An introduction to the history of western Europe

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

I The Historical Point of View i

II Western Europe before the Barbarian Invasions 8

Chapter I The Historical Point Of View

I. History, in the broadest sense of the word, is all that we The scope of know about everything that man has ever done, or thought, or hoped, or felt. It is the limitless science of past human affairs, a subject immeasurably vast and important but exceedingly vague. The historian may busy himself deciphering hieroglyphics on an Egyptian obelisk, describing a mediaeval monastery, enumerating the Mongol emperors of Hindustan or the battles of Napoleon. He may explain how the Roman Empire was conquered by the German barbarians, or why the United States and Spain came to blows in 1898, or what Calvin thought of Luther, or what a French peasant had to eat in the eighteenth century. We can know something of each of these matters if we choose to examine the evidence which still exists ; they all help to make up history.

The present volume deals with a small but very important object of this

volume, portion of the history of the world. Its object is to give as

adequate an account as is possible in one volume of the chief changes in western Europe since the German barbarians overcame the armies of the Roman Empire and set up states of their own, out of which the present countries of France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, and England have slowly grown. There are, however, whole libraries upon the history of each of these countries during the last fifteen hundred years, and it requires a volume or two to give a tolerably complete account of any single important person, like St. Francis, Cromwell, Frederick the Great, or Napoleon. Besides biographies and general histories, there are many special treatises upon the Church and other great institutions ; upon the literature, art, philosophy, and law of the various countries. It is obvious, therefore, that only a very few of the historical facts known to scholars can possibly find a place in a single volume such as this. One who undertakes to condense what we know of Europe's past, since the times of Theodosius and Alaric, into the space of six hundred pages assumes a very grave responsibihty. The reader has a right to ask not only that what he finds in the book shall be at once true and clearly stated, but that it shall consist, on the whole, of the most important and useful of all the things which might have been selected from the well-nigh infinite mass of true things that are known.

We gain practically nothing from the mere enumeration of events and dates. The student of history wishes to know how people Hved ; what were their institutions (which are really only the habits of nations), their occupations, interests, and achievements ; how business was transacted in the Middle Ages almost without the aid of money ; how, later, commerce increased and industry grew up ; what a great part the Christian church played in society ; how the monks li\'ed and what they did for mankind. In short, the object of an introduction to mediaeval and modern European history is the description of the most significant achievements of western civilization during the past fifteen hundred years, — the explanation of hov/ the Roman Empire of the West and the wild and unknown districts inhabited by the German races have become the Europe of Gladstone and Bismarck, of Darwin and Pasteur.

The Historical Point of View 3

In order to present even an outline of the great changes during this long period, all that was exceptional and abnormal must be left out. We must fix our attention upon man's habitual conduct, upon those things that he kept on doing in essentially the same way for a century or_ so. Particular events are important in so far as they illustrate these permanent conditions and explain how the western world passed from one state to another.

We must learn, above all, to study sympathetically institu- we should tions and beliefs that we are tempted at first to declare absurd past^sympaand unreasonable. The aim of the historian is not to prove ^ ^^^ ^' that a particular way of doing a thing is right or wrong, as, for instance, intrusting the whole government to a king or forbidding clergymen to marry. His object is to show as well as he can how a certain system came to be introduced, what was thought of it, how it worked, and how another plan gradually supplanted it. It seems to us horrible that a man should be burned alive because he holds views of Christianity different from those of his neighbors. Instead, however, of merely condemning the practice, we must, as historical students, endeavor to see why practically every one in the thirteenth century, even the wisest and most tender-hearted, agreed that such a fearful punishment was the appropriate one for a heretic. An effort has, therefore, been made throughout this volume to treat the convictions and habits of men and nations in the past with consideration ; that is, to make them seem natural and to show their beneficent rather than their evil aspects. It is not the weakness of an institution, but the good that is in it, that leads men to adopt and retain it.

2. It is impossible to divide the past into distinct, clearly impossibility

defined periods and prove that one age ended and another the past into , . . , , . ^ clearly de-

began in a particular year, such as 476, or 1453, or 1789. fined periods.

Men do not and cannot change their habits and ways of

doing things all at once, no matter what happens. It is true

All general changes take place gradually.

The unity or continuity of history.

that a single event, such as an important battle which results in the loss of a nation's independence, may produce an abrupt change in the government. This in turn may encourage or discourage commerce and industry and modify the language and the spirit pf a people. Yet these deeper changes take place only very gradually. After a battle or a revolution the farmer will sow and reap in his old way, the artisan will take up his familiar tasks, and the merchant his buying and selling. The scholar will study and write and the household go on under the new government just as they did under the old. So a change in government affects the habits of a people but slowly in any case, and it may leave them quite unaltered.

