II. THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE: PREDOMINANCE OF THE CHURCH: TO THE END OF THE CRUSADES, A.D. 1270…

II. THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE: PREDOMINANCE OF THE CHURCH: TO THE END OF THE CRUSADES, A.D. 1270

THE TWO RELIGIONS.--The Crusades were a new chapter in the long warfare of Christendom with Mohammedanism. "In the Middle Ages, there were two worlds utterly distinct,--that of the Gospel and that of the Koran." In Europe, with the exception of Spain, the Gospel had sway; from the Pyrenees to the mouths of the Ganges, the Koran. The border contests between the two hostile parties on the eastern and western frontiers of Christendom were now to give place to conflict on a larger scale during centuries of invasion and war.

STATE OF THE GREEK EMPIRE.--The Greek Christian Empire lay between the Christian peoples of the West and the dominion of the Arabs. That empire lived on, a spiritless body. After Justinian, there is an endless recurrence of wars with the Arabs, and with the barbarians on the North, and of theological disputes, either within the empire itself, or with the Church of the West. The Greeks complained that a phrase teaching the procession of the Spirit from the Son had been added in the West to the Nicene Creed. The Latins complained of the use of leavened bread in the sacrament, of the marriage of priests, and of some other Greek peculiarities. The separation of the two churches was consummated when, in 1054, the legate of the Pope laid on the altar of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, an anathema against "the seven mortal heresies" of the Greeks.

ATTACKS OF RUSSIANS AND BULGARIANS.--Left to itself, the empire showed some energy in repelling the attacks of the Russians and Bulgarians. A number of capable rulers arose. The Russians, of the same race of Northmen who had ravaged Western Europe, kept up their assaults until their chief, Vladimir, made peace, accepted Christianity, and married the sister of the emperor, Basil II. (988). The empire between 988 and 1014 was invaded twenty-six times by King Samuel of Bulgaria. But the Bulgarian kingdom was overthrown, in 1019, by Basil II. In the twelfth century it regained its independence.

THE GREEK EMPERORS.--In the ninth century the Greeks made head against the Arabs, especially by means of their navy. In the tenth century John I. (Zimisces) crossed the Euphrates, and created alarm in Bagdad. The tenacity of life in the Greek Empire was surprising in view of the languishing sort of existence that it led. After Heraclius, there were three dynasties, the last of which, the Macedonian (867-1056), produced three remarkable men, Nicephorus Phocas, Zimisces, and Basil II. But the dynasty of Comneni, which, in the person of Isaac I., ascended the throne in 1057, had to combat a new and vigorous enemy, the Turks, who had now made themselves masters of Asia. One of this line of emperors, Alexius I., appealed to the Germans for help. This had some influence in giving rise to the first of the Crusades. In these conflicts the Latins bore the brunt. The exhausted Greek Empire played a minor part.

CONQUESTS OF THE TURKS.--The Mussulman dominion of the Arabs had become enfeebled. The Ommiad dynasty at Cordova had disappeared under the assaults of Christians, and of the Moors of Africa. The Fatimite caliphs were confined to Egypt. The rule of the Abassids of Bagdad had been well-nigh demolished by the Seljukian Turks in 1058. They founded in the eleventh century an extensive empire. The sultan, Alp Arslan, took the emperor, Romanus IV. Diogenes, prisoner (1071), and conquered Armenia. Malek Shah invaded Syria, Palestine, Jerusalem, and carried his arms as far as Egypt, while a member of the Turkish family of Seljuk wrested Asia Minor from the Greeks, and established the kingdom of Iconium, which was called Roum, extending from Mount Taurus to the Bosphorus. After the death of Malek Shah, there were three distinct sultanates, Persia, Syria, and Kerman,--the last being on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

THE PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM.--The immediate occasion of the Crusades was the hard treatment of the Christian pilgrims who visited the sepulcher of Christ in Jerusalem. There the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, had erected a stately church. Pilgrimages--which had become more and more a custom since the fourth century--naturally tended to the sacred places in Palestine. Especially was this the case in the eleventh century, when piety had been quickened by the Cluny movement. In 1064 a great pilgrimage, in which seven thousand persons, priests and laity, of all nations, were included, under Siegfried, archbishop of Mentz, made its way through Hungary to Syria. Not more than a third of them lived to return. The reports of returning pilgrims were listened to with absorbing interest, as they told of the spots to which the imagination of the people was constantly directed. What indignation then was kindled by the pathetic narrative of the insults and blows which they had endured from the infidels who profaned the holy places with their hateful domination! In the ninth century, under caliphs of the temper of Haroun Al-Raschid, Christians had been well treated. About the middle of the tenth century the Fatimite caliphs of Egypt were the rulers at Jerusalem. Hakem was fierce in his persecution, but his successors were more tolerant. When the Seljukian Turks got control there, the harassed pilgrims had constant occasion to complain of insult and inhumanity.

THE CALL OF THE GREEKS.--The Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, threatened by the Mussulmans on the opposite bank of the Bosphorus, sent his call for succor to all Christian courts. Two popes, Sylvester II. and Gregory VII., had in vain exhorted the princes to rise in their might, to do away with the wrong and the shame which the disciples of Jesus were suffering at the hands of his enemies.

MOTIVES TO THE CRUSADES.--After this, only a spark was needed to kindle in the Western nations a flame of enthusiasm. The summons to a crusade appealed to the two most powerful sentiments then prevalent,--the sentiment of religion and that of chivalry. The response made by faith and reverence was reinforced by that thirst for a martial career and for knightly exploits which burned as a passion in the hearts of men. The peoples in the countries formed by the Germanic conquests were full of vigor and life. Outside of the Church, there was no employment to attract aspiring youth but the employment of a soldier. Western Europe was covered with a net-work of petty sovereignties. Feudal conflicts, while they were a discipline of strength and valor, were a narrow field for all this pent-up energy. There was a latent yearning for a wider horizon, a broader theater of action. Thus the Crusades profoundly interested all classes. The Church and the clergy, the lower orders, the women and the children, shared to the full in the religious enthusiasm, which, in the case of princes and nobles, took the form of an intense desire to engage personally in the holy war, in order to crush the infidels, and at the same time to signalize themselves by gallant feats of arms. There was no surer road to salvation. There was, moreover, a hope, of which all in distressed circumstances partook, of improving their temporal lot.

THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT.--The prime author of the first Crusade was Pope Urban II. He authorized an enthusiast, Peter the Hermit, of Amiens, to travel on an ass through Italy and Southern France, and to stir up the people to the great undertaking of delivering the Holy Sepulcher. With an emaciated countenance and flashing eye, his head bare, and feet naked, and wearing a coarse garment bound with a girdle of cords, he told his burning tale of the inflictions endured by the pilgrims. At the great council of Clermont, in 1095, where a throng of bishops and nobles, and a multitude of common people who spoke the Romanic tongue, were assembled, Urban himself addressed the assembly in a strain of impassioned fervor. He called upon everyone to deny himself, and take up his cross, that he might win Christ. Whoever would enlist in the war was to have a complete remission of penances,--a "plenary indulgence." The answer was thundered forth, "God wills it." Thousands knelt, and begged to be enrolled in the sacred bands. The red cross of cloth or silk, fastened to the right shoulder, was the badge of all who took up arms. Hence they were called crusaders (from an old French word derived from crucem, Lat. acc. of crux, a cross).

THE UNDISCIPLINED BANDS.--The farmer left his plow, and the shepherd his flock. Both sexes and all ages were inspired with a common passion. Before a military organization could be made, a disorderly host, poorly armed and ill-provided, led by Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, a French knight, started for Constantinople by way of Germany and Hungary. They were obliged to separate; and, of two hundred thousand, it is said that only seven thousand reached that capital. These perished in Asia Minor. They left their bones on the plain of Nicoea, where they were found by the next crusading expedition.

FIRST CRUSADE (1096-1099).--"The Crusades were primarily a Gaulish movement:" in French-speaking lands, the fire of chivalric devotion was most intense. The first regular army of soldiers of the cross departed by different routes under separate chiefs. First of these was Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, the bravest and noblest of them all. With him were his brothers, Baldwin, and Eustace, count of Boulogne. Prominent among the other chiefs were Hugh, count of Vermandois; Robert, duke of Normandy, who had pawned his duchy to his brother, William II., the king of England; Robert, count of Flanders; Raymond, count of Toulouse; Bohemond of Tarentum, son of Robert Guiscard; and Tancred, Robert Guiscard's nephew. The Spaniards were taken up with their own crusade against the Moors. In consequence of the late absorbing struggles between emperors and popes, the Germans and Italians did not now embark in the enterprise. The relation of the Norman dynasty in England to the conquered Saxons prevented the first crusading host from receiving substantial aid from that country. The leaders of the army finally consented to become the feudal dependents of the emperor Alexius while they should be within his borders, and to restore to him such of their conquests as had been lately wrested by the Turks from the Eastern Empire. Alexius was more alarmed than gratified on seeing the swarm of warriors which he had brought into his land. After a siege of seven weeks, Nicea was surrendered, not, however, into the hands of the European soldiers who had conducted the siege, but to the shrewd Alexius. At Doryleum, in a desperate battle the Turks were defeated; but, on their march eastward, they wasted the lands which they left behind them. The crusaders suffered severely from disease consequent on the heat. A private quarrel broke out between Tancred and Baldwin. Baldwin, invited to Edessa by the Greek or Armenian ruler, founded there a Latin principality. After besieging Antioch for several months, by the treachery of a renegade Christian, Bohemond, with a few followers, was admitted into the city. The Christians slew ten thousand of its defenders; but, three days after, Antioch was shut in by a great army of Turks under the sultan Kerboga. The crusaders were stimulated by the supposed discovery of the "holy lance," or the steel head of the spear which had pierced the side of Jesus. The Turks were vanquished, and the citadel of Antioch was possessed by Bohemond. The wrangling chieftains were now compelled by the army to set out for Jerusalem. When they reached the heights where they first caught a glimpse of the holy city, the crusaders fell on their knees, and with tears of joy broke out in hymns of praise to God. But, not accustomed to siege operations, and destitute of the machines and ladders requisite for the purpose, they found themselves balked in the first attempts to capture the city. Yet after thirty days, their needs having been meantime in a measure supplied, Jerusalem was taken by storm (July 15, 1099). The infuriated conquerors gave the rein to their vindictive passions. Ten thousand Saracens were slaughtered. The Jews were burned in the synagogues, to which they had fled. When the thirst for blood and for plunder was sated, feelings of penitence and humility took possession of the victors. The leaders, casting aside their arms, with bared heads and barefoot, entered into the church of the Holy Sepulcher, and on their bended knees thanked God for their success. After debate, the princes united in choosing Godfrey of Bouillon as ruler of the city. He would not wear a royal crown in the place where the Saviour of the world had worn on his bleeding forehead a crown of thorns. He designated himself Protector of the Holy Sepulcher. Shortly after, at Ascalon, he won a great victory against the vastly superior forces of the Egyptian sultan. Godfrey died the next year (1100), and was succeeded by his brother Baldwin, who first took the title of King of Jerusalem. The force of the Moslems, and the almost incessant strife and division among the crusaders themselves, made the kingdom hard to defend.

THE NEW KINGDOM.--Venice, Genoa, and Pisa had the most to do with the defense and enlargement of the new kingdom. It was organized according to the method of feudalism. It continued until the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187.

THE MILITARY ORDERS.--The principal supporters of the new kingdom at Jerusalem were the orders of knights, in which were united the spirit of chivalry and the spirit of monasticism. To the monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, they added a fourth vow, which bound them to fight the infidels, and to protect the pilgrims. These military orders acquired great privileges and great wealth. Each of them had its own peculiar apparel, stamped with a cross. The two principal orders were the Knights of St. John, or the Hospitallers, and the Knights Templar. The Hospitallers grew out of a hospital established in the eleventh century near the Holy Sepulcher, for the care of sick or wounded pilgrims. The order, when fully constituted, contained three classes of members,--knights, who were all of noble birth, priests and chaplains, and serving brothers. After the loss of the Holy Land, the island of Rhodes was given up to them. This they held until 1522, when they were driven out by the Turks, and received from the emperor, Charles V., the island of Malta. The Templars gained high renown for their valor, and, by presents and legacies, acquired immense wealth. After the loss of their possessions in Palestine, most of their members took up their abode in Cyprus: from there many of them went to France. Not a few of them became addicted to violent and profligate ways. They were charged, whether truly or falsely, with unbelief, and Oriental superstitions caught up in the East from their enemies. These accusations, coupled with a desire to get their property, led to their suppression by Philip V. in the beginning of the fourteenth century. A third order was that of Teutonic Knights, founded at Jerusalem about 1128. In the next century they subjugated the heathen Wends in Prussia (1226-1283).

WELFS AND WAIBLINGS.--The emperor Lothar died on a journey back from Italy in 1137. Henry the Proud, of the house of Welf, to whom he had given the imperial insignia, hoped to be his successor, and hesitated to recognize Conrad III. (1137-1152) of the house of Hohenstaufen, who was chosen. Conrad required him to give up Saxony, for the reason that one prince could not govern two duchies. When he refused, Bavaria, also, was taken from him, and given to Leopold, margrave of Austria. This led to war, in which the king, as usual, was strongly supported by the cities. Henry the Proud left a young son, known later as Henry the Lion. Count Welf, the brother of Henry the Proud, kept up the war in Bavaria. He was besieged in Weinsberg. During the siege, it is said that his followers shouted "Welf" as a war-cry, while the besiegers shouted "Waiblings,"--Waiblingen being the birthplace of Frederick, duke of Swabia, brother of Conrad. These names, corrupted into Guelphs and Ghibellines by the Italians, were afterwards attached to the two great parties,--the supporters, respectively, of the popes and the emperors. Henry the Lion afterwards received Saxony; and the mark of Brandenburg was given in lieu of it to Albert the Bear.

Welf I. was a powerful nobleman, who received from Henry IV. the fief of Bavaria. When Henry V died, the natural heirs of the extinct Franconian line were his nephews, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, duke of Swabia, and Conrad. But the Saxons supported the wealthy Lothar, who was chosen emperor, and won over to his side Henry the Proud, grandson of Welf I., to whom Lothar gave his daughter in marriage, and gave, also, the dukedom of Saxony, in addition to his dukedom of Bavaria. In these events lay the roots of the long rivalship between the Welfs and the Hohenstaufens. Henry the Lion, as stated above, was the son of Henry the Proud.

GENEALOGY OF THE WELFS.

WELF, Duke of Bavaria, 1070-1101. | +--HENRY the Black, Duke of Bavaria, 1120-1126. | +--Judith, m. to Frederic, Duke of Swabia (d. 1147), | the son of Agnes, who was the daughter of HENRY IV. FREDERIC I | (Barbarossa) was the son of Judith, and this Frederic of Swabia. | The Swabian dukes were called Hohenstaufens, from a | castle on Mount Staufen in Wurtemberg. | +--HENRY the Proud, Duke of Bavaria 1126, of Saxony 1137; deprived, 1138. | +--HENRY the Lion, m. Matilda, daughter of Henry II of England. | +--HENRY the Young, d. 1227. | +--OTTO IV, d. 1218.

SECOND CRUSADE (1147-1149).--The preacher of the second Crusade was St. Bernard, whose saintly life and moving eloquence produced a great effect. Louis VII. of France and Conrad III. were the leaders. The expedition was attended by a series of calamities. The design of recapturing Edessa from Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, was given up. The siege of Damascus failed (1148). Conrad returned home with broken health. Soon after, Damascus fell into the hands of Noureddin, who was a brave and upright leader. Through one of his lieutenants, he conquered Egypt. After his death, Saladin, who sprung from one of the tribes of Kurds, and was in his service, rose to power there, and set aside the Fatimite caliphate (1171). He was not less renowned for his culture and magnanimity than for his valor. Saladin united under his scepter all the lands from Cairo to Aleppo. In the battle at Ramla, not far from Ascalon (1178), the crusaders gained their last notable victory over this antagonist, which served to prolong for some years the existence of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Afterwards victory was on his side: the crusaders were overthrown in the fatal battle of Tiberias, and Jerusalem was taken by him (1187). Thus the Latin kingdom fell. The Saracen conqueror was much more humane after success than the Christian warriors had been in like circumstances.

FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.--Frederick I.--Barbarossa, or Redbeard, he was called in Italy--(1152-1190) was one of the grand figures of the Middle Ages. He was thirty-one years of age at his election as emperor, and had already been with the crusaders to the Holy Land. In him great strength of understanding and a capacity for large undertakings were combined with a taste for letters and art. His aim was to bring back to the empire the strength and dignity which had belonged to it under the Saxon and Franconian emperors. The rulers of Bohemia and Poland he obliged to swear fealty as vassals. He put down private war, and restored order in Germany. The palatinate on the Rhine, formerly a part of Franconia, he gave to his half-brother Conrad, who founded Heidelberg (1155).

STRUGGLE WITH THE LOMABARD CITIES.--The principal conflict of Frederick I. was in Italy, where he endeavored to restore the imperial supremacy over the Lombard cities, which had grown prosperous and freedom-loving, and were bent on managing their own municipal affairs. They had thrown off the rule of bishops and counts. The burghers of Milan, the principal town, had obliged the neighboring nobles and cities to form a league with them. The smaller cities, as Como and Lodi, preferred the emperor's control to being subject to Milan. Pavia clung to the empire. But most of the cities prized their independence and republican administration. The Pope and the emperor were soon at variance, and the cities naturally looked to the pontiff for sympathy and leadership. In 1158 Frederick again crossed the Alps, bent on establishing the imperial jurisdiction as it had stood in the days of Charlemagne. The study of the Roman law was now pursued with enthusiasm at Bologna and Padua. At a great assembly in the Roncalian Fields, Frederick caused the prerogatives of the empire to be defined according to the terms of the civil law. The emperor was proclaimed as "lord of the world,"--dominus mundi. In the room of the consuls, a Podesta was appointed as the chief officer in each city, to represent his authority. Milan, which had submitted, revolted, but, after a siege of two years, was forced to surrender, and was destroyed, at the emperor's command, by the inhabitants of the neighboring cities (1162). In 1159 Alexander III. was elected Pope by a majority of the cardinals. Victor IV. was chosen by the imperial party, and was recognized at a council convened by Frederick at Pavia. On the death of Victor, another anti-pope, Paschal III., was elected in his place; and, on the fourth visit of Frederick to Italy (1166-1168), he conducted Paschal to Rome. In 1167 the cities of Northern Italy, which maintained their cause with invincible spirit, united in the Lombard League. They built the strongly fortified place, Alessandria,--named after the Pope,--and took possession of the passes of the Alps. The emperor, whose army was nearly destroyed by a pestilence at Rome, escaped, with no little difficulty and danger, to Germany.

