dependencies, no separate kingdoms or duchies. ♦Effect of geographical continuity.
Contrast with Spain and Austria.♦ The geographical continuity of the French territory enabled France really to incorporate her conquests in a way in which Spain and Austria never could. And the process was further helped by the fact that each annexation by itself was small compared with the general bulk of the French monarchy. Except in the case of the fragment of Navarre which was held by its Bourbon king, France never annexed a kingdom or made any permanent addition to the royal style of her kings.

The same reign saw another acquisition altogether unlike the rest in the form of the Italian island of Corsica. In itself the incorporation of this island with the French kingdom seems as unnatural as the Spanish or Austrian dominion in Sicily or Sardinia. ♦Its effects.♦ But the result has been different. Corsica has been far more thoroughly incorporated with France than such outlying possessions commonly are. The truth is that the strong continuity of the continental dominions of France made the incorporation of the island easier. There were no traditions or precedents which could suggest the holding of it as a dependency or as a separate state in any form. ♦Birth of Buonaparte. 1769.♦ Corsica again was more easily attached to France, because the man who did most to extend the dominion of France was a Frenchman only so far as Corsicans had become Frenchmen. Corsica has thus become French in a sense in which Sardinia and Sicily never became Spanish, partly because France had no other possession of the kind, partly because Napoleon Buonaparte was born at Ajaccio.

§ 3. The Colonial Dominion of France.

France, like all the European powers which have an oceanic coast, entered early on the field of colonization and distant dominion. At one time indeed it seemed as if France was destined to become the chief European power both in India and in North America. ♦French colonies in North America. 1506.♦ French attempts at colonization in the latter country began early in the sixteenth century. ♦1540.
1603.♦ Thus Cape Breton at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence was reached early in the sixteenth century, the colonization of Canada began a generation later, and French dominion in America was confirmed by the foundation of Quebec. ♦Acadia ceded to England. 1713.♦ The peninsula of Acadie or Nova Scotia was from this time a subject of dispute between France and Great Britain, till it was finally surrendered by France at the Peace of Utrecht. ♦Canada and Louisiana.♦ France now, under the names of Canada and Louisiana, or of New France, held or claimed a vast inland region stretching from the mouth of the Saint Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, while the eastern coast was colonized by other powers. ♦Colonization at the mouth of the Mississippi. 1699.
Foundation of New Orleans. 1717.♦ At the end of the seventeenth century the first colonization began at the mouth of the Mississippi; and the city of New Orleans was founded eighteen years later. ♦Rivalry of English and French settlements.♦ France and England thus became distinctly rival powers in America as well as in Europe. The English settlers were pressing westward from the coast to the Ocean. The French strove to fix the Alleghany range as the eastern boundary of English advance. ♦Share of the Colonies in European Wars.♦ In every European war between the two powers the American colonies played an important part. ♦English conquest of Canada. 1759.
1763.♦ Canada was wrested from France; and by the Treaty of Paris all the French possessions north of the present United States were finally surrendered to England, except a few small islands kept for fishing purposes. ♦The Mississippi boundary.♦ The Mississippi was now made the boundary of Louisiana, leaving nothing to France on its left bank except the city of New Orleans. These cessions ruled for ever that men of English blood, whether remaining subjects of the mother-country or forming independent states, should be the dominant power in the North American continent.

Among the West India islands, France in the seventeenth century colonized several of the Antilles, some of which were afterwards lost to England. ♦St. Domingo. 1697.♦ Later in the century she acquired part of the great island called variously Hispaniola, Saint Domingo, and Hayti. ♦French Guiana. 1624.
Cayenne. 1635.♦ On the coast of South America lay the French settlements in Guiana, with Cayenne as their capital. This colony grew into more importance after the war of Canada.

Nearly the same course of things took place in the eastern world as in the western. In India neither English nor French colonized in any strict sense. But commercial settlements grew into dominion, or what seemed likely to become dominion: and in India, as in America, the temporary greatness of France came before the more lasting greatness of England. ♦1664.♦ The French East India Company began later than the English; but its steps towards dominion were for a long time faster. ♦Bourbon. 1657.♦ Before this the French had occupied the Isle of Bourbon, an important point on the road to India. ♦Factory at Surat. 1668.♦ The first French factory on the mainland was at Surat. ♦Pondicherry. 1672.♦ During the later years of the century various attempts at settlement were made; but no important or lasting acquisition was made, except that of Pondicherry. This has ever since remained a French possession, often lost in the course of warfare, but always restored at the next peace. ♦Chandernagore. 1676.♦ A little later France obtained Chandernagore in Bengal. ♦Isle of France. 1720.♦ In the next century the island of Mauritius, abandoned by the Dutch, became a French colony under the name of the Isle of France. Under Labourdonnais and Dupleix France gained for a moment a real Indian dominion. ♦Taking of Madras. 1746.♦ Madras was taken, and a large dominion was obtained on the eastern coast of India in the Carnatic and the Circars. ♦Restored. 1748.♦ But all hope of French supremacy in India came to an end in the later years of the Seven Years’ War. ♦Effects of the Peace of Paris. 1763.♦ France was confined to a few points which have not seriously threatened the eastern dominion of England.

