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SKETCHES FROM FRENCH HISTORY
Decay of Feudalism Rise of
the Towns The King Cen
tralizes the Government and
Checks the Encroachments of
the Church.
Philip I was succeeded by his son
Louis the Fat. Although his name
seemed to give him the right to
membership in the brotherhood of
those who are “born tired,” and
whose energies are spent in dodging
work, yet he trotted his lord around
with so much activity that he won
the nick-names of “the Fighter” and
“the Wide-awake.”
The Feudal lords had grown en
tirely too big for their breeches.
They had become robbers as well as
tyrants. They imprisoned merchants
and travelers in their castles and re
fused to liberate them without the
payment of large ransom. If the
merchant was a little slow in coming
to terms they helped him to a de
cision by mashing his feet in an
iron vice; by crushing his thumbs in
a thumb screw; by roasting him
over a slow tire, or some other such
methods of persuasion. They also
robbed the churches and ill-treated
the clergy.
In fact, they levied toll upon all
who passed their castles, and thus
they lived in a splendor which dimly
foreshadowed the way in which our
Millionaire Manufacturers and Na
tonal Bankers and Rail Road Kings
would revel in luxury when they had
succeeded in getting our laws so
framed that they could levy toll
upon every man, woman and child in
all the land.
Louis the Fat made common cause
with the clergy who were outraged
by the plundering of churches, and
with the town people who were tired
if being robbed, and he made suc
cessful war upon the Feudal aris
tocracy.
In return for the help the king
received from the workmen of the
towns, he granted them charters
which allowed them self-govern
ment, and which exempted them
from the hateful power and the hate
ful taxes of the Feudal lords. From
this time commerce began to flourish
and the merchants and towns began
to grow rich. The roads began to
grow safe for travelers and the
country began to be orderly.
The city of Paris is now the most
splendid city in the world; but in
those days its trade was unimpor
tant, its buildings were shabby and its
streets were narrow, dirty and full of
pigs. In the year 1131 the oldest
son of the king was riding through
Paris and one of these pigs ran be
tween the legs of the prince’s horse,
causing him to fall. The young man
was so badly hurt that he died in a
few hours.
Louis the Fat died in 1137 and
was succeeded by his son Louis VII,
Philip Augustus succeeded Louis
VII in the year 1180. He was
France’s greatest ruler since Charle
magne.
lie built colleges and schools and
churches. He still further humbled
the feudal lords and added to the
royal power. He wrested~the great
province of Normandy from the En
glish, and thus added immensely to
the strength of the throne.
A horrible religious war took place
in France during his reign, called
the Albigensian Crusade.
In the beautiful and prosperous
portion of Southern France, called
Languedoc, lived an industrious and
cultured people who entertained re
ligious views different from the or
thodox faith. They were said to be
enemies to the church and to the
people. A “holy war” was pro
claimed against them just as if they
had been Moors or Turks. A large
army was collected from all parts of
France and put under command of
Simon de Montfort. Languedoc was
laid in waste —its homes burnt, its
people butchered. The cruel contest
lasted twenty years. As an example
of the barbarous spirit in which this
“holy war” was fought, we are told
that when the town of Beziers was
attacked, one of the officers asked
the Abbot of Citeaux how they were
to tell the heretics from the true be
lievers in the tow T n. “Kill them all,”
replied this gentle disciple the
PEOPLE’S PARTYPAPER. ATLANTA. GEORGIA,'FRIDAY, MAY 12. 1893.
Prince of Peace, “for the Lord will
know those that are his.”
The savage order was savagely
executed. Not a man or woman or
child was left alive. Not a living
being was left in all the town. The
infuriated soldiers, led on by fanati
cal Priests, offered up to the Lord
Jesus Christ a burnt offering than
which heathen god never saw one
more diabolical—an offering which
violated every precept of His lips and
every lesson of His life.
The territory thus taken was given
by the Pope to Simon de Montfort,
the chief robber and murderer.