FREDERICK I. AND POPE ALEXANDER III.--For nearly seven years Frederick remained in Germany. He put an end to a violent feud which had been raging between Henry the Lion and his enemies (1168). In 1174 he was ready to resume his great Italian enterprise. But he did not succeed in taking Alessandria. All his efforts to induce Henry the Lion to come to his support failed. He was consequently defeated in the battle of Legnano (1176). The extraordinary abilities and indefatigable energy of the great emperor had been exerted in the vain effort, as he himself now perceived it to be, to break down the resistance of a free people to a system which they felt to be an obsolete despotism. A reconciliation took place at Venice in 1177 between Pope Alexander III. and Frederick, in which the latter virtually gave up the plan which he had so long struggled to realize. It was a day of triumph for the Papacy. At Constance, in 1183, a treaty was made with the Lombard cities, in which their self-government was substantially conceded, with the right to fortify themselves, and to levy armies, and to extend the bounds of their confederacy. The overlordship of the emperor was recognized. There was to be an imperial judge in each town, to whom appeals in the most important causes might be made. The "regalian rights" to forage, food, and lodging for the emperor's army, when within their territory, were reduced to a definite form. The cities grew stronger from their newly gained freedom; yet the loss of imperial restraint was, on some occasions, an evil.

FREDERICK IN GERMANY.--After his return to Germany, Frederick deprived Henry the Lion of his lands; and when Henry craved his forgiveness at the Diet of Erfurt in 1181, he was allowed to retain Brunswick and Lüneburg. He was to live for three years, with his wife and child, at the court of his father-in-law, Henry II., king of England. His son William, born there, is the ancestor of the present royal family in England. In 1184 the emperor, in honor of his sons, King Henry, and Frederick, duke of Swabia, who were of age to become knights, celebrated at Mentz a magnificent festival, where a great throng of attendants was gathered from far and near. In a last and peaceful visit to Italy, his son Henry was married to Constance, the daughter of Roger II., and the heiress of the Norman kingdom of Lower Italy and Sicily.

THIRD CRUSADE (1189-1192).--The old emperor now undertook another Crusade (1189), in which he was supported by Philip II. (Philip Augustus), king of France, and Richard the Lion-Hearted (Cæur-de-Lion), king of England, but of French descent. Having spent the winter at Adrianople, Frederick crossed into Asia Minor, and conquered Iconium. In his advance he showed a military skill and a valor which made the expedition a memorable one; but at the river Calycadnus in Cilicia, either while bathing or attempting to cross on horseback, the old warrior was swept away by the stream, and drowned (1190). His son Frederick died during the siege of Acre. Richard and Philip quarreled, before and after reaching Acre, which surrendered in 1191. Philip returned to France. Richard, with all his valor, was twice compelled to turn back from Jerusalem. Nothing was accomplished except the establishment of a truce with Saladin, by which a strip of land on the coast, from Joppa to Acre, was given to the Christians, and pilgrimages to the holy places were allowed. Richard was distinguished both for his deeds of arms and for his cruelty. On his return, he was kept as a prisoner by Leopold, duke of Austria, by the direction of the emperor, Henry VI., for thirteen months, and released on the payment of a ransom, and rendering homage. He was charged with treading the German banner in the filth at Acre. His alliance with the Welfs in Germany is enough to explain the hostility felt towards him by the imperial party.

HENRY VI.: POPE INNOCENT III.--Henry VI. (1190-1197) had the prudence and vigor of his father, but lacked his magnanimity. He was hard and stern in his temper. Twice he visited Italy to conquer the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the inheritance of his wife. He waged a new war with Henry the Lion (1192-1194), which ended in a marriage of Agnes, the emperor's cousin, with Henry, the son of Henry. It was a project of the emperor to convert Germany and Italy, with Sicily, into a hereditary monarchy; but the princes would not consent. He aspired to incorporate the Eastern Empire in the same dominion. While engaged in strife with the aged Pope, Coelestin II., respecting the Tuscan lands of Matilda, which she had bequeathed to the Church, the emperor suddenly died. His son Frederick was a boy only three years old. On the death of Coelestin II., early in 1198, Innocent III., the ablest and most powerful of all the popes, acceded to the pontifical chair. Innocent was a statesman of unsurpassed sagacity and energy. He was imbued with the highest idea of the pontifical dignity. He made his authority felt and feared in all parts of Christendom. He exacted submission from all rulers, civil and ecclesiastical. The Empress Constance, in order to secure Italy for Frederick, accepted the papal investment on conditions dictated by the Pope. After her death Innocent ruled Italy in the character of guardian of her son. He dislodged the imperial vassals from the Tuscan territory of Matilda, and thus became a second founder of the papal state.

FOURTH CRUSADE (1202-1204).--Under the auspices of Innocent III., a Crusade was undertaken by French barons, with whom were associated Baldwin, count of Flanders, and Boniface, marquis of Montferrat. Arrived at Venice, the crusaders were not able to furnish to the Venetians the sum agreed to be paid for their transportation. The Venetians, whose devotion was strongly tempered with the mercantile spirit, under the old doge, Henry Dandolo, greatly to the displeasure of the Pope, persuaded them to assist in the capture of Zara, which the king of Hungary had wrested from Venice. Then, at the call of Alexius, son of the Eastern emperor, Isaac Angelus, they went with the Venetian fleet to Constantinople, and restored these princes to the throne. The result of the contentions that followed with the Greeks was the pillage of Constantinople, and the establishment of the Latin Empire under Baldwin. Principalities were carved out for different chiefs; the Venetians taking several Greek coast towns, and afterwards Candia (Crete). The patriarch of Constantinople had to take his pallium from Rome. The Latin service was established in the churches. There was no real union between the Greeks and the invaders, but constant strife, until, in 1261, Michael Paloeologus, the head of a Greek empire which had been established at Nicoea, put an end to the Latin kingdom.

CHILDREN'S CRUSADE.--The failure of the stupendous undertakings for the conquest of the infidels was attributed to the wicked wrangles, and still more to the vicious lives, of the crusaders, whose defeat was regarded as indicative of the frown of Heaven on their evil courses. This feeling gave occasion to the Children's Crusade, in 1212. Many thousands of French and German boys made their way, in two distinct expeditions, to Marseilles and the seaports of Italy, in order to be conveyed thence to the Holy Land. But few returned: nearly all perished by the way, or were seized, and carried off to slave-markets. The enterprise grew out of a wild construction of the injunction of Jesus to let little children come to him.

OTTO IV.: CIVIL WAR IN GERMANY.--Frederick had been elected king; but, on the death of his father, his claims were disregarded. The Hohenstaufens chose Philip, brother of Henry VI.: the Welfs appointed Otto, the second son of Henry the Lion. Innocent claimed the right, not to appoint the emperor, but to decide between the rival claimants. He decided, in 1201, in favor of Otto IV. (1198-1214). Philip's party, however, seemed likely to succeed; but, in 1208, he was murdered. Otto, having made large promises of submission to the Pope's requirements, was crowned emperor, and universally acknowledged. When he failed to fulfill his pledges, and began to assert the old imperial prerogatives in Italy, he was excommunicated and deposed by Innocent (1210).

FREDERICK (II.) MADE KING.--Innocent was now led to take up the cause of young Frederick (1212). The latter won Germany over to his side, and received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1215. Otto was restricted to his ancestral territory in Brunswick.

CHARACTER OF FREDERICK II. (1214-1250).--Frederick II., on account of his extraordinary natural gifts and his accomplishments, was called the wonder of the world. He knew several languages, and, in intercourse with the Saracens_ in Sicily, had acquired a familiarity with the sciences. In many of his ideas of government he was in advance of his time. But his reign was largely spent in a contest with the Lombard cities and with the popes. He is styled by an eminent modern historian, "the gay, the brave, the wise, the relentless, and the godless Frederick." He was often charged with skepticism in relation to the doctrines of the Church. The main ground of this imputation seems to have been a temper of mind at variance with the habit of the age,--a very moderate degree of reverence for ecclesiastical authority, and the absence of the usual antipathy to heresy and religious dissent.

FIFTH CRUSADE (1228-1229).--Having caused his son Henry to be elected king of Rome, Frederick, in 1220, left Germany for fifteen years. It was the policy of the popes to keep the Sicilian crown from being united with the empire, and the emperor from gaining the supremacy in Lombardy. Frederick, at his coronation at Aix, and afterwards, had engaged to undertake a crusade. But he had postponed it from time to time. Pope Honorius III. had patiently borne with this delay. But when Frederick, in 1227, was about to start, and was prevented, as he professed, by the contagious disease in his army, from which he himself was suffering, Gregory IX., the next pope, placed him under the ban of the Church. Nevertheless, the emperor, in the following year, embarked on his crusade. His vigor as a soldier, and, still more, his tact in conciliating the Saracens, enabled him to get possession of Jerusalem. No bishop would crown an excommunicate, and he had to put the crown on his own head. That he left a mosque unmolested was a fresh ground of reproach. He negotiated an armistice with the sultan, Kameel (El Kámil), who ceded Nazareth and a strip of territory reaching to the coast, together with Sidon. Fifteen years later (in 1244) Jerusalem was finally lost by the Christians.

CONTEST OF FREDERICK WITH THE POPES.--On his return to Italy, Frederick drove the papal troops out of Apulia. In a personal interview with Gregory IX. at San Germane, a treaty was made between them, the ban was removed, and the treaty of Frederick with the Sultan was sanctioned by the Pope. Frederick now displayed his talent for organization in all parts of his empire. His constitution for the Sicilian kingdom, based on the ruins of the old feudalism, is tinged with the modern political spirit. His court, wherever he sojourned, mingled an almost Oriental luxury and splendor with the attractions of poetry and song. A sore trial was the revolt of his son Henry (1234), whom he conquered, and confined in a prison, where he died in 1242. The efforts of Frederick to enforce the imperial supremacy over the Lombard cities were met with the same stubborn resistance from the Guelfs which his grandfather had encountered. In 1237 he gained a brilliant victory over them at Cortenuova. But the hard terms on which Frederick insisted, in connection with other transactions offensive to the Pope, called out another excommunication from Gregory IX. (1239). The Genoese fleet, which was conveying ecclesiastics to a council called by the Pope at Rome, was captured by direction of Frederick; and the prelates were thrown into prison. Pope Innocent IV. (1243-1254) fled to Lyons, and there published anew the ban against the emperor, declared him deposed, and summoned the Germans to elect another emperor in his place. The ecclesiastical princes in Germany chose Henry Raspe (1246-1247), landgrave of Thuringia, who was defeated by Conrad, Henry's son. The next emperor thus chosen, William of Holland (1247), made no headway in Germany. During this period of civil war, many German cities gained their freedom from episcopal rule, attained to great privileges, and came into an immediate relation to the emperor. A fearful war raged in Italy between the Guelfs and Ghibellines, in the midst of which Frederick died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. Had he been as conscientious and as capable of curbing his passions and appetites as he was highly endowed in other respects, he might have been a model ruler. As it was; although his career was splendid, his private life, as well as his public conduct, was stained with flagrant faults.

THE SICILIAN KINGDOM.--The kingdom of the Two Sicilies was bravely defended by Manfred, son of Frederick II, in behalf of young Conradin, the son of the new emperor, Conrad IV. The Pope gave the crown to Charles of Anjou, brother of _Louis IX_. of France. Charles, after the fall of Manfred at Beneventum (1266), gained the kingdom. Conradin went to Italy, but was defeated and captured in 1268, and was executed at Naples. Such was the tragic end of the last of the Hohenstaufens. The unbearable tyranny of the French led to a conspiracy called the Sicilian Vespers (1282); and, at Easter Monday, at vesper time, the rising took place. All the French in Sicily were massacred. Peter of Aragon, who had married the daughter of Manfred, became king of Sicily. The dominion of Charles of Anjou was restricted to Naples.

SPAIN.--The Spaniards had a crusade to carry forward in their own land, which lasted for eight hundred years. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, especially under Abderrahman III. (912-961), the Moorish civilization was most brilliant. In Cordova, there were six hundred mosques. There were said to be seventeen universities and seventy large libraries in Spain. The caliph's fleets were dominant in the Mediterranean. He was mild in his policy towards Jews and Christians. In the eleventh century the caliphs gave themselves up to luxury, and the control of their forces was in the hands of the viziers. Of these, Almanzor, the general of Hakem II (976-1013), was the most famous. He took the city of Leon, and plundered the church of St. James of Compostella, the patron saint of Spain. After this time the caliphate of Cordova broke up into numerous kingdoms. The Christian Visigoths in the north-west had built up the little kingdom of Oviedo, which later took the name of Leon. The rest of Christian Spain was united under Sancho the Great (970-1035). To one of his sons, Ferdinand I, he left Castile, to which Leon and the Asturias were united; to another, Aragon; and, to a third, Navarre and Biscay. It was under Ferdinand that the exploits of the Spanish hero, the Cid (Rodrigo Diaz of Bivar), in conflict with the infidels, began. The complete conquest of the Moors was prevented by the strife of the Christian kingdoms with one another. Under Alfonso VI (1072-1109), they were all once more united.

GREAT DEFEAT OF THE MOORS.--The invasion of the Almoravids, invited over from Africa by the Mussulman princes (1086), checked the progress of the Christian conquest. These allies of the Arabs built up a kingdom for themselves, reconquered Valencia, and taxed to the utmost the power of the Christians to resist their progress. New sects of fanatical Moslems, the Almohads, having conquered Morocco, passed over into Spain. The Mohammedans were thus at war among themselves, and were divided into three parties. Military orders were established in Spain; and the kings of Castile, Leon, and Navarre, aided by sixty thousand crusaders from Germany, France, and Italy, defeated Mohammed, the chief of the Almohads, with great slaughter, in a decisive battle near Tolosa (1212). The Spanish crusade built up the little kingdom of Portugal, and the states of Castile and of Aragon. They were destined to play an important part in the history of commerce and discovery. The Spanish character owed some of its marked traits to this prolonged struggle with the Moslems.

THE MONGOLIAN INVASIONS.--At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Genghis Khan, the leader of Mongolian hordes which roamed over the Asiatic plateau between China and Siberia, conquered China, and overthrew the ruling dynasty. He subdued Hindustan and the empire of the Chowares, which had been founded by a Seljukian slave, and spread his power from the Caspian Sea through Persia to India (1218). Bokhara and Samarcand were among the populous cities which were burned with all their treasures by these ruthless invaders. Libraries were converted into stalls for the horses of the brutal conquerors. The sons and successors of Genghis Khan swept over the countries north of the Black Sea, captured Moscow and Kiev, burned Cracow, and pursued their murderous and devastating path over Poland and Hungary, At the battle of Wahlstatt (1241), the Germans under Henry the Pious, duke of Liegnitz, were defeated. The victories of the Tartars were frightful massacres. It was a custom of the Mongols to cut off an ear of the slaughtered enemy. It was said that at Liegnitz these trophies filled nine sacks. The Mongol hosts retired from Europe. They attacked the caliphate of Bagdad, a city which they took by storm, and plundered for forty days. They destroyed the dynasty of the Abassids. They marched into Syria, stormed and sacked Aleppo, and captured Damascus. For a time the central point of the Tartar conquests was the city or camping-ground of Karakorum in Central Asia. After a few generations their empire was broken in pieces. The "Golden Horde," which they had planted in Russia, on the east of the Volga, remained there for two centuries. Bagdad was held by the Mongols until 1400, when it was conquered, and kept for a short time, by Tamerlane.

The religion of the Tartars was either Lamaism--a corrupted form of Buddhistic belief and worship,--or Mohammedanism. In China and Mongolia they were Lamaists: elsewhere they generally adopted the faith of Islam. Their original religion was Shamaism, a worship of spirits, akin to fetichism. The later Mongol sovereigns, especially Kublai Khan, were ready to promote peaceful intercourse with Europe. It was at this time that Marco Polo resided at their court.

SIXTH CRUSADE (1248-1254): SEVENTH CRUSADE (1270).-Two additional Crusades were undertaken under the leadership of that upright and devout king, Louis IX. of France. The first (1248-1254) resulted in the taking of Damietta in Egypt (1249); but the next year Louis, with his whole army, was captured, and obtained his release after much delay, by the surrender of his conquests, and in return for a large ransom. Not disheartened by this failure, the pious monarch, in 1270, sailed to Tunis, where he and most of his army perished from sickness. In 1291 Acre, the last town held by the Christians, was taken by the Egyptian Mamelukes; and the Crusades came to an end.

EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADES.--The Crusades were a spontaneous movement of Christian Europe. It was a great tide, which bore away all classes of people. It lends to the Middle Ages an ideal and heroic character. An overpowering sentiment, submerging calculation and self-interest, swept over society. There was infinite suffering: countless lives were the forfeit. The results, however, were beneficent, 1. It is true that the conquests made in the East were all surrendered. The holy places were given up. Yet the Turks had received a check which was a protection to Europe during the period when its monarchies were forming, and were gaining the force to encounter them anew, and repel their dangerous aggressions. 2. The Feudal System in Europe was smitten with a mortal blow. Smaller fiefs, either by sale or by the death of the holders, were swallowed up in the larger. The anarchical spirit was counteracted. Political unity was promoted. 3. There was a lessening of the social distance between suzerain and serf. They fought side by side, and aided one another in common perils. The consequence was an increase of sympathy. 4. There was an expansion of knowledge. There was a widening of geographical knowledge. An acquaintance was gained with other peoples and countries. To the more civilized Saracens, the crusaders seemed brutal and barbarous. The crusaders in turn were impressed with the superior advancement and elegance of the Saracens. It was not the lord only who beheld distant lands: the serf was taken from the soil to which he had been tied. He drew stimulus and information from sojourning under other skies. 5. A great impulse was given to trade and commerce. An acquaintance was gained with new products, natural and artificial. New wants were created. 6. The cities advanced in strength and wealth. Important social consequences resulted from their growth.

