Opening
Transcriber’s Note: As a result of editorial shortcomings in the original, some reference letters in the text don’t have matching entries in the reference-lists, and vice versa.
THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD
THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD
A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of all ages: edited, with the assistance of a distinguished board of advisers and contributors, by
HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.
IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME XI--FRANCE, 843-1715
The Outlook Company New York
The History Association London
1905
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
All rights reserved.
Press of J. J. Little & Co. New York, U. S. A.
Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.
Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin. Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France. Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University. Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan. Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna. Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris. Capt. F. Brinkley, Tokio.
Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin. Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University. Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg. Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University. Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society. Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.
Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin. Prof. H. Marczali, University of Budapest. Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University. Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen. Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz. Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.
Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary. Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest. Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin. Dr. Frederick Robertson Jones, Bryn Mawr College. Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London. Dr. John P. Peters, New York.
Prof. Adolph Harnack, University of Berlin. Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris. Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin. Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University. Prof. W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia. Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna. Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.
Chapter I
THE LATER CARLOVINGIANS (843-987 A.D.) 1
Charles the Bald, 1. The Northmen, 2. Edict of Mersen, 3. The Northmen’s allies, 4. Beginning of the great fiefs, 5. Edicts of Pistes and Quierzy, 6. Louis II to Carloman, 7. Charles the Fat, king and emperor, 8. The feudal régime, 10. The church, 13. Capetians and Carlovingians, 14. The last Carlovingians, 17.
Chapter II
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CAPETIAN DYNASTY (987-1180 A.D.) 22
Henry I, 24. Deeds of the great barons, 26. Philip I, 27. Louis the Fat and Louis the Young, 30. Battle of Brenneville, 31. The abbot Suger, 34. Emancipatory movements after the Crusades, 38. The communes, 38. Philosophy and thought; Abelard and St. Bernard, 40. Abelard and the university, 44. The position of woman, 45.
Chapter III
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY (1180-1270 A.D.) 47
Prince Arthur of Brittany, 49. The Albigensian Crusade, 51. League against Philip Augustus, 54. The battle of Bouvines, 54. Last years and influence of Philip Augustus, 56. Louis VIII, 56. Louis IX, called St. Louis, 58. First Crusade of St. Louis, 60. Last years and death of St. Louis, 61. Hallam’s estimate of St. Louis, 63. Piety and christianity of St. Louis, 64. Progress of the monarchy under St. Louis, 67. Aspects of thirteenth-century civilisation, 71.
Chapter IV
PHILIP III TO THE HOUSE OF VALOIS (1270-1328 A.D.) 74
Philip (III) the Bold, 74. Philip (IV) the Fair, 75. New war with Flanders, 76. The quarrel between Philip and Boniface VIII, 77. Sentence of the Templars, 83. Philip’s fiscal policy, 84. Execution of Jacques de Molay, 85. Political progress in Philip’s reign, 87. Louis (X) the Quarrelsome, 89. Philip (V) the Tall, 91. Charles (IV) the Fair, 92. Aspects of civilisation, 93. The great fairs, 95.
Chapter V
THE OPENING OF THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR (1328-1350 A.D.) 98
Edward III claims the throne of France, 103. The battle of Sluys or L’Écluse, 104. The war in Brittany, 107. Joan de Montfort defends Hennebon, 108. Philip’s financial difficulties, 110. Renewal of the war with England, 111. Edward returns to France, 112. Froissart’s description of Crécy, 114. Michelet on the results of Crécy, 118. The siege of Calais, 119. Suspension of the war, 121. Territorial acquisition, 122.
Chapter VI
JOHN THE GOOD AND CHARLES THE WISE (1350-1380 A.D.) 124
Trouble with Charles of Navarre, 126. The states-general of 1355, 128. The battle of Poitiers, 130. The states-general of 1356-1357, 132. The dauphin repudiates the Grande Ordonnance, 134. The Jacquerie, 135. Death of Marcel, 137. Peace negotiations; Edward in France, 138. The story of Le Grand Ferré, 139. The Treaty of Bretigny, 141. The last years of King John, 142. Charles the Wise, 143. Early exploits of Bertrand du Guesclin, 144. End of the Breton War; battle of Auray, 146. Du Guesclin leads the free companies into Castile, 147. The Peace of Bretigny is broken, 149. The English invasion, 150. Last years of Charles V and of Du Guesclin, 152.
Chapter VII
THE BETRAYAL OF THE KINGDOM (1380-1422 A.D.) 155
War in Flanders; battle of Roosebeke, 156. Insurrections in Paris and Rouen, 157. The King assumes the rule, 159. Hatred of the nobles for the ministry, 162. The king goes mad: the princes return to power, 163. Domestic troubles and scandals, 165. Civil war, 167. Henry V invades France; a French view, 169. Michelet’s account of the battle of Agincourt, 170. Massacre of the Armagnacs in Paris, 174. The duke of Burgundy master of Paris, 175. Siege of Rouen, 176. Henry and John the Fearless, 177. The Treaty of Troyes, 178. Henry’s struggle with the dauphin, 180. Woes of the people; the Danse Macabre, 182. The University of Paris and the council of Constance, 184.
Chapter VIII
THE RESCUE OF THE REALM (1422-1431 A.D.) 187
Monstrelet describes the siege of Montargis, 189. The siege of Orleans, 190. The “battle of the Herrings,” 191. The Maid of Orleans (La Pucelle), 194. Joan at the court, 196. The deliverance of Orleans, 198. Joan of Arc leads the king to Rheims, 200. Joan defeated at Paris, 203. Capture of Joan of Arc, 204. Trial of Joan of Arc, 206. The Twelve Articles, 207. The findings of the faculty, 211. The sentence and its execution, 213. The rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, 218. The British estimate of Joan’s services, 219.
Chapter IX
“THE CONVALESCENCE OF FRANCE” (1431-1461 A.D.) 220
The Treaty of Arras, 222. The French return to Paris, 224. The Pragmatic Sanction, 225. The atrocious crimes of the barons, 226. Gilles de Retz, 226. Charles begins the work of reform, 228. Agnes Sorel; the Praguerie, 230. Effective progress against England, 233. Expedition to Switzerland and Lorraine, 235. The battle of Sankt Jakob, 236. Military and financial reforms, 236. The close of the Hundred Years’ War, 238. The battle of Castillon, 239. The last years of Charles VII, 242. Quarrels with Burgundy and with the dauphin, 242. Death of Charles VII; the influence of his reign, 244.
Chapter X
THE REIGN OF LOUIS XI: THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROWN (1461-1483 A.D.) 247
Relations with the Church, 249. The war of the Public Weal, 250. The battle of Montlhéry and the Treaty of Conflans, 250. Political intrigues, 253. The struggle with Charles the Bold, 254. Comines describes the visit to Péronne, 255. The storming of Liège, 259. The return of Louis to France, 262. Edward IV of England aids Charles the Bold, 263. Gold and diplomacy make Louis the victor, 265. Last deeds of Charles the Bold, 266. Mary of Burgundy, 268. War with Maximilian, 270. Last years and death of Louis, 272. Martin’s estimate of Louis XI, 274. Louis’ influence on civilisation, 275. Establishment of posts in France, 275.
Chapter XI
CHARLES VIII AND LOUIS XII--THE INVASION OF ITALY (1483-1515 A.D.) 278
Charles VIII, 278. The rule of Anne de Beaujeu, 279. The struggle with the duke of Orleans, 284. Charles VIII in Italy, 288. Death of Charles VIII, 293. Louis XII, “the father of his people,” 293. Marriage with Anne of Brittany, 295. Foreign affairs, 297. Internal affairs, 302. Last years of Louis XII, 304.
