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How Did France and Great Britain respond to the Emancipation Proclamation after Lincoln issued it  – France and Britain responded to the Emancipation Proclamation by declining to acknowledge the Alliance. Announcing their support for slavery in the South, Building a trade association with the Confederacy, and Assigning representatives to settle the Civil War.

How Did France and Great Britain respond to the Emancipation Proclamation after Lincoln issued it

• • • • • • • By refusing to recognize the confederacy
            • Declaring their support for slavery in the south
            • Forming a trade alliance with the confederacy
            • Sending ambassadors to settle the civil war.

Originally, the North engaged in the Civil War with the South to prevent secession from the South and preserve the Union. Ending slavery was not a goal. This changed on September 22, 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that the slaves of those states or parts of the state still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863, would be enfranchised. One hundred days later, a proclamation of emancipation was promulgated by Lincoln declaring “that all persons held as slaves” in rebel areas “are and must henceforth be free.”

This bold move by Lincoln was a military step in which he hoped to encourage the slaves of the Confederation to support the cause of the Union. Because it was a military measure, the proclamation was limited in many ways.

It applied only to States that had seceded from the Union and maintained slavery in border States. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation did not put an end to slavery, it fundamentally transformed the nature of war. From now on, each progress of the federal troops grew the scope of freedom.

In addition, the proclamation announced the acceptance of black men in the Union’s army and navy. By the end of the war, nearly 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and for their own freedom.

 

How It All Started – The Emancipation Proclamation &

Why did european nations such as Britain and France distance themselves from the confederate war effort after the emancipation proclamation? 

On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln decreed the Proclamation of Emancipation. When it came into effect on January 1, 1863, the executive order legally released about 4 million slaves in the rebel-held southern areas of the United States.

How was the emancipation proclamation tied to European and English attitudes toward the civil war?

The Emancipation Proclamation turned the civil war into a social revolution. It transformed the struggle, led by the North, to preserve the Union as it existed in 1860, a war for the destruction of slavery and the social and political order in which it ceased.

Given its historical content and Lincoln’s well-deserved reputation as a master of prose, the modest and legal style of the document might seem surprising. The decisive section appears only in the middle, where Lincoln writes: “On the first day of January, in the year 1863 of our Lord, in any State or any designated part of a State holding slaves, these will then be in rebellion against the United States, and will be from now on, and forever be free. “

The modest style did not weaken the revolutionary content of the Proclamation. “Lincoln is an unusual person in the annals of history,” observed Karl Marx on October 9, 1862, in Die Presse. “The most formidable decrees – which will forever remain remarkable historical documents – which he has thrown into the face of the enemy all resemble, and are made to coincide, routine injunctions that a lawyer would address to a solicitor. from the opposite side. ”

The “preliminary” Emancipation Proclamation, as it is sometimes called, referred to the possibility that if the rebellious states returned to the Union during the 100 days between September 22, 1862, and January 1, 1863, and they accepted a plan for the gradual enfranchisement of slaves, they can be spared from expropriation. In this initial version, Lincoln even raised the possibility that a settlement plan “on this continent or elsewhere” would be implemented for freed slaves.

Lincoln did not believe that these incentives would bring revolutionary states back into the Union. Their inclusion in the document (Lincoln did not mention plans for colonization in the Final Proclamation) was intended to appease the border slave states that had remained in the Union (Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, West Virginia, and Maryland) as well as a section of voters in the North, where the population was overwhelmed by relentless propaganda from the press and Democratic Party politicians regarding the “race-to-race” and “servile insurrection” objectives of the “Black Republican Party”.

After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation great Britain and France ….

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military order and as commander-in-chief. He invoked his powers of war to circumvent the opposition of the Democratic Party to emancipation. It was for this reason, as well as the existence of constitutional clauses enshrining slavery, that the Proclamation applied only to areas in rebellion.

However, there was little doubt at the time that the document meant the end of slavery. The President of the Confederation, Jefferson Davis, raved that the Proclamation was “an invitation to the widespread assassination … of the masters”.

In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery in the United States, was passed by both congressional chambers controlled by the Republicans before the end of the war and formally decreed in December 1865.

Lincoln’s personal opposition to slavery was well known. He was perceived by both his friends and his enemies as an anti-slavery politician, even though he was not an abolitionist. “I would not wish to be a slave, and I would not wish to be a master. That’s my conception of democracy, “said Lincoln.

However, the Republican Party had won the 1860 election by promising that slavery would not be abolished where it already existed, but only in new territories. Although the elite in the South had vehemently opposed this position through seceding and war, the Lincoln administration led the Civil War in 1861-1862 with the goal of restoring the status quo ante.

