Documents for "French History":

• émigré in French history, a refugee, usually royalist, who fled the French Revolution and took up residence in a foreign land. The émigrés comprised all classes, but were disproportionately drawn from...

• Albret former duchy, SW France, in the Landes of Gascony. The powerful lords of Albret became kings of Navarre by the marriage (1484) of Jean d'Albret with Catherine de Foix, queen of Navarre, who also...

• Amboise, conspiracy of 1560, plot of the Huguenots (French Protestants) and the house of Bourbon to usurp the power of the Guise family, which virtually ruled France during the reign of the young Francis II. The plan, presumably worked out by Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé , provided for a march on the castle of Amboise, the abduction of King Francis II, and the arrest of François, duc de Guise, and his brother Charles, cardinal of Lorraine. The cardinal was...

• Aquitaine Lat. Aquitania, former duchy and kingdom in SW France. Julius Caesar conquered the Aquitani, an Iberian people of SW Gaul, in 56 BC The province that he created occupied the territory between the Garonne River and...

• Arles, kingdom of was formed in 933, when Rudolf II, king of Transjurane Burgundy , united the kingdom of Provence or Cisjurane Burgundy to his lands and established his capital at Arles. Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II annexed the kingdom to the Holy Roman Empire in 1034, but few of his successors troubled to be crowned as king of Arles. The imperial rulers exercised little control, and the component parts of the...

• Armagnacs and Burgundians opposing factions that fought to control France in the early 15th cent. The rivalry for power between Louis d' Orléans , brother of the recurrently insane King Charles VI, and his cousin John the Fearless , duke of Burgundy, led to Louis's murder in 1407. In the conflicts that followed, the partisans of Charles d' Orléans , son of Louis, were led by Charles's father-in-law, Bernard VII , count of Armagnac, after whom they were named. The followers of the duke of Burgundy, or Burgundians, were allied with members of the lower classes, notably the Cabochiens , who were particularly strong in Paris. Open civil war between the two groups broke out in 1411. John the Fearless at first held control of the government, but in 1413 the Cabochiens were ousted by...

• Arras, Treaty of 1 Treaty of 1435, between King Charles VII of France and Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy. Through it, France and Burgundy became reconciled. Philip deserted his English allies and recognized Charles as king of France. In return, Philip received the Somme towns and was...

• assignats paper currency issued during the French Revolution. To redeem the huge public debt and to counterbalance the growing deficit, the revolutionary constituent assembly issued (Dec., 1789) treasury notes, called assignats, to the amount of 400 million...

• Aubry de Montdidier in French legend, a French courtier of King Charles V, murdered c.1371 near Montargis by one Macaire. The animosity of Aubry's dog toward Macaire was so great that the king ordered trial by combat...

• Austrasia northeastern portion of the Merovingian kingdom of the Franks in the 6th, 7th, and 8th cent., comprising, in general, parts of E France, W Germany, and the Netherlands, with its capital variously at Metz, Reims, and Soissons. It originated in the partition...

• Bastille [O.Fr.,=fortress], fortress and state prison in Paris, located, until its demolition (started in 1789), near the site of the present Place de la Bastille. It was begun c.1369 by Hugh Aubriot,...

• Brunehaut see Brunhilda.

• Burgundians medieval French political faction: see Armagnacs and Burgundians.

• Cabochiens popular faction in Paris in the early 15th cent. Composed largely of small tradespeople and members of the butchers' and skinners' guilds, it was named after one of the leaders, Simon...

• Catholic League in French history: see Holy League.

• Chouans [Norman Fr.,=owls], peasants of W France who rose against the French Revolutionary government in 1793. One of their first leaders was Jean Cottereau, traditionally nicknamed Jean Chouan, marquis de...

• Committee of Public Safety see Reign of Terror.

• Commune of Paris insurrectionary governments in Paris formed during (1792) the French Revolution and at the end (1871) of the Franco-Prussian War. In the French Revolution, the Revolutionary commune, representing urban workers, tradespeople, and radical bourgeois, engineered the storming of the Tuileries and the arrest of the king. During...

