Chapter II: Part 2

While the decadence of the Triple Alliance had this important effect on the domestic affairs of France, its inception had produced the Franco-Russian alliance, which took France out of its isolation in Europe, and became the pivot of its exterior policy. It has been noted that in the years succeeding the Franco-Prussian War the tsar Alexander II. had shown a disposition to support France against German aggression, as though to make up for his neutrality during the war, which was so benevolent for Germany that his uncle William I. had ascribed to it a large share of the German victory. The assassination of Alexander II. by revolutionaries in 1881 made it difficult for the new autocrat to cultivate closer relations with a Republican government, although the Third Republic, under the influence of Gambetta, to whom its consolidation was chiefly due, had repudiated that proselytizing spirit, inherited from the great Revolution, which had disquieted the monarchies of Europe in 1848 and had provoked their hostility to the Second Republic. But the Triple Alliance which was concluded the year after the murder of the tsar indicated the possible expediency of an understanding between the two great powers of the West and the East, in response to the combination of the three central powers of Europe,--though Bismarck after his fall revealed that in 1884 a secret treaty was concluded between Germany and Russia, which was, however, said to have in view a war between England and Russia. Internal dissension on the subject of colonial policy in the far East, followed by the fall of Jules Ferry and the Boulangist agitation were some of the causes which prevented France from strengthening its position in Europe by seeking a formal understanding with Russia in the first part of the reign of Alexander III. But when the Boulangist movement came to an end, entirely from the incompetency of its leader, it behoved the government of the Republic to find a means of satisfying the strong patriotic sentiment revealed in the nation, which, directed by a capable and daring soldier, would have swept away the parliamentary republic and established a military dictatorship in its place. The Franco-Russian understanding provided that means, and Russia was ready for it, having become, by the termination in 1890 of the secret treaty with Germany, not less isolated in Europe than France. In July 1891, when the French fleet visited Kronstadt the incident caused such enthusiasm throughout the French nation that the exiled General Boulanger's existence would have been forgotten, except among his dwindling personal followers, had he not put an end to it by suicide two months later at Brussels. The Franco-Russian understanding united all parties, not in love for one another but in the idea that France was thereby about to resume its place in Europe. The Catholic Royalists ceased to talk of the restitution of the temporal power of the pope in their joy at the deference of the government of the republic for the most autocratic monarchy of Christendom; the Boulangists, now called Nationalists, hoped that it would lead to the war of revenge with Germany, and that it might also be the means of humiliating England, as shown by their resentment at the visit of the French squadron to Portsmouth on its way home from Kronstadt. It is, however, extremely improbable that the understanding and subsequent alliance would have been effected had the Boulangist movement succeeded. For the last thing that the Russian government desired was war with Germany. What it needed and obtained was security against German aggression on its frontier and financial aid from France; so a French plebiscitary government, having for its aim the restitution of Alsace and Lorraine, would have found no support in Russia. As the German chancellor, Count von Caprivi, said in the Reichstag on the 27th of November 1891, a few weeks after a Russian loan had been subscribed in France nearly eight times over, the naval visit to Kronstadt had not brought war nearer by one single inch. Nevertheless when in 1893 the Russian fleet paid a somewhat tardy return visit to Toulon, where it was reviewed by President Carnot, a party of Russian officers who came to Paris was received by the population of the capital, which less than five years before had acclaimed General Boulanger, with raptures which could not have been exceeded had they brought back to France the territory lost in 1871. In November 1894, Alexander III. died, and in January 1895, M. Casimir-Perier resigned the presidency of the Republic, to which he had succeeded only six months before on the assassination of M. Carnot. So it was left to Nicholas II. and President Felix Faure to proclaim the existence of a formal alliance between France and Russia. It appears that in 1891 and 1892, at the time of the first public manifestations of friendship between France and Russia, in the words of M. Ribot, secret conventions were signed by him, being foreign minister, and M. de Freycinet, president of the council, which secured for France "the support of Russia for the maintenance of the equilibrium in Europe"; and on a later occasion the same statesman said that it was after the visit of the empress Frederick to Paris in 1891 that Alexander III. made to France certain offers which were accepted. The word "alliance" was not publicly used by any minister to connote the relations of France with Russia until the 10th of June 1895, when M. Hanotaux used the term with cautious vagueness amid the applause of the Chamber of Deputies. Yet not even when Nicholas II. came to France in October 1896 was the word "alliance" formally pronounced in any of the official speeches. But the reception given to the tsar and tsaritsa in Paris, where no European sovereign had come officially since William of Germany passed down the Champs Elysees as a conqueror, was of such a character that none could doubt that this was the consecration of the alliance. It was at last formally proclaimed by Nicholas II., on board a French man-of-war, on the occasion of the visit of the president of the Republic to Russia in August 1897. From that date until the formation of M. Briand's cabinet in 1909, nine different ministries succeeded one another and five ministers of foreign affairs; but they all loyally supported the Franco-Russian alliance, although its popularity diminished in France long before the war between Russia and Japan, which deprived it of its efficacy in Europe. In 1901 Nicholas II. came again to France and was the guest of President Loubet at Compiegne. His visit excited little enthusiasm in the nation, which was disposed to attribute it to Russia's financial need of France; while the Socialists, now a strong party which provided the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry with an important part of its majority in the Chamber, violently attacked the alliance of the Republic with a reactionary autocracy. However anomalous that may have been it did not prevent the whole French nation from welcoming the friendship between the governments of Russia and of France in its early stages. Nor can there be any doubt that the popular instinct was right in according it that welcome. France in its international relations was strengthened morally by the understanding and by the alliance, which also served as a check to Germany. But its association with Russia had not the results hoped for by the French reactionaries. It encouraged them in their opposition to the parliamentary Republic during the Dreyfus agitation, the more so because the Russian autocracy is anti-Semitic. It also made a Nationalist of one president of the Republic, Felix Faure, whose head was so turned by his imperial frequentations that he adopted some of the less admirable practices of princes, and also seemed ready to assume the bearing of an autocrat. His sudden death was as great a relief to the parliamentary Republicans as it was a disappointment to the plebiscitary party, which anti-Dreyfusism, with its patriotic pretensions, had again made a formidable force in the land. But the election of the pacific and constitutional M. Loubet as president of the Republic at this critical moment in its history counteracted any reactionary influence which the Russian alliance might have had in France; so the general effect of the alliance was to strengthen the Republic and to add to its prestige. The visit of the tsar to Paris, the first paid by a friendly sovereign since the Second Empire, impressed a population, proud of its capital, by an outward sign which seemed to show that the Republic was not an obstacle to the recognition by the monarchies of Europe of the place still held by France among the great powers. Before M. Loubet laid down office the nation, grown more republican, saw the visit of the tsar followed by those of the kings of England and of Italy, who might never have been moved to present their respects to the French Republic had not Russia shown them the way.