WHY THE CRUSADES TERMINATED.--After the thirteenth century it was impossible to rekindle the crusading enthusiasm. The fire had burned out. It seemed as if the idea had exhausted itself in action. This effect was due, (1) to the absence of novelty in such undertakings; (2) to the long experience of the hardships belonging to them, which tended to dampen the romantic zeal that had formed a part of the motive; (3) to the disappointments following upon the practical failure of so prodigious and costly exertions; (4) to an altered condition of public feeling of a more general character. Antipathy to the infidel, the more exclusive sway of religious sentiment, were giving way to a mingling of secular aims and interests. There were new and wider fields of activity at home. The mood of men's minds was no longer the same.

LUXURIES INTRODUCED BY THE CRUSADES.--The effect of the Crusades in bringing in new comforts and luxuries, and in thus altering the style of living, was remarkable. At the very outset, a great deal of money, obtained by the sale or pawning of estates, was spent in the outfit of the hundred thousand nobles, who, at the beginning, took the cross. Costly furs, embroidered cushions, curtains of purple dye, pavilions worked with gold, banners of purple or of cloth-of-gold, showy costumes, and shining armor,--such was the splendor that met the eyes of thousands who had never before beheld such a spectacle. The journey to the East brought under the observation of the crusaders, arts and fashions to which they had been strangers, They saw the gilded domes and marble palaces of Constantinople, and the treasures of ancient art which had been gathered within the walls of that ancient capital. Antioch, with all its wealth, fell into their hands. Later, the merchants of both religions followed in the wake of the armies, and met one another. The superb fabrics of the East were carried to the West by routes which now became safe and familiar. The precious ores and tissues of Damascus, and the beautiful glassware of Tyre, were conveyed to Venice, and thence to places more distant. Silk stuffs of exquisite beauty were brought from Mosul and Alexandria. The elegance of the East, with its rich fabrics, its jewels and pearls, was so enchanting that an enthusiastic crusader termed it "the vestibule of Paradise." It was not the nobles alone in the West who acquired these attractive products of skill and industry. The cities shared in them. Even the lower classes partook of the change in the way of living.

LIFE IN THE CASTLE.--Even in the earlier days of feudalism, the seclusion of the castle was not without an influence in promoting domestic intercourse and affection. A new sentiment respecting woman sprang up in the Middle Ages, and was fostered by the honor which the New Testament and the teaching of the Church rendered to saintly women. A spirit of gallantry and devotion to woman, partly natural to the Germanic race, and partly arising from causes like that just named, sprang up in the midst of prevailing ignorance and perpetual strife. In the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries life in the castle is found to be very much improved. In the eleventh century it lacked comfort, to say nothing of luxury. The lights were torches of dry wood: even candles were not in general use. Houses in France, England, and Germany commonly had thatched roofs. They were made of logs covered with a sort of clay or mud. They were built with low and narrow doors, and with small windows which admitted but little light. In the middle of the smoky hall was a large, round fireplace. There was no chimney, but only a funnel, which pierced the ceiling. The seats were benches and stools. The feet of the family and guests were kept warm by hay spread beneath them. In the later period the substitution of dry rushes and straw was thought to be a marvelous gain. Beds of straw were introduced into all the apartments of nobles, and even of kings. To sleep on a straw couch was deemed a regal luxury. One consequence of the Crusades was to introduce carpets and hangings into the dwellings of the great. Improved timepieces took the place of the water-clocks, which were a wonder in the days of Charlemagne. In the twelfth century the castle begins to look less like a dungeon. Within and without, it ceases to wear so exclusively the aspect of a fortress. The furniture has more beauty. In the great hall are the large tables attached to the floor, the sideboards, the cupboards, the stately chair of the lord, the couch with its canopy, the chests for the wearing-apparel, the armor on the walls. In the thirteenth century France was covered with chateaux, which, in the case of princes and nobles of highest rank, had their spacious courts, their stables, their lodgings for the servants. All these were within the precincts of the palace. In the great hall were held the assemblies of vassals, banquets, judicial trials. In the wealthiest mansions, there was a main saloon on the floor above, reached by a spiral stairway, and serving also for the principal bed-chamber. There the stone floor gave place to marble of varied colors. Mosaics and other ornaments were introduced. Sculptures, carvings, and mural paintings decorated the apartments. Glass mirrors, imported by way of Venice, began to supersede the mirrors of polished metal. Larger windows, of painted glass, became common among the rich, in the room of the small pieces of glass, or of alabaster, which had before served to let in a few rays of light. Tallow candles came into vogue. Lamps were not unknown. On great occasions, lanterns and wax candles were used for a festive illumination. Chimneys were in use, and about the vast fire-place the family group could gather. The hospitality of the castle was often bountiful. The chase, the favorite amusement, gave life and animation to the scene, and prepared the inmates for the feast that followed. Minstrels enlivened the social gathering. Troops of mountebanks and buffoons furnished amusement, and were sometimes lavishly rewarded. There were singers and buffoons who were attached permanently to the household. There were others who traveled from place to place, and were even organized into corporations or guilds. The fool, or jester, to whom a large license was allowed, was long deemed a necessary adjunct of the castle-hall. Carriages were little used; rank was indicated by the accouterments of the war-horse or of the palfrey. From the twelfth century onward, the improvement in the comforts of living was not confined to the nobles and to rich burghers in cities. It was shared by the rural classes, notwithstanding the miseries--such as insecurity, and dangers of famine--that belonged to their condition.

POVERTY AND DISEASE.--A French writer on the history of luxury, speaking of France in this period, says, "In the cities, we meet at once luxury, certain beginnings of prosperity, and frightful misery. Beggary exists in a form the most hideous: there is an organization of it with grades, and a sort of hierarchy. In the face of sumptuous costumes, of chateaux better adorned, of the nascent wealth of industry, France included more than two thousand lepers, and knew not how to treat maladies born of the most imperfect hygiene and the most sordid filth. Such were the extremes. The course of general progress went forward between them." The condition of the poorest class in England was no better. "The absence of vegetable food for the greater part of the year, the personal dirt of the people, the sleeping at night in the clothes worn in the day, and other causes, made skin-diseases frightfully common. At the outskirts of every town in England, there were crawling about emaciated creatures covered with loathsome sores, living Heaven knows how. They were called by the common name of lepers; and probably the leprosy, strictly so called, was awfully common." Such being the life of the poor in villages, and in the absence of drainage and other modern safeguards of health, in large towns, it is no wonder that in the Middle Ages there were terrible pestilences, and that the average length of life was much less than at present.

ORIGIN AND NATURE OF CHIVALRY.--It was in the period of the crusades that the mediaeval institution of chivalry was ennobled by receiving a religious consecration. Chivalry is a comprehensive term, denoting a system of ideas and customs that prevailed in the middle ages. In the western kingdoms of Europe there was gradually formed a distinct class of warriors of superior rank, who fought on horseback, and were recognized as knights by a ceremony of equipment with arms. Among the customs of the ancient Germans, which are noticed by Tacitus, and in which may be discovered the germs of chivalry, are the remarkable deference paid to women, attendance of the aspiring youth on a military superior,--out of which vassalship arose,--and the formal receiving of arms on reaching manhood. At the outset, knighthood was linked to feudal service: the knights were landholders. In the age of Charlemagne, the warriors on horseback--the caballarii--were the precursors, both in name and function, of the chevaliers of later times. The word knight, meaning a youth or servant, and then a military attendant, came to be a term of equivalent meaning. The necessary connection of knighthood with the possession of fiefs was broken in the thirteenth century, through changes in the circumstances of warfare. Knighthood became independent of feudalism. It was a personal distinction, frequently bestowed as a reward for brave deeds, and often conferred with elaborate ceremonies, partly of a religious character. When the boy of gentle birth passed from under the care of females, he first served as a page or valet at the court of a prince or the castle of a rich noble. Having been thus trained in habits of courtesy and obedience, he was advanced, not earlier than the age of fourteen, to the rank of squire, and instructed in horsemanship and in the use of weapons. He followed his master to the tournament and in battle, until finally he was himself dubbed a knight, was clothed in armor of steel, and took on him all the obligations and privileges of his order. The introduction of hereditary surnames and of armorial bearings served to distinguish the members of this order. He who was a knight in one place was a knight everywhere.

There were different classes of knights. The "bachelor," who bore a forked pennon, was below the "knight-banneret," who alone had the right to carry the square banner. The banneret was required to have a certain estate, and to be able to bring into the field a certain number of lances, i.e., inferior knights with their men-at-arms and foot-soldiers. Each knight was accompanied by his squire and personal attendants. Not seldom two knights joined together in a brotherhood in arms, pledging themselves to sustain each other in every peril.

THE VIRTUES OF KNIGHTHOOD.--There were characteristic obligations of knighthood. One was loyalty, which included a strict fidelity to all pledges, embracing promises made to an enemy. Another knightly virtue was courtesy, which was exercised even towards a foe. The spirit of gallantry, inspiring devotion to woman, especially the chosen object of love, and protection to womanly weakness, was always a cardinal trait of the chivalric temper. Courage, which delighted in daring exploits, and sought fields for the exercise of personal prowess, was an indispensable quality of the knights. The ideal of chivalry was honor rather than benevolence. The influence of chivalry in refining manners was very great; but, especially in its period of decline, it allowed or brought in much cruelty and profligacy. Its distinctive spirit could find room for exercise only amid conflict and bloodshed, which it naturally tended to promote.

CEREMONIES OF INVESTITURE.--When the knight was created according to the complete form, he entered into a bath on the evening previous, was instructed by old knights in "the order and feats" of chivalry, was then clad in white and russet, like a hermit, passed the night in the chapel in "orisons and prayers," and at daybreak confessed to the priest, and received the sacrament. He then returned to his chamber. At the appointed hour he was conducted to the hall, where he received the spurs and was girded with the sword by the prince or other lord who was to confer the distinction, by whom he was smitten on the shoulder and charged to be "a good knight." Thence he was escorted to the chapel, where he swore on the altar to defend the church, and his sword was consecrated.

JUDICIAL COMBATS.--The disposition to resort to single combats as a judicial test of guilt or innocence was stimulated by the development of chivalry. There were other ordeals long in vogue, by which it was thought that Heaven would interpose miraculously to shield, and thus to vindicate, the innocent, and to expose the criminal. Such were the plunging of the hand into boiling water, the contact of the flesh with red-hot iron or with fire, the lot, the oath taken on holy relics, the reception of the Eucharist, which would choke the perjurer, and send his soul to perdition. The ordeals were regulated and managed by the clergy. Among the German, and also the Celtic tribes, there are traces of the duel between combatants, for purposes of divination, or of determining on which side in a controversy the right lay. The judicial combat in mediaeval Europe became general. Champions, in cases where the rights of women were in debate, and in other instances where the wager of battle between the direct antagonists in a dispute was impracticable, were selected, or volunteered, to try the issue in an armed conflict. Sometimes professional champions, hired for the occasion, were employed. The custom of judicial combats by degrees declined. The municipalities and the spirit of commerce were averse to it. It was opposed by the Emperor Frederic II. and by Louis IX. of France. The influence of the Roman law helped to undermine it; but the opposition of the Church was the most effectual agency in doing away with it. The modern duel, which survived the judicial combat, is a relic of the ancient custom of avenging private injuries, and of proving the courage of the combatants between whom a quarrel had arisen. In the opening of Shakespeare's play of Richard II., in the quarrel of Mowbray and Bolingbroke, the idea of the judicial combat mingles with the motives and feelings characteristic of the duel when stripped of its religious aspect.

FRANCE.--DESCENDANTS OF HUGH CAPET

HUGH THE GREAT (d. 956), m. 3, Hedwiga, daughter of Henry I of Germany. | +--HUGH CAPET, 987-996. | +--ROBERT, 996-1031. | +--HENRY I,1031-1060. | +--PHILIP I, 1060-1108, m. Bertha, daughter of Florence I, Count of Holland. | +--LOUIS VI, 1108-1137. | +--LOUIS VII, 1137-1180, m. 3, Alice, daughter of Theobold II, Count of Champagne. | +--PHILIP II (Augustus), 1180-1223, m. 1, Isabella, daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Hainault. | +--LOUIS VIII, 1223-1226, m. Blanche, daughter of Alfonso IX of Castile. | +--(St.) Louis IX, 1226-1270, m. Margaret, daughter of Raimond Berengar IV, Count of Provence. | +--2, PHILIP III, 1270-1285, | m. 1, Isabella, daughter | of James I of Aragon. | | | +--PHILIP IV, 1285-1314, | | m. Jeanne, | | heiress of Champagne and Navarre. | | | | | +--LOUIS X, 1314-1316. | | | | | +--PHILIP V, 1316-1322. | | | | | +--CHARLES IV, 1322-1328. | | | +--Charles, Count of Valois (d. | 1325), founder of the house of | Valois, m. Margaret, daughter | of Charles II of Naples. | | | +--PHILIP VI, succeeded 1328. | +--Robert, Count of Clermont, founder of the house of Bourbon.

ENGLAND.--FROM THE CONQUEST TO EDWARD I.

WILLIAM I, 1066-1087, m. Matilda, daughter of Baldwin V of Flanders | +--WILLIAM II (Rufus), 1087-1100. | | (Malcolm Canmore m. St. Margaret) | | | +--Mary m. Eustace, Count of Boulogne | | | +--Maud | | | +--Matilda. | m. +--HENRY I, 1100-1135 | | | +--MATILDA (d. 1167) m. | 1, Emperor Henry V; | 2, Geoffrey Plantagenet, | Count of Anjou | | | +--HENRY II, 1154-1189 m. | Eleanor of Aquitaine, etc., | wife of Louis VII of France. | | | +--3, RICHARD I, 1189-1199. | | | +--5, JOHN, 1199-1216, m. | Isabella of Angouleme | | | +--HENRY III, 1216-1272, | m. Eleanor, daughter of | Raymond Berengar IV of | Provence. | | | +--EDWARD I, succeeded 1272. | +--Adela, m. Stephen, Count of Blois. | +--STEPHEN, 1135-1154. m. Maud, daughter of Malcolm Canmore and St. Margaret.

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III. ENGLAND AND FRANCE: THE FIRST PERIOD OF THEIR RIVALSHIP (1066-1217)

The emperors, the heads of the Holy Roman Empire, were the chief secular rulers in the Middle Ages, and were in theory the sovereigns of Christendom. But in the era of the Crusades, the kingdoms of England and France began to be prominent. In them, moreover, we see beginnings of an order of things not embraced in the mediaeval system. In France, steps are taken towards a compact monarchy. In England, there are laid the foundations of free representative government.

CONNECTION OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE.--For a long time the fortunes of England and of France are linked together. The kings of the French, with their capital at Paris, had been often obliged to contend with their powerful liegemen, the dukes of Normandy, at Rouen. When the Norman duke became king of England, he had an independent dominion added to the great fief on the other side of the channel. It sometimes looked as if England and France would be united under one sovereignty, so close did their relations become.

DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.--It was while William the Conqueror, angry with the king of the French, was burning Mantes, in the border-land between Normandy and France, that, by the stumbling of his horse in the ashes, he was thrown forward upon the iron pommel of his saddle, and received the hurt which ended, in the next month, in his death (Sept., 1087). On his death-bed he was smitten with remorse for his unjust conquest of England, and for his bloody deeds there. He would not dare to appoint a successor: it belonged, he said, to the Almighty to do that; but he hoped that his son William might succeed him. The burial service at Caen, in the church which he had built, was interrupted by Ascelin, a knight, who raised his voice to protest against the interment, for the reason that the duke had wrongfully seized from his father the ground on which the church stood. The family of William made a settlement with Ascelin on the spot by paying a sum of money, and the service proceeded. The whole ground was afterwards paid for. William had left money for the rebuilding of the churches which he had burned at Mantes. He gave his treasures to the poor and to the churches in his dominions. These circumstances illustrate in a striking way how, in the Middle Ages, ruthless violence was mingled with power of conscience and a sense of righteous obligation.

WILLIAM RUFUS.--William the Conqueror was succeeded by his son, William Rufus (1087-1100), who was as able a man as his father. He promised to be liberal, and to lay no unjust taxes; but he proved to be--especially after the death of the good Lanfranc, the archbishop of Canterbury--a vicious and irreligious king. The Norman nobles would have preferred to have his brother Robert, who was duke of Normandy, for their king; but the English stood by William. He left bishoprics and abbacies vacant that he might seize the revenues. One of his good deeds was the appointment of the holy and learned Anselm to succeed Lanfranc; but he quarreled with Anselm, who withdrew from the kingdom. Normandy, which he had tried to wrest from his elder brother Robert, was mortgaged to him by the latter, in order that he might set out upon the first Crusade. That duchy came thus into the king's possession. William, while hunting in the New Forest, was killed, if not accidentally, then either, as it was charged, by Walter Tyrrel, one of the party, or by some one who had been robbed of his home when the New Forest was made. He was found in the agonies of death, pierced by an arrow shot from a cross-bow.