Chapter XII
IMPERIAL STRUGGLES OF FRANCIS I AND HENRY II (1515-1559 A.D.) 306
Critical survey of Francis I and his period, 306. A brilliant campaign in Italy, 308. The Concordat, 309. Strife between Francis I and Charles V, 310. Meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, 311. Francis I and Charles V at war, 313. Defection of the duke de Bourbon, 314. A disastrous campaign in Italy; the battle of Pavia, 316. Francis captive in Spain; the Treaty of Madrid, 320. Further dissensions and the “Ladies’ Peace,” 322. Internal affairs, 325. The French Renaissance, 328. War again between Francis I and Charles V, 332. Last years and death of Francis I, 335. Gaillard’s estimate of Francis I, 336. Character and policy of Henry II, 337. Court favourites, 338. Religious persecutions and royal marriages, 339. War with Charles V and his successor, 342. The siege of Metz, 343. Minor engagements; the abdication of Charles V, 346. Battle and defence of St. Quentin, 347. The retaking of Calais, 347. The Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis, 348. The last days of Henry II, 349.
Chapter XIII
CATHERINE DE MEDICI AND THE RELIGIOUS WARS (1559-1589 A.D.) 351
Francis II, 352. Religious parties, 353. Death of Francis II, 355. The accession of Charles IX, 356. Civil war, 357. The Edict of Amboise and its results, 359. The Second Religious War, 361. The Third Religious War, 362. Admiral Coligny; the Peace of St. Germain, 364. A troubled peace; the marriage of Henry of Navarre, 365. The attack on Coligny, 368. Preparing for the massacre, 370. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 374. Effects of the massacre, 376. Last years, death, and character of Charles IX, 378. The accession of Henry III, 380. Political conditions, 381. The Holy League, 383. The war of the Three Henrys, 384. The battle of Coutras, 386. The Day of the Barricades and the Treaty of Union, 388. The meeting of the states-general, 388. The assassination of Henry, duke of Guise, 390. Death of Catherine de Medici, 392. The siege of Paris and the death of Henry III, 392.
Chapter XIV
HENRY OF NAVARRE, FIRST OF THE BOURBONS (1589-1610 A.D.) 395
Henry’s struggle for the crown, 395. The battle of Ivry, 397. The duke of Parma and the Spaniards, 400. Henry IV and the league, 401. Opposition of the pope and Philip II, 404. The Edict of Nantes, 405. Reorganisation of France with the aid of Sully, 407. Amours and second marriage of Henry IV, 409. Intrigues of De Biron, 412. The last years of Henry’s reign, 414. Grand design of Henry IV; his death, 415. Character and policy of Henry IV, 417. Martin’s estimate of Henry IV, 418. Stephen’s characterisation of Henry IV and his times, 419.
Chapter XV
THE LITERARY PROGRESS OF FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 422
Calvin, 426. Montaigne, 427.
Chapter XVI
THE EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS XIII AND THE RISE OF RICHELIEU (1610-1628 A.D.) 432
The regency of Marie de Medici, 432. Disgrace of Sully, 434. First revolt of the lords, 434. Last assembly of the states-general, 436. Majority of Louis XIII; marriage with Anne of Austria, 438. Richelieu appears, 438. Assassination of Marshal d’Ancre, 441. The ministry of Luynes, 443. The Huguenot uprising; the siege of Montauban, 445. Death of Luynes, 448. Richelieu’s return to the ministry, 449. Conspiracy of the court against Richelieu, 450. The siege of La Rochelle described by Seignobos, 452.
Chapter XVII
THE DICTATORSHIP OF RICHELIEU (1629-1643 A.D.) 457
Richelieu and the king, 458. Richelieu enters the European arena, 460. Enmity of Marie de’ Medici against Richelieu, 462. The Day of Dupes, 462. Exile of Marie de’ Medici, 464. The revolt of Gaston and the execution of Montmorency, 465. Foreign affairs, 466. Wars with Austria, 468. Attempt to assassinate the cardinal, 469. Character of Louis, 470. Revolt of the count de Soissons, 472. Caillet’s estimate of the administration of Richelieu, 472. The church and the state under Richelieu, 475. The conspiracy of Cinq-Mars, 478. Recovery and triumph of Richelieu, 480. The last days of Richelieu, 482. Stephen’s estimate of Louis XIII and of Richelieu, 484.
Chapter XVIII
THE SUPREMACY OF MAZARIN (1643-1661 A.D.) 487
Battle of Rocroi, 489. The importants, 491. The education of the young king, 493. Military glory, 494. Treaty of Westphalia, 496. Mazarin’s domestic policy, 497. First insurrection of the Fronde, 499. The Day of the Barricades, 500. Second act of the Fronde; arrest of Condé, 505. Resistance of Bordeaux, 506. Disgrace and exile of Mazarin, 507. Condé in power, 508. Return of Mazarin, 509. The last phase of the Fronde, 511. Battle of St. Antoine, 513. Second exile of Mazarin, 513. Mazarin again in power, 515. War with Spain continues, 516. Alliance with Cromwell; war in Flanders, 517. The Treaty of the Pyrenees, 520. Last years and death of Mazarin, 522.
Chapter XIX
“L’ÉTAT, C’EST MOI” (1661-1715 A.D.) 525
The ministers, 528. The man with the Iron Mask, 531. The ministry of Colbert, 531. Reorganisation of the finances, 532. Michelet’s estimate of Colbert, 535. Louvois, 538. Vauban, 539. Séguier, legislative works, 540. Lionne, foreign affairs and diplomacy, 541. Triumph of the absolute monarchy, 541. Submission of Parliament, 542. Submission of the nobility, 543. The third estate, 543. Louis XIV and the church, 544. The Protestants, 545. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 546. The Jansenists, 548. The police, 549. The court of the grand monarch, 550. Mademoiselle de la Vallière, 551. Madame de Montespan, 555. Poisoning: the Brinvilliers case, 556. The retirement of Montespan, 558. Madame de Maintenon, 559. Effect of Louis XIV’s policy on the nation, 561.
Chapter XX
LOUIS XIV, SPAIN, AND HOLLAND (1661-1679 A.D.) 563
The war of the Queen’s Rights, 566. The Triple Alliance, 569. Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 570. Projects against Holland, 571. The Treaty of Dover; death of Madame, 572. Treaties with other powers, 573. The war with Holland begins, 574. The passage of the Rhine, 575. The French in Holland and Germany, 576. The new coalition against France, 577. Defection of England and the imperial allies, 581. Operations in Franche-Comté; Turenne in Alsace, 581. Condé in the Netherlands, 584. Last campaigns of Turenne and Condé, 584. Events of 1676; affairs in Sicily, 585. Campaign of 1677; negotiations for peace, 587. Louis XIV settles with the coalition, 589.
Chapter XXI
THE HEIGHT AND DECLINE OF THE BOURBON MONARCHY (1679-1715 A.D.) 592
Acquisition of frontier places, 593. Preparations for a second coalition, 596. Relations with Turks and Berbers, 598. Second coalition; the league of Augsburg, 599. The Revolution in England, 600. War of the league of Augsburg, 601. Attempts to restore James II, 601. Devastation of the Palatinate, 603. The war in Savoy and Piedmont, 604. The war in the Netherlands, 604. Steenkerke and Neerwinden, 605. Last years of the war; treaty with Savoy, 606. The Treaty of Ryswick, 608. Louis XIV and the Polish throne, 609. The question of the Spanish succession, 610. Accession of the Bourbons in Spain, 612. The Grand Alliance or third coalition against France, 613. War of the Spanish Succession; the French victories, 615. The camisards, 617. War of the Spanish Succession; French reverses, 617. The battle of Blenheim, 618. The battle of Ramillies, 620. The battle of Malplaquet, 624. The battle of Denain, 626. Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt, 627. Death of Louis XIV, 629.