Even on August 22, 1862, Lincoln published a letter in Horace Greeley’s anti-slavery newspaper, The New York Tribune, in which he seemed to reaffirm his position. He wrote: “If I could save the Union by not releasing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by releasing part of it, I would do it too. “

Why Did France Fall So Easily To The Nazis In WW2 – Hitler Stalin 1939 … Western propaganda claimed that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were “allies”. The Second World War was entirely their fault, while France, Great Britain, and Poland were innocent victims of totalitarianism.

Historians interpret and reinterpret history. This is a normal process … except when politicians are reinterpreting. Their interests are not intellectual but rather political. They seek to justify their politics by evoking the past, history as they need it to be.

Why Did France Fall So Easily To The Nazis In WW2

The origins and conduct of the Second World War are of particular interest to Western politicians, past and present. It was true, even from the beginning. In December 1939, the British government decided to produce a white paper on the Anglo-French-Soviet negotiations in the spring and summer of this year, with the aim of organizing an alliance to fight against Hitler’s Germany.

Foreign Ministry officials carefully selected a hundred or so documents to show that they and the French had been serious about organizing an anti-German alliance and that the USSR was primarily responsible for the failure of the negotiations. At the beginning of January 1940, the white paper was in the testing stage. Almost everyone in London was eager to publish it.

All that was needed was the approval of France and the Polish government in exile. To the surprise of British officials, France opposed the publication of the white paper, as did the Polish government in exile. This may surprise today’s readers.

Why would the French and Polish officials oppose a publication considered as “good propaganda” by the British to blacken the reputation of the Soviet Union?

Let the French ambassador in London explain it in his own words: “The general impression that emerges from reading [the white paper],” he writes in a memorandum dated January 12, 1940, “is that the Russian government has never stopped insisting, from beginning to end, to give the agreement [currently being negotiated] the maximum scope and effectiveness. Whether sincere or not, the Soviet Government’s determination to effectively cover all the possible routes of German aggression appears throughout the negotiations but met with Franco-British reluctance and the clear intention of the two governments to limit the scope of the negotiations. Russian intervention. ”

The French ambassador did not stop there. He observed that critics who felt that the USSR had been forced into an agreement with Nazi Germany because of Anglo-French “reluctance” to make real commitments in Moscow, would find in the white paper “a number of ‘arguments in their favor’. The language used here conformed to the best traditions of diplomatic euphemisms, but the Foreign Office received the message.

Especially since there was still the irritating fact for Gallic sensibilities that the documents chosen for the white paper failed to show that they, the French, had been more worried to conclude with Moscow than their British allies.

What would happen, the French wondered if the Soviet government published its own collection of documents in response to a white paper? Who would public opinion believe? The French were not sure of the answer.

As for the Poles in exile, they could not insist much, but they too preferred that the white paper should not be published. Even in the first days of their exile, the Poles were unwilling to make known their responsibilities in the origins of the war and their blazing defeat against the Wehrmacht.

In fact, the three governments, the British, the French, and the Polish, had much to hide, and not only their conduct in 1939 but during the whole period after the accession of Adolf Hitler to power in January 1933. The government Soviet had been quick to sound the alarm of danger and to propose a defensive anti-Nazi alliance to France and Great Britain. And yes, Moscow also made overtures to Poland. The Soviet Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Maxime Litvinov, even hoped to attract Fascist Italy to an anti-Nazi coalition. In Bucharest, the Soviet government developed concerted efforts to obtain Romanian participation in a broad anti-German alliance evoking the Entente coalition of the First World War.

Were all these Soviet efforts a ruse to fool the West, while Soviet diplomats secretly negotiated with Nazi Germany?

Not at all, the Russian archives seem conclusive on this point. The Soviet overtures were serious, but its so-called allies hesitated, except for Poland, which at no time had considered joining an anti-Nazi alliance with the Soviet Union.

Commissioner Litvinov saw that the so-called allies of the Soviets were trying to deal with Nazi Germany. Poland constantly obstructed Soviet policy, and Romania, under Polish and German pressure, gave up better relations with Moscow. A Soviet ambassador even recommended that the Soviet government not break all relations with Berlin in order to send the message, especially to Paris and London, that the USSR could also deal with Nazi Germany. The four most important French diplomats in Moscow during the 1930s repeatedly warned that France must protect its relations with the USSR or risk seeing it reconcile with Berlin.

In Paris, these reports disappeared in the files and finally remained ineffective. The greatest blow to collective security came in September 1938, when France and Great Britain concluded the Munich Agreement, which sanctioned the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Neither Czechoslovak diplomats nor Soviet diplomats were invited to the negotiations. As for Poland, it allied itself with Nazi Germany. “If Hitler obtains the Czechoslovak territories,” said the Polish diplomats before Munich, “then we will have our share too. ”

Is it surprising that after about six years of futile attempts to organize an anti-Nazi front, the Soviet government is losing all confidence in the French and British governments and is making an agreement with Berlin to stay out of the war, that all world-recognized as imminent?