Relations with England.

While the French rejoiced at the Russian alliance chiefly as a check to the aggressive designs of Germany, they also liked the association of France with a power regarded as hostile to England. This traditional feeling was not discouraged by one of the chief artificers of the alliance, Baron Mohrenheim, Russian ambassador in Paris, who until 1884 had filled the same position in London, where he had not learned to love England, and who enjoyed in France a popularity rarely accorded to the diplomatic agent of a foreign power. An _entente cordiale_ has since been initiated between England and France. But it is necessary to refer to the less agreeable relations which existed between the two countries, as they had some influence on the exterior policy of the Third Republic. England and France had no causes of friction within Europe. But in its policy of colonial expansion, during the last twenty years of the 19th century, France constantly encountered England all over the globe. The first important enterprise beyond the seas seriously undertaken by France after the Franco-German War, was, as we have seen, in Tunis. But even before that question had been mentioned at the congress of Berlin, in 1878, France had become involved in an adventure in the Far East, which in its developments attracted more public attention at home than the extension of French territory in northern Africa. Had these pages been written before the end of the 19th century it would have seemed necessary to trace the operations of France in Indo-China with not less detail than has been given to the establishment of the protectorate in Tunis. But French hopes of founding a great empire in the Far East came to an end with the partial resuscitation of China and the rise to power of Japan. As we have seen, Jules Ferry's idea was that in colonial expansion France would find the best means of recovering prestige after the defeat of 1870-71 in the years of recuperation when it was essential to be diverted from European complications. Jules Ferry was not a friend of Gambetta, in spite of later republican legends. But the policy of colonial expansion in Tunis and in Indo-China, associated with Ferry's name, was projected by Gambetta to give satisfaction to France for the necessity, imposed, in his opinion, on the French government, of taking its lead in foreign affairs from Berlin. How Jules Ferry developed that system we know now from Bismarck's subsequent expressions of regret at Ferry's fall. He believed that, had Ferry remained in power, an amicable arrangement would have been made between France and Germany, a formal agreement having been almost concluded to the effect that France should maintain peaceable and friendly relations with Germany, while Bismarck supported France in Tunis, in Indo-China and generally in its schemes of oversea colonization. Even though the friendly attitude of Germany towards those schemes was not official the contrast was manifest between the benevolent tone of the German press and that of the English, which was generally hostile. Jules Ferry took his stand on the position that his policy was one not of colonial conquest, but of colonial conservation, that without Tunis, Algeria was insecure, that without Tongking and Annam, there was danger of losing Cochin-China, where the French had been in possession since 1861. It was on the Tongking question that Ferry fell. On the 30th of March 1885, on the news of the defeat of the French troops at Lang-Son, the Chamber refused to vote the money for carrying on the campaign by a majority of 306 to 149. Since that day public opinion in France has made amends to the memory of Jules Ferry. His patriotic foresight has been extolled. Criticism has not been spared for the opponents of his policy in parliament of whom the most conspicuous, M. Clemenceau and M. Ribot, have survived to take a leading part in public affairs in the 20th century. The attitude of the Parisian press, which compared Lang-Son with Sedan and Jules Ferry with Emile Ollivier, has been generally deplored, as has that of the public which was ready to offer violence to the fallen minister, and which was still so hostile to him in 1887 that the congress at Versailles was persuaded that there would be a revolution in Paris if it elected "the German Ferry" president of the Republic. Nevertheless his adversaries in parliament, in the press and in the street have been justified--not owing to their superior sagacity, but owing to a series of unexpected events which the most foreseeing statesmen of the world never anticipated. The Indo-China dream of Jules Ferry might have led to a magnificent empire in the East to compensate for that which Dupleix lost and Napoleon failed to reconquer.