The French Revolution, at the end of the eighteenth century, was probably the most abrupt and thoroughgoing change in the habits of a nation of which we have any record. But we shall find, when we come to study it, that it was by no means so sudden in reality as is ordinarily supposed. Moreover, the innovators did not even succeed in permanently altering the form of government ; for when the French, after living under a monarchy for many centuries, set up a republic in 1792, the new government lasted only a few years. The nation was monarchical by habit and soon gladly accepted the rule of Napoleon, which was more despotic than that of any of its former kings. In reorganizing the state he borrowed much from the discarded monarchy, and the present French republic still retains many of these arrangements.

This tendency of mankind to do, in general, this year what it did last, in spite of changes in some one department of Hfe, — such as substituting a president for a king, traveling by rail instead of on horseback, or getting the news from a newspaper instead of from a neighbor, — results in what is called the unity or continuity of history. The truth that no abrupt change has ever taken place in all the customs of a people, and that it

The Historical Point of View 5

cannot, in the nature of things, take place, is perhaps the most fundamental lesson that history teaches.

Historians sometimes seem to forget this principle, when they claim to begin and end their books at precise dates. We find histories of Europe from 476 to 918, from 1270 to 1492, as if the accession of a capable German king in 918, or the death of a famous French king in 1270, or the discovery of America, marked a general change in European affairs. In reality, however, no general change took place at these dates or in any other single year. It would doubtless have proved a great convenience to the readers and writers of history if the world had agreed to carry out a definite programme and alter its habits at precise dates, preferably at the opening of each century. But no such agreement has ever been adopted, and the historical student must take things as he finds them. He must recognize that nations retain their old customs while they adopt new ones, and that a portion of a nation may advance while a great part of it stays behind.

3. We cannot, therefore, hope to fix any year or event Meaning of which may properly be taken as the beginning of that long 'Middle period which followed the downfall of the Roman state in western Europe and which is commonly called the Middle Ages. Beyond the northern and western boundaries of the Roman Empire, which embraced the whole civilized world from the Euphrates to Britain, mysterious peoples moved about whose history before they came into occasional contact with the Romans is practically unknown. These Germans, or barbarians, as the Romans called them, were destined to put an end to the Roman Empire in the West. They had first begun to make trouble about a hundred years before Christ, when a great army of them was defeated by the Roman general, Marius. JuHus Caesar narrates in poHshed Latin, familiar to all who have begun the study of that language, how fifty years later he drove back other bands. Five hundred years elapsed,

Ages.'

however, between these first encounters and the founding of German kingdoms within the boundaries of the Empire. With their estabhshment the Roman government in western Europe may be said to have come to an end and the Middle Ages to have begun.

Yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that this means that the Roman civilization suddenly disappeared at this time. As we shall see, it had gradually changed during the centuries following the golden age of Augustus, who died a.d. 14. Long before the German conquest, art and literature had begun to decline toward the level that they reached in the Middle Ages. Many of the ideas and conditions which prevailed after the coming of the barbarians were common enough before, — even the ignorance and want of taste which we associate particularly with the Middle Ages.

The term Middle Ages is, then, a vague one. It will be used in this volume to mean, roughly speaking, the period of nearly a thousand years that elapsed between the opening of the fifth century, when the disorder of the barbarian invasions was becoming general, and the fourteenth century, when Europe was well on its way to retrieve all that had been lost since the break-up of the Roman Empire.

The ' dark It used to be assumed, when there was much less interest

in the period than there now is, that with the disruption of the Empire and the disorder that followed, practically all culture perished for centuries, that Europe entered upon the *' dark ages." These were represented as dreary centuries of ignorance and violence in marked contrast to the civilization of the Greeks and Romans on the one hand, and to the enlight^ enment of modern times on the other. The more careful studies of the last half century have made it clear that the Middle Ages were not "dark" in the sense of being stagnant and unproductive. On the contrary, they were full of movement and growth, and we owe to them a great many things ages.

TJie Historical Point of View 7

in our civilization which we should never have derived from Greece and Rome. It is the purpose of the first nineteen chapters of this manual to describe the effects of the barbarian conquests, the gradual recovery of Europe from the disorder of the successive invasions, and the peculiar institutions which grew up to meet the needs of the times. The remaining chapters will attempt to show how mediaeval institutions, habits, and ideas were supplanted, step by step, by those which exist in Europe to-day.

