How many barons were there in feudal 10th century France?

Around AD 1000, the king was technically owner of all of France but the land was 'leased' to his vassals: dukes, counts, lower barons, and these in turn leased it to lower barons and knights.

What I don't have an idea of are the numbers in this tree structure. How many vassals would the king have had (ten, twenty, a hundred), and in what ratio of dukes:counts:barons? How many vassals would a typical baron have? Were the dukes as powerful as the king in terms of vassals, ie was the king "primus inter pares"?

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No contemporary French record on the scale of the Doomsday Book commissioned by William I is known. However, given reasonable assumptions, good extrapolations for French dominions can likely be made from estimates obtained from this prosopography of the Doomsday Book

On page 23 it is noted:

In the Doomsday prosopography which follows hereafter some 19,500 records of continental names, excluding the king, have been analyzed as 2,468 different people. These include about 200 tenants-in-chief, and about 600 Englishmen.

with the total arrived at as (pp 15):

If one discounts the demesne tenancies of the churches - as distinct from bishops or abbots - the tenancies of Englishmen and those of the king some 19,500 remain.

This provides us with approximately 200 future baronies (the tenants-in-chief) and some 2,468 - 200 =~ 2,268 sub-tenancies. This is then an average of ~11 sub-tenancies per tenant-in-chief.

Assuming roughly equal land fertility for England and France, and given that the area of modern France (~643,000 km-squared) is nearly 5 times that of England (~130,000 km-squared), would yield estimates of approximately 1,000 tenants-in-chief and 11,000 sub-tenants for the area that is now modern France. These latter numbers perhaps help in understanding why it took so much longer for France to unify nationally compared to England.

Update

Evergalo points out below that the area of mainland France is about 20% less at just 544.000 km^2. This reduces the net numbers likewise by about 20% to perhaps 800 tenants-in-chief and 8,800 sub-tenants.

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In terms of the five peerage ranks - Duke, Marquess/Marquis, Earl/Count, Viscount, and Baron - Duke and Marquess were senior positions, with the Marches held by a Marquess/Marquis being border territories otherwise equivalent to a Duchy. The Counties and Baronies held by the junior peers were, originally, typically sub-divisions of the duchies and marches, some of which might be held directly by the monarch and heirs.

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During the 10th century, you had 5 dukedoms in France. At the dawn of the Capetian era, you had only 4 left, so in 1000 A.D. you should have 5 dukes, but the title Duke of Franks maybe was still used by the French kings/heirs. One more was added in 1088, and afterwards, lot of them went extinct, merged etc, tough act to follow.

Counts were usually quite low in the social ranking of medieval France, unless they were counts of Flanders, Champagne or Toulouse. Those were peers, but the oldest one I can find is from 1156. So I guess they were not very relevant before that. Barons were very numerous and almost "lowest" noble there was, for a fun fact, a Baronny could be sold to a commonner which then became Lord of the Baronny and not a Baron, the seller would lose its title and no such Baron would exist as long as no Nobles held the land where the seat of power was. Some Barons could hold several baron titles, and in fact, many Dukes and Counts were Barons and Marquis, too. A "typical" baron is thus quite a difficult term. They could be managing a little Fief with maybe 100 people living in it, or managing big regions. Depended on the title (baronies could be very unequal) and if the holder had more titles unders his belt.

The dukes were indeed as powerful and most of the time stronger than the king, it took a LONG time for France to become an absolute monarchy and for dukes to be much weaker than the King. BUT the French king was the first among peers, supposedly.

The dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine under House Plantagenet were the most famous powerful dukes that challenged the French Crown, most notably with the Hundred years war. Before that war, Richard the Lion-Hearted most famously challenged Philippe-Auguste and was considered much more than an equal for the french King. The Duchy of Aquitaine was at one time considered a different kingdom altogether, much richer than the rest of them, when one French King married to the heiress of the Duchy, most people wondered who was the most honored of the two, the Duchess who married to a King or the French who got Aquitaine "secured" ?

Other notable powerful dukes were the dukes of Burgundy, which at one point declared themselve Kings, look for Charles the Bold (and his famous demise). The dukes of Brittany were very important for the French Kings and were maybe the "loyalest" of Dukes for a long time. Dukes afterward varied in power, but the Bourbons were strong enough they became the dominent power in France after some times, so there's that.

In 1000 A.D. the French King was Robert the second who had small holdings as crown lands, he had thus much less income than all of the dukes, he inherited the duchy of Burgundy later in his reign (but his heir would give it to his brother) and managed to gain some counties, notably the county of Paris, he had authority upon his peers but most likely was too weak to keep them in line. He famously had trouble to claim the duchy of Burgundy and had to resort to a Church Ruling to inherit it, since he didn't manage to conquer it. He managed to stay the king by allying a lot with his vassals, which he treated more as equals. He's maybe one of the Capetian kings we know the less about, his wikipedia page should give you an headstart to find whatever else you wish.

Sources : List of dukedoms in France , Peers of France , Robert II (the French link has a lot more details)

How many barons were there in feudal 10th century France? - History

Two views of Susan Durant's bust of Triqueti. [Click to obtain larger images.]

Baron Henri-Joseph-François de Triqueti (1803-1874) was one of the major sculptors of the nineteenth-century, eminent both in France and England. Born in Conflans, Loiret, not far from Orléans, he was the son of a Piedmontese industrialist and diplomat, and had a privileged, cultured upbringing. In particular, his artistic inclinations were encouraged by the family's neighbour and friend, the Romantic painter Anne-Louis Girodet. Triqueti went on to study under Louis Hersent, and exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1831 onwards, winning a medal for sculpture at his debut. This marked the start of an illustrious career as "one of a new generation of Romantic sculptors who rejected the Neo-classical teaching of the école des Beaux-Arts in favour of learning from medieval and early Renaissance examples" (Lemaistre 416).

In 1834 Triqueti married Julia Forster, granddaughter of the eighteenth-century British neo-classical sculptor Thomas Banks, and daughter of the English ambassador's chaplain in Paris. He received various commissions through the ambassador himself, Lord Cowley. So the connection with England was established early on in his career. But in the same year (1834) he won the major commission for the bas-reliefs on the mighty bronze doors of the Madeleine. He was widely praised for these reliefs when they were installed in 1841. They have been taken as a political statement in support of the July Monarchy of Louis Philippe, "King of the French," previously Duke of Orléans (see Ribner 85-9). But they also show Triqueti to have been above all "a great religious sculptor" (Rykner). His success here resulted in his being awarded the Legion of Honour in 1842. The patronage of the princely Orléans family, then at the height of its power, brought him still more fame. For example, he sculpted the effigy for the tomb of the young Duke Ferdinand of Orléans in 1842, and was also commissioned to work on Napoleon's tomb at the Invalides. Although this project never materialised, he was at least responsible for two crucifixes there, one in bronze and the other in marble (see "France").

In 1848, Triqueti, "sculptor to the princes" and clearly a monarchist, was injured at the barricades. While he was recovering, he converted to Protestantism. He started to sign his name "Henry," and began to spend much of his time in England, where Louis Philippe had already sought refuge, and was now staying in the royal residence of Claremont in Surrey. Strong family connections between the exiles and the British royal family brought Triqueti into prominence here too: most important of all, in 1864, Queen Victoria commissioned him to collaborate with Sir George Gilbert Scott on transforming the Wolsey Chapel attached to St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle into the Albert Memorial Chapel (1864-74).

For most of the rest of his life, Triqueti worked on the design and execution of the chapel's marble ornamentation, and on Prince Albert's cenotaph itself. Isabelle Lemaistre characterises the latter as Gothic Revival. As she says, it shows "the recumbent figure of the Prince in medieval armour" resting on "a base adorned by a delicate colonette structure" (417) and includes allegorical statues of the virtues, attendant angels, and the mourning figures of Royalty and Science. The effigy was put in place in 1872, and the whole piece of work is majestic. However, the fact that it was Gothic in style had more to do with Scott than the sculptor, whose decoration of the walls with marble inlay-work or tarsia was inspired by the Renaissance period.

Triqueti was very versatile: he had started as a painter, and he also wrote, preparing educational pieces for apprentices on such diverse subjects as George Stephenson and Elizabeth Fry. One of his papers was on "The Three Museums of London" (the British Museum, the National Gallery and what is now the V & A). Since he himself was a Protestant convert, he also wrote a book about the history of Protestantism in France. He was a cultivated man of considerable learning. His two large marble tarsia panels on classical themes — the Marmor Homericum and the Yates Memorial — are still on display in different parts of University College, London.

Triqueti's use of the English spelling of his Christian name may be significant in more than one way: he must have felt that he was more valued in England. On his stays in London, from the later 1850s onwards, he used the address of the beautiful, gifted and intelligent young woman who had been his devoted pupil and had remained with him as his assistant — Susan Durant. From 1866-73, this was her home at 3, Bryanston Place in Marylebone. He would meet clients in her studio nearby, in Conduit Street. However, he kept his studio and base in Paris, was Secretary of the Presbyterial Council of Paris, and was very active in charitable works there, especially in relation to the education of poor children, and the provision of care for aged paupers. He died in France after an operation, not long after Susan Durant had met an similar fate herself. Both are buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery.

Triqueti was, by all accounts, charming and amiable, but of a "modest and retiring disposition" ("France"). Perhaps because he never sought the limelight, perhaps too because his major commissions were not only hugely time-consuming but "official" in nature, his accomplishments are not widely f&circumted. That is changing. Le Musée Girodet de Montargis and Le Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans held a joint retrospective in 2007-8, which was accompanied by a catalogue and led to other publications, and more interest from the Louvre. Still, it is just the beginning. The catalogue itself has been criticised for leaving many aspects of his career unexplored, or inadequately explored, and for not providing a chronology (which would indeed have been helpful see note below). Rykner concludes, "Much is still needed for a complete understanding of one of the major sculptors of the XIXc." Later work has made some of these deficits good, but another (obviously not insurmountable) problem is that because of his family's roots in Italy and his own visits there, and because his oeuvre was spread out between two other countries, it is in Italian and French, as well as in English.

