France a Republic Napoleon Bonaparte Breaking Chains in Italy Campo Formio Campaign in Egypt An Empire Rapid Steps from Toulon to Versailles A New Map of Europe Maria Louisa Moscow Leipsic Elba CHAPTER XVII. Louis XVIII. Return of Napoleon Waterloo St. Helena Bourbon Restoration Charles X. Louis Philippe Revolution Second Republic Louis Napoleon CHAPTER XVIII. Second French Republic The _Coup d'Etat_ Napoleon III. A "Liberator" in Italy Peace of Villafranca Suez Canal An Empire in Mexico Franco-Prussian War Sedan CHAPTER XIX. Third French Republic The Commune The Germans in Paris Reconstruction from Thiers to Loubet Affaire Dreyfus Law of Associations Separation of Church and State Conference at Algeciras Election of M. Fallieres Conclusion Sovereigns and Rulers of France Index ILLUSTRATIONS. Gambetta, proclaiming the Republic of France . . . _Frontispiece_ Coronation of Charlemagne Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May 30, 1431 Napoleon at the Battle of Rivoli, January 14, 1797 Josephine crowned Empress, December 2, 1804, in Notre Dame Cathedral The Revolution of July 28, 1830 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. CHAPTER I. One of the greatest achievements of modern research is the discovery of a key by which we may determine the kinship of nations. What we used to conjecture, we now know. An identity in the structural form of language establishes with scientific certitude that however diverse their character and civilizations, Russian, German, Englishman, Frenchman, Spaniard, are all but branches from the same parent stem, are all alike children of the Asiatic Aryan. So skilful are modern methods of questioning the past, and so determined the effort to find out its secrets, we may yet know the origin and history of this wonderful Asiatic people, and when and why they left their native continent and colonized upon the northern shores of the Mediterranean. Certain it is, however, that, more centuries before the Christian era than there have been since, they had peopled Western Europe. This branch of the Aryan family is known as the Keltic, and was older brother to the Teuton and Slav, which at a much later period followed them from the ancestral home, and appropriated the middle and eastern portions of the European Continent. The name of Gaul was given to the territory lying between the Ocean and the Mediterranean, and the Pyrenees and the Alps. And at a later period a portion of Northern Gaul, and the islands lying north of it, received from an invading chieftain and his tribe the name _Brit_ or _Britain_ (or Pryd or Prydain).