This was the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, signed on August 23, 1939. As for the Poles, in their arrogance and blindness, they mocked the idea of ​​an alliance with the USSR until the first day of the war…

The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was the result of the failure of six years of Soviet policy to conclude an anti-Nazi alliance with the West and not the cause of this failure. The British ambassador in Moscow accused the Soviet government of “bad faith,” but it was only the hospital that made fun of Charity. Even during the last days of peace, the British and French governments sought to escape the war. “Although we can not, under these circumstances, avoid declaring war,” declared a British minister, “we can always write the letter declaring war without immediately going there. In fact, France and Great Britain barely raised a finger to help Poland, when it was invaded on September 1, 1939. After bringing the disaster upon itself, the Polish government fled Warsaw after the first days of combat, its members passing in Romania to be interned there.

If France and Britain did not help the Poles in their moment of despair, could Joseph Stalin reasonably have calculated that the British and the French would have done more to help the Soviet Union if it had entered the war? September 1939?

Obviously no. The USSR should turn to its own defenses. No one should be surprised then that a few months later, the French and the Poles in exile are opposed to the publication of a white paper that could open the Pandora’s box of questions about the origins of the war and their failure to join an anti-Nazi alliance. It is better not to wake the sleeping dog and hope that the government archives will not be open for a long time.

After the war, however, the failure surrounding the British White Paper was long forgotten. The sleeping dogs woke up and began to bark. The West launched a campaign accusing Stalin of being Hitler’s “ally”. In 1948, the US Department of State published a collection of documents under the title of Soviet-Nazi Relations 1939-1941, to which the Soviet government responded with falsifiers of history. The war of propaganda was unleashed, as was especially the American attempt to attribute to the USSR an equal responsibility to Nazi Germany in the provocation of the Second World War.

American propaganda was absurd, given the history of the 1930s as we know it today, from various European archives.

Was there ever a greater act of ingratitude than the US accusations blaming the USSR for the origins of the war and hiding the immense contribution of the Red Army to the common victory against Nazi Germany?

Nowadays, the role of the Soviet people in the destruction of Nazism is virtually unknown in the West. Few people are aware that the Red Army fought almost alone for three years against the Wehrmacht while calling for the opening of a second front to its Anglo-American allies. Few people know that the Red Army inflicted more than 80% of the losses of the Wehrmacht and its allies and that the Soviet people are suffering so much loss that no one knows exactly how many, though they are estimated to 26 or 27 million civilians and soldiers. The Anglo-American losses were insignificant in comparison.

Ironically, the anti-Russian campaign of falsification of history intensified after the dismantling of the USSR in 1991. The Baltic States and Poland led the charge. Like the tail that moves the dog, they dragged all the well-disposed European organizations, such as the OSCE, the European Parliament and Assembly in Strasbourg, into ridiculous statements about the origins of the Second World War.

It was the triumph of the ignorance of politicians who knew nothing or who calculated that the few who knew something of the war would not be heard.

After all, how many people have read diplomatic papers in the various European archives detailing Soviet efforts to build an anti-Nazi alliance during the 1930s?

How many people know the responsibilities of London, Paris, and Warsaw in obstructing the common European defense against Nazi Germany?

“Not much,” must have been the conclusion of European governments. The few historians and informed citizens who knew or know the truth could easily be fooled, marginalized, or ignored.

So Hitler and Stalin had become accomplices, the two friends, and the two “totalitarians”. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were “allies”. World War II was entirely their fault.

France, Great Britain, and Poland were innocent victims of totalitarianism. The OSCE and the European Assembly issued resolutions to this effect in 2009, declaring August 23 as a day in memory of the victims of the “alliance” of the Nazis and Soviets, as if the non-aggression pact signed this that day had fallen from heaven and had no other context than totalitarian evil.

In 2014, after US and EU support for the coup in Kyiv, a fascist junta seized power in Ukraine, and the campaign of propaganda to falsify history intensified. Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, like Stepan Bandera, were crowned national heroes. Ukrainian paramilitary forces called the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UUN / UPA), who fought alongside the Wehrmacht and the SS, were similarly transformed into liberation forces.

In October this year, the Polish and Ukrainian legislatures passed resolutions blaming Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union for the Second World War. Given Poland’s role in collaborating with Nazi Germany and obstructing Soviet efforts to create an anti-Nazi alliance in the 1930s, this resolution is surrealistic.

Equally perverse is the equivalent Ukrainian resolution, by a government celebrating the collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World War.

Ironically, the Law and Justice Party have their own problems in its “alliance” with fascist Ukraine. These Ukrainian collaborators who fought with the Nazis and committed atrocities against Soviet citizens also perpetrated mass murders in Poland during the latter part of the war.