§ 4. Acquisitions of France during the Revolutionary Wars.

Thus the French monarchy grew from the original Parisian duchy into a kingdom which spread north, south, east, and west, taking in all the fiefs of the West-Frankish kings, together with much which had belonged to the other kingdoms of the Empire. ♦Acquisitions in the Revolutionary Wars.♦ With the great French revolution began a series of acquisitions of territory on the part of France which are altogether unparalleled. ♦Different classes of annexations.♦ First of all, there were those small annexations of territory surrounded or nearly so by French territory, whose annexation was necessary if French territory was to be continuous. ♦Avignon.
Mülhausen.♦ Such were Avignon, Venaissin, the county of Montbeliard, the few points in Elsass which had escaped the reunions, with the Confederate city of Mülhausen. Avignon and Venaissin, and the surviving Alsatian fragments, were annexed to France before the time of warfare and conquest had begun. Mülhausen, as Confederate ground, was respected as long as Confederate ground was respected. ♦1796.♦ Montbeliard had been annexed already. ♦Geneva and Bischofbasel. 1801.♦ And with these we might be inclined to place the annexations of Geneva and of the Bishopric of Basel, lands which lay hardly less temptingly when the work of annexation had once begun. ♦Second zone;♦ And beyond these roundings off of the home estate lay a zone of territory which might easily be looked upon as being French soil wrongfully lost. ♦traditions of Gaul and the Rhine frontier.♦ When the Western Francia had made such great strides towards the dimensions of the Gaul of Cæsar, the inference was easily made that it ought to take in all that Gaul had once taken in. The conquest and incorporation of the Austrian Netherlands, of all Germany on the left bank of the Rhine, of Savoy and Nizza, thus became a matter of course. ♦Buonaparte’s feeling towards Switzerland.♦ That the Gaul of Cæsar was not fully completed by the complete incorporation of Switzerland, seems to have been owing to a personal tenderness for the Confederation on the part of Napoleon Buonaparte, who never incorporated with his dominions any part of the territory of the Thirteen Cantons. Otherwise, France under the Consulate might pass for a revival of the Transalpine Gaul of Roman geography. And there were other lands beyond the borders of Transalpine Gaul, which had formed part of Gaul in the earlier sense of the name, and whose annexation, when annexation had once begun, was hardly less wonderful than that of the lands within the Rhine and the Alps. ♦Piedmont, &c.♦ The incorporation of Piedmont and Genoa was not wonderful after the incorporation of Savoy. ♦Distinction between conquests under the Republic and under the ‘Empire.’♦ In short, the annexations of republican France are at least intelligible. They have a meaning; we can follow their purpose and object. They stand distinct from the wild schemes of universal conquest which mark the period of the ‘Empire.’

Still the example of such schemes was given during the days of the old monarchy. There was nothing to suggest a French annexation of Corsica, any more than a French annexation of Cerigo. ♦Character of Buonaparte’s conquests.♦ Both were works of exactly the kind, works quite different from incorporating isolated scraps of Elsass or of the old Burgundy, from rounding off the frontier by Montbeliard, or even from advancing to the left bank of the Rhine. The shiftings of the map which took place during the ten years of the first French Empire, the divisions and the unions, the different relations of the conquered states, seem like several centuries of the onward march of the old Roman commonwealth crowded into a single day. ♦Dependent and incorporated lands.♦ In both cases we mark the distinction between lands which are merely dependent and lands which are fully incorporated. And in both cases the dependent relation is commonly a step towards full incorporation. All past history and tradition, all national feelings, all distinctions of race and language, were despised in building up the vast fabric of French dominion. Such a power was sure to break in pieces, even without any foreign attack, before its parts could possibly have been fused together. As it was, Buonaparte never professed to incorporate either Spain or the whole of Italy and Germany with his Empire. He was satisfied with leaving large parts either in the formally dependent relation, in the hands of puppet princes, or even in the hands of powers which he deemed too much weakened for further resistance. ♦Buonaparte’s treatment of Germany;♦ A large part of Germany was incorporated with France, another large part was under French protection or dependence, but a large part still remained in the hands of the native princes of Austria and Prussia. ♦of Italy.♦ Much of Italy was incorporated, and the rest was held, partly by the conqueror himself under another title, partly by a prince of his own house. This last was the case with Spain. ♦Division of Europe between France and Russia.♦ Till the final breach with Russia, the idea of Buonaparte’s dominion seems to have been that of a twofold division of Europe between Russia and himself, a kind of revival on a vaster scale of the Eastern and Western Empires. The western potentate was careful to keep everywhere a dominant influence within his own world; but whether the territory should be incorporated, made dependent, or granted out to his kinsfolk and favourites, depended in each case on the conqueror’s will.

