Part 55

Among his friends were Guillaume de Machault, Eustache Deschamps, the most vigorous poet of this age of decadence, and Cuvelier, a follower of Bertrand du Guesclin. These alliances are certain. It is probable that he knew Chaucer, with whom Deschamps maintained a poetical correspondence; there is nothing to show that he ever made the acquaintance of Christine de Pisan. Froissart was more proud of his poetry than his prose. Posterity has reversed this opinion, and though a selection of his verse has been published, it would be difficult to find an admirer, or even a reader, of his poems. The selection published by Buchon in 1829 consists of the _Dit dou florin_, half of which is a description of the power of money; the _Debat dou cheval et dou levrier_, written during his journey in Scotland; the _Dittie de la flour de la Margherite_; a _Dittie d'amour_ called _L'Orlose amoureus_, in which he compares himself, the imaginary lover, with a clock; the _Espinette amoureuse_, which contains a sketch of his early life, freely and pleasantly drawn, accompanied by rondeaux and virelays; the _Buisson de jonesce_, in which he returns to the recollections of his own youth; and various smaller pieces. The verses are monotonous; the thoughts are not without poetical grace, but they are expressed at tedious length. It would be, however, absurd to expect in Froissart the vigour and verve possessed by none of his predecessors. The time was gone when Marie de France, Ruteboeuf and Thibaut de Champagne made the 13th-century language a medium for verse of which any literature might be proud. Briefly, Froissart's poetry, unless the unpublished portion be better than that before us, is monotonous and mechanical. The chief merit it possesses is in simplicity of diction. This not infrequently produces a pleasing effect.

As for the character of his _Chronicle_, little need be said. There has never been any difference of opinion on the distinctive merits of this great work. It presents a vivid and faithful drawing of the things done in the 14th century. No more graphic account exists of any age. No historian has drawn so many and such faithful portraits. They are, it is true, portraits of men as they seemed to the writer, not of men as they were. Froissart was uncritical; he accepted princes by their appearance. Who, for instance, would recognize in his portrait of Gaston Phoebus de Foix the cruel voluptuary, stained with the blood of his own son, which we know him to have been? Froissart, again, had no sense of historical responsibility; he was no judge to inquire into motives and condemn

## actions; he was simply a chronicler. He has been accused by French

authors of lacking patriotism. Yet it must be remembered that he was neither a Frenchman nor an Englishman, but a Fleming. He has been accused of insensibility to suffering. Indignation against oppression was not, however, common in the 14th century; why demand of Froissart a quality which is rare enough even in our own time? Yet there are moments when, as in describing the massacre of Limoges, he speaks with tears in his voice.

Let him be judged by his own aims. "Before I commence this book," he says, "I pray the Saviour of all the world, who created every thing out of nothing, that He will also create and put in me sense and understanding of so much worth, that this book, which I have begun, I may continue and persevere in, so that all those who shall read, see, and hear it may find in it delight and pleasance." To give delight and pleasure, then, was his sole design.

As regards his personal character, Froissart depicts it himself for us. Such as he was in youth, he tells us, so he remained in more advanced life; rejoicing mightily in dances and carols, in hearing minstrels and poems; inclined to love all those who love dogs and hawks; pricking up his ears at the uncorking of bottles,--"Car au voire prens grand plaisir"; pleased with good cheer, gorgeous apparel and joyous society, but no commonplace reveller or greedy voluptuary,--everything in Froissart was ruled by the good manners which he set before all else; and always eager to listen to tales of war and battle. As we have said above, he shows, not only by his success at courts, but also by the whole tone of his writings, that he possessed a singularly winning manner and strong personal character. He lived wholly in the present, and had no thought of the coming changes. Born when chivalrous ideas were most widely spread, but the spirit of chivalry itself, as inculcated by the best writers, in its decadence, he is penetrated with the sense of knightly honour, and ascribes to all his heroes alike those qualities which only the ideal knight possessed.