Even if Poland tries hard to falsify history, it can not hide the atrocities of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators against the Poles, recalled in a recent Polish hit movie, Volhynia. It sounds like a surrealist quarrel between brigands who have to bury the history of Ukrainian fascism and Nazi collaboration in order to unite against the common Russian enemy.

If only the many Ukrainians living today in southern Poland stopped erecting illegal monuments to commemorate Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. The poor Poles are caught between the hammer and the anvil. It is equally unpleasant for them to recall that the Red Army has liberated Poland and put an end to the atrocities of Nazi collaborators.

Will Russia and Poland finally bury the hatchet to get rid of the new wave of fascist Ukrainians in their territories?

It’s unlikely. The Polish government also had to choose in the 1930s, between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He chose collaboration with Nazi Germany and rejected an anti-Nazi alliance with the Soviet Union. It is not surprising that history must be falsified. There is so much to hide for Western governments and Poland.

Why Did France and Britain Fight In The War – In 1491, Anne of Brittany married the king of France. It is the epilogue of more than a century of conflicts between a centralizing monarchy and a real state.

Last Tuesday at Langeais were made the wedding of the king and the queen, our sovereign lady, and that night, at Langeais, they slept together and the queen let her virgin there. Yesterday, at dinnertime, the King arrived at Plessix, and in the evening the Queen, and they made good and big dear. We have been kind enough to warn you, so that you may have general processions, bonfires, and all joyous things done, thanking God. ”

It is in these laconic terms that the citizens sent by the city of Rennes to Langeais to attend the marriage of the Duchess Anne of Brittany and King Charles VIII of France report to their compatriots the events of December 6, 1491. The joy of The order hides the bitterness of the Bretons in front of the cavalier treatment that their new master reserved for them. This account corroborates what is known of the coldness of the ceremonies of Langeais: hasty marriage, lack of ostentation, the eagerness of the royal environment to consummate the union to make it irreversible.

This marriage, which comes after five years of violent conflict, marks the end of the ambitious adventure of the Montforts dynasty, of which Anne is the last direct descendant. Since their accession to the throne in 1364, the Montforts have built a princely state, more and more embarrassing for the King of France.

Covering an area of ​​35,000 km2, the Principality has a population of about 1 million at the end of the Middle Ages. Naturally turned towards the west, Brittany is at the heart of the major trade routes of the Atlantic (see Olivier Chaline, page 44). In the 13th and early 14th century, Brittany was influenced by the kingdom of France, which installed at its head a ducal dynasty from the Capetian line, to try to assimilate it gently. This policy was met with stubborn opposition, as evidenced by the War of Succession (1341-1364), a Breton episode of the Hundred Years War. The victory of John IV of Montfort on the Penthièvre at Auray, September 29, 1364, marks the lasting decline of the French influence. It pushes Brittany to play, under the aegis of its “natural” princes, a personal political map.

 

LOUIS XI, THE ENEMY

Indeed, whether it is administrative literature, history or even poetry, documents from the late Middle Ages testify to the emergence of Breton “nationalism”. From the time of John IV to that of Duchess Anne, chroniclers, unknown by the royal literary history, have thus succeeded to support the enterprise of dukes2. They justify the pretensions of the Breton princes by recalling that “there was a king once, / Now a duke who has the same rights / That the king, neither more nor less”.

This reference to the rulers of the past is based on the myth, or forges it if necessary when the tradition resulting from the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffroy de Monmouth, Welsh historian of the twelfth century, does not allow to establish the uninterrupted chain of kings who reigned over the island of Brittany (see Amaury Chauou, 22).

Such an inheritance distinguishes the dukes from all the other territorial princes. It is therefore legitimate to glorify them, and the flattering portraits that embellish the historical works underline their appearance of “very beautiful princes” and “the royal state” of their train of existence; they put forward their human qualities and their political virtues, a guarantee of safeguarding and prosperity for their people. The love of the prince for his subjects, his devotion to public affairs call-in return the fidelity of the Bretons. Hence the repeated desire to exalt the successes of the great hours of national unity, to condemn the traitors, like Du Guesclin, passed to the service of the King of France, who “Too much mourning in his heart had / Of the war and dissension / Being between his nation / And the French he loved “.

From where, still, the necessity to nail to the pillory the enemies of the dukes, in the first rank of which one recognizes, even if its name is not quoted, Louis XI: “Prince who hates to have powerful neighbor […] / Prince who carries and supports the bad / Against the good ones, the honor of his palace […] Prince tending to falsity covered / To take others and lead him to a loss “(Jean Meschinot).

