Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/563

 FRANCE PART II. HISTORY. I. INTRODUCTORY. THE extinct tribes which once thinly peopled the soil of France have left but scanty traces of their existence in the weapons and ornaments dug out of gravel-beds and river courses. However interesting they may be to the student of ethnology and of the origin of man, they find no place in history; for neither in blood, nor manners, nor speech have they left any mark on the land they inhabited. Very different are those tribes whom Caesar met when he first entered Gaul. The history of France may well begin with the words which open his famous chronicle &quot; Gaul is all divided into three parts.&quot; Of the inhabitants of these divisions, the Belgians, Gauls, and Iberians, the third were in all ways different from the others ; for the Iberians were a race of other origin, shorter, darker of complexion, less sociable, less bright, of more tenacity, possessed of that power of resistance which those whom stronger races drive out of the plains into the mountains quickly learn. On the northward and southward slopes of the Pyrenees, amid the fastnesses of that great chain, and in the Basque provinces of Spain, this race still dwells, easily discerned by characteristics of speech and appearance, which mark them off alike from Spaniards and Frenchmen. The Belgians and the Gauls were blood-relations. The former, dwelling chiefly in the northern districts of France, were later comers than their kinsmen the Gauls, stronger men and of a finer development. The Gauls, the men of central France, were a bright intelligent people, full of vivacity, frank and open of disposition, brave and scornful of tactics, as though all strategy were a lie and a disgrace. The Belgians seem to have been more staid, less active, less easily cast down, more thoughtful ; they were not without a physical and moral resemblance to their neighbours and distant cousins the Germans. From these two tribes has sprung the modern Frenchman, who to this day, according to his part of France, bears the mark and sign of one or other origin. When Julius Caesar entered Gaul (58 B.C.), he found these natives in a half-barbarous state, split up into clans, each with its elected chieftain, its Druids or priests, and its body of warriors or horsemen ; while below these was an undistinguished company of servile men, women, and children, who did all works of peace for their idle fighting aristocracy. Each clan lived to itself, with little or no power of combining even with its nearest neighbours. Its home was usually an open village of circular wattled huts, with one family dwelling in each hut. Sometimes, in places of strength and importance, the Gaul built himself a fortified town enclosed by earthworks, perched sometimes, like Alesia, on a strong hill-top, or entrenched in dark recesses of wood and marsh. The more close the tighten ing of the Celtic clanship, the more completely did each little community live to itself, apart from other clans ; so that in spite of the great difficulties of the country, Cajsar found the reduction of it a tolerably easy task. Before Caesar s days Gaul had already known something of foreign invasion. On her northern and eastern frontiers were the Germans ; in the south stood the Greek city of Massilia, the ancient rival of Carthage; and in 122 B.C. Caius Sextius had founded the town which bore his name, Aquae Sextise, now Aix in Provence, whence, as from a centre, the Roman occupation spread through the district watered by the Rhone and its tributaries, until it received the name of Gallia Braccata, and became a province of the republic. Narbonne (Narbo Martius, founded 118 B.C.) was the new capital of the district, the first Roman municipium on the soil of Gaul. But invasion took an entirely new character when Caesar was made proconsul (59 B.C.). Czesar in He entered on his great conquest in the following year, Gaul, and the reduction of the whole country was complete by 50 B.C. In the course of those years the great Roman penetrated to the utmost limits of Gaul, beat down all opposition, crushed the Helvetians back into their Swiss home ; he defeated the Germans who had made secure lodgment in the Sequaniau lands, and drove them into the Rhine ; broke the resistance of the Nervii, all but exterminating that gallant tribe; severed the connexion between Gaul and Britain, on which the Americans especially relied, by two expeditions across the Channel, in which he gained a great addition of glory, if little fresh power ; the conquest of far-off Britain fired the imagina tions of men : finally he brought the long wars to a close by the submission of Yercingetorix under the walls of Alesia. Thenceforward C&amp;lt;=esar, having conquered the Gauls, became their emperor. He saw what boundless supplies of force, of enthusiasm and intelligence, were now at his disposal ; with Gallic support and his own devoted legions, he was now able to give law to Rome herself. Meanwhile, he did all in his power for Gaul, lightened her tribute, mitigated slavery, forbade human sacrifices, repressed tlio Druids. The country lost its independence, and became the docile pupil and follower of Roman civilized life. For more than four hundred years the Roman domination influenced Gaul. At the beginning of the time the natives were savages, dwelling in a wild land of forests and wastes, a thinly scattered company of unsociable clans, without towns or roads or industries ; at the end they had fine cities, and much cultivated land, wore the Roman dress, had adopted the Roman law, and had exchanged their own tongue for a new form of the common Latin language. After the murder of Julius Caesar, the administrative Au- genius of Augustus found wide scope for its activity in gustus. Gaul. Lyons was the new capital, whence his four great roadways and his civilization radiated out in every direction. Several of the later emperors vied with him in their interest in Gallic affairs : Caligula spent much time at Lyons, and, in his grotesque way, encouraged letters there ; Claudius was a native of that city, and threw open the senate to the Gallic chiefs ; he esta blished schools, emancipated slaves, and taught the Gauls the equality of all men under the law ; Nero, with his Greek sympathies, delighted in Provence, though he cared little for the rest of the country then called &quot;Imperial&quot; Gaul. All through this period new ideas, new pleasures and efforts, characterize the life of Gaul ; and after the fall of Civilis in 70 A.TX, no one in ail the country dreams of any further struggle in behalf of the independence she had finally lost. All things were now preparing for the next great influence chris- which should affect the Gallic race. For nearly a century, tianity though Gaul and Rome seemed together to tread the mGau1 downward path towards ruin, the Roman ideas as to justice, law, and order, were fitting the Gallic mind for the reception of Christianity. And Christianity soon came. In 160 or 161 A.D. we find a bishop of Lyons, Pothinus, and with him the well-known name of Irenseus. These men ministered at first to Greek and other settlers, for the early church of Lyons long bore marks of a Greek