The Triquetis' story has a sad ending but a happy footnote. Elizabeth Barrett Browning mentions a visit from "Madame de Triqueti" in in Paris in a letter of 28 February 1856 (227). Harriet Beecher Stowe met the whole family, describing their daughter Blanche as "charming" (Stowe 289). But when their son Edouard died in a tragic accident at the age of 21, their marriage seems to have collapsed. Triqueti eventually turned to the loyal Durant, who bore him a son in October 1869, when she was already in her early forties. After both she and Triqueti died, the little boy was brought up by Blanche until her own death from TB in 1886.

Young Henry Paul Harvey Durant was educated first at Rugby and then at New College, Oxford. by then his care had passed to Lady Gregory, the Irish playwright and friend of Yeats. Now known simply as Paul Harvey, he married Lady Gregory's niece in 1896. Although he had dropped his mother's surname, the couple did call their only daughter Susan. Harvey had an extremely distinguished career at home and abroad in the civil service, and was knighted in 1911. After retiring with many honours, he became famous in an entirely different field, as the author of the much-loved Oxford Companion to English Literature (1932 not superseded until Margaret Drabble's edition of 1985, in which many of his original entries remain unchanged). He also prepared the Oxford Companions to classical and (largely) French literature. It is very pleasing to think that this was the outcome of the Triqueti-Durant relationship.

There are still some areas of uncertainty in Triquet's life. For instance, New York Times obituary gave the year of Triqueti's birth as 1802, Lemaistre in The Grove History of Art has 1804, and a number of art galleries and other art sites on the web, like artnet , have 1807. However, the catalogue of the 2007/8 major exhibition, in the locality of his birth, must be presumed to be accurate. Then, even in Jason Tomes's latest entry for Paul Harvey in the ODNB , Blanche is described simply as "a cultivated Frenchwoman married to an expatriate American," rather than being identified as his half-sister. Interestingly, Harriet Beecher Stowe not only met Blanche at the Triqueti's home, but was invited to her nineteenth birthday, when she described her as their "eldest daughter" (290 emphasis added). There may be more to be learned about the sculptor, and there is certainly more to be written about his achievements.

Bibliography

Banerjee, Jacqueline. "A Good Start: The Making of Paul Harvey." The Times Literary Supplement . 7 January 2011: 14-15.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Letters , Vol. II (1806-1856). Ed. Frederic E. Kenyon. London: Macmillan, 1897. Internet Archive . Web. 23 May 2016.

"France." The Times . 15 May 1874: 5. Times Digital Archive . Web. 24 May 2016.

Garrihy, Andrea. "Durant, Susan Durant (1827-1873)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Online ed. Web. 29 March 2009.

Lemaistre, Isabelle. Entry on Triqueti. From Monet to Cézanne (The Grove History of Art) , ed. Jane Turner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 416-17.

New York Times Obituary ("Baron Triqueti, Sculptor"). 18 May 1874. Web. 23 May 2016.

Read, Benedict. Victorian Sculpture . New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1982.

Ribner, Jonathan P. Broken Tablets: The Cult of the Law in French Art from David to Delacroix . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Rykner, Didier. "Henry de Triqueti (1803-1874)." This is a review of the catalogue for the 2007-8 exhibition in France.

Stowe, Charles Edward. The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Compiled from her Letters and Journals by her Son . Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin (Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press), 1889. Internet Archive . Web. 23 May 2016.

Tomes, Jason. "Harvey, Sir (Henry) Paul (1869-1948)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Online ed. Web. 29 March 2009.

Geography Edit

By the French Revolution, the Kingdom of France had expanded to nearly the modern territorial limits. The 19th century would complete the process by the annexation of the Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice (first during the First Empire, and then definitively in 1860) and some small papal (like Avignon) and foreign possessions. France's territorial limits were greatly extended during the Empire through Revolutionary and Napoleonic military conquests and re-organization of Europe, but these were reversed by the Vienna Congress. Savoy and Nice were definitively annexed following France's victory in the Franco-Austrian War in 1859.

In 1830, France invaded Algeria, and in 1848 this north African country was fully integrated into France as a département. The late 19th century saw France embark on a massive program of overseas imperialism — including French Indochina (modern day Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos) and Africa (the Scramble for Africa brought France most of North-West and Central Africa) — which brought it in direct competition with British interests.

With the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, France lost her provinces of Alsace and portions of Lorraine to Germany (see Alsace-Lorraine) these lost provinces would only be regained at the end of World War I.

Demographics Edit

Between 1795 and 1866, metropolitan France (that is, without overseas or colonial possessions) was the second most populous country of Europe, behind Russia, and the fourth most populous country in the world (behind China, India, and Russia) between 1866 and 1911, metropolitan France was the third most populous country of Europe, behind Russia and Germany. Unlike other European countries, France did not experience a strong population growth from the middle of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. The French population in 1789 is estimated at roughly 28 million by 1850, it was 36 million and in 1880 it was around 39 million. [1] Slow growth was a major political issue, as arch-rival Germany continued to gain an advantage in terms of population and industry. Ways to reverse the trend became a major political issue. [2]

Until 1850, population growth was mainly in the countryside, but a period of slow urbanization began under the Second Empire. Unlike in England, industrialization was a late phenomenon in France. France's economy in the 1830s had a limited iron industry, under-developed coal supplies, and the great majority lived on farms. The systematic establishment of primary education and the creation of new engineering schools prepared an industrial expansion which would blossom in the following decades. French rail transport only began hesitantly in the 1830s, and would not truly develop until the 1840s, using imported British engineers. By the revolution of 1848, a growing industrial workforce began to participate actively in French politics, but their hopes were largely betrayed by the policies of the Second Empire. The loss of the important coal, steel and glass production regions of Alsace and Lorraine would cause further problems. The industrial worker population increased from 23% in 1870 to 39% in 1914. Nevertheless, France remained a rather rural country in the early 1900s with 40% of the population still farmers in 1914. While exhibiting a similar urbanization rate to the U.S. (50% of the population in the U.S. was engaged in agriculture in the early 1900s), the urbanization rate of France was still well behind that of the UK (80% urbanization rate in the early 1900s). [3]

In the 19th century, France was a country of immigration for peoples and political refugees from Eastern Europe (Germany, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Ashkenazi Jews) and from the Mediterranean (Italy, Spanish Sephardic Jews and North-African Mizrahi Jews). Large numbers of Belgian migrant workers laboured in French factories, particularly in the textile industry in the Nord.

France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution. The Crémieux Decree of 1870 gave full citizenship for the Jews in French Algeria. By 1872, there were an estimated 86,000 Jews living in France (by 1945 this would increase to 300,000), many of whom integrated (or attempted to integrate) into French society, although the Dreyfus affair would reveal anti-semitism in certain classes of French society (see History of the Jews in France).

Alsace and Lorraine were lost to Germany in 1871. Some French refugees moved to France. France suffered massive losses during World War I — roughly estimated at 1.4 million French dead including civilians (see World War I casualties) (or nearly 10% of the active adult male population) and four times as many wounded (see World War I Aftermath).

Language Edit

Linguistically, France was a patchwork. People in the countryside spoke various dialects. France would only become a linguistically unified country by the end of the 19th century, and in particular through the educational policies of Jules Ferry during the French Third Republic. From an illiteracy rate of 33% among peasants in 1870, by 1914 almost all French could read and understand the national language, although 50% still understood or spoke a regional language of France (in today's France, only an estimated 10% still understand a regional language). [4]

Through the educational, social and military policies of the Third Republic, by 1914 the French had been converted (as the historian Eugen Weber has put it) from a "country of peasants into a nation of Frenchmen". By 1914, most French could read French and the use of regional languages had greatly decreased the role of the Catholic Church in public life had been radically diminished a sense of national identity and pride was actively taught. The anti-clericalism of the Third Republic profoundly changed French religious habits: in one case study for the city of Limoges comparing the years 1899 with 1914, it was found that baptisms decreased from 98% to 60%, and civil marriages before a town official increased from 14% to 60%.

Economic laggard: 1815–1913 Edit

French economic history since its late-18th century Revolution was tied to three major events and trends: the Napoleonic Era, the competition with Britain and its other neighbors in regards to 'industrialization', and the 'total wars' of the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Quantitative analysis of output data shows the French per capita growth rates were slightly smaller than Britain. However the British population tripled in size, while France grew by only third — so the overall British economy grew much faster. François Crouzet has summarized the cycles of French per capita economic growth in 1815–1913 as: [5]

• 1815–1840: irregular, but sometimes fast growth
• 1840–1860: fast growth
• 1860–1882: slowing down
• 1882–1896: stagnation and
• 1896–1913: fast growth.