HENRY I. OF ENGLAND (1100-1135): LOUIS VI. (the FAT) OF FRANCE (1108-1137): LOUIS VII. (1137-1180).--Henry was the youngest son of the Conqueror. His wife was English, and was a great-granddaughter of Edmund Ironside. Her name was Edith, but she assumed the Norman name of Matilda. Her mother Margaret, wife of Malcolm of Scotland, was of the stock of the West Saxon kings. Thus the blood of Alfred, as well as of William the Conqueror, flowed in the veins of the later English kings. In the absence of his older brother Robert, who was in Jerusalem, he took the crown, and put forth a Charter of Liberties, promising the Church to respect its rights, and giving privileges to his vassals which they in turn were to extend to their own vassals. Robert came back from the Holy Land, and tried to wrest England from his brother. He failed in the attempt. After this, Henry got possession of Normandy by the victory of Tinchebrai in 1106, and kept Robert a prisoner in Cardiff Castle until his death (1135). Louis the Fat, king of France, espoused the cause of William of Clito, son of Robert, but was beaten in 1119 at Brenneville. Peace was made between the two kings; but in 1124 Henry of England combined with his son-in-law, Henry V. of Germany, for the invasion of France. Louis called upon his vassals, who gathered in such force that the emperor abandoned the scheme. Louis then undertook to chastise those great vassals who had not responded to his summons. William, the duke of Aquitane, seeing the power of the suzerain, came into his camp, and offered him his homage. Louis inflicted a brutal punishment in Flanders, where the count, Charles the Good, had been assassinated in 1127, and which had failed to furnish its contingent in 1124. He obliged the Flemish lords to elect as their count, William Clito, whose rule, however, they presently cast off. Louis the Fat united his son Louis in marriage with Eleanor, the only daughter of William (X.), the duke of Aquitaine, and thus paved the way for a direct control over the South. The duchy of Aquitaine included Gascony and other districts, and the suzerainty over Auvergne, Périgord, etc. Louis the VII. (1137-1180) was not able to preserve the dominion, extending from the north to the south of France, which he inherited. He plunged into a dispute with Pope Innocent II. in relation to the church of Bourges, where he claimed the right to name the archbishop. St. Bernard took the side of the Pope. Suger, abbot of St. Denis, an able minister, the counselor of the last king, supported Louis. The king attacked the lands of Theobald of Champagne, who sided with the Pope, and in his wrath burned the parish church of Vitry, with hundreds of poor people who had taken refuge in it. His own remorse and the excommunication of the Pope moved him to do penance by departing on a Crusade. Suger, not liking the risk which the monarchy incurred through the absence of the king, opposed the project. St. Bernard encouraged it. The Crusade failed of any important result; but it helped to infuse a national spirit into the French soldiers, who fought side by side with the army of the emperor, Conrad III. On his return, on the alleged ground that Eleanor was too near of kin, he divorced her, and rendered back her dowry (1152).

LOUIS VII. OF FRANCE (1137-1180): STEPHEN (1135-1154) AND HENRY II. of ENGLAND (1154-1189).--The king of England, Henry I., after the death of his son by shipwreck, declared his daughter Matilda his heir. She was the widow of Henry V., the emperor of Germany. In 1127 she married Geoffrey, count of Anjou, surnamed Plantagenet on account of his habit of wearing a sprig of broom (genet) in his bonnet. Henry left Matilda, whom he called the "Empress," under the charge of his nephew, Stephen of Blois, who got himself elected king by the barons or great landowners,--as there was no law regulating the succession of the crown,--and was crowned at Westminster. They had sworn, however, to support Matilda. Her uncle David, king of Scots, took up her cause; but the Scots were defeated at the Battle of the Standard in 1138. England was thrown into utter disorder by these circumstances: some of the barons fought on one side, and some on the other. There were thieves along the highways, and the barons in their castles were no better than the thieves. The empress landed in England in 1139, to recover her rights. In the civil war that ensued, Stephen was taken prisoner (1141); but Matilda, whose imperious temper made her unpopular in London, was driven out of the city. Stephen was released in exchange for the Earl of Gloucester. Matilda was at one time in great peril, but contrived to escape in a winter night from Oxford Castle (1142). In 1153 peace was made, by which Stephen was to retain the kingdom, but was to be succeeded by Matilda's eldest son.

CRUELTY OF THE NOBLES.--In the time of Stephen and Matilda, the barons, released from the strong hand of his predecessor, were guilty of atrocities which made the people mourn the loss of Henry.

"They built strong castles, and filled them with armed men. From these they rode out as robbers, as a wild beast goes forth from its den. 'They fought among themselves with deadly hatred, they spoiled the fairest lands with fire and rapine; in what had been the most fertile of counties they destroyed almost all the provision of bread.' Whatever money or valuable goods they found, they carried off. They burnt houses and sacked towns, If they suspected any one of concealing his wealth, they carried him off to their castle; and there they tortured him, to make him confess where his money was. 'They hanged up men by their feet, and smoked them with foul smoke. Some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by the head, and burning things were hung on to their feet. They put knotted strings about men's heads, and twisted them till they went to the brain. They put men into prisons where adders and snakes and toads were crawling, and so they tormented them. Some they put into a chest short and narrow, and not deep, and that had sharp stones within, and forced men therein so that they broke all their limbs. In many of the castles were hateful and grim things called rachenteges, which two or three men had enough to do to carry. It was thus made: it was fastened to a beam, and had a sharp iron to go about a man's neck and throat, so that he might noways sit or lie or sleep; but he bore all the iron. Many thousands they starved with hunger.' The unhappy sufferers had no one to help them. Stephen and Matilda were too busy with their own quarrel to do justice to their subjects. Poor men cried to Heaven, but they got no answer. 'Men said openly that Christ and his saints were asleep.'"

DOMINIONS OF HENRY II.--Henry, the son of the empress and of Count Geoffrey of Anjou, was the first of the Angevin kings of England. They had Saxon blood in their veins, but were neither Norman nor Saxon, except in the female line. It was eighty-eight years since the Conquest; and, although the higher classes talked French, almost every one of their number was of mixed descent. The line between Saxon and Norman was becoming effaced. A vassal of the king of France, Henry held so many fiefs that he was stronger than the king himself, and all the other crown vassals taken together. From his father he had Anjou; from his mother, Normandy and Maine; the county of Poitou and the duchy of Aquitaine he received by Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII., whom he married. Later, by marrying one of his sons to the heiress of Brittany, that district, the nominal fief of Normandy, came practically under his dominion. He was a strong-willed man, who reduced the barons to subjection, and pulled down the castles which had been built without the king's leave. It might seem probable that the possessor of so great power would absorb the little monarchy of France. But this was prevented by long-continued discord in England,--discord in the royal family, between the king and the clergy, and, later, between the king and the barons. On the Continent, the king of England required a great and united force to break the feudal bonds which grew stronger between the king of France and the French provinces of England. We shall soon see how France enlarged her territory, and how the English dominion on the Continent was greatly reduced.

REFORMS OF HENRY.--In order to control the barons, he arranged with them to pay money in lieu of military service. In this way they were weakened. At the same time, he encouraged the small landowners to exercise themselves in arms, which would prepare them for self-defense and to assist the king. Moreover, he sent judges through the land to hear causes. They were to ask a certain number of men in the county as to the merits of the cases coming before them. These men took an oath to tell the truth. They gradually adopted the custom of hearing the evidence of others before giving to the judges their verdict,--that is, their declaration of the truth (from vere dictum). Out of this custom grew the jury system.

BECKET: CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON.--The Conqueror had granted to ecclesiastical courts the privilege of trying cases in which the clergy were concerned. On this privilege the clergy had been disposed to insist ever since the fall of the Roman Empire. Under Stephen the energetic restraint exercised upon them was removed. In the early years of the reign of Henry II., there were great disorders among the Norman clergy, and crimes were of frequent occurrence. These were often punished more lightly than the same offenses when committed by a layman, as church courts could not inflict capital punishment. Henry undertook to bring the clergy under the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. In this attempt he was resisted by Thomas à Becket, who had been his chancelor, and whom he raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury (1162), in the full expectation of having his support. He had been gay and extravagant in his ways, and zealous in behalf of whatever the king wished. But the brilliant chancelor became a strict and austere prelate, the champion of the clergy, with a will as inflexible as that of Henry. The only bishop that voted against him at his election, remarked that "the king had worked a miracle in having that day turned a layman into an archbishop, and a soldier into a saint." In this controversy, the clergy had reason to fear that Henry, if he got the power, would use it to punish and plunder the innocent. At a great council of prelates and barons, the Constitutions of Clarendon were adopted (1164), which went far towards the subjecting of the ecclesiastics, as to their appointment and conduct, to the royal will.

Becket, with the other prelates, swore to observe these statutes; but he repented of the act, was absolved by the Pope from his oath, and fled to France. Later a reconciliation took place between him and the king. Becket returned to England, but with a temper unaltered. A hasty expression of Henry, uttered in wrath, and indicating a desire to be rid of him, was taken up by four knights, who attacked the archbishop, and slew him, near the great altar in the cathedral at Canterbury (Dec. 29, 1170). The higher nobles welcomed the occasion to revolt. Henry was regarded as the instigator of the bloody deed, and was moved to make important concessions to the Pope, Alexander III. His life was darkened by quarrels with his sons. In 1173 the kings of France and Scotland, and many nobles of Normandy and England, joined hands with them. Henry, afflicted with remorse, did penance, allowing himself to be scourged by the monks at the tomb of Becket, or "St. Thomas,"--for he was canonized. The people rallied to him, and the nobles were defeated. The rebellion came to an end. The king of Scotland became more completely the vassal of England. In another rebellion the king's sons rebelled against him: in 1189 John, the youngest of them, joined with his brother Richard. Then Henry's heart was broken, and he died.

CONQUEST OF IRELAND.--In the first year of Henry's reign, he was authorized by Pope Hadrian IV. to invade Ireland. In 1169 Dermot of Leinster, a fugitive Irish king, undertook to enlist adventurers for this service. He was aided by Richard of Clare, earl of Pembroke, called Strongbow, and others. They were successful; and in 1171 Henry crossed over to Ireland, and was acknowledged as sovereign by all the chiefs of the South. A synod brought the Irish Church into subjection to the see of Canterbury. But there was constant warfare, and the North and East of the island were not subdued. The whole country was not conquered until Elizabeth's time, four centuries later.

WEAKENING OF GREAT VASSALS IN FRANCE.--The weakening of Henry's power was the salvation of Louis VII., who had more the spirit of a monk than of an active and resolute monarch. At his death a new epoch is seen to begin. The dominion of the great vassals declines, and the truly monarchical period commences. It was the change which ended in making the king the sole judge, legislator, and executive of the country. Louis the Fat, Philip Augustus, and St. Louis (Louis IX.) are the early forerunners of Louis XIV., under whom the absolute monarchy was made complete.

PHILIP AUGUSTUS OF FRANCE (1180-1223): RICHARD THE LIONHEARTED OF ENGLAND (1189-1199).--Philip Augustus was the last king of France to be crowned before his accession. The custom had helped to give stability to the regal system. Now it was no longer needful. Philip was only fifteen years old when he began to reign alone. For forty-three years he labored with shrewdness and perseverance, and with few scruples as to the means employed, to build up the kingly authority. His first act was a violent attack on the Jews, whom he despoiled and banished. This was counted an act of piety. He acquired Vermandois, Valois, and Amiens; refusing to render homage to the Bishop of Amiens, who claimed to be its suzerain. During the life of Henry II., Philip had allied himself closely with his son Richard (the Lion-hearted), who succeeded his father. Richard was passionate and quarrelsome, yet generous. He was troubadour as well as king. After his coronation (1189), the two kings made ready for a Crusade together. To raise money, Richard sold earldoms and crown lands, and exclaimed that he would sell London if he could find a buyer. The two kings set out together in 1190. They soon quarreled. Philip came home first, and, while Richard was a prisoner in Austria, did his best to profit by his misfortunes, and to weaken the English reigning house. In the absence of Richard, John, his ambitious and unfaithful brother, was made regent by the lords and the London citizens. As nothing was heard of the king, John claimed the crown. Hearing of the release of Richard, Philip wrote to John (1194), "Take care of yourself, for the devil is let loose." Richard made war on Philip in Normandy, but Pope Innocent III. obliged the two kings to make a truce for five years (1199). Two months after, Richard was mortally wounded while besieging a castle near Limoges, where it was said that a treasure had been found, which he as the suzerain claimed. He had never visited England but twice; and, although he always had the fame of a hero, the country had no real cause to regret his death.

JOHN OF ENGLAND (1199-1216).--John (surnamed Sansterre, or Lackland, a name given to the younger sons, whose fathers had died before they were old enough to hold fiefs) was chosen king. Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine desired to have for their duke young Arthur, duke of Brittany, the son of Geoffrey, John's elder brother. Philip Augustus took up the cause of Arthur, but deserted him when he had gained for himself what he wished. When Philip wished to reopen the war he took advantage of a complaint from one of John's vassals, Hugh of Lusignan, whose affianced bride John had stolen away. As suzerain Philip summoned John to answer at Paris, and when he did not appear the court declared his fiefs forfeited. It was in this war that Arthur was captured by his uncle and was murdered. This crime served only to strengthen Philip's cause. He seized on Normandy, which thenceforward was French, and Brittany, which became an immediate fief of the king (1204). He took the other possessions of England in Northern Gaul. There were left to the English the duchy of Aquitaine, with Gascony and the Channel Islands. The lands south of the Loire John had inherited from his mother.

TYRANNY OF JOHN.--John robbed his subjects, high and low, under the name of taxation. Not content with forcing money out of the Jews, one of whom he was said to have coerced by pulling out a tooth every day, he treated rich land-owners with hardly less cruelty. He had not, like Henry II., the support of the people, and added to his unpopularity by hiring soldiers from abroad to help him in his oppression.

JOHN'S QUARREL WITH THE POPE: MAGNA CHARTA.--As rash as he was tyrannical, John engaged in a quarrel with Pope Innocent III. The monks of Canterbury appointed as archbishop, not the king's treasurer, whom he bade them choose, but another. The Pope neither heeded the king nor confirmed their choice, but made them elect a religious and learned Englishman, Stephen Langton. John, in a rage, drove the monks out of Canterbury, and refused to recognize the election. The Pope excommunicated him, and laid England under an interdict; that is, he forbade services in the churches, and sacraments except for infants and the dying; marriages were to take place in the church porch, and the dead were to be buried without prayer and in unconsecrated ground. As John paid no regard to this measure of coercion, Innocent declared him deposed, and charged the king of France to carry the sentence into effect (1213). Resisted at home, and threatened from abroad, John now made an abject submission, laying his crown at the feet of Pandulph, the Pope's legate. He made himself the vassal of the Pope, receiving back from him the kingdoms of England and Ireland, which he had delivered to Innocent, and engaging that a yearly rent should be paid to Rome by the king of England and his heirs. Philip had to give up his plan of invading England. John's tyranny and licentiousness had become intolerable. Langton, a man of large views, and the English Church, united with the barons in extorting from him, in the meadow of Runnymede,--an island in the Thames, near Windsor,--the Magna Charta, the foundation of English constitutional liberty. It secured two great principles: first, that the king could take the money of his subjects only when it was voted to him for public objects; and secondly, that he could not punish or imprison them at his will, but could only punish them after conviction, according to law, by their countrymen.

The Great Charter is based on the charter of Henry I. It precisely defines and secures old customs, 1. It recognizes the rights of the Church. 2. It secures person and property from seizure and spoliation without the judgment of peers or the law of the land. 3. There are regulations for courts of law. 4. Exactions by the lord are limited to the three customary feudal aids. The benefits granted to the vassal are to be extended to the lower tenants. 5, How the Great Council is to be composed, and how convened, is defined. 6. The "liberties and free customs" of London and of other towns are secured. 7. Protection is given against certain oppressive exactions of the Crown. 8. The safety of merchants against exactions in coming into England, and in going out, and in traveling through it, is guaranteed. 9. There is some provision in favor of the villain.

WAR WITH FRANCE.--John joined in a great coalition against Philip Augustus. He was to attack France in the south-west; while the emperor, Otto IV., and the counts of Flanders and Boulogne, with all the princes of the Low Countries, were to make their attack on the north. It was a war of the feudal aristocracy against the king of the French. At the great battle of Bouvines (1214) the French were victorious. The success, in the glory of which the communes shared, added no territory to France; but it awakened a national spirit. John was beaten in Poitou, and went home.

DEPOSITION OF JOHN.--In England, John found that all his exertions against the Charter, even with the aid of Rome, were unavailing. In a spirit of vengeance, he brought in mercenary freebooters, and marched into Scotland, robbing and burning as he went. Every morning he burned the house in which he had lodged for the night. At length the English barons offered the crown to Louis, the eldest son of Philip Augustus; but John died in 1216, and Louis found himself deserted. He had shown a disposition to give lands to the French.

THE ALBIGENSIAN WAR.--The war against the Albigenses began in the reign of Philip; but he pleaded that his hands were full, and left it to be waged by the nobles. That sect had its seat in the south of France, and derived its name from the city of Albi. It held certain heterodox tenets, and rejected the authority of the priesthood. In 1208, under Innocent III., a crusade was preached against Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, in whose territory most of them were found. This was first conducted by Simon de Montfort, and then by Philip's son, Louis VIII., the county of Toulouse being a fief of France. The result of the desolating conflict was, that part of the count's fiefs were in 1229 transferred to the crown, and the country itself in 1270. In that year, at the council of Toulouse, the Inquisition, a special ecclesiastical tribunal, was organized to complete the extermination of the Albigensians who had escaped the sword. The advantages resulting from the crushing of the sovereignties of the south were sure to come to the French monarchy. But Philip left it to the nobles and to his successors to win the enticing prize.

The first period of rivalry between England and France ends with John and Philip Augustus. For one hundred and twenty years, each country pursues its course separately. Monarchy grows stronger in France: constitutional government advances in England.

LOUIS IX. OF FRANCE (1226-1270).--In Louis IX. (St. Louis) France had a king so noble and just that the monarchy was sanctified in the eyes of the people. At his accession he was but eleven years old, and with his mother, Blanche of Castile, had to encounter for sixteen years a combination of great barons determined to uphold feudalism. Most of them staid away from his coronation. When the young king and his mother approached Paris, they found the way barred; but it was opened by the devoted burghers, who came forth with arms in their hands to bring them in. The magistrates of the communes swore to defend the king and his friends (1228). They were supported by the Papacy. In 1231 the war ended in a way favorable to royalty. The treaty of 1229 with Raymond VII., count of Toulouse, led to the gradual absorption of the South. Theobald of Champagne became king of Navarre, and sold to the crown Chartres and other valuable fiefs. In the earlier period of his reign Louis was guided by his wise, even if imperious, mother, who held the regency.