He did not live long to enjoy his
bloody spoils. As he was riding un
der the walls of Toulonse, which he
was besieging, a stone shot from one
of the engines on the walls killed him
deader than Hector.
Philip Augustus showed that he
was in advance of his age by refusing
to take any hand in this butchery,
although the Pope stoutly urged him
to do so.
His son Louis VIII, however, who
was crowned in 1223, was a narrow
minded bigot, and he obeyed the
Pope’s commands to lead another
army against the people of Langue
doc (for some of the wretched
creatures still remained in their
country) for the purpose of “rooting
them out of the land.”
One is glad to learn that fever at
tacked both the King and his army,
and although he took the town of
Avignou, he failed before Toulouse,
and, after losing great numbers of
his troops by disease, he himself did
the world the service of dying.
His son Louis IX, a boy of twelve,
now became King (1226), but as he
was so young his mother, Queen
Blanche, became Regent, and ruled
France for nine years—ruled it well,
too, as women usually rule.
This is a notable fact in the history
of France, because by the fundamen
tal law of the Kingdom, no woman
could reign. Sometimes they did it,
all the same.
The great feudal lords couldn’t
bear the idea of petticoat rule, so
they leagued together in rebellion.
Queen Blanche was equal to the
crisis. She smashed the league and
crushed the rebellion.
Her son, known to History as
Saint Louis, deferred to her very
much even after he became of age,
and she remained virtual ruler of the
Kingdom as long as she lived.
Louis led an army to the East in
1248, in the vain attempt to drive
Mahomet’s disciples out of Palestine.
Lauding in Egypt, he met with noth
ing but misfortunes. The bulk of
his army was destroyed either by
sword or pestilence, and the King
himself was made pritfoner by the
Infidels.
For the sum of $2,000,000 they
agreed to release Louis and the rem
nant of his forces. The French
people loyally raised the money and
paid the ransom. So hard was it to
find that much coin in France that
they even had to melt down the sil
ver railings around the tomb of
Richard the Lion-heart, at Rouen,
and turn them into money.
If ever a King was worth that
much money to his people, Louis
was he. Loving justice, prone to
mercy and to good works, tilled with
that true spirit of Christianity which
sees a brother in every fellow man
no matter how humble, he was one
of the most remarkable monarchs
that ever reigned.
After sixteen years of prosperous
administration in France, he was
seized with another attack of the
Crusade fever, and in spite of the
urgent entreaties of his friends, he
raised an army and set out upon the
eighth and last Crusade.
He landed in Africa, on his way to
Palestine, and laid seige to Tunis.
Sickness soon began to destroy his
troops. It entered his own family,
and was fatal to one of his sons.
Then the King was stricken. Find
ing himself at the point of death, he
bade his attendants lay him upon a
bed of ashes.
In this lowly posture the good
King died, saying: “ I will enter
Thy house, O Lord; I will worship
in thy holy tabernacle.”
He was succeeded (1270) by his
eldest son, Philip—a very common
place individual, who died in 1285.
To him succeeded Philip the Fair,
who reigned till 1314.
He was active and successful;
was cruel, proud, treacherous and
avaricious. He plundered his sub
jects, made them pay heavy taxes,
debased the gold and silver money
by melting it up and putting baser
metals with it in recoinage.
But he is notable for the success
with which he resisted the Pope’s
claim to have absolute authority over
temporal affairs.
Had this claim been admitted in
practice, the Church would have
been ruler over everything and
everybody. Every law in France
would have been subject to the
Pope’s veto, every State officer to
foreign control and removal.
Philip resisted this power, and his
people sustained him in it.
To get their full support, he sum
moned the first States General
known to French history.
The assembly thus named was a
sort of General Congress of the rep
resentatives of the people in which
the Clergy, the Aristocracy and a
portisn of the Commons all took
part.
To their credit be it said that most
of the French Churchmen took the
King’s side of the controversy.