• Consulate 1799-1804, in French history, form of government established after the coup of 18 Brumaire (Nov. 9-10, 1799), which ended the Directory. Three consuls were appointed to rule France—Napoleon Bonaparte...

• Cordeliers political club of the French Revolution. Founded (1790) as the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, it was called after its original meeting place, the suppressed...

• dauphin [Fr.,=dolphin], French title, borne first by the counts of Vienne (also called Viennois) and later by the eldest son of the king of France, or, if the dauphin came to die before the king, by the...

• Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen a fundamental document of French constitutional history, drafted by Emmanuel Sieyès , adopted by the Constituent Assembly on Aug. 26, 1789, and embodied in the French constitution of 1791 as a preamble. Its framers were much influenced by the American Declaration of Independence...

• Diamond Necklace, Affair of the scandal that took place at the court of King Louis XVI of France just before the French Revolution. An adventuress who called herself the comtesse de La Motte duped Cardinal de Rohan , the grand almoner, who was out of favor with Queen Marie Antoinette , into believing that she could regain the queen's regard for him. Mme de La Motte and her accomplices then engineered a sham correspondence between the cardinal and the queen and even arranged an...

• Directory group of five men who held the executive power in France according to the constitution of the year III (1795) of the French Revolution. They were chosen by the new legislature, by the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients; each year one director, chosen by lot, was to be replaced. The Directory was balanced by two...

• Dreyfus Affair the controversy that occurred with the treason conviction (1894) of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), a French general staff officer.

• East India Company, French 1664-1769, commercial enterprise planned by Jean Baptiste Colbert and chartered by King Louis XIV for the purpose of trading in the Eastern Hemisphere. It failed to found a colony on Madagascar but...

• enragés term applied to a small group of Parisian radical extremists in the French Revolution. Rising prices and food shortages provoked them in Feb.-Mar., 1793, to pillage the city's food stores. Led by...

• Estates-General see States-General.

• February Revolution 1848, French revolution that overthrew the monarchy of Louis Philippe and established the Second Republic. General dissatisfaction resulted partly from the king's increasingly reactionary policy, carried out after 1840 by François Guizot , and partly from the poor conditions of the working class, which were intensified by the economic crisis of 1846-47. A banquet campaign, organized to promote political opposition to the regime, led...

• Feuillants political club of the French Revolution. It emerged in July, 1791, when those Jacobins who opposed a petition for the dethronement of the king split off and began to meet at the former Feuillant convent. Its chief member was Antoine Barnave. The Feuillants advocated a constitutional monarchy. In Mar., 1792, Girondists helped overthrow the Feuillant ministry, which opposed war against Austria. From then on, the Feuillants were identified with the royalists and aristocrats and, after the fall (Sept., 1792) of the...

• Fifth Republic see France.

• Fourth Republic see France.

• Franks group of Germanic tribes. By the 3d cent. AD, they were settled along the lower and middle Rhine. The two major divisions were the Salian Franks in the north and the Ripuarian Franks in the south...

• French East India Company see East India Company, French.

• French Revolution political upheaval of world importance in France that began in 1789.

• French Union 1946-58, political entity established by the French constitution of 1946. It comprised metropolitan France (the 90 departments of continental France and Corsica); French overseas departments,...

• Fronde 1648-53, series of outbreaks during the minority of King Louis XIV, caused by the efforts of the Parlement of Paris (the chief judiciary body) to limit the growing authority of the crown; by the...

• Girondists or Girondins , political group of moderate republicans in the French Revolution , so called because the central members were deputies of the Gironde dept. Girondist leaders advocated continental war. Led at first by Jacques Brissot de Warville , the Girondists were known as Brissotins. Notable members were Pierre Vergniaud , Charles Dumouriez , and Jean Marie Roland de la Platière and Jeanne Manon Roland de la Platière. Representative of the educated, provincial middle class of the provinces, they were lawyers, journalists, and merchants who desired a constitutional government. Early in 1792 they succeeded,...