Chapter XXII
THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV: ASPECTS OF ITS CIVILISATION (1610-1715 A.D.) 632
Foundation of the French Academy, 632. The patronage system, 633. Literary characteristics, 635. Science, 637. Poetry: Boileau, 640. Oratory: Bossuet, 641. The third period, 642. The drama; tragedy, 643. Corneille, 643. Racine, 644. Comedy, 645. Architecture, 647. Sculpture and painting, 648. Music and the opera, 650. Rapid decline of the age of Louis XIV, 651. A French view of the effect of the age, 651.
BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 653
XVI. THE HISTORY OF FRANCE
BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES
A. ALISON, ALEXIS BELLOC, L. P. E. BIGNON, LOUIS BLANC, JULES CAILLET, J. B. R. CAPEFIGUE, THOMAS CARLYLE, FRANÇOIS R. CHÂTEAUBRIAND, ADOLPHE CHÉRUEL, JOHN WILSON CROKER, E. E. CROWE, C. DARESTE DE LA CHAVANNE, BRUGIÈRE DE BARANTE, A. GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC, PHILIP DE COMMINES, JURIEN DE LA GRAVIÈRE, LE COMTE DE TOCQUEVILLE, JEHAN DE VAURIN, VICTOR DURUY, GABRIEL HENRI GAILLARD, FRANÇOIS GUIZOT, C. P. M. HAAS, ERNEST HAMEL, LUDWIG HÄUSSER, KARL HILLEBRAND, G. W. KITCHIN, LACRETELLE, A. LAMARTINE, T. LAVALLÉE, P. E. LEVASSEUR, J. MALLET-DUPAN, HENRI MARTIN, JULES MICHELET, F. A. MIGNET, MONSTRELET, C. PELLETAN, VICTOR PIERRE, JULES QUICHERAT, ALFRED RAMBAUD, J. E. ROBINET, DUC DE SAINT-SIMON, J. R. SEELEY, C. SEIGNOBOS, J. C. S. DE SISMONDI, ALBERT SOREL, H. M. STEPHENS, H. VON SYBEL, H. TAINE, M. TERNAUX, A. THIERS, F. AROUET DE VOLTAIRE
TOGETHER WITH AN ESSAY IN FOUR PARTS
THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION OF FRANCE
BY
ALFRED RAMBAUD
WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM
J. AMBERT, MARQUIS D’ARGENSON, A. ARNETH AND M. A. GEFFROY, JULES BARNI, E. BERTIN, PAUL BONDOIS, A. BOUGÉART, M. N. BOUILLET, E. BOUTARIC, H. T. BUCKLE, T. BURETTE. F. CANONGE, HIPPOLYTE CASTILLE, H. CARNOT, SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER, CHRONIQUE DE ST. DENIS, CONTINUATOR OF GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, OLIVIER D’ORMESSON, C. A. DAUBAN, A. DE BEAUCHAMP, G. AND M. DU BELLAY, MAXIMILIAN DE BÉTHUNE, DUC DE SULLY, ÉMILE DE BONNECHOSE, MARQUIS DE CHAMBRAY, MARQUIS DE FERRIÈRES, PIERRE DE L’ESTOILE, CHARLES MERCIER DE LACOMBE, BERNARD DE LACOMBE, FRANÇOIS DE LANOUE, LA BARONNE DE STAËL, DU FRESNE DE BEAUCOURT, H. FORNERON, C. A. FYFFE, BERNARD GERMAIN, ABBÉ GIRARD, HENRI GIRARD, SAINT-MARC GIRARDIN, HENRY HALLAM, HERMANN HETTNER, VICTOR HUGO, W. H. JERVIS, J. B. F. KOCH, H. LEBER, U. LEGEAY, G. H. LEWES, L. DE LOMÉNIE, O. DE LA MARCHE, SIR THOMAS ERSKINE MAY, MARQUIS OF NORMANBY, E. DE MÉZERAY, COUNT VON MOLTKE, WILHELM MÜLLER, DAVID MÜLLER, W. F. B. NAPIER, J. B. PAQUIER, JULIA PARDOE, A. RASTOUL, P. ROBIQUET, C. ROUSSET, ROSSEEUW ST. HILAIRE, D. SAUVAGE, MAURICE DE SAXE, EDMOND SCHÉRER, F. C. SCHLOSSER, SIR WALTER SCOTT, A. SORBIN, J. L. SOULAVIE, SAINT RENE-TAILLANDIER, EUGÈNE TÉNOT, J. E. TYLER, MAURICE WAHL, JAMES WHITE, E. F. WIMPFFEN, HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, R. T. WILSON
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
All rights reserved.
I. THE LATER CARLOVINGIANS
CHARLES THE BALD (843-877 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [843-877 A.D.]]
Up to the present we have told the history of the Gauls, the Gallo-Romans, and the Franks; with the Treaty of Verdun we begin the history of the French people. There now existed in France, except the Northmen, who already were beginning to appear on its coast and who established themselves there only in small numbers, all the races of which her people are formed, and all the elements, Celtic, Roman, Christian, and Germanic, whose combination goes to make up her civilisation. The medley is even already too sufficiently advanced for one to distinguish any longer the Gallo-Roman from the Frank, the civilised man from the barbarian. All have the same customs and almost all the same tongue. The French idiom showed itself officially in the Treaty of Verdun. Law ceases to be personal and becomes local; national custom replaces the Roman or barbaric codes; there are scarcely any slaves; there are but few free men--we shall soon see nothing but serfs and lords.
But this France has no longer the extent of Gaul; the Treaty of Verdun has confined it to the Schelde and the Maas, the Saône and the Rhone, and the population within these narrow limits finds them still too broad; they wish to live apart, for themselves alone, and not to sustain a vast dominion which is crushing them and which they do not understand.
The son of Judith and Louis le Débonnaire, Charles the Bald, king of France since 840, was nothing but an ambitious man of the people. Length of days was generously bestowed upon him, as it had been with Charlemagne, for he reigned thirty-seven years--but he knew how to do nothing with his life. Difficulties, it is true, were great. The same year when the destinies of the empire were moulded at Fontenailles, Asnar, count of Jaca, helped himself to the sovereignty of Navarre, and the Northmen burned Rouen--in 843 they pillaged Nantes, Saintes, and Bordeaux. At the same time the Aquitanians rose up for a national king. The Bretons had found theirs in Noménoë, whom Charles had excommunicated by the bishops, but who defeated his lieutenants; and Septimania had its chief in Bernhard. The Saracens and the Greek pirates ravaged the south while the Northmen devastated the north and the west. And as if to fill the cup of misfortune of which this age was the bearer, the Hungarians, successors of the Huns and Avars, were putting in an appearance in the east.
THE NORTHMEN
[Sidenote: [843 A.D.]]
These dreaded pirates, the Northmen, were the men whom hunger, thirst for pillage, and love of adventure drove each year from the sterile regions of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. In three days an east wind brought their two-masted ships to the mouth of the Seine. The fleet obeyed a kuning or king. “But,” says Augustin Thierry, “he was king only at sea and in battle; for when the banquet hour arrived the whole troop sat at the same table, and the beer-filled horns passed from hand to hand without there being a first or a last. The sea-king was followed everywhere with fidelity and obeyed with zeal, for always he was reputed the bravest of the brave, like him who had never drained a cup at a protected fireside.
“He knew how to handle ships as a good knight his horse, and to the ascendency of courage and skill there was added the power that superstition gave him. He was initiated in the sciences of the Runes. He knew the mysterious characters which, graven on swords, would procure victory, and those which inscribed on the stern or on the oars would prevent shipwreck. All equal under such a chief, supporting lightly their voluntary submission and the weight of mailed armour which they promised themselves to exchange for an equal weight of gold, the Danish pirates gaily travelled the ‘path of the swans,’ as their ancient national poetry called it. Now they hugged the shores and watched their enemy in the narrow straits, bays, and little anchorage grounds, from which they got their name of vikings,--children of the bays and creeks,--now they hurled themselves forth in pursuit of him across the ocean. The violent storms of the North Sea scattered and crushed their frail ships. There were always some missing when from the chief’s ship came the signal to gather together, but those who survived their shipwrecked companions had no less confidence and no more concern. They laughed at the winds and the waves which could not destroy them. ‘The might of the storm,’ they sang, ‘aids the arms of our oarsmen--the tempest is at our service; it throws us where we would go.’”
