François Guizot - History of France from the Earliest Times (Vol. 1-6)

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"A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times" in 6 volumes is a comprehensive account of French history from its earliest beginnings in Gaul to 1789 written by the French historian and statesman François Guizot. According to the author's opinion, there are, in the history of peoples, two sets of causes essentially different, and, at the same time, closely connected; the natural causes which are set over the general course of events, and the unrestricted causes which are incidental. The fated causes and the unrestricted causes, the defined laws of events and the spontaneous actions of man's free agency – herein is the whole of history. This carefully crafted e-artnow ebook is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents:
Gaul
The Romans in Gaul
Gaul Conquered by Julius Caesar
Establishment of Christianity in Gaul
The Germans in Gaul, the Franks and Clovis
The Merovingians
Charlemagne and His Wars
The Crusades, Their Origin and Their Success…
Volume 2:
The Crusades, Their Decline and End
The Kingship in France
The Hundred Years' War, Philip VI and John II
The Hundred Years' War, Charles V
Volume 3:
The Hundred Years' War, Charles VII and Joan of Arc (1422-1461)
Louis XI (1461-1483)
The Wars of Italy, Charles VIII (1483-1498)
The Wars in Italy, Louis XII (1498-1515)
Volume 4:
Francis I and Charles V
Francis I and the Reformation
Henry II (1547-1559)
Charles IX and the Religious Wars (1560-1574)
Henry III and the Religious Wars (1574-1589)…
Volume 5:
Henry IV, Protestant King (1589-1593)
Henry IV, Catholic King (1593-1610)
Louis XIII, Richelieu, Catholics and Protestants
Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu, and Foreign Affairs
Louis XIV, His Wars and His Conquests 1661-1697
Volume 6:
Louis XV, the Ministry of Cardinal Fleury, 1723-1748
Louis XV, the Seven Years' War
Louis XVI, France Abroad – United States' War
Louis XVI, France at Home – Ministry of M. Necker
Louis XVI, Convocation of the States General 1787-1789

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At last both princes and people grew weary. Antiochus, King of Syria, attacked one of the three bands—that of the Tectosagians—conquered it, and cantoned it in a district of Upper Phrygia. Later still, about 241 B.C., Eumenes, sovereign of Pergamos, and Attalus, his successor, drove and shut up the other two bands, the Tolistoboians and Troemians, likewise in the same region. The victories of Attalus over the Gauls excited veritable enthusiasm. He was celebrated as a special envoy from Zeus. He took the title of King, which his predecessors had not hitherto borne. He had his battles showily painted; and that he might triumph at the same time both in Europe and Asia, he sent one of the pictures to Athens, where it was still to be seen three centuries afterwards, hanging upon the wall of the citadel. Forced to remain stationary, the Gallic hordes became a people—the Galatians—and the country they occupied was called Galatia. They lived there some fifty years, aloof from the indigenous population of Greeks and Phrygians, whom they kept in an almost servile condition, preserving their warlike and barbarous habits, resuming sometimes their mercenary service, and becoming once more the bulwark or the terror of neighboring states. But at the beginning of the second century before our era, the Romans had entered Asia, in pursuit of their great enemy, Hannibal. They had just beaten, near Magnesia, Antiochus, King of Syria. In his army they had encountered men of lofty stature, with hair light or dyed red, half naked, marching to the fight with loud cries, and terrible at the first onset. They recognized the Gauls, and resolved to destroy or subdue them. The consul, Cn. Manlius, had the duty and the honor. Attacked in their strongholds on Mount Olympus and Mount Magaba, 189 B.C., the three Gallic bands, after a short but stout resistance, were conquered and subjugated; and thenceforth losing all national importance, they amalgamated little by little with the Asiatic populations around them. From time to time they are still seen to reappear with their primitive manners and passions. Rome humored them; Mithridates had them for allies in his long struggle with the Romans. He kept by him a Galatian guard; and when he sought death, and poison failed him, it was the captain of the guard, a Gaul named Bituitus, whom he asked to run him through. That is the last historical event with which the Gallic name is found associated in Asia.

Nevertheless the amalgamation of the Gauls of Galatia with the natives always remained very imperfect; for towards the end of the fourth century of the Christian era they did not speak Greek, as the latter did, but their national tongue, that of the Kymro-Belgians; and St. Jerome testifies that it differed very little from that which was spoken in Belgica itself, in the region of Troves.