• Holy League in Italian history, alliance formed (1510-11) by Pope Julius II during the Italian Wars for the purpose of expelling Louis XII of France from Italy, thereby consolidating papal power. Venice, the Swiss cantons, Ferdinand II of Aragón, Henry VIII of England, and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I were the chief members of the...

• Hundred Days name given to the period after the return of the deposed French emperor, Napoleon I , from Elba. The Hundred Days are counted from Mar. 20, 1815, when Napoleon arrived in Paris, to June 28, 1815, when Louis XVIII was restored for the second time as king, following Napoleon's...

• intendant French administrative official who served as the chief royal representative in the provinces under the ancien régime. The intendants first gained importance under Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII's...

• Jacobins political club of the French Revolution. Formed in 1789 by the Breton deputies to the States-General, it was reconstituted as the Society of Friends of the Constitution after the revolutionary National Assembly moved (Oct., 1789) to...

• Jacquerie [Fr.,=collection of Jacques, which is, like Jacques Bonhomme, a nickname for the French peasant], 1358, revolt of the French peasantry. The uprising was in part a reaction to widespread poverty during the Hundred Years War. Peasants revolted against the écorcheurs (mercenaries who fought in the war), who pillaged their land, and the nobles, who made extortionate demands but did not protect them. Beginning around Beauvais, north of Paris, the revolt spread...

• July Revolution revolt in France in July, 1830, against the government of King Charles X. The attempt of the ultraroyalists under Charles to return to the ancien régime provoked the opposition of the middle classes, who wanted more voice in the government. The banker Jacques Laffitte was typical of the bourgeois who supported liberal journalists, such as Adolphe Thiers , in opposing the government. Liberal opposition reached its peak when Charles called on the reactionary and unpopular Jules Armand de Polignac to form a new ministry (Aug., 1829). When the chamber of deputies registered its disapproval, Charles dissolved the chamber. New elections (July, 1830) returned an even stronger opposition...

• June Days in French history, name usually given to the insurrection of workers in June, 1848. The working classes had played an important role in the February Revolution of 1848, but their hopes for economic and social reform were disappointed. Their increasing unrest was due to continued economic crisis and rising unemployment and to the inadequacy of the national...

• Katharine or Katherine. For some persons thus named, use Catherine.

• League or Holy League, in French history, organization of Roman Catholics, aimed at the suppression of Protestantism and Protestant political influence in France. It was foreshadowed as early as 1561 by the formation of...

• lettre de cachet formerly in French law, private, sealed document, issued as a communication from the king. Such a letter could order imprisonment or exile for an individual without recourse to courts of law. Of...

• Lorraine, Lower and Upper see Lotharingia.

• Lotharingia name given to the northern portion of the lands assigned (843) to Emperor of the West Lothair I in the first division of the Carolingian empire (see Verdun, Treaty of ). It comprised, roughly, the present Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Lorraine, Alsace, and NW Germany, including Aachen and Cologne. Lothair also received Italy and Burgundy (including Provence...

• Ménippée, Satyre see Satyre Ménippée.

• Maginot Line system of fortifications along the eastern frontier of France, extending from the Swiss border to the Belgian. It was named for André Maginot, who was French minister of war (1929-32) and who...

• mandats see assignats.

• Marmousets [Fr.,=little fellows], ministers of King Charles V of France, so called by the great nobles, who were contemptuous of their humble origins. Olivier de Clisson was the most prominent Marmouset. They...

• Montagnards see Mountain, the.

• Mountain, the in French history, the label applied to deputies sitting on the raised left benches in the National Convention during the French Revolution. Members of the faction, known as Montagnards [Mountain...

• Nantes, Edict of 1598, decree promulgated at Nantes by King Henry IV to restore internal peace in France, which had been torn by the Wars of Religion; the edict defined the rights of the French Protestants (see Huguenots ). These included full liberty of conscience and private worship; liberty of public worship wherever it had previously been granted and its extension to numerous other localities and to estates of...