Some of them often, in the midst of the clash of arms and the sight of blood, became possessed with a sort of mad fury which redoubled their strength and made them insensible to wounds--as if they saw revealed to their eyes the palace of their god Odin and the shining hall of Valhalla. Others showed an irresistible courage under torture, and sang their death-song in the agonies of torment. Thus the famous Lodbrog, when thrown into a ditch filled with vipers, flung proudly back these words to his enemies:
“We have fought with the sword. I was still young when in the East, under the stars of Eirar, we dug a river of blood for the wolves and invited the yellow-legged bird to a great banquet of corpses: the sea was red like a fresh-opened wound and the ravens swam in blood.
“We have fought with the sword. I have seen near Aienlane (England) numberless bodies filling the decks of the ships; we continued the fight for six whole days and the enemy did not give in; the seventh, at sunrise, we celebrated the mass of swords. Valthiof was forced to bend under our arms.
“We have fought with the sword. Torrents of blood rained from our swords at Partohyrth (Pesth). The vulture could find no more in the bodies; the bow thrummed and arrows buried themselves in coats of mail; sweat ran over the sword blades. They poured poison into the wounds and harvested the warriors like Odin’s hammer.
“We have fought with the sword. Death seizes me. The bite of the vipers has been deep. I feel their teeth at my heart. Soon, I hope the sword will avenge me in the blood of Ælla. My sons will rage at news of my death--anger will redden their visages; besides, brave warriors will take no rest until they have avenged me.
“I must cease--behold the Dysir whom Odin sends to lead me to his joyful palace. I go thither with the Ases, to quaff hydromel at the seat of honour. The hours of my life have run out and my smile braves death.”
[Sidenote: [837-847 A.D.]]
Religious and warlike fanaticism are here joined together--these pirates loved to shed the blood of priests and stable their horses in the churches. When they had ravaged a Christian land: “We have sung them,” they said, “the mass of spears; it began at early morn and lasted till the night.” Charlemagne felt these terrible invaders from afar; under Louis le Débonnaire they grew bolder. Some of them set up abodes, in 837, on the island of Walcheren, and made tributary the river lands of the Maas and the Waal. After 843 they came every year. From the mouth of the Schelde, the Somme, the Seine, the Loire, and the Gironde, they ascended into the interior of the country. A number of towns, even the more important, as Orleans and Paris, were taken and pillaged by them without Charles being able to make any defence. From the Rhine to the Adour, from the ocean to the Cévennes and the Vosges, all was devastated. They even acquired the habit of not returning home during the winter and settled down on the island of Oissel--above Rouen, at Noirmoutiers at the mouth of the Loire and on the island of Bière, near St. Florent. It was thither they carried their booty and thence they set out on new expeditions.
EDICT OF MERSEN (847 A.D.)
Chroniclers not understanding that apathy of the Frankish nation once so brave, who now let themselves be pillaged by a handful of adventurers, could only explain these things on the supposition that there had been a tremendous massacre at Fontenailles (Fontenay).
La peri de France la flor Et des baronz tuit li meillor Ansi troverènt Haenz terre Vinde de gent, bonne a conquerre.
[There perished the flower of France And the best of all the barons died And thus was the land of Haenz Void of the brave--easy to conquer.]
There is some truth in these words. Charlemagne’s fifty-three expeditions had used up the Frankish race, and his conquests, where always some of his warriors were left behind to rule, had spread it over three kingdoms. The dissensions of Louis le Débonnaire’s sons completed this dissemination. Now there were no longer free men to be found, because of the terrible results of so many wars, because in the midst of growing anarchy almost all the free men had renounced an independence which left them in isolation and consequently in danger, to become the vassals of men able to protect them. The Edict of Mersen (847) says, “Every freeman may choose a lord, either the king or one of his vassals, and no vassal of the king will be obliged to follow him in war unless against a foreign enemy.” With the subjects thus disposing of their obedience, the king in civil war remained unarmed and powerless, and as he was as incapable of making the great obey him as he was of protecting the small, the latter gathered around the former. The king’s vassals diminished; those of the great lords increased. On all sides national interest was forgotten in solicitude for that of the individual. Rouen troubled itself little about the misfortunes of Bordeaux, Saintes, and Paris, and that is why in this age, as in the last days of the Roman Empire, and for the same reason, namely the absence of that common and spirited sentiment known as patriotism, a few small bands could ravage a great country. Charles tried to send them back by giving them gold; but this was the surest means to attract them. The Roman Empire had done the same thing with the barbarians, and we know with what result.
THE NORTHMEN’S ALLIES
[Sidenote: [843-850 A.D.]]
The number of true Northmen must have been comparatively few, since they came from afar and over the sea. “But,” as a chronicler of the time remarks, “many inhabitants of the country, forgetting their regeneration in the holy waters of baptism, plunged into the dark errors of the pagans: they ate with these pagans the flesh of horses sacrificed to Thor and Odin, and took part in their atrocious crimes.” And these renegades were the most to be feared. They acted as guides to the invaders, they knew how to foil the ruses their countrymen adopted to cheat the greed of the barbarians, and showed even less respect and mercy than the latter for the religion and the people they had abandoned. Sometimes even some of the powerful nobles were paid by the Northmen, with money raised by the pillage of France, so as not to be disturbed in their expeditions.
The most dreadful of these pirates was Hastings, who ravaged the banks of the Loire from 843 to 850, sacked Bordeaux and Saintes, threatened Tours, which still celebrates to-day, on the 21st of May, a victory won from him, circumnavigated Spain and, robbing and burning the while, reached the shores of Italy. He had been drawn by the great name and wealth of the capital of Christendom; but he mistook Luna for Rome. Hastings sent word to the count and the bishop that his companions, conquerors of France, wished no harm to the people of Italy and only wished to repair his storm-battered ships, and that he himself, wearied of his roving life, wished to seek repose in the bosom of the church. The bishop and the count refused him nothing; Hastings even received baptism; but the gates of the town remained shut. Some time after the camp was filled with lamentations; Hastings was dangerously ill. Messengers came with the news and declared at the same time that the dying man intended to leave all his booty to the church provided his body might be interred in consecrated ground. The Northmen’s cries of grief soon announced the death of their chief. They were permitted to bring his body into the town, and the funeral ceremony was prepared in the cathedral itself. But when they had set down the corpse in the middle of the choir, Hastings suddenly rose up and struck the bishop down, while his companions, drawing their concealed arms, massacred both priests and soldiers. Master of Luna, Hastings perceived his mistake. He was made to understand that Rome was a long way off, and could not be so easily captured, so he set sail with his booty and at the end of several months reappeared at the mouth of the Loire.
[Sidenote: [850-882 A.D.]]
Charles the Bald had reunited one part of the country, between the Seine and the Loire, under command of Robert the Strong, ancestor of the Capetians, in order to oppose a more efficacious resistance to the Northmen and the Bretons, a great number of whom had joined the pirates. Robert gained two victories over the Bretons and defeated a body of Northmen loaded with the booty of Brie and of the town of Meaux. This was the valiant leader whom Hastings encountered on his return from Italy. He had just sacked Le Mans when Robert and the duke of Aquitaine caught up with him at Brissarthe (Pont-sur-Sarthe) near Angers. The barbarians numbered but four hundred, half Northmen, half Bretons; and at Robert’s approach they betook themselves to a church and barricaded it. It was evening, and the French put off the attack until the next day. Robert had already taken off his helmet and coat of mail, when the Northmen, suddenly opening the doors, threw themselves upon the dispersed troops. Robert rallied his men, drove the enemy back to the church, and tried to follow them in. But he fought with bared head and breast and on the threshold was mortally wounded. Duke Rainulf of Aquitaine fell by his side (866). Hastings, delivered of his dread adversary, ascended the Loire and made his way as far as Clermont-Ferrand. No other means could be found of ridding France than by giving him, in 882, the county of Chartres. But he even abandoned this at the age of nearly seventy, to resume his life of adventure.