DUCS AT THE ROYAL STATURE

Although the dukes never explicitly claimed the royal title, their chancery form and the language of some of their spokespersons abroad or their political partners speak volumes about their idea of their power. A sentence of the historian Pierre Le Baud, borrowed from the judicial archives of the country, sums it up perfectly: “The duke was as well in his duchy as was the king in Paris. ”

The claim of sovereignty is expressed in many ways. And first of all in the refusal of homage lige, the duke considers that he owes to the king “oath, fealty, and lordship.” But he demands from his own vassals an obedience to “him alone and against all,” a real challenge to monarchical authority. This refusal is explained by the conviction that the Montforts have to hold their power of God: the formula “duke by the grace of God” systematically appears under John V and his successors from 1417.

Pope Martin V subscribed in 1418 when he said that “the Duke of Brittany holds his power of divine largesse, like any king and prince”. The same goes for the wearing of the “royal” crown of Brittany, “the great golden circle” which is placed on the head of the prince on the day of the coronation in the Saint-Pierre cathedral of Rennes and whose ” ten plates, plates embellished with precious stones, and especially the arrogant “Haut fleurons” make the king a shade.

When this ceremony is institutionalized and the royal crown appears clearly in the written and figurative documentation (1442), Breton princes have for a long time forged a stature of sovereigns, using for their benefit the Roman notion of lèse- majesty to which Jean IV refers from 1384 to force the inhabitants of Saint-Malo, guilty of rebellion, to make amends.

Also, when Duchess Anne declared in 1490, during the war of independence, that “all those who obey the King of France would be guilty of lèse-majesté”, which amounts to reversing the hierarchy of powers in the kingdom, his attitude appears as the consequence of a more than secular evolution. It is not surprising, therefore, to see the prince included among his “royal and ducal rights”, corroborated by the great inquiry that Peter II diligently ordered in 1455, a series of prerogatives revealing the true nature of Breton ducal power.

The duke legislates and renders justice throughout the duchy and, even though custom continues to admit, until 1485, the call to the king, this right is strictly regulated. In addition, it strikes the currency of gold and silver, and, as of the end of XIVe century, the Breton monetary types are distinguished from those of the king, sign that Brittany does not need any more to play on the imitation and the confusion to accept currencies whose value liberatory strengthened during the fifteenth century.

It is true that since the advent of the Montforts, the financial independence of Brittany, where there is a complete fiscal arsenal, has become a reality that lasted until 1491. The same goes for what concerns the mobilization of the army, the construction or the maintenance of the fortresses, which require the prior authorization of the ducal power.

Its independent diplomacy, active throughout the European scale, allows Brittany to maintain direct contacts with the Holy See and to multiply the treaties of alliance with the main nations of the Ponant: Castile (1430), England, the Netherlands. Low Burgundy (1440), Portugal (1452), Norway and Sweden (1467), Germanic Hanseatic (1479).

The right to create the offices and public offices necessary for the State, to ennoble or privilege “those of their subjects as they wish,” to concede “letters of grace, forgiveness, recovery, respite, safeguards and others” complete the arsenal of powers possessed by the dukes, and which they forbid both to the leaders of the powerful local aristocracy and to the king, “who has neither nor does he take no sovereign rights in the duchy.”

To impose the respect of the prince, the Montforts modernize the institutions of the duchy with the support of the ruling classes of the principality. Only the great nobility, removed from the effective exercise of government and anxious not to lose the lands it has in the kingdom, remains on the reserve when it does not pay into the open opposition. The small aristocracy, numerous in lower Brittany, responds massively to the demand for political, administrative and military cadres; the bourgeoisie, late enriched, plays a growing role, especially in the financial administration, from the middle of the fifteenth century.

In Brittany of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there is a pattern of institutional organization common to the centralizing monarchies of time. At the ducal council are found both the heads of the administrative services and the representatives of the political forces of the country. We can talk about everything and its role in the choice of political orientations is essential. The Chancellery is headed by a Chancellor whose place on the Council, the first after the Duke, and the relations within the administration make a real Prime Minister.

A Chamber of Accounts was created in Vannes in 1365. It controls all accounting officers, maintains the profitability of the Estate, monitors fluctuations in the number of taxpayers and exempts. The finances are placed under the authority of a treasury and general recipe, entrusted to a unique manager, financial of high flight: it is the case, in the last third of XVe century, Pierre Landais, which becomes the main character advice. From him depends on all the removal of the ducal resources. The main thing comes from direct or indirect taxation and not from the Domain – the “Ordinary” – unable to meet the enormous needs of the State.

The states of Brittany include about a hundred nobles, about sixty clerics and about thirty bourgeois representing twenty-five cities. They meet at least once a year. Their action was decisive in providing the duchy with a public tax, to which they must give their approval under the principle that “what affects all must be agreed by all”. But power also associates this assembly with most of the decisions that affect the future of the country.

