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Andrew Swanzy's evidence before the House of Commons in 1816: 'Gold is procured in every part of the country; it appears more like an impregnation of the soil than a mine. His long captivity at Kumasi, where to a certain extent he learned the Oji speech, familiarised him with the native processes; and thus a Frenchman taught Englishmen to work gold in a golden land where they have been domiciled true fainéants for nearly three centuries.
The race itself does not seem to have become exhausted. Its chiefs, the successive occupants of the throne, never sank into mere weaklings or faineants, never shut themselves up in their seraglios, or ceased to take a leading part, alike in civil broils, and in struggles with foreign rivals.
In half a century his race had faded into the feeble rois fainéants, degenerate by precocious debauchery, some of whom were fathers at fourteen or fifteen years of age and in their graves before they were thirty. The bow of power is to him who can bend it, and in an age when human passions are untamed, the one unpardonable vice in a king is weakness.
I can endure gossip for old people who cannot employ themselves, and must talk, and have nothing to talk of but their neighbours; but only think of those wretched fainéants who go chattering on, wasting their own time and other people's, doing no good on the face of the earth, and a great deal of harm.
The motto, suggested by some one or other after a fifth tumbler of whisky punch, might bear more than a single interpretation. Harvey Munden, the one member of this genial brotherhood who lived by the sweat of his brow, proposed as a more suitable title, Les Faineants; that, however, was judged pedantic, not to say offensive.
"Les monsignors, soy disant Grands, Seuls dans leurs palais magnifiques Y sont d'illustres faineants, Sans argent, et sans domestiques. "Pour les petits, sans liberte, Martyrs du joug qui les domine, Ils ont fait voeu de pauvrete, Priant Dieu par oisivete Et toujours jeunant par famine.
The rest was in the hands of Fate. Bold might the planton be; we were no faineants. We made a little speech to everyone in general desiring them to lend us their belts.
So they of the Dry Tree advised them of these tidings, and deemed that it would ease the sorrow of their hearts for their Lady if they could deal with these sons of whores and make a mark upon the Burg: so they lay hid while the daylight lasted, and by night and cloud fell upon these faineants of the Burg, and won them good cheap, as was like to be, though the Burg-dwellers were many the more.
Others are weaklings, fainéants; but one, the most dread woman in Frankish history, Fredegonda, the queen of Chilperic, towers above all in this masque of slaughter and treachery. Tradition makes claim that Andernach was the cradle of the Merovingian dynasty. In proof of this are shown the extensive ruins of the palace of these ancient Frankish kings.
After Dagobert's death these mayors practically ruled in the place of the Merovingian monarchs, who became mere "do-nothing kings," rois fainéants, as the French call them. The Austrasian Mayor of the Palace, Pippin of Heristal, the great-grandfather of Charlemagne, succeeded in getting, in addition to Austrasia, both Neustria and Burgundy under his control.
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