Various

“ The visit of the tsar to Paris, the first paid by a friendly sovereign since the Second Empire, impressed a population, proud of its capital, by an outward sign which seemed to show that the Republic was not an obstacle to the recognition by the monarchies of Europe of the place still held by France among the great powers. Before M. Loubet laid down office the nation, grown more republican, saw the visit of the tsar followed by those of the kings of England and of Italy, who might never have been moved to present their respects to the French Republic had not Russia shown them the way. ”

“ A few years later the defeat of Russia by Japan and the rise of the sea-power of the Japanese practically ended the French empire in Indo-China. What the French already had at the end of the last century is virtually guaranteed to them only by the Anglo-Japanese alliance. It is in the irony of things that these possessions which were a sign of French rivalry with England should now be secured to France by England’s friendliness. For it is now recognized by the French that the defence of Indo-China is impossible. ”

“ In this, indeed, as in other cases, it may be said that the emperor was guided less by any abstract principles than by a common-sense appreciation of the needs and possibilities of the moment. Whatever his natural prejudices or natural resentments, he never allowed these to influence his policy. The German empire and the Italian kingdom had been built up out of the ruins of immemorial Habsburg ambitions; yet he refused to be drawn into an alliance with France in 1869 and 1870, and became the mainstay of the Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy. ”

“ These actions, the coup d’état of the chancellor Maupeou, as they were called, produced an immense sensation. The repeated conflicts of the reign of Louis XV. had already given rise to a whole literature of books, pamphlets and tracts in which the rights of the crown were discussed. At the same time the political philosophy of the 18th century was disseminating new principles, and especially those of the supremacy of the people and the differentiation of powers, the government of England also became known among the French. Thus men’s minds were being prepared for the Revolution. ”

“ Even a man who had appeared in a court of law and received judgment had the choice of refusing to accept the judgment and of making war instead. Justice, moreover, with its frequent employment of trial by combat, did not essentially differ from private war.
It is unnecessary to go further and to affirm, with certain historians of our time, for example Guilhermoz and Sée, that the only free men at that time, besides the clergy, were the nobles, all the rest being serfs. ”

“ But what proved the great disturbing element in Gallo-Roman society was the fact that the conquerors, owing to their former customs and the degree of their civilization, were all warriors, men whose chief interest was to become practised in the handling of arms, and whose normal state was that of war. It is true that under the Roman empire all the men of a civitas were obliged, in case of necessity, to march against the enemy, and under the Frankish monarchy the count still called together his pagenses for this object. ”

“ The situation of France in 1871 in no wise resembled that after the French defeat of 1815, when the First Empire, issue of the Revolution, had been upset by a coalition of the European monarchies which brought back and supported on his restored throne the legitimate heir to the French crown. In 1871 the Republic was founded in isolation. France was without allies, and outside its frontiers the form of its executive government was a matter of interest only to its German conquerors. Bismarck desired that France should remain isolated in Europe and divided at home. ”

“ The French tradition in Egypt was a relic of Napoleon’s vain scheme to become emperor of the Orient even before he had made himself emperor of the West. It was because Egypt was the highway to India that under Napoleon III. the French had constructed the Suez Canal, and for the same reason England could never permit them to become masters of the Nile delta. But the possessors of Algeria could extend their coast-line of North Africa without seriously menacing the power which held Gibraltar and Malta. ”

“ The French of the 19th and 20th centuries may well be considered less enterprising in both hemispheres than were their ancestors of the 17th, and Madagascar, after having been the cause of much ill-feeling between England and France under the Third Republic down to the time of its formal annexation, by the law of the 9th of August 1896, is not now the object of much interest among French politicians. On the African continent it is different. When the Republic succeeded to the Second Empire the French African possessions outside Algiers were inconsiderable in area. ”

“ The élus, or officiers des élections, only existed in districts which were subject to the royal taille; hence the division, so important in old France, into pays d’élections and pays d’états. The élus kept both administration and jurisdiction; but in the higher stage a differentiation was made: the généraux des finances, who numbered four, kept the administration, while their jurisdiction as a court of final appeal was handed over to another body, the cour des aides, which had already been founded at the end of the 14th century. ”

“ Some towns won for themselves true political rights, for instance the right of self-administration, rights of justice over the inhabitants, the right of not being taxed except by their own consent, of maintaining an armed force, and of controlling it themselves. Others only obtained civil rights, e.g. guarantees against the arbitrary rights of justice and taxation of the lord or his provost. The chief forms of municipal organization at this time were the commune jurée of the north and east, and the consulat, which came from Italy and penetrated as far as Auvergne and Limousin. ”

“ The immensity of its domain on paper is no doubt a satisfaction to a people which prefers to pursue its policy of colonial expansion without the aid of emigration. The acquisition of Tunis by France is also important as an example of the system of protectorate as applied to colonization. Open annexation might have more gravely irritated the powers having interests in the country. England, in spite of Lord Salisbury’s suggestions to the French foreign minister, was none too pleased with France’s policy ”

“ By this time, however, France was no longer isolated and at the mercy of Germany, which by reason of the increase of its population while that of France had remained almost stationary, was, under the system of compulsory military service in the two countries, more than a match for its neighbour in a single-handed conflict. Even the Triple Alliance ceased to be a terror for France. An understanding arose between France and Russia preliminary to the Franco-Russian alliance, which became the pivot of French exterior relations until the defeat of Russia in the Japanese war of 1904. ”