ENGLAND AND FRANCE.--In 1243 Louis defeated Henry III. of England, who had come over to help the count of La Marche and other rebellious nobles. In 1245 Charles of Anjou, the king's brother, married Beatrice, through whom Provence passed to the house of Anjou. The king's long absence (1248-1254), during the sixth Crusade, had no other result but to show to all that he combined in himself the qualities of a hero and of a saint. After his return, his government was wise and just, and marked by sympathy with his people. In 1259 he made a treaty with Henry III., yielding to him the Limousin, Périgord, and parts of Saintonge, for which Henry relinquished all claims on the rest of France. Louis fostered learning. The University of Paris flourished under his care. In his reign Robert of Sorbon (1252) founded the Sorbonne, the famous college for ecclesiastics which bears his name.

CIVIL POLICY OF LOUIS.--In his civil policy Louis availed himself of the Roman law to undermine feudal privileges. The legists enlarged the number of cases reserved for the king himself to adjudicate. He established new courts of justice, higher than the feudal courts, and the right of final appeal to himself. He made the king's "Parliament" a great judicial body. He abolished in his domains the judicial combat, or duel,--the old German method of deciding between the accused and the accuser. He liberated many serfs. But, mild as he was, he had no mercy for Jews and heretics. In his intercourse with other nations, he blended firmness and courage with a fair and unselfish spirit. He refused to comply with the request of the Pope to take up arms against the emperor, Frederic II.; but he threatened to make war upon him if he did not release the prelates whom he had captured on their way to Rome. The "Pragmatic Sanction" of St. Louis is of doubtful genuineness. It is an assertion of the liberties of the Gallican Church. With loyalty to the Holy See, and an exalted piety, Louis defended the rights of all, and did not allow the clergy to attain to an unjust control. Voltaire said of him, "It is not given to man to carry virtue to a higher point." He stands in the scale of merit on a level with Alfred of England.

PARLIAMENTS IN FRANCE.--The word parliament in French history has a very different meaning from that which it bears when applied to the English institution of the same name. There were thirteen parliaments in France, each having a jurisdiction of its own. They were established at different times. Of these the Parliament of Paris was the oldest and by far the most important. The king and other suzerains administered justice, each in his own domain. The Parliament of Paris was originally a portion of the king's council that was set apart to hear causes among the fiefs. It considered all appeals and judicial questions. But in the reign of Louis IX., commissioners, or baillis, of the king, held provincial courts of appeal in his name. The great suzerains established, each in his own fief, like tribunals, but of more restricted authority. Louis IX. made it optional with the vassal to be tried by his immediate suzerain, or in the king's courts, which were subordinate to his council. As time went on, the authority of the royal tribunals increased, as that of the feudal courts grew weaker. In the Parliament of Paris, a corps of legists who understood the Roman law were admitted with the lords, knights, and prelates. More and more these "counsellors" were left to themselves. Later there was a division into Chambers, of which the Grand Chamber for the final hearing and decision of appeals was of principal importance. Philip the Fair (1303) gave a more complete organization to Parliament. He provided that it should hold two annual sittings at Paris. Thus there grew up a judicial aristocracy. After 1368 the members were appointed for life. At length, under Henry IV., the seats in Parliament became hereditary. The great magistrates thus constituted wore robes of ermine, or of scarlet adorned with velvet. The Palace of Justice (Palais de Justice), on an island in the Seine, was given to Parliament for its sessions by Charles V. In its hall scenes of tragic interest, including, in modern times, the condemnation of Marie Antoinette and of Robespierre, have taken place. The crown was represented by a great officer, a public prosecutor or attorney-general (procureur général). He and his assistants were termed the "king's people" (gens du roi). They had the privilege of speaking with their hats on. It was an ancient custom to enroll the royal ordinances in the parliamentary records. Gradually it came to be considered that no statute or decree had the force of law unless it was entered on the registers of Parliament. Great conflicts occurred with the kings when Parliament refused "to register" their edicts or treaties. Then the king would hold "a bed of justice,"--so called from the cushions of the seat where he sat in the hall of Parliament, whither he came in person to command them to register the obnoxious enactment. This royal intervention could not be resisted: commonly the enrollment would be made, but sometimes under a protest. Each of the local parliaments claimed to be supreme in its own province: they were held to constitute together one institution, and all the judges were on a level. Attempts at political interference by Parliaments, the kings resisted. At the French Revolution in 1790, the Parliaments were finally abolished.

HENRY III. (1216-1272).--John's eldest son, Henry, when he was crowned by the royalists, was only nine years old. For a short time he had a wise guardian in William, Earl of Pembroke. In two battles, one on the land and one on the sea, Louis VIII. (1223-1226), son of Philip Augustus of France, was defeated. He made peace, and returned to France. Henry married Eleanor, the daughter of Raymond, count of Provence,--a beautiful and accomplished woman, but she was unpopular in England. The king, as well as his wife, lavished offices, honors, and lands upon foreigners. He was a weak prince, and unwisely accepted for his second son, Edmund, the crown of the Two Sicilies, which could be won only at the expense of England. This measure induced the barons to compel Henry to a measure equivalent to the placing of authority in the hands of a council. This brought on a war between the king and the barons. The latter were led by Simon de Montfort (the second of the name), who had inherited the earldom of Leicester through his mother. Through him PARLIAMENT assumed the form which it has since retained. The greater barons, the lords or peers, with the bishops and principal abbots, came together in person, and grew into the House of Lords. The freeholders of each county had sent some of the knights to represent them. The attendance of these knights now began to be regular; but besides the two knights from each county, who were like the county members of our own time, Simon caused each city and borough to send two of their citizens, or burgesses. Thus the House of Commons arose. Simon defeated Henry at Lewes (1264): but the barons flocked to the standard of Prince Edward, who escaped from custody; and Simon was defeated and slain at the battle of Evesham in 1265. Henry was restored to power. He died in 1272, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, which he had begun to rebuild. Under Henry, the Great Charter, with some alterations, was three times confirmed. A Charter of the Forest was added, providing that no man should lose life or limb for taking the king's game. Cruel laws for the protection of game in the forests or uncultivated lands had been a standing grievance from the days of the Norman Conquest. The confirming of the Great Charter in 1225 was made the condition of a grant of money from the National Council to the king. When the bishops, in 1236, desired to have the laws of inheritance conformed to the rules of the Church, the barons made the laconic answer, "We will not change the laws of England" (Nolumus leges Anglice mutare).

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IV. RISE OF THE BURGHER CLASS: SOCIETY IN THE ERA OF THE CRUSADES

RISE OF THE CITIES.--Under feudalism, only two classes present themselves to view,--the nobility and the clergy on the one hand, and the serfs on the other. This was the character of society in the ninth century. In the tenth century we see the beginnings of an intermediate class, the germ of "the third estate." This change appears in the cities, where the burghers begin to increase in intelligence, and to manifest a spirit of independence. From this time, for several centuries, their power and privileges continued to grow.

GROWTH OF THE CITIES.--The same need of defense that led to the building of towers and castles in the country drove men within the walls of towns. Industry and trade developed intelligence, and produced wealth. But burghers under the feudal rule were obliged to pay heavy tolls and taxes. For example, for protection on a journey through any patch of territory, they were required to make a payment. Besides the regular exactions, they were exposed to most vexatious depredations of a lawless kind. As they advanced in thrift and wealth, communities that were made up largely of artisans and tradesmen armed themselves for their own defense. From self-defense they proceeded farther, and extorted exemptions and privileges from the suzerain, the effect of which was to give them a high though limited degree of self-government.

ORIGIN OF MUNICIPAL FREEDOM.--It has been supposed that municipal government in the Middle Ages was a revival of old Roman rights and customs, and thus an heirloom from antiquity. The cities--those on the Rhine and in Gaul, for example--were of Roman origin. But the view of scholars at present is, that municipal liberty, such as existed in the Middle Ages, was a native product of the Germanic peoples. The cities were incorporated into the feudal system. They were subject to a lay lord or to a bishop. In Italy, however, they struggled after a more complete republican system.

CITIES AND SUZERAINS.--In the conflicts which were waged by the cities, they were sometimes helped by the suzerain against the king, and sometimes by the king against the nearer suzerain. In England the cities were apt to ally themselves with the nobility against the king: in Germany and France the reverse was the fact. But in Germany the cities which came into an immediate relation to the sovereign were less closely dependent on him than were the cities in France on the French king.

TWO CLASSES OF CITIES.--Not only did the cities wrest from the lords a large measure of freedom: it was often freely conceded to them. Nobles, in order to bring together artisans, and to build up a community in their own neighborhood, granted extraordinary privileges. Charters were given to cities by the king. Communities thus formed differed from the other class of cities in not having the same privilege of administering justice within their limits.

GERMAN CITIES.--The cities in Germany increased in number on the fall of the Hohenstaufen family. They made the inclosure of their walls a place of refuge, as the nobles did the vicinity of their castles. They eventually gained admittance to the Diets of the empire. They formed leagues among themselves, which, however, did not become political bodies, any more than the Italian leagues.

THE ROMAN LAW.--The revised study of the Roman law brought in a code at variance with feudal principles. The middle class, that was growing up in the great commercial cities, availed themselves, as far as they could, of its principles in regard to the inheritance of property. The legists helped in a thousand ways to emancipate them from the yoke of feudal traditions.

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT.--The cities themselves often had vassals, and became suzerains. Government rested in the hands of the magistrates. They were chosen by the general assembly of the inhabitants, who were called together by the tolling of the bell. The magistrates governed without much restraint until another election, unless there were popular outbreaks, "which were at this time," as Guizot remarks, "the great guarantee for good government." Where the courage and spirit of burghers were displayed was in the maintenance of their own privileges, or purely in self-defense. In all other relations they showed the utmost humility; and in the twelfth century, when their emancipation is commonly dated, they did not pretend to interfere in the government of the country.

TRAVELERS AND TRADE.--The East, especially India, was conceived of as a region of boundless riches; but commerce with the East was hindered by a thousand difficulties and dangers. Curiosity led travelers to penetrate into the countries of Asia. Among them the Polo family of Venice, of whom Marco was the most famous, were specially distinguished. Marco Polo lived in China, with his father and his uncle, twenty-six years. After his return, and during his captivity at Genoa, he wrote the celebrated accounts of his travels. He died about 1324. Sir John Mandeville also wrote of his travels, but most of his descriptions were taken from the work of Friar Odoric, of Pordenone, who had visited the Far East. Merchants did not venture so far as did bold explorers of a scientific turn. Commerce in the Middle Ages was mainly in two districts,--the borders of the North Sea and of the Baltic, and the countries upon the Mediterranean. Trade in the cities on the African coast, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, was flourishing; and the Arabs of Spain were industrious and rich. Arles, Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Florence, Amalfi, Venice, vied with one another in traffic with the East. Intermediate between Venice and Genoa, and the north of Europe, were flourishing marts, among which Strasburg and other cities on the Rhine--Augsburg, Ulm, Ratisbon, Vienna, and Nuremberg--were among the most prominent. Through these cities flowed the currents of trade from the North to the South, and from the South to the North.

THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE.--To protect themselves against the feudal lords and against pirates, the cities of Northern Germany formed (about 1241) the Hanseatic League, which, at the height of its power, included eighty-five cities, besides many other cities more or less closely affiliated with it. This league was dominant, as regards trade and commerce, in the north of Europe, and united under it the cities on the Baltic and the Rhine, as well as the large cities of Flanders. Its merchants had control of the fisheries, the mines, the agriculture, and manufactures of Germany. Lübeck, Cologne, Brunswick, and Dantzic were its principal places. Lübeck was its chief center. In all the principal towns on the highways of commerce, the flag of the Hansa floated over its counting-houses. Wherever the influence of the league reached, its regulations were in force. It almost succeeded in monopolizing the trade of Europe north of Italy.

FLANDERS: ENGLAND: FRANCE.--The numerous cities of Flanders--of which Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges were best known--became hives of industry and of thrift. Ghent, at the end of the thirteenth century, surpassed Paris in riches and power. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, the number of its fighting men was estimated at eighty thousand. The development of Holland was more slow. Amsterdam was constituted a town in the middle of the thirteenth century. England began to exchange products with Spain. It sent its sheep, and brought back the horses of the Arabians. The cities of France--Rouen, Orleans, Rheims, Lyons, Marseilles, etc.--were alive with manufactures and trade. In the twelfth century the yearly fairs at Troyes, St. Denis, and Beaucaire were famous all over Europe.

NEW INDUSTRIES.--It has been already stated that the crusaders brought back to Europe the knowledge as well as the products of various branches of industry. Such were the cloths of Damascus, the glass of Tyre, the use of windmills, of linen, and of silk, the plum-trees of Damascus, the sugar-cane, the mulberry-tree. Cotton stuffs came into use at this time. Paper made from cotton was used by the Saracens in Spain in the eighth century. Paper was made from linen at a somewhat later date. In France and Germany it was first manufactured early in the fourteenth century.

THE JEWS.--The Jews in the Middle Ages were often treated with extreme harshness. An outburst of the crusading spirit was frequently attended with cruel assaults upon them. As Christians would not take interest, money-lending was a business mainly left to the Hebrews. By them, bills of exchange were first employed.

OBSTACLES TO TRADE.--The great obstacle to commerce was the insecurity of travel. Whenever a shipwreck took place, whatever was cast upon the shore was seized by the neighboring lord. A noble at Leon, in Brittany, pointing out a rock on which many vessels had been wrecked, said, "I have a rock there more precious than the diamonds on the crown of a king." It was long before property on the sea was respected, even in the same degree as property on the land. Not even at the present day has this point been reached. The infinite diversity of coins was another embarrassment to trade. In every fief, one had to exchange his money, always at a loss. Louis IX. ordained that the money of eighty lords, who had the right to coin, should be current only in their own territories, while the coinage of the king should be received everywhere.

GUILDS.--A very important feature of mediæval society was the guilds. Societies more or less resembling these existed among the Romans, and were called collegia,--some being for good fellowship or for religious rites, and others being trade-corporations. There were, also, similar fraternities among the Greeks in the second and third centuries B.C. In the Middle Ages, there were two general classes of guilds: First, there were the peace-guilds, for mutual protection against thieves, etc., and for mutual aid in sickness, old age, or impoverishment from other causes. They were numerous in England, and spread over the Continent. Secondly, there were the trade-guilds, which embraced the guilds-merchant, and the craft-guilds. The latter were associations of workmen, for maintaining the customs of their craft, each with a master, or alderman, and other officers. They had their provisions for mutual help for themselves and for their widows and orphans, and they had their religious observances. Each had its patron saint, its festivals, its treasury. They kept in their hands the monopoly of the branch of industry which belonged to them. They had their rules in respect to apprenticeship, etc. Almost all professions and occupations were fenced in by guilds.

MONASTICISM.--Society in the Middle Ages presented striking and picturesque contrasts. This was nowhere more apparent than in the sphere of religion. Along with the passion for war and the consequent reign of violence, there was a parallel self-consecration to a life of peace and devotion. With the strongest relish for pageantry and for a brilliant ceremonial in social life and in worship, there was associated a yearning for an ascetic course under the monastic vows. As existing orders grew rich, and gave up the rigid discipline of earlier days, new orders were formed by men of deeper religious earnestness. In the eleventh century, there arose, among other orders, the Carthusian and Cistercian; in the twelfth century, the Premonstrants and the Carmelites, and the order of Trinitarians for the liberation of Christian captives taken by the Moslems. The older orders, especially that of the Benedictines in its different branches, became very wealthy and powerful. The Cistercian Order, under its second founder, St. Bernard (who died in 1153), spread with wonderful rapidity.

THE MENDICANT ORDERS.--In the thirteenth century, when the papal authority was at its height, the mendicant orders arose. The order of St. Francis was fully established in 1223, and the order of St. Dominic in 1216. They combined with monastic vows the utmost activity in preaching and in other clerical work. These orders attracted young men of talents and of a devout spirit in large numbers. The mendicant friars were frequently in conflict with the secular clergy,--the ordinary priesthood,--and with the other orders. But they gained a vast influence, and were devotedly loyal to the popes. It must not be supposed that the monastic orders generally were made up of the weak or the disappointed who sought in cloisters a quiet asylum. Disgust with the world, from whatever cause, led many to become members of them; but they were largely composed of vigorous minds, which, of their own free choice, took on them the monastic vows.

THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES.--The Crusades were accompanied by a signal revival of intellectual activity. One of the most important events of the thirteenth century was the rise of the universities. The schools connected with the abbeys and the cathedrals in France began to improve in the eleventh century, partly from an impulse caught by individuals from the Arabic schools in Spain. After the scholastic theology was introduced, teachers in this branch began to give instruction near those schools in Paris. Numerous pupils gathered around noted lecturers. An organization followed which was called a university,--a sort of guild,--made up of four faculties,--theology, canon law, medicine, and the arts. The arts included the three studies (trivium) of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, with four additional branches (the quadrivium),--arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy. Paris became the mother of many other universities. Next to Paris, Oxford was famous as a seat of education. Of all the universities, Bologna in Italy was most renowned as a school for the study of the civil law.

SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY.--The scholastic theology dates from the middle of the eleventh century. It was the work of numerous teachers, many of them of unsurpassed acuteness, who, at a time when learning and scholarship were at a low ebb, made it their aim to systemize, elucidate, and prove on philosophical grounds, the doctrines of the Church. Aristotle was the author whose philosophical writings were most authoritative with the schoolmen. In theology, Augustine was the most revered master.

The main question in philosophy which the schoolmen debated was that of Nominalism and Realism. The question was, whether a general term, as man, stands for a real being designated by it (as man, in the example given, for humanity), or is simply the name of divers distinct individuals.

THE LEADING SCHOOLMEN.--In the eleventh century Anselm of Canterbury was a noble example of the scholastic spirit. In the thirteenth century Abelard was a bold and brilliant teacher, but with less depth and discretion. He, like other eminent schoolmen, attracted multitudes of pupils. The thirteenth century was the golden age of scholasticism. Then flourished Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventura, and others very influential in their day. There were two schools of opinion,--that of the Thomists, the adherents of Aquinas, the great theologian of the Dominican order; and that of the Scotists, the adherents of Duns Scotus, a great light of the Franciscans. They differed on various theological points not involved in the common faith.