For the 1870-1913 era, Angus Maddison gives growth rates for 12 Western advanced countries — 10 in Europe plus the United States and Canada. [6] In terms of per capita growth, France was about average. However again its population growth was very slow, so as far as the growth rate in total size of the economy France was in next to the last place, just ahead of Italy. The 12 countries averaged 2.7% growth per year in total output, but France only averaged 1.6% growth. [7] Crouzet concludes that the:

average size of industrial undertakings was smaller in France than in other advanced countries that machinery was generally less up to date, productivity lower, costs higher. The domestic system and handicraft production long persisted, while big modern factories were for long exceptional. Large lumps of the Ancien Régime economy survived. On the whole, the qualitative lag between the British and French economy. persisted during the whole period under consideration, and later on a similar lag developed between France and some other countries—Belgium, Germany, the United States. France did not succeed in catching up with Britain, but was overtaken by several of her rivals. [8]

End of the Ancien Régime (to 1789) Edit

The reign of Louis XVI (1774–1792) had seen a temporary revival of French fortunes, but the over-ambitious projects and military campaigns of the 18th century had produced chronic financial problems. Deteriorating economic conditions, popular resentment against the complicated system of privileges granted the nobility and clerics, and a lack of alternate avenues for change were among the principal causes for convoking the Estates-General which convened in Versailles in 1789. On May 28, 1789 the Abbé Sieyès moved that the Third Estate proceed with verification of its own powers and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them. They proceeded to do so, and then voted a measure far more radical, declaring themselves the National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates but of "the People". [9]

Louis XVI shut the Salle des États where the Assembly met. The Assembly moved their deliberations to the king's tennis court, where they proceeded to swear the Tennis Court Oath (June 20, 1789), under which they agreed not to separate until they had given France a constitution. A majority of the representatives of the clergy soon joined them, as did 47 members of the nobility. By June 27 the royal party had overtly given in, although the military began to arrive in large numbers around Paris and Versailles. On July 9 the Assembly reconstituted itself as the National Constituent Assembly. [10]

On July 11, 1789 King Louis, acting under the influence of the conservative nobles, as well as his wife, Marie Antoinette, and brother, the Comte d'Artois, banished the reformist minister Necker and completely reconstructed the ministry. Much of Paris, presuming this to be the start of a royal coup, moved into open rebellion. Some of the military joined the mob others remained neutral. On July 14, 1789, after four hours of combat, the insurgents seized the Bastille fortress, killing its governor and several of his guards. The king and his military supporters backed down, at least for a short time.

After this violence, nobles started to flee the country as émigrés, some of whom began plotting civil war within the kingdom and agitating for a European coalition against France. Insurrection and the spirit of popular sovereignty spread throughout France. In rural areas, many went beyond this: some burned title-deeds and no small number of châteaux, as part of a general agrarian insurrection known as "la Grande Peur" (the Great Fear).

Constitutional monarchy (1789–1792) Edit

On August 4, 1789, the National Assembly abolished feudalism, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the tithes gathered by the First Estate. In the course of a few hours, nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies, and cities lost their special privileges. The revolution also brought about a massive shifting of powers from the Catholic Church to the State. Legislation enacted in 1790 abolished the Church's authority to levy a tax on crops known as the dîme, cancelled special privileges for the clergy, and confiscated Church property: under the Ancien Régime, the Church had been the largest landowner in the country. Further legislation abolished monastic vows. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed on July 12, 1790, turned the remaining clergy into employees of the State and required that they take an oath of loyalty to the constitution. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy also made the Catholic Church an arm of the secular state. [11]

Looking to the United States Declaration of Independence for a model, on August 26, 1789 the Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Like the U.S. Declaration, it comprised a statement of principles rather than a constitution with legal effect. The Assembly replaced the historic provinces with eighty-three départements, uniformly administered and approximately equal to one another in extent and population it also abolished the symbolic paraphernalia of the Ancien Régime — armorial bearings, liveries, etc. — which further alienated the more conservative nobles, and added to the ranks of the émigrés.

Louis XVI opposed the course of the revolution and on the night of June 20, 1791 the royal family fled the Tuileries. However, the king was recognised at Varennes in the Meuse late on June 21 and he and his family were brought back to Paris under guard. With most of the Assembly still favouring a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, the various groupings reached a compromise which left Louis XVI little more than a figurehead: he had perforce to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation, or permitting anyone to do so in his name would amount to de facto abdication.

Meanwhile, a renewed threat from abroad arose: Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick William II of Prussia, and the king's brother Charles-Phillipe, comte d'Artois issued the Declaration of Pillnitz which considered the cause of Louis XVI as their own, demanded his total liberty and the dissolution of the Assembly, and promised an invasion of France on his behalf if the revolutionary authorities refused its conditions. The politics of the period inevitably drove France towards war with Austria and its allies. France declared war on Austria (April 20, 1792) and Prussia joined on the Austrian side a few weeks later. The French Revolutionary Wars had begun. [12]

In the Brunswick Manifesto, the Imperial and Prussian armies threatened retaliation on the French population should it resist their advance or the reinstatement of the monarchy. As a consequence, King Louis was seen as conspiring with the enemies of France. He was arrested on August 10, 1792. On September 20, French revolutionary troops won their first great victory at the battle of Valmy. The First Republic was proclaimed the following day. By the end of the year, the French had overrun the Austrian Netherlands, threatening the Dutch Republic to the north, and had also penetrated east of the Rhine, briefly occupying the imperial city of Frankfurt am Main. January 17, 1793 saw the king condemned to death for "conspiracy against the public liberty and the general safety" by a weak majority in Convention. On January 21, he was beheaded. This action led to Britain and the Netherlands declaring war on France. [13]

Reign of Terror (1793–1794) Edit

The first half of 1793 went badly for the new French Republic, with the French armies being driven out of Germany and the Austrian Netherlands. In this situation, prices rose and the sans-culottes (poor labourers and radical Jacobins) rioted counter-revolutionary activities began in some regions. This encouraged the Jacobins to seize power through a parliamentary coup, backed up by force effected by mobilising public support against the Girondist faction, and by utilising the mob power of the Parisian sans-culottes. An alliance of Jacobin and sans-culottes elements thus became the effective centre of the new government. Policy became considerably more radical. The government instituted the "levy-en-masse", where all able-bodied men 18 and older were liable for military service. This allowed France to field much larger armies than its enemies, and soon the tide of war was reversed.

The Committee of Public Safety came under the control of Maximilien Robespierre, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror. At least 1200 people met their deaths under the guillotine — or otherwise — after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities. In October, the queen was beheaded, further antagonizing Austria. In 1794 Robespierre had ultra-radicals and moderate Jacobins executed in consequence, however, his own popular support eroded markedly. Georges Danton was beheaded for arguing that there were too many beheadings. There were attempts to do away with organized religion in France entirely and replace it with a Festival of Reason. The primary leader of this movement, Jacques Hébert, held such a festival in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with an actress playing the Goddess of Reason. But Robespierre was unmoved by Hébert and had him and all his followers beheaded.

Thermidorian Reaction (1794–1795) Edit

On July 27, 1794 the French people revolted against the excesses of the Reign of Terror in what became known as the Thermidorian Reaction. It resulted in moderate Convention members deposing Robespierre and several other leading members of the Committee of Public Safety. All of them were beheaded without trial. With that, the extreme, radical phase of the Revolution ended. The Convention approved the new Constitution of the Year III on August 17, 1795. A plebiscite ratified it in September and it took effect on September 26, 1795.

Directory (1795–1799) Edit

The new constitution installed the Directoire and created France's bicameral legislature. It was markedly more conservative, dominated by the bourgeoise, and sought to restore order and exclude the sans-culottes and other members of the lower classes from political life.

By 1795, the French had once again conquered the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine, annexing them directly into France. The Dutch Republic and Spain were both defeated and made into French satellites. At sea however, the French navy proved no match for the British, and was badly beaten off the coast of Ireland in June 1794.

Napoleon Bonaparte was given command of an army in 1796 that was to invade Italy. The young general defeated the Austrian and Sardinian forces and he negotiated the Treaty of Campo Formio without the input of the Directory. The French annexation of the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine was recognized, as were the satellite republics they created in northern Italy.

Although the War of the First Coalition ended in 1797, a second coalition was formed in May 1798 when France invaded the Swiss Confederation, the Kingdom of Naples, and the Papal States. Napoleon convinced the Directory to approve an expedition to Egypt, with the purpose of cutting off Britain's supply route to India. He got approval for this, and set off in May 1798 for Egypt with 40,000 men. But the expedition foundered when the British fleet of Horatio Nelson caught and destroyed most of the French ships in the Battle of the Nile. The army had no way to return to France and faced the hostility of the Ottoman Empire.

Consulate (1799–1804) Edit

Napoleon himself escaped back to France, where he led the coup d'état of November 1799, making himself First Consul (his hapless troops remained in Egypt until they surrendered to a British expedition in 1801 and were repatriated to France).

By that point, the War of the Second Coalition was in progress. The French suffered a string of defeats in 1799, seeing their satellite republics in Italy overthrown and an invasion of Germany beaten back. Attempts by the allies on Switzerland and the Netherlands failed however, and once Napoleon returned to France, he began turning the tide on them. In 1801, the Peace of Lunéville ended hostilities with Austria and Russia, and the Treaty of Amiens with Britain.

By 1802, Napoleon was named First Consul for life. His continued provocations of the British led to renewed war in 1803, and the following year he proclaimed himself emperor in a huge ceremony in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The pope was invited to the coronation, but Napoleon took the crown from him at the last minute and placed it on his own head. He attracted more power and gravitated towards imperial status, gathering support on the way for his internal rebuilding of France and its institutions. The French Empire (or the Napoleonic Empire) (1804–1814) was marked by the French domination and reorganization of continental Europe (the Napoleonic Wars) and by the final codification of the republican legal system (the Napoleonic Code). The Empire gradually became more authoritarian in nature, with freedom of the press and assembly being severely restricted. Religious freedom survived under the condition that Christianity and Judaism, the two officially recognized faiths, not be attacked, and that atheism not be expressed in public. Napoleon also recreated the nobility, but neither they nor his court had the elegance or historical connections of the old monarchy. Despite the growing administrative despotism of his regime, the emperor was still seen by the rest of Europe as the embodiment of the Revolution and a monarchial parvenu. [14]

By 1804, Britain alone stood outside French control and was an important force in encouraging and financing resistance to France. In 1805, Napoleon massed an army of 200,000 men in Boulogne for the purpose of invading the British Isles, but never was able to find the right conditions to embark, and thus abandoned his plans. Three weeks later, the French and Spanish fleets were destroyed by the British at Trafalgar. Afterwards, Napoleon, unable to defeat Britain militarily, tried to bring it down through economic warfare. He inaugurated the Continental System, in which all of France's allies and satellites would join in refusing to trade with the British.

Portugal, an ally of Britain, was the only European country that openly refused to join. After the Treaties of Tilsit of July 1807, the French launched an invasion through Spain to close this hole in the Continental System. British troops arrived in Portugal, compelling the French to withdraw. A renewed invasion the following year brought the British back, and at that point, Napoleon decided to depose the Spanish king Charles IV and place his brother Joseph on the throne. This caused the people of Spain to rise up in a patriotic revolt, beginning the Peninsular War. The British could now gain a foothold on the Continent, and the war tied down considerable French resources, contributing to Napoleon's eventual defeat.

