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 FRANCE under the count de Chambord (in whose favor the Orleanist branch of the Bourbons had agreed to yield their claim) might be success- ful. Many monarchists were appointed to office ; the party daily gained in apparent in- fluence ; the celebration of the anniversary of the declaration of the republic on Sept. 4 was forbidden; and the hopes of the legitimists appeared to be on the point of fulfilment, when they were suddenly brought to an end by the letter of the count de Chambord to M. de Chesnelong on Oct. 30, in which he distinctly refused to make the concessions that were ne- cessary to the acceptance by the assembly of a monarchy under his rule, and declared his de- termined adherence to the white flag of the Bourbons. After the recess of the assembly from July 27 to Nov. 5, the opening message of President MacMahon called for action to secure some degree of permanence and stability to the government. The right demanded that the executive power be conferred on MacMa- hon for a term of ten years. By a compromise this was lessened; and in the night of the 19th-20th a law was passed making his term seven years. One of the most important events subsequent to this was the conclusion of the long trial of Marshal Bazaine, by a court mar- tial of which the duke d'Aumale was presi- dent, on a charge of treason in surrendering his army and the fortress of Metz without suffi- cient cause. On Dec. 10 he was found guilty and sentenced to death ; which sentence was commuted by President MacMahon to 20 years' seclusion, after degradation from his rank. The payment of the last instalment of the war in- demnity had taken place on Sept. 5, and by the 16th France was free from foreign occu- pation. During the period since the war her material prosperity has been restored with re- markable rapidity; new commercial treaties with Great Britain and Belgium were approved in July, 1873 ; and French industries and trade have again reached an entirely normal condi- tion. But the political situation continued to be unsettled in the early part of 1874, owing to the systematic agitation of monarchists against the republican institutions of the coun- try, to which new elections in various depart- ments have given repeated sanction. On March 16, the 18th birthday of the prince imperial, the Bonapartists celebrated his majority at Chiselhurst, hailing him as Napoleon IV. ; to which he replied in a set speech, appealing to the decision of a new plebiscite. Foreign rela- tions also continued complicated ; the German empire proposed increased armaments, avowed- ly from fear of French retaliation, and emphati- cally evinced its determination to wield a para- mount influence in Italian and eastern affairs. The cabinet of the duke de Broglie resigned May 16, in consequence of the defeat of the electoral bill, and was succeeded on the 22d by one under Gen. de Cissey as minister of war, composed of anti-republicans, and with little prospect of stability. (See MACMAHON.) FRANCE (LANGUAGE, &o.) 401 FRANCE, Isle'of. See MAUEITIUS. FRANCE, Language and Literature of. The French is the most important of the six Ro- manic languages produced from Latin by the influence of other tongues. The Italian, the Roumanic or Wallachian, the Provencal, Span- ish, and Portuguese are its sisters. The Belgro of Gaul probably spoke Celto-Teutonic, the Aquitani Celto-Iberic, while the Celtse or Galli proper occupied the centre of the country, and at the same time Greek colonies held points on the Mediterranean sea. The language of Rome overwhelmed all these idioms. The Gallic, however, was yet spoken in the 3d century; Celticism was perceptible in the lingua rustica, or degenerate Latin, at the close of the 6th century ; and the ancient vernaculars continued to exist afterward. The rustica extended from the Rhine to the Pyrenees in the 4th century. The corruption of the Latin was similar in all countries from the Danube to the mouth of the Tagus, and the above mentioned languages dif- fer only in consequence of the various barba- rous tongues that have acted upon them. Since the Suevi, Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, &c., made no efforts to destroy the languages of the inhabitants of Gaul, compara- tively few words of theirs survived in the lin- gua rustica. Many Celtic elements had com- bined with the Latin even before Cassar, and some were introduced afterward ; but it is dif- ficult to distinguish them from the Latin stock on account of their common origin from the storehouse of the Indo-European family of lan- guages. The Latin jargon, tainted by Ger- manic ingredients, is called lingua Romano., and also Gallica or Gallicana. It coexisted for some time with the Frerikiska (Francisca, Francica}, or Theotisca or Tudesque ; and al- though it continued to exist with more vigor than the last named, it was eventually called lingua Franco- Gallica, or rather Franco- Ro- mana, langue francoise. While the Frankish prevailed in the north and east of the country, the rustica or Romana was spoken south of the Loire, although also used in the Frankish regions. The council of Tours (813) recom- mended the use of both the rustic and Tudesc versions of the homilies. The Latin grammati- cal suffixes were gradually dropped, and the accusative case was in general taken as the new word. Auxiliary verbs were successively introduced from the Teutonic idioms, the case endings were supplied by prepositions, the personal endings of verbs by pronouns, or both by the fragments of ancient endings and by pronouns before the verb. In the 10th cen- tury the Latin ille, iste were converted into the article le and the pronouns il and cet (ce), the latter being pronounced st. According to Raynouard's hypothesis, the lingua Romana was separated into two dialects. The Visigoths and Burgundians S. of the Loire said oc (Latin ac, German auch, also) for yes, for which the Franks and Normans (who established them- selves in France in 912) along the Seine used