The discussions of the schoolmen were often carried into distinctions bewildering from their subtlety. There were individuals who were more disposed to the inductive method of investigation, and who gave attention to natural as well as metaphysical science. Perhaps the most eminent of these is Roger Bacon. He was an Englishman, was born in 1219, and died about 1294. He was imprisoned for a time on account of the jealousy with which studies in natural science and new discoveries in that branch were regarded by reason of their imagined conflict with religion. Astrology was cultivated by the Moors in Spain in connection with astronomy. It spread among the Christian nations. Alchemy, the search for the transmutation of metals, had its curious votaries. But such pursuits were popularly identified with diabolic agency.

THE VERNACULAR LITERATURES: THE TROUBADOURS.--Intellectual activity was for a long time exclusively confined to theology. The earliest literature of a secular cast in France belongs to the tenth and eleventh centuries, and to the dialect of Provence. The study of this language, and the poetry composed in it, became the recreation of knights and noble ladies. Thousands of poets, who were called Troubadours (from trobar, to find or invent), appeared almost simultaneously, and became well known in Spain and in Italy as well as in France. At the same time the period of chivalry began. The theme of their tender and passionate poems was love. They indulged in a license which was not offensive, owing to the laxity of manners and morals in Southern France at that day, but would be intolerable in a different state of society. Kings, as well as barons and knights, adopted the Provençal language, and figured as troubadours. In connection with jousts and tournaments, there would be a contest for poetical honors. The "Court of Love," made up of gentle ladies, with the lady of the castle at their head, gave the verdict. Besides the songs of love, another class of Provençal poems treated of war or politics, or were of a satirical cast. From the Moors of Spain, rhyme, which belonged to Arabian poetry, was introduced, and spread thence over Europe. After the thirteenth century the troubadours were heard of no more, and the Provençal tongue became a mere dialect.

THE NORMAN WRITERS.--The first writers and poets in the French language proper appeared in Normandy. They called themselves Trouvères. They were the troubadours of the North. They composed romances of chivalry, and Fabliaux, or amusing tales. They sang in a more warlike and virile strain than the poets of the South. Their first romances were written late in the twelfth century. About that time Villehardouin wrote in French a history of the conquest of Constantinople. From the poem entitled "Alexander," the name of Alexandrine verse came to be applied to the measure in which it was written. A favorite theme of the romances of chivalry was the mythical exploits of Arthur, the last Celtic king of Britain, and of the knights of the Round Table. Another class of romances of chivalry related to the court of Charlemagne. The Fabliaux in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were largely composed of tales of ludicrous adventures.

GERMAN, ENGLISH, AND SPANISH WRITERS.--In Germany, in the age of the Hohenstaufens, the poets called Minnesingers abounded. They were conspicuous at the splendid tournaments and festivals. In the thirteenth century numerous lays of love, satirical fables, and metrical romances were composed or translated. Of the Round Table legends, that of the San Graal (the holy vessel) was the most popular. It treated of the search for the precious blood of Christ, which was said to have been brought in a cup or charger into Northern Europe by Joseph of Arimathea. During this period the old ballads were thrown into an epic form; among them, the Nibelungenlied, the Iliad of Germany. The religious faith and loyalty of the Spanish character, the fruit of their long contest with the Moors, are reflected in the poem of the Cid, which was composed about the year 1200. It is one of the oldest epics in the Romance languages. In England during this period, we have the chronicles kept in the monasteries. Among their authors are William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk of St. Albans.

DANTE.--Dante, the chief poet of Italy, and the father of its vernacular literature, was born in Florence in 1265. The Divine Comedy is universally regarded as one of the greatest products of poetical genius.

The family of Alighieri, to which Dante belonged, was noble, but not of the highest rank. He was placed under the best masters, and became not only an accomplished student of Virgil and other Latin poets, but also an adept in theology and in various other branches of knowledge. His training was the best that the time afforded. His family belonged to the anti-imperial party of Guelfs. The spirit of faction raged at Florence. Dante was attached to the party of "Whites" (Bianchi), and, having held the high office of prior in Florence, was banished, with many others, when the "Blacks" (Neri) got the upper hand (1302). Until his death, nineteen years later, he wandered from place to place in Italy as an exile. Circumstances, especially the distracted condition of the country, led him to ally himself with the Ghibellines, and to favor the imperial cause. All that he saw and suffered until he breathed his last, away from his native city, at Ravenna, combined to stir within him the thoughts and passions which find expression in his verse.

No poet before Dante ever equaled him in depth of thought and feeling. His principal work is divided into three parts. It is an allegorical vision of hell, purgatory, and heaven. Through the first two of these regions, the poet is conducted by Virgil. In the third, Beatrice is his guide. When he was a boy of nine years of age, he had met, at a May-day festival, Beatrice, who was of the same age; and thenceforward he cherished towards her a pure and romantic affection. Before his twenty-fifth year she died; but, after her death, his thoughts dwelt upon her with a refined but not less passionate regard. She is his imaginary guide through the abodes of the blest. His Young Life (Vita Nuova) gives the history of his love. The "Divine Comedy"--so called because the author would modestly place it below the rank of tragedy,--besides the lofty genius which it exhibits, besides the matchless force and beauty of its diction, sums up, so to speak, what is best and most characteristic in the whole intellectual and religious life of the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas was Dante's authority in theology· The scholastic system taught by the Church is brought to view in his pictures of the supernatural world, and in the comments connected with them.

PAINTING.--After the Lombard conquest of Italy, art branched off into two schools. The one was the Byzantine, and the other the Late Roman. In the Byzantine paintings, the human figures are stiff, and conventional forms prevail. The Byzantine school conceived of Jesus as without beauty of person,--literally "without form or comeliness." The Romans had a directly opposite conception. Byzantine taste had a strong influence in Italy, especially at Venice. This is seen in the mosaics of St. Mark's Cathedral. The first painter to break loose from Byzantine influence, and to introduce a more free style which flourished under the patronage of the Church, was Cimabue (1240-1302), who is generally considered the founder of modern Italian painting. The first steps were now taken towards a direct observation and imitation of nature. The artist is no longer a slavish copyist of others. "Cimabue" says M. Taine, "already belongs to the new order of things; for he invents and expresses." But Cimabue was far outdone by Giotto (1276-1337), who cast off wholly the Byzantine fetters, studied nature earnestly, and abjured that which is false and artificial. Notwithstanding his technical defects, his force, and "his feeling for grace of action and harmony of color," were such as to make him, even more than Cimabue, "the founder of the true ideal style of Christian art, and the restorer of portraiture." "His, above all, was a varied, fertile, facile, and richly creative nature." The contemporary of Dante, his portrait of the poet has been discovered in recent times on a wall in the Podesta at Florence. "He stands at the head of the school of allegorical painting, as the latter of that of poetry." The most famous pupil of Giotto was Taddeo Gaddi (about 1300-1367).

SCULPTURE.--In the thirteenth century, the era of the revival of art in Italy, a new school of sculpture arose under the auspices especially of two artists, Niccolo of Pisa and his son Giovanni. They brought to their art the same spirit which belonged to Giotto in painting and to Dante in poetry. The same courage that moved the great poet to write in his own vernacular tongue, instead of in Latin, emboldened the artists to look away from the received standards, and to follow nature. In the same period a new and improved style of sculpture appears in other countries, especially in the Gothic cathedrals of Germany and France.

ARCHITECTURE.--The earliest Christian churches were copies of the Roman basilica,--a civil building oblong in shape, sometimes with and sometimes without rows of columns dividing the nave from the aisles: at one end, there was usually a semicircular apse. Most of the churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were built after this style. Then changes were introduced, which in some measure paved the way for the Gothic, the peculiar type of mediæval architecture. The essential characteristic of this style is the pointed arch. This may have been introduced by the returning crusaders from buildings which they had observed in the East. Its use and development in the churches and other edifices of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were without previous example. The Gothic style was carried to its perfection in France, and spread over England and Germany. The cathedrals erected in this form are still the noblest and most attractive buildings to be seen in the old European towns.

The cathedral in Rheimes was commenced in 1211: the choir was dedicated in 1241, and the edifice was completed in 1430. The cathedral of Amiens was begun in 1220; that of Chartres was begun about 1020, and was dedicated in 1260; that of Salisbury was begun in 1220; that of Cologne, in 1248; the cathedral of Strasburg was only half finished in 1318, when the architect, Erwin of Steinbach, died; that of Notre Dame in Paris was begun in 1163; that of Toledo, in 1258. These noble buildings were built gradually: centuries passed before the completion of them. Several of them to this day remain unfinished.

FRANCE.--THE HOUSE OF VALOIS.

PHILIP VI, 1328-1350, m. Jeanne, daughter of Robert II, Duke of Burgundy. | +--JOHN, 1350-1364, m. Bona, daughter of John, King of Bohemia. | +--CHARLES V, 1364-1380, m. Jeanne, daughter of Peter I, Duke of Bourbon. | +--CHARLES VI, 1380-1422, m. | Isabella, daughter of Stephen, Duke of Bavaria. | | | +--CHARLES VII, 1422-1461, | m. Mary, daughter | of Louis II of Anjou. | | | +--LOUIS XI, 1461-1483, | m. (2), Charlotte, | daughter of Louis, | Duke of Savoy. | | | +--3, CHARLES VIII, 1483-1498, | m. Anne of Bretagne. | +--Louis, Duke of Orleans (d. 1407) m. Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzi, Duke of Milan. | +--Charles, Duke of Orleans (d. 1467), | m. Mary of Cleves. | | | +--2, Anne of Bretagne, | m. LOUIS XII, 1498-1515. | | | +--Claude, m. FRANCIS I, 1515-1547. | +--John, Count of Angoulême (d. 1467). | +--Charles, count (d. 1496), m. Louisa, daughter of Philip II, Duke of Savoy. | +--FRANCIS I, 1515-1547. | | | +--HENRY II. 1547-1559, m.. | Catherine de' Medici, d.. 1589. | | | +--FRANCIS II, 1559-1560, m. | | Mary, Queen of Scots. | | | +--CHARLES IX, 1560-1574, | | m. Elizabeth, daughter of | | Emperor Maximilian II. | | | +--HENRY III. 1574-1589, m. | | Louis, daughter of Nicholas, | | Duke of Mercoeur. | | | +--Margaret, | m. | +--HENRY IV, succeeded 1589. | | | +--Jeanne, m. Anthony of Bourbon. | | +--MARGARET, m. (2), HENRY II OF NAVARRE.

ENGLAND.--DESCENDANTS OF EDWARD I

EDWARD I, 1272-1307, m.. 1, Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand III of Castile; | | +--4, EDWARD II, 1307-1327, m.. Isabel, daughter of Philip IV of France. | +--EDWARD III, 1327-1377, m. Philippa, daughter of William III of Hainault. | +--Edward, the Black Prince, | m. Joan of Kent. | | | +--RICHARD II, 1377-1399, m. | Anne, daughter of Emperor Charles IV. | +--Lionel, Duke of Clarence. | | | +--Philippa, m. Edmund Mortimer. | | | +--Roger Mortimer. | | | +--Edmund Mortimer. | | | +--Anne Mortimer, m. | Richard, Earl of Cambridge. | | | +--Richard, Duke of York. | | | +--EDWARD IV, 1461-1483. | | | | | +--EDWARD V (d. 1483). | | | +--RICHARD III, 1483-1485. | +--John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. | | | +--HENRY IV, 1399-1413. | | | +--HENRY V, 1413-1422. | | | +--HENRY VI, 1422-1461. | +--Edmund, Duke of York. | +--Richard, Earl of Cambridge m. Anne Mortimer (wh. see).

2, Margaret, daughter of Philip III of France.

PERIOD IV. FROM THE END OF THE CRUSADES TO THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. (A.D. 1270-1453.)

THE DECLINE OP ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY: THE GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT AND OF MONARCHY.

CHARACTER OF THE NEW ERA.--The Church was supreme in the era of the Crusades. These had been great movements of a society of which the Pope was the head,--movements in which the pontiffs were the natural leaders. We come now to an era when the predominance of the Church declines, and the Papacy loses ground. Mingled with religion, there is diffused a more secular spirit. The nations grow to be more distinct from one another. Political relations come to be paramount. The national spirit grows strong,--too strong for outside ecclesiastical control. Within each nation the laity is inclined to put limits to the power and privileges of the clergy. In several of the countries, monarchy in the modern European form gets a firm foothold. The enfranchisement of the towns, the rise of commerce, the influence gained by the legists and by the Roman law, of which they were the expounders, had betokened the dawn of a new era. The development of the national languages and literatures signified its coming. Germany and the Holy Roman Empire no longer absorb attention. What is taking place in France and England is, to say the least, of equal moment.

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I. ENGLAND AND FRANCE: SECOND PERIOD OP RIVALSHIP: THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR (A.D. 1339-1453)

PHILIP III. OF FRANCE (1270-1285).--In France royalty made a steady progress down to the long War of a Hundred Years. Philip III. (1270-1285) married his son to the heiress of Navarre. His sway extended to the Pyrenees. He failed in an expedition against Peter, king of Aragon, who had supported the Sicilians against Charles of Anjou; but the time for foreign conquests had not come.

PHILIP IV. OF FRANCE (1285-1314): WAR WITH EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND.-- Philip IV. (the Fair) has been styled the "King of the Legists." He surrounded himself with lawyers, who furnished him, from their storehouse of Roman legislation, weapons with which to face baron and pope. In 1292 conflicts broke out between English and French sailors. Philip, in his character as suzerain, undertook to take peaceful possession of Guienne, but was prevented by the English garrisons. Thereupon he summoned Edward I. of England, as the holder of the fiefs, before his court. Edward sent his brother as a deputy, but the French king declared that the fiefs were forfeited in consequence of his not appearing in person.

In the war that resulted (1294-1297), each party had his natural allies. Philip had for his allies the Welsh and the Scots, while Edward was supported by the Count of Flanders and by Adolphus of Nassau, king of the Romans. In Scotland, William Wallace withstood Edward. Philip was successful in Flanders and in Guienne. Edward, who was kept in England by his war with the Scots, secured a truce through the mediation of Pope Boniface VIII. Philip then took possession of Flanders, with the exception of Ghent. Flanders was at that time the richest country in Europe. Its cities were numerous, and the whole land was populous and industrious. From England it received the wool used in its thriving manufactures. To England its people were attached. Philip loaded the Flemish people with imposts. They rose in revolt, and Robert d'Artois, Philip's brother, met with a disastrous defeat in a battle with the Flemish troops at Courtrai, in 1302. The Flemish burghers proved themselves too strong for the royal troops. Flanders was restored to its count, four towns being retained by France.

CONFLICT OF PHILIP IV. AND BONIFACE VIII.--The expenses of Philip, in the support of his army and for other purposes, were enormous. The old feudal revenues were wholly insufficient for the new methods of government. To supply himself with money, he not only levied onerous taxes on his subjects, and practiced ingenious extortion upon the Jews, but he resorted again and again to the device of debasing the coin. His resolution to tax the property of the Church brought him into a controversy, momentous in its results, with Pope Boniface VIII.

Boniface's idea of papal prerogative was fully as exalted as that formerly held by Hildebrand and Innocent III. But he had less prudence and self-restraint, and the temper of the times was now altered. If Philip was sustained by the Roman law and its interpreters, whose counsels he gladly followed, Boniface, on the other hand, could lean upon the system of ecclesiastical or canon law, which had long been growing up in Europe, and of which the Canonists were the professional expounders. The vast wealth of the clergy had led to enactments for keeping it within bounds, like the statute of mortmain in England (1279) forbidding the giving of land to religious bodies without license from the king. The word mortmain meant dead hand, and was applied to possessors of land, especially ecclesiastical corporations, that could not alienate it. The jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, which kings, because they happened to have a less liking for feudal law, had often favored, had now come to be another great matter of contention. In 1296 Boniface VIII., in the bull clericis laicos,--so named, like other papal edicts, from the opening words,--forbade the imposition of extraordinary taxes upon the clergy without the consent of the Holy See. Philip responded by forbidding foreigners to sojourn in France, which was equivalent to driving out of the country the Roman priests and those who brought in the obnoxious bull. At the same time he forbade money to be carried out of France. This last prohibition cut off contributions to Rome. The king asserted the importance of the laity in the Church, as well as of the clergy, and the right of the king of France to take charge of his own realm. There was a seeming reconciliation for a time, through concessions on the side of the Pope; but the strife broke out afresh in 1301. Philip arrested Bernard Saisset, a bold legate of the Pope. Boniface poured forth a stream of complaints against Philip (1301), and went so far as to summon the French clergy to a council at Rome for the settlement of all disorders in France. The king then appealed to the French nation. On the 10th of April, 1302, he assembled in the Church of Notre Dame, at Paris, a body which, for the first time, contained the deputies of the universities and of the towns, and for this reason is considered to have been the first meeting of the States General, The clergy, the barons, the burghers, sided cordially with the king. The Pope then published the famous bull, Unam Sanctam, in which the subjection of the temporal power to the spiritual is proclaimed with the strongest emphasis. Boniface then excommunicated Philip, and was preparing to depose him, and to hand over his kingdom to the emperor, Albert I.

DEATH OF BONIFACE VIII.--Meantime Philip had assembled anew the States General (1303). The legists lent their counsel and active support. It was proposed to the king to convoke a general council of the Church, and to summon the Pope before it. William of Nogaret, a great lawyer in the service of Philip, was directed to lodge with Boniface this appeal to a council, and to publish it at Rome. With Sciarra Colonna, between whose family and the Pope there was a mortal feud, Nogaret, attended also by several hundred hired soldiers, entered Anagni, where Boniface was then staying. The two messengers heaped upon him the severest reproaches, and Colonna is said to have struck the old pontiff in the face with his mailed hand. The French were driven out of the town by the people; but from the indignities which he had suffered, and the anger and shame consequent upon them, Boniface shortly afterwards died.