The Russian alliance, which came at the time when Ferry's policy was justified in the eyes of the public, too late for him to enjoy any credit, gave a new impetus to the French idea of establishing an empire in the Far East. In the opinion of all the prophets of Europe the great international struggle in the near future was to be that of England with Russia for the possession of India. If Russia won, France might have a share in the dismembered Indian empire, of which part of the frontier now marched with that of French Indo-China, since Burma had become British and Tongking French. Such aspirations were not formulated in white-books or in parliamentary speeches. Indeed, the apprehension of difficulty with England limited French ambition on the Siamese frontier. That did not prevent dangerous friction arising between England and France on the question of the Mekong, the river which flows from China almost due south into the China Sea traversing the whole length of French Indo-China, and forming part of the eastern boundary of Upper Burma and Siam. The aim of France was to secure the whole of the left bank of the Mekong, the highway of commerce from southern China. The opposition of Siam to this delimitation was believed by the French to be inspired by England, the supremacy of France on the Mekong river being prejudicial to British commerce with China. The inevitable rivalry between the two powers reached an acute crisis in 1893, the British ambassador in Paris being Lord Dufferin, who well understood the question, upper Burma having been annexed to India under his viceroyalty in 1885. The matter was not settled until 1894, when not only was the French claim to the left bank of the Mekong allowed, but the neutrality of a 25-kilometre zone on the Siamese bank was conceded as open to French trade. It is said that at one moment in July 1893 England and France were more nearly at war than at any other international crisis under the Third Republic, not excluding that of Fashoda, though the acute tension between the governments was unknown to the public.

The Panama affair had left French public opinion in a nervous condition. Fantastic charges were brought not only in the press, but in the chamber of deputies, against newspapers and politicians of having accepted bribes from the British government. At the general election in August and September 1893 M. Clemenceau was pursued into his distant constituency in the Var by a crowd of Parisian politicians, who brought about his defeat less by alleging his connexion with the Panama scandal than by propagating the legend that he was the paid agent of England. The official republic, which changed its prime minister three times and its foreign minister twice in 1893, M. Develle filling that post in the Ribot and Dupuy ministries and M. Casimir-Perier in his own, repudiated with energy the calumnies as to the attempted interference of England in French domestic affairs. But the successive governments were not in a mood to make concessions in foreign questions, as all France was under the glamour of the preliminary manifestations of the Russian alliance. This was seen, a few weeks after the elections, in the wild enthusiasm with which Paris received Admiral Avelane and his officers, who had brought the Russian fleet to Toulon to return the visit of the French fleet to Kronstadt in 1891. The death of Marshal MacMahon, who had won his first renown in the Crimea, and his funeral at the Invalides while the Russians were in Paris, were used to emphasize the fact that the allies before Sebastopol were no longer friends. The projector of the French empire in the Far East did not live to see this phase of the seeming justification of the policy which had cost him place and popularity. Jules Ferry had died on the 17th of March 1893, only three weeks after his triumphant rehabilitation in the political world by his election to the presidency of the Senate, the second post in the state. The year he died it seemed as though with the active aid of Russia and the sympathy of Germany the possessions of France in south-eastern Asia might have indefinitely expanded into southern China. A few years later the defeat of Russia by Japan and the rise of the sea-power of the Japanese practically ended the French empire in Indo-China. What the French already had at the end of the last century is virtually guaranteed to them only by the Anglo-Japanese alliance. It is in the irony of things that these possessions which were a sign of French rivalry with England should now be secured to France by England's friendliness. For it is now recognized by the French that the defence of Indo-China is impossible.

African policy.

French and English rivalry.

Upper Nile exploration.

Marchand mission.

Fashoda.

Convention of 1898.

