France

A

Prehistoric Cultures

The oldest identifiable cultures are those of the Old Stone or Palaeolithic Age (50,000 bc-8000 bc). These cultures left a rich artistic heritage of paintings on cave walls; the most famous of these cave paintings are at Lascaux in the Dordogne region of south-west France.

The Middle Stone or Mesolithic Age (8000-4000 bc) people were food gatherers like their ancestors but left relatively few remains. The peasants of the New Stone (Neolithic) Age (4000 bc-2000 bc), on the other hand, left several thousand remarkable stone monuments in France, including the menhirs in Brittany, the statue-menhirs of southern France, and the dolmens, or chamber tombs, of the Loire Valley, the Parisian Basin, and Champagne.

More sophisticated cultures emerged in the Bronze Age (2000-800 bc) and the Iron Age (8th-2nd century bc). By about 800 bc the techniques of working with iron had been introduced by the Hallstatt people—warriors and shepherds who had spread from their native Alpine region into much of France. In the period that followed, the Celts, or Gauls, became the dominant group.

Contact with Mediterranean culture began when the Greeks explored the western Mediterranean in the 7th century bc, established a colony at Marseille, and traded with the interior via the Rhône Valley. In the 5th century bc La Tène culture—characterized by finely crafted jewellery, weapons, and pottery—spread from eastern Gaul through the rest of the Celtic world.

B

Roman Gaul

In 121 bc the Romans established a protectorate over the old Greek colony at Massilia (now Marseille) and then founded another settlement farther inland at Narbonne, which in turn became the centre of the flourishing province of Gallia Narbonensis.

Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul several decades later, between 58 and 51 bc. The newly conquered lands were called Gallia Belgica, Gallia Lugdunensis, and Aquitania. The main centre of administration was Lugdunum (modern Lyon).

After the Romans consolidated control over Gaul, their main problem was the long, exposed north-east frontier with the Germanic peoples. Rome intended to conquer the German lands beyond the Rhine and make Colonia Agrippinensis (modern Cologne, Germany) a base somewhat equivalent to Lyon. After being defeated by the Germans in ad 9, however, the Romans limited themselves to defending the Rhine frontier. Many Gauls served in the frontier legions, and the first two centuries under Roman domination were generally peaceful and prosperous for Gauls and Romans alike.

In the 3rd century ad, as the Roman Empire began its decline, Gaul was afflicted by a variety of ills: political instability, a dwindling supply of slaves, plague, rising inflation and its complement of economic insecurity, mounting pressure from the Germanic peoples along the frontier, and a general breakdown of law and order. Temporary respite was gained in the time of the Emperor Diocletian, whose military and fiscal reorganization was carried out in part from an imperial residence in Gaul at Trier (now in Germany).

Christianity, which had been introduced as a persecuted sect in the 2nd century, flourished under imperial protection in this period of personal insecurity and political disorder. By the 5th century, even the Gallo-Roman aristocracy was converting: men from old senatorial families moved rather easily into episcopal positions.

Throughout the 4th century small groups of Germans had been settling in Gaul with the permission of the Roman authorities. In 406 this movement became an invasion when the Vandals, Suevi, and Alans broke through the frontier, moved rapidly across Gaul on a south-westerly course, and crossed into Spain. In 412 the Visigoths freely entered southern Gaul from Italy, and about 440 the Burgundians settled in eastern Gaul. In the north-west, Celtic refugees from Britain, which had also been invaded by Germanic peoples, sought and gained refuge and gave their name to the region of Brittany. In 451 Germans, Romans, and Gauls united to defeat a new horde of invaders—the Huns under Attila.

C

The Emergence of France

In the last quarter of the 5th century, as Roman imperial authority collapsed in the West, Gaul was conquered by another Germanic group, the Salian Franks. Their leader Clovis was a tough warrior, unhesitatingly violent and, when he saw fit, treacherous. Married to a Christian Burgundian princess, he became a Christian himself in 496. By adopting the Catholic form of Christianity favoured by the Gallo-Romans instead of the Arian Christianity espoused by the Visigoths, he was able to strengthen his hold over the country.