THE "BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY" (1309-1379).--From the date of the events just narrated, the pontifical authority sank, and the secular authority of sovereigns and nations was in the ascendant. After the short pontificate of Benedict XL, who did what he could to reconcile the ancient but estranged allies, France and the Papacy, a French prelate, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, was made pope under the name of Clement V., he having previously engaged to comply with the wishes of Philip. While the Papacy continued subordinate to the French king, its moral influence in other parts of Christendom was of necessity reduced. Clement V, was crowned at Lyons in 1305, and in 1309 established himself at Avignon, a possession of the Holy See on the borders of France. After him there followed at Avignon seven popes who were subject to French influence (1309-1376). It is the period in the annals of the Papacy which is called the "Babylonian captivity." Philip remained implacable. He was determined to secure the condemnation of Boniface VIII., even after his death. Clement V. had no alternative but to summon a council, which was held at Vienne in 1311, when Boniface was declared to have been orthodox, at the same time that Philip was shielded from ecclesiastical censure or reproach.

SUPPRESSION OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS.--One of the demands which Philip had made of Clement V., and a demand which the council had to grant, was the condemnation of the order of Knights Templars, whose vast wealth Philip coveted. On the 13th of October, 1307, the Templars were arrested overall France,--an act which evinces both the power of Philip, and his injustice. They were charged with secret immoralities, and with practices involving impiety. Provincial councils were called together to decree the judgment preordained by the king. The Templars were examined under torture, and many of them were burned at the stake. A large number of those who were put to death revoked the confessions which had been extorted from them by bodily suffering. Individuals may have been guilty of some of the charges, but there is no warrant for such a verdict against the entire order. The order was abolished by Clement V.

LAW STUDIES: MERCENARY TROOPS.--During the reign of Philip the Fair, it was ordained that Parliament should sit twice every year at Paris (1303). A university for the study of law was founded at Orleans. The king needed soldiers as well as lawyers. Mercenary troops were beginning to take the place of feudal bands. Philip brought the Genoese galleys against the ships of Flanders.

THE THREE SONS OF PHILIP: THE "SALIC LAW."--Three sons of Philip reigned after him. Louis X. (1314-1316) was induced to take part in an aristocratic reaction, in behalf of "the good old customs," against the legists; but he continued to emancipate the serfs. He was not succeeded by his daughter, but by his brother. This precedent was soon transformed into the "Salic law" that only heirs in the male line could succeed to the throne. The rule was really the result of the "genealogical accident" that for three hundred and forty-one years, or since the election of Hugh Capet, every French king had been succeeded by his son. In several cases the son had been crowned in the lifetime of the father. Thus the principle of heredity, and of heredity in the male line, had taken root.

Under Philip V. and his successor, Charles IV. (1322-1328), there was cruel persecution of the Jews, and many people suffered death on the charge of sorcery.

EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND (1272-1307): CONQUEST OF WALES: WILLIAM WALLACE.--Edward, who was in the Holy Land when his father died, was a gallant knight and an able ruler,--"the most brilliant monarch of the fourteenth century." Llywelyn, prince of Wales, having refused to render the oath due from a vassal, was forced to yield. When a rebellion broke out several years later, Wales was conquered, and the leader of the rebellion was executed (1283). Thus Wales was joined to England; and the king gave to his son the title of "Prince of Wales," which the eldest son of the sovereign of England has since worn. Edward was for many years at war with Scotland, which now included the Gaelic-speaking people of the Highlands, and the English-speaking people of the Lowlands. The king of England had some claim to be their suzerain, a claim which the Scots were slow to acknowledge. The old line of Scottish princes of the Celtic race died out. Alexander III. fell with his horse over a cliff on the coast of Fife. Two competitors for the throne arose, both of them of Norman descent,--John Baliol and Robert Bruce. The Scots made Edward an umpire, to decide which of them should reign. He decided for Baliol (1292), stipulating that the suzerainty should rest with himself. When he called upon Baliol to aid him against France, the latter renounced his allegiance, and declared war. He was conquered at Dunbar (1296), and made prisoner. The strongholds in Scotland fell into the hands of the English. The country appeared to be subjugated, but the Scots were ill-treated by the English. William Wallace put himself at the head of a band of followers, defeated them near Stirling in 1292, and kept up the contest for several years with heroic energy. At length Edward, through the skill acquired by the English in the use of the bow, was the victor at Falkirk in 1298. Wallace, having been betrayed into his hands, was brutally executed in London (1305).

Edward carried off from Scone the stone on which the Scottish kings had always been crowned. It is now in Westminster Abbey, under the coronation chair of the sovereign of Great Britain. There was a legend, that on this same stone the patriarch Jacob laid his head when he beheld angels ascending and descending at Bethel. Where that stone was, it was believed that Scottish kings would reign. This was held to be verified when English kings of Scottish descent inherited the crown.

ROBERT BRUCE.--The struggle for Scottish independence was taken up by Robert Bruce, grandson of the Bruce who had claimed the crown. His plan to gain the throne was disclosed by John Comyn, nephew of Baliol: this Comyn young Bruce stabbed in a church at Dumfries. He was then crowned king at Scone, and summoned the Scots to his standard. The English king sent his son Edward to conquer him; but the king himself, before he could reach Scotland, died.

PARLIAMENT: THE JEWS.--Under Edward, the form of government by king, lords, and commons was firmly established. Parliament met in two distinct houses. Against his inclination he swore to the "Confirmation of the Charters," by which he engaged not to impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. The statute of mortmain has been referred to already. The clergy paid their taxes to the king when they found, that, unless they did so, the judges would not protect them. Edward had protected the Jews, who, in England as elsewhere, were often falsely accused of horrible crimes, and against whom there existed, on account of their religion, a violent prejudice. At length he yielded to the popular hatred, and banished them from the kingdom, permitting them, however, to take with them their property.

Edward II. (1307-1327).--Edward II., a weak and despicable sovereign, cared for nothing but pleasure.

He was under the influence of the son of a Gascon gentleman, Peter of Gaveston, whom, contrary to the injunction of his father, he recalled from banishment. Gaveston was made regent while the king was in France, whither he went, in 1308, to marry Isabel, daughter of Philip the Fair. After his return, the disgust of the barons at the conduct of Gaveston, and at the courses into which Edward was led by him, was such, that in 1310 they forced the king to give the government for a year to a committee of peers, by whom Gaveston was once more banished. When he came back, he was captured by the barons, and beheaded in 1312.

BRUCE: BANNOCKBURN: DEPOSITION OF EDWARD II.--After various successes, Robert Bruce laid siege to Stirling in 1314. This led to a temporary reconciliation between the king and the barons. Edward set out for Scotland with an army of a hundred thousand men. A great battle took place at Bannockburn, where Bruce, with a greatly inferior force of foot-soldiers, totally defeated the English. He had dug pits in front of his army, which he had covered with turf resting on sticks. The effect was to throw the English cavalry into confusion. Against the Despencers, father and son, the next favorites of Edward, the barons were not at first successful; but in 1326 Edward's queen, Isabel, who had joined his enemies, returned from France with young Edward, Prince of Wales, and at the head of foreign soldiers and exiles. The barons joined her: the Despencers were taken and executed. The king was driven to resign the crown. He was carried from one castle to another, and finally was secretly murdered at Berkeley Castle, by Roger Mortimer, in whose custody he had been placed.

On the suppression of the Knights Templars by Pope Clement V., their property in England was confiscated. The Temple, which was their abode in London, became afterwards the possession of two societies of lawyers, the Inner and Middle Temple.

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR:

PERIOD I. (TO THE PEACE OF BRÉTIGNY. 1360).

ORIGIN OF THE WAR: EDWARD III. OF ENGLAND (1327-1377).--England and France entered on one of the longest wars of which there is any record in history. It lasted, with only a few short periods of intermission, for a hundred years. At the outset, there were two main causes of strife. First, the king of France naturally coveted the English territory around Bordeaux,--Guienne, whose people were French. Secondly, the English would not allow Flanders --whose manufacturing towns, as Ghent and Bruges, were the best customers for their wool--to pass under French control. Independently of these grounds of dispute, Edward III. laid claim to the French crown, for the reason that his mother was the sister of the last king, while Philip VI. (1328-1350), then reigning, was only his cousin. The French stood by the "Salic law," but a much stronger feeling was their determination not to be ruled by an Englishman.

Edward III. claimed the throne of France in right of his mother, Isabel, the daughter of Philip IV. The peers and barons of France, on the whole, for political reasons, decided that the crown should be given to Philip (VI.). his nephew, of the house of Valois, a younger line of the Capets. Edward rendered to him, in 1328, feudal homage for the duchy of Guienne, but took the first favorable occasion to re-assert his claim to the throne. Robert II., Count of Artois, was obliged to fly from France on a charge of having poisoned his aunt and her daughters, as a part of his unsuccessful attempt to get possession of the fiefs left to them by his grandsire. He went over to England from Brussels, and stirred up the young English king to attack Philip (1334). David Bruce, whom Edward sought to drive out of Scotland, received aid from France. Philip ordered Louis, Count of Flanders, between whom and the burghers there was no affection, to expel the English from his states. James Van Arteveld, a brewer of Ghent, convinced the people that it was better to get rid of the count, and ally themselves with the English. Edward even then hesitated about entering into the conflict, but the demands and measures of Philip showed that he was bent on war. The princes in the neighborhood of Flanders, and the emperor Louis V., to whom the Pope at Avignon was hostile, declared on the side of Edward.

The following tables (in part repeated, in a modified form, from previous tables, and here connected) will illustrate the narrative:--

THE HOUSE OF VALOIS.

CHARLES, Count of Valois (d. 1325), younger son of PHILIP III, KING OF FRANCE. (See below.) | +--PHILIP VI, 1328-1350. | +--JOHN the Good, 1350-1364. | +--CHARLES V the Wise, 1364-1380. | | | +--CHARLES VI, 1380-1422. | | | | | +--CHARLES VII, 1422-1461. | | | | | +--LOUIS XI, 1461-1483. | | | | | +--CHARLES VIII, 1483-1498. | | | | | +--Jeanne, | | m | | +--Duke of Orleans, afterwards LOUIS XII, 1498-1515. | | | | | +--Charles, Duke of Orleans, (d. 1467) | | | | +--Louis, Duke of Orleans (assassinated 1407), | founder of the House of Valois-Orleans. | +--Louis, Duke of Anjou, founder | of the second Royal House of Naples. | +--John, Duke of Berry. | +--Philip, Duke of Burgundy (d. 1404).

* * * * *

PHILIP III, 1270-1285. | +--PHILIP IV, 1285-1314. | | | +--Isabel, m. Edward II of England | | | | | +--Edward II of England. | | | | | +--Edward III of England. | | | +--PHILIP V, 1316-1322. | | | +--CHARLES IV, 1322-1328. | +--Charles, Count of Valois (d. 1325), m. (1), Margaret of Naples. | +--PHILIP VI, 1328-1350.

EARLY EVENTS OF THE WAR.--Hostilities began in 1337. Edward entered France, and then for the first time publicly set up his claim to be king of France, quartering the lilies on his shield; and he was accepted by the Flemish as their suzerain. The first battle was on the sea near Fort Sluys (1340), where Edward won a victory, and thirty thousand Frenchmen were slain or drowned. This established the supremacy of the English on the water. The fleet of the French was made up of hired Castilian and Genoese vessels. In 1341 the conflict was renewed on account of a disputed succession in Brittany, in which the "Salic law" was this time on the English side.

Jane of Penthievre was supported by Philip; while Jane of Montfort, an intrepid woman who was protected by Edward, contended for the rights of her husband. This war, consisting of the sieges of fortresses and towns, was kept up for twenty-four years.

BATTLE OF CRÉCY: CALAIS: BRITTANY.--In 1346 the Earl of Derby made an attack in the south of France, while Edward, with his young son Edward, the Prince of Wales, landed in Normandy, which he devastated. King Edward advanced to the neighborhood of Paris; but the want of provisions caused him to change his course, and to march in the direction of Flanders. His situation now became perilous. He was followed by Philip at the head of a powerful army; and, had there been more energy and promptitude on the side of the French, the English forces might have been destroyed. Edward was barely able, by taking advantage of a ford at low tide, to cross the Somme, and to take up an advantageous position at Crécy. There he was attacked with imprudent haste by the army of the French. The chivalry of France went down before the solid array of English archers, and Edward gained an overwhelming victory. Philip's brother Charles, count of Alençon, fell, with numerous other princes and nobles, and thirty thousand soldiers (1346). In the battle, the English king's eldest son --Edward, the Black Prince as he was called from the color of his armor--was hard pressed; but the father would send no aid, saying, "Let the boy win his spurs." It was the custom to give the spurs to the full-fledged knight. After a siege, Calais, the port so important to the English, was captured by them. The deputies of the citizens, almost starved, came out with cords in their hands, to signify their willingness to be hanged. The French were driven out, and Calais was an English town for more than two centuries. France was defeated on all sides. The Scots, too, were vanquished; and David Bruce was made prisoner (1346). In Brittany the French party was prostrate. A truce between the kings was concluded for ten months.

THE "BLACK DEATH."--In the midst of these calamities, the fearful pestilence swept over France, called the "Black Death." It came from Egypt, possibly from farther east. In Florence three-fifths of the inhabitants perished by it. From Italy it passed over to Provence, and thence moved northward to Paris, spreading destruction in its path. It reached England, and there it is thought by some that one-half of the population perished (1348-1349).

ENGLISH AND FRENCH ARMIES.--At this time, when the power of France was so reduced, the king acquired Montpellier from James of Aragon, and the Dauphiné of Vienne by purchase from the last Dauphin, Humbert II., who entered a monastery. Dauphin became the title of the heir of the French crown. It was constantly evident how deep a root the royal power had struck into the soil of France. At times, when the kingdom was almost gone, the kingship survived. But, unhappily, there was no union of orders and classes. Chivalry looked with disdain upon the common people. The poor Genoese archers who had fought with the French at Crécy, and whose bow-strings were wet by a shower, were despised by the gentlemen on horseback. In the French armies, there was no effective force but the cavalry, and there was a fatal lack of subordination and discipline. In England, on the contrary, under kings with more control over the feudal aristocracy, and from the combination of lords and common people in resistance to kings, the English armies had acquired union and discipline. The bow in the hands of the English yeoman was a most effective weapon. The English infantry were more than a match for the brave and impetuous cavaliers of France. At Crécy the entire English force fought on foot. Cannon were just beginning to come into use. This brought a new advantage to the foot-soldier. But it seems probable that cannon were employed at Crécy.

BATTLE OF POITIERS: INSURRECTION IN PARIS.--Philip left his crown to his son, John (II.) of Normandy, called "the Good" (1350-1364); but the epithet (le Bon) signifies not the morally worthy, but rather, the prodigal, gay and extravagant. He was a passionate, rash, and cruel king. His relations with Charles "the Bad," king of Navarre,--who, however, was the better man of the two,--brought disasters upon France. This Charles II. of Navarre (1349-1387) was the grandson, on his mother's side, of Louis X. of France. John had withheld from him promised fiefs. Later he had thrown him into prison. Philip of Navarre, the brother of Charles, helped the English against John in Normandy. Meanwhile the Prince of Wales (the Black Prince) ravaged the provinces near Guienne. The national spirit in France was roused by the peril. The States General granted large supplies of men and money, but only on the condition that the treasure should be dispensed under their superintendence, and that they should be assembled every year. The army of the Black Prince was small, and he advanced so far that he was in imminent danger; but the attack on him at Poitiers (1356), by the vastly superior force of King John, was made with so much impetuosity and so little prudence that the French, as at Crecy, were completely defeated. Their cavalry charged up a lane, not knowing that the English archers were behind the hedges on either side. Their dead to the number of eleven thousand lay on the field. The king, and with him a large part of the nobility, were taken prisoners. John was taken to England (1357). From the moment of his capture he was treated with the utmost courtesy. The French peasantry, however, suffered greatly; and in France the name of Englishman for centuries afterwards was held in abhorrence.

INSURRECTION IN PARIS.--The incapacity of the nobles to save the kingdom called out the energies of the class counted as plebeian,--the middle class between the nobles and serfs. It was not without competent leaders, chief of whom were Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon, and councilor of Parliament; and Etienne Marcel, an able man, provost of the traders, or head of the municipality of Paris. The States General at Paris, at the instigation of such as these, required of the Dauphin the punishment of the principal officers of the king, the release of the King of Navarre, and the establishment of a council made up from the three orders, for the direction of all the important affairs of government. The States General, representing the South, at Toulouse voted a levy of men and means without conditions; but the Dauphin Charles was obliged, at the next meeting of the States General of Paris (1357), to yield to these and other additional demands. The king, however, a prisoner in England, at the Dauphin's request refused to ratify the compact. The agitators at Paris set the King of Navarre free, and urged him to assert his right to the throne. Marcel and the Parisian multitude wore the party-colored hood of red and blue, the civic colors of Paris. They killed two of the Dauphin's confidential advisers, the marshals of Champagne and Normandy. A reaction set in against Marcel, and in favor of the royal cause. A civil war was the result.

REVOLT OF THE JACQUERIE.--At this time, there burst forth an insurrection, called the Jacquerie, of the peasants of the provinces,--Jacques Bonhomme being a familiar nickname of the peasantry. It was attended with frightful cruelties: many of the feudal chateaux were destroyed, and all of their inmates killed. The land was given over to anarchy and bloodshed. Marcel made different attempts to effect a combination with Charles of Navarre; but the revolutionary leader was assassinated, and the Dauphin Charles, having destroyed opposition in Paris, made peace with the King of Navarre, who had kept up in the provinces the warfare against him. The movement of Marcel, with whatever crimes and errors belonged to it, was "a brave and loyal effort to stem anarchy, and to restore good government." By its failure, the hope of a free parliamentary government in France was dashed in pieces.

TREATY OF BRÉTIGNY (1360).--The captive king, John, made a treaty with Edward, by which he ceded to the English at least one-half of his dominions. The Dauphin assembled the States General, and repudiated the compact. Edward III., in 1359, again invaded France with an immense force. But Charles prudently avoided a general engagement, and Edward found it difficult to get food for his troops. He concluded with France, in 1360, the treaty of Brétigny, by which the whole province of Aquitaine, with several other lordships, was ceded to Edward, clear of all feudal obligations. Edward, in turn, renounced his claim to the French crown, as well as to Normandy, and to all other former possessions of the Plantagenets north of the Loire. The King was to be set at liberty on the payment of the first installment of his ransom.