Had the French dream been realized of a large expansion of territory into southern China, the success of the new empire would have been based on free Chinese labour. This might have counterbalanced an initial obstacle to all French colonial schemes, more important than those which arise from international difficulties--the reluctance of the French to establish themselves as serious colonists in their oversea possessions. We have noted how Algeria, which is nearer to Toulon and Marseilles than are Paris and Havre, has been comparatively neglected by the French, after eighty years of occupation, in spite of the amenity of its climate and its soil for European settlers. The new French colonial school advocates the withdrawal of France from adventures in distant tropical countries which can be reached only by long sea voyages, and the concentration of French activity in the northern half of the African continent. Madagascar is, as we have seen, counted as Africa in computing the area of French colonial territory. But it lies entirely outside the scheme of African colonization, and in spite of the loss of life and money incurred in its conquest, its retention is not popular with the new school, although the first claim of France to it was as long ago as the reign of Louis XIII., when in 1642 a company was founded under the protection of Richelieu for the colonization of the island. The French of the 19th and 20th centuries may well be considered less enterprising in both hemispheres than were their ancestors of the 17th, and Madagascar, after having been the cause of much ill-feeling between England and France under the Third Republic down to the time of its formal annexation, by the law of the 9th of August 1896, is not now the object of much interest among French politicians. On the African continent it is different. When the Republic succeeded to the Second Empire the French African possessions outside Algiers were inconsiderable in area. The chief was Senegal, which though founded as a French station under Louis XIII., was virtually the creation of Faidherbe under the Second Empire, even in a greater degree than were Tunis and Tongking of Jules Ferry under the Third Republic. There was also Gabun, which is now included in French Congo. Those outposts in the tropics became the starting-points for the expansion of a French sphere of influence in north Africa, which by the beginning of the 20th century made France the nominal possessor of a vast territory stretching from the equatorial region on the gulf of Guinea to the Mediterranean. A large portion of it is of no importance, including the once mysterious Timbuktu and the wilds of the waterless Sahara desert. But the steps whereby these wide tracts of wilderness and of valuable territory came to be marked on the maps in French colours, by international agreement, are important, as they were associated with the last serious official dispute between England and France before the period of _entente_. M. Hanotaux, who was foreign minister for the then unprecedented term of four years, from 1894 to 1898, with one short interval of a few months, has thrown an instructive light on the feeling with which French politicians up to the end of the 19th century regarded England. He declared in 1909, with the high authority of one who was during years of Anglo-French tension the mouthpiece of the Republic in its relations with other powers, that every move in the direction of colonial expansion made by France disquieted and irritated England. He complained that when France, under the stimulating guidance of Jules Ferry, undertook the reconstitution of an oversea domain, England barred the way--in Egypt, in Tunis, in Madagascar, in Indo-China, in the Congo, in Oceania. Writing with the knowledge of an ex-foreign minister, who had enjoyed many years of retirement to enable him to weigh his words, M. Hanotaux asserted without any qualification that when he took office England "had conceived a triple design, to assume the position of heir to the Portuguese possessions in Africa, to destroy the independence of the South African republics, and to remain in perpetuity in Egypt." We have not to discuss the truth of those propositions, we have only to note the tendency of French policy; and in so doing it is useful to remark that the official belief of the Third Republic in the last period of the 19th century was that England was the enemy of French colonial expansion all over the globe, and that in the so-called scramble for Africa English ambition was the chief obstacle to the schemes of France. M. Hanotaux, with the authority of official knowledge, indicated that the English project of a railway from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo was the provocation which stimulated the French to essay a similar adventure; though he denied that the Marchand mission and other similar expeditions about to be mentioned were conceived with the specific object of preventing the accomplishment of the British plan. The explorations of Stanley had demonstrated that access to the Great Lakes and the Upper Nile could be effected as easily from the west coast of Africa as from other directions. The French, from their ancient possession of Gabun, had extended their operations far to the east, and had by treaties with European powers obtained the right bank of the Ubanghi, a great affluent of the Congo, as a frontier between their territory and that of the Congo Independent State. They thus found themselves, with respect to Europe, in possession of a region which approached the valley of the Upper Nile. Between the fall of Jules Ferry in 1885 and the beginning of the Russian alliance came a period of decreased activity in French colonial expansion. The unpopularity of the Tongking expedition was one of the causes of the popularity of General Boulanger, who diverted the French public from distant enterprises to a contemplation of the German frontier, and when Boulangism came to an end the Panama affair took its place in the interest it excited. But the colonial party in France did not lose sight of the possibility of establishing a position on the Upper Nile. The partition of Africa seemed to offer an occasion for France to take compensation for the English occupation of Egypt. In 1892 the Budget Commission, on the proposal of M. Etienne, deputy for Oran, who had three times been colonial under secretary, voted 300,000 francs for the despatch of a mission to explore and report on those regions, which had not had much attention since the days of Emin. But the project was not then carried out. Later, parliament voted a sum six times larger for strengthening the French positions on the Upper Ubanghi and their means of communication with the coast. But Colonel Monteil's expedition, which was the consequence of this vote, was diverted, and the 1,800,000 francs were spent at Loango, the southern port of French Congo, and on the Ivory Coast, the French territory which lies between Liberia and the British Gold Coast Colony, where a prolonged war ensued with Samory, a Nigerian chieftain. In September 1894, M. Delcasse being colonial minister, M. Liotard was appointed commissioner of the Upper Ubanghi with instructions to extend French influence in the Bahr-el-Ghazal up to the Nile. In addition to official missions, numerous expeditions of French explorers took place in Central Africa during this period, and negotiations were continually going on between the British and French governments. Towards the end of 1895 Lord Salisbury, who had succeeded Lord Kimberley at the foreign office, informed Baron de Courcel, the French ambassador, that an expedition to the Upper Nile was projected for the purpose of putting an end to Mahdism. M. Hanotaux was not at this moment minister of foreign affairs. He had been succeeded by M. Berthelot, the eminent chemist, who resigned that office on the 26th of March 1896, a month before the fall of the Bourgeois cabinet of which he was a member, in consequence of a question raised in the chamber on this subject of the English expedition to the Soudan. According to M. Hanotaux, who returned to the Quai d'Orsay, in the Meline ministry, on the 29th of April 1896, Lord Salisbury at the end of the previous year, in announcing the expedition confidentially to M. de Courcel, had assured him that it would not go beyond Dongola without a preliminary understanding with France. There must have been a misunderstanding on this point, as after reaching Dongola in September 1896 the Anglo-Egyptian army proceeded up the Nile in the direction of Khartoum. Before M. Hanotaux resumed office the Marchand mission had been formally planned. On the 24th of February 1896 M. Guieysse, colonial minister in the Bourgeois ministry, had signed Captain Marchand's instructions to the effect that he must march through the Upper Ubanghi, in order to extend French influence as far as the Nile, and try to reach that river before Colonel Colvile, who was leading an expedition from the East. He was also advised to conciliate the Mahdi if the aim of the mission could be benefited thereby. M. Liotard was raised to the rank of governor of the Upper Ubanghi, and in a despatch to him the new colonial minister, M. Andre Lebon, wrote that the Marchand mission was not to be considered a military enterprise, it being sent out with the intention of maintaining the political line which for two years M. Liotard had persistently been following, and of which the establishment of France in the basin of the Nile ought to be the crowning reward. Two days later, on the 25th of June 1896, Captain Marchand embarked for Africa. This is not the place for a description of his adventures in crossing the continent or when he encountered General Kitchener at Fashoda, two months after his arrival there in July 1898 and a fortnight after the battle of Omdurman and the capture of Khartoum. The news was made known to Europe by the sirdar's telegrams to the British government in September announcing the presence of the French mission at Fashoda. Then ensued a period of acute tension between the French and English governments, which gave the impression to the public that war between the two countries was inevitable. But those who were watching the situation in France on the spot knew that there was no question of fighting. France was unprepared, and was also involved in the toils of the Dreyfus affair. Had the situation been that of a year later, when the French domestic controversy was ending and the Transvaal War beginning, England might have been in a very difficult position. General Kitchener declined to recognize a French occupation of any part of the Nile valley. A long discussion ensued between the British and French governments, which was ended by the latter deciding on the 6th of November 1898 not to maintain the Marchand mission at Fashoda. Captain Marchand refused to return to Europe by way of the Nile and Lower Egypt, marching across Abyssinia to Jibuti in French Somaliland, where he embarked for France. He was received with well-merited enthusiasm in Paris. But the most remarkable feature of his reception was that the ministry became so alarmed lest the popularity of the hero of Fashoda should be at the expense of that of the parliamentary republic, that it put an end to the public acclamations by despatching him secretly from the capital--a somewhat similar treatment having been accorded to General Dodds in 1893 on his return to France after conquering Dahomey. The Marchand mission had little effect on African questions at issue between France and Great Britain, as a great settlement had been effected while it was on its way across the continent. On the 14th of June 1898, the day before the fall of the Meline ministry, when M. Hanotaux finally quitted the Quai d'Orsay, a convention of general delimitation was signed at Paris by that minister and by the British ambassador, Sir Edmund Monson, which as regards the respective claims of England and France covered in its scope the whole of the northern half of Africa from Senegambia and the Congo to the valley of the Nile. Comparatively little attention was paid to it amid the exciting events which followed, so little that M. de Courcel has officially recorded that three months later, on the eve of the Fashoda incident, Lord Salisbury declared to him that he was not sufficiently acquainted with the geography of Africa to express an opinion on certain questions of delimitation arising out of the success of the British expedition on the Upper Nile. The convention of June 1898 was, however, of the highest importance, as it affirmed the junction into one vast territory of the three chief African domains of France, Algeria and Tunis, Senegal and the Niger, Chad and the Congo, thus conceding to France the whole of the north-western continent with the exception of Morocco, Liberia and the European colonies on the Atlantic. This arrangement, which was completed by an additional convention on the 21st of March 1899, made Morocco a legitimate object of French ambition.