Without narrating the violent
events that followed, it is sufficient
to say that the King won a complete
victory. He drove Pope Boniface
VIII to madness and death, and
completely established his indepen
dence of papal control.
Philip having spent all his money
in a war with the Flemings, decided
to refill his purse.
First he fell upon the Jews, took
all their cash that he could lay hands
on and then drove them out of
France.
Next he made an agreement with
his friend, Pope Clement, (whose
election he had brought about after
the contest already alluded to) to
seize all the property of the Knights
Templar, one of the most powerful
and wealthy orders of chivalry.
Philip had the Knights seized sud
denly and thrown into prison on the
most preposterous charges. One of
these was that they were in the habit
of worshiping the devil under the
form of a cat. Toasted on a slow
fire, the unhappy prisoners, to escape
the dreadful pain, confessed the
crime. Most horrible were the per
versions of justice sometimes prac
ticed in those times.
If the accused admitted guilt at
the outset, of course punishment fol
lowed.
If, on the other hand, he was inno
cent, and denied guilt, he was tor
tured with devilish cruelty until he
lied to escape pain. Having extorted
the confession by punishment equal
to death itself, they then mercifully
ended the business by carrying out
the final sentence.
After putting the Knights through
hideous tortures to compel them to
confess (’which confessions they -with
drew as soon as the torture was
stopped), the cold-hearted King had
them burnt to death by a slow fire
on an island in the Seine, close to
his royal palace.
He then seized all their money and
two-thirds of all their personal prop
erty, besides much of their immense
holdings of real estate.
This royal monster was killed by a
hog. Boar-hunting was a favorite
pastime in those days, and a part
of the pleasure lay in the fact
that it was dangerous. Philip, in the
pursuit of this amusement, came
across the wrong hog one day, and
got the worst of it. Being badly
wounded by the wild boar, he saw
that he must die, and his last hours
were full of remorse for his crimes.
FAMOUS ORATORS.
It is Held that Great Speakers Must
be Great Readers.
Prof. Brainard G. Smith, in St. Louis Republic.
It would be easy to show that the
secret of the oratorical power of the
great orators of the past did not lie
in any peculiar style of speech, of
diction, common to all, any more
than in their physical perfection as
men; nor in a particular choice of
subjects common to all.
What did each have, then, that
made him an orator ? Was there
any common quality?
I think that there was.
To say that it was the “oratorical
instinct” is not to throw much light
on the subject. To say that each
has something worth saying, and
therefore was an orator, would not
be true, for I shall show—or try to
show—that it is not enough to have
something worth saying.
To say that the occasion inspired
th* speaker, and {that he therefore
became for the time being an orator,
would not be true.
But is it not true that if we ex
amine their printed speeches we see
that the diction is oratorical ? That
the words are evidently spoken to
men, not -written at men ? That the
style may be fairly called oratorical,
showing a certain energy in con
struction ?
Whether these speeches were
spoken almost extempore, and then
carefully written out for publication,
as in the case of some of Webster’s
best speeches ; whether the orations
were carefully written and memo
rized, as in the case of some of
Everett’s best productions; whether
the speeches were carefully written
and then read from the manuscript,
as in the case of Lincoln’s famous
Gettysburg address, or whether they
were spoken entirely extemporane
ously, and published unrevised from
the stenographer’s notes, as in the
case of some of Beecher’s best efforts,
they are still marked in the style by
that indefinable something which we
call “oratorical.”
But more than that; history bears
uniform testimony that in the deliv
ery of their speeches the great ora
tors exhibited a certain indefinable
quality of utterance which we call
“oratorical,” a certain energy which
is not necessarily force, or vivacity,
or vigor, which is indeed indefinable,
but which we describe by the word
“oratorical.”
Therefore it seems to me that the
young man who would be an orator
must endeavor to acquire the art of
arranging his thoughts in that ora
torical style, and then of voicing his
thoughts in that oratorical manner.
But can that be taught? Is it not
O
a gift rather than an acquirement ?