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR:

PERIOD II. (TO THE PEACE OF TROYES, 1420).

DUCHY OF BURGUNDY.--There was an opportunity to repair a part of these losses. In 1361 the ducal house of Burgundy became extinct, and the fief reverted to the crown. But John gave it to his son, Philip the Bold, who became the founder of the Burgundian branch of the house of Valois. Philip married the heiress of Flanders, and thus founded the power of the house of Burgundy in the Netherlands.

DU GUESCLIN: CONTEST IN SPAIN.--The provinces of France were overrun and plundered by soldiers of both parties, under the names of routiers (men of the road) and great companies. King John returned to England, because one of his sons, left as a hostage, had fled. There his captivity was made pleasant to him, but he died soon after.

Charles V., or Charles the Wise (1364-1380), undertook to restore prosperity to the French kingdom. He reformed the coin, the debasement of which was a dire grievance to the burghers. Against the free lances in the service of Charles of Navarre, the king sent bands of mercenary soldiers under Du Guesclin, a valiant gentleman of Brittany, who became one of the principal heroes of the time. The war lasted for a year, and the King of Navarre made peace. In Brittany, Du Guesclin was taken prisoner by the English party and the adventurers who fought with them. The king secured his release by paying his ransom; and he led the companies into Spain to help the cause of Henry of Transtamare, who had a dispute for the throne of Castile with Peter the Cruel. The Black Prince supported Peter, and, for a time, with success. In 1369 Henry was established on the throne, and with him the French party. The principal benefit of this Spanish contest was the deliverance of France from the companies of freebooters.

ADVANTAGES GAINED BY THE FRENCH.--King Charles reformed the internal administration of his kingdom, and at length felt himself ready to begin again the conflict with England. Edward III. was old. The Black Prince was ill and gloomy, and his Aquitanian subjects disliked the supercilious ways of the English. Charles declared war (1369). The English landed at Calais. But the cities were defended by their strong walls; and the French army, under the Duke of Burgundy, in pursuance of the settled policy of the king, refused to meet the enemy in a pitched battle. The next year (1370) they appeared again, and once more, in 1373, both times with the same result. The Duke of Anjou reconquered the larger part of Aquitaine. Du Guesclin was made constable of the French army, and thus placed above the nobles by birth. The English fleet was destroyed by the Castilian vessels before Rochelle (1372). Du Guesclin drove the Duke of Montfort, who was protected by the English, out of Brittany. In 1375 a truce was made, which continued until the death of Edward III. (1377). Then Charles renewed the war, and was successful on every side. Most of the English possessions in France were won back. The last exploit of the Black Prince had been the sacking of Limoges (1370). After this cruel proceeding, broken in health, he returned to England.

STATE OF ENGLAND.--The Black Prince, after his return, when his father was old and feeble, did much to save the country from misrule, so that his death was deplored. The Parliament at this time was called "the Good." It turned out of office friends of John of Gaunt,--or of Ghent (the place where he was born),--the third son of Edward. They were unworthy men, whom John had caused to be appointed. At this time occurred the first instance of impeachment of the king's ministers by the Commons. When the Black Prince died, his brother regained the chief power, and his influence was mischievous. During Edward's reign, Flemish weavers were brought over to England, and the manufacture of fine woolen cloths was thus introduced.

JOHN WICKLIFFE.--In this reign the English showed a strong disposition to curtail the power of the popes in England. When Pope Urban V., in 1366, called for the payment of the arrears of King John's tribute, Parliament refused to grant it, on the ground that no one had the right to subject the kingdom to a foreigner. It was in the reign of Edward III. that John Wickliffe became prominent. He took the side of the secular or the parish clergy in their conflict with the mendicant orders,--"the Begging Friars," as they were styled. He also advocated the cause of the king against the demands of the Pope. He contended that the clergy had too much wealth and power. He adopted doctrines, at that time new, which were not behind the later Protestant, or even Puritan, opinions. He translated the Bible into English. He was protected by Edward III. and by powerful nobles, and he died in peace in his parish at Lutterworth, in 1384; but, after his death, his bones were taken up, and burned. His followers bore the nickname of Lollards, which is probably derived from a word that means to sing, and thus was equivalent to psalm-singers.

RICHARD II. (1377-1399): THE PEASANT INSURRECTION: DEPOSITION OF RICHARD.--Richard, the young son of the Black Prince, had an unhappy reign. At first he was ruled by his uncles, especially by John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Four years after his accession, a great insurrection of the peasants broke out, from discontent under the yoke of villanage, and the pressure of taxes. The first leader in Essex was a priest, who took the name of Jack Straw. In the previous reign, the poor had found reason to complain bitterly of the landlords; but their lot was now even harder. When the insurgents reached Blackheath, they numbered a hundred thousand men. There a priest named John Ball harangued them on the equality of rights, from the text,--

When Adam delved, and Eve span, Who was then a gentleman?

Young Richard managed them with so much tact, and gave them such fair promises, that they dispersed. One of their most fierce leaders, Wat Tyler, whose daughter had been insulted by a tax-gatherer, was stabbed during a parley which he was holding with the king.

There was a Gloucester party--a party led by his youngest uncle, the Duke of Gloucester--which gave Richard much trouble; but he became strong enough to send the duke to Calais, where, it was thought, he was put to death. In 1398 he banished two noblemen who had given him, at a former day, dire offense. One of them was Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; the other was Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, afterwards called Duke of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt. When John of Gaunt died, Richard seized his lands. In 1399, when Richard was in Ireland, Bolingbroke landed, with a few men-at-arms and with Archbishop Arundel; and, being joined by the great family of Percy in the North, he obliged Richard to resign the crown. He was deposed by Parliament for misgovernment. Not long after, he was murdered. Lancaster was made king under the name of Henry IV. It was under Richard that the statute of præmunire (of 1353) was renewed, and severe penalties were imposed on all who should procure excommunications or sentences against the king or the realm.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.--In the course of the reign of Edward III., the French language, which had come in with the Normans, ceased to be the speech of fashion; and the English, as altered by the loss of inflections and by the introduction of foreign words, came into general use. The English ceased to speak the language of those who were now held to be national enemies. In 1362 the use of English was established in the courts of law. The Old English ceased to be written or spoken correctly. The Latin still continued to be familiar to the clergy and to the learned. William Langland wrote a poem entitled the Vision of Piers Plowman (1362). Pierce the Plowman's Crede is a poem by another author. The two principal poets are Chaucer and Gower, both of whom wrote the new English in use at the court. Chaucer's great poem, the Canterbury Tales, is the latest and most remarkable of his works.

HENRY IV. (1399-1413): TWO REBELLIONS: THE LOLLARDS.-By right of birth, the crown would have fallen to Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, the grandson of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Lionel having been a son of Edward III., older than John of Gaunt. But there was no law compelling Parliament to give the throne to the nearest of kin. So it fell to the house of Lancaster.

Henry had to confront two rebellions. One was that of the Welsh, under Owen Glendower, which he long tried to put down, and which was gradually overcome by Henry, Prince of Wales, the story of whose wild courses in his youth was perhaps exaggerated. The other rebellion was that of the powerful Northumberland family of the Percys, undertaken in behalf of Richard if he was alive,--for it was disputed whether or not he had really died,--and if not alive, in behalf of the Earl of March. The Percys joined Glendower. They were beaten in a bloody battle near Shrewsbury, in 1403, where Northumberland's son "Hotspur" (Harry Percy) was slain. While praying at the shrine of St. Edward in Westminster, the king was seized with a fit, and died in the "Jerusalem Chamber" of the Abbot. Under Henry the proceedings against heretics were sharpened; but the Commons at length, from their jealousy of the clergy, sought, although in vain, a mitigation of the statute. In the next reign, the Lollards, who were numerous, had a leader in Sir John Oldcastle, called Lord Cobham, who once escaped from the Tower, but was captured, after some years, and put to death as a traitor and heretic. Whether he aimed at a Lollard revolution or not, is uncertain. The Lollards were persecuted, not only as heretics, but also as desiring to free the serfs from their bondage to the landlords.

THE BURGUNDIANS AND ARMAGNACS.--In the last days of Charles V. of France, he tried in vain to absorb Brittany. Flanders and Languedoc revolted against him. The aspect of public affairs was clouded when Charles VI. (1380-1422), who was not twelve years old, became the successor to the throne. His uncles, the Dukes of Anjou, Berri, and Burgundy, contended for the regency. Their quarrels distracted the kingdom. A contest arose with the Flemish cities under the leadership of Philip Van Artevelde; but they were defeated by the French nobles at Roosebeke, and Arterielde was slain. This victory of the nobles over the cities was followed by the repression of the municipal leaders and lawyers in France. Two factions sprang up,--the Burgundians and the Armagnacs.

Margaret, the wife of the Duke of Burgundy, received Flanders by inheritance, on the death of her father the Count (1384). The king was beginning to free himself from the control of the factions when he suddenly went mad. Thenceforth there was a struggle in France for supremacy between the adherents of the dukes of Burgundy and the adherents of the house of Orleans. The latter came to be called Armagnacs (1410), after the Count d'Armagnac, the father-in-law of Charles, Duke of Orleans. The strength of the Burgundians was in the North and in the cities. They adhered to Urban VI., the pope at Rome, in opposition to the Avignon pope, Clement VII.; for these were the days of the papal schism. They were also friends of the house of Lancaster in England,--of Henry IV. and Henry V. The strength of the Armagnacs was in the South. At the outset, it was a party of the court and of the nobles: later it became a national party. Louis, Duke of Orleans, was treacherously assassinated by a partisan of the Burgundians (1407). This act fomented the strife.

BATTLE OF AGINCOURT: TREATY OF TROYES (1420).--It was in 1392 that the king partially lost his reason. For the rest of his life, except at rare intervals, he was either imbecile or frenzied. By the division of counsels and a series of fatalities, gigantic preparations for the invasion of England had come to naught (1386-1388). Henry V. of England (1413-1422) concluded that the best way to divert his nobles from schemes of rebellion was to make war across the Channel. Accordingly he demanded his "inheritance" according to the treaty of Brétigny, together with Normandy. On the refusal of this demand, he renewed the claim of his greatgrandfather to the crown of France, although he was not the eldest descendant of Edward III. Henry invaded France at the head of fifty thousand men. By his artillery and mines he took Harfleur, but not until after a terrible siege in which thousands of his troops perished by sickness. On his way towards Calais, with not more than nine thousand men, he found his way barred at Agincourt by the Armagnac forces, more than fifty thousand in number, comprising the chivalry of France (1415). In the great battle that ensued, the horses of the French floundered in the mud, and horse and rider were destroyed by the English bowmen. The French suffered another defeat like the defeats of Crécy and Poitiers. They lost eleven thousand men, and among them some of the noblest men in France. France was falling to pieces. Rouen was besieged by Henry, and compelled by starvation to surrender (1419). The fury of factions continued to rage. There were dreadful massacres by the mob in Paris. The Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless (Jean sans Peur), was murdered in 1419 by the opposite faction. The young Duke Philip, and even the Queen of France, Isabella, were now found on the Anglo-Burgundian side. By the Treaty of Troyes, in 1420, Catherine, the daughter of Charles VI., was given in marriage to Henry V., and he was made the heir of the crown of France when the insane king, Charles VI., should die. Henry was made regent of France. The whole country north of the Loire was in his hands. The Dauphin Charles retired to the provinces beyond that river.

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR:

PERIOD III. (TO THE END, 1463).

FRANCE IN 1422.--Both Henry and Charles VI. died in 1422. The Duke of Bedford was made regent in France, ruling in the name of his infant nephew (Henry VI.). Charles VII. (1422-1461) was proclaimed king by the Armagnacs south of the Loire. His situation was desperate, but he represented the national cause. Bedford laid siege to Orleans, the last bulwark of the royal party. The English were weakened, however, by the withdrawal of the Duke of Burgundy and his forces.

JOAN OF ARC.--When the national cause was at this low point, Providence raised up a deliverer in the person of a pure, simple-hearted, and pious maiden of Domrémy in Lorraine, seventeen years of age, Jeanne Dare by name (the name Joan of Arc being merely a mistake in orthography). The tales of suffering that she had heard deeply moved her. She felt herself called of Heaven to liberate France. She fancied that angels' voices bade her undertake this holy mission. Her own undoubting faith aroused faith in others. Commissioned by the king, she mounted a horse, and, with a banner in her hand, joined the French soldiers, whom she inspired with fresh courage. They forced the English to give up the siege of Orleans, and to march away. Other defeats of the English followed. The Maid of Orleans took Charles to Rheims, and stood by him at his coronation. The English and Burgundians rallied their strength. Joan of Arc was ill supported, and was made prisoner at Compèigne by the Burgundians. They delivered her to the English. She was subjected to grievous indignities, was condemned as a witch, and finally burned as a relapsed heretic at Rouen (1431). The last word she uttered was "Jesus." Her character was without a taint. In her soul, the spirit of religion and of patriotism burned with a pure flame. A heroine and a saint combined, she died "a victim to the ingratitude of her friends, and the brutality of her foes."

THE ENGLISH DRIVEN OUT--In 1435 the Duke of Burgundy was reconciled to Charles VII., and joined the cause of France. The generals of Charles gained possession of one after another of the provinces. During a truce of two years, Henry VI. of England (1422-1461) married Margaret of Anjou, the daughter of King René. Henry was of a gentle temper, but lacked prudence and vigor. The king of France and the dauphin began the organization of a standing army, which greatly increased the military strength of the country (1439). In 1449 the war with England was renewed. With the defeat of the English, and the death of their commander, Talbot, in 1453, the contest of a century came to an end. All that England retained across the Channel was Calais with Havre and Guines Castle. France was desolated by all this fruitless strife. Some of the most fertile portions of its territory were reduced to a desert, "given up to wolves, and traversed only by the robber and the free-lance."

REBELLION of "JACK CADE."--The peasants in England were now free from serfdom. Under Henry VI. occurred a formidable insurrection of the men of Kent, who marched to London led by John Cade, who called himself John Mortimer. They complained of bad government and extortionate taxes. One main cause of the rising was the successes of the French. The condition of the laboring class had much improved. The insurgents were defeated by the citizens, and their leader was slain. In this reign began the long "Wars of the Roses," or the contest of the houses of York and Lancaster for the throne.

MILAN.--THE VISCONTI AND SFORZA.

Matteo I, VISCONTI (nephew of Archbishop Otto), Lord of Milan, 1295-1332. | +--Stefano (d. 1327). | +--Matteo II,[1] 1354-1355. | +--Bernabo,[1] 1354-1385. | | | +--Catharine, | m. (2), | +--GIAN GALEAZZO, 1378-1402 (first duke, 1396). | | | | | +--GIOVANNI MARIA, 1402-1412. | | | | | +--FILIPPO MARIA, 1412-1447. | | | | | | | +--Bianca Maria. | | | m. | | | +--FRANCESCO SFORZA, 1450-1466 | | | | | | | | | +--GALEAZZO MARIA, 1466-1476, m. | | | | | Bona, daughter of Louis, Duke of Savoy. | | | | | | | | | | | +--GIAN GALEAZZO, 1476-1494. | | | | | | | | | +--LUDOVICO Il Moro, 1494-1500, 3, (d. 1510) | | | | m. Beatrice d'Este. | | | | | | | | | +--MASSAMILLANO,[4] 1512-1515 (d. 1530) | | | | | | | | | +--FRANCESCO MARIA, [4], 1521-1535. m. | | | | Christina, daughter of Christian II of Denmark (1) | | | | | | | Jacopo (Muzio) Attendolo di Cotignola, called Sforza. | | | | | +--Valentina, [2] m. | | Louis, Duke of Orleans. | | | | | +--Charles, Duke of Orleans. | | | | | +--LOUIS XII of France, | | Duke of Milan 1500-1512. | | +--Galeazzo II,[1] 1354-1378.

1 The Milanese territory was divided between the three brothers, and united on the death of Bernabo.

2 Hence the French claim to Milan.

3 Louis XII of France took Ludovico prisoner, and held Milan 1500-1512.

4 Puppet dukes. Milan being, in fact, the subject of contention between France and the Hapsburgs.

[Abridged from George's Genealogical Tables.]

THE THREE NORTHERN KINGDOMS BEFORE THE UNION OF CALMAR.

[D. means King of Denmark; N., King of Norway; S., King of Sweden.]

HACO IV, N. (d. 1263). | +--MAGNUS VI, N., 1263-1281. | +--ERIC II, N., 1281-1299. | +--HACO V, N., 1299-1320. | | MAGNUS I, S., 1279-1290. | | | +--BERGER, S., 1290-1320 (deposed; d. 1326) | | m. | | +--Martha. | | | | | +--CHRISTOPHER II, D., 1320-1340. | | | | | | | +--WALDEMAR III, D., 1346-1375. | | | | | | | +--Margaret,[2] D. N., 1387, S., 1388 (d. 1412). | | | m. HACO VI, N. (d. 1380) | | | | | | | +--OLAF VI, D. 1376, N. 1380 (d. 1387). | | | | | +--ERIC VI, D., 1286-1320. | | | | | ERIC V, D., 1250-1286. | | | +--Eric. | m. +--Ingeburga | +--Magnus VII (II), N. S., 1320-1365 (deposed). | +--Euphemia. m. Albert, Duke of Mecklenburg, | | | +--Albert,[1] S., 1365-1388 (deposed). | | | +--Henry, m. Ingeburga, daughter of Waldemar III, D. | | | +--Mary, m. Wratislas of Pomerania. | | | +--ERIC, D. N. S., 1412-1439 | | (deposed; d. 1459). | | | +--Catharine, m. John, son of Emperor Robert. | | | +--CHRISTOPHER, D. N. S. (d. 1448). | m. (1) | Dorothea, daughter of John Alchymista, | Margrave of Brandenburg | m. (2) | CHRISTIAN I,[3] D. N. S. | +--HACO VI, N. (d. 1380)

1 Elected to Sweden in opposition to Haco VI; deposed by Margaret.

2 Having united all three kingdoms in her own person, framed formal Union of Calmar, 1397.

3 Elected king on death of Christopher, whose widow he married; said to be descended from Eric V of Denmark.

[Abridged from George's Genealogical Tables.]

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