MY FAMILY ALBUM 1

FRANCE

HISTORY
Rome To Revolution

The borders of modern France are approxemately the same as those of ancient Gaul, which was inhabited by Celtic Gauls.Gaul was conquered for Rome by Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC, and the Gauls eventually adopted Roman speech (Latin, form which the French language evolved) and Roman culture. Christianity appeared in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, and became so firmly established by the fourth and fifth centuries that St.Jerome wrote that Gaul was the only region "free from heresy"

Monarchy To Republic.

The monarchy ruled France until French Revolution, in 1789. Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of the Republic in 1799, making himself First Consul, and later Emperor of what is now know as the First Empire (1804-1814).In the course of several wars, his armies conquered most of continental Europe, whit members of the Bonaparte family being appointed as monarchs of newly established kingdoms. About a million Frenchmen died during the Napoleonic wars.

Families

Growing out of the values of the Catholic church and rural communities, the basic unit of French society was traditionally held to be the family. Over the twentieth century the "traditional" family structure in France has evolved form extended families to, after World Ward II, nuclear families. Since the 1960s, marriages have decreased and divorces have increased in France, and divorce law and legal family status have evolved to reflect these social changes.