Stories and Sights of France and Italy (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. PARIS. ? FRENCH HISTORY. ]HE ancient Gauls, who once inhabited France, were a rude, gross, inferior race of barbarian idolaters, when they were subdued by the Romans, about half a century before Christ. Caesar speaks of Paris as Lutetia, the principal city of the Parisii, one of the Celtic tribes. When the Romans began to lose power and sovereignty ? as all nations do after a time, when they get overgrown, rich, insolent, and oppressive ? the Franks, a warlike German people, wrested Gaul from them, gave it the name of France, and made one of their chiefs, Clovis, king. Christianity had been introduced into Gaul about a century before, ? had taken well and flourished, ? so the new king found it good policy to take a Christian wife, and be himself baptized into the new religion. It did not seem, however, that the sacred waters of baptism served to cool down his fiery, fighting spirit, as it shouldhave done, for, as the holy Bishop of Rheims was eloquently preaching to him of the sufferings of the Saviour, he sprang to his feet, with a great clang of armor, and, clapping his hand on his sword, exclaimed, 0, why was I not there, with my Pranks, to fight for him For two hundred and seventy years the descendants of Clovis ? called the Merovingian race of kings, from Merovee, the father of Clovis? governed France, ? sometimes well, sometimes ill, but with more and more pomp and pride the farther they .were removed from their really great founder, and the weaker grew in their veins his hot heroic blood, till at last they were thrust aside by Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, ? or Charles the Great, ? who founded the Carlovin- gian race of kings. Pepin truly deserved fame and honor on his own account, for he was a brave and able monarch; but for all that, he is...