I. 12. Vingt ans. From 1793 to

II. 17-18. Ce drapeau payait à la France tout le sang qu'il nous a coûté. These lines are explained by the one which follows ; it was the tricolour flag which won liberty and freedom for France.

1. 22. Combien la gloire est roturière. Béranger alludes more than once to the fact that the generals of the Republic and the Empire were self-made men.

1. 27. Rendons-lui le coq des Gaulois. The heraldic fleursde-lys of the Bourbons were replaced during the Revolution by a cock, no doubt because the Latin word gallus meant both a Gaul and a cock. Napoleon I adopted the Roman eagle instead of the cock ; the fleurs- de-lys were of course reintroduced at the Restoration ; the cock was reinstated in 1830, and the eagle under Napoleon III. The flagstaff was always topped with one or another of these emblems ; at the present day the French flagstaff terminates in a simple spear-point.

1. 36. aux bords de la Loire. After Waterloo the remains of the routed army, as well as Grouchy's corps, had found their way to Paris, and at the beginning of July 90,000 troops of the line and 12,000 federals, under the command of Davoust, were preparing to defend the capital. As, however, their resistance against the overwhelming masses of the Allies would have been unavailing, Davoust agreed with Blucher and Wellington, on July 3, to retire beyond the Loire. Louis XVI 1 1 re-entered Paris under the protection of the Allies on July 8, and Marshal Macdonald was at once entrusted with the delicate task of dismissing to their homes

NOTES. PAGES 59— 6l 20Ç

those ' brigands de la Loire,' whom the Royalist party loaded with abuse. Béranger was an intimate friend of General Bro, who, wounded at Waterloo, had nevertheless rejoined the troops on the Loire, and he refers more than once to that army, the disbanding of which was keenly resented by the people. Thus in Les Tombeaux de Juillet (1832) he writes : —

Des artisans, des soldats de la Loire . . . Sont tombés là . . .

Louis XI. (Page 61.)

Professor Hartmann points out that Béranger was the first in date of the numerous writers who at the beginning of the nineteenth century made literary studies of the crafty and superstitious Louis XI. The best known of these are Sir Walter Scott's Quentin Dur<ward (1823), Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), and Delavigne's drama Louis XI (1832).

Philippe de Comines gives a description, closely followed by Sir Walter Scott, of the castle at Plessis-lez-Tours in which Louis XI secluded himself during the last years of his reign, in constant fear of assassination or poison, and terrified at the thought of death. ' Ledict seigneur, vers la fin de ses jours, fit clore tout à l'entour de sa maison du Plessis-lez- Tours de gros barreaulx de fer, en forme de grosses grilles ; et aux quatre coins de la maison, quatre moyneaux de fer, bons, grands et épais. Lesdites grilles estoient contre le mur du costé de la place, de l'autre part du fossé (car il estoit à fond de cuve), et y fit mettre plusieurs broches de fer maçonnées dedans le mur, qui avoient chacune trois ou quatre pointes, et les fit mettre fort près l'une de l'auter. Et davantaige ordonna dix arbalestriers dedans lesdits fossés pour tirer à ceux qui en approcheroient avant que la porte fust ouverte ; et entendoit qu'ils couchassent dedans lesdits fossés, et se retirassent auxdits moyneaux de fer. La porte ne se ouvroit qu'il ne fust huict heures du matin, et nul n'y entroit que par le guichet, et que ce ne fust le seu du roi, excepté quelques maistres d'hostel et gens de ceste sorte, qui n'alloient point devers lui . . .'

Béranger had lived in Péronne, where Louis was trapped in 1468 by Charles the Bold, and his acquaintance with the history of Louis XI probably dated from his early youth.

1. 2. Sautez, fillettes. * Fillette ' is used here in the sense of 'jeune fille,' and not as in Ce n'est plus Lisette, 1. 58.