The first edition of Froissart's Chronicles was published in Paris. It bears no date; the next editions are those of the years 1505, 1514, 1518 and 1520. The edition of Buchon, 1824, was a continuation of one commenced by Dacier. The best modern editions are those of Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1863-1877) and Simeon Luce (Paris, 1869-1888); for bibliography see Potthast, _Bibliotheca hist. medii aevi_, i. (Berlin, 1896). An abridgment was made in Latin by Belleforest, and published in 1672. An English translation was made by Bouchier, Lord Berners, and published in London, 1525. See the "Tudor Translations" edition of Berners (Nutt, 1901), with introduction by W. P. Ker; and the "Globe" edition, with introduction by G. C. Macaulay. The translation by Thomas Johnes was originally published in 1802-1805. For Froissart's poems see Scheler's text in K. de Lettenhove's complete edition; _Meliador_ has been edited by Longnon for the Societe des Anciens Textes (1895-1899). See also Madame Darmesteter (Duclaux), _Froissart_ (1894). (W. Be.)

FROME, a market town in the Frome parliamentary division of Somersetshire, England, 107 m. W. by S. of London by the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 11,057. It is unevenly built on high ground above the river Frome, which is here crossed by a stone bridge of five arches. It was formerly called Frome or Froome Selwood, after the neighbouring forest of Selwood; and the country round is still richly wooded and picturesque. The parish church of St John the Baptist, with its fine tower and spire, was built about the close of the 14th century, and, though largely restored, has a beautiful chancel, Lady chapel and baptistery. Fragments of Norman work are left; the interior is elaborately adorned with sculptures and stained glass. The market-hall, museum, school of art, and a free grammar school, founded under Edward VI., may be noted among buildings and institutions. The chief industries are brewing and art metal-working, also printing, metal-founding, and the manufacture of cloth, silk, tools and cards for wool-dressing. Dairy farming is largely practised in the neighbourhood. Selwood forest was long a favourite haunt of brigands, and even in the 18th century gave shelter to a gang of coiners and highwaymen.

The Saxon occupation of Frome (From) is the earliest of which there is evidence, the settlement being due to the foundation of a monastery by Aldhelm in 705. A witenagemot was held there in 934, so that Frome must already have been a place of some size. At the time of the Domesday Survey the manor was owned by King William. Local tradition asserts that Frome was a medieval borough, and the reeve of Frome is occasionally mentioned in documents after the reign of Edward I., but there is no direct evidence that Frome was a borough and no trace of any charter granted to it. It was not represented in parliament until given one member by the Reform Act of 1832. Separate representation ceased in 1885. Frome was never incorporated. A charter of Henry VII. to Edmund Leversedge, then lord of the manor, granted the right to have fairs on the 22nd of July and the 21st of September. In the 18th century two other fairs on the 24th of February and the 25th of November were held. Cattle fairs are now held on the last Wednesday in February and November, and a cheese fair on the last Wednesday in September. The Wednesday market is held under the charter of Henry VII. There is also a Saturday cattle market. The manufacture of woollen cloth has been established since the 15th century, Frome being the only Somerset town in which this staple industry has flourished continuously.