No modern state without judicial independence. In this field, the obstacles have been difficult to overcome: the call to the king, in cases of denial of justice and “false judgment” (biased judgment), is found in the customary Breton tradition since the thirteenth century. The organization of a hierarchy of courts, from the local “bar” to the Parliament of Brittany via the courts of justice installed in each of the eight chief towns of a bailiff (judicial and feudal district) that counts the principality, aims to discourage calls to Paris, which are actually few.

But the higher court works badly. He was unable to find either a fixed-seat or a stable staff before 1485, when Duke Francis II broke through and, breaking with the king, erected in Vannes the first sovereign parliament of the Duchy, which could be likened to a crime of lèse-majesté, since it calls into question an essential component of the royal image, that of the sovereign justice for the whole kingdom.

At this date, Brittany has for thirty years of a military instrument whose modernity can not be doubted. Imitating the royal model, it rests on three main elements: a permanent base of professional warfare, the ordinance; the traditional reserve of the back-ban, numerous but of reduced military value, provided by the tenants-stronghold of the duchy; the popular militias finally, reserves of specialists of the weapons of stroke, exempt from tax.

To these troops are added the guard of the ducal body, about 200 elite fighters, and a band of artillery for which serious efforts were made under François II, which increases the park of guns and makes come from the Germanic countries, by offering them much higher salaries than their counterparts in Brittany, many firearms specialists. This interest in the artillery is coupled with particular attention to the urban fortifications, built at the expense of the cities, under the control of ducal agents, in anticipation of a conflict with France.

An UNEQUAL COMBAT

The discourse of the dukes, their institutional achievements, are in fact in conflict with the interests of a monarchy that perseveres in its enterprise of centralization. The crisis of the end of the Middle Ages thwarted this process: the disturbances of all kinds that it generated naturally turn to the nearest authorities, like that of the Breton duke, the elements of society threatened with downgrading and those who dream of social climbing. But the royal power finally grew out of the crisis, sitting on solid finances (permanent size) and an army of trade unparalleled in Europe. Also, from the reign of Louis XI (1461-1483), the time is no longer the discretion of the competing authorities.

In these conditions, the destiny of Brittany is sealed. Alone against the royal France after the victory of Louis XI on Charles the Bold in 1477, resulting in the collapse of the Burgundian state, which was long his privileged ally, it does not have the material means to resist. The country can not face the test of a long war: a single year of conflict requires the mobilization of all its resources and even to resort to the loan secured on the receipts of the following year.

However, with the equivalent of 500,000 pounds tournaments re-entries in a normal year, one can not compete with a royal France capable of mobilizing more than 4,600,000 books in a war year at the beginning of the 1480s. Remain the expedients, at the limited effectiveness: the alienation of the domains of the Crown and especially the currency devaluation, which is solved a few months after the beginning of the French invasion.

A Chamber of Accounts was created in Vannes in 1365. It controls all accounting officers, maintains the profitability of the Estate, monitors fluctuations in the number of taxpayers and exempts. The finances are placed under the authority of a treasury and general recipe, entrusted to a unique manager, financial of high flight: it is the case, in the last third of XVe century, Pierre Landais, which becomes the main character advice. From him depends on all the removal of the ducal resources. The main thing comes from direct or indirect taxation and not from the Domain – the “Ordinary” – unable to meet the enormous needs of the State.

This inequality of resources leads to that of the combatants, Brittany struggling to regularly pay 800 spears – 4,000 fighters at best – in time of war, while the royal budget supports to pay ten times more. And the duchy does not weigh enough “heavy” on the international chessboard for its political partners to engage with him. The support provided by English, Germans, and Castilians remains limited, and the maintenance of expeditionary forces left to the charge of the Bretons further increases deficits: in 1488, for example, it is necessary to pledge the entire estate of Gavre, near Nantes, to pay the only Germans of Captain Lornay.

To this disproportion of means are added internal political divisions which weaken Brittany. Two rival camps clash – Francophiles and supporters of emancipation – whose opinions are radicalized from the 1450s, the dukes tolerating less and less contestation of their authority by a high nobility won the interests of the King of France.

The encroachments of the monarchy in Brittany are also favored by the uncertainties hanging over the succession of Francis II. The king’s people do not recognize the choice of states which, in 1486, fell on Princess Anne. They persist in considering that the devolution of the duchy must be done in the respect of the treaty of Guérande, more than a century old (1365), which had disposed, in a very different political context, that the crown of Brittany returned to Penthievre or their successors in case of failure of the Montforts male line.

Since 1480, the rights of the Penthievre are in the hands of the king who bought them from the last descendant of the family. It is feigning to ignore that the Penthieves have since 1448 renounced to avail of these rights, to regain possession of the Breton goods which the duke had deprived them in 1420. The king, therefore, bought only the wind, but with the idea of ​​using it to unleash the storm!