The entente with England.

The other questions which caused mutual animosity between England and France in the decline of the 19th century had nothing whatever to do with their conflicting international interests. The offensive attitude of the English press towards France on account of the Dreyfus affair was repaid by the French in their criticism of the Boer War. When those sentimental causes of mutual irritation had become less acute, the press of the two countries was moved by certain influences to recognize that it was in their interest to be on good terms with one another. The importance of their commercial relations was brought into relief as though it were a new fact. At last in 1903 state visits between the rulers of England and of France took place in their respective capitals, for the first time since the early days of the Second Empire, followed by an Anglo-French convention signed on the 8th of April 1904. By this an arrangement was come to on outstanding questions of controversy between England and France in various parts of the world. France undertook not to interfere with the action of England in Egypt, while England made a like undertaking as to French influence in Morocco. France conceded certain of its fishing rights in Newfoundland which had been a perpetual source of irritation between the two countries for nearly two hundred years since the treaty of Utrecht of 1713. In return England made several concessions to France in Africa, including that of the Los Islands off Sierra Leone and some rectifications of frontier on the Gambia and between the Niger and Lake Chad. Other points of difference were arranged as to Siam, the New Hebrides and Madagascar. The convention of 1904 was on the whole more advantageous for England than for France. The free hand which England conceded to France in dealing with Morocco was a somewhat burdensome gift owing to German interference; but the incidents which arose from the Franco-German conflict in that country are as yet too recent for any estimate of their possible consequences.

The work of M. Delcasse.