To the first question I would say
that much of that art may be learned,
yet may be taught.
To the second I would say, as I
have said, that the gift may be de
veloped. I will add : I believe that
it may in a great measure be ac
quired.
I have used the words “arranging
his thoughts” and “voicing his
thoughts.”
Therefore it is plain that “thought”
is the foundation. It seems too ob
vious to require statement; and yet
considerable experience forces me to
conclude that not a few young men—
would-be orators—seem to forget
that to speak well a man must have
something to say. Asked to define
oratory, they will glibly ans-wer,
“The Art of Persuasion,” having
learned that definition from their
rhetoric; but seemingly forget that
in order to persuade, a man must
have something of which he would
persuade. That he must (for in
stance) have well-defined thoughts
concerning a certain line of conduct
before he can persuade men that
that line of conduct is the one which
they ought to follow.
Without dwelling upon this point
further, I would make the very
natural suggestion that first of all
the would-be orator should lay a solid
foundation of knowledge.
That means more than a high
school or college or university “edu
cation.”
It means very much more.
It means wide, and patient and
continuous reading of the best that
literature offers in all directions, but
particularly in those in which are
recorded the motives and actions of
men and the results of both.
You cannot hope to succeed as a
public speaker without painstaking
study; without large reading. Do
you say that this fact is so self-evi
dent that it needs no reiteration ?
Why, it is but a short time ago that
a teacher in one of the great univer
sities of this country told me that,
having occasion to ask a student
something about a very familiar pas
sage from Shakespeare, the student
answered with an ill-concealed sneer,
“I don’t know. I never read poetry.”
Wrote Theodore Parker to a person
who asked him how he could acquire
an impressive delivery :
“ That will depend on the qualities
that lie much deeper than the sur
face. It seems to me to depend on
vigorous feeling and vigorous think
ing in the first place ; on clearness of
statement in the next place; and,
finally, on a vigorous and natural
mode of speech. Vigorous feeling
and thinking depend on the original
talent a man is born with, and on the
education he acquires, or on his daily
habits. No man can ever be perma
nently an impressive speaker without
being first a man of superior senti
ments or superior ideas. Sometimes
mere emotion (feeling) impresses,
but it soon wearies. Superiority of
ideas always commands attention and
respect.”
Need I apologise for suggesting, in
this article, which I hope may meet
the eyes of many who are denied col
lege and university advantages, that
the man -who would succeed as a pub
lic speaker must be a careful reader,
though not a large one ?
Can you point to a great orator
who has not exemplified this sugges
tion? Most great orators were not
only great readers, but they were
careful students in the lines likely to
help them as orators.
When William Pitt, afterwards
Lord Chatham, was a student of 18
in Oxford University he pursued, in
addition to his other work, a severe
course of rhetorical study. He prac
ticed writing out translations from
the ancient historians and orators.
Demosthenes was his model, and, as
a means of acquiring a forcible and
expressive style, he translated most
of his orations over and over again
into English. To acquire a large vo
cabulary and a command of language,
he read and re read the sermons of
Dr. Barrow, then very famous, until
he knew many of them by heart. He
went twice through the folio diction
ary of Bailey, examining each word
carefully as to its various shades of
meaning and modes of construction.
It is said that no man of genius
since Cicero went through so much
real drudgery in preparing himself
for public life and public speaking.
And yet he was a genius, and|’na
ture had done so much for him that
he might be thought excusable had
he relied more upon nature’s gifts
and less upon his own acquisitions.
But it was those acquisitions,
added to nature’s gifts, which made
him the most powerful orator of
modern times.
Edmund Burke, called “the great
philosophical orator of our language,”
was denied many gifts by nature.
But he became one of the very
greatest orators who spoke the En
glish language. Like Chatham, he
mastered the great writers of an
tiquity, and made a particular study
of Demosthenes, though in later life
he gave more study to Cicero. He
knew Plutarch, Horace, Virgil and
Lucretius almost by heart; he pored
over the writings of Bacon; Shake
speare was his daily study, and Mil
ton was a constant inspiration.
