In the year 464,Childeric the Frank took Paris.
The whole history of the occupation of France is told by Augustin Thierry,in his 'Narratives of the Merovingian Times.'
"There are Franks,"he says in his Preface,"who remained pure Germans in Gaul;Gallo-Romans,irritated and disgusted by the barbarian rule;Franks more or less influenced by the manners and customs of civilised life;and 'Romans more or less barbarian in mind and manners.'The contrast may be followed in all its shades through the sixth century,and into the middle of the seventh;later,the Germanic and Gallo-Roman stamp seemed effaced and lost in a semi-barbarism clothed in theocratic forms."The Franks,when they had completed the conquest of the entire country,gave it the name of Franken-ric--the Franks'kingdom.
Eventually,Charles the Great,or Charlemagne,descended from Childeric the Frank,was in 800crowned Emperor of the West.
Towards the end of his reign,the Norsemen began to devastate the northern coast of Franken-ric.Aix-la-Chapelle was Charlemagne's capital,and there he died and was buried.
At his death,the Empire was divided among his sons.The Norse Vikingers continued their invasions;and to purchase repose,Charles the Simple ceded to Duke Rollo a large territory in the northwest of France,which in deference to their origin,was known by the name of Normandy.
There Norman-French was for a long time spoken.Though the Franks had supplanted the Romans,the Roman language continued to be spoken.In 996Paris was made the capital of France;and from that time,the language of Paris became,with various modifications,the language of France;and not only of France,but the Roman or Latin tongue became the foundation of the languages of Italy,Spain,and Portugal.
Thus,Gaulish,Frankish,and Norman disappeared to give place to the Latin-French.The Kymriac language was preserved only in Brittany,where it still lingers.And in the south-west of France,where the population was furthest removed from the invasions of the Gauls,Ostrogoths,and Visigoths,the Basques continued to preserve their language,--the Basques,who are supposed by Canon Isaac Taylor to be the direct descendants of the Etruscans.
The descendants of the Gauls,however,constitute the mass of the people in Central France.The Gauls,or Galatians,are supposed to have come from the central district of Asia Minor.They were always a warlike people.In their wanderings westward,they passed through the north of Italy and entered France,where they settled in large numbers.Dr.Smith,in his Dictionary of the Bible,says that "Galatai is the same word as Keltici,"which indicates that the Gauls were Kelts.It is supposed that St.Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians soon after his visit to the country of their origin."Its abruptness and severity,and the sadness of its tone,are caused by their sudden perversion from the doctrine which the Apostle had taught them,and which at first they had received so willingly.It is no fancy,if we see in this fickleness a specimen of that 'esprit impretueux,ouvert a toutes les impressions,'and that 'mobilite extreme,'which Thierry marks as characteristic of the Gaulish race."At all events,the language of the Gauls disappeared in Central France to make way for the language or the Capital--the modern French,founded on the Latin.The Gaulish race,nevertheless,preserved their characteristics--quickness,lightness,mobility,and elasticity--qualities which enabled them quickly to conceive new ideas,and at the same time to quickly abandon them.The Franks had given the country the name it now bears--that of France.But they were long regarded as enemies by the Central and Southern Gauls.In Gascony,the foreigner was called Low Franciman,and was regarded with suspicion and dislike.
"This term of Franciman,"says Miss Costello,who travelled through the country and studied the subject,"evidently belongs to a period of the English occupation of Aquitaine,when a Frenchman was another word for an enemy."[3]But the word has probably a more remote origin.When the Franks,of German origin,burst into Gaul,and settled in the country north of the Loire,and afterwards carried their conquests to the Pyrenees,the Franks were regarded as enemies in the south of France.
"Then all the countries,"says Thierry,"united by force to the empire of the Franks,and over which in consequence of this union,the name of France had extended itself,made unheard-of efforts to reconquer their ancient names and places.Of all the Gallic provinces,none but the southern ones succeeded in this great enterprise;and after the wars of insurrection,which,under the sons of Charlemagne,succeeded the wars of conquest,Aquitaine and Provence became distinct states.Among the South Eastern provinces reappeared even the ancient name of Gaul,which had for ever perished north of the Loire.The chiefs of the new Kingdom of Aries,which extended from the Jura to the Alps,took the title of Gaul in opposition to the Kings of France."[4]
It is probable that this was the cause of the name of "Franciman"being regarded as an hereditary term of reproach in the Gaulish country south of the Loire.Gascon and Provencal were the principal dialects which remained in the South,though Littre classes them together as the language of the Troubadours.
They were both well understood in the South;and Jasmin's recitations were received with as much enthusiasm at Nimes,Aries,and Marseilles,as at Toulouse,Agen,and Bordeaux.
Mezzofanti,a very Tower of Babel in dialects and languages,said of the Provencal,that it was the only patois of the Middle Ages,with its numerous derivations from the Greek,the Arabic,and the Latin,which has survived the various revolutions of language.The others have been altered and modified.
They have suffered from the caprices of victory or of fortune.