One result was the retirement of M. Delcasse from the foreign office on the 6th of June 1905. He had been foreign minister for seven years, a consecutive period of rare length, only once exceeded in England since the creation of the office, when Castlereagh held it for ten years, and one of prodigious duration in the history of the Third Republic. He first went to the Quai d'Orsay in the Brisson ministry of June 1898, remained there during the Dupuy ministry of the same year, was reappointed by M. Waldeck-Rousseau in his cabinet which lasted from June 1899 to June 1902, was retained in the post by M. Combes till his ministry fell in January 1905, and again by his successor M. Rouvier till his own resignation in June of that year. M. Delcasse had thus an uninterrupted reign at the foreign office during a long critical period of transition both in the interior politics of France and in its exterior relations. He went to the Quai d'Orsay when the Dreyfus agitation was most acute, and left it when parliament was absorbed in discussing the separation of church and state. He saw the Franco-Russian alliance lose its popularity in the country even before the Russian defeat by the Japanese in the last days of his ministry. Although in the course of his official duties at the colonial office he had been partly responsible for some of the expeditions sent to Africa for the purpose of checking British influence, he was fully disposed to pursue a policy which might lead to a friendly understanding with England. In this he differed from M. Hanotaux, who was essentially the man of the Franco-Russian alliance, owing to it much of his prestige, including his election to the French Academy, and Russia, to which he gave exclusive allegiance, was then deemed to be primarily the enemy of England. M. Delcasse on the contrary, from the first, desired to assist a _rapprochement_ between England and Russia as preliminary to the arrangement he proposed between England and France. He was foreign minister when the tsar paid his second visit to France, but there was no longer the national unanimity which welcomed him in 1896, M. Delcasse also accompanied President Loubet to Russia when he returned the tsar's second visit in 1902. But exchange of compliments between France and Russia were no longer to be the sole international ceremonials within the attributes of the French foreign office; M. Delcasse was minister when the procession of European sovereigns headed by the kings of England and of Italy in 1903 came officially to Paris, and he went with M. Loubet to London and to Rome on the president's return visits to those capitals--the latter being the immediate cause of the rupture of the concordat with the Vatican, though M. Delcasse was essentially a concordatory minister. His retirement from the Rouvier ministry in June 1905 was due to pressure from Germany in consequence of his opposition to German interference in Morocco. His resignation took place just a week after the news had arrived of the destruction of the Russian fleet by the Japanese, which completed the disablement of the one ally of France. The impression was current in France that Germany wished to give the French nation a fright before the understanding with England had reached an effective stage, and it was actually believed that the resignation of M. Delcasse averted a declaration of war. Although that belief revived to some extent the fading enmity of the French towards the conquerors of Alsace-Lorraine, the fear which accompanied it moved a considerable section of the nation to favour an understanding with Germany in preference to, or even at the expense of, friendly relations with England. M. Clemenceau, who only late in life came into office, and attained it at the moment when a better understanding with England was progressing, had been throughout his long career, of all French public men in all political groups, the most consistent friend of England. His presence at the head of affairs was a guarantee of amicable Anglo-French relations, so far as they could be protected by statesmanship.

By reason of the increased duration and stability of ministries, the personal influence of ministers in directing the foreign policy of France has in one sense become greater in the 20th century than in those earlier periods when France had first to recuperate its strength after the war and then to take its exterior policy from Germany. Moreover, not only have cabinets lasted longer, but the foreign minister has often been retained in a succession of them. Of the thirty years which in 1909 had elapsed since Marshal MacMahon retired and the republic was governed by republicans, in the first fifteen years from 1879 to 1894 fourteen different persons held the office of minister of foreign affairs, while six sufficed for the fifteen years succeeding the latter date. One must not, however, exaggerate the effect of this greater stability in office-holding upon continuity of policy, which was well maintained even in the days when there was on an average a new foreign minister every year. Indeed the most marked breach in the continuity of the foreign policy of France has been made in that later period of long terms of office, which, with the repudiation of the Concordat, has seen the withdrawal of the French protectorate over Roman Catholic missions in the East--though it is too soon to estimate the result. In another respect France has under the republic departed a long way from a tradition of the Quai d'Orsay. It no longer troubles itself on the subject of nationalities. Napoleon III., who had more French temperament than French blood in his constitution, was an idealist on this question, and one of the causes of his own downfall and the defeat of France was his sympathy in this direction with German unity. Since Sedan little has been done in France to further the doctrine of nationalities. A faint echo of it was heard during the Boer war, but French sympathy with the struggling Dutch republics of South Africa was based rather on anti-English sentiment than on any abstract theory. (J. E. C. B.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRENCH HISTORY.--The scientific study of the history
of France only begins with the 16th century. It was hampered at first
by the traditions of the middle ages and by a servile imitation of
antiquity. Paulus Aemilius of Verona (_De rebus gestis Francorum_,
1517), who may be called the first of modern historians, merely
applies the oratorical methods of the Latin historiographers. It is
not till the second half of the century that history emancipates
itself; Catholics and Protestants alike turn to it for arguments in
their religious and political controversies. Francois Hotman published
(1574) his _Franco-Gallia_; Claude Fauchet his _Antiquites gauloises
et francoises_ (1579); Etienne Pasquier his _Recherches de la France_
(1611), "the only work of erudition of the 16th century which one can
read through without being bored." Amateurs like Petau, A. de Thou,
Bongars and Peiresc collected libraries to which men of learning went
to draw their knowledge of the past; Pierre Pithou, one of the authors
of the _Satire Menippee_, published the earliest annals of France
(_Annales Francorum_, 1588, and _Historiae Francorum scriptores
coetanei XI._, 1596), Jacques Bongars collected in his _Gesta Dei per
Francos_ (1611-1617) the principal chroniclers of the Crusades. Others
made a study of chronology like J.J. Scaliger (_De emendatione
temporum_, 1583; _Thesaurus temporum_, 1606), sketched the history of
literature, like Francois Grude, sieur of La Croix in Maine
(_Bibliotheque francoise_, 1584), and Antoine du Verdier (_Catalogue
de tous les auteurs qui ont ecrit ou traduit en francais_, 1585), or
discussed the actual principles of historical research, like Jean
Bodin (_Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem_, 1566) and Henri
Lancelot Voisin de La Popeliniere (_Histoire des histoires_, 1599).