Charles James Fox studied the
orations of Demosthenes and the
speeches of Chatham. As an orator
it is said that he gained his taste,
style and reasoning from his study
of the Greek writers.
William Pitt, the younger, had
the finest part of Shakespeare by
heart, read the best historians with
care, studied Barrow’s sermons, as
his father did before him, and read
the Bible carefully as the “ true well
of English undefined.”
Patrick Henry has been often
cited as an example of the “natural
orator without any training what
ever,” and yet Patrick Henry read
carefully Greek and Roman history;
was particularly fascinated by Livy,
which, in the English translation, he
read through once every year during
the early part of his life. That he
was a careful reader of the Bible
is proved by a study of his style,
which was unmistakably influenced
by the diction of the Holy Scrip
tures.
Os Rufus Choate, one of the fa
mous American orators, Mathews
says: “Choate drank deep at the
fountains, not only of science and his
tory, but of philosophy and belles
lettres, to increase his command of
language, his copia verborum; and
to avoid sinking into cheap and bald
fluency, as well as to give elevation,
energy, sonorousness and refinement
to his vocabulary, he read aloud
daily, during a large part of his life,
a page or more from some fine En
glish author. He was a profound
student of words, and made all the
realms of literature tributary to his
vocabulary.”
And Choate himself, of reading,
said this: “In literature you find
ideas. There one should daily re
plenish his stock. The whole range
of polite literature should be vexed
for thought.” And again he said :
“All the discipline and customs of
social life, in our time, tend to crush
emotion and feeling. Literature alone
is brimful of feeling.”
Greater Than a Pyramid.
Five or six of us were down at the
end of the car talking about the pyr
amids of Egypt and other ancient
things, when an old man, who had
been a silent-but interested listener,
pulled out an old tin tobacco box
and said:
“Gentlemen, I’m only a plain and
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GEORGE J. FARGO, 603 Broad street, Augusta, Georgia
uneducated man, but I like to hear
about them old ruins and things. I
guess them pyramids is a powerful
curiosity, but I calkerlate I’ve got
sunthin’ right here that beats ’em.”
“Something you found on your
farm ?” asked the professor.
“Yes, on my farm. It hain’t as
big nor as high as a pyramid, of
course, but it’s more of a curiosity.
I’ve showed it to twenty different fel
lers, and none of ’em ever saw any
thing like it. I wouldn’t take two
dollars fur it jest as it stands.”
“Perhaps you have discovered some
relic of the stone age or drift
period ?”
“Shouldn’t a bit wonder. I’m
willin’ to show it to you, but I don’t
want no foolin’ about it. I don’t
want you to bend or break it.”
“No, of course not.”
The old man opened the box and
took from a mass of cotton the bowl
of a teaspoon. The professor re
ceived it, turned it over and over and
finally said:
“This isn’t much of a relic.”
“Hain’t it?” chuckled the owner.
“Mebbe you’ll change your miud
afore we git through talkin’?”
“But it’s only the bowl of a tea
spoon.”
“In the back yard perhaps.”
“Not much ! Gentlemen, you kin
talk about your old pyramids of
Egypt, but thar is sumthin’ that
knocks the socks offin ’enf every day
in the ■week ! You couldn’t none of
you guess in five years whar I found
it, and so I’ll tell you. I got that
out of a cow’s stomach!”
Nobody expressed the slightest
surprise. Nobody cared to handle
the relic. We began talking about
something else while he restored it
to the cotton and the box. When he
finally dropped the box into his
overcoat pocket, he rose up and stffly
said :
“Gentlemen, excuse me. I see I
hain’t wanted here. I see that you’d
druther go over to Egypt and see a
durned old pyramid and come home
and lie about it than to stick up fur
American enterprise, and the hull
caboodle of you kin go to Halifax
and be hanged to you I”
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