[Illustration:  “Who made thee King?”——­302]

[Illustration:  Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester ii——­304]

[Illustration:  Knights returning from Foray——­311]

[Illustration:  Knights and Peasants——­312]

[Illustration:  Robert had a Kindly Feeling for the Weak and Poor——­313]

[Illustration:  “The Accolade.”——­324]

[Illustration:  Normans landing on English Coast——­353]

[Illustration:  William the Conqueror reviewing his Army——­357]

[Illustration:  Edith discovers the Body of Harold——­360]

[Illustration:  “God willeth it!”——­383]

[Illustration:  The Four Leaders of the First Crusade——­385]

[Illustration:  Crusaders on the March——­386]

[Illustration:  The Assault on St. Jean d’Acre——­386]

A POPULAR HISTORY OF FRANCE

From the earliest times.

CHAPTER I.——­GAUL.

The Frenchman of to-day inhabits a country, long ago civilized and Christianized, where, despite of much imperfection and much social misery, thirty-eight millions of men live in security and peace, under laws equal for all and efficiently upheld.  There is every reason to nourish great hopes of such a country, and to wish for it more and more of freedom, glory, and prosperity; but one must be just towards one’s own times, and estimate at their true value advantages already acquired and progress already accomplished.  If one were suddenly carried twenty or thirty centuries backward, into the midst of that which was then called Gaul, one would not recognize France.  The same mountains reared their heads; the same plains stretched far and wide; the same rivers rolled on their course.  There is no alteration in the physical formation of the country; but its aspect was very different.  Instead of the fields all trim with cultivation, and all covered with various produce, one would see inaccessible morasses and vast forests, as yet uncleared, given up to the chances of primitive vegetation, peopled with wolves and bears, and even the urns, or huge wild ox, and with elks, too—­a kind of beast that one finds no longer nowadays, save in the colder regions of north-eastern Europe, such as Lithuania and Courland.  Then wandered over the champaign great herds of swine, as fierce almost as wolves, tamed only so far as to know the sound of their keeper’s horn.  The better sort of fruits and of vegetables were quite unknown; they were imported into Gaul—­the greatest part from Asia, a portion from Africa and the islands of the Mediterranean; and others, at a later period, from the New World.  Cold and rough was the prevailing temperature.  Nearly every winter the rivers froze sufficiently hard for the passage of cars.  And three or four centuries before the Christian era, on that vast territory comprised between the ocean, the