t of 1889, the
Monarchists do not in the long run win, it will clearly be nobody's
fault but their own!

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE CALVADOS

VAL RICHER.

Perhaps the most striking illustration that can be given of the true
nature of the contest now waging between the Third Republic and France,
is the share taken in it by the family and the representatives of the
great Protestant statesman, who, under Louis Philippe, laid down the
lines in France of a truly free and liberal system of public education.
In the matter of education France was undoubtedly thrown backward and
not forward by the First Republic. The number of illiterates--that is,
of persons unable to read and write--naturally increased between 1789
and 1799 as the educational foundations which existed all over the
kingdom shared the fate of the religious and charitable foundations.
There was an abundance of ordinances and decrees about public education.
But the chief practical work done was to confiscate the means by which
the ancient system had been carried on. Baudrillart mentions educational
foundations made by the great abbeys as early as in the seventh century.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Councils of the French Church
created in each cathedral chapter a special prebend, the holder of which
was to look after the education not only of clerical persons, but 'of
all poor scholars,' and this 'gratuitously.'

In the fourteenth century lay foundations for free public education are
found, one in particular of importance established by a rich citizen,
Jean Rose, for promoting the general education of the people at Meaux,
the diocese afterwards of Bossuet, who under Louis XIV. was so active in
promoting 'the moral unity' of France from his point of view.

The long English wars interrupted the development of education, and many
instances are found during that dismal period in which persons who had
bought legal positions had to employ professional scribes to do their
writing. In the sixteenth century schools increased and multiplied all
over France. Rich citizens founded them for 'the instruction of all the
children,' as at Provins in 1509, and at Roissy-en-Bue in 1521. In the
rural regions the schoolmaster often received his pay in grain; he was
sometimes attached to some public office. In many places he taught the
children only for six months in each year. In short, education was
carried on in France at that time very much as it was in the ru