APANAGE ( Apanagium, Apanamen turn), the provision of lands or feudal superiorities assigned by the kings of France for the maintenance of their younger sons.
Some of the proposed etymologies of the word apanage are mentioned by Rich elet, Dictionnazre de la Langue Frangoise.
The prince to whom the portion was assigned was called apanagiste, or apan ager ; and he was regarded by the ancient law of that country as the proprietor of all the seigniories dependent on the apan age, to whom the fealty (Pi) of all sub ordinate feudatories within the domain was due, as to the lord of the "dominant fief." Under the first two races of French kings, the children of the deceased king usually made partition of the kingdom among them ; but the inconvenience of such a practice occasioned a different arrangement to be adopted under the dynasty of the Capets, and the crown descended entire to the eldest son, with no other dismemberment than the sever ance of certain portions of the dominions for the maintenance of the younger branches of the family. Towards the close of the thirteenth century the rights of the apanagiste were still further cir cumscribed ; and at length it became an established rule, which greatly tended to consolidate the royal authority in that kingdom, that, upon the failure of lineal heirs male, the apanage should revert to the crown.
The time at which this species of pro vision was first introduced into France, the source from which it was borrowed, and the origin of the term, are matters on which French writers are not agreed. (Pasquier's Recherches, lib. ii. cap. 18.; lib. viii. cap. 20; Calvini, Lex Jurid. " Appanagium ;" Ducange, Gloss. " Apa namentum ;" Pothier's Trait( des Fiefs; and Ilenaules Hist. de France, Alm 1283.) " It is evident," says Mr. Hallam, "that this usage, as it produced a new class of powerful feudatories, was hostile to the interests and policy of the sove reign, and retarded the subjugation of the ancient aristocracy. But an usage coeval with the monarchy was not to be abro gated, and the scarcity of money rendered it impossible to provide for the younger branches of the royal family by any other means." . . " By means of their apanages and through the operation of the Salic law, which made their inherit ance of the crown a less remote contin gency, the princes of the blood-royal in France were at all times (for the remark is applicable long after Louis XI.) a dis tinct and formidable class of men, whose influence was always disadvantageous to the reigning monarch, and, in general, to the people." (Middle Ages, vol. i. p.
121, 2nd edit.) By a law of 22nd November, 1790, it was enacted, that in future no apanage real should be granted by the crown, but that the younger branches of the royal family of France should be educated and provided for out of the civil list until they married or attained the age of twenty-five years : and that then a certain income called rentes apanctgeres was to be granted to them, the amount of which was to be ascertained by the legislature for the time being.
By a law of March 2, 1832, which regulates the civil list of the present king of the French, it is provided, that in case of the insufficiency of the private domain of the crown, the dotatious of the younger sons of the king and of the princesses his daughters shall be subsequently arranged by special laws Before this law, the head of the house of Orleans was in pos session of all that remained of the ancient apanage of his house, in virtue of art. 4 of the law of 15th January, 1825, accord Aug to which the property restored to the branch of Orleans in execution of several royal ordinances of 1814, would coneaue to be possessed by the chief of the Orleans branch until extinction of male issue, when the property would return to the state. The conditions attached, according to the old law, to precedents, and the law of' 1825, to the possession of the Orleans apanage, were as follows :-1. The prince apana gist owed an allowance to his sons and brothers, and a portion to his daughters and sister. 2. If the prince came to the throne, his apanage was united to the crown domaiu, from which it was not distinct before 1791. 3. This opened to the princes whom it deprived of their claims on the apanage, a similar claim for themselves and their descendants on the domain of the crown. The law of 15th Jan. 1825, formally maintained these conditions and rights. At the revolution of 1830 the apanage of Orleans was united to the crown, which gave the younger princes a claim for compensation from the country, recognised by the 21st art. of the law of March 2, 1832. This claim, according to the terms of the article, is only admissible when the pri vate domain of the crown is insufficient, and the right is co-existent only with the insufficiency. (Moniieur Universe!, 30th June, 1844.) No allowance from the state has yet been made to the family of the present King of the French.