EXTERIOR POLICY  1870—1909 The Franco-

German War marks a turning-point in the history of the exterior policy of France as distinct as does the fall of the ancient monarchy or the end of the Napoleonic epoch . The new With the disappearance of the Second Empire, by epoch. its own fault, on the field of Sedan in September 1870, followed in the early months of 1871 by the proclamation of the German empire at Versailles and the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine under the treaty of peace of Frankfort, France descended from its primacy among the nations of continental Europe, which it had gradually acquired in the half-century subsequent to Waterloo . It was the design of Bismarck that united Germany, which had been finally established under his direction by the war of 1870, should take the place hitherto occupied by France in Europe . The situation of France in 1871 in no wise resembled that after the French defeat of 1815, when the First Empire, issue of the Revolution, had been upset by a coalition of the European monarchies which brought back and supported on his restored throne the legitimate heir to the French crown . In 1871 the Republic was founded in isolation . France was without allies, and outside its frontiers the form of its executive government was a matter of interest only to its German conquerors . Bismarck desired that France should remain isolated in Europe and divided at home . He thought that the Republican form of government would best serve these ends . The revolutionary tradition of France would, under a Republic, keep aloof the monarchies of Europe, whereas, in the words of the German ambassador at Paris, Prince Hohenlohe, a" monarchy would strengthen France and place her in abetter position to make alliances and would threaten our alliances." At the same time Bismarck counted on governmental instability under a Republic to bring about domestic disorganization which would so disintegrate the French nation as to render it unformidable as a foe and ineffective as an ally . The Franco-German War thus produced a situation unprecedented in the mutual relations of two great European powers . From that situation resulted all the exterior policy of France, for a whole generation, colonial as well as foreign . In 1875 Germany saw France in possession of a constitution which gave promise of durability if not of permanence .

German

opinion had already been perturbed by the facility and speed with which France had paid off the colossal war indemnity exacted by the conqueror, thus giving proof of the inexhaustible resources of the country and of its powers of recuperation . The successful reorganization of the French army under the military law of 1872 caused further alarm when there appeared to be some possibility of the withdrawal of Russia from the Dreikaiserbund, which had set the seal on Germany's triumph and France's abasement in Europe . It seemed, therefore, as though it might be expedient for Germany to make a sudden aggression upon France before that country was adequately prepared for war, in order to crush the nation irreparably and to remove it from among the great powers of Europe . The constitution of the Third Republic was voted by the National Assembly on the 25th of February 1875 . The new constitution had to be completed by electoral laws and other complementary provisions, so it could not become effective until the following year, after the first elections of the newly founded Senate and Chamber of Deputies . M . Buffet was then charged by the president of the republic, Marshal MacMahon, to form a provisional ministry in which the duc Decazes, who had been foreign minister since 1873, was retained at the Quai d'Orsay . The cabinet met for the first time on the 1th of March, and. ten days later the National Assembly adjourned for a long recess . It was during that interval that occurred the incident known as " The Scare of 1875." The Kulturkampf had left Prince Bismarck in a state of nervous irritation . In all directions he was on the look out for traces of Ultra- montane intrigue . The clericals in France after the fall of Thiers had behaved with great indiscretion in their desire to see the temporal power of the pope revived . But when the reactionaries had placed MacMahon at the head of the state, their divisions and their political ineptitude had shown that the government cf France would soon pass from their hands, and of this the voting of the Republican constitution by a monarchical assembly was the visible proof .

Nevertheless Bismarck, influenced by the presence at

Berlin of a French ambassador, M. de Gontaut-Biron, whom he regarded as an Ultramontane agent, seems to have thought otherwise . A military party at Berlin affected alarm at a law passed by the French Assembly on the 12th of March, which continued a provision increasing from three to four the battalions of each infantry regiment, and certain journals, supposed to be inspired by Bismarck, argued that as the French were ;'reparing, it might be well to anticipate their designs before they were ready . Europe was scared by an article on the 6th of May in The Times, professing to reveal the designs of Bismarck, from its Paris correspondent, Blowitz, who was in relations with the French foreign minister, the duc Decazes, and with Prince Hohenlohe, German ambassador to France, both being prudent diplomatists, and, though Catholics, opposed to Ultramontane pretensions . Europe was astounded at the revelation and alarmed at the alleged imminence of war . In England the Disraeli ministry addressed the governments of Russia, Austria and Italy, with a view to restraining Germany from its aggressive designs, and Queen Victoria wrote to the German emperor to plead the cause of peace . It is probable that there was no need either for this intervention or for the panic which had produced it . We know now that the old emperor William was steadfastly opposed to a fresh war, while his son, the crown prince Frederick, who then seemed likely soon to succeed him for a long reign, was also determined that peace should be maintained . The scare had, however, a most important result, in sowing the seeds of the subsequent Franco-Russian alliance . Notwithstanding that the tsar Alexander II. was on terms of affectionate intimacy with his uncle, the emperor William, he gave a personal assurance to General Le F16, French ambassador at St Petersburg, that France should have the " moral support " of Russia in the case of an aggression on the part of Germany . It is possible that the danger of war was exaggerated by the French foreign minister and his ambassador at Berlin, as is the opinion of certain French historians, who think that M. de Gontaut-Biron, as an old royalist, was only too glad to see the Republic under the protec- tion, as it were, of the most reactionary monarchy of Europe . At the same time Bismarck's denials of having acted with terrorizing intent cannot be accepted . He was more sincere when he criticized the ostentation with which the Russian Chancellor, Prince Gortchakoff, had claimed for his master the character of the defender of France and the obstacle to German ambitions .

It was in memory of this that, in 1878 at the

congress of Berlin, Bismarck did his best to impair the advantages which Russia had obtained under the treaty of San Stefano . The events which led to that congress put into abeyance the prospect of a serious understanding between France and Russia . The insurrection in Herzegovina in July 1875 reopened the Eastern question, and in the Orient the interests of Be Congress rUn . of France and Russia had been for many years con- flicting, as witness the controversy concerning the Holy Places, which was one of the causes of the Crimean War . France had from the reign of Louis XIV. claimed the exclusive right of protecting Roman Catholic interests in the East . This claim was supported not only by the monarchists, for the most part friendly to Russia. in other respects, who directed the foreign policy of the Third Republic until the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, but by the Republicans, who were coming into perpetual power at the time of the congress of Berlin—the ablest of the anti-clericals, Gambetta,, declaring in this connexion that "anti-clericalism was not an article of exportation." The defeat of the monarchists at the elections of 1877, after the " Seize Mai," and the departure from office of the duc Decazes, whose policy had tended to prepare the way for an alliance with. the tsar, changed the attitude of French diplomacy towards Russia . M . Waddington, the first Republican minister for foreign affairs, was not a Russophil, while Gambetta was ardently anti-Russian, and he, though not a minister, was exercising that preponderant influence in French politics which he retained until 1882, the last year of his life . Many Republicans considered that the monarchists, whom they had turned out, favoured the support of Russia not only as a defence against Germany, which was not likely to be effective so long as a friendly uncle and nephew were reigning at Berlin and at St Petersburg respectively, but also as a possible means of facilitating a monarchical restoration in France . Consequently at the congress of Berlin M . Waddington and the other French delegates maintained a very independent attitude towards Russia . They supported the resolutions which aimed at diminishing the advantages obtained by Russia in the war, they affirmed the rights of France over the Holy Places, and they opposed the anti-Semitic views of the Russian representatives .

The result of the congress of Berlin seemed therefore to draw France and Russia farther apart, especially as Gambetta and the Republicans now in power were more disposed towards an understanding with England . The contrary, however, happened . The treaty of Berlin, which took the place of the treaty of San Stefano, was the ruin of Russian hopes . It was attributed to the support given by Bismarck to the anti-Russian policy of England and Austria at the congress, the German chancellor having previously discouraged the project of an alliance between Russia and Germany . The consequence was that the tsar withdrew from the Dreikaiserbund, and Germany, finding the support of Austria inadequate for its purposes, sought an understanding with Italy . Hence arose the Triple Alliance of 1882, which was the

work of Bismarck, who thus became eventually the author of the Franco-Russian alliance, which was rather a sedative for the nervous temperament of the French than a remedy necessary for their protection . The twofold aim of the Triplice was the development of the Bismarckian policy of the continued isolation of France and of the maintenance of the situation in Europe acquired by the German empire in 1871 . The most obvious alliance for Germany was that with Russia, but it was clear that it could be obtained only at the price of Russia having a free hand to satisfy_ its ambitions in the East . This not only would have irritated England against Germany, but also Austria, and so might have brought about a Franco-Austrian alliance, and a day of reckoning for Germany for the combined rancours of two nations, left by 1866 and 187r . It was thus that Germany allied itself first The crisis of 1875 . with Austria and then with Italy, leaving Russia eventually to unite with France . As the congress of Berlin took in review the general situation of the Turkish empire, it was natural that the French delegates should formulate the position of France in Egypt .

Egypt/a q a Thus the powers of Europe accepted the maintenance of the condominium in Egypt,

financial and administrative, of England and France . Egypt, nominally a province of the Turkish empire, had been invested with a large degree of autonomy, guaranteed by an agreement made in 1840 and 1841 between the Porte and the then five great powers, though some opposition was made to France being a party to this compact . By degrees Austria, Prussia and Russia (as well as Italy when it attained the rank of a great power) had left the international control of Egypt to France and England by reason of the preponderance of the interests of those two powers on the Nile . In 1875 the interests of England in Egypt, which had hitherto been considered inferior to those of France, gained a superiority owing to the purchase by the British government of the shares of the khedive Ismail in the Suez Canal . Whatever rivalry there may have been between England and France, they had to present al united front to the pretensions of Ismail, whose prodigalities made him impatient of the control which they exercised over his finances . This led to his deposition and exile . The control was re-established by his successor Tewfik on the 4th of September 1899 . The revival ensued of a so-called national party, which Ismail for his own purposes had encouraged in • its movement hostile to foreign domination . In September 1881 took place the rising led by Arabi, by whose action an assembly of notables was convoked for the purpose of deposing the government authorized by the European powers . The fear lest the sultan should intervene gave an appearance of harmony to the policy of England and France, whose interests were too great to permit of any such interference . At the end of 1879 the first Freycinet cabinet had succeeded that of M . Waddington and had in turn been succeeded in September 188o by the first Ferry cabinet .

In the latter the foreign minister was M .

Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, an aged philosopher who had first taken part in politics when he helped to dethrone Charles X. in 183o . In September r881 he categorically invited the British government to join France in a military intervention to oppose any interference which the Porte might attempt, and the two powers each sent a war-ship to Alexandria . On the 14th of November Gambetta formed his grand ministpre, in which he was foreign minister . Though it lasted less than eleven weeks, important measures were taken by it, as Arabi had become under-secretary for war at Cairo, and was receiving secret encouragement from the sultan . On the 7th of January x882, at the instance of Gambetta, a joint note was presented by the British and French consuls to the khedive, to the effect that their governments were resolved to maintain the status quo, Gambetta having designed this as a consecration of the Anglo-French alliance in the East There-upon the Porte protested, by a circular addressed to the powers, against this infringement of its suzerainty in Egypt . Meanwhile, the assembly of notables claimed the right of voting the taxes and administering the finances of the country, and Gambetta, considering this as an attempt to emancipate Egypt from the financial control of Europe, moved the British government to join with France in protesting against any interference on the part of the notables in the budget . But when Lord Granville accepted this proposal Gambetta had fallen, on the 26th of January, being succeeded by M. de Freycinet, who for the second time became president of the council and foreign minister . Gambetta fell nominally on a scheme of partial revision of the constitution . It included the re-establishment of scrutin deliste, a method of voting to which many Republicans were hostile, so this gave his enemies in his own party their opportunity . He thus fell the victim of republican jealousy, nearly half the Re-publicans in the chamber voting against him in the fatal division . The subsequent debates of 1882 show that many of Gambetta's adversaries were also opposed to his policy of uniting with England an the Egyptian question .

Henceforth the interioraffairs of Egypt have little to do with the subject we are treating; but some of the incidents in France which led to the

English occupation of Egypt ought to be mentioned . M. de Freycinet was opposed to any armed intervention by France; but in the face of the feeling in the country in favour of maintaining the traditional influence of France in Egypt, his declarations of policy were vague . On the 23rd of February 1882 he said that he would assure the non-exclusive preponderance in Egypt of France and England by means of an understanding with Europe, and on the rxth of May that he wished to retain for France its peculiar position of privileged influence . England and France sent to Alexandria a combined squadron, which did not prevent a massacre of Europeans there on the r rth of June, the khedive being now in the hands of the military party under Arabi . On the 1th of July the English fleet bombarded Alexandria, the French ships in anticipation of that action having departed the previous day . On the 18th of July the Chamber debated the supplementary vote for the fleet in the Mediterranean, M. de Freycinet declaring that France would take no active part in Egypt except as the mandatory of the European powers . This was the occasion for the last great speech of Gambetta in parliament . In it he earnestly urged close co-operation with England, which he predicted would otherwise become the mistress of Egypt, and in his concluding sentences he uttered the famous " Ne rompez jamais l'alliance anglaise." A further vote, pro-posed in consequence of Arabi's open rebellion, was abandoned, as M. de Freycinet announced that the European powers declined to give France and England a collective mandate to intervene in their name . In the Senate on the 25th of July M . Scherer, better known as a philosopher than as a politician, who had Gambetta's confidence, read a report on the supplementary votes which severely criticized the timidity and vacillation of the government in Egyptian policy . Four days later in the Chamber M. de Freycinet proposed an understanding with England limited to the protection of the Suez Canal . Attacked by M .

Clemenceau on the impossibility of separating the question of the canal from the general Egyptian question, the ministry was defeated by a huge majority, and M. de Freycinet fell, having achieved the distinction of being the chief instrument in removing Egypt from the sphere of French interest . Some of the Republicans whose votes turned out M. de Freycinet wanted Jules Ferry to take his place, as he was considered to be a strong man in foreign policy, and Gambetta, for this reason, was willing to see his personal enemy at the head of public affairs . But this was prevented by M . Clemenceau and the extreme Left, and the new ministry was formed by M . Duclerc, an old senator whose previous official experience had been under the Second Republic . On its taking office on the 7th of August, the ministerial declaration announced that its policy would be in conformity with the vote which, by refusing supplies for the occupation of the Suez Canal, had overthrown M.'de Freycinet . The declaration characterized this vote as " a measure of reserve and of prudence but not as an abdication." Nevertheless the action of the Chamber—which was due to the hostility to Gambetta of rival leaders, who had little mutual affection, including MM. de Freycinet, Jules Ferry, Clemenceau and the president of the Republic, M . Grevy, rather than to a desire to abandon Egypt—did result in the abdication of France . After England single-handed had subdued the rebellion and restored the authority of the khedive, the latter signed a decree on the lath of January 1883 abolishing the joint control of England and France . Henceforth Egypt continued to be a frequent topic of debate in the Chambers; the interests of France in respect of the Egyptian finances, the judicial system and other institutions formed the subject of diplomatic correspondence, as did the irritating question of the eventual evacuation of Egypt by England . But though it caused constant friction between the two countries up to the Anglo-French convention of the 8th of April 1904, there was no longer a French active policy with regard to Egypt . The lost predominance of France in that country did, however, quicken French activity in other regions of northern Africa .

The

idea that the Mediterranean might become a French lake has, in different senses, been a preoccupation for France and for Algerian its rivals in Europe ever since Algeria became a French pul/cy. province by a series of fortuitous incidents—an insult offered by the dey to a French consul, his refusal to make reparation, and the occasion it afforded of diverting public attention in France from interior affairs after the Revolution of 183o . The French policy of preponderance in Egypt had only for a secondary aim the domination of the Mediterranean . The French tradition in Egypt was a relic of Napoleon's vain scheme to become emperor of the Orient even before he had made himself emperor of the West . It was because Egypt was the highway to India that under Napoleon III. the French had constructed the Suez Canal, and for the same reason England could never permit them to become masters of the Nile delta . But the possessors of Algeria could extend their coast-line of North Africa without seriously menacing the power which held Gibraltar and Malta . It was Italy which objected to a French occupation of Tunis . Algeria has never been officially a French " colony . It is in many respects administered as an integral portion of French territory, the governor-general, as agent of the central power, exercising wide jurisdiction . Although the Europeans in Algeria are less than a seventh of the population, and although the French are actually a minority of the European inhabitants—Spaniards prevailing in the west, Italians and Maltese in the east—the three departments of Constantine, Algiers and Oran are administered like three French departments . Consequently, when disturbances occurred on the borderland separating Constantine from Tunis, the French were able to say to Europe that the integrity of their national frontier was threatened by the proximity of a turbulent neighbour . The history of the relations between Tunis and France were set forth, from the French standpoint, in a circular, of which Jules Ferry was said to be the author, addressed by theforeignminister, M . Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire on the 9th of May 1881, to the diplomatic agents of France abroad .

The most important point emphasized by Tunis. the French minister was the

independence of Tunis from the Porte, a situation which would obviate difficulties with Turkey such as had always hampered the European powers in Egypt . In support of this contention a protest made by the British government in 1830, against the French conquest of Algiers, was quoted, as in it Lord Aberdeen had declared that Europe had always treated the Barbary states as independent powers . On the other hand, there was the incident of the bey of Tunis having furnished to Turkey a contingent during the Crimean War, which suggested a recognition of its vassalage to the Sublime Porte . But in 1864, when the sultan had sent a fleet to La Goulette to affirm his " rights " in Tunis, the French ambassador at Constantinople intimated that France declined to have Turkey for a neighbour in Algeria . France also in 1868 essayed to obtain control over the finances of the regency; but England and Italy had also large interests in the country, so an international financial commission was appointed . In 1871, when France was disabled after the war, the bey obtained from Constantinople a finnan of investiture, thus recognizing the suzerainty of the Porte . Certain English writers have reproached the Foreign Office for its lack of foresight in not taking advantage of France's disablement by establishing England as the preponderant power in Tunis . The fact that five-sixths of the commerce of Tunis is now with France and Algeria may seem to justify such regrets . Yet by the light of subsequent events it seems probable that England would have been diverted from more profitable undertakings had she been saddled with the virtual administration and military occupation of a vast territory which such preponderance would have entailed . The wonder is that this opportunity was not seized by Italy; for Mazzini and other workers in the cause of Italian unity. before the Bourbons ha,d been driven from Naples, had cast ayes on Tunis, lying over against the coasts of Sicily at a distance of barely too m., as a favourable field for colonization and as the key of the African Mediterranean . But when Rome became once more the capital of Italy, Carthage was not fated to fall again under its dominationand the occasion offered by France's temporary impotence was neglected . In 1875 when France was rapidly recovering, there went to Tunis as consul an able Frenchman, M .

Roustan, who became virtual ruler of the regency in spite of the resistance of the representative of Italy . French action was facilitated by the attitude of England . On the 26th of July 1878 M .

Wadding-ton wrote to the marquis d'Harcourt, French ambassador in London, that at the congress of Berlin Lord Salisbury had said to him—the two delegates being the foreign ministers of their respective governments—in reply to his protest, on behalf of France, against the proposed English occupation of Cyprus, " Do what you think proper in Tunis: England will offer no opposition." This was confirmed by Lord Salisbury in a despatch to Lord Lyons, British ambassador in Paris, on the 8th of August, and it was followed in October by an intimation made by the French ambassador at Rome that France intended to exercise a preponderant influence in Tunis . Italy was not willing to accept this situation . In January 1881 a tour made by King Humbert in Sicily, where he received a Tunisian mission, was taken to signify that Italy had not done with Tunis, and it was answered in April by a French expedition in the regency sent from Algeria, on the pretext of punishing the Kroumirs who had been marauding on the frontier of Constantine . It was on this occasion that M . Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire issued the circular quoted above . France nominally was never at war with Tunis; yet the result of the invasion was that that country became virtually a French possession, although officially it is only under the protection of France . The treaty of El Bardo of the 12th of May 1881, confirmed by the decree of the 22nd of April 1882, placed Tunis under the protectorate of France . The country is administered under the direction of the French Foreign Office, in which there is a department of Tunisian affairs . The governor is called minister resident-general of France, and he also acts as foreign minister, being assisted by seven French and two native ministers .

The annexation of Tunis was important for many reasons . It was the first successful achievement of France after the disasters of the Franco-German War, and it was the first enterprise of serious utility to France undertaken BxofAtefruslcap lon beyond its frontiers since the early

period of the Second territory . Empire . It was also important as establishing the hegemony of France on the southern shores of the Mediterranean . When M . Jules Cambon became governor-general of Algeria, his brother M . Paul Cambon having been previously French resident in Tunis and remaining the vigilant ambassador to a Mediterranean power, a Parisian wit said that just as Switzerland had its Lac des quatre Cantons, so France had made of the midland sea its Lac des deux Cambons . The jeu d'esprit indicated what was the primary significance to the French of their becoming masters of the Barbary coast from the boundary of Morocco to that of Tripoli . Apart from the Mediterranean question, when the scramble for Africa began and the Hinterland doctrine was asserted by European powers, the possession of this extended coast-line resulted in France laying claim to the Sahara and the western Sudan . Consequently, on the maps, the whole of north-west Africa, from Tunis to the Congo, is claimed by France with the exception of the relatively small areas on the coast belonging to Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Liberia, Germany and England . On this basis, in point of area, France is the greatest African power, in spite of British annexations in south and equatorial Africa, its area being estimated at 3,866,950 sq. m . (including 227,950 in Madagascar) as against 2,101,411 more effectively possessed by Great Britain .