Napoleon was at the height of his power in 1810–1812, with most of the European countries either his allies, satellites, or annexed directly into France. After the defeat of Austria in the War of the Fifth Coalition, Europe was at peace for 2 + 1 ⁄ 2 years except for the conflict in Spain. The emperor was given an archduchess to marry by the Austrians, and she gave birth to his long-awaited son in 1811.

Ultimately, the Continental System failed. Its effect on Great Britain and on British trade is uncertain, but the embargo is thought to have been more harmful on the continental European states. Russia in particular chafed under the embargo, and in 1812, that country reopened trade with Britain, provoking Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The disaster of that campaign caused all the subjugated peoples of Europe to rise up against French domination. In 1813, Napoleon was forced to conscript boys under the age of 18 and less able-bodied men who had been passed up for military service in previous years. The quality of his troops deteriorated sharply and war-weariness at home increased. The allies could also put far more men in the field than he could. Throughout 1813, the French were forced back and by early 1814, the British were occupying Gascony. The allied troops reached Paris in March, and Napoleon abdicated as emperor. Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI, was installed as king and France was granted a quite generous peace settlement, being restored to its 1792 boundaries and having to pay no war indemnity.

After eleven months of exile on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, Napoleon escaped and returned to France, where he was greeted with huge enthusiasm. Louis XVIII fled Paris, but the one thing that would have given the emperor mass support, a return to the revolutionary extremism of 1793-1794, was out of the question. Enthusiasm quickly waned, and as the allies (then discussing the fate of Europe in Vienna) refused to negotiate with him, he had no choice but to fight. At Waterloo, Napoleon was completely defeated by the British and Prussians, and abdicated once again. This time, he was exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he remained until his death in 1821.

Louis XVIII was restored a second time by the allies in 1815, ending more than two decades of war. He announced he would rule as a limited, constitutional monarch. After the Hundred Days in 1815 when Napoleon suddenly returned and was vanquished, a more harsh peace treaty was imposed on France, returning it to its 1789 boundaries and requiring a war indemnity in gold. Allied troops remained in the country until it was paid. There were large-scale purges of Bonapartists from the government and military, and a brief "White Terror" in the south of France claimed 300 victims. Otherwise the transition was largely peaceful. Although the old ruling class had returned they did not recover their lost lands, and were unable to reverse most of the dramatic changes in French society, economics, and ways of thinking. [15] [16]

In 1823, France intervened in Spain, where a civil war had deposed king Ferdinand VII. The French troops marched into Spain, retook Madrid from the rebels, and left almost as quickly as they came. Despite worries to the contrary, France showed no sign of returning to an aggressive foreign policy and was admitted to the Concert of Europe in 1818. [17]

Louis XVIII, for the most part, accepted that much had changed. However, he was pushed on his right by the Ultra-royalists, led by the comte de Villèle, who condemned the Doctrinaires' attempt to reconcile the Revolution with the monarchy through a constitutional monarchy. Instead, the Chambre introuvable elected in 1815 banished all Conventionnels who had voted Louis XVI's death and passed several reactionary laws. Louis XVIII was forced to dissolve this Chamber, dominated by the Ultras, in 1816, fearing a popular uprising. The liberals thus governed until the 1820 assassination of the duc de Berry, the nephew of the king and known supporter of the Ultras, which brought Villèle's ultras back to power. [18]

Louis died in September 1824 and was succeeded by his brother. Charles X of France followed the "ultra" conservative line but was a much less effective coalition builder than Louis XVIII. Freedom of the press was severely restricted. He compensated the families of the nobles who had had their property taken during the Revolution. In 1830 the discontent caused by these changes and Charles X's authoritarian nomination of the Ultra prince de Polignac as prime minister led to his overthrow. [19]

The Restoration did not try to resurrect the Ancien Régime. Too much had changed for that. The egalitarianism and liberalism of the revolutionaries remained an important force and the autocracy and hierarchy of the earlier era could not be fully restored. The economic changes, which had been underway long before the revolution, had been further enhanced during the years of turmoil and were firmly entrenched by 1815. These changes had seen power shift from the noble landowners to the urban merchants. The administrative reforms of Napoleon, such as the Napoleonic Code and efficient bureaucracy, also remained in place. These changes produced a unified central government that was fiscally sound — for example, the indemnitees imposed by the victors were quickly paid off, and the occupation troops left quietly. The national government did not face strong regional parliaments or power centers and had solid control over all areas of France in sharp contrast with the chaotic situation the Bourbons had faced in the 1770s and 1780s. Restoration did not lessen inequality in France, and it did not promote industrialisation. On the whole, however, there was more wealth, and more political freedom for all classes. The parliamentary system worked well. Restrictions on the press resembled those in most of Europe. Frequent parliamentary transitions took place, but the losers were not executed or exiled. France regained its place among the respected major powers, and its voice was heard in international diplomacy. There was a new sense of humanitarianism, and popular piety. France began, on a small scale, to rebuild the overseas empire it had lost in 1763. [20]

Charles X was overthrown in an uprising in the streets of Paris, known as the 1830 July Revolution (or, in French, "Les trois Glorieuses" - The three Glorious days - of 27, 28 and July 29). Charles was forced to flee and Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, a member of the Orléans branch of the family, and son of Philippe Égalité who had voted the death of his cousin Louis XVI, ascended the throne. Louis-Philippe ruled, not as "King of France" but as "King of the French" (an evocative difference for contemporaries). It was made clear that his right to rule came from the people and was not divinely granted. He also revived the Tricolor as the flag of France, in place of the white Bourbon flag that had been used since 1815, an important distinction because the Tricolour was the symbol of the revolution. The July Monarchy (1830–1848) saw the political dominance of the high middle class (haute bourgeoisie). Louis-Philippe clearly understood his base of power: the wealthy bourgeoisie had carried him aloft during the July Revolution and he kept their interests in mind. [21]

Louis-Philippe, who had flirted with liberalism in his youth, rejected much of the pomp and circumstance of the Bourbons and surrounded himself with merchants and bankers. The July Monarchy, however, remained a time of turmoil. A large group of Legitimists on the right demanded the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne. On the left, Republicanism and, later Socialism, remained a powerful force. Late in his reign Louis-Philippe became increasingly rigid and dogmatic and his President of the Council, François Guizot, had become deeply unpopular, but Louis-Philippe refused to remove him. The situation gradually escalated until the Revolutions of 1848 saw the fall of the monarchy and the creation of the Second Republic. [22]

However, during the first several years of his regime, Louis-Philippe appeared to move his government toward legitimate, broad-based reform. The government found its source of legitimacy within the Charter of 1830, written by reform-minded members of Chamber of Deputies upon a platform of religious equality, the empowerment of the citizenry through the reestablishment of the National Guard, electoral reform, the reformation of the peerage system, and the lessening of royal authority. And indeed, Louis-Phillipe and his ministers adhered to policies that seemed to promote the central tenets of the constitution. However, the majority of these policies were veiled attempts to shore up the power and influence of the government and the bourgeoisie, rather than legitimate attempts to promote equality and empowerment for a broad constituency of the French population. Thus, though the July Monarchy seemed to move toward reform, this movement was largely illusory.

During the years of the July Monarchy, enfranchisement roughly doubled, from 94,000 under Charles X to more than 200,000 by 1848 [ citation needed ] . However, this represented less than one percent of population, and, as the requirements for voting were tax-based, only the wealthiest gained the privilege. By implication, the enlarged enfranchisement tended to favor the wealthy merchant bourgeoisie more than any other group. Beyond simply increasing their presence within the Chamber of Deputies, this electoral enlargement provided the bourgeoisie the means by which to challenge the nobility in legislative matters. Thus, while appearing to honor his pledge to increase suffrage, Louis-Philippe acted primarily to empower his supporters and increase his hold over the French Parliament. The inclusion of only the wealthiest also tended to undermine any possibility of the growth of a radical faction in Parliament, effectively serving socially conservative ends.

The reformed Charter of 1830 limited the power of the King – stripping him of his ability to propose and decree legislation, as well as limiting his executive authority. However, the King of the French still believed in a version of monarchy that held the king as much more than a figurehead for an elected Parliament, and as such, he was quite active in politics. One of the first acts of Louis-Philippe in constructing his cabinet was to appoint the rather conservative Casimir Perier as the premier of that body. Perier, a banker, was instrumental in shutting down many of the Republican secret societies and labour unions that had formed during the early years of the regime. In addition, he oversaw the dismemberment of the National Guard after it proved too supportive of radical ideologies. He performed all of these actions, of course, with royal approval. He was once quoted as saying that the source of French misery was the belief that there had been a revolution. "No Monsieur", he said to another minister, "there has not been a revolution: there is simply a change at the head of state." [23]

Further expressions of this conservative trend came under the supervision of Perier and the then Minister of the Interior, François Guizot. The regime acknowledged early on that radicalism and republicanism threatened it, undermining its laissez-faire policies. Thus, the Monarchy declared the very term republican illegal in 1834. Guizot shut down republican clubs and disbanded republican publications. Republicans within the cabinet, like the banker Dupont, were all but excluded by Perier and his conservative clique. Distrusting the National Guard, Louis-Philippe increased the size of the army and reformed it in order to ensure its loyalty to the government.