FROMENTIN, EUGENE (1820-1876), French painter, was born at La Rochelle in December 1820. After leaving school he studied for some years under Louis Cabat, the landscape painter. Fromentin was one of the earliest pictorial interpreters of Algeria, having been able, while quite young, to visit the land and people that suggested the subjects of most of his works, and to store his memory as well as his portfolio with the picturesque and characteristic details of North African life. In 1849 he obtained a medal of the second class. In 1852 he paid a second visit to Algeria, accompanying an archaeological mission, and then completed that minute study of the scenery of the country and of the habits of its people which enabled him to give to his after-work the realistic accuracy that comes from intimate knowledge. In a certain sense his works are not more artistic results than contributions to ethnological science. His first great success was produced at the Salon of 1847, by the "Gorges de la Chiffa." Among his more important works are--"La Place de la breche a Constantine" (1849); "Enterrement Maure" (1853); "Bateleurs negres" and "Audience chez un chalife" (1859); "Berger kabyle" and "Courriers arabes" (1861); "Bivouac arabe," "Chasse au faucon," "Fauconnier arabe" (now at Luxembourg) (1863); "Chasse au heron" (1865); "Voleurs de nuit" (1867); "Centaurs et arabes attaques par une lionne" (1868); "Halte de muletiers" (1869); "Le Nil" and "Un Souvenir d'Esneh" (1875). Fromentin was much influenced in style by Eugene Delacroix. His works are distinguished by striking composition, great dexterity of handling and brilliancy of colour. In them is given with great truth and refinement the unconscious grandeur of barbarian and animal attitudes and gestures. His later works, however, show signs of an exhausted vein and of an exhausted spirit, accompanied or caused by physical enfeeblement. But it must be observed that Fromentin's paintings show only one side of a genius that was perhaps even more felicitously expressed in literature, though of course with less profusion. "Dominique," first published in the _Revue des deux mondes_ in 1862, and dedicated to George Sand, is remarkable among the fiction of the century for delicate and imaginative observation and for emotional earnestness. Fromentin's other literary works are--_Visites artistiques_ (1852); _Simples Pelerinages_ (1856); _Un Ete dans le Sahara_ (1857); _Une Annee dans le Sahel_ (1858); and _Les Maitres d'autrefois_ (1876). In 1876 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Academy. He died suddenly at La Rochelle on the 27th of August 1876.

FROMMEL, GASTON (1862-1906), Swiss theologian, professor of theology in the university of Geneva from 1894 to 1906. An Alsatian by birth, he belonged mainly to French Switzerland, where he spent most of his life. He may best be described as continuing the spirit of Vinet (q.v.) amid the mental conditions marking the end of the 19th century. Like Vinet, he derived his philosophy of religion from a peculiarly deep experience of the Gospel of Christ as meeting the demands of the moral consciousness; but he developed even further than Vinet the psychological analysis of conscience and the method of verifying every doctrine by direct reference to spiritual experience. Both made much of moral individuality or personality as the crown and criterion of reality, believing that its correlation with Christianity, both historically and philosophically, was most intimate. But while Vinet laid most stress on the liberty from human authority essential to the moral consciousness, the changed needs of the age caused Frommel to develop rather the aspect of man's dependence as a moral being upon God's spiritual initiative, "the conditional nature of his liberty." "Liberty is not the primary, but the secondary characteristic" of conscience; "before being free, it is the subject of obligation." On this depends its objectivity as a real revelation of the Divine Will. Thus he claimed that a deeper analysis carried one beyond the human subjectivity of even Kant's categorical imperative, since consciousness of obligation was "une experience imposee sous le mode de l'absolu." By his use of _imposee_ Frommel emphasized the priority of man's sense of obligation to his consciousness either of self or of God. Here he appealed to the current psychology of the subconscious for confirmation of his analysis, by which he claimed to transcend mere intellectualism. In his language on this fundamental point he was perhaps too jealous of admitting an ideal element as implicit in the feeling of obligation. Still he did well in insisting on priority to self-conscious thought as a mark of metaphysical objectivity in the case of moral, no less than of physical experience. Further, he found in the Christian revelation the same characteristics as belonged to the universal revelation involved in conscience, viz. God's sovereign initiative and his living action in history. From this standpoint he argued against a purely psychological type of religion (_agnosticisme religieux_, as he termed it)--a tendency to which he saw even in A. Sabatier and the _symbolo-fideisme_ of the Paris School--as giving up a real and unifying faith. His influence on men, especially the student class, was greatly enhanced by the religious force and charm of his personality. Finally, like Vinet, he was a man of letters and a penetrating critic of men and systems.

LITERATURE.--G. Godet, _Gaston Frommel_ (Neuchatel, 1906), a compact sketch, with full citation of sources; cf. H. Bois, in _Sainte-Croix_ for 1906, for "L'Etudiant et le professeur." A complete edition of his writings was begun in 1907. (J. V. B.)