The immensity of its domain on

paper is no doubt a satisfaction to a people which prefers to pursue its policy of colonial expansion without the aid of emigration . The acquisition of Tunis by France is also important as an example of the system of protectorate as applied to colonization . Open annexation might have more gravely irritated the powers having interests in the country . England, in spite of Lord Salisbury's suggestions to the French foreign minister, was none too pleased with France's policy; while Italy, with its subjects outnumbering all other European settlers in the regency, was in a mood to accept a pretext for a quarrel for the reasons already mentioned . Apart from these considerations the French government favoured a protectorate The Pro- tectorate because it did not wish to make of Tunis a second system . Algeria . While the annexation of the latter had excellent commercial results for France, it had not been followed by successful colonization, though it had cost France 160 millions sterling in the first sixty years after it became French territory . The French cannot govern at home or abroad without a centralized system of administration . The organization of Algeria, as departments of France with their administrative divisions, was not an example to imitate . In the beylical government France found, ready-made, a sufficiently centralized system, such as did not exist in Algeria under native rule, which could form a basis of administration by French functionaries under the direction of the Quai d'Orsay . The result has not been unpleasing to the numerous advocates in France of protectorates as a means of colonization . According to M .

Paul Leroy-

Beaulieu, the most eminent French authority on colonization, who knows Tunis well, a protectorate is the most pacific, the most supple, and the least costly method of colonization in countries where an organized form of native government exists; it is the system in which the French can most nearly approach that of English crown colonies . One evil which it avoids is the so-called representative system, under which senators and deputies are sent to the French parliament not only from Algeria as an integral part of France, but from the colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe and French India, while Cochin-China, Guiana and Senegal send deputies alone . These sixteen deputies and seven senators attach themselves to the various Moderate, Radical and Socialist groups in parliament, which have no connexion with the interests of the colonies; and the consequent introduction of French political controversies into colonial elections has not been of advantage to the oversea possessions of France . From this the protectorate system has spared Tunis, and the paucity of French immigration will continue to safeguard that country from parliamentary representation . After twenty years of French rule, of x20,000 European residents in Tunis, not counting the army, only 22,000 were French, while nearly 70,000 were Italian . If under a so-called representative system the Italians had demanded nationalization, for the purpose of obtaining the franchise, complications might have arisen which are not to be feared under a protectorate . But of all the results of the French annexation of Tunis, the most important was undoubtedly the Triple Alliance, into which Italy entered in resentment at having been The deprived of the African territory which seemed marked Triple Alliance. out as 'ts natural field for colonial expansion . The most manifest cause of Italian hostility towards France had passed away four years before the annexation of Tunis, when the reactionaries,who had favoured the restitution of the temporal power of the pope, fell for ever from power . The clericalism of the anti-republicans, who favoured a revival of the fatal policy of the Second Empire whereby France, after Magenta and Solferino, had by leaving its garrison at St Angelo, been the last obstacle to Italian unity, was one of the chief causes of their downfall . For after the war with Germany, the mutilated land and the vanquished nation had need to avoid wanton provocations of foreign powers . Henceforth the French Republic, governed by Republicans, was to be an anti-clerical force in Europe, sympathizing with the Italian occupation of Rome . But to make Italy realize that France was no longer the enemy of complete Italian unity it would have been necessary that all causes of irritation between the two Latin sister nations were removed .

Such causes of dissension did, however, remain, arising from economic questions . The maritime relations of the two chief Mediterranean powers were based on a treaty of

navigation of 1862—when Venice was no party to it being an Austrian port—which Crispi denounced as a relic of Italian servility towards Napoleon HI . Commercial rivalry was induced by the industrial development of northern Italy, when freed from Austrian rule . Moreover, the emigrant propensity of the Italians flooded certain regions of France with Italian cheap labour, with the natural result of bitter animosity between the intruders and the inhabitants of the districts thus invaded . The annexation of Tunis, coming on the top of these causes of irritation, exasperated Italy . A new treaty of commerce was nevertheless signed between the two countries on the 3rd of November 1881 . Unfortunately for its stability, King Humbert the previous week had gone to Vienna to see the emperor of Austria . In visiting in his capital the former arch-enemy of Italian unity, who could never return the courtesy, Rome being interdicted for Catholic sovereigns by the " prisoner of the Vatican," Humbert had only followed the example of his father Victor Emmanuel, who went both to Berlin and to Vienna in 1893 . But that was when in France the duc de Broglie was prime minister of a clerical government of which many of the supporters were clamouring for the restitution of the temporal power . King Humbert's visit to Vienna at the moment when Gambetta, the great anti-clerical champion, was at the height of his influence was significant for other reasons . Since the 7th of October 1879 Germany and Austria had been united by a defensive treaty, and though its provisions were not published until 1888, the two central empires were known to be in the closest alliance . The king of Italy's visit to Vienna, where he was accompanied by his ministers Depretis and Mancini, had therefore the same significance as though he had gone to Berlin also .

On the loth of May 1882 was signed the treaty of the Triple Alliance, which for many years

bound Italy to Germany in its relations with the continental powers . The alliance was first publicly announced on the 13th of March 1883, in the Italian Chamber, by Signor Mancini, minister for foreign affairs . The aim of Italy in joining the combination was alliance with Germany, the enemy of France . The connexion with Austria was only tolerated because it secured a union with the powerful government of Berlin . It effected the complete isolation of France in Europe . An understanding between the French Republic and Russia, which alone could alter that situation, was impracticable, as its only basis seemed to be the possibility of having a common enemy in Germany or even in England . But that double eventuality was anticipated by a secret convention concluded at Skiernewice in September 1884 by the tsar and the German emperor, in which they guaranteed to one another a benevolent neutrality in case of hostilities between England and Russia arising out of the Afghan question . It will be convenient here to refer to the relations of France with Germany and Italy respectively in the years succeeding the signature of the Triple Alliance . With Germany both Gambetta, who died ten weeks before the treaty was announced and who was a strong Russophobe, and his adversary Jules Ferry were inclined to come to an understanding . But in this they had not the support of French opinion . In September 1883 the king of Spain had visited the sovereigns of Austria and Germany: Alphonso XII., to prove that this journey was not a sign of hostility to France, came to Paris on his way home on Michaelmas Day on an official visit to President Grevy . Unfortunately it was announced that the German emperor had made the king colonel of a regiment of Uhlans garrisoned at Strassburg, the anniversary of the taking of which city was being celebrated by the emperor by the inauguration of a monument made out of cannon taken from the French, on the very eve of .

King Alphonso's arrival . Violent protests were made in Paris in the monarchical and in not a few republican journals; with the result that the king of Spain was hooted by the

crowd as he drove with the president from the station to his embassy, and again on his way to dine the same night at the Elysee . The incident was closed by M . Grevy's apologies and by the retirement of the minister of war, General Thibaudin, who under pressure from the extreme Left had declined to meet le roi uhian . Though it displayed the bitter hostility of the population towards Germany, the incident did not aggravate Franco-German relations . This was due to the policy of the prime minister„ Jules Ferry, who to carry it out made himself foreign minister in November, in the place of Challemel-Lacour, who resigned . HISTORY] Jules Ferry's idea was that colonial expansion was the surest means for France to recover its prestige, and that this could be obtained only by maintaining peaceful relations with all the powers of Europe . His consequent unpopularity caused his fall in April 1885, and the next year a violent change of military policy was marked by the arrival of General Boulanger at the ministry of war, where he remained, in the Freycinet and Goblet cabinets, from January 1886 to the 17th of May 1887 . His growing popu- larity in France was answered by Bismarck, who asked for an increased vote for the German army, indicating that he considered Boulanger the coming dictator for the war of revenge; so when the Reichstag, on the 14th of January 1887, voted the supplies for three years, instead of for the seven demanded by the chancellor, it was dissolved . Bismarck redoubled his efforts in the press and in diplomacy, vainly attempting to come to an under- standing with Russia and with more success moving the Vatican to order the German Catholics to support him . He obtained his vote for seven years in March, and the same month renewed the Triple Alliance . In April the Schnaebele incident seemed nearly to cause war between France and Germany .

The.com- missary-

special, an agent of the ministry of the interior, at Pagny-sur-Moselle, the last French station on the frontier of the annexed territory of Lorraine, having stepped across the boundary to regulate some official matter with the corresponding func- tionary on the German side, was arrested . It was said that Schnaebele was arrested actually on French soil, and on whichever side of the line he was standing he had gone to meet.the German official at the request of the latter . Bismarck justified the outrage in a speech in the Prussian Landtag which suggested that it was impossible to live at peace with a nation so bellicose as the French . In France the incident was regarded as a trap laid by the chancellor to excite French opinion under the aggres- sive guidance of Boulanger, and to produce events which would precipitate a war . The French remained calm, in spite of the growing popularity of Boulanger . The Goblet ministry resigned on the 17th of May 1887 after a hostile division on the budget, and the opportunity was taken to get rid of the minister of war, who posed as the coming restorer of Alsace and Lorraine to France . The Boulangist movement soon became anti-Republican, and the opposition to it of successive ministries improved the official relations of the French and German governments . The circum- stances attending the fall of President Grevy the same year strengthened the Boulangist agitation, and Jules Ferry, who seemed indicated as his successor, was discarded by the Republi- can majority in the electoral congress, as a revolution was threatened in Paris if the choice fell on " the German Ferry." Sadi Carnot was consequently elected president of the Republic on the 3rd of December 1887 . Three months later, on the 9th of March 1888, died the old emperor William who had personified the conquest of France by Germany . His son, the pacific emperor Frederick, died too, on the 15th of June, so the accession of William II., the pupil of Bismarck, at a moment when Boulanger threatened to become plebiscitary dictator of France, was ominous for the peace of Europe . But in April 1889 Boulanger ignominiously fled the country, and in March 1890 Bismarck fell . France none the less rejected all friendly overtures made by the young emperor .

In February 1891 his

mother came to Paris and was unluckily induced to visit the scenes of German triumph near the capital—the ruins of St Cloud and the Chateau of Versailles where the German empire was proclaimed . The incident called forth such an explosion of wrath from the French press that it was clear that France had not forgotten 1871 . By this time, however, France was no longer isolated and at the mercy of Germany, which by reason of the increase of its population while that of France had remained almost stationary, was, under the system of compulsory military service in the two countries, more than a match for its neighbour in a single- handed conflict . Even the Triple Alliance ceased to be a terror for France . An understanding arose between France and Russia preliminary to the Franco-Russian alliance, which became the pivot of French exterior relations until the defeat of Russia 899 in the Japanese war of 1904 . So the second renewal of the Triplice was forthwith answered by a visit of the French squadron to Kronstadt in July 1891 . While such were the relations between France and the principal party to the Triple Alliance, the same period was marked by bitter dissension between France and Italy . Tunis had made Italy Gallophobe, but the diplomatic France relations between the two countries had been courteous and Maly . until the death of Depretis in 1887 . When Crispi succeeded him as prime minister, and till 1891 was the director of the exterior policy of -Italy, a change took place . Crispi, though not the author of the Triple Alliance, entered with enthusiasm into its spirit of hostility to France . The old Sicilian revolutionary hastened to pay his respects to Bismarck at Friedrichsruh in October 1887, the visit being highly approved in Italy .

