Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/593

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 585 do not regard the conquered as guilty, who do not worship force, ought to pay homage to our ancestors, who struggled during the seventeenth century to safeguard their existence as a small nation.' A curious illustra- tion of this local feeling is given in the Bibliographic, p. 106. When Lacordaire went to Mattaincourt in 1853 to eulogize St. Pierre Fourier he also praised Richelieu, and by so doing offended some of the Lorrainers present, who tried, without success, to persuade Lacordaire to omit the praise of Richelieu from the printed text of his discourse. M. Parisot (Bibliographic, p. 15) even protests against M. Pfister's statement that the Lorrainers were abandoned by their dynasty in 1737. He says that Francis III renounced Lorraine only because he was forced, and that France and Austria came to their agreement to give Lorraine to Stanislas and Tuscany as compensation to Francis without consulting him at all. But Francis knew of the arrangements before he married Maria Theresa, and he knew that France would never consent to Lorraine's remaining in the power of one who would probably become emperor. He made a formal protest against the cession to Stanislas two months after his marriage, but in truth he had deliberately abandoned Lorraine when he decided, with full knowledge of the Austro-French convention, to marry the emperor's heiress. The sentiments of provincial patriotism are admirable, but its geographical situation made the independence of Lorraine impossible. That these sentiments have some influence even to-day may be gathered from another slight indication in the. Bibliographic, p. 186. M. Louis Madelin, describing the ceremonial entry of French troops after the recent war into the towns of Alsace and Lorraine, ' a senti 1'opposition entre 1' exuberance des Alsaciens et la discretion un peu froide des Lorrains '. The absorption by France, inevitable after Henry II's occupation of the three bishoprics and the failure of the empire to reclaim them, was delayed through the wars of religion in France, but after Louis XIII' s capture of Nancy in 1633 there were only two intervals of independence. The sufferings of the duchy during the two French occupations from 1633 to 1661, and from 1670 to 1697, are clearly stated by M. Parisot, and the policy of Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIV is seen from a new point of view. Leopold I (1690-1729), who received a famous eulogy from Voltaire, was an admirable example of an enlightened eighteenth-century ruler. In his first volume M. Parisot laid stress on the influence of the states-general in distinguishing Lorraine from France, but that distinction soon dis- appeared. The dukes followed the French tendency towards absolutism and centralization, and the states-general met for the last time in 1629. There was no attempt to revive self-government till after Lorraine had become a French generalite, and the provincial assembly set up in 1787 was no more successful in securing the necessary reforms than the similar bodies in other parts of France. We find in Lorraine the same privileged classes with fiscal immunities, and the same demi-servitude of parts of the peasantry. French-speaking Lorraine in 1700 contained peasants subject to personal mainmorte and the lord's right of pursuit, but Leopold I gave the peasants the right to purchase exemption by annual payments. As late as 1743 in the county of Saarwerden only 369 households out of 1,972 were wholly free. The economic condition of the peasantry was