The Seigneurs of Old Canada: A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism

William Bennett Munro
The Seigneurs of Old Canada:A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism

Project Gutenberg's The Seigneurs of Old Canada, by William Bennett Munro #5 in our series Chronicles of Canada
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg file.
We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your own disk, thereby keeping an electronic path open for future readers.
Please do not remove this.
This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to view the etext. Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they need to understand what they may and may not do with the etext. To encourage this, we have moved most of the information to the end, rather than having it all here at the beginning.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*****These Etexts Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get etexts, and further information, is included below. We need your donations.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541 Find out about how to make a donation at the bottom of this file.

Title: The Seigneurs of Old Canada: A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism
Author: William Bennett Munro
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4655] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 21, 2002]
Project Gutenberg's The Seigneurs of Old Canada, by William Bennett Munro **********This file should be named cca0510.txt or cca0510.zip**********
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, cca0511.txt VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, cca0510a.txt
This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan
Project Gutenberg Etexts are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not keep etexts in compliance with any particular paper edition.
The "legal small print" and other information about this book may now be found at the end of this file. Please read this important information, as it gives you specific rights and tells you about restrictions in how the file may be used.

CHRONICLES OF CANADA Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton In thirty-two volumes
Volume 5
THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism
By WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO TORONTO, 1915

CHAPTER I
AN OUTPOST OF EMPIRE
What would history be without the picturesque annals of the Gallic race? This is a question which the serious student may well ask himself as he works his way through the chronicles of a dozen centuries. From the age of Charlemagne to the last of the Bonapartes is a long stride down the ages; but there was never a time in all these years when men might make reckonings in the arithmetic of European politics without taking into account the prestige, the power, and even the primacy of France. There were times without number when France among her neighbours made herself hated with an undying hate; there were times, again, when she rallied them to her side in friendship and admiration. There were epochs in which her hegemony passed unquestioned among men of other lands, and there were times when a sudden shift in fortune seemed to lay the nation prostrate, with none so poor to do her reverence.
It was France that first brought an orderly nationalism out of feudal chaos; it was her royal house of Capet that rallied Europe to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre and led the greatest of the crusades to Palestine. Yet the France of the last crusades was within a century the France of Crecy, just as the France of Austerlitz was more speedily the France of Waterloo; and men who followed the tricolour at Solferino lived to see it furled in humiliation at Sedan. No other country has had a history as prolific in triumph and reverse, in epochs of peaceful progress and periods of civil commotion, in pageant and tragedy, in all that gives fascination to historical narrative. Happy the land whose annals are tiresome! Not such has been the fortune of poor old France.
The sage Tocqueville has somewhere remarked that whether France was loved or hated by the outside world she could not be ignored. That is very true. The Gaul has at all stages of his national history defied an attitude of indifference in others. His country has been at many times the head and at all times the heart of Europe. His hysteria has made Europe hysterical, while his sober national sense at critical moments has held the whole continent to good behaviour. For a half-dozen centuries there
Continue reading on your phone by scaning this QR Code

 / 42
Tip: The current page has been bookmarked automatically. If you wish to continue reading later, just open the Dertz Homepage, and click on the 'continue reading' link at the bottom of the page.