• Neustria western portion of the kingdom of the Franks in the 6th, 7th, and 8th cent., during the rule of the Merovingians. It comprised the Seine and Loire country and the region to the north; its principal...

• Normans designation for the Northmen, or Norsemen , who conquered Normandy in the 10th cent. and adopted Christianity and the customs and language of France. Abandoning piracy and raiding, they adopted regular commerce and gave much impetus to...

• Père-Lachaise see cemetery ; La Chaise, François d'Aix de.

• parlement in French history, the chief judicial body under the ancien régime. The parlement consisted of a number of separate chambers: the central pleading chamber, called the Grand-Chambre; the...

• Plain, the in French history, term designating the independent members of the National Convention during the French Revolution. The name was applied to them because, in contrast to the radical Mountain , they occupied the lower benches of the chamber. The Plain was a leaderless mass and a pliable instrument, but it was numerically in the majority and consequently determined many votes. It played...

• Poison Affair in French history, scandal implicating a number of prominent persons at the court of King Louis XIV. It began with the trial of Marie Madeleine d'Aubray, marquise de Brinvilliers (c.1630-76). She...

• Praguerie 1440, revolt against King Charles VII of France, so called in allusion to the Hussite uprising in Prague. It was led by several great feudal lords, including the comte de Dunois, who resented the...

• Reign of Terror 1793-94, period of the French Revolution characterized by a wave of executions of presumed enemies of the state. Directed by the Committee of Public Safety, the Revolutionary government's Terror was essentially a war dictatorship,...

• Restoration in French history, the period from 1814 to 1830. It began with the first abdication of Emperor Napoleon I and the return of the Bourbon king, Louis XVIII, but was interrupted (1815) by Napoleon's...

• Rulers of France since 987 Rulers of France since 987 ( including dates of reign )

• Saint Bartholomew's Day, massacre of murder of French Protestants, or Huguenots , that began in Paris on Aug. 24, 1572. It was preceded, on Aug. 22, by an attempt, ordered by Catherine de' Medici , on the life of the Huguenot leader Admiral Coligny. The failure of the attempt led to formulation of the plan for a general massacre. The opportunity was furnished by the presence in Paris of many of the Huguenot nobility for the wedding of Henry...

• sans-culottes [French,=without knee breeches], a term loosely applied to the lower classes in France during the French Revolution. The name was derived from the fact that these people wore long trousers instead...

• Satyre Ménippée or Satire Ménippée , anonymous French political pamphlet (1st ed. 1594) circulated in Paris in the 1590s. A brilliant lampoon attacking the leaders of the League at the 1593 States-General, it helped sway Parisian...

• September massacres see French Revolution.

• Socialist parties in European history, political organizations formed in European countries to achieve the goals of socialism.

• States-General or Estates-General, diet or national assembly in which the chief estates (see estate ) of a nation—usually clergy, nobles, and towns (or commons)—were represented as separate bodies. The name survives in the Netherlands, where the two houses of parliament are known as...

• Stavisky Affair financial and political scandal that shook France in 1934. Serge Alexandre Stavisky, a swindler associated with the municipal pawnshop of Bayonne, sold huge quantities of worthless bonds. Despite...

• Tauroggen, Convention of see Taurage , Lithuania.

• Terror, Reign of see Reign of Terror.

• Thermidor 11th month of the French Revolutionary calendar. The coup of 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794) marked the downfall of Robespierre and the end of the Reign of Terror. The men who came into power were members of the old bourgeoisie and the newly rich who had profited from speculation and inflation. Extravagance in dress and manner prevailed. The Jacobins were suppressed, but the royalists did not gain power. The Thermidorians removed economic controls, thus unleashing inflation, and established some freedom of worship. The principal figures in the...

• Thierry I see Theodoric I.

• Third Republic see France.

• Vendémiaire first month of the French Revolutionary calendar. 13 Vendémiaire of the year iv (Oct. 5, 1795) was the day when Napoleon Bonaparte, until then an obscure general, won fame by putting down a serious insurrection. The Parisian electorate had...