“ He devoted himself to solitude, prayer and the service of the poor, and before long went on a pilgrimage to Rome. Finding the usual crowd of beggars before St Peter’s, he exchanged his clothes with one of them, and experienced an overpowering joy in spending the day begging among the rest. The determining episode of his life followed soon after his return to Assisi; as he was riding he met a leper who begged an alms; Francis had always had a special horror of lepers, and turning his face he rode on ”

“ No private educational establishment could be opened without the authorization of the state.
But chief among the documents dating from this period are the Codes, which still give laws to France. These are the Civil Code of 1804, the Code de Procédure Civile of 1806, the Code de Commerce of 1807, the Code d’Instruction Criminelle The Codes. of 1809, and the Code Pénal of 1810. These monumental works, in the elaboration of which the conseil d’état took the chief part, contributed, to a greater or less extent, towards the fusion of the old law of France with the laws of the Revolution. ”

“ Every noble was destined on coming of age to become a knight, and the knight equally as a matter of course received a fief, if he had not one already by hereditary title. This nobility, moreover, was not a caste but could be indefinitely recruited by the granting of fiefs and admission to knighthood (see Knighthood and Chivalry) .
The state of anarchy was by now so far advanced that war became an individual right, and the custom of private war arose. Every man had in principle the right of making war to defend his rights or to avenge his wrongs. ”

“ During the disturbances of 1848, Francis Joseph spent some time in Italy, where, under Radetzky, at the battle of St Lucia, he had his first experience of warfare. At the end of that year, after the rising of Vienna and capture of the city by Windischgrätz, it was clearly desirable that there should be a more vigorous ruler at the head of the empire, and Ferdinand, now that the young archduke was of age, was able to carry out the abdication which he and his wife had long desired. ”

“ In England the Disraeli ministry addressed the governments of Russia, Austria and Italy, with a view to restraining Germany from its aggressive designs, and Queen Victoria wrote to the German emperor to plead the cause of peace. It is probable that there was no need either for this intervention or for the panic which had produced it. We know now that the old emperor William was steadfastly opposed to a fresh war, while his son, the crown prince Frederick, who then seemed likely soon to succeed him for a long reign, was also determined that peace should be maintained. ”

“ We have noted how Algeria, which is nearer to Toulon and Marseilles than are Paris and Havre, has been comparatively neglected by the French, after eighty years of occupation, in spite of the amenity of its climate and its soil for European settlers. The new French colonial school advocates the withdrawal of France from adventures in distant tropical countries which can be reached only by long sea voyages, and the concentration of French activity in the northern half of the African continent. Madagascar is, as we have seen, counted as Africa in computing the area of French colonial territory. ”

“ In the 17th and 18th centuries the peers of France can be reckoned among the nobility, forming indeed its highest grade, though the rank of peer was still attached to a fief, which was handed down with it; on the eve of the Revolution there were thirty-eight lay peers. The rest of the nation, apart from the ecclesiastics, consisted of the roturiers, who were not subject to the disabilities of the serfs, but had not the privileges of the nobility. ”

“ He declared in 1909, with the high authority of one who was during years of Anglo-French tension the mouthpiece of the Republic in its relations with other powers, that every move in the direction of colonial expansion made by France disquieted and irritated England. He complained that when France, under the stimulating guidance of Jules Ferry, undertook the reconstitution of an oversea domain, England barred the way—in Egypt, in Tunis, in Madagascar, in Indo-China, in the Congo, in Oceania. ”

“ The law of the 21st of July 1881 on the press is one of the most liberal in the world. By it all offences committed by any kind of publication are submitted to a jury; the punishment for the mere expression of obnoxious opinions is abolished, the only punishment being for slander, libel, defamation, inciting to crime, and in certain cases the publication of false news. The law of the 1st of July 1901 established in France the right of forming associations. ”

“ The result of the congress of Berlin seemed therefore to draw France and Russia farther apart, especially as Gambetta and the Republicans now in power were more disposed towards an understanding with England. The contrary, however, happened. The treaty of Berlin, which took the place of the treaty of San Stefano, was the ruin of Russian hopes. It was attributed to the support given by Bismarck to the anti-Russian policy of England and Austria at the congress, the German chancellor having previously discouraged the project of an alliance between Russia and Germany. ”

“ The labour laws, which generally partook of the nature both of public and of private law, are a sign of our times. Under the Third Republic they have been numerous, the most notable being: the law of the 21st of March Labour legislation. ”

“ The weakest point in the French parliamentary organism is perhaps the right of dissolution. It is difficult of application, for the reason that the president must obtain the preliminary consent of the Senate before exercising it; moreover, this valuable right has been discredited by its abuse by Marshal MacMahon in the campaign of the 16th of May 1877, on which occasion he exercised his right of dissolution against a chamber, the moderate but decidedly republican majority in which he was re-elected by the country.
The legislative reforms carried out under the Third Republic are very numerous. ”

“ For after the war with Germany, the mutilated land and the vanquished nation had need to avoid wanton provocations of foreign powers. Henceforth the French Republic, governed by Republicans, was to be an anti-clerical force in Europe, sympathizing with the Italian occupation of Rome. But to make Italy realize that France was no longer the enemy of complete Italian unity it would have been necessary that all causes of irritation between the two Latin sister nations were removed. ”