A glance at the map of Europe, as it stood at the beginning of 1811, will show how nearly this scheme was carried out. The kernel of the French Empire was France as it stood at the beginning of the Revolution, together with those conquests of the Republic which gave it the Rhine frontier from Basel to Nimwegen. Beyond these limits the former United Provinces, with the whole oceanic coast of Germany as far as the Elbe, and the cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck, were incorporated with France. France now stretched to the Baltic, and, as Holstein was now incorporated with Denmark, France and Denmark had a common frontier. The Confederation of the Rhine was a protected state, and the Kingdom of Prussia and the self-styled ‘Empire’ of Austria could practically hardly claim a higher place. Of the former Austrian possessions, those parts which had passed to Bavaria and to the kingdom of Italy formally stood in the dependent relation, and the so-called Illyrian provinces were actually incorporated with France. So were the Ionian islands yet further on. In Italy, the whole western side of the ancient kingdom, with Rome itself, was incorporated with France. North-eastern Italy formed a separate kingdom held by the ruler of France. Naples, like Spain, was a dependent kingdom. In northern Europe, Denmark and Sweden, like Prussia and Austria, could practically claim no higher place. And the new duchy of Warsaw and the new republic of Danzig carried French influence beyond the ancient borders of Germany.

Such was the extent of the French dominion when the power of Buonaparte was at its highest. At his fall all the great and distant conquests were given up. ♦The first class of annexations retained by France, the rest restored.♦ But those annexations which were necessary for the completion of France as she then stood were respected. The new Germanic body took back Köln, Trier, and Mainz, Worms and Speyer, but not Montbeliard or any part of Elsass. The new Swiss body received the Bishopric of Basel, Neufchâtel, Geneva, and Wallis. ♦Boundary of Savoy.♦ Savoy and Nizza went back to their own prince. But here a different frontier was drawn after the first and the second fall of Buonaparte. The earlier arrangement left Chambéry to France. The Pope again received Rome and his Italian dominions, but not his outlying Burgundian city of Avignon and county of Venaissin. The frontier of the new kingdom of the Netherlands, though traced at slightly different points by the two arrangements, differed in either case but little from the frontier of the Barrier Treaty. In short the France of the restored Bourbons was the France of the old Bourbons, enlarged by those small isolated scraps of foreign soil which were needed to make it continuous.

The geographical results of the rule of the second Buonaparte consist of the completion of the work which began under Philip the Fair, balanced by the utter undoing of the work of Richelieu, the partial undoing of the work of Henry the Second and Lewis the Fourteenth. ♦Annexation of Savoy and Nizza. 1860.
Loss of Elsass and Lorraine. 1871.♦ Savoy, Nizza, and Mentone were added; but Germany recovered nearly all Elsass and a part of Lorraine. The Rhine now neither crosses nor waters a single rood of French ground. As it was in the first beginnings of Northern European history, so it is now; Germany lies on both sides of the German river.

The time of the greatest power of France in Europe was by no means equally favourable to her advance in other parts of the world. ♦Independence of Hayti, 1801.♦ The greatest West India colony of France, Saint Domingo, now known as Hayti, became an independent negro state whose chiefs imitated home example by taking the title of Emperor. About the same time the last remnant of French dominion on the North American continent was voluntarily given up. ♦Louisiana ceded to Spain, 1763; recovered, 1800; sold to United States, 1803.♦ Louisiana, ceded to Spain by the Peace of Paris and recovered under the Consulate, was sold to the United States. All the smaller French West India islands were conquered by England; but all were restored at the peace, except Tobago and Saint Lucia. ♦Mauritius kept by England.♦ The isles of Bourbon and Mauritius were also taken by England, and Bourbon alone was restored at the Peace. ♦Pondicherry lost and restored.♦ In India Pondicherry was twice taken and twice restored.

But since France was thus wholly beaten back from her great schemes of dominion in distant parts of the world, she has led the way in a kind of conquest and colonization which has no exact parallel in modern times. ♦French conquest of Algeria, 1830;♦ In the French occupation of Algeria we see something different alike from political conquests in Europe and from isolated conquests in distant parts of the world. ♦of Constantine, 1837.♦ It is conquest, not actually in Europe, but in a land on the shores of the great European sea, in a land which formed part of the Empire of Constantine, Justinian, and Heraclius. ♦Character of African conquests.♦ It is the winning back from Islam of a land which once was part of Latin-speaking Christendom, a conquest which, except in the necessary points of difference between continental and insular conquests, may be best paralleled with the Norman Conquest of Sicily. Sicily could be wholly recovered for Europe and Christendom; but the French settlement in Algeria can never be more than a mere fringe of Europe and its civilization on the edge of barbaric Africa. It is strictly the first colony of the kind. Portugal, Spain, England, had occupied this or that point on the northern coast of Africa; France was the first European power to spread her dominion over a long range of the southern Mediterranean shore, a land which in some sort answers alike to India and to Australia, but lying within two days’ sail of her own coast.

We have thus finished our survey of the states which were formed out of the break-up of the later Western Empire. The rest of Western Europe must be postponed, as neither the Spanish, the British, nor the Scandinavian kingdoms rose out of the break-up of the Empire of Charles the Great. In our next Chapter we must trace the historical geography of the states which arose out of the gradual dismemberment of the dominion of the Eastern Rome, a survey which will lead us to the most stirring events and to the latest geographical changes of our own day.