Before that the French Chamber had, in July 1886, by a small majority, rejected a new treaty of navigation between France and Italy, this being followed by the failure to renew the commercial treaty of 1881 . Irritating incidents were of constant occurrence . In 1888 a conflict between the French consul at Massowah and the Italians who occupied that Abyssinian

port induced Bismarck to instruct the German ambassador in Paris to tell M . Goblet, minister for foreign affairs in the Floquet cabinet, in case he should refer to the matter, that if Italy were involved thereby in complications it would not stand alone —this menace being communicated to Crispi by the Italian ambassador at Berlin and officially printed in a green-book . But after Bismarck's fall relations improved a little, and in April 1890 the Italian fleet was sent to Toulon to salute President Carnot in the name of King Humbert, though this did not prevent the French government being suspected of having designs on Tripoli . Italian opinion was again incensed against France by the action of the French clericals, represented by a band of Catholic " pilgrims " who went to Rome to offer their sympathy to the pope in the autumn of 1881, and outraged the burial-place of Victor Emmanuel by writing in the visitors' register kept at the Pantheon the words " Vive le pape." In August 1893 a fight took place at Aigues Mortes, the medieval walled city on the salt marshes of the Gulf of Lyons, between French and Italian workmen, in which seven Italians were killed . But Crispi had gone out of office early in 1891, and the ministers who succeeded him were more disposed to prevent a rupture between Italy and France . Crispi became prime minister again in December 1893, but this time without the portfolio of foreign affairs . He placed at the Consulta Baron Blanc, who though a strong partisan of the Triple Alliance was closely attached to France, being a native of Savoy, where he spent his yearly vacations on French soil . That the relations between the two nations were better was shown by what occurred after the murder of President Carnot in June 1894 . The fact that the assassin was an Italian might have caused trouble a little earlier; but the grief of the Italians was so sincere, as shown by popular demonstrations at Rome, that no anti-Italian violence took place in France, and in the words of the French ambassador, M . Billot, Caserio's crime seemed likely to further an under-standing between the two peoples .

The movement was very slight and made no progress during the

short presidency of M . Casimir-Perier . On the 1st of November 1894 Alexander III. died, when the Italian press gave proof of the importance attributed by the Triplice to the Franco-Russian understanding by expressing a hope that the new tsar would put an end to it . But on the loth of June 1895, the foreign minister, M . Hanotaux, intimated to the French Chamber that the understanding had become an alliance, and on the r7th the Russian ambassador in Paris conveyed to M . Felix Faure, who was now president of the Republic, the collar of St Andrew, while the same day the French and Russian men-of-war, invited to the opening of the Kiel Canal, entered German waters together . The union of France with Russia was no doubt one cause of the cessation of Italian hostility to France ; but others were at work . The inauguration of the statue of MacMahon at Magenta the same 'reek as the announcement of the Franco-Russian alliance showed that Franco-German relations . there was a disposition to revive the old sentiment of fraternity which had once united France with Italy . More important was the necessity felt by the Italians of improved commercial re- lations with the French . Crispi fell on the 4th of March 1896, after the news of the disaster to the Italian troops at Adowa, the war with Abyssinia being a disastrous legacy left by him . The previous year he had caused the withdrawal from Paris of the Italian ambassador Signor Ressmann, a friend of France, transferring thither Count Tornielli, who during his mission in London had made a speech, after the visit of the Italian fleet to Toulon, which qualified him to rank as a misogallo .

But with the final disappearance of Crispi the relations of the two Latin neighbours became more natural . Commerce between them had diminished, and the business men of both countries, excepting certain protectionists, felt that the commercial rupture was mutually prejudicial . Friendly negotiations were initiated on both sides, and almost the last

act of President Felix Faure before his sudden death—M . Delcasse being then foreign minister —was to promulgate, on the 2nd of February 1899, a new com- mercial arrangement between France and Italy which the French parliament had adopted . By that time M . Barrere was ambassador at the Quirinal and was engaged in promoting cordial relations between Italy and France, of which Count Tornielli in Paris had already become an ardent advocate . Italy remained a party to the Triple Alliance, which was renewed for a third period in 1902 . But so changed had its significance become that in October 1903 the French Republic received for the first time an official visit from the sovereigns of Italy . This reconciliation of France and Italy was destined to.have most important results outside the sphere of the Triple Alliance . The return visit which President Loubet paid to Victor Emmanuel state had gone to Rome since the pope had lost the temporal sovereignty, provoked a protest from the Vatican which caused the rupture of diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See, followed by the repudiation of the Concordat by an act passed in France, in 1905, separating the church from the state . While the decadence of the Triple Alliance had this important effect on the domestic affairs of France, its inception had pro- duced the Franco-Russian alliance, which took France out of its isolation in Europe, and became the pivot of its exterior policy . It has been noted that in the years succeeding the Franco-Prussian War the tsar Alexander II .

had shown a disposition to support France against German aggression, as though to make up for his neutrality during the war, which was so benevolent for Germany that his uncle William I. had ascribed to it a large

share of the German victory . The assassination of Alexander II. by revolutionaries in 1881 made it difficult for the new autocrat to cultivate closer relations with a Republican government, although the Third Republic, under the influence of Gambetta, to whom its consolidation was chiefly due, had repudiated that proselytizing spirit, inherited from the great Revolution, which had disquieted the monarchies of Europe in 1848 and had provoked their hostility to the Second Republic . But the Triple Alliance which was concluded the year after the murder of the tsar indicated the possible expediency of an understanding between the two great powers of the West and the East, in response to the combination of the three central powers of Europe, .though Bismarck after his fall revealed that in 1884 a secret treaty was concluded between Germany and Russia, which was, however, said to have in view a war between England and Russia . Internal dissension on the subject of colonial policy in the far East, followed by the fall of Jules Ferry and the Boulangist agitation were some of the causes which prevented France from strengthening its position in Europe by seeking a formal understanding with Russia in the first part of the reign of Alexander III . But when the Boulangist movement came to an end, entirely from the incompetency of its leader, it behoved the government of the Republic to find a means of satisfying the strong patriotic sentiment revealed in the nation, which, directed by a capable and daring soldier, would have swept away the parliamentary republic and estab- lished a military dictatorship in its place . The Franco-Russian understanding provided that means, and Russia was ready for it,, having become, by the termination in ago of the secret treaty with Germany, not less isolated in Europe than Fratice . In July 1891, when the French fleet visited Kronstadt the incident caused such enthusiasm throughout the French nation that the exiled General Boulanger's existence would have been forgotten, except among his dwindling personal followers, had he not put an end to it by suicide two months later at Brussels . The Franco-Russian understanding united all parties, not in love for one another but in the idea that France was thereby about to resume its place in Europe . The Catholic Royalists ceased to talk of the restitution of the temporal power of the pope in their joy at the deference of the government of the republic for the most autocratic monarchy of Christendom; the Boulangists, now called Nationalists, hoped that it would lead to the war of revenge with Germany, and that it might also be the means of humiliating England, as shown by their resentment at the visit of the French squadron to Portsmouth on its way home from Kronstadt . It is, however, extremely improbable that the understanding and subsequent alliance would have been effected had the Boulangist movement succeeded . For the last thing that the Russian government desired was war with Germany . What it needed and obtained was security against German aggression on its frontier and financial aid from France; so a French plebiscitary government, having for its aim the restitution of Alsace and Lorraine, would have found no support in Russia .

As the German chancellor, Count von Caprivi, said in the Reichstag on the 27th of November 1891, a few weeks after a Russian

loan had been subscribed in France nearly eight times over, the naval visit to Kronstadt had not brought war nearer by one single inch . Nevertheless when in 1893 the Russian fleet paid. a somewhat tardy return visit to Toulon, where it was reviewed by President Carnot, a party of Russian officers who came to Paris was received by the population of the capital, which less than five years before had acclaimed General Boulanger, with raptures which could not have been exceeded had they brought back to France the territory lost in 1871 . In November 1894, Alexander III. died, and in January 1895, M . Casimir-Perier resigned the presidency of the Republic, to which he had succeeded only six months before on the assassination of M . Carnot . So it was left to Nicholas II. and President Felix Faure to proclaim the existence of a formal alliance between France and Russia . It appears that in 1891 and 1892, at the time of the first public manifestations of friendship between France and Russia, in the words of M . Ribot, secret conventions were signed by him, being foreign minister, and M. de Freycinet, president of the council, which secured for France " the support of Russia for the maintenance of the equilibrium in Europe "; and on a later occasion the same statesman said that it was after the visit of the empress Frederick to Paris in 1891 that Alexander III. made to France certain offers which were accepted . The word " alliance " was not publicly used by any minister to connote the relations of France with Russia until the loth of June 1895, when M . Hanotaux used the term with cautious vagueness amid the applause of the Chamber of Deputies . Yet not even when Nicholas II. came to France in October 1896 was the word " alliance " formally pronounced In any of the official speeches . But the reception given to the tsar and tsaritsa in Paris, where no European sovereign had come officially since William of Germany passed down the Champs Elysees as a conqueror, was of such a character that none could doubt that this was the consecration of the alliance .

It was at last formally proclaimed by Nicholas II., on

board a French man-of-war, on the occasion of the visit of the president of the Republic to Russia in August 1897 . From that date until the formation of M . Briand's cabinet in 1909, nine different ministries succeeded one another and five ministers of foreign affairs; but they all loyally sup- . ported the Franco-Russian alliance, although its popularity diminished in France long before the war between Russia and Japan, which deprived it of its efficacy in Europe . In 1901 Nicholas II. came again to France and was the guest of President Russian animism Loubet at Compiegne . His visit excited little enthusiasm in the nation, which was disposed to attribute it to Russia's financial need of France; while the Socialists, now a strong party which provided the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry with an important part of its majority in the Chamber, violently attacked the alliance of the Republic with a reactionary autocracy . However anomalous that may have been it did not prevent the whole French nation from welcoming the friendship between the governments of Russia and of France in its early stages: Nor can there be any doubt that the popular instinct was right in according it that welcome . France in its international relations was strengthened morally by the understanding and by the alliance, which also served as a check to Germany . But its association with Russia had not the results hoped for by the French reactionaries . It encouraged them in their opposition to the parliamentary Republic during the Dreyfus agitation, the more so because the Russian autocracy is anti-Semitic . It also made a Nationalist of one president of the Republic, Felix Faure, whose head was so turned by his imperial frequentations that he adopted some of the less admirable practices of princes, and also seemed ready to assume the bearing of an autocrat . His sudden death was as great a relief to the parliamentary Republicans as it was a disappointment to the plebiscitary party, which anti-Dreyfusism, with its patriotic pretensions, had again made a formidable force in the land . But the election of the pacific and constitutional M .