BEGINNING OF THE GREAT FIEFS
[Sidenote: [848-877 A.D.]]
The Northmen were the greatest but not the only one of Charles’ troubles; the Breton Noménoë repelled all his attacks, crowned himself king, and left the title to his son Hérispoë. The Aquitanians elected as leader the son of their late king, Pepin II, whom Charles the Bald had deposed. Driven out on account of his vices, Pepin allied himself with the Northmen and Saracens to pillage his former subjects, but he was captured and shut up in a cloister. Charles recovered, for the time, Aquitaine, lost it, recovered it again and gave it to one of his sons. But the true masters of the country were Raymond, count of Toulouse, who also ruled over Rouergue and Quercy; Walgrin, count of Angoulême; Sancho Mitara, duke of Gascony, whose capital was Bordeaux; Bernhard, marquis of Septimania; Rainulf, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers; Bernard Plantevelue, count of Auvergne; all of whom founded hereditary houses. To the north of the Loire, Charles had been constrained in the same way to constitute, for Robert the Strong, the grand duchy of France, from which sprang the third line of kings. North of the Somme it had been the same thing with the county of Flanders, given to the king’s son-in-law, Baldwin Bras de Fer (Iron Arm), and between the Loire and Saône, the powerful duchy of Burgundy for Richard the Judge. Thus under Charlemagne’s grandson not only was the empire divided into kingdoms, but the kingdoms themselves were dismembered into fiefs.[1]
EDICTS OF PISTES AND QUIERZY
Charles made, however, more and more the effort to retain in his service and that of the state the class of freedmen. In 863, the Edict of Pistes ordered a census of the men bound to military duty. The most severe penalties were pronounced against those who deprived these men of their horses and their arms, and also against the artful ones who sought to avoid military duty by giving themselves to the church.
This prince, so weak at home, wished nevertheless to aggrandise himself abroad. The king who could not wear his own crown undertook to acquire others. At the death of the emperor Lothair, in 855, the inheritance was shared between his three sons. The eldest took Italy, the second Lorraine, and the third Provence. The last only lived until 863, and the king of Lorraine until 869, and neither had any children. Charles the Bald tried, on their death, to lay hands on their dominions. His plans miscarried in 863, but succeeded in 870, when he shared Lorraine with his brother, Louis the German. In spite of the weakness and dishonour of his reign, Charles the Bald brought together again, at least on one side, the France which the Treaty of Verdun had broken up.
Instead of continuing this policy Charles sought for the imperial crown, left once more without a wearer in 875. He sought it in Rome from the hands of the pope, took on his return to Milan that of the Lombard kingdom, and as his brother, Louis the German, had died, he attempted to annex the latter’s dominions to his own--that is, Germany to France. At this moment the Northmen took Rouen from him. He was beaten on the Rhine; Italy likewise escaped him.[b]
Unity existed only in the ambitious fancy of the feeble Charles. In spite of his titles and his crowns, his power in Italy, Lorraine, and Provence was as much a cipher as it was in Gaul; the dismemberment of the kingdoms into duchies and counties, and of the latter into viscounties, sireries, and seigneuries, still continued; and, at the very moment when he was dreaming of his grandfather’s empire, he was finally completing his own destruction by changing the feudal system from a custom into a law.
Before going to Italy in 877, he assembled a diet at Quierzy to formulate rules for the government of Gaul by his son, and there was delivered that famous capitulary from which we may date the feudal revolution: “If one of our trusty subjects,” runs this capitulary, “inspired by the love of God, desire to renounce the world, and if he have a son or some other relative capable of serving the state, he is free to transmit to him his privileges and honours at pleasure. If a count of this kingdom dies, we desire that the nearest relatives of the deceased, the other officers of the county, and the bishops of the diocese provide for its administration until such time as we shall be able to intrust his son with the honours with which he was invested.”
This capitulary effected no change in the existing state of things, it only confirmed accomplished facts and legalised a revolution which had its origin in the customs of the Germans even before their entry into Gaul, that is to say the transformation of fiefs into freeholds and the acquisition of hereditary rights in duchies and counties. From this time the distinction between allods and feods had no longer either reality or importance; as the son of the count inherited not only the domains but also the offices of his father, the distinction between the magistrate sent from the king and the lord of the manor was done away; and the titles of duke and count no longer expressed merely an office, an honour, or a dignity, but sovereign rights. The feudal system was thus inscribed in the law.[c]
[Sidenote: [877-879 A.D.]]
Such was the condition in which Charles the Bald left France when, in 877, he went to Italy, to fulfil the obligations he had contracted on receiving the imperial crown. Pope John VIII had begged him to drive the Saracens from the peninsula, and repress the aggressions of his nephew Carloman, king of Bavaria, a pretender to the empire. It is astonishing, the persistence with which Charlemagne’s descendants, in taking arms against each other, not only hastened the disorganisation of their own states, but accomplished the rapid ruin of their house in Italy, Germany, and even France, where it lasted three or four generations longer than anywhere else. The campaign of 877 bore no result. Charles’ only idea after he got to Italy seems to have been to pillage the imperial domains. Abandoned for the most part by his vassals, he was obliged to return to France, fell ill during the return, and died the 6th of October, a few days after he had crossed the Mont Cenis.
LOUIS II TO CARLOMAN (877-884 A.D.)
Louis the Stammerer, given a share in the throne during his father’s lifetime, was crowned by Hincmar at Compiègne in presence of most of the great vassals. By the advice of Hincmar the new king pledged himself to disturb no man in the possession of his benefices or offices and to respect the liberty of the churches. He was also obliged to make a distribution of lands, abbeys, and counties “to whoever,” says one chronicle, “demanded them first.”
Charles the Bald had worn four crowns, those of France, the empire, Italy, and Lorraine. His son inherited the first only. The imperial crown and the crown of Italy passed to the head of a Carlovingian prince of the Germanic branch. Ludwig of Saxony contended with Louis the Stammerer for that of Lorraine and the two claimants came to terms by dividing the kingdom on the bases of the treaty of 870. This treaty was renewed in 878 at Fouron on the Maas. The south was troubled by the revolt of Bernhard, marquis of Gothia, who took arms and formed a league of malcontents. But Bernhard, count of Auvergne, and Boson, duke of Provence, took from him successively Gothia and several counties which he possessed in Burgundy.
[Sidenote: [879-885 A.D.]]
Louis the Stammerer, having fallen into a decline, died in 879 at Compiègne leaving two sons, Louis and Carloman, of whom the eldest was sixteen years old. The seigneurs were divided; some wished to proclaim the young French princes, others to give the crown to the German prince, Ludwig of Saxony. But the party of French princes was the most numerous and the abbot Hugo, who was its leader, hastened to crown the two brothers.[d] Two victories over the Northmen, notably that of Saucourt in Vimeu, gave a little glory to these princes. But these advantages did not prevent the recommencement of brigandage. In 885 the famous Hastings gave up the county of Chartres, and Carloman paid the others of his race to take themselves off. “They promised peace,” says the chronicler sadly, “for as many years as we could count them one thousand pounds’ weight of silver.” The two kings died by accident, Louis in 882, Carloman in 884. One had governed the north of France, the other Burgundy and Aquitaine.
CHARLES THE FAT, KING AND EMPEROR (884-887 A.D.)
These two had a brother, Charles the Simple, but the nobles preferred a grandson of Louis le Débonnaire, Charles the Fat, then emperor and king of Germany. The whole heritage of Charlemagne was now reunited in Charles the Fat’s hands. But times had changed. This man weighted down with so many crowns could not even inspire terror in the Northmen.