FRONDE, THE, the name given to a civil war in France which lasted from 1648 to 1652, and to its sequel, the war with Spain in 1653-59. The word means a sling, and was applied to this contest from the circumstance that the windows of Cardinal Mazarin's adherents were pelted with stones by the Paris mob. Its original object was the redress of grievances, but the movement soon degenerated into a factional contest among the nobles, who sought to reverse the results of Richelieu's work and to overthrow his successor Mazarin. In May 1648 a tax levied on judicial officers of the parlement of Paris was met by that body, not merely with a refusal to pay, but with a condemnation of earlier financial edicts, and even with a demand for the acceptance of a scheme of constitutional reforms framed by a committee of the parlement. This charter was somewhat influenced by contemporary events in England. But there is no real likeness between the two revolutions, the French parlement being no more representative of the people than the Inns of Court were in England. The political history of the time is dealt with in the article FRANCE: _History_, the present article being concerned chiefly with the military operations of what was perhaps the most costly and least necessary civil war in history.

The military record of the first or "parliamentary" Fronde is almost blank. In August 1648, strengthened by the news of Conde's victory at Lens, Mazarin suddenly arrested the leaders of the parlement, whereupon Paris broke into insurrection and barricaded the streets. The court, having no army at its immediate disposal, had to release the prisoners and to promise reforms, and fled from Paris on the night of the 22nd of October. But the signing of the peace of Westphalia set free Conde's army, and by January 1649 it was besieging Paris. The peace of Rueil was signed in March, after little blood had been shed. The Parisians, though still and always anti-cardinalist, refused to ask for Spanish aid, as proposed by their princely and noble adherents, and having no prospect of military success without such aid, submitted and received concessions. Thenceforward the Fronde becomes a story of sordid intrigues and half-hearted warfare, losing all trace of its first constitutional phase. The leaders were discontented princes and nobles--Monsieur (Gaston of Orleans, the king's uncle), the great Conde and his brother Conti, the duc de Bouillon and his brother Turenne. To these must be added Gaston's daughter, Mademoiselle de Montpensier (La grande Mademoiselle), Conde's sister, Madame de Longueville, Madame de Chevreuse, and the astute intriguer Paul de Gondi, later Cardinal de Retz. The military operations fell into the hands of war-experienced mercenaries, led by two great, and many second-rate, generals, and of nobles to whom war was a polite pastime. The feelings of the people at large were enlisted on neither side.