Loubet as president of the Republic at this

critical moment in its history counteracted any reactionary influence which the Russian alliance might have had in France; so the general effect of the alliance was to strengthen the Republic and to add to its prestige . The visit of the tsar to Paris, the first paid by a friendly sovereign since the Second Empire, impressed a population, proud of its capital, by an outward sign which seemed to show that the Republic was not an obstacle to the recognition by the monarchies of Europe of the place still held by France among the great powers . Before M . Loubet laid down office the nation, grown more republican, saw the visit of the tsar followed by those of the kings of England and of Italy, who might never have been moved to present their respects to the French Republic had not Russia shown them the way . While the French rejoiced at the Russian alliance chiefly as a check to the aggressive designs of Germany, they also liked the association of Fiance with a power regarded as hostile to England . This traditional feeling was not discouraged by one of the chief artificers of the alliance, Baron Mohrenheim, Russian ambassador in Paris, who until 1884 had filled the same position in London, where he had not learned to love England, and who enjoyed in France a popularity rarely accorded to the diplomatic agent of a foreign power . An entente cordiale has since been initiated between England and France . But it is necessary to refer to the less agreeable relations which existed between the two countries, as they had some influence on the exterior policy of the Third Republic . England and France had no causes of friction within Europe . But in its policy of colonial expansion, during the last twenty years of the 19th century, France constantly encountered England allover theglobe . Thefirstimportant enterprisebeyond the seas seriously undertaken by France after the Franco- German War. was, as we have seen, in Tunis . But even before that question had been mentioned at the congress of Berlin, in 1878, France had become involved in an adventure in the Far East, which in its developments attracted more public attention at home than the extension of French territory in northern Africa .

Had these pages been written before the end of the 19th century it would have seemed necessary to trace the operations of France in Indo-China with not less detail than has been given to the establishment of the protectorate in Tunis . But French hopes of

founding a great empire in the Far East came to an end with the partial resuscitation of China and the rise to power of Japan . As we have seen, Jules Ferry's idea was that in colonial expansion France would find the hest. means of recovering prestige after the defeat of 1870-71 :n the years of recuperation when it was essential to be diverted from European complications . Jules Ferry was not a friend of Gambetta, in spite of later republican legends . But the policy of colonial expansion in Tunis and in Indo-China, associated with Ferry's name, was projected by Gambetta to give satisfaction to France for the necessity, imposed, in his opinion, on the French government, of taking its lead in foreign affairs from Berlin . How Jules Ferry developed that system we know now from Bismarck's subsequent expressions of regret at Ferry's fall . He believed that, had Ferry remained in power, an amicable arrangement would have been made between France and Germany, a formal agreement having been almost concluded to the effect that France should maintain peaceable and friendly relations with Germany, while Bismarck supported France in Tunis, in Indo-China and generally in its schemes of oversea colonization . Even though the friendly attitude of Germany towards those schemes was not official the contrast was manifest between the benevolent tone of the German press and that of the English, which was generally hostile . Jules Ferry took his stand on the position that his policy was one not of colonial conquest, but of colonial conservation, that without Tunis, Algeria was insecure, that without Tongking and Annam, there was danger of losing Cochin-China, where the French had been in possession since 1861 . It was on the Tongking question that Ferry fell . On the 3oth of March x885,onthe news of the defeat of the French troops at Lang-Son, the Chamber refused to vote the money for carrying on the campaign by a majority of 306 to 149 . Since that day public opinion in France has made amends to the memory of Jules Ferry .

His'patriotic foresight has been extolled .

Criticism has not been spared for the opponents of his policy in parliament of whom the most conspicuous, M . Clemenceauand M . Ribot, have survived to take a leading part in public affairs in the loth century . The attitude of the Parisian press, which compared Lang-Son with Sedan and Jules Ferry with Emile 011ivier, has been generally deplored, as has that of the public which was ready to offer violence to the fallen minister, and which was still so hostile to him in 1887 that the congress at Versailles was persuaded that there would be a revolution in Paris if it elected "the German Ferry" president of the Republic . Nevertheless his adversaries in parliament, in the press and in the street have been justified—not owing to their superior sagacity, but owing to a series of unexpected events which the most foreseeing statesmen of the world never anticipated . The Indo-China dream of Jules Ferry might have led to a magnificent empire in the East to compensate for that which Dupleix lost and Napoleon failed to reconquer . The Russian alliance, which came at the time when Ferry's policy was justified in the eyes of the public, too late for him to enjoy any credit, gave a new impetus to the French idea of establishing an empire in the Far East . In the opinion of all the prophets of Europe the great international struggle. in the near future was to be that of England with Russia for the possession of India . If Russia won, France might have a share in the dismembered Indian empire, of which part of the frontier now marched with that of French Indo-China, since Burma had become British and Tongking French . Such aspirations were not formulated in white-books or in parliamentary speeches . Indeed, the apprehension of difficulty with England limited French ambition on the Siamese frontier .

That did not prevent dangerous friction arising between England and France on the question of the

Mekong, the river which flows from China almost due south into the China Sea traversing the whole length of French Indo-China, and forming part of the eastern boundary of Upper Burma and Siam . The aim of France was to secure the whole of the left bank of the Mekong, the highway of commerce from southern China . The opposition of Siam to this delimitation Was believed by the French to be inspired by England, the supremacy of France on the Mekong river being prejudicial to British commerce with China . The inevitable rivalry between the two powers reached an acute crisis in 1893, the British ambassador in Paris being Lord Dufferin, who well understood the question, upper Burma having been annexed to India under Relations with England . his viceroyalty in 1885 . The matter was not settled until 1894; when not only was the French claim to the left bank of the Mekong allowed, but the neutrality of a 25-kilometre zone on the Siamese bank was conceded as open to French trade . It is said that at one moment in July 1893 England and France were more nearly at war than at any other international crisis under the Third Republic, not excluding that of Fashoda, though the acute tension between the governments was unknown to the public . The Panama affair had left French public opinion in a nervous condition . Fantastic charges were brought not only in the press, but in the chamber of deputies, against newspapers and politicians of having accepted bribes from the British government . At the general election in August and September 1893 M . Clemenceau was pursued into his distant constituency in the Var by a crowd of Parisian politicians, who brought about his defeat less by alleging his connexion with the Panama scandal than by propagating the legend that he was the paid agent of England . The official republic, which changed its prime minister three times and its foreign minister twice in 1893, M .

Develle filling that

post in the Ribot and Dupuy ministries and M . Casimir-Wrier in his own, repudiated with energy the calumnies as to the attempted interference of England in French domestic affairs . But the successive governments were not in a mood to make concessions in foreign questions, as all France was under the glamour of the preliminary manifestations of the Russian alliance . This was seen, a few weeks after the elections, in the wild enthusiasm with which Paris received Admiral Avelane and his officers, who had brought the Russian fleet to Toulon to return the visit of the French fleet to Kronstadt in 1891 . The death of Marshal MacMahon, who had won his first renown in the Crimea, and his funeral at the Invalides while the Russians were in Paris, were used to emphasize the fact that the allies before Sebastopol were no longer friends . The projector of the French empire in the Far East did not live to see this phase of the seeming justification of the policy which had cost him place and popularity . Jules Ferry had died on the 17th of March 1893, only three weeks after his triumphant rehabilitation in the political world by his election to the presidency of the Senate, the second post in the state . The year he died it seemed as though with the active aid of Russia and the sympathy of Germany the possessions of France in south-eastern Asia might have indefinitely expanded into southern China . A few years later the defeat of Russia by Japan and the rise of the sea-power of the Japanese practically ended the French empire in Indo-China . What the French already had at the end of the last century is virtually guaranteed to them only by the Anglo-Japanese alliance . It is in the irony of things that these possessions which were a sign of French rivalry with England should now be secured to France by England's friendliness . For it is now recognized by the French that the defence of Indo-China is impossible .

Had the French dream been realized of a large expansion of territory into southern China, the success of the new empire would have been based on free

Chinese labour . This might African polio,. have counterbalanced an initial obstacle to all French colonial schemes, more important than those which arise from international difficulties--the reluctance of the French to establish themselves as serious colonists in their oversea possessions . We have noted how Algeria, which is nearer to Toulon and Marseilles than are Paris and Havre, has been comparatively neglected by the French,, after eighty years of occupation, in spite of the amenity of its climate and its soil for European settlers . The new French colonial school advocates the withdrawal of France from adventures in distant tropical countries which can be reached only by long sea voyages, and the.concentration of French activity in the northern half of the African continent . Madagascar is, as we have seed, counted as Africa in computing the area of French colonial territory . But it lies entirely outside the. scheme of African colonization, and in spite of the loss of life and money incurred in its conquest, its retention is not popular with the new school, although the first claim of France to it was "as long ago as the reign of Louis XIII., when in 1642 a company was founded underthe protection of Richelieu for the colonization of the island . The French of the 19th and loth centuries may well be considered less enterprising in both hemispheres than were their ancestors of the 17th,' and Madagascar, after having been the cause of much ill-feeling between England and France under the Third Republic down to the time of its formal annexation, by the law of the 9th of August 1896, is not now the object of much interest among French politicians . On the African continent it is different . When the Republic succeeded to the Second Empire the French African possessions outside Algiers were inconsiderable in area . The chief was Senegal, which though founded as a French station under Louis XIII., was virtually the. creation of Faidherbe under the Second Empire, even in a greater degree than were Tunis and Tongking of Jules Ferry under the Third Republic . There was also Gabun, which is now included in French Congo . Those outposts in the tropics became the starting-points for the expansion of a French sphere of influence in north Africa, which by the beginning of the loth century made France the nominal possessor of a vast territory stretching from the equatorial region on the gulf of Guinea to the Mediterranean .

A large portion of it is of no importance, including the once mysterious

Timbuktu and the wilds of the waterless Sahara desert . But the steps whereby these wide tracts of wilderness and of valuable territory came to French be marked on the maps in French colours, by inter- and national agreement, are important, as they were English associated with the last serious official dispute between rivalry . England and France before the period of entente . M . Hanotaux, who was foreign minister for the then unprecedented term of four years, from 1894 to 1898, with one short interval of a few moths, has thrown an instructive light on the feeling with which French politicians up to the end of the 19th century regarded England . He declared in 19o9, with the high authority of one who was during years of Anglo-French tension the mouth-piece of the Republic in its relations with other powers, that every move in the direction of colonial expansion made by France disquieted and irritated England . He complained that when France, under the stimulating guidance of Jules Ferry, undertook the reconstitution of an oversea domain, England barred the way—in Egypt, in Tunis, in Madagascar, in Indo-China, in the . Congo, in Oceania . Writing with the knowledge of an ex-foreign minister, who had enjoyed many years of retirement to enable him to weigh his words, M . Hanotaux asserted without any qualification that when he took office England " had conceived a triple design, to assume the position of heir to the Portuguese possessions in Africa, to destroy the independence of the South African republics, and to remain in perpetuity in Egypt." We have not to discuss the truth of those propositions, we have only to note the tendency of French policy; and in so doing it is useful to remark that the official belief of the Third Republic in the last period of the 19th century was that England was the enemy of French colonial expansion all over the globe, and that in the so-called scramble for Africa English ambition was the chief obstacle to the schemes of France . M . Hanotaux, with the authority of official know-ledge, indicated that the English project of a railway from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo was the provocation which stimulated the French to essay a similar adventure; though he denied that the Marchand mission and other similar expeditions about to be mentioned were conceived with the specific object of preventing the accomplishment of the British plan .

