by the French, and with it Canada passed into the possession of Great Britain.
The war between England and France ended with the treaty of Paris in 1763. France surrendered all her possessions east of the Mississippi, except the Island of Orleans. At the same time Florida was ceded to England by Spain. The possessions of England in America were now 20 times greater than when the war began. The Indian tribes, which had been allied with the French, refused to submit to English authority. In 1763 a formidable league was formed under the leadership of Pontiac, a famous Ottawa chief. The country west of Niagara was devastated. All the British posts, excepting Detroit and Fort Pitt, were captured and the settlements blotted out. Next year a strong force was sent against the Indians, and they were reduced to submission.
French Congo, a possession of France in west-central Africa, situated between German Kamerun, Congo Free State and Lake Chad, Kanem and Wadai. The French were among the earliest explorers of the Congo region, and M. di Brazza, the Italian explorer, obtained large tracts of land from the native chiefs for France. French Congo lies on the northern bank of the Congo River, between the river and the Atlantic, including the region around Ubanghi River. Area about 680,000 square miles. Population estimated at 5,000,000. The capital, Libreville, has a population of 3,000; other towns are Loango, Franceville, Brazzaville and Fort de Possel. French Congo is divided into three colonies, under lieutenant-governors, with a general budget for the whole. The colonies are Gabun (capital Libreville); Middle Congo (capital Brazzaville); and Ubangi-Shari-Chad (capital Fort de Possel). The mineral resources embrace gold, copper and iron; while its exports (amounting in 1904 to about 14,000,000 francs) consist of rubber, ivory, various woods, palm-oil and kernels, coffee, cocoa, kola-nuts etc. There is considerable shipping-trade at Loango, but inland trade is hindered by lack of railways, though a line is projected to connect Libreville and the Congo. Brazzaville is connected with Loango by telegraph (715 miles), and another is being put up to connect with Leopoldville in Belgian Congo.
French Guinea. Lying between Portuguese Guinea on the north and Sierra Leone on the south, this French possession extends inland with a total area of 95,000 square miles and a population estimated at 1,498,000. The colony is self-supporting, the income and outgo balancing in 1907 at 5,300,000 francs. In 1905 the imports amounted to 18,924,814 francs, and the exports to 16,373,661 francs, these consisting chiefly of rubber, cattle and palm-nuts. A road has been driven from Konakry, the capital, to the Niger at Kurussa, and a railway has followed it as far as Kindia, 83 miles. There are 1,060 miles of telegraph. As elsewhere in French West Africa, governmental lay-schools are taking the place of those under the care of religious orders. French colonization began in 1685, but official occupancy by France did not occur till 1843.
French Language, The, is a development from the Latin spoken by the Romans who had conquered Gaul in the first century B. C. under Julius Cæsar. This Latin was not classical Latin, nor even the speech of the cities, but the more corrupt patois of the camps and rural districts. An undefined proportion of Celtic words was adopted into the rustic Latin, and thence found a path to modern French. In the fifth century, too, a Teutonic race known as the Franks overran and conquered Gaul, which had been completely Romanized. The conquerors, indeed, adopted the spoken Latin, but introduced about 400 Teutonic words. A few Greek words came into the French language from the Greek colonies at Marseilles and Nice. Thus in the seventh century the language of France had come to differ widely from Latin. It was now called Romanic.
The development of the French language now bifurcated into two parts. The French of the north was called the langue d'oil, that of the south the langue d'oc. These two words, oil and oc, meant yes in the north and south respectively. The langue d'oc developed into modern Provençal; the langue d'oil into modern literary French. The former tongue achieved a wide celebrity during the 12th century as the language of the troubadours. New words were drawn into the French language during and preceding the Renaissance by almost direct adoption from the Latin. Italian and Spanish have each contributed several hundreds of words to French. The French language is now standardized and modified by the famous Académie Française, founded in 1635 and suppressed (for but a short time) in 1793. The chief recent modifications of the French language have been caused by an influx of scientific terms, largely Greek, and another influx of borrowed English words.
French Literature. See Literature.
French Military Territories were three in number, but in 1904 were broken up. The second was handed over to the civil administration, the third and first amalgamated as the military territory of the Niger. See Upper Senegal and Niger Colony.
French Oceania. See New Caledonia and Society Islands.
French, Major-General J. D. P., a British cavalry-officer who distinguished himself in the Egyptian campaign (1884-85) and especially in the Boer War (1899-1901).