This peace of Rueil lasted until the end of 1649. The princes, received at court once more, renewed their intrigues against Mazarin, who, having come to an understanding with Monsieur, Gondi and Madame de Chevreuse, suddenly arrested Conde, Conti and Longueville (January 14, 1650). The war which followed this _coup_ is called the "Princes' Fronde." This time it was Turenne, before and afterwards the most loyal soldier of his day, who headed the armed rebellion. Listening to the promptings of his Egeria, Madame de Longueville, he resolved to rescue her brother, his old comrade of Freiburg and Nordlingen. It was with Spanish assistance that he hoped to do so; and a powerful army of that nation assembled in Artois under the archduke Leopold, governor-general of the Spanish Netherlands. But the peasants of the country-side rose against the invaders, the royal army in Champagne was in the capable hands of Cesar de Choiseul, comte du Plessis-Praslin, who counted fifty-two years of age and thirty-six of war experience, and the little fortress of Guise successfully resisted the archduke's attack. Thereupon, however, Mazarin drew upon Plessis-Praslin's army for reinforcements to be sent to subdue the rebellion in the south, and the royal general had to retire. Then, happily for France, the archduke decided that he had spent sufficient of the king of Spain's money and men in the French quarrel. The magnificent regular army withdrew into winter quarters, and left Turenne to deliver the princes with a motley host of Frondeurs and Lorrainers. Plessis-Praslin by force and bribery secured the surrender of Rethel on the 13th of December 1650, and Turenne, who had advanced to relieve the place, fell back hurriedly. But he was a terrible opponent, and Plessis-Praslin and Mazarin himself, who accompanied the army, had many misgivings as to the result of a lost battle. The marshal chose nevertheless to force Turenne to a decision, and the battle of Blanc-Champ (near Somme-Py) or Rethel was the consequence. Both sides were at a standstill in strong positions, Plessis-Praslin doubtful of the trustworthiness of his cavalry, Turenne too weak to attack, when a dispute for precedence arose between the _Gardes francaises_ and the _Picardie_ regiment. The royal infantry had to be rearranged in order of regimental seniority, and Turenne, seeing and desiring to profit by the attendant disorder, came out of his stronghold and attacked with the greatest vigour. The battle (December 15, 1650) was severe and for a time doubtful, but Turenne's Frondeurs gave way in the end, and his army, as an army, ceased to exist. Turenne himself, undeceived as to the part he was playing in the drama, asked and received the young king's pardon, and meantime the court, with the _maison du roi_ and other loyal troops, had subdued the minor risings without difficulty (March-April 1651). Conde, Conti and Longueville were released, and by April 1651 the rebellion had everywhere collapsed. Then followed a few months of hollow peace and the court returned to Paris. Mazarin, an object of hatred to all the princes, had already retired into exile. "Le temps est un galant homme," he remarked, "laissons le faire!" and so it proved. His absence left the field free for mutual jealousies, and for the remainder of the year anarchy reigned in France. In December 1651 Mazarin returned with a small army. The war began again, and this time Turenne and Conde were pitted against one another. After the first campaign, as we shall see, the civil war ceased, but for several other campaigns the two great soldiers were opposed to one another, Turenne as the defender of France, Conde as a Spanish invader. Their personalities alone give threads of continuity to these seven years of wearisome manoeuvres, sieges and combats, though for a right understanding of the causes which were to produce the standing armies of the age of Louis XIV. and Frederick the Great the military student should search deeply into the material and moral factors that here decided the issue.

The debut of the new Frondeurs took place in Guyenne (February-March 1652), while their Spanish ally, the archduke Leopold William, captured various northern fortresses. On the Loire, whither the centre of gravity was soon transferred, the Frondeurs were commanded by intriguers and quarrelsome lords, until Conde's arrival from Guyenne. His bold trenchant leadership made itself felt in the action of Bleneau (7th April 1652), in which a portion of the royal army was destroyed, but fresh troops came up to oppose him, and from the skilful dispositions made by his opponents Conde felt the presence of Turenne and broke off the action. The royal army did likewise. Conde invited the commander of Turenne's rearguard to supper, chaffed him unmercifully for allowing the prince's men to surprise him in the morning, and by way of farewell remarked to his guest, "Quel dommage que des braves gens comme nous se coupent la gorge pour un faquin"--an incident and a remark that thoroughly justify the iron-handed absolutism of Louis XIV. There was no hope for France while tournaments on a large scale and at the public's expense were fashionable amongst the _grands seigneurs_. After Bleneau both armies marched to Paris to negotiate with the parlement, de Retz and Mlle de Montpensier, while the archduke took more fortresses in Flanders, and Charles IV., duke of Lorraine, with an army of plundering mercenaries, marched through Champagne to join Conde. As to the latter, Turenne manoeuvred past Conde and planted himself in front of the mercenaries, and their leader, not wishing to expend his men against the old French regiments, consented to depart with a money payment and the promise of two tiny Lorraine fortresses. A few more manoeuvres, and the royal army was able to hem in the Frondeurs in the Faubourg St Antoine (2nd July 1652) with their backs to the closed gates of Paris. The royalists attacked all along the line and won a signal victory in spite of the knightly prowess of the prince and his great lords, but at the critical moment Gaston's daughter persuaded the Parisians to open the gates and to admit Conde's army. She herself turned the guns of the Bastille on the pursuers. An insurrectional government was organized in the capital and proclaimed Monsieur lieutenant-general of the realm. Mazarin, feeling that public opinion was solidly against him, left France again, and the bourgeois of Paris, quarrelling with the princes, permitted the king to enter the city on the 21st of October 1652. Mazarin returned unopposed in February 1653.