Everything accelerates when the treasurer and receiver-general Pierre Landais triumphs in Brittany, who, having eliminated his rival, the Chancellor Guillaume Chauvin, favorable to the maintenance of a dialogue with France, becomes the head of the political and political Breton diplomacy, the apostle convinced of an independence turning Brittany towards the Atlantic, and thus the man to defeat for the monarchy.

The conjunction of French ambitions and Breton reactionary forces is not long in coming. From the month of October 1484, by the treaty of Montargis, the great men recognize the validity of the royal pretensions to the succession of Francis II. Landais was executed in Nantes in 1485: the confidence of Duke Francis II was not enough to guarantee against the skillful maneuvers of the high aristocracy and royal agents. In 1487, the grandees, gathered around Francoise de Dinan, renewed the agreement of 1484 in the Treaty of Châteaubriant, and took the decisive step by requesting the intervention of a royal army limited to 6,000 men to hunt from the country. the strangers who surround the duke, essentially French princes rebelling to the king.

The latter could not miss his chance. In May 1487, 15,000 men invaded the duchy. The milestones and the results of the operations are well known: the military disaster of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, which results in the crushing of the Breton army and its allies (July 28, 1488); the signing of the treaty of the Orchard, at the end of which the duke agrees not to marry his daughters without the consent of the king and to let the victorious army occupy the main fortresses of the north-east of Brittany (August 19, 1488); repeated campaigns (1487, 1488, 1489, 1491), violent and devastating French armies ever more numerous; the mediocrity of foreign reinforcements; the gradual erosion of the resistance, until the fall of Nantes, taken by treason (March 1491), and the investment of Rennes finally, ultimate bastion of a duchess forced to submit or to resign (July-August 1491).

Anne’s counselors choose the first solution. The year before, the Breton government thought to break the impasse by linking the fate of the duchy to that of Maximilian of Habsburg, king of the Romans, future German emperor. But the proxy marriage that unites Anne to the Austrian prince on December 19, 1490, was not consummated and, although at the Chancery of Brittany appeared a new official titulature, “Maximilian and Anne, by the grace of God King and queen of the Romans, duke and duchess of Brittany “, the new” duke “, too absorbed by the Flemish questions, could never really get involved in Breton affairs.

THE END OF INDEPENDENCE

Locked in Rennes, the last square of Anne’s defenders knows what to expect. A military surrender might allow the duchess to join her distant husband, but she would deliver Brittany to the French. A new marriage of the duchess, made possible by the defects of form found in the first and its non-consumption, would necessarily be accompanied by a negotiation, preferable to an unconditional surrender.

Charles VIII (1483-1498) and Anne de Beaujeu, his sister, lend themselves to the matrimonial compromise while not sparing the humiliations to the young bride, unable, given his age (14 years), to oppose a political decision that goes beyond it. And the marriage contract says nothing about the “liberties and privileges” of the country, but provides that the spouses transmit to one another all their rights over the duchy, an exchange very favorable to the monarchy whose rights are nothing less than established.

The obligation of remarriage with the successor of the king or the nearest heir to the Crown, imposed on the queen-duchess in the event that Charles VIII died without a male child, clearly signifies that France does not intend to give up her conquest easily. Without even waiting for the marriage, she began to align administratively on the rest of the kingdom since, in the spring of 1491, a French finance general was appointed by the king. His arrival transforms Brittany, financially speaking, into the generality of the kingdom. The page of independence is turned, the process of integration is underway.

The fact that Charles VIII preferred the matrimonial compromise to annexation pure and simple deserves consideration. By marrying the duchess, the king renounces another marriage, that of Margaret of Austria, granddaughter of the Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold, promised to Charles VIII with Artois and Franche-Comté for dowry. That we have chosen to send the Austrian princess to her father Maximilian speaks volumes about the importance that France attaches to the capture of Britain.

At a time when Western civilization is deliberately moving towards the Atlantic, its strategic interest is considerable, and its position at the heart of the roads of the great international trade has already begun to enrich it. All this could escape the King of France. It is also permissible to believe that the profound transformations that have affected the duchy since the arrival of the Montforts have been well perceived in Paris.

For Brittany inherited by Charles VIII hardly resembles that of the last century: the Montforts have accustomed it to the presence of a centralized government, they have advanced the knowledge of the country by the administration, obliged the great to bend in front of the power, sensitized the population to the notion of State. In doing so, they also fostered the crystallization of national sentiment and marked mentalities. What matters in 1491 is the relative ease with which the change of regime takes place, as if the time of the Montforts had been the interlude of political acculturation necessary for the integration of Brittany in the French State.

Certainly, in 1491, the duchy still exists, but the Duchess, to whom one even refuses her title, is totally marginalized, and only a personal union binds it to France, a fragile link which can be broken at any moment. To ease the tensions, the king must however resolve to confirm the privileges and liberties of Brittany (1492), to which, in 1498, the absence of heir gives a new meaning: Anne became widow of Charles VIII finds, in application of the contract of 1491, full and complete disposition of the inheritance of Montforts. Returned to Brittany, she behaves like a sovereign, beats gold money, restores the chancery suppressed by her husband, reminds the business of the servants of the past. And when she married Louis XII in Nantes in 1499, the new marriage contract multiplies the precautions to avoid that Brittany returns to the heir to the throne of France.