The explorations of

Stanley had demonstrated that access to the Great Lakes and the Upper Nile could be effected as easily from the west coast of Africa as from other directions . The French, from their ancient possession of Gabun, had extended their operations far to the east, and had by treaties with European powers obtained the right bank of the Ubanghi, a great affluent of the Congo, as a frontier between their territory and that of the Congo Independent State . They thus found themselves, with respect to Europe, in possession of a region which approached the valley of the Upper Nile . Between the fall of Jules Ferry in 188 and the beginning of the Russian alliance came a period of decreased activity in French colonial expansion . The unpopularity of the Tongking expedition was one of the causes of the popularity of General Boulanger, who diverted the French public from distant enterprises to a contemplation of the German frontier, and when Boulangism came to an end the Panama affair took its place in the interest it excited . But the colonial party in France did not lose sight of the possibility of establishing upper a position on the Upper Nile . The partition of Africa Nile seemed to offer an occasion for France to take comexpiora- pensation for the English occupation of Egypt . In don . 1892 the Budget Commission, on the proposal of M . Etienne, deputy for Oran, who had three times been colonial under secretary, voted 300,000 francs for the despatch of a mission to explore and report on those regions, which had not had much attention since the days of Emin . But the project was not then carried out . Later, parliament voted a sum six times larger for strengthening the French positions on the Upper Ubanghi and their means of communication with the coast .

But Colonel

Monteil's expedition, which was the consequence of this vote, was diverted, and the 1,800,000 francs were spent at Loango, the southern port of French Congo, and on the Ivory Coast, the French territory which lies between Liberia and the British Gold Coast Colony, where a prolonged war ensued with Samory, a Nigerian chieftain . In September 1894, M . Delcasse being colonial minister, M . Liotard was appointed commissioner of the Upper Ubanghi with instructions to extend French influence in the Bahr-el-Ghazal up to the Nile . In addition to official missions, numerous expeditions of French explorers took place in Central Africa during this period, and negotiations were continually going on between the British and French governments . Towards the end of 1895 Lord Salisbury, who had succeeded Lord Kimberley at the foreign office, informed Baron de Courcel, the French ambassador, that an expedition to the Upper Nile was projected for the purpose of putting an end to Mandism . M . Hanotaux was not at this moment minister of foreign affairs . He had been succeeded by M . Berthelot, the eminent chemist, who resigned that office on the 26th of March 1896, a month before the fall of the Bourgeois cabinet of which he was a member, in consequence of a question raised in the chamber on this subject of the English expedition to the Soudan . According to M . Hanotaux, who returned to the Quai d'Orsay, in the Maine ministry, on the 29th of April 1896, Lord Salisbury at the end of the previous year, in announcing the expedition confidentially to M. de Courcel, had assured him that it would not go beyond Dongola without a preliminary understanding with France .

There must have been a misunderstanding on this point, as after reaching Dongola in September 1896 the Anglo-Egyptian army proceeded up the Nile in the direction of Khartoum . Before M . Hanotaux Marchand resumed office the Marchand mission had been formally mission. planned . On the 24th of February 1896 M . Guieysse, colonial minister in the Bourgeois ministry, had signed

Captain Marchand's instructions to the effect that he must march through the Upper Ubanghi, in order to extend French influence as far as the Nile, and try to reach that river before Colonel Colvile, who was leading an expedition from the East . He was also advised to conciliate the Mandi if the aim of the mission could be benefited thereby . M . Liotard was raised to the rank of governor of the Upper Ubanghi, and in a despatch to him the new colonial minister, M . Andre Lebon, wrote that the Marchand mission was not to be considered a military enterprise, it being sent out with the intention of maintaining the political line which for two years M . Liotard had persistently been following, and of which the establishment of France in the basin of the Nile ought to be the cr,Dwning reward . Two days later, on the 25th of June 1896, Captain Marchand embarked for Africa . This is not the place for a description of his adventures in crossing the continent or when Raahoda. he encountered General Kitchener at Fashoda, two months after his arrival there in July 1898 and a fortnight after the battle of Omdurman and the capture of Khartoum .

The news was made known to Europe by the

sirdar's telegrams to the British government in September announcing the presence of the French mission at Fashoda . Then ensued a period of acute tension between the French and English governments, which gave the impression to the public that war between the two countries was inevitable . But those who were watching the situation in France on the spot knew that there was no question of fighting . France was unprepared, and was also involved in the toils of the Dreyfus affair . Had the situation been that of a year later, when the French domestic controversy was ending and the Transvaal War beginning, England might have been in a very difficult position . General Kitchener declined to recognize a French occupation of any part of the Nile valley . A long discussion ensued between the British and French governments, which was ended by the latter deciding on the 6th of November 1898 not to maintain the Marchand mission at Fashoda . Captain Marchand refused to return to Europe by way of the Nile and Lower Egypt, marching across Abyssinia to Jibuti in French Somaliland, where he embarked for France . He was received with well-merited enthusiasm in Paris . But the most remarkable feature of his reception was that the ministry became so alarmed lest the popularity of the hero of Fashoda should be at the expense of that of the parliamentary republic, that it put an end to the public acclamations by despatching him ,ecretly from the capital—a somewhat simi'ar treatment having been accorded to General Dodds in 1893 on his return to France after conquering Dahomey . The Marchand mission had little effect on African questions at issue between France and Great Britain, as a great settlement had been effected while it was on its way across the continent . On the 14th of June 1898, the tlon Conveaofday before the fall of the Maine ministry, when M. iris, Hanotaux finally quitted the Quai d'Orsay, a conven- tion of general delimitation was signed at Paris by that minister and by the British ambassador, Sir Edmund Monson, which as regards the respective claims of England and France covered in its scope the whole of the northern half of Africa from Senegambia and the Congo to the valley of the Nile .

Comparatively little attention was paid to it amid the exciting events which followed, so little that M. de Courcel has officially recorded that three months later, on the eve of the Fashoda incident, Lord Salisbury declared to him that he was not sufficiently acquainted with the

geography of Africa to express an opinion on certain questions of delimitation arising out of the success of the British expedition on the Upper Nile . The convention of June 1898 was, however, of the highest importance, as it affirmed the junction into one vast territory of the three chief African domains of France, Algeria and Tunis, Senegal and the Niger, Chad and the Congo, thus conceding to France the whole of the north-western continent with the exception of Morocco, Liberia and the European colonies on the Atlantic . This arrangement, which was completed by an additional convention on the 21st of March 1899, made Morocco a legitimate object of French ambition, The other questions which caused mutual animosity between England and France in the decline of the 19th century had nothing whatever to do with their conflicting inter- The national interests . The offensive attitude of the entente English press towards France on account of the with Dreyfus affair was repaid by the French in their England. criticism of the Boer War . When those sentimental causes of mutual irritation had become less acute, the press of the two countries was moved by certain influences to recognize that it was in their interest to be on good terms with one another . The importance of their commerical relations was brought into relief as though it were a new fact . At last in 1903 state visits between the rulers of England and of France took place in their respective capitals, for the first time since the early days of the Second Empire, followed by an Anglo-French convention signed on the 8th of April 1904 . By this an arrangement was come to on outstanding questions of controversy between England and France in various parts of the world . France undertook not to interfere with the action of England in Egypt, while England made a like undertaking as to French influence in Morocco . France conceded certain of its fishing rights in Newfoundland which had been a perpetual source of irritation between the two countries for nearly two hundred years since the treaty of Utrecht of 1713 . In return England made several concessions to France in Africa, including that of the Los Islands off Sierra Leone and some rectifications of frontier on the Gambia and between the Niger and Lake Chad . Other points of difference were arranged as to Siam, the New Hebrides and Madagascar .

The convention of 1904 was on the whole more advantageous for England than for France . The free hand which England conceded to France in dealing with Morocco was a somewhat burdensome

gift owing to German interference; but the incidents which arise from the Franco-German conflict in that country are as yet too recent for any estimate of their possible consequences . One result was the retirement of M . Delcasse from the foreign office on the 6th of June 1905 . He had been foreign minister for seven years, a consecutive period of rare length, The only once exceeded in England since the creation of work of M . Delceacassb. the office, when Castlereagh held it for ten years, and one of prodigious duration in the history of the Third Republic . He first went to the Quai d'Orsay in the Brisson ministry of June 1898, remained there during the Dupuy ministry of the same year, was reappointed by M . Waldeck-Rousseau in his cabinet which lasted from June 1899 to June 1902, was retained in the post by M . Combes till his ministry fell in January 1905, and again by his successor M . Rouvier till his own resignation in June of that year . M.Delcasse had thusan uninterrupted reign at the foreign office during a long critical period of transition both in the interior politics of France and in its exterior relations . He went to the Quai d'Orsay when the Dreyfus agitation was most acute, and left it when parliament. was absorbed in dis- cussing the separation of church and state .

He saw the Franco- Russian alliance lose its popularity in the country even before the Russian defeat by the Japanese in the last days of his ministry . Although in the course of his official duties at the colonial office he had been partly responsible for some of the expeditions sent to Africa for the purpose of checking British influence, he was fully disposed to pursue a policy which might lead to a friendly understanding with England . In this he differed from M . Hanotaux, who was essentially the man of the Franco-Russian alliance, owing to it much of his prestige, including his election to the French

Academy, and Russia, to which he gave exclu- sive allegiance, was then deemed to be primarily the enemy of England . M . Delcasse on the contrary, from the first, desired to assist a rapprochement between England and Russia as pre- liminary to the arrangement he proposed between England and France . He was foreign minister when the tsar paid his second visit to France, but there was no longer the national unanimity which welcomed him in 1896 . M . Delcasse also accom- panied President Loubet to Russia when he returned the tsar's second visit in 1902 . But exchange of compliments between France and Russia were no longer to be the sole international ceremonials within the attributes of the French foreign office; M . Delcasse was minister when the procession of European sovereigns headed by the kings of England and of Italy in 1903 came officially to Paris, and he went with M . Loubet to London and to Rome on the president's return visits to those capitals— the latter being the immediate cause of the rupture of the con- cordat with the Vatican, though M .

Delcasse was essentially a concordatory minister . His retirement from the Rouvier ministry in June 1905 was due to pressure from Germany in consequence of his opposition to German interference in Morocco . His resignation took place just a week after the news had arrived of the destruction of the Russian fleet by the Japanese, which completed the disablement of the one ally of France . The impression was current in France that Germany wished to give the French nation a fright before the understanding with England had reached an effective

stage, and it was actually believed that the resignation of M . Delcasse averted a declaration of war . Although that belief revived to some extent the fading enmity of the French towards the conquerors of Alsace-Lorraine, the fear which accompanied it moved a considerable section of the nation to favour an understanding with Germany in preference to, or even at the expense of, friendly relations with England . M . Clemenceau, who only late in life came into office, and attained it at the moment when a better understanding with England was progressing, had been throughout his long career, of all French public men in all political groups, the mostconsistent friend of England . His presence at the head of affairs was a guarantee of amicable Anglo-French relations, so far as they could be protected by statesmanship . By reason of the increased duration and stability of ministries, the personal influence of ministers in directing the foreign policy of France has in one sense become greater in the loth century than in those earlier periods when France had first to recuperate its strength after the war and then to take its exterior policy from Germany . Moreover, not only have cabinets lasted longer, but the foreign minister has often been retained in a succession of them . Of the thirty years which in 1909 had elapsed since Marshal MacMahon retired and the republic was governed by republicans, in the first fifteen years from 1879 to 1894 fourteen different persons held the office of minister of foreign affairs, while six sufficed for the fifteen years succeeding the latter date .