[Sidenote: [885-887 A.D.]]
Charles had already ceded Friesland to one of their chiefs. Another, the famous Rollo, a kind of giant who, as legend tells us, always went about on foot because no horse could be found for his mount, had recently taken Rouen and Pontoise and killed the duke of Le Mans. At the approach of his countrymen, the new count of Chartres, the former pirate Hastings, hastened to meet them and all marched upon Paris, which had already three times submitted to the sack. But Paris had recently been fortified. Great towers covered the bridges (Petit-Pont and Pont-au-Change) which connected the island of the city of Paris with the two shores. The Seine was then barricaded with seven hundred huge barges in which the Northmen intended to voyage into Burgundy, a region they had not yet visited. The inhabitants, encouraged by their bishop Gozlin and by Count Eudes, son of Robert the Strong, held out for one year. The attack began November 26th, 885. The tower of the Grand-Pont, on the right bank, not being finished, the Northmen assailed it. For two days they fought there with great fury and Bishop Gozlin was wounded by a javelin. The Northmen were driven back and intrenched themselves in a camp around the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, where deserters soon taught them all the knowledge of Roman military science that had survived the ages. The invaders first built a three-storied rolling tower, but when they tried to bring it up to the walls, the Parisians killed with arrows those who were moving it. Then they advanced with battering-rams, some under portable screens covered with raw leather for protection from fire, and some under shields in the form of the Roman testudo. When they came to the edge of the moat they began to fill it up with earth, fascines, whole trees, and even the bodies of captives whom they put to death before the very eyes of the besieged. While those farthest away drove off the defenders of the battlements with a hail-storm of arrows and leaden ball, those close to the tower hammered it with the rams; but all in vain. The Parisians poured streams of boiling oil, wax, and molten pitch upon the enemy; their catapults hurled huge rocks which crushed the assailants’ screens and shields, and let down iron hooks which tore away the coverings and made the enemy a target for their arrows. Three blazing ships floated down to the bridge, were stopped by the abutting stone piles, and could not set it on fire.
This hopeless resistance had lasted for more than two months when a sudden rise of the river carried away, on the night of February 6th, 886, a portion of the “Petit-Pont.” The Northmen immediately rushed upon the tower on the left bank, now cut off from the city. Only twelve men were stationed there, but they held out for a whole day and then retired, still fighting, to the wreckage of the bridge. Finally they surrendered on the promise that their lives would be saved, but as soon as the barbarians got hold of these brave men they put them to death. One of them, of gigantic frame, appeared to be a chief, and the Northmen decided to spare him; but he begged to share the fate of his companions. “You will never get ransom for my head,” he told them, and so forced them to kill him.
Meanwhile reports of the Parisians’ courage had spread over the land and others were emboldened to emulate their example. Several pirate bands which had left the siege were beaten; the counsellor of the emperor Charles, Duke Henry, succeeded even in getting relief into the besieged town, but the pagans still maintained the blockade. Misery became extreme in the city and many people died. Bishop Gozlin and the count of Anjou “passed to the Lord.” The brave count Eudes managed to make his way out and went to hasten the emperor’s arrival, and when he saw the latter started, went back to his besieged people. The promised relief finally appeared, Duke Henry at its head. Wishing to reconnoitre the situation himself the duke advanced too near, and his horse fell into one of the Northmen’s pits. Here he was killed and those who had come with him were disbanded. Paris was once more left to its fate. The Northmen now believed that despair reigned there, and that they could have the people at little cost. They began a general attack, but the walls covered with valiant defenders proved insurmountable. They then tried to fire the door of the great tower, by heaping up against it a great wooden pile, but the Parisians made a sudden sortie and drove back the assailants and the fire at the same time.
At the end of long months, Charles finally arrived with his army on the heights of Montmartre. The Parisians, filled with ardour, awaited the signal of combat, when the news came to them that the emperor had bought with money the withdrawal of their half vanquished enemy and given the barbarians permission to “winter” in Burgundy, that is to say, to ravage that province. They at least refused to be a party to this shameful agreement, and when the Northmen’s ships presented themselves at the bridges they refused to let them pass. The pirates had to drag their boats upon the shore and made a wide detour in order to avoid the heroic city (November, 886). The brave people of Sens imitated the courage of the Parisians and resisted the Northmen for six months.
In that year Paris gloriously won its title of capital of France; and its chief, the brave count Eudes, laid the foundation of the first national dynasty. The contrast between the courage of the little city and the cowardice of the emperor turned everyone against the unworthy prince.[b] On all sides he was accused of indolence and incapacity. A great weakness of body and spirit had come over him. The vassals wanted an able and active king.
Those of Germany and Lorraine, assembled at Tribur, near Mainz, in 887, pronounced Charles’ deposition “because he was lacking,” says the Annals of St. Waast, “in the necessary strength to govern the empire.” The feeble and unfortunate emperor suffered the fate of the “do-nothing” Merovingian kings. He was shut up in the monastery of Reichenau, on Lake Constance, and died in about two months.[d] The empire of Charlemagne was irrevocably dismembered; its pieces served to form seven kingdoms--France, Navarre, Cisjurane Burgundy, Transjurane Burgundy, Lorraine, Italy, and Germany.
THE FEUDAL RÉGIME
[Sidenote: [843-887 A.D.]]
But it was not only the empire that was dismembered; it was also the realm and royalty itself. At the close of Charlemagne’s reign, feudalism was not yet founded, but it was almost completely established at the death of Charles the Bald a half century afterwards. And this was because the progress of feudal institutions was singularly hastened by the historical events we have just been studying.
Royal authority at the end of Charles the Bald’s reign was ruined, as it had been under the later Merovingians, for the same reasons and in the same fashion. The king had no more money and he had no more land to give away. He tried to take from the church, but the church resisted. The bishops assembled in council at Meaux and at Paris in 846, in the early years of the reign, advised Charles the Bald to send missi dominici to make a thorough investigation of the lands of the royal fisc, which had been usurped. “You must not,” they told him, “let a state of poverty, which does not accord with your dignity, push your magnificence to do things you would not wish to do. You cannot have attendants to serve you in your house, unless you have the means to pay them.” Here we see royalty reduced to indigence. The king himself recognised it. “We wish,” he said, one day, “to determine, with the advice of our faithful, how we may live in our court honourably and without poverty, as our predecessor did.”
Since the reign of Charles the Bald, public authority had disappeared. The kingdom, ravaged by the Northmen, the Bretons, and the Aquitanians, was in the throes of brigandage. Brigandage had sunk so deeply into the customs of the country that oaths were exacted from freemen not to attack houses or to conceal robbers. In his twenty-third capitulary (857) the king, after speaking of the infinite evils caused not only by the incursions of the pagans, but also by the vagabondage of some of his own royal subjects, orders the bishops, counts, and missi to call together general meetings which everyone without exception must attend. The bishop was to read to the gathering the precepts of the Gospels, the fathers, and the prophets against brigandage. The capitulary itself furnished quotations from Christ, the prophet Isaiah, St. Augustine and St. Gregory. If these were not sufficient the bishop was to add all those he might find himself. He was also to threaten all hardened sinners with anathema, and to explain to them what a terrible punishment it was. On their own side the counts and missi were to read the laws of Charles and of Louis against brigandage.
If these readings had no effect the guilty man was threatened with the sentence of the bishops and the prosecution of the judges. If he showed contempt for the one or the other he could be summoned to the king’s presence. If he refused to come he would be excluded from the holy church, on earth as well as in heaven. He would be pursued until driven from the realm. But to this there must be a public force, and such existed no longer; and this is why the king was compelled to replace it with sermons and threats of hell.
In no age of history did the weak have more need of protection than in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and this is why the last freemen disappeared throughout a large portion of Gaul, especially north of the Loire.