But the writers of history are as yet very inexpert; the _Histoire
generale des rois de France_ of Bernard de Girard, seigneur de Haillan
(1576), the _Grandes Annales de France_ of Francois de Belleforest
(1579), the _Inventaire general de l'histoire de France_ of Jean de
Serres (1597), the _Histoire generale de France depuis Pharamond_ of
Scipion Dupleix (1621-1645), the _Histoire de France_ (1643-1651) of
Francois Eudes de Mezeray, and above all his _Abrege chronologique de
l'histoire de France_ (1668), are compilations which were eagerly
read when they appeared, but are worthless nowadays. Historical
research lacked method, leaders and trained workers; it found them all
in the 17th century, the golden age of learning which was honoured
alike by laymen, priests and members of the monastic orders,
especially the Benedictines of the congregation of St Maur. The
publication of original documents was carried on with enthusiasm. To
Andre Duchesne we owe two great collections of chronicles: the
_Historiae Normannorum scriptores antiqui_ (1619) and the _Historiae
Francorum scriptores_, continued by his son Francois (5 vols.,
1636-1649). These publications were due to a part only of his
prodigious activity; his papers and manuscripts, preserved in the
Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, are an inexhaustible mine. Charles du
Fresne, seigneur du Cange, published Villehardouin (1657) and
Joinville (1668); Etienne Baluze, the _Capitularia regum Francorum_
(1674), the _Nova collectio conciliorum_ (1677), the _Vitae paparum
Avenionensium_ (1693). The clergy were very much aided in their work
by their private libraries and by their co-operation; Pere Philippe
Labbe published his _Bibliotheca nova manuscriptorum_ (1657), and
began (1671) his _Collection des conciles_, which was successfully
completed by his colleague Pere Cossart (18 vols.). In 1643 the Jesuit
Jean Bolland brought out vol. i. of the _Acta sanctorum_, a vast
collection of stories and legends which has not yet been completed
beyond the 4th of November. (See BOLLANDISTS.) The Benedictines, for
their part, published the _Acta sanctorum ordinis sancti Benedicti_ (9
vols., 1668-1701). One of the chief editors of this collection, Dom
Jean Mabillon, published on his own account the Vetera analecta (4
vols., 1675-1685) and prepared the _Annales ordinis sancti Benedicti_
(6 vols., 1703-1793). To Dom Thierri Ruinart we owe good editions of
Gregory of Tours and Fredegarius (1699). The learning of the 17th
century further inaugurated those specialized studies which are
important aids to history. Mabillon in his _De re diplomatica_ (1681)
creates the science of documents or diplomatics. Adrien de Valois lays
a sound foundation for historical geography by his critical edition of
the _Notitia Galliarum_ (1675). Numismatics finds an enlightened
pioneer in Francois Leblanc (_Traite historique des monnaies de
France_, 1690). Du Cange, one of the greatest of the French scholars
who have studied the middle ages, has defined terms bearing on
institutions in his _Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis_ (1678),
recast by the Benedictines (1733), with an important supplement by Dom
Carpentier (1768), republished twice during the 19th century, with
additions, by F. Didot (1840-1850), and by L. Favre at Niort
(1883-1888); this work is still indispensable to every student of
medieval history. Finally, great biographical or bibliographical works
were undertaken; the _Gallia christiana_, which gave a chronological
list of the archbishops, bishops and abbots of the Gauls and of
France, was compiled by two twin brothers, Scevole and Louis de
Sainte-Marthe, and by the two sons of Louis (4 vols., 1656); a fresh
edition, on a better plan, and with great additions, was begun in 1715
by Denys de Sainte-Marthe, continued throughout the 18th century by
the Benedictines, and finished in the 19th century by Barthelemy
Haureau (1856-1861).

As to the nobility, a series of researches and publications, begun by
Pierre d'Hozier (d. 1660) and continued well on into the 19th century
by several of his descendants, developed into the _Armorial general de
la France_, which was remodelled several times. A similar work, of a
more critical nature, was carried out by Pere Anselme (_Histoire
genealogique de la maison de France et des grands officiers de la
couronne_, 1674) and by Pere Ange and Pere Simplicien, who completed
the work (3rd ed. in 9 vols., 1726-1733). Critical bibliography is
especially represented by certain Protestants, expelled from France by
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Pierre Bayle, the sceptic,
famous for his _Dictionnaire critique_ (1699), which is in part a
refutation of the _Dictionnaire historique et geographique_ published
in 1673 by the Abbe Louis Moreri, was the first to publish the
_Nouvelles de la republique des lettres_ (1684-1687), which was
continued by Henri Basnage de Beauval under the title of _Histoire des
ouvrages des savants_ (24 vols.). In imitation of this, Jean Le Clerc
successively edited a _Bibliotheque universelle et historique_
(1686-1693), a _Bibliotheque choisie_ (1703-1713), and a _Bibliotheque
ancienne et moderne_ (1714-1727). These were the first of our
"periodicals."

The 18th century continues the traditions of the 17th. The
Benedictines still for some time hold the first place. Dom Edmond
Martene visited numerous archives (which were then closed) in France
and neighbouring countries, and drew from them the material for two
important collections: _Thesaurus novus anecdotorum_ (9 vols., 1717,
in collaboration with Dom Ursin Durand) and _Veterum scriptorum
collectio_ (9 vols., 1724-1733). Dom Bernard de Montfaucon also
travelled in search of illustrated records of antiquity; private
collections, among others the celebrated collection of Gaignieres (now
in the Bibliotheque Nationale), provided him with the illustrations
which he published in his _Monuments de la monarchie francoise_ (5
vols., 1729-1733). The text is in two languages, Latin and French. Dom
Martin Bouquet took up the work begun by the two Duchesnes, and in
1738 published vol. i. of the Historians of France (_Rerum Gallicarum
et Francicarum scriptores_), an enormous collection which was intended
to include all the sources of the history of France, grouped under
centuries and reigns. He produced the first eight volumes himself; his
work was continued by several collaborators, the most active of whom
was Dom Michel J. Brial, and already comprised thirteen volumes when
it was interrupted by the Revolution. In 1733, Antoine Rivet de La
Grange produced vol. i. of the _Histoire litteraire de la France_,
which in 1789 numbered twelve volumes. While Dom C. Francois Toustaint
and Dom Rene Prosper Tassin published a _Nouveau Traite de
diplomatique_ (6 vols., 1750-1765), others were undertaking the _Art
de verifier les dates_ (1750; new and much enlarged edition in 1770).
Still others, with more or less success, attempted histories of the
provinces.