The reason of state is, however, stronger than the will of a queen, and in 1506 the daughter of Anne and Louis, the princess Claude, is trusted to François d’Angoulême, heir apparent to the Crown. Until her death, in 1514, Anne manages to avoid the marriage that condemns Brittany to merge into the kingdom. It is celebrated as early as May 18, 1514, and François d’Angoulême, king the following year under the name of François Ier, is yielded the duchy in usufruct, then perpetually in 1515. The death of the queen Claude (1524) makes Dauphin Francis the new owner of the duchy, which his father continues to administer on his behalf.

Political realism eventually prevails: no one imagines a new war of succession and royal propaganda has cleverly worked, multiplying gifts and favors to the influential members of the states. On August 4, 1532, the states “solicit” the union of Britain to the kingdom. The edict of Union, published in Nantes on August 13, 1532, confirms the privileges and the local liberties and regulates for more than two centuries the legal status of the country.

1. Municipal Archives of Rennes (modernized text).

2. The following quotes are from the works of William of St. Andrew, John of St. Paul, Pierre Le Baud, Alain Bouchart or Jean Meschinot.

What Was The Main Economic Activity In New France – The history of France’s presence as a colonial power in North America extends from the early sixteenth century, at the time of great European discoveries and fishing trips, to the early nineteenth century while Napoleon Bonaparte sells Louisiana to the United States of America.

New France Map

New France Map

This French adventure in America is marked by important commercial exchanges, but also by recurring conflicts with the native nations established on a vast territory which the French sought to appropriate. This business is also motivated by religious objectives and the desire to establish a settlement on the shores of the St. Lawrence.

Aboriginal peoples have lived for millennia on the territory that becomes New France and the Vikings frequent it from the end of the tenth century (see Vikings Expedition). However, it was mainly from the founding of Quebec in 1608 until the cession of Canada to England in 1763 that France permeated the history of a continent from which it came to control three-quarters of the land, including the Acadia. It establishes, particularly in the St. Lawrence Valley (see St. Lawrence Lowlands) a population that is able to affirm its vitality and culture to this day.

Foundation and context Of  New France

Where was new France – In the sixteenth century, the founding of New France was part of the vast movement of great discoveries. Following the other powers of the Christian West (England, Spain, and Portugal) and businesses of Christopher Columbus in 1492, John Cabot in 1497, and brothers Corte-Real (see also Portuguese), France is interested in new lands. In 1524, Giovanni Verrazzano runs along the eastern coast of America, from Florida to Newfoundland. Later, Jacques Cartier makes three voyages of discovery. He took possession of the territory in the name of the King of France by planting a cross in Gaspé (see Gaspésie) in 1534. The following year, he goes up the St. Lawrence, winters in Stadacona (site of the present city of Quebec), and goes to Hochelaga (Montreal). During the winter, twenty-five of his men die of scurvy. In 1536, he returned to France.

In 1540-1541, Cartier returned and attempted to establish a colony at the mouth of the Cap-Rouge River. If religious objectives have guided the organization of these trips, the economic motives are even more obvious. The hope of finding a route to the Indies is constantly asserted (see Northwest Passage).

In 1534, the king asked Cartier to “discover certain islands and countries: it is believed that there must be a large amount of gold and other wealth.” On his last trip, the discoverer brings back minerals he believes to be gold and diamonds. It was only iron and quartz (see Diamonds of Canada). France then lost interest in this distant country until the end of the century.

New France Map

What Was The Main Economic Activity In New France

Which economic activity was common in new France – For an overseas colony to survive, it is necessary to encourage the creation of businesses on the spot, exploit its natural wealth, and ensure the production of essential goods.

Fishing establishment, Baie de Plaisance, around 1700, Gerard van Edema

This section discusses the beginnings of trade during the era of French colonization in North America. It recalls that whaling and cod, a seasonal activity, has led to the establishment of the first French on the continent. Admittedly, this activity will only occupy a small part of the population, but it will nonetheless remain an important component of the economy throughout the French Regime, and even beyond.

However, IN REAL, Which Economic Activity Was common in New France

The most important economic activity in new France was The fur trade as it was the real economic engine of New France. The exploitation of furs, which has ensured the wealth of Canadians, is largely what has favored the exploration of the continent. In addition, trafficking has created alliances with many indigenous peoples.

Finally, even though France’s mercantilist policy prohibited the creation of companies likely to rival those of the metropolis, a variety of initiatives gave birth to a craft and industrial sector.