One must not, however, exaggerate the effect of this greater stability in office-holding upon continuity of policy, which was well maintained even in the days when there was on an

average a new foreign minister every year . Indeed the most marked breach in the continuity of the foreign policy of France has been made in that later period of long terms of office, which, with the repudiation of the Concordat, has seen the withdrawal of the French protectorate over Roman Catholic missions in the East—though it is too soon to estimate the result . In another respect France has under the republic departed a long way from a tradition of the Quai d'Orsay . It no longer troubles itself on the subject of nationalities . Napoleon III., who had more French temperament than French blood in his constitution, was an idealist on this question, and one of the causes of his own down-fall and the defeat of France was his sympathy in this direction with German unity . Since Sedan little has been done in France to further the doctrine of nationalities . A faint echo of it was heard during the Boer war, but French sympathy with the struggling Dutch republics of South Africa was based rather on anti-English sentiment than on any abstract theory . (J . E . C . B.) But the writers of history are as yet very inexpert; the Histoire generate des rois de France of Bernard de Girard, seigneur de Hainan 1576), the Grandes Annales de France of Francois de Belleforest (1579), the Inventaire general de l'histoire de France of Jean de Serres (1597), the Histoire generale de France depuis Pharamond of Scipion Dupleix (1621-1645), the Histoire de France (1643–1651) of Francois Eudes de Mezeray, and above all his Abrege chronologique de l'histoire HISTORIOGRAPHY] de France (1668), are compilations which were eagerly read when they appeared, but are worthless nowadays . Historical research lacked method, leaders and trained workers; it found them all in the 17th century, the golden age of learning which was honoured alike by laymen, priests and members of the monastic orders, especially the Benedictines of the congregation of St Maur .

The publication of

original documents was carried on with enthusiasm . To Andre Duchesne we owe two great collections of chronicles: the Historiae Normannorum scriptores antiqui (1619) and the Historiae Francorum scriptores, continued by his son Francois (5 vols., 1636—1649) . These publications were due to a part only of his prodigious activity; his papers and manuscripts, preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, are an inexhaustible mine . Charles du Fresne, seigneur du Cange, published Villehardouin (1657) and Joinville (1668) ; Etienne Baluze, the Capitularia regum Francorum (1674), the Nova collectio conciliorum (1677), the Vitae paparum Avenionensium (1693) . The clergy were very much aided in their work by their private libraries and by their co-operation; Pere Philippe Labbe published his Bibliotheca nova manuscriptorum (1657), and began (1671) his Collection des conciles, which was successfully completed by his colleague Pere Cossart (18 vols.) . In 1643 the Jesuit Jean Bolland brought out vol. i. of the Acta sanctorum, a vast collection of stories and legends which has not yet been completed beyond the 4th of November . (See BOLLANDISTS.) The Benedictines, for their part, published the Acta sanctorum ordinis sancti Benedicti (9 vols., 1668—1701) . One of the chief editors of this collection, Dom Jean Mabillon, published on his own account the Vetera analecta (4 vols., 1675—1685) and prepared the Annales ordinis sancti Benedicti (6 vols., 1703—1793) . To Dom Thierri Ruinart we owe good editions of Gregory of Tours and Fredegarius (1699) . The learning of the 17th century further inaugurated those specialized studies which are important aids to history . Mabillon in his De re diplomatica (1681) creates the science of documents or diplomatics . Adrien de Valois lays a sound foundation for historical geography by his critical edition of the Notitia Galliarum (1675) .

Numismatics finds an en-lightened pioneer in Francois Leblanc (Traite historique des monnaies de France, 1690) . Du Cange, one of the greatest of the French scholars who have studied the middle ages, has defined terms bearing on institutions in his Glossarium mediae et infimae latinilalis (1678), recast by the Benedictines (1733), with an important supplement by Dom Carpentier (1768), republished twice during the 19th century, with additions, by F . Didot (184o-185o), and by L . Favre at Niort (1883—1888) ; this work is still indispensable to every student of medieval history . Finally, great biographical or bibliographical works were undertaken; the Gallia christiana, which gave a chronological list of the archbishops, bishops and abbots of the Gauls and of France, was compiled by two twin brothers, Scevole and Louis de Sainte-Marthe, and by the two sons of Louis (4 vols., 1656) ; a fresh edition, on a better plan, and with great additions, was begun in 1715 by Denys de Sainte-Marthe, continued throughout the 18th century by the Benedictines, and finished in the 19th century by Barthelemy Haureau (1856—1861) . As to the nobility, a series of researches and publications, begun by Pierre d'Hozier (d . 1660) and continued well on into the 19th century by several of his descendants, developed into the Armorial general de la France, which was remodelled several times . A similar work, of a more critical nature, was carried out by Pere Anselme (Histoire genealogique de la maison de France et des grands officiers de la couronne, 1674) and by Pere Ange and Pere Simplicien, who completed the work (3rd ed. in 9 vols., 1726—1733) . Critical bibliography is especially represented by certain Protestants, expelled from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes . Pierre Bayle, the sceptic, famous for his Dictionnaire critique (1699), which is in part a refutation of the Dictionnaire historique et giographique published in 1673 by the Abbe Louis Moren, was the first to publish the Nouvelles de la republique des lettres (1684—1687), which was continued by Henri Basnage de Beauval under the title of Histoire des ouvrages des savants (24 vols.) . In imitation of this, Jean Le Clerc successively edited a Bibliotheque universelleet historique (1686—1693), a Bibliotheque choisie (1703—1713), and a Bibliotheque ancienne et moderne (1714—1727) . These were the first of our " periodicals." The 18th century continues the traditions of the 17th .

The Benedictines still for some time hold the first place . Dom Edmond Martene visited numerous archives (which were then closed) in France and neighbouring countries, and

drew from them the material for two important collections: Thesaurus novus anecdotorum (9 vols., 1717, in collaboration with Dom Ursin Durand) and Veterum scriptorum collectio (9 vols., 1724—1733) . Dom Bernard de Montfaucon also travelled in search of illustrated records of antiquity; private collections, among others the celebrated collection of Gaignieres (now in the Bibliotheque Nationale), provided him with the illustrations which he published in his Monuments de la monarchie frantoise (5 vols., 129—1733) . The text is in two languages, Latin and French . Dom Martin Bouquet took up the work begun by the two Duchesnes, and in 1738 published vol. i. of the Historians of France (Rerum Gallicarum et Francicarum scriptores), an enormous collection which was intended to include all the sources of the history of France, grouped under centuries and reigns . He produced the first eight volumes himself; his work was continued by several90.E collaborators, the most active of whom was Dom Michel J . Brial, and already comprised thirteen volumes when it was interrupted by the Revolution . In 1733, Antoine Rivet de La Grange produced vol. i. of the Histoire littiraire de la France, which in 1789 numbered twelve volumes . While Dom C . Francois Toustaint and Dom Rene Prosper Tassin published a Nouveau Traite de diplomatique (6 vols., 1750—1765), others were undertaking the Art de verifier les dates (1750; new and much enlarged edition in 1770) . Still others, with more or less success, attempted histories of the provinces . In the second half of the 18th century, the ardour of the Benedictines of St Maur diminished, and scientific work passed more and more into the hands of laymen .

The Academie des

Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, founded in 1663 and reorganized in 1701, became its chief instrument, numbering among its members Denis Francois Secousse, who continued the collection of Ordonnances des rois de France, begun (1723) by J. de Lauriere; J.-B. de La Curne de Sainte Palaye (Memoires sur l'ancienne chevalerie, 1759—1781; Glossaire de la longue francaise depuis son origine usqu'a la fin de Louis XI V, printed only in 1875—t882); J.-B. d'Anville (Notice sur l'ancienne Gaule tiree des monuments, 1760) ; and L . G. de Brequigny, the greatest of them all, who continued the publication of the Ordonnances, began the Table chronologique des diplhmes concernant l'histoire de France (3 vols., 1769—1783), published the Diplomata, chartae, ad res Francicas specialities (1791, with the collaboration of La Porte du Theil), and directed fruitful researches in the archives in London, to enrich the Cabinet des thanes, where Henri Bertin (1719—1792), an enlightened minister of Louis XV., had in 1764 set himself the task of collecting the documentary sources of the national history . The example set by the religious orders and the government bore fruit . The general assembly of the clergy gave orders that its Proces verbaux (9 vols., 1767-1789) should be printed; some of the provinces decided to have their history written, and mostly applied to the Benedictines to have this done . Brittany was treated by Dom Lobineau (1707) and Dom Morice (1742); the duchy of Burgundy by Dom Urbain Plancher (1739—1748); Languedoc by Dom Dominique Vaissete (1730—1749, in collaboration with Dom Claude de Vic; new ed . 1873—1893); for Paris, its secular history was treated by Dom Michel Felibien and Dom Lobineau (1725), and its ecclesiastical history by the abbe Lebeuf (1745—1760; new ed . 1883—189o) . This ever-increasing stream of new evidence aroused curiosity, gave rise to pregnant comparisons, developed and sharpened the critical sense, but further led to a more and more urgent need for exact information . The Academie des Inscriptions brought out its Histoire de l'Academie avec lea memoires de literature tires de ses registres (vol. i . 1717; 55, vols. appeared before the Revolution, with five indexes; vide the Bibliographic of Lasteyrie, vol. iii. pp . 256 et seq.) . Other collections, mostly of the nature of bibliographies, were the Journal des savants (111 vols., from 1665 to 1792; vide the Table methodique by H .

Cocheris, 1860; the Journal de Trevoux, or Memoires pour l'histoire des sciences et des

beaux-arts, edited by Jesuits (265 vols., 1701—1790); the Mercure de France (977 vols., from 1724 to 1791) . To these must be added the dictionaries and encyclopaedias: the Dictionnaire de Moreri, the last edition of which numbers to vols . (1759); the Dictionnaire geographi ue, historique et politique des Gaules et de la France, by the abbe J . J . Expilly (6 vols., 1762—1770; unfinished); the Repertoire universel et raisonne de jurisprudence civile, criminelle, canonique et beneficiale, by Guyot (64 vols., 1775—1786; supplement in 17 vols., 1784—1785), reorganized and continued by Merlin de Douai, who was afterwards one of the Montagnards, a member of the Directory, and a count under the Empire . The historians did not use to the greatest advantage the treasures of learning provided for them; they were for the most part superficial, and dominated by their political or religious prejudices . Thus works like that of Pere Gabriel Daniel (Histoire de France, 3 vols., 1713), of President Henault (Abrege chronologique, 1744; 25 editions between 1770 and 1834), of the abbe Paul Francois Velly and those who completed his work (Histoire de France, 33 vols., 1765 to 1783), of G . H . Gaillard (Hisloire de la rivaliti de la France et de l'Angleterre, 11 vols., 1771—1777), and of L . P . Anquetil (1805), in spite of the brilliant success with which they met at first, have fallen into a just oblivion . A separate place must be given to the works of the theorists and philosophers: Histoire de l'ancien gouvernement de la France, by the Comte de Boulainvilliers (1727), Histoire critique de l'etablissement de la monarchic francoise clans les dent Gaules, by the abbe f .

