printing press, and other instruments of education, 
     provided that these employed one and the same 
     language. Confronted with the historic fact that France 
     was not a linguistic unit—that, in addition to widely 
     variant dialects in different parts of the country, “foreign” 
     languages were spoken in the west by Bretons, in the 
     south by Provençals, Basques, and Corsicans, in the north 
     by Flemings, and in the northeast by Alsatian Germans—
     they resolved to stamp out the dialects and the foreign 
     languages and to force every French citizen to know and 
     employ the French language. (80)

     Hayes in this passage makes it quite clear that the 
passion behind the vernacular drive was homogenization, a 
matter which the Anglo-Saxon world has always understood is 
much better managed by price rivalry and consumer goods. In a