Without dwelling longer on the propagation of the silk trade in Italy, let us pass on to its establishment in France. It was in 1340 that some French gentlemen, who had stayed some time in Naples, planted in Avignon the first mulberry trees.[58] According to Olivier de Serres, it was not introduced till much later into Dauphiné. It was not introduced into Alan, near Montelimart, till 1495, by the Seigneur Guyape de Saint-Aubain.[59] Louis XI. made great efforts to develop the silk trade in France, by inviting over Italian workmen; and they began under his reign to fabricate silks in Touraine and Lyons. Francis I. greatly developed the trade of Lyons. In 1554, under Henry II., the masters and men employed in the manufacture of gold, silver, and silk in Lyons were twelve thousand in number. Under Henry II. were planted the mulberry trees of Bourdezière, Tours, Chenonceaux, Toulouse, and Moulins. These plantations, however, were of very small extent. They were not the result of a general and truly popular effort; moreover, civil war came very soon, and turned men's minds away from the isolated attempts of some few private individuals. Sericulture, in fact, did not assume any great importance in France till the reign of Henry IV.
[58] De Gasparin, "Essai sur l'Introduction des Vers à Soie en Europe," p. 70.
[59] "Théâtre d'Agriculture d'Olivier de Serres," tome ii., p. 158. In 8vo.
This king saw with grief considerable sums of money leaving France each year for the purchase of raw silk or of silk stuffs. Two men marvellously furthered his project of encouraging the silk trade. One of these men was Barthelemy Laffemas, called _Beausemblant_. For a long time he had been writing memoir upon memoir, to demonstrate the advantages to be derived from the plantation of the mulberry tree in France; and he tells us that silkworms were then raised with success at Nantes, at Poissy, and even at Paris. The second supporter whom Henry IV. found in the propagation of sericulture was a man distinguished in a very different way from that of M. Laffemas. This was Olivier de Serres, the author of the "Théâtre de l'Agriculture;" he whom Henry IV. called his _lord and master in agriculture_. Olivier de Serres was the first among his countrymen who had published instructions regarding the cultivation of mulberry trees and the rearing of silkworms. Henry IV., who had noticed his writings, called him to Paris; and, on his solicitation, caused twenty thousand mulberry trees and a great quantity of silkworms' eggs, of which a distribution was made over the whole of France, to be imported from Italy. From that moment, sericulture was propagated rapidly in the Cévennes, in Provence, in Languedoc, in Touraine, and many other provinces. Mulberry trees were planted at Fontainebleau, in the royal park of Tournelles, and even in the Tuileries, where an Italian lady, named Julle, reared silkworms for Henry IV.