B .

Dubos {1734); L'Esprit des lois, by the president de Montesquieu (1748); the Observations sur l'histoire de France, by the abbe de Mabl'y (r765); the Theorie de la politique de la monarchic frangaise, by Marie Pauline de Lezardiere (1792) . "These works have, if nothing else, the merit of provoking reflection . At the time of the Revolution this activity was checked . The religious communities and royal academies were suppressed, and France violently broke with even her most recent past, which was considered to belong to the ancien regime . When peace was re-established, she began the task of making good the damage which had been done, but a greater effort was now necessary in order to revive the spirit of the institutions which had been overthrown . The new state, which was, in spite of all, bound by so many ties to the former order of things, seconded this effort, and during the 906 whole of the 19th century, and even longer, had a strong influence on historical production . The section of the Institut de France, which in 1816 assumed the old name of Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, began to reissue the two series of the Memoires and of the Notices et extraits des manuscrits tires de la bibliotheque royale (the first volume had appeared in 1787) ; began (1844) that of the Memoires presentee par divers savants and the Comptes rendus (subject index 1857–1900, by G . Ledos, 1906) ; and continued the Recueil des historiens de France, the plan of which was enlarged by degrees (Historiens des croisades, obituaires, pouilles, comptes, &c.), the Ordonnances and the Table chronologique des diplontes . During the reign of Louis Philippe, the ministry pf the interior reorganized the administration of the archives of the departments, communes and hospitals, of which the Inventaires sommaires are a mine of precious information (see the Rapport au mil istre, by G . Servois, 1902) . In 1834 the ministry of public instruction founded a committee, which has been called since 1881 the Comite des Travaux historiques at scientifiques, under the direction of which have been published: (I) the Collection des documents inedits relatifs a l'histoire de France (more than 26o vols. have appeared since 1836); (2) the Catalogue general des manuscrits des biblioth2ques de France; (3) the Dictionnaires topographiques (25 vols. have appeared)); and the Repertoires archiologiques of the French departments (8 vols. between 1861 and 1888) ; (4) several series of Bulletins, the details of which will be found in the Bibliographie of Lasteyrie .

At the same time were founded or reorganized, both in Paris and the departments, numerous

societies, devoted sometimes partially and sometimes exclusively to history and archaeology; the Academie Celtique (1804), which in 1813 became the Societe des Antiquaires de France (general index by M . Prou, 1894) ; the Societe de 1'Histoire de France (1834) ; the Societe de l'Ecole des Charles (1839) ; the Societe de 1' Histoire de Paris at de 1'Ile-de-France (1874; four decennial indexes), &c . The details will be found in the excellent Bibliographic generale des travaux historiques et archeologiques public's par les societes savantes de France, which has appeared since 1885 under the direction of Robert de Lasteyrie . Individual scholars also associated themselves with this great literary movement . Guizot published a Collection de memoires relatifs a l'histoire de France (31 vols., 1824–1835); Buchon, a Collection des chroniques nationales francaises icrites en longue vulgaire du XIII° au XVI° siecle (47 vols., 1824–1829), and a Choix de chroniques et memoires sur l'histoire de France (14 vols., 1836–1841); Petitot and Monmerque, a Collection de memoires relatifs a l'histoire de France (131 vols., 1819–1829) ; Michaud and Poujoulat, a Nouvelle Collection de memoires pour servir a l'histoire de France (32 vols., 1836–1839) ; Barriere and de Lescure, a Bibliotheque de memoires relatifs a l'histoire de France pendant le X Ville siecle (30 vols., 1855–1875) ; and finally Berville and Barriere, a Collection des memoires relatifs a la Revolution Frangaise (55 vols., 1820–1827) . The details are to be found in the Sources de l'histoire de France, by Alfred Franklin (1876) . The abbe J . P . Migne in his Palro.ogia Latina (221 vols.,1844–1864), re-edited a number of texts anterior to the 13th century . Under the second empire, the ad-ministration of the imperial archives at Paris published ten volumes of documents (Monuments historiques, 1866; Layettes du tresor des chartes, 1863, which were afterwards continued up to 1270; Actes du parlement de Paris, 1863–1867), not to mention several volumes of Inventaires . The administration of the Bibliotheque imperiale had printed the Catalogue general de l'histoire de France (lo vols., 1855–187o; vol. xi., containing the alphabetical index to the names of the authors, appeared in 1895) . Other countries also supplied a nurnber of useful texts; there is much in the English Rolls series, in the collection of Chroniques beiges, and especially in the Monumenta Germaniae historica .

At the same time the scope of history and its

auxiliary sciences becomes more clearly defined ; the Ecole des Chartes produces some excellent palaeographers, as for instance Natalis de Wailly (Elements de paleographie, 1838), and L . Delisle (q.v.), who has also left traces of his profound researches in the most varied departments of medieval history (Bibliographic des travaux de M . Leopold Delisle, 1902); Anatole de Barthelemy made a study of coins and medals, Douet d'Arcq and G . Demay of seals . The works of Alexandre Lenoir (Musee des monuments frangais, 1800–1822), of Arcisse de Caumont (Histoire de l'architecture du moyen dge, 1837; Abecedaire ou rudiment d'archeologie, 185o), of A . Napoleon Didron (Annales archiologiques, 1844), of Jules Quicherat (Melanges d'archeologie et d'histoire, published after his death, 1886), and the dictionaries of Viollet le Duc (Dictionnaire raisonne de 1'architecture frwncaise, 1853–1868; Dictionnaire du mobilier frangais, 1855) displayed to the best advantage one of the most brilliant sides of the French intellect, while other sciences, such as geology, anthropology, the comparative study of languages, religions and folk-lore, and political economy, continued to enlarge the horizon of history . The task of writing the general history of a country became more and more difficult, especially for one man, but the task was none the less undertaken by several historians, and by some of eminence . Francois Guizot treated of the Histoire de la civilisation en France (1828–183o) ; Augustin Thierry after the Recits des temps merovingiens (184o) published the Monuments de l'histoire du tiers etat (1849–1856), the introduction to which was expanded into a book (1855) ; Charles Simonde [HISTORIOGRAPHY de Sismondi produced a mediocre Histoire des frangais in 31 vols . (182I–1844), and Henri Martin a Histoire de France in 16 vols . (1847–1854), now of small use except for the two or three last centuries of the ancien regime . Finally J . Michelet, in his Histoire de France (17 vols., 1833–1856) and his Histoire de la Revolution (7 vols., 1847–1853), aims at reviving the very soul of the nation's past .

After the Franco-German War begins a better organization of scientific, studies, modelled on that of Germany . The Ecole des Hautes Etudes, established in 1868, included in its

programme the critical study of the sources, both Latin and French, of the history of France; and from the seminaire of Gabriel Monod came men of learning, already prepared by studying at the Ecole des Chartes: Paul Viollet, who revived the study of the history of French law; Julien Havet, who revived that of Merovingian diplomatics; Arthur Giry, who resumed the study of municipal institutions where it had been left by A . Thierry, prepared the Annales carolingiennes (written by his pupils, Eckel, Favre, Lauer, Lot, Poupardin), and brought back into honour the study of diplomatics (Manuel de diplomatique, 1894) ; Auguste Molinier, author of the Sources de l'histoire de France (19o2–1904; general index, 1906), &c . Auguste Longnon introduced at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes the study of historical geography (Atlas historique de la France, in course of publication since 1888) . The universities, at last reorganized, popularized the employment of the new methods . The books of Fustel de Coulanges and Achille Luchaire on the middle ages, and those of A . Aulard on the revolution, gave. a strong, though well-regulated, impetus to historical production . The Ecole du Louvre (1881) increased the value of the museums and placed the history of art among the studies of higher education, while the Murree archeologique of St-Germain-en-Laye offered a fruitful field for research on Gallic and Gallo-Roman antiquities . Rich archives, hitherto inaccessible, were thrown open to students; at Rome those of the Vatican (Registres pontificaux, published by students at the French school of archaeology, since 1884) ; at Paris, those of the Foreign Office (Recueil des instructions donnees aux ambassadeurs depuis le traite de Westphalie, i6 vols., 1885–1901; besides various collections of diplomatic papers, inventories, &c.) . Those of the War Office were used by officers who published numerous documents bearing on the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, and on that of 187o–1871) . In 1904 a commission, generously endowed by the French parlement, was entrusted with the task of publishing the documents relating to economic and social life of the time of the Revolution, and four volumes had appeared by 1908 . Certain towns, Paris, Bordeaux, &c., have made it a point of honour to have their chief historical monuments printed .

The work now becomes more and more specialized . L'Histoire de France, by Ernest

Lavisse (1900, &c.), is the work of fifteen different authors . It is therefore more than ever necessary that the work should be under sound direction . The Manuel de bibliographic historique of Ch . V . Langlois (2nd edition, 1901–1904) is a good guide, as is his Archives de l'histoire de France (1891, in collaboration with H . Stein) . Besides the special bibliographies mentioned above, it will be useful to consult the Bibliotheque historique of Pere Jacques Lelong (1719; new ed. by Fevret de Fontette, 5 vols., 1768–1778); the Geschichte der historischen Forschung and Kunst of Ludwig Wachler (2 vols., 1812—1816) ; the Bibliographic de la France, established in 1811 (1st series, 1811-1856, 45 vols.; 2nd series, i vol. per annum since 1857) ; the publications of the Societe de Bibliographie (Polybiblion, from 1868 on, &c.); the Bibliographic de l'histoire de France, by Gabriel Monod (1888) ; the Repertoire of the abbe Ulysse Chevalier (Biobibliographie; new ed . 1903–1907; and Topobibliographie, 1894–1899) . Bearing exclusively on the middle ages are the Bibliotheca historica medii aevi of August Potthast (new ed . 1896) and the Manuel (Les Sources de l'histoire de France, 1901, &c.) of A . Molinier; but the latter is to be continued up to modern times, the 16th century having already been begun by Henri Hausser (1st part, 1906) .

Finally, various special reviews, besides teaching historical method by criticism and by example, try to keep their readers an courant with literary production; the Revue critique d'histoire et de litterature (1866 fol.), the Revue des questions historiques (1866 fol.), the Revue historique (1876 fol.), the Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, accompanied annually by a valuable Repertoire methodique (1898 fol.) ; the Revue de synthese historique (1900 fol.), &c . (C .