The Romans had good ground for keeping a watchful eye, from the time they met them, upon the Gauls, and for dreading them particularly. At the time when they determined to pursue them into the mountains of Asia Minor, they were just at the close of a desperate struggle, maintained against them for four hundred years, in Italy itself; “a struggle,” says Sallust, “in which it was a question not of glory, but of existence, for Rome.” It was but just now remarked that at the beginning of the sixth century before our era, whilst, under their chieftain Sigovesus, the Gallic bands whose history has occupied the last few pages were crossing the Rhine and entering Germany, other bands, under the command of Bellovesus, were traversing the Alps and swarming into Italy. From 587 to 521 B.C. five Gallic expeditions, formed of Gallic, Kymric, and Ligurian tribes, followed the same route and invaded successively the two banks of the Po—the bottomless river, as they called it. The Etruscans, who had long before, it will be remembered, themselves wrested that country from a people of Gallic origin, the Umbrians or Ambrons, could not make head against the new conquerors, aided, may be, by the remains of the old population. The well-built towns, the cultivation of the country, the ports and canals that had been dug, nearly all these labors of Etruscan civilization disappeared beneath the footsteps of these barbarous hordes that knew only how to destroy, and one of which gave its chieftain the name of Hurricane (Elitorius, Ele-Dov). Scarcely five Etruscan towns, Mantua and Ravenna amongst others, escaped disaster. The Gauls also founded towns, such as Mediolanum (Milan), Brixia (Brescia), Verona, Bononia (Bologna), Sena-Gallica (Sinigaglia), &c. But for a long while they were no more than intrenched camps, fortified places, where the population shut themselves up in case of necessity. “They, as a general rule, straggled about the country,” says Polybius, the most correct and clear-sighted of the ancient historians, “sleeping on grass or straw, living on nothing but meat, busying themselves about nothing but war and a little husbandry, and counting as riches nothing but flocks and gold, the only goods that can be carried away at pleasure and on every occasion.”

During nearly thirty years the Gauls thus scoured not only Upper Italy, which they had almost to themselves, but all the eastern coast, and up to the head of the peninsula, encountering along the Adriatic, and in the rich and effeminate cities of Magna Graecia, Sybaris, Tarentum, Crotona, and Locri, no enemy capable of resisting them. But in the year 391 B.C., finding themselves cooped up in their territory, a strong band of Gauls crossed the Apennines, and went to demand from the Etruscans of Clusium the cession of a portion of their lands. The only answer Clusium made was to close her gates. The Gauls formed up around the walls. Clusium asked help from Rome, with whom, notwithstanding the rivalry between the Etruscan and Roman nations, she had lately been on good terms. The Romans promised first their good offices with the Gauls, afterwards material support; and thus were brought face to face those two peoples, fated to continue for four centuries a struggle which was to be ended only by the complete subjection of Gaul.

The details of that struggle belong specially to Roman history; they have been transmitted to us only by Roman historians; and the Romans it was who were left ultimately in possession of the battle-field, that is, of Italy. It will suffice here to make known the general march of events and the most characteristic incidents.

Four distinct periods may be recognized in this history; and each marks a different phase in the course of events, and, so to speak, an act of the drama. During the first period, which lasted forty-two years, from 391 to 349 B.C., the Gauls carried on a war of aggression and conquest against Rome. Not that such had been their original design; on the contrary, they replied, when the Romans offered intervention between them and Clusium, “We ask only for lands, of which we are in need; and Clusium has more than she can cultivate. Of the Romans we know very little; but we believe them to be a brave people, since the Etruscans put themselves under their protection. Remain spectators of our quarrel; we will settle it before your eyes, that you may report at home how far above other men the Gauls are in valor.”

But when they saw their pretensions repudiated and themselves treated with outrageous disdain, the Gauls left the siege of Clusium on the spot, and set out for Rome, not stopping for plunder, and proclaiming everywhere on their march, “We are bound for Rome; we make war on none but Romans;” and when they encountered the Roman army, on the 16th of duly, 390 B.C., at the confluence of the Allia and the Tiber, half a day’s march from Rome, they abruptly struck up their war-chant, and threw themselves upon their enemies. It is well known how they gained the day; how they entered Rome, and found none but a few gray-beards, who, being unable or unwilling to leave their abode, had remained seated in the vestibule on their chairs of ivory, with truncheons of ivory in their hands, and decorated with the insignia of the public offices they had filled. All the people of Rome had fled, and were wandering over the country, or seeking a refuge amongst neighboring peoples. Only the senate and a thousand warriors had shut themselves up in the Capitol, a citadel which commanded the city. The Gauls kept them besieged there for seven months. The circumstances of this celebrated siege are well known, though they have been a little embellished by the Roman historians. Not that they have spoken too highly of the Romans themselves, who, in the day of their country’s disaster, showed admirable courage, perseverance, and hopefulness. Pontius Cominius, who traversed the Gallic camp, swam the Tiber, and scaled by night the heights of the Capitol, to go and carry news to the senate; M. Manlius, who was the first, and for some moments the only one, to hold in check, from the citadel’s walls, the Gauls on the point of effecting an entrance; and M. Furius Camillus, who had been banished from Rome the preceding year, and had taken refuge in the town of Ardea, and who instantly took the field for his country, rallied the Roman fugitives, and incessantly harassed the Gauls—are true heroes, who have earned their weed of glory. Let no man seek to lower them in public esteem. Noble actions are so beautiful, and the actors often receive so little recompense, that we are at least bound to hold sacred the honor attached to their name.

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