In the second half of the 18th century, the ardour of the Benedictines
of St Maur diminished, and scientific work passed more and more into
the hands of laymen. The Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres,
founded in 1663 and reorganized in 1701, became its chief instrument,
numbering among its members Denis Francois Secousse, who continued the
collection of _Ordonnances des rois de France_, begun (1723) by J. de
Lauriere; J.-B. de La Curne de Sainte Palaye (_Memoires sur l'ancienne
chevalerie_, 1759-1781; _Glossaire de la langue francaise depuis son
origine jusqu'a la fin de Louis XIV_, printed only in 1875-1882);
J.-B. d'Anville (_Notice sur l'ancienne Gaule tiree des monuments_,
1760); and L.G. de Brequigny, the greatest of them all, who continued
the publication of the _Ordonnances_, began the _Table chronologique
des diplomes concernant l'histoire de France_ (3 vols., 1769-1783),
published the _Diplomata, chartae, ad res Francicas spectantia_ (1791,
with the collaboration of La Porte du Theil), and directed fruitful
researches in the archives in London, to enrich the _Cabinet des
chartes_, where Henri Bertin (1719-1792), an enlightened minister of
Louis XV., had in 1764 set himself the task of collecting the
documentary sources of the national history. The example set by the
religious orders and the government bore fruit. The general assembly
of the clergy gave orders that its _Proces verbaux_ (9 vols.,
1767-1789) should be printed; some of the provinces decided to have
their history written, and mostly applied to the Benedictines to have
this done. Brittany was treated by Dom Lobineau (1707) and Dom Morice
(1742); the duchy of Burgundy by Dom Urbain Plancher (1739-1748);
Languedoc by Dom Dominique Vaissete (1730-1749, in collaboration with
Dom Claude de Vic; new ed. 1873-1893); for Paris, its secular history
was treated by Dom Michel Felibien and Dom Lobineau (1725), and its
ecclesiastical history by the abbe Lebeuf (1745-1760; new ed.
1883-1890).

This ever-increasing stream of new evidence aroused curiosity, gave
rise to pregnant comparisons, developed and sharpened the critical
sense, but further led to a more and more urgent need for exact
information. The Academie des Inscriptions brought out its _Histoire
de l'Academie avec les memoires de litterature tires de ses registres_
(vol. i. 1717; 51 vols. appeared before the Revolution, with five
indexes; _vide_ the _Bibliographie_ of Lasteyrie, vol. iii. pp. 256 et
seq.). Other collections, mostly of the nature of bibliographies, were
the _Journal des savants_ (111 vols., from 1665 to 1792; _vide_ the
_Table methodique_ by H. Cocheris, 1860); the _Journal de Trevoux_, or
_Memoires pour l'histoire des sciences et des beaux-arts_, edited by
Jesuits (265 vols., 1701-1790); the _Mercure de France_ (977 vols.,
from 1724 to 1791). To these must be added the dictionaries and
encyclopaedias: the _Dictionnaire de Moreri_, the last edition of
which numbers 10 vols. (1759); the _Dictionnaire geographique,
historique et politique des Gaules et de la France_, by the abbe J.J.
Expilly (6 vols., 1762-1770; unfinished); the _Repertoire universel et
raisonne de jurisprudence civile, criminelle, canonique et
beneficiale_, by Guyot (64 vols., 1775-1786; supplement in 17 vols.,
1784-1785), reorganized and continued by Merlin de Douai, who was
afterwards one of the _Montagnards_, a member of the Directory, and a
count under the Empire.

The historians did not use to the greatest advantage the treasures of
learning provided for them; they were for the most part superficial,
and dominated by their political or religious prejudices. Thus works
like that of Pere Gabriel Daniel (_Histoire de France_, 3 vols.,
1713), of President Henault (_Abrege chronologique_, 1744; 25 editions
between 1770 and 1834), of the abbe Paul Francois Velly and those who
completed his work (_Histoire de France_, 33 vols., 1765 to 1783), of
G.H. Gaillard (_Histoire de la rivalite de la France et de
l'Angleterre_, 11 vols., 1771-1777), and of L.P. Anquetil (1805), in
spite of the brilliant success with which they met at first, have
fallen into a just oblivion. A separate place must be given to the
works of the theorists and philosophers: _Histoire de l'ancien
gouvernement de la France_, by the Comte de Boulainvilliers (1727),
_Histoire critique de l'etablissement de la monarchie francoise dans
les deux Gaules_, by the abbe J.B. Dubos (1734); _L'Esprit des lois_,
by the president de Montesquieu (1748); the _Observations sur
l'histoire de France_, by the abbe de Mably (1765); the _Theorie de la
politique de la monarchie francaise_, by Marie Pauline de Lezardiere
(1792). These works have, if nothing else, the merit of provoking
reflection.