Cap-Français

“ Divided as was all the western world, there was no part of it more utterly divided in feeling and interest than the kingdom of the West Franks. When the early Capetians were carrying on their petty warfare in the regions between Seine and Loire, or making their vain progresses and emphasising their barren claims over more distant regions, half a score of feudal potentates as able, as wealthy, and as vigorous as themselves were building up a series of local states with foundations as strong, and patriotism as intense, as those of the lords of Paris. ”

“ This quiet little girl, at once artless and disenchanted, pious and disillusioned, does not answer in the least to the conception that a young German artist forms of France. But we know better! The little governess personifies that France, known to few outside her boundaries, which is compact of sacrifice, of duty, of delicate conscientiousness, of rigid economy for self and generous outlay for some treasured ideal, child, or cause:—the France of Port-Royal, the France of ‘48. ”

“ And here we have an ordinance from the Court of Versailles, with the Bourbon’s own signature affixed, as if New England were already a French province. Everything is French,—French soldiers, French sailors, French surgeons, and French diseases too, I trow; besides French dancing-masters and French milliners, to debauch our daughters with French fashions! Everything in America is French, except the Canadas, the loyal Canadas, which we helped to wrest, from France. And to that old French province the Englishman of the colonies must go to find his country! ”

“ Lusson not as proclaiming merely the sovereignty of Louis XIV or of France, but as heralding the new civilization, for if we are to appreciate the real significance of that pageant and of France's mission, we must associate with that day's ceremony, not merely the subsequent wanderings of a few men of French birth or ancestry in all those "countries, rivers, lakes and streams," "bounded on the one side by the seas of the north and west and on the other by the South Sea," but all that life to which they led the adventurous, perilous way. ”

“ Nor, as historians would make us believe, was the high civilization which succeeded self-evolved from this unpromising horde. Native Englishmen—Norman and Saxon—played but a small part in the development of the nation. The men who made England were the swarming adventurers from every land—enterprising merchants, cunning artificers, and sailors bold—who flocked to the island when the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope and the Americas, together with the growth of northwestern Europe, made it the finest business location in the world. ”

“ The discovery of America and passage of the Cape were the first steps of that prodigious maritime development soon exhibited by Western Europe. And since commercial prosperity is forthwith followed by the production of men and concentration of wealth, and, moreover, implies an energetic intellectual condition, it appeared before long that the three centres of population, of wealth, of intellect, were shifting westwardly. The front of Europe was suddenly changed; the British Islands, hitherto in a sequestered and eccentric position, were all at once put in the van of the new movement. ”

“ In Burgundy and the southern towns the tree of liberty was planted, that is to say, a mast surmounted by a red cap. ”

“ With coat, shoes and stockings, fat carcase and all!
How France is distinguish'd in Louis's reign!
What cannot her genius and courage attain?
Thro'out the wide world have her arms found the way,
And art to the stars is extending her sway.
At sea let the British their neighbours defy—
The French shall have frigates to traverse the sky,
In this navigation more fortunate prove,
And cruise at their ease in the climates above.
If the English should venture to sea with their fleet,
A host of balloons in a trice they shall meet. ”

“ Across the river-beds, peasant women and fishwives, with bared legs and baskets clasped to their bending backs, appeared and disappeared—shapes that emerged into the light only to vanish into the gulf of the night.
In was in these pictures that we read our answer.
Like Mont St. Michel, so has France carried into the heights of history her glory and her power. On every century, she, like this world in miniature, has also cast her shadow, dwarfing some, illuminating others. ”

“ I have lived long enough to find hundreds of my countrymen participating in a real knowledge of the French, and believing with me that they are a brave, intelligent, and generous nation. Nearly half a century of experience amongst them has taught me that there is much to learn and much that is worthy of imitation in France. The social habits of the French, and their easy mode of communication, always gain the admiration, and often invite the attachment of foreigners. They are less prejudiced than we islanders, and are much more citizens of the world than ourselves. ”

“ France had not won the leadership of European civilization.
In the coming reign, new forces, new conditions, were to widen the field of national ambitions. And it was the nation across the channel which would grasp these forces and distance her rivals in an advance along the untried paths of commerce and a world-wide expansion.
With a strange apathy France had seen herself mistress of a large part of the American Continent, won for her by adventurous Frenchmen and Catholic missionaries. She did practically nothing to develop this magnificent colonial empire. ”

“ And when all Europe was exhausted by the Napoleonic struggle, the United States, neutral and safe three thousand miles away, snapped up the carrying trade of the world; from fish cargoes for the hungry combatants the transition was easy to more varied commodities. Their own wars, French and English, had been good training schools for men of enterprise, and immediately the Cape Cod sailors were to prove their mettle in this new era of adventure. ”

“ But the French people remained, and their descendants remain, in Canada; and their presence there—those two million fine, happy, prosperous French-Canadians, who combine loyalty to the British Empire with a love for France—supplies, I think, the noblest object-lesson in international fraternity anywhere to be found on the earth. It is an object-lesson that grows in distinctness as our eyes open to new possibilities of unarmed amity ”

“ The German party at Laon could not withstand the combined power of Rouen and Paris. Thus with Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian line, the kingdom of France began, having Paris for its capital; and the name of France came gradually to be applied to the greater part of Gaul. But when Hugh Capet became king, the great feudal states were almost independent of the royal control. Eight were above the rest in power and extent. "The counts of Flanders, Champagne, and Vermandois, and the dukes of Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, and Aquitaine, regarded themselves as the new king's peers or equals." ”

“ But when the French conquer England, their action upon it is entirely beneficent. Gradually, the country, from a nest of restless savages, becomes strong and glorious; and having good material to work upon, they make of us at last a nation stronger than themselves.
Then the strength of France perishes, virtually, through the folly of St. Louis;—her piety evaporates, her lust gathers infectious power, and the modern Cité rises round the Sainte Chapelle. ”

“ In the early annals of the northland one can find silhouetted in sharp relief examples of all that was best and all that was worst in the life of Old France. The political framework of the colony, with its strict centralization, the paternal regulation of industry and commerce, the flood of missionary zeal which poured in upon it, the heroism and courage of its priests and voyageurs, the venality of its administrative officials, the anachronism of a feudal land-tenure, the bizarre externals of its social life, the versatility of its people—all these reflected the paternity of New France. ”

“ It is France herself. Not the France of to-day—banker and bourgeois-ridden; nor the France of the Second Empire—vulgar and painted; nor the Napoleonic France—half a brothel, half a barrack. Across all these and the fumes of the Revolution, Versailles calls to us: “I am France. Before I was built I was born in the dreams of the Gallic people. ”

“ And now, looking back on the great career of that great man, no portion of his history can, perhaps, present anything to compare with the splendor of the Consulate. A long succession of victories, the spoils of half Europe, glory to very satiety, had intoxicated the nation. A country flourishing in every element of prosperity; social order restored; a high position amid surrounding nations; and everything that could gratify national ambition obtained,—France stood at the very pinnacle of her greatness. ”

“ The Capetian territory bristled with hostile castles, permanent obstacles to commerce between the larger towns and intolerable plagues to the country people. In short, the king of France, in spite of the dignity of his title, no longer dared to move about his own narrow domain. He to whom the most powerful lords owed homage could not venture out of Paris without encountering fortresses constructed by noble brigands, who were the terror alike of priest, merchant, and laborer. Without money or soldiers, royalty vegetated within its diminished patrimony. ”

“ The Extension of the Market and its Results.—The fifteenth century saw the formation of the great States in Europe. France, which felt herself to be a nation when she was trampled under foot by the English, was the first to become a unity, and for several centuries drew her power and her greatness from the start which she thus gained. ”

“ The Capetian dynasty was long lived, and for more than three centuries son followed father on the throne without a break in the succession. [20] During this time the French sovereigns worked steadily to exalt the royal power and to unite the feudal states of medieval France into a real nation under a common government. Their success in this task made them, at the close of the Middle Ages, the strongest monarchs in Europe.
FRANCE AND ITS FIEFS Hugh Capet's duchy—the original France—included only a small stretch of inland country centering about Paris on the Seine and Orléans on the Loire. ”

“ I have read that the figure upon the coins of France—a woman sowing—symbolizes the idea that France sows while others reap. That is eminently true of the United States and eminently true of North America. When we recall that Canada, the Ohio territory and Louisiana once belonged to France, and recall how relatively small the Spanish province of Florida and the British colonies along the Atlantic Coast were, we realize what an empire on this continent, extending from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, was once the territory of France. ”

“ Is it not apparent, that under all the oppressions they talk so much of, the French are the nation the most improved and increased in manufactures, in navigation, in commerce, within these fifty years, of any nation in the world? ”

“ They were not continental conquerors to the same extent as the Spaniards, they did not confine themselves to the fringes of the land to the same extent as the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English. They were what France made them to be.
France is an integral part of the continent of Europe; but it is also, with the exception of the Spanish peninsula, the westernmost province of that continent; and it has a long indented seaboard open to the Atlantic. The country has a double outlook, its people have had a twofold character and a double history. ”

“ Throughout their efforts in North America, the French showed a capacity for understanding the large questions of political geography, a genius for exploration, and a talent for making use of its results, or guiding their way to dominion, that is in singular contrast with the blundering processes of their English rivals. ”

“ But of the true Franchise of Charlemagne and Roland, there were, you must note also, two distinct forms. In the last stanzas of the Chant de Roland, Normandy and France have two distinct epithets,—“Normandie, la franche; France, la solue” (soluta) . “Frank Normandy; Loose France. Solute;”—we, adding the dis, use the words loose and dissolute only in evil sense. But ‘France la solue’ has an entirely lovely meaning. The frankness of Normandy is the soldier’s virtue; but the unbinding, so to speak, of France, is the peasant’s. ”

“ This is France, and its history is the history of France even if its art takes enduring colour from a persistent quality in its people that is its own and not simply that of the Franks and{38} Normans and Celts who coalesced around the old Île de France to the building of one of the great peoples and one of the great states in history. Each gave more than it received when it became a part of a state that was slowly building itself out of assembling races and peoples, but each was like the daughter of a house ”

“ The sea divided the other empires, while, strange as it may appear, this same sea united the British. The French were a nation of landsmen; for one very good reason that they had two land frontiers to defend. Their kings and statesmen understood armies better than navies, and the French people themselves liked soldiers better than sailors. The British, on the other hand, since they lived on an island, had no land frontiers to defend. The people liked sailors better than soldiers. ”

“ The people of the Cape became in colonial times clever traders in various pursuits. Although in one sense they were as isolated as islanders, their adventurous life on the sea gave them breadth of view. By their thrift and in innumerable shrewd and persistent ways they amassed competencies and estates for their families. ”