After having fled for a long time at the approach of the pagans to the forest, among the wild beasts, some stout-hearted had turned their heads and refused to abandon all they had without some attempt at defence. Here and there in mountain gorges, at river fords, or on the hill overlooking the plain, walled strongholds were raised up where the brave and the strong held their own. An edict of 862 directed the counts and the king’s vassals to repair their old castles and to build new ones. The country was soon covered with these strongholds against which invaders often flung themselves in vain. A few defeats taught these bold people prudence, and they dared not venture so far amid these fortresses which had sprung out of the ground on all sides, and the new invasion, now made hazardous and difficult, came to an end in the following century. The masters of these castles became later the terror of the country side they had helped to save. Feudalism so oppressive in its age of decadence had its legitimate term. All power is raised up by its good services and falls by its abuses. These hedged and walled-in castles were places of refuge from the Northmen, but often also they became nests of brigands. However, little by little, out of the chaos came a new order of things.
We have seen how the king and his nobles assured themselves of the services of a greater or less number of men by giving them benefices or rather taking these men under their protection by making them their vassals. One might be a beneficiary without being a vassal or a vassal without being a beneficiary; in the days of Charles the Bald there were vassals who held no land. These were the vagi homines, so often mentioned in the prince’s edicts--brigands in search of fortune and who transferred their loyalty from one noble to another at their pleasure. It was to remedy these disorders and to organise these unruly members of society that Charles the Bald ordered every freeman to choose a lord and remain faithful to him.
Doubtless it happened more often than otherwise that the man who received a piece of land made himself a vassal of the man who gave it to him, but the two states finally became much confused. One might be at the same time both beneficiary and vassal, and take upon himself the very narrow obligations of one and the other condition. Indeed after a property had been held for several generations by men who inherited their obligations together with the land, it seemed as if the fief carried its rights and duties with it and communicated them to those that held it. In the end the property, which always remained, was considered rather than the men, who came and went. It was no longer the weak man who bound himself to the strong one but the little acreage to the great domain, and certain formalities symbolised this new relation. The land became his in a manner to replace itself in the hands of the great landlord, in the shape of a clod of sod or the branch of a tree, which the petty proprietor brought himself. This land, so burdened with obligations, was the fief.
When France became covered with fiefs each property had its own organisation; it had its lord, great or small, and there was no land without its lord. Whoever had no land had no condition, for there was no lord without his land. Certain relations were established between the different fiefs--there were some which were dominant and others which were dominated. The dominant fiefs were those of the dukes and the counts, who assumed all the power which royalty had delegated them and who ruled as petty kings over their duchies and counties. Their vassals and the latters’ sub-vassals depended upon them before depending upon the king. As for the dukes and counts, they were the vassals of the king, but as the feudal hierarchy developed, the obligation of the vassal became, as a matter of fact, less strict. The duke of Burgundy’s vassals obeyed him; of course the duke of Burgundy would not make the mistake of disobeying the king.
Such was the great revolution accomplished at the end of the ninth and in the tenth century. After the deposition of Charles the Fat appeared the great fiefs whose names we find over and over again throughout the whole of French history. The duke of Gascony owned all the country south of the Garonne, and the counts of Toulouse, Auvergne, Périgord, Poitou, and Berri, the district between the Garonne and the Loire. To the east and north of the latter river everything belonged to the count of Forez, the duke of Burgundy, the duke of France, and to the counts of Flanders and Brittany who exercised their royal rights over the land. To the kings remained only a few towns which he had not yet been constrained to give away in fiefs.
THE CHURCH
In the ninth century royalty fell and feudalism arose; the former had lost its strength, the latter had not yet acquired that which it was soon to have. The church alone had all the power. She wanted nothing--the authority in knowledge and morality, the ardent faith of the people, rich domains--in fact, while everything was breaking up and civil and political society going to pieces, the ecclesiastical body showed its unity and its healthy condition in the fifty-six councils which were held in the reign of Charles the Bald alone. The bishops, reasoning on the right of the church to interfere in the conduct of every man guilty of sin in order to correct and punish him, arrived logically at the pretension that they could depose kings and dispose of their crowns. They were not only the ministers of religion, but participated at the time in the administration of public affairs. Since Charlemagne, who brought them into the government of his empire, they may be found taking part in all affairs and speaking everywhere with authority. These were they who degraded and re-established Louis le Débonnaire, who told at Fontenailles on which side justice lay. In 859 Charles the Bald, threatened with deposition by some of the bishops because he violated his own laws, could find nothing further to reply to this assumption of authority than that “having been consecrated and anointed with the holy chrism, he could not be overthrown on his throne, nor supplanted by anyone without being heard and judged by the bishops who had crowned him king.” This right Archbishop Hincmar, of Rheims, the most illustrious personage of his day, had haughtily claimed.
This power of the church was a fortunate thing in these days, when might made right, for she alone found herself in a position to keep alive the idea that justice was above strength; and to oppose the aristocratic principle of the feudal organisation, she put forward that of the brotherhood of man. In place of hereditary primogeniture which prevailed in civil society, she practised election for herself and proclaimed the rights of the intellect. If the prerogative of deposing kings which she claimed was a usurpation of temporal authority it must be recognised that the latter had no antidote but the sacerdotal power, and the weak and oppressed no other security than the protection of the churches. When Lothair II, king of Lorraine, put away without reason Queen Thietberga in order to marry Waldrada, Pope Nicholas I took up the poor, betrayed, outraged woman’s cause, and at the risk of persecution established her rights. While law was impotent and opinion without strength, it is well that somewhere there existed an avenger of outraged morality.[b]
CAPETIANS AND CARLOVINGIANS (887-936 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [887-911 A.D.]]
Eight kings shared in the division of the empire through the deposition of Charles the Fat. In France it was Eudes, count of Paris, who had just defended that town against the Normans and whose glory was heightened by contrast with the ignominious conduct of Charles the Fat.
The accession of Count Eudes was an important fact, although overestimated perhaps, if one wishes to regard it as a bridge between Gaul and France and between the Franks and the French. It was not the beginning of a revolution of which he was the consummation; nor yet a point of departure, for it was Frenchmen rather than Angevins who fought with Robert the Strong at Brissarthe. However, apart from the fact itself, the reign of the first French king was certainly important. The Normans, turned loose upon Burgundy by Charles the Fat, had gone still further; they threw themselves upon Champagne which they were proceeding to ruin with fire and sword when the new king attacked them in the defiles of the Argonne, near Montfaucon. A brilliant victory made a worthy beginning to his reign, but that was all. Wearied by the fruitless struggle, occupied elsewhere by the anxieties which Aquitaine gave him where through race jealousy his “usurpation,” as the monks of that time and the seventeenth century historians called it, had not been recognised, and at a time when they placed at the head of acts, Christi regante: rege nullo (“in the reign of Christ and absence of the king”). Eudes finally adopted the Carlovingian policy and drove the Normans back with his purse. What brought about his ruin was that he broke too abruptly with the feudalism that made him king. His cousin Vaucher rebelled against royal authority. Eudes could not understand that this authority was no longer anything but a phantom, even in his hands, and he had his cousin’s head cut off after obtaining his submission. The people deplored the light-hearted nonentity of a Carlovingian king, but a faction which formed in favour of young Charles the Simple, youngest son of Louis the Stammerer, waxed in strength until the former count of Paris was obliged to capitulate. He admitted his rival to a sort of partnership and at his death the kingdom of France returned to Germanic dominion, if we can admit, that it is still possible to recall the Austrasian origin of Charles the Simple (898).
Under this reign the people were finally delivered from the long Norman invasion, which stopped of its own accord, and by act of the invaders rather than resistance of the invaded. Since the time the Norman vassals collected at the mouth of the Seine, the country round about had been nothing but a desert, towns abandoned, villages in ashes; one could travel whole leagues without even hearing a dog bark. Since there was nothing more to be got they ran the risk of dying by hunger. The Normans finally perceived with their positive spirit that it was better to take possession of the land than to pillage its ruined inhabitants, and that it was worth more to make these rich territories valuable than to get sustenance from their ruins. Thenceforth everything was changed. The fleets from the north brought colonists instead of pirates, and the peasants found in their midst a protection which they could not have gotten anywhere else.