Though two factions always persisted in the cabinet, split between liberal conservatives like Guizot (le parti de la Résistance, the Party of Resistance) and liberal reformers like the aforementioned journalist Adolphe Thiers (le parti du Mouvement, the Party of Movement), the latter never gained prominence. After Perier came count Molé, another conservative. After Molé came Thiers, a reformer later sacked by Louis-Philippe after attempting to pursue an aggressive foreign policy. After Thiers came the conservative Guizot. In particular, the Guizot administration was marked by increasingly authoritarian crackdowns on republicanism and dissent, and an increasingly pro-business laissez-faire policy. This policy included protective tariffs that defended the status quo and enriched French businessmen. Guizot's government granted railway and mining contracts to the bourgeois supporters of the government, and even contributing some of the start-up costs. As workers under these policies had no legal right to assemble, unionize, or petition the government for increased pay or decreased hours, the July Monarchy under Perier, Molé, and Guizot generally proved detrimental to the lower classes. In fact, Guizot's advice to those who were disenfranchised by the tax-based electoral requirements was a simple "enrichissez-vous" – enrich yourself. The king himself was not very popular either by the middle of the 1840s, and due to his appearance was widely referred to as the "crowned pear". There was a considerable hero-worship of Napoleon during this era, and in 1841 his body was taken from Saint Helena and given a magnificent reburial in France.

Louis-Philippe conducted a pacifistic foreign policy. Shortly after he assumed power in 1830, Belgium revolted against Dutch rule and proclaimed its independence. The king rejected the idea of intervention there or any military activities outside France's borders. The only exception to this was a war in Algeria which had been started by Charles X a few weeks before his overthrow on the pretext of suppressing pirates in the Mediterranean. Louis-Philippe's government decided to continue the conquest of that country, which took over a decade. By 1848, Algeria had been declared an integral part of France. [24]

The Revolution of 1848 had major consequences for all of Europe: popular democratic revolts against authoritarian regimes broke out in Austria and Hungary, in the German Confederation and Prussia, and in the Italian States of Milan, Venice, Turin and Rome. Economic downturns and bad harvests during the 1840s contributed to growing discontent.

In February 1848, the French government banned the holding of the Campagne des banquets, fundraising dinners by activists where critics of the regime would meet (as public demonstrations and strikes were forbidden). As a result, protests and riots broke out in the streets of Paris. An angry mob converged on the royal palace, after which the king abdicated and fled to England. The Second Republic was then proclaimed.

The revolution in France had brought together classes of wildly different interests: the bourgeoisie desired electoral reforms (a democratic republic), socialist leaders (like Louis Blanc, Pierre Joseph Proudhon and the radical Auguste Blanqui) asked for a "right to work" and the creation of national workshops (a social welfare republic) and for France to liberate the oppressed peoples of Europe (Poles and Italians), while moderates (like the aristocrat Alphonse de Lamartine) sought a middle ground. Tensions between groups escalated, and in June 1848, a working class insurrection in Paris cost the lives of 1500 workers and eliminated once and for all the dream of a social welfare constitution.

The constitution of the Second Republic which was ratified in September 1848 was extremely flawed and permitted no effective resolution between the President and the Assembly in case of dispute. In December 1848, a nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, was elected as President of the Republic, and pretexting legislative gridlock, in 1851, he staged a coup d'état. Finally, in 1852 he had himself declared Emperor Napoléon III of the Second Empire.

France was ruled by Emperor Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870. The regime was authoritarian in nature during its early years, curbing most freedom of the press and assembly. The era saw great industrialization, urbanization (including the massive rebuilding of Paris by Baron Haussmann) and economic growth, but Napoleon III's foreign policies would be catastrophic.

In 1852, Napoleon declared that "L'Empire, c'est la paix" (The empire is peace), but it was hardly fitting for a Bonaparte to continue the foreign policy of Louis-Philippe. Only a few months after becoming president in 1848, he sent French troops to break up a short-lived republic in Rome, remaining there until 1870. The overseas empire expanded, and France made gains in Indo-China, West and central Africa, and the South Seas. This was helped by the opening of large central banks in Paris to finance overseas expeditions. The Suez Canal was opened by the Empress Eugénie in 1869 and was the achievement of a Frenchman. Yet still, Napoleon III's France lagged behind Britain in colonial affairs, and his determination to upstage British control of India and American influence in Mexico resulted in a fiasco.

In 1854, the emperor allied with Britain and the Ottoman Empire against Russia in the Crimean War. Afterwards, Napoleon intervened in the questions of Italian independence. He declared his intention of making Italy "free from the Alps to the Adriatic", and fought a war with Austria in 1859 over this matter. With the victories of Montebello, Magenta and Solferino France and Austria signed the Peace of Villafranca in 1859, as the emperor worried that a longer war might cause the other powers, particularly Prussia, to intervene. Austria ceded Lombardy to Napoleon III, who in turn ceded it to Victor Emmanuel Modena and Tuscany were restored to their respective dukes, and the Romagna to the pope, now president of an Italian federation. In exchange for France's military assistance against Austria, Piedmont ceded its provinces of Nice and Savoy to France in March 1860. Napoleon then turned his hand to meddling in the Western Hemisphere. He gave support to the Confederacy during the American Civil War, until Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation in the autumn of 1862. As this made it impossible to support the South without also supporting slavery, the emperor backed off. However, he was conducting a simultaneous venture in Mexico, which had refused to pay interest on loans taken from France, Britain, and Spain. As a result, those three countries sent a joint expedition to the city of Veracruz in January 1862, but the British and Spanish quickly withdrew after realizing the extent of Napoleon's plans. French troops occupied Mexico City in June 1863 and established a puppet government headed by the Austrian archduke Maximilian, who was declared Emperor of Mexico. Although this sort of thing was forbidden by the Monroe Doctrine, Napoleon reasoned that the United States was far too distracted with its Civil War to do anything about it. The French were never able to suppress the forces of the ousted Mexican president Benito Juárez, and then in the spring of 1865, the American Civil War ended. The United States, which had an army of a million battle-hardened troops, demanded that the French withdraw or prepare for war. They quickly did so, but Maximilian tried to hold onto power. He was captured and shot by the Mexicans in 1867.

Public opinion was becoming a major force as people began to tire of oppressive authoritarianism in the 1860s. Napoleon III, who had expressed some rather woolly liberal ideas prior to his coronation, began to relax censorship, laws on public meetings, and the right to strike. As a result, radicalism grew among industrial workers. Discontent with the Second Empire spread rapidly, as the economy began to experience a downturn. The golden days of the 1850s were over. Napoleon's reckless foreign policy was inciting criticism. To placate the Liberals, in 1870 Napoleon proposed the establishment of a fully parliamentary legislative regime, which won massive support. The French emperor never had the chance to implement this, however - by the end of the year, the Second Empire had ignominiously collapsed.

Napoleon's distraction with Mexico prevented him from intervening in the Second Schleswig War in 1864 and the Seven Weeks' War in 1866. Both of those conflicts saw Prussia establish itself as the dominant power in Germany. Afterwards, tensions between France and Prussia grew, especially in 1868 when the latter tried to place a Hohenzollern prince on the Spanish throne, which was left vacant by a revolution there.

The Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck provoked Napoleon into declaring war on Prussia in July 1870. The French troops were swiftly defeated in the following weeks, and on September 1, the main army, which the emperor himself was with, was trapped at Sedan and forced to surrender. A republic was quickly proclaimed in Paris, but the war was far from over. As it was clear that Prussia would expect territorial concessions, the provisional government vowed to continue resistance. The Prussians laid siege to Paris, and new armies mustered by France failed to alter this situation. The French capital began experiencing severe food shortages, to the extent where even the animals in the zoo were eaten. As the city was being bombarded by Prussian siege guns in January 1871, King William of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Shortly afterwards, Paris surrendered. The subsequent peace treaty was harsh. France ceded Alsace and Lorraine to Germany and had to pay an indemnity of 5 billion francs. German troops were to remain in the country until it was paid off. Meanwhile, the fallen Napoleon III went into exile in England where he died in 1873.

The birth of the Third Republic would see France occupied by foreign troops, the capital in a popular socialist insurrection — the Paris Commune — and two provinces (Alsace-Lorraine) annexed to Germany. Feelings of national guilt and a desire for vengeance ("revanchism") would be major preoccupations of the French throughout the next two decades. Yet by 1900, France had resumed many economic and cultural ties with Germany, and few French still dreamed of a "revanche". No French political party even mentioned Alsace-Lorraine any more on its program.

Napoleon's rule came to an abrupt end when he declared war on Prussia in 1870, only to be defeated in the Franco-Prussian War and captured at Sedan. He abdicated on 4 September, with a Third Republic proclaimed that same day in Paris.

The French legislature established the Third Republic which was to last until the military defeat of 1940 (longer than any government in France since the Revolution). On 19 September the Prussian army arrived at Paris and besieged the city. The city suffered from cold and hunger the animals, including the elephants, in the Paris zoo were eaten by the Parisians. In January the Prussians began the bombardment of the city with heavy siege guns. The city finally surrendered on January 28, 1871. The Prussians briefly occupied the city and then took up positions nearby.

Paris Commune (1871) Edit

A revolt broke out on 18 March when radicalized soldiers from the Paris National Guard killed two French generals. French government officials and the army withdrew quickly to Versailles, and a new city council, the Paris Commune, dominated by anarchists and radical socialists, was elected and took power on March 26, and tried to implement an ambitious and radical social program.

The Commune proposed the separation of Church and state, made all Church property state property, and excluded religious instruction from schools, including Catholic schools. The churches were only allowed to continue their religious activity if they kept their doors open to public political meetings during the evenings. Other projected legislation dealt with educational reforms which would make further education and technical training freely available to all. However, for lack of time and resources, the programs were never carried out. The Vendôme Column, seen as a symbol of Napoleon's imperialism was pulled down, at the suggestion of Commune member Gustave Courbet, who was later briefly jailed and required to pay for putting it back up.

Nathalie Lemel, a religious workwoman, and Elisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian aristocrat, created the Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés ("Women Union for the Defense of Paris and Care to the Injured") on April 11, 1871. They demanded gender equality, wages' equality, right of divorce for women, right to laïque instruction (non-clerical) and for professional formation for girls. They also demanded suppression of the distinction between married women and concubins, between legitimate and natural children, the abolition of prostitution — they obtained the closing of the maisons de tolérance (legal unofficial brothels). The Women Union also participated in several municipal commissions and organized cooperative workshops. [25]

The Paris Commune held power for only two months. Between May 21 and 28 the French army reconquered the city in bitter fighting, in what became known as "la semaine sanglante" or "bloody week." During the street fighting, the Communards were outnumbered four or five to one they lacked competent officers and they had no plan for the defense of the city, so each neighborhood was left to defend itself. Their military commander, Louis Charles Delescluze, committed suicide by dramatically standing atop a barricade on May 26. In the final days of the battle the Communards set fire to the Tuileries Palace, the Hotel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and other prominent government buildings, and executed hostages they had taken, including Georges Darboy, the archbishop of Paris. [26]

Army casualties from the beginning April through Bloody Week amounted to 837 dead and 6,424 wounded. Nearly seven thousand Communards were killed in combat or summarily executed by army firing squads afterwards, and buried in the city cemeteries, and in temporary mass graves. [27] About ten thousand Communards escaped and went into exile in Belgium, England, Switzerland and the United States. Forty-five thousand prisoners taken after the fall of the Commune. Most were released, but twenty-three were sentenced to death, and about ten thousand were sentenced to prison or deportation to New Caledonia or other prison colonies. All the prisoners and exiles were amnestied in 1879 and 1880, and most returned to France, where some were elected to the National Assembly. [28]

Royalist domination (1871–1879) Edit

Thus, the Republic was born of a double defeat: before the Prussians, and of the revolutionary Commune. The repression of the commune was bloody. One hundred forty-seven Communards were executed in front of the Communards' Wall in Père Lachaise Cemetery, while thousands of others were marched to Versailles for trials. The number killed during La Semaine Sanglante (The Bloody Week) had been estimated by some sources as high as twenty thousand recent historians, using research into the number buried in the city cemeteries and exhumed from mass graves, now put the most likely number at between six and seven thousand. [29] Thousands were imprisoned 7,000 were exiled to New Caledonia. Thousands more fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain and the United States. In 1872, "stringent laws were passed that ruled out all possibilities of organizing on the left." [30] For the imprisoned there was a general amnesty in 1880, and many of the Communards returned to France, where some were elected to the Parliament. [31] Paris remained under martial law for five years.

The concept of the state is different from the concept of government. A government is the particular group of people that controls the state apparatus at a given time. The state is a political and geopolitical entity the nation is a cultural or ethnic entity.

But Magna Carta’s legacy is reflected most clearly in the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution ratified by the states in 1791. In particular, amendments five through seven set ground rules for a speedy and fair jury trial, and the Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail and fines.

The death of Henry I

Henry died before his Abbey was complete, and he was buried here in 1136 in front of the high altar. Reading remains his resting place today.

King Henry I, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, was interred at Reading Abbey in 1136. Oil on canvas by Harry Morley, 1916: REDMG : 1931.280.1

Contents

The Cathars believed that the world had been made by a bad god. They believed that this bad god had taken them from the good god and put them in the world, but inside their bodies there was a spirit, and that spirit needed to return to the good god. They were famous for a belief in a form of reincarnation and believed that when someone died the bad god would put that person's spirit in a new body. They believed this cycle of coming back to life could be escaped by a ritual cleansing. They were opposed to the doctrine of sin.

Women were prominent in the faith. They were pacifists. They didn't eat anything that was made from other animals, including meat and cows milk. The only exception to this was fish. Fish was OK to eat because they believed fishes were not alive but just things that were sometimes produced from dirt and water.

They preached tolerance of other faiths. They rejected the usual Christian rules of marriage and only believed in the New Testament. An earlier 10th-century Bulgarian heresy, Bogomilism and also Manichaeism started some of these trends.

Language Edit

They used a bible in the language people spoke. Many other Christians used a Bible in Latin. Latin was spoken only by the priests.

In 1145, open challenge to Catholic dominance began. In about 1165, the first Cathars said that the Church was "full of ravening (starving) wolves and hypocrites" and "worshipping the wrong God", right in front of the most powerful Catholics. In 1166, the Council of Oxford in England wiped out the English Cathars. It was also suppressed in Northern France. In 1167, Cathar bishops met to discuss organizing a counter Church - in the South of France, the Languedoc nobles protected it, and many noble women became "Perfects". Parish clergy had low morale, or confidence.

Reactions Edit

The Catholic Church was against Catharism, seeing it as a heresy.

In the South of France there was tremendous religious fervor, and an economy that was starting to grow, and a social class of merchants and peasants was starting to grow. Peasants owned their own land. Meanwhile, in other parts of Europe, peasants were forced to give up their land to nobles and become serfs or slaves - the system of feudalism. There was a strong central absolute monarchy that did not exist in the South of France. The burghers and bankers had more power in this looser system. R. I. Moore is a historian who believes that it was desire to crush this system and take over the land that drove the attack.

However, there was real cultural and religious difference to cause problems: Troubadors, who combined some of the traditions of the Bards of the Celts, and Jews, were both part of the multicultural society in the South of France. Their influences were not appreciated by local or Roman Church figures. The 12th century Roman Catholic Monks were founding their monasteries outside the towns, drawing the best people there.

Results Edit

The Cathars thus had little competition. The Cathar "Perfects", the so-called Good Men or Good Women, lived restrained lives and spread their faith in towns - where the Catholics in general did not have their best agents. Also, Cathars preached that only these Good leaders had to follow the regimens their whole lives - lay people could repent only on their deathbeds. Many 20th century Christian sects have similar beliefs.

Methods Edit

The Pope ordered a crusade against the Cathars in southern France. He said any crusader who answered the call would be given the same rewards as a crusader who went to the Holy Land. This was an absolution of all sin.

In the Launguedoc, on the 22nd of July 1209, a force of about 30,000 Crusaders arrived at the walls of Beziers bearing the cross pattee to mislead and create ease among the Cathars, thinking they were friend, not foe, and demanded that about 200 Cathars be surrendered. The people of the town who were mostly Catholic, said that rather than turn over their friends and family, "we would rather be flayed alive."

A mistake by the defenders of Beziers let thousands of attackers in. Arnauld Amaury made the famous quote "Kill them all, god knows his own" on being asked how to tell who were Cathars during the assault. Everyone in the town was killed, some while taking refuge in the church. It is guessed that 20,000 were killed, many of whom were Catholics and not Cathars at all. The crusade became known as the Albigensian crusade after the town of Albi. It was to wipe out the Cathars almost entirely over forty or so years. The Crusaders wanted to go home, but were ordered by the Pope to continue until the whole South of France was controlled and all Cathars were dead. In 1210, they attacked the fortress at Minerv and built "the first great bonfire of heretics" - beginning the practice of burning at the stake that would continue in the Inquisition of the Counter-Reformation. It is interesting to note that at the siege of Montsegur when the fires were lit the Cathars ran down the hill and threw themselves on, as their beliefs were very strong.

Result Edit

Catharism disappeared from the northern Italian cities after the 1260s, pressured by the Inquisition. The last known Cathar perfectus in the Languedoc, Guillaume Bélibaste, was killed in 1321.

The first castles were built by the Normans The great age of castles began almost 1,000 years ago and lasted for nearly 500 years. The Normans introduced the first proper castles, starting with the wooden Motte and Bailey castles, to England following their victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

After their victory at the Battle of Hastings, the Normans settled in England. They constructed castles all over the country in order to control their newly-won territory, and to pacify the Anglo-Saxon population. These early castles were mainly of motte and bailey type.

The word chancery is from French, from Latin, and ultimately refers to the lattice-work partition that divided a section of a church or court, from which also derives chancel, cancel "cross out with lines", and, more distantly, incarcerate "put behind bars" – see chancery for details.

In England, this office was one of the two main administrative offices, along with the Exchequer. It began as part of the royal household, but by the 13th-century was separate from the household and was located at Westminster. It produced all the charters and writs, which were all sealed with the Great Seal. [1]

The office was headed by the Chancellor of England, and was staffed by royal clerks. It came into existence shortly before the Norman Conquest of England, and was retained by King William I of England after the Conquest. In 1199, the chancery began to keep the Charter Rolls, a record of all the charters issued by the office. Then in 1201, the Patent Rolls, a similar record of letters patent began, and in 1204 the Close Rolls, or record of letters close began. [2] Although the English Chancery was responsible for most of the charters and writs issued by the government, they were not responsible for all of them, as the Exchequer and the justiciars continued to issue writs during the Angevin period. [3]

Whether there was a formal chancery office in Anglo-Saxon England prior to the Norman Conquest is a matter of some debate amongst historians. Some hold that most royal charters in Anglo-Saxon England were produced by the beneficiaries of the charter. Other historians hold that by the 10th and 11th centuries most royal charters were produced by royal clerks, and thus they probably were produced in some sort of chancery-like office. [4]

The crusader states in the Levant also had chanceries. In the Principality of Antioch, the office was responsible for producing all documents pertaining to the administration of the principality. One office holder in the Antiochene chancery was Walter the Chancellor, who wrote the only early history of the state. [5]

In the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the chancery produced hundreds of documents. The chancellor of Jerusalem was one of the highest posts in the kingdom. One famous chancellor was the chronicler William of Tyre.

In the Duchy of Normandy, after 1066 a ducal chancery developed, especially under William's sons Robert Curthose and Henry I. [6]

The French royal chancery first appears in a rudimentary form during the Merovingian dynasty. They borrowed from the diplomatic institutions of the late Roman Empire, and had four officials, usually clerics, called "referendaries" who guarded the king's seal. The documents are very formulaic, probably using the formulary of Marculf as a source. They used their own script, which was very messy with many ligatures, and their Latin was of very poor quality. [7]

After the Merovingians were overthrown by the Mayors of the Palace, the chancery began to develop more fully. The Carolingian chancellor was usually the Archbishop of Reims. He was a member of the king's council, while the actual business of the chancery was conducted by lesser officials. Louis the Pious created a new formulary, the Formulae Imperiales, which was the basis of formularies used in later centuries. They also used a different script, the more legible Carolingian minuscule. The Carolingian chancery took requests from those who wished to have a charter drawn up, and the king would send missi to investigate the situation. [8]

In the Capetian period, the chancellor was still the Archbishop of Reims. The chancery itself tended not to write its own charters, but rather confirmed charters that had already been written by the intended recipient. This reflected the relative powerlessness of the Capetian kings, who, unlike their Carolingian predecessors, controlled only the Ile-de-France. It was not until the 12th century that the chancellor truly became the head of the chancery, rather than the guardian of the king's seal. This chancellor was a member of the Great Officers of the Crown of France, which developed in the 11th and 12th centuries. Because the chancellor had power over the granting of charters and other benefits, the kings often saw them as a threat to their own authority, and the office sometimes lay dormant for many years. Philip II abolished the post in 1185, and the chancery remained without an official head for most of the thirteenth and part of the fourteenth century. The head of the chancery in this period took over the guardianship of the seal, and was usually not a cleric. Documents in this period were signed as "cancellaria vacante" ("with the chancellorship vacant"). When the chancellorship was restored in the fourteenth century, it was held by laymen and became the highest ranking of the Great Officers. [9]

In the fourteenth century the rest of the chancery staff consisted of notaries and secretaries. They were appointed by the chancellor and wrote royal letters and other documents that were not already produced by the beneficiaries. The most important official after the chancellor was the audencier, who presided over the ceremony in which the chancellor affixed the royal seal to a document. The chancery charged a tax to recipients of charters Jews were taxed at a higher rate, but royal grants of alms or other donations were not usually taxed. The Capetian chancery also used a minuscule script, and documents were written in Latin until the thirteenth century, when French also began to be used. [10]

The majority of the documents produced by the chancery were letters patent, which were directed from the king to a single person. They could be letters of thanks, financial transactions, letters of justice and pardon, legitimization of children, recognition of nobility, and many other subjects. Charters authorizing grants of land or settling property disputes are less common. Documents were not registered in an archive until the fourteenth century, and then only rarely, if the document pertained to royal administration. [11]

Normally a document was validated by witnesses, including the author, the chancellor, or other nobles the early Capetians derived their authority from the number of people they could collect to sign a document. Later in the Middle Ages the kingship had regained enough power that the king's seal was considered authoritative enough on its own. [12]

The chancery office was abolished in 1928.

The medieval popes had a Chancery of Apostolic Briefs, which was one of the four great papal offices, the others being the Apostolic Camera, which handled finances, the Penitentiary, which dealt with spiritual matters, and the Sacra Rota, which dealt with judicial matters. [13]

The Illuminati: 13 questions about the clandestine secret society answered

Who were the Illuminati, and do they really control the world? Here's what we know about one of history's most alluring secret societies, including how you became a member.

This competition is now closed

Published: June 4, 2021 at 8:32 am

What is the Illuminati?

The Illuminati is a name given to both a real and fictitious society. The latter has fuelled conspiracy theories for years, with people claiming it to be a secretive and mysterious worldwide organisation intent on world domination – as well as being behind some of history’s greatest revolutions and assassinations.

What was the original Illuminati?

The Illuminati was a secret society formed in Bavaria (now part of modern-day Germany) that existed from 1776 to 1785 – its members originally referred to themselves as Perfectibilists. The group was inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment and founded by professor of canon law Adam Weishaupt. He wanted to promote the education of reason and philanthropy and oppose superstition and religious influence in society. Weishaupt sought to change the way states in Europe were run, removing the influence of religion from government and giving people a new source of ‘illumination’.

It’s believed that the Bavarian Illuminati’s first meeting was held in a forest near Ingolstadt on 1 May 1776. Here, five men set out the rules that would govern the secret order.

Eventually the group’s aims focused on influencing political decisions and disrupting institutions like the monarchy and the Church. Some members of the Illuminati joined the Freemasons in order to recruit new members. A bird known as the ‘owl of Minerva’ (Minerva being the ancient Roman goddess of wisdom) eventually became its main symbol.

How is the Illuminati connected to the Freemasons?

The Freemasons are a fraternal order that evolved from the guilds of stonemasons and cathedral builders of the Middle Ages. In some countries, especially the US, there has historically been a lot of paranoia about the Freemasons – in 1828, a single-issue political movement known as the Anti-Masonic Party was even established. Due to the original Illuminati recruitment of Freemasons, the two groups have often been confused for each other.

How could you join the Illuminati?

To join the Illuminati, you had to have full consent from the other members, possess wealth, and have a good reputation within a suitable family. There was also a hierarchical system to Illuminati membership. After entering as a ‘novice’, you graduated to a ‘minerval’ and then an ‘illuminated minerval’, although this structure later became more complicated, with 13 degrees of initiation required in order to become a member.

Did the Illuminati use rituals?

They did use rituals – most of which remain unknown – and pseudonyms were used to keep the identities of members a secret. However, the rituals we do know about (found in seized, secret papers) explain how novices could move to a higher level within the Illuminati’s hierarchy: they had to compile a report on all the books they owned, write a list of their weaknesses, and reveal the names of any enemies they had. The novice would then promise to sacrifice personal interests for the good of the society.

What is the all-seeing eye?

The ‘Eye of Providence’ – a symbol resembling an eye inside a triangle – appears on churches around the globe, as well as on Masonic buildings and the US one-dollar bill. In addition to being associated with Freemasonry, it has also been linked with the Illuminati as a symbol of the group’s control and surveillance of the world.

Originally a Christian emblem, the all-seeing eye has been used in paintings to represent God’s watchfulness over humanity. In the 18th century, it began to be used in new ways – for example, in Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier’s The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, an illustrated version of the human rights document adopted by France’s National Constituent Assembly in 1789. Here, it is depicted as an instrument of paternalistic reason, keeping a watchful eye over the newly democratic nation.

There is no official link between the all-seeing eye and the Illuminati – the proposed connection probably stems from the fact that the original group shared similarities with the Freemasons, who used the image as a symbol of God.

Did the Illuminati succeed in world domination?

Some people believe that the Illuminati controls the world today, suggesting that they are so secretive that few are aware of it. As many members of the Illuminati infiltrated the Freemasons and vice versa, it’s difficult to judge the Illuminati’s success, but most historians believe the original group only gained moderate influence.

Were there any famous members Illuminati?

By 1782, the Illuminati had grown to around 600 members – these included German nobles such as Baron Adolph von Knigge who, as a former Freemason, helped shape the group’s organisation and expansion. Initially, Weishaupt’s students were the only members, but soon, doctors, lawyers and intellectuals joined. There were between 2,000 and 3,000 Illuminati members by 1784. Some sources say that renowned writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also joined, but this is disputed.

Why did the Illuminati disappear?

In 1784, Karl Theodor, Duke of Bavaria, banned the creation of any kind of society not previously authorised by law and the following year he passed a second edict, which expressly banned the Illuminati. During the arrest of suspected Illuminati members, compromising documents (defending ideas such as atheism and suicide) were found in their possession, as well as instructions for carrying out abortions.

This cemented the belief that the group was a threat to both the state and the Church. The Illuminati then seems to have disappeared, with some people believing that it continued underground.

What happened to Adam Weishaupt?

Adam Weishaupt was eventually stripped of his post at the University of Ingolstadt. After being exiled from Bavaria, he spent the remainder of his life in Gotha, Thuringia, dying in 1830.

Why did the myth of the Illuminati endure?

From the moment they disbanded, conspiracy theories about the Illuminati began to take hold. In 1797, French publicist and Jesuit priest Abbé Augustin Barruel suggested that secret societies like the Illuminati had spearheaded the French Revolution. First president of the US, George Washington, then wrote a letter the following year in which he stated that he believed the threat of the Illuminati had been avoided, adding further fuel to the idea that the order still existed. Books and sermons condemning the group later sprung up, and third US president, Thomas Jefferson, was falsely accused of being a member.

Why do people still believe in the Illuminati today?

The idea of a world-dominating Illuminati has never really left people’s minds, and still infiltrates popular culture today. In 1963, a text called the Principia Discordia was published, promoting an alternative belief system known as ‘Discordianism’. Calling for anarchism and civil disobedience by perpetrating hoaxes, its adherents included writer Robert Anton Wilson. Some followers of Discordianism sent fake letters into magazines claiming that events such as the assassination of US president John F Kennedy were all the work of the Illuminati.

Wilson later published a book with Robert Shea, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which became a cult success and inspired a new genre of conspiracy fiction, including Dan Brown’s novel (and subsequent film) Angels & Demons. The Illuminati also became connected with Satanism and other ideals that were far removed from those associated with the original 18th-century Bavarian group.

What is the New World Order and how does it connect to the Illuminati?

Those who believe in the theory of a New World Order believe that an elite group of people are trying to rule the globe. As well as US presidents, several popstars have been accused of being members, including Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Both have denied the claims.

Emma Slattery Williams is BBC History Revealed‘s staff writer

How many barons were there in feudal 10th century France? - History

[All photographs in this review were taken” by the author. The gallery exhibits were taken” by kind permission of the Musée Girodet, Montargis, France. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.]

Cover of the book under review. NB This shows the terracotta Clytie discussed below.

The collapse of the July Monarchy in 1848, after the second revolution in France, sent the French royal family into exile in Surrey. Having crossed the Channel incognito, Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, already elderly, died at Claremont in Esher in 1850 and was first laid to rest in a little domed mausoleum attached to the Catholic church of St Charles Borrromeo in nearby Weybridge. His wife Marie-Amélie lived on into her eighties, occupying Claremont until her death in 1866. The Orléans family were great patrons of the arts, and their family connections with Queen Victoria meant that their residence here had an impact on the already cosmopolitan Victorian art scene. More attention is being paid to this now, with some long overdue retrospectives. One artist whose contribution has been unjustly neglected is the sculptor Baron Henri (later Henry) de Triqueti. This new book about him in France might help to right the injustice.

Since Triqueti was born in Conflans-sur-Loing in the Loiret region, near Orléans, works from his studio were donated” by his daughter Blanche and son-in-law Edward Lee Childe to the nearby Musée Girodet in Montargis and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans. These therefore were the joint venues of the first retrospective of Triqueti's work in 2007-2008. Both now have Triqueti rooms, the opening of the one in the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans having taken place only late last year (2009). This informative and attractively illustrated handbook was written by the curator, Véronique Galliot-Rateau, to mark that occasion and, it is hoped, to bring Triqueti's talent to the notice of many more people.

Left: A view of the Academic Painting and Sculpture Gallery of the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans. Right: The Triqueti room in the Musée Girodet.

After a brief preface suggesting his importance, Galliot-Rateau first outlines the career that took Triqueti away from his native country to England. He was always more than just an "enfant du pays," since his father, who was originally from Savoy, had received his baronetcy from the king of Sardinia for service as an ambassador in Amsterdam. His mother, the baron's second wife, came on her mother's side from local French nobility but was partly of Swiss origin. The young Triqueti emerged from this cosmopolitan background with a thorough knowledge of Greek, Latin, the scriptures, and medieval Italian poetry. He studied art first with his mother's friend Anne Louis Girodet Trioson, and then at the Paris studio of Louis Hersent, gradually turning to sculpture. Such details are already included in the Victorian Web, but some new ones can now be added, such as his lifelong love of drawing, his delight in nature, and the spread of his artistic sympathies. His pleasure in nature led him to take walks round the zoological gardens in London's Regent's Park it helps to account for the well-observed natural details in his work, for instance, in the borders of the Triqueti Marbles in the Albert Memorial Chapel at Windsor. As for his artistic leanings, while he was among the new wave of Romantic sculptors, his close familiarity with early Italian sculpture gave his work a certain gravitas from an early age. Another of his London haunts, Galliot-Rateau notes later, was the British Museum, where he was much taken with the Elgin Marbles.

Part of the full-sized maquette of the Duke of Orléans in its gallery setting.

The advantages of such a background as Triqueti's are obvious, but nothing can really account for his precocity. Having paid tribute to the art-collector and museum director Eudoxe Marcille (1814-1890), who played an important role in the acquisition of Triqueti's works, Galliot-Rateau launches into the first of her three main sections: "Le Sculpteur des Princes." This is how Triqueti is popularly known, because of the patronage of the House of Orléans, and later of Queen Victoria. It is astonishing, as Galliot-Rateau says, that someone who had shown hardly any work at the Paris Salon should start getting major public commissions at around the age of 30, especially for the bronze reliefs of the great doors of the Madeleine, right in the heart of the capital. The young sculptor rose to the challenge magnificently, choosing to depict not episodes from the life of St. Madeleine, but the tragedy of sinful man, in a series of powerful scenes illustrating the Ten Commandments. Galliot-Rateau also gives details of other work which shows just how intensely alive Biblical figures were to him. His patron and friend during these early years was the young Prince Royal, the Duke of Orléans, whose tragic death inspired Triqueti's next notable works, the recumbent sculpture for the his tomb in the Chapelle de Saint-Ferdinand in Paris, and the Pietà there. Galliot-Rateau suggests that Mary's expression in the latter work owes something to the grief of Triqueti's mother at the death, that same year (1843), of her only daughter, the sculptor's sister Henrietta. This section discusses various other works, including a great, elaborately decorated bronze and marble vase for the Duke of Orléans, which illustrates the poetry of Dante and Petrarch. The three statuettes for niches in its base, of Beatrice, Laura, and Vittoria Colonna, are now in the Louvre.

Left: A more playful side of Triqueti: this preliminary model for the bust-medallion of a young woman is surrounded by putti and flowers, with an impish figure at the bottom riding a grotesque — half-animal, but sprouting vegetation instead of a tail. His work on such medallions was influenced by fifteenth-century Florentine sculptors (Turner 416). Right: More typical: a model for one of the heads on the doors of the Madeleine, illustrating "Thou Shalt Not Steal."

Coming as he did from such a wealthy background, Triqueti never needed to work for money. He was driven, as the best are, by his own passion for his art. His marriage to Julia Forster in 1834 opened up new avenues of patronage. Julia was not only the granddaughter of the eighteenth-century English sculptor, Thomas Banks but daughter to the chaplain of the British Ambassador in Paris, Lord Cowley. Hence he began to receive commissions like that for the medallion-busts of Florence and Alice Campbell. This stood him in good stead after the second revolution, when he himself enlisted in the National Guard and was wounded at the barricades. He began to turn more and more towards England. One of the other works discussed in this section is his Sappho et l'Amour , or Sappho and Cupid , which was first executed in terracotta in the very year of the revolution, and then chiselled in ivory. The ivory piece was purchased by Queen Victoria in 1852, and is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It rather a typical composition, depicting a moment of high drama: according to the V & A's own site, Sappho is just about to cast herself into the sea after having been rejected” by Phaon a small Cupid is trying unavailingly to hold her back. A parallel might be drawn with the work of another royalist artist, the painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856), who also expressed his feelings about events in France through depictions of women in crisis (for instance, in The Execution of Lady Jane Grey , the featured work of another recent exhibition, this time at the National Gallery in London).

A smaller vase (but still 130 cms high) has been preserved in its entirety, on the theme of the Israelites during their Captivity . The kind of work involved can be seen in the following examples. Left to right: (a) Vase de la Chasse , bronze, 1837 (80 cms high). (b) Maquette for another vase or amphora of a different design (Triqueti did not believe in making copies of the same work). (c) Detail of one of the panels on this vase: a nuptial scene.

By the end of the 1850s Triqueti was spending much of his time in London, where his address was that of his English assistant, and from some point mistress, Susan Durant, near Hyde Park. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the Chapelle de Saint-Ferdinand in 1855, and were much moved by Triqueti's work there. Prince Albert was also impressed by Triqueti's tarsia technique. He confessed in a letter to his daughter Victoria that sculpture was more attractive to him than painting (see Galliot-Rateau 24), and Triqueti was engaged to direct young Vicky's skills in this line. It was the princess, apparently, who encouraged her mother to entrust Triqueti with the decoration of the Albert Memorial Chapel. The Triqueti Marbles are fabulous. They have to be seen to be believed. The time for such sumptuous funerary work and heavily religious sentiment would pass, and it is significant that Victoria herself prevailed upon Triqueti to make the effigy of her husband more knightly than saintly. Nevertheless, Galliot-Rateau may be right about the influence of this celebrated, large-scale project. She does not elaborate on this point, but such elements as Triqueti's resuscitation of an old traditional craft, his meticulous attention to detail, the panel borders of leaves and flowers, and the use of carefully selected and interpreted texts, may well have left a profound mark on the evolving Arts and Crafts movement.

The next two sections of Henry de Triqueti, 1803-1874, Sculpteur deal with the sources of Triqueti's inspiration and his techniques. Like the first section, which moves methodically from his early commissions to his work for first French and then English royalty, these both divide into fully-illustrated shorter essays, with major works picked out for more detailed discussion. As for Triqueti's chief inspirations, these were, without doubt, Christianity, women, and ancient mythology. The order given here is absolutely right. He was a man of great religious sensibility, encouraged in him from his earliest days” by his mother Sophie. Angels feature prominently in his work of all kinds, an interest which, when combined with his skill at producing circular compositions, yielded the wonderful Concert d'Anges , or Concert of Angels , which he used for the headstone of Susan Durant, who died suddenly in January 1873. As for women, he was most affected” by their maternal feelings, and two of his haunting representations of the infant Moses with his mother are illustrated here. The heartbreak and despair of heroines from the classical past provided him with other subjects. One of the full-page illustrations is of a terracotta Clytie, her body twisted to follow the sun, some leaves” by her thigh suggesting the metamorphosis about to take place (her yielding pose contrasting sharply with G. F. Watt's more sinewy Clytie). Among the other works inspired” by classical mythology and singled out here is a remarkable Narcissus, Narcisse Mort , the figure almost subsumed into the riverbank. This dates from 1850, yet its fluid lines look forward to the New Sculpture, and such works as Alfred Gilbert's monument to Queen Alexandra. Benedict Read has written about the influence of the French on the New Sculpture, pointing particularly to his fellow-countryman Marochetti's skills in translating his models into bronze he could have mentioned Triqueti, too.

Nor was this sculptor any less gifted or adventurous technically. His minutely observed drawings, of which there is an enormous cache (several thousand), were carefully annotated and organised. Having the wealth to acquire the best materials, he worked with a variety of them, including precious metals, wood, ivory and of course marble and his work ranged from the truly monumental, like the vast bronze doors of the Madeleine and his great vases, to the miniature, as in the tiny details of his tarsia work. Earlier studies would be used in later compositions, but, believing a work of art should be unique, he never made copies of entire pieces. Of course, because the hard work to produce the actual sculpture was done” by his assistants under his direction, his drawings and maquettes, which show his personal touch, have a special importance. (They in fact literally bear his touch — one illustration here shows a fingerprint on the plaster of The Concert of Angels , as well as his compass marks).

Unfortunately, says Galliot-Rateau, Triqueti was a victim of his own success (52). Since he did not need to seek out public commissions, or replicate his works, the individual pieces disappeared one” by one into private hands, some in France and some in England. His desire to explicate his major works, the Madeleine reliefs and the marbles in the Albert Memorial Chapel, shows that he did care about his wider reputation but he was largely forgotten after his death. Now, with the 2007/8 exhibition, the full-length book that accompanied it (details given below), the two dedicated museum rooms, and this useful and beautifully produced paperback, he may at last be given the place he deserves in the history of nineteenth-century sculpture.

Bibliography

Galliot-Rateau, Véronique. Henry de Triqueti, 1803-1874, Sculpteur : Collection du Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans . Amis des Musée d''Orléans / Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, 2009. 64 pp. &euro15. ISBN 978-2-910173-36-4.

Lemaistre, Isabelle Leroy-Jay, et al. Henry de Triqueti, 1803-1874, Le Sculpteur des Princes . Vanves, France: Hazan, 2007.