C

1

The Merovingians

Clovis’s dynasty, the Merovingian, named after its founder, Merovech or Merowig (reigned 448-458), ruled until 751. According to Frankish custom all the king’s possessions, including the royal title, were divided among his sons. Because of this practice, Merovingian France was beset by continual disunity and civil war in the 6th century. The kingdom was again unified in 613 under Clotaire II and Dagobert I. Thereafter it went into severe decline under a series of weak, incompetent kings. During this period power came to be concentrated in the hands of the mayors of the palace, royal officials who had charge of the king’s estates. Struggles broke out among the mayors that were reminiscent of those among earlier kings. Late in the 7th century, one palace mayor in particular, Pepin of Herstal, a member of the Arnulfung family of Austrasia (in eastern France and western Germany), achieved superiority over his rivals, successfully extending his authority over the Frankish kingdoms of Neustria and Burgundy to the west and south. He was succeeded by his son, Charles Martel, who rallied a Frankish army that repulsed a Muslim invasion from Spain in 732. In 751 Martel’s son and successor, Pepin the Short, deposed the last Merovingian ruler and had himself crowned King of the Franks.

C

2

The Carolingians

The new dynasty—eventually named Carolingian, after its most famous member, Charlemagne, or Charles (Carolus) the Great—was strengthened by Pepin’s alliance with the papacy. In return for Frankish help against the Lombards, who were encroaching on papal territory in Italy, Pope Stephen II approved the Carolingian seizure of the throne.

In 754 the pope journeyed to France to anoint Pepin and his sons with holy oil as the biblical kings of Israel had been anointed by the prophets. Pepin in turn fought campaigns in Italy on the pope’s behalf in 754 and 756. The King then turned over the lands he conquered in Italy to Pope Stephen II and these became the Papal States—territory governed directly by the papacy. Pepin’s rule was divided, at his death in 768, between his sons Charles (the future Charlemagne) and Carloman. Carloman died three years later, however, and Charlemagne was the sole ruler of the Franks for more than four decades, until his death in 814.

Military campaigns occupied Charlemagne in the early years of his reign. Like his father, he fought in Italy, both on the pope’s behalf and on his own, conquering the Lombards and taking the Lombard royal title for himself. He campaigned in Spain against both the Muslims and the Basques and established a frontier territory called the Spanish March. In the east he fought the Bavarians and the Avars and absorbed them into his realm. For three decades he campaigned against the Saxons in Germany, eventually bringing them under his control and forcing them to convert to Christianity.

In the year 800, Charlemagne was crowned in Rome by Pope Leo III and received the title Emperor of the Romans. There had not been a Roman emperor in the western provinces since the late 5th century. He established a vast administrative system, divided into some 250 counties, for governing his empire. He assembled the leading scholars of Europe and initiated a programme of intellectual and religious reforms. Charlemagne established a principal royal residence at Aix-la-Chapelle, his favourite sulphur-spring spa (now Aachen, Germany).

Even before 800, Viking raiders from Scandinavia had begun to attack the coastal areas of the Carolingian realm. The full impact of these raids, however, was not felt until the reign of Charlemagne’s successor, Louis I (the Pious), whom Charlemagne himself crowned Emperor in 813. The Viking attacks and succession problems after Louis the Pious made a shambles of the Carolingian Empire.

Louis sought to provide for an orderly succession by decreeing in 817 that his eldest son, Lothair, would inherit the empire and that his two younger sons, Pepin of Aquitaine and Louis II (Louis the German), would hold subordinate kingdoms within the empire. The Emperor then had a fourth son, Charles, by his second wife, who was determined that her son would not be excluded from the royal inheritance.

The sons fought bitterly among themselves and sometimes against their father as well. One temporary settlement among three of the brothers is of particular historical interest. By the Treaty of Verdun (843), Lothair was to get the imperial title plus a long strip of territory stretching from the North Sea at the mouth of the Rhine all the way down to, and including, Rome. Louis the German received the lands east of the Rhine, and Charles the Bald those west of the Rhône, the Saône, the Meuse, and the Schelde. Louis’s territory was a forerunner of modern Germany, Charles’s a forerunner of modern France, and Lothair’s a forerunner of the lands in between that have been so often fought over by France and Germany in modern times. Although this particular division did not prove lasting, the separation of Francia Occidentalis (the West Frankish Kingdom, or France) from Francia Orientalis (the East Frankish Kingdom, or Germany) became permanent at this time.