[Sidenote: [911-923 A.D.]]
The new plan had been in operation for some time when a great emigration was determined upon in the north, owing to the subjection of all the chiefs under one head. The movement set out in the direction of Neustria under the leadership of Rollo, the famous sea-king--one of those who had assisted at the siege of Paris in the days of Charles the Fat, and had established a fixed home in that country. For some years the new-comers kept up their old practises. They burned St. Martin of Tours, and went to Bourges and killed the bishop. Rollo reappeared before the towers of the châtelet. Finally he came to an understanding with Charles the Simple, who gave him his daughter Gisela in marriage and raised him to the rank of the feudal barons, by legalising his seizure of Neustria. Rollo became duke of Normandy, and the king of France’s vassal, not without making the latter often feel that he troubled himself little about the nominal suzerainty. When the time for doing homage came and they wished him to do it in the Carlovingian manner, by kissing the sovereign’s foot, “No, by God,” exclaimed the proud sea-king, and he signed to one of his soldiers to kiss the royal foot for him. But the soldier, not less proud, seized Charles’ foot and put it to his lips without kissing it. The king fell back and his people remained dumb and motionless amid the laughter of Rollo and his companions[2] (912). The barbaric traits of the Normans did not prevent their quickly assimilating the semi-civilisation they found in their new country. Normandy was soon the most prosperous and best policed province in the kingdom. As Ordericus Vitalis[i] says, a child could have crossed it in safety, a purse full of gold in his hand. There runs a tale that one day while hunting Rollo hung his gold bracelets on a tree and they remained there two years without anyone’s daring to touch them.
Charles the Simple lost no time in indemnifying himself for the cession of Neustria by the acquisition of Lorraine which became his on the death of Louis the Child, son of the emperor Arnulf; but he did not profit long by this addition to his realm. He had made a favourite of a person of low degree, a man named Haganon. Haganon, more solicitous than his master to uphold the royal dignity, soon displayed the desire of raising it, to his own profit, from the state of subjection in which it was kept by the powerful nobles. Two of the latter presented themselves four days in succession to speak with the king and waited in vain at the door of his bed-chamber. They finally went away thoroughly angry, saying that Haganon would soon be king with Charles, or Charles a man of low condition with Haganon. Of these two noblemen, one was Henry the Fowler, or the Saxon, king of Germany, and the other Robert, duke of France, brother of the late king Eudes.
In 920, at a court held at Soissons, the nobles assembled together, all broke the blades of straw and threw them on the ground at the feet of Charles the Simple, declaring that they disowned him as their king. Each took his departure at once, and Charles remained alone on the spot where the assemblage had met. There followed two years of hesitation, at the end of which Robert, duke of France, caused himself to be proclaimed king in the cathedral of Rheims by his vassals and those of his son-in-law, Rudolf of Burgundy. Charles having retired to Lorraine, the new king prepared to seek him as far as the foot of the Ardennes. He did not anticipate any resistance, but Haganon purchased the services of a band of Normans, living along the Maas, which Charles led in person into Robert’s domains. A battle took place on the plain of St. Médard (Soissons) near the Aisne (923). Robert, throwing his long white beard over his coat of arms, seized his banner and flung himself into the mêlée. He fell upon Fulbert, his rival’s standard-bearer, when Charles cried out, “Take care, Fulbert.” The standard-bearer, turning, dodged the blow which Robert was aiming, and cleft the duke’s head with his sword. Charles the Simple gained nothing by this. Robert’s son, Hugh, hastened up with his brother-in-law, Héribert de Vermandois, and remained to the end master of the battle-field, strewn with eighteen thousand dead.
[Sidenote: [923-927 A.D.]]
Of the two men who had claimed the title of king that morning, one lay cold in death, the other was dethroned by defeat. Robert’s son sent to consult his sister Emma, wife of Rudolf of Burgundy, to know what he should do with the crown on his hands. Emma replied that she would prefer to kiss the knees of her husband rather than those of her brother, and Rudolf was made king (July 13th, 923).
The aged Rollo was now minded of the homage which he had formerly held so cheaply, and as faithful vassal loudly declared himself the protector of the vanquished king. Doubtless he preferred such a sovereign as Charles the Simple to a connection with that powerful house of the dukes of France, who moved everything at their pleasure. Unfortunately he did not have the king in his hands. Charles had taken refuge at Bonn with the king of Germany, the same Henry the Fowler whom he had once kept waiting at his own door. He wished now to make use of the services of Héribert of Vermandois, who swore to replace him on the throne. The king sought Count Héribert at the gates of St. Quentin, where the latter knelt and kissed the king’s knee. The count’s son refused to do the same and Héribert took him by the neck and forced him to kneel. Then he conducted the king into St. Quentin and entertained him with great magnificence. But the next day he had him seized in the night and conducted to Château Thierry, whence they carried him to the tower of Péronne. Héribert then marched with Rudolf against the Normans, who were with great difficulty driven back from the Île-de-France and Beauvoisis. Rudolf believed himself mortally wounded during an encounter in Artois and the inhabitants of Laon saw him carried into their city on a barrow. Rollo died a short time afterwards, leaving as successor his son, William Longsword.
[Sidenote: [927-942 A.D.]]
The count of Vermandois had not undertaken this piece of treachery for nothing, and had already obtained the archbishopric of Rheims for his son, a child of five years. They placed the boy on a table in the presence of the bishops, and after stammering a few words of catechism, he was consecrated with the approbation of the onlookers. But even this did not satisfy the father’s ambition, who demanded the county of Laon for himself. Rudolf, who was finding his restless and dangerous auxiliary too powerful, feared perhaps the fate of Charles the Simple, and met the demand with a refusal. Thereupon Héribert dragged Charles from prison, clothed him in rich raiment, and took him to the court of William Longsword, who saluted him as king. This was all that was needed to decide Rudolf, who ceded the county of Laon, and Charles was put back in Péronne. But when Héribert tried to commence the same game again, Rudolf this time took up arms and pressed him so hotly that he was obliged to flee to Germany. There now remained to him nothing but Péronne, but Henry the Fowler, the count of Flanders, and the duke of Lorraine interfered; Rudolf gave him back his possessions and died soon after without a male heir (936). Charles the Simple had preceded him by a few years to the tomb (929). The vacant throne was for a second time at the disposition of the duke of France, who did not want it, since he found it much pleasanter to remain peacefully in real possession, pre-eminent as he was among the feudal lords, than to plunge himself into interminable controversies by placing on his head a crown which had become the target for so much contention. Rudolf’s enemies, of whom we have mentioned but a small part, had much reason to support the duke in this resolution. Hugh now remembered that at the time of the fall of Charles the Simple the latter’s wife Odgiwe had taken to England their son Louis, then a child, but now, after thirteen years of exile, entering upon his sixteenth year. Hugh congratulated himself on his great mind and went after him.
THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS (936-987 A.D.)
Louis IV, surnamed Louis d’Outre-Mer on account of his long sojourn on the other side of the Channel, occupied the throne eighteen years, but his reign was one long humiliation. Hugh exploited his generosity to the king, as Héribert had done about his treachery, and scarcely got him to the shores of France than he dragged him to the duchy of Burgundy and made Louis invest him with it; and moreover Louis had the chagrin of seeing that his act was useless. Hugh the Black, Rudolf’s brother, bravely defended his heritage. The royal signature served nothing to the duke of France who, armed as he was, could only snatch a few shreds from the duchy of Burgundy. Thwarted in his ambition he turned to other things and demanded the county of Laon. Following Rudolf’s example, Louis refused this demