A.D. GROWTH OF THE FRENCH ARMY. 1124 First instance of a permanent military force established. 1191 The supreme command of the army given to the constable of France, who has under his orders two marshals, besides the grand-master of the cross-bowmen. 1439 The cavalry of the gens d'armes (compagnies a'ordonnance) instituted; these companies, fifteen in number, are of 100 lances (600 men) each. 1445 The Francs-archers or Francs-taupins (infantry) instituted. The name taupins is derived from the Low Latin talparius, meaning a man who works underground, like a mole. Scotch archers appointed as part of the king's body-guard 1478 The company of the gentilshommesà-bec-de-corbin (infantry) organized. 1496 A body of Swiss soldiers, 127 in number, added to the king's household troops. (Les cent hommes de guerre Suisses de la garde du Roi.) 1532 Provincial legions instituted by Francis I. These corps, seven in all, are of 6000 men each. 1544 A colonel-general of the infantry appointed. 1558 Creation of a corps of carabins (light cavalry).—Marshal de CosséBrissac forms a regiment of dragoons destined to fight both on horseback and on foot. 1563 The provincial legions formed into regiments. The most ancient of these corps are the regiments of Picardy, Champagne, Navarre, Piedmont. Institution of the French guards. 1571 Appointment of a colonel-general of the Swiss and Grison troops in the French service. 1609 Gens d'armes of the king's bodyguard instituted (cavalry). 1619 First nomination of a minister of war. 1621 The company of gray musketeers in PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM, ESPECIALLY IN FRANCE. Estates Fiscal lands, belonging to the crown, the greater portion of which were granted to favored subjects under the name of benefices. Whosoever possessed a benefice was obliged to follow his sovereign to the wars. Salic lands from which females were excluded. longing to Lands bethe nation Allodial lands, subject to no burden, except that of public defense. They passed to all the children equally. They were changed afterward into feudal tenures, that is to say, the owners acknowledged themselves vassals of a Suzerain, and received of him their estates as Fiefs. Fiefs of office, by which the officers who exercised functions about the royal person were rewarded with grants of land. Nobility. When gentility of blood was not marked The Barons, originally peers of the King's by the actual tenure of land, something was wanting court; they held lands immediately under to ascertain it. Hence the adoption of surnames and of armorial bearings which were devised in the 11th and 12th centuries. There were different orders of nobility Freemen. Inhabitants of chartered towns, citizens, burghers. Villeins, or Serfs attached to the Glebe. None but the lord could receive it. the crown. They possessed the higher territorial jurisdiction, and had the right of carrying their own banner to the field. (The Duke of Burgundy The Count of Toulouse The twelve peers of France were- Was an indispensable form, but might be received by proxy. Investiture Military Service Feudal incidents The Count-bishop of Beauvais pense. Louis 9th of France extended this period to sixty days. The tenant of a knight's fee (£20 per annum in England) was obliged to serve his lord forty days at his own ex Reliefs. Duties paid by every person of full age taking a fief by descent. Fines upon alienation. The alienation of fiefs was prohibited without the lord's consent. through the vassal's delinquency. Escheats and Forfeits occurring either in consequence of the fief being vacant from want of heirs, or more frequently Aids (auxilia) to which the lord was entitled- Right of coining money. Right of waging private War. Immunity from all public tributes except the feudal aids. When he made his eldest son a knight. When he married his eldest daughter. When his own person was to be redeemed from captivity. The lord had the power of marrying his wards without their consent. High jurisdiction. This alone conveyed the right of life and death. Low jurisdiction was merely applied {These sent, the capital cases to the superior, except when a Rights of various kinds. Hunting, in matters of police. thief was taken in the fact. preserving (garenne), appropriating the wrecks and persons of the shipwrecked (bris), labor or wine-press (banalité). (corvées), tolls; compelling the vassals to grind their corn, bake their bread, and make their wine at the baronial mill, bakery, THREE or four centuries before the Christian era, on that vast territory comprised between the ocean, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, the Alps, and the Rhine, lived six or seven millions of men a bestial life, enclosed in dwellings dark and low, the best of them built of wood and clay, not inartistically composed of timber, earth, and stone, which surrounded and protected what they were pleased to call a town. Of even such towns there was scarcely any as yet, save in the most populous and least uncultivated portion of Gaul. In the north and the west were paltry hamlets as transferable almost as the people themselves; and on islet amid the morasses, or in some hidden recess of the forest, were huge entrenchments formed of the trees that were felled, where the population, at the first sound of the war-cry, ran to shelter themselves, with their flocks and all their movables. Gaul was not occupied by one and the same nation, with the same traditions and the same chiefs. In the south were Iberians or Aquitanians, Phoenicians and Greeks; in the north and north-west Kymrians or Belgians; everywhere else Gauls or Celts, the most numerous settlers, who had the honor of giving their name to the country. Who were the first to come, then? and what was the date of the first settlement? Nobody knows. The Iberians, whom Roman writers call Aquitanians, dwelt at the foot of the Pyrenees, in the territory comprised between the mountains, the Garonne, and the ocean. They belonged to the race which, under the same appellation, had peopled Spain, and which abides still in the department of the Lower Pyrenees, under the name of Basques; a peoplet distinct from all its neighbors in features, costume, and especially language. Beyond a strip of land of uneven breadth, along the Mediterranean, and save the space peopled toward the south-west by the Iberians, the country, which received its name from the former of the two, was occupied by the Gauls and the Kymrians: by the Gauls in the center, south-east, and east, in the highlands of modern France, between the Alps, the Vosges, the mountains of Auvergne and the Cevennes; by the Kymrians in the north, north-west, and west, in the lowlands, from the western boundary of the Gauls to the ocean. Whether the Gauls and the Kymrians were originally of the same race, or at least of races closely connected; whether they were both anciently comprised under the general name of Celts; and whether the Kymrians, if they were not of the same race as the Gauls, belonged to that of the Germans, the final conquerors of the Roman empire, are questions which the learned have been a long, long while discussing without deciding. Each of these races, far from forming a single people bound to the same destiny and under the same chieftains, split into peoplets, more or less independent, who foregathered or separated according to the shifts of circumstances, and who pursued each on their own account and at their own pleasure, their fortunes or their fancies. From the earliest times to the first century before the Christian era, Gaul appears a prey to an incessant and disorderly movement of the population; they change settlement and neighborhood; disappear from one point and reappear at another; cross one another; avoid one another; absorb and are absorbed. And the movement was not confined within Gaul; the Gauls of every race went, sometimes in very numerous hordes, to seek far away plunder and a settlement. Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Asia Minor and Africa have been in turn the theater of those Gallic expeditions which entailed long wars, grand displace. ments of peoples, and sometimes the formation of new nations. Nevertheless the fusion, of the Gauls of Galatia with the natives. always remained very imperfect; for toward 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 Treves. The details of the struggle between the Gauls and the Romans belong specially to Roman history; they have been transmitted to us by Roman historians; and the Romans it was who were left ultimately in possession of Italy. IST EPOCH.-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. 2D EPOCH.-During this second period Rome was more than once in danger. In the year 283 B.C. the Gauls destroyed one of her armies near Aretium and advanced to the Roman frontier. 3D EPOCH.-In the third period the third period of the struggle of Gauls and Romans the latter formed the resolution of no longer restraining them, but of subduing and conquering their territory. For thirty years (from 200 to 170 B.C.) she proceeded, by means of war, founding Roman colonies and sowing dissensions among the Gallic tribes. The Senate of Rome increased the number of its colonies in Gaul, treated the subjugated tribes with moderation, and named the whole Cisalpine Gaul. This was afterward changed to Gallia Togata, or Roman Gaul. In the year 123 B.C., at some leagues to the north of the Greek city, near a little river, then called the Conus, and nowadays the Arc, the consul C. Sextius Calvinus constructed an enclosure, aqueducts, baths, houses, a town in fact, which he called after himself Aqua Sextiæ, the modern Aix, the first Roman establishment in Transalpine Gaul. As in the case of Cisalpine Gaul, with Roman colonies came Roman intrigue, and dissensions got up and fomented among the Gauls. The Gauls ran of themselves into the Roman trap. Two of their confederations, the Eduans, of whom mention has already been made, and the Allobrogians, who were settled between the Alps, the Isere, and the Rhone, were at A third confederation, the most powerful in Gaul at this time, the Arvernians, who were rivals of the Æduans, gave their countenance to the Allobrogians. The Æduans, with whom the Massilians had commercial dealings, solicited through these latter the assistance of Rome. A treaty was easily concluded. The Eduans obtained from the Romans the title friends and allies; and the Romans received from the Æduans that of brothers, which among the Gauls implies a sacred tie. war. In the year 110 B.C. the Cimbrians and the Teutons entered Gaul. Continuing their wanderings and ravages in Central Gaul they at last reached |