, CHAPTER II

Extent of the Roman Empire.

Great diversity of races included within the Empire .

4. No one can hope to understand the Middle Ages who does not first learn something of the Roman Empire, within whose bounds the Germans set up their kingdoms and began the long task of creating modern Europe.

At the opening of the fifth century there were no separate, independent states in western Europe such as we find on the map to-day. The whole territory now occupied by England, France, Spain, and Italy formed at that time only a part of the vast realms ruled over by the Roman emperor and his host of officials. As for Germany, it was still a region of forests, familiar only to the barbarous and half-savage tribes who inhabited them. The Romans tried in vain to conquer this part of Europe, and finally had to content themselves with keeping the German hordes out of the Empire by means of fortifications and guards along the Rhine and Danube rivers.

The Roman Empire, which embraced southern and western Europe, western Asia, and even the northern portion of Africa, included the most diverse peoples and races. Egyptians, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Germans, Gauls, Britons, Iberians, — all alike were under the sovereign rule of Rome. One great state embraced the nomad shepherds who spread their tents on the borders of Sahara, the mountaineers in the fastnesses of Wales, and the citizens of Athens, Alexandria, and Rome, heirs to all the luxury and learning of the ages. Whether one lived in York

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or Jerusalem, Memphis or Vienna, he paid his taxes into the

same treasury, he was tried by the same law, and looked to the

same armies for protection.

At first it seems incredible that this huge Empire, which Bonds which

included African and Asiatic peoples as well as the most various Empire

together, races of Europe in all stages of civilization, could have held

together for five centuries instead of falHng to pieces, as might have been expected, long before the barbarians came in sufficient strength to establish their own kingdoms in its midst.

Remains of a Roman Aqueduct, now used as Southern France

Bridge, near Nimes,

When, however, we consider the bonds of union which held the state together it is easy to understand the permanence of the Empire. These were : (i) the wonderfully organized government which penetrated to every part of the realm and allowed little to escape it; (2) the worship of the emperor as the incarnation of the government; (3) the Roman law in force everywhere ; (4) the admirable roads and the uniform system of coinage which encouraged intercommunication ; and, lastly, (5) the Roman colonies and the teachers maintained by the lO

The Roman government attempted to regulate everything.

The worship of the emperor.

government, for through them the same ideas and cuhure were carried to even the most distant parts of the Empire.

Let us first glance at the government and the emperor. His decrees were dispatched throughout the length and breadth of the Roman dominions; whatsoever pleased him became law, according to the well-known principle of the Roman constitution. While the cities were permitted some freedom in the regulation of their purely local affairs, the emperor and his innumerable and marvelously organized officials kept an eye upon even the humblest citizen. The Roman government, besides maintaining order, administering justice, and defending the boundaries, assumed many other responsibiHties. It watched the grain dealers, butchers, and bakers ; saw that they properly suppUed the public and never deserted their occupation. In some cases it forced the son to follow the profession of his father. If it could have had its way, it would have had every one belong to a definite class of society, and his children after him. It kept the unruly poorer classes quiet in the towns by furnishing them with bread, and sometimes with wine, meat, and clothes. It provided amusement for them by expensive entertainments, such as races and gladiatorial combats. In a word, the Roman government was not only wonderfully organized, so that it penetrated to the utmost confines of its territory, but it attempted to guard and regulate almost every interest in life.

Every one was required to join in the worship of the emperor because he stood for the majesty of the Roman dominion. The inhabitants of each province might revere their particular gods, undisturbed by the government, but all were obhged as good citizens to join in the official sacrifices to the deified head of the state. The early Christians were persecuted, not only because their religion was different from that of their fellows, but because they refused to offer homage to the image of the emperor and openly prophesied the downfall of the Roman

Westerft Europe before the Barbarian Invasions state. Their religion was incompatible with what was then deemed good citizenship, inasmuch as it forbade them to express the required veneration for the government.

As there was one government, so there was one law for The Roman all the civilized world. Local differences were not considered ; the same principles of reason, justice, and humanity were believed to hold whether the Roman citizen lived upon the Euphrates or the Thames. The law of the Roman Empire is its chief legacy to posterity. Its provisions are still in force in many of the states of Europe to-day, and it is one of the subjects of study in our American universities. It exhibited a humanity unknown to the earHer legal codes. The wife, mother, and infant were protected from the arbitrary power of the head of the

house, who, in earlier centuries, had been privileged to treat the members of his family as slaves. It held that it was better that a guilty person should escape than that an innocent person should be condemned. It conceived humanity, not as a group of nations and tribes, each with its peculiar institutions and legal customs, but as one people included in one great empire and subject to a single system of law based upon reason and equity.

A Fortified Roman Gateway at Treves

Roads and public works.

The same culture throughout the Roman Empire.

Loyalty to the Empire and conviction that it was eternal.

Reasons why the Empire lost its power to defend Itself against the Germans.

Magnificent roads were constructed, which enabled the messengers of the government and its armies to reach every part of the Empire with incredible speed. These highways made commerce easy and encouraged merchants and travelers to visit the most distant portions of the realm. Everywhere they found the same coins and the same system of weights and measures. Colonies were sent out to the confines of the Empire, and the remains of great public buildings, of theaters and bridges, of sumptuous villas and baths at places like Treves, Cologne, Bath, and Salzburg indicate how thoroughly the influence and civihzation of Rome penetrated to the utmost parts of the territory subject to her rule.

The government encouraged education by supporting at least three teachers in every town of any considerable importance. They taught rhetoric and oratory and explained the works of the great writers. The Romans, who had no marked literary or artistic ability, had adopted the culture of the Greeks. This was spread abroad by the government teachers so that an educated man was pretty sure to find, even in the outlying parts of the great Empire, other educated men with much the same interests and ideas as his own. Everywhere men felt themselves to be not mere natives of this or that land but citizens of the world.

During the four centuries from the first emperor, Augustus, to the barbarian invasions we hear of no attempt on the part of its subjects to overthrow the Empire or to secede from it. The Roman state, it was universally believed, was to endure forever. Had a rebellious nation succeeded in throwing off the rule of the emperor and estabhshing its independence, it would only have found itself outside the civilized world.

5. Just why the Roman government, once so powerful and so universally respected, finally became unable longer to defend its borders and gave way before the scattered attacks of the German peoples, who never combined in any general alliance against it, is a very difficult question to answer satisfactorily. The inhabitants of the Empire appear gradually to have lost their energy and self-reliance and to have become less and less prosperous. This may be explained partially at least by the following considerations : (i) the terrible system of taxation, which discouraged and not infrequently ruined the members of the wealthier classes; (2) the existence of slavery, which served to discredit honest labor and demoralized the free workingmen ; (3) the steady decrease of population ; (4) the infiltration of barbarians, who prepared the way for the conquest of the western portion of the Empire by their fellow-barbarians.

It required a great deal of money to support the luxurious Oppressive court of the emperors and their innumerable officials and servants, and to supply "bread and circuses" for the populace of the towns. All sorts of taxes and exactions were consequently devised by ingenious officials to make up the necessary revenue. The crushing burden of the great land tax, the emperor's chief source of income, was greatly increased by the pernicious way in which it was collected. The government made a group of the richer citizens in each of the towns permanently responsible for the whole amount due from all the landowners within their district. It was their business to collect the taxes and make up any deficiency, it mattered not from what cause. This responsibility and the weight of the taxes themselves ruined so many landowners that the government was forced to decree that no one should desert his estates in order to escape the exactions. Only the very rich could stand the drain on their resources. The middle class sank into poverty and despair, and in this way the Empire lost just that prosperous class of citizens who should have been the leaders in business enterprises.

The sad plight of the poorer laboring classes was largely slavery, due to the terrible institution of slavery which prevailed

The villa.

Slavery brings labor into disrepute.

everywhere in ancient times. So soon as the Romans had begun to conquer distant provinces the number of slaves greatly increased. For six or seven centuries before the barbarian invasions every kind of labor fell largely into their hands in both country and town. There were millions of them. A single rich landholder might own hundreds and even thousands, and it was a poor man that did not have several at least.

Land was the only highly esteemed form of wealth in the Roman Empire, in spite of the heavy taxes imposed upon it. Without large holdings of land no one could hope to enjoy a high social position or an honorable office under the government. Consequently the land came gradually into the hands of the rich and ambitious, and the small landed proprietor disappeared. Great estates called villas covered Italy, Gaul, and Britain. These were cultivated and managed by armies of slaves, who not only tilled the land, but supplied their master, his household, and themselves with all that was needed on the plantation. The artisans among them made the tools, garments, and other manufactured articles necessary for the whole community, or " family," as it was called. Slaves cooked the food, waited on the proprietor, wrote his letters, and read to him. To a head slave the whole management of the villa was intrusted. A villa might be as extensive as a large village, but all its members were under the absolute control of the proprietor of the estate. A well-organized villa could supply itself with everything that it needed, and found Httle or no reason for buying from any outsider.

Quite naturally, freemen came to scorn all manual labor and even trade, for these occupations were associated in their minds with the despised slave. Seneca, the philosopher, angrily rejects the suggestion that the practical arts were invented by a philosopher ; they were, he declares, " thought out by the meanest bondman."

Western Europe before the Barbarian Invasions i 5 Slavery did more than bring manual labor into disrepute ; it competition

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largely monopolized the market. Each great household where fatal to the articles of luxury were in demand relied upon its own host of dexterous and efficient slaves to produce them. Moreover, the owners of slaves frequently hired them out to those who needed workmen, or permitted them to work for wages, and in this way brought them into a competition with the free workman which was fatal to him.

It cannot be denied that a notable improvement in the improved condition of the slaves took place during the centuries immedi- the slaves ately preceding the barbarian invasions. Their owners aban- emancipadoned the horrible subterranean prisons in which the farm hands were once miserably huddled at night. The law, moreover, protected the slave from some of the worst forms of abuse ; first and foremost, it deprived his master of the right to kill him. Slaves began to decrease in numbers before the German invasions. In the first place, the supply had been cut off after the Roman armies ceased to conquer new territory. In the second place, masters had for various reasons begun to emancipate their slaves on a large scale.

The freed slave was called 2ifreedman, and was by no means in The freedthe position of one who was born free. It is true that he was no longer a chattel, a mere thing, but he had still to serve his former master, — who had now become his patron, — for a certain number of days in the year. He was obliged to pay him a part of his earnings and could not marry without his patron's consent.

Yet, as the condition of the slaves improved, and many of The coioni. them became freedmen, the state of the poor freeman only became worse. In the towns, if he tried to earn his living, he was forced to mingle with those slaves who were permitted to work for wages and with the freedmen, and he naturally tended to sink to their level. In the country the free agricultural laborers became colofii, a curious intermediate class, neither slave nor really free. They were bound to the particular bit i6 of land which some great proprietor permitted them to cultivate and were sold with it if it changed hands. Like the Resemblance mediaeval serf, they could not be deprived of their fields so long coio^i and the as they paid the owner a certain part of their crop and worked for him during a period fixed by the customs of the domain upon which they lived. This system made it impossible for the farmer to become independent, or for his son to be better off than he. The coloni and the more fortunate slaves tended to fuse into a single class ; for the law provided that, like the coloni, certain classes of country slaves were not to be taken from the field which they had been accustomed to cultivate but were to go with it if it was sold.^

Moreover, it often happened that the Roman proprietor had a number of dependents among the less fortunate landowners in his neighborhood. These, in order to escape the taxes and gain his protection as the times became more disorderly, surrendered their land to their powerful neighbor with the understanding that he should defend them and permit them to continue during their lifetime to cultivate the fields, the title to which had passed to him. On their death their children became coloni. This arrangement, as we shall find, serves in a measure to explain the feudalism of later times.

When a country is prosperous the population tends to increase. In the Roman Empire, even as early as Augustus, a falHng off in numbers was apparent, which was bound to sap the vitality of the state. War, plague, the evil results of slavery, and the outrageous taxation all combined to hasten the depopulation ; for when it is hard to make a living, men are deterred from marrying and find it difficult to bring up large families.

In order to replenish the population great numbers of the Germans were encouraged to settle within the Empire, where they became coloni. Constantine is said to have called in

1 There is a short description of Roman society in Hodgkin, Dynasty oj Theodosius, Chapter II.

Depopulation.

Infiltration of Germans into the Empire.

three hundred thousand of a single people. Barbarians were enHsted in the Roman legions to keep out their fellow- Germans. Julius Caesar was the first to give them a place among his soldiers. The expedient became more and more common, until, finally, whole armies were German, entire tribes being enlisted under their own chiefs. Some of the Germans rose to be distinguished generals ; others attained important positions among the officials of the government. In this way it came about that a great many of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire were Germans before the great invasions. The fine dividing the Roman and the barbarian was growing indistinct. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the influx of barbarians smoothed the way for the break-up of the western part of the Empire. Although they had a great respect for the Roman state, they must have kept some of their German love of individual liberty and could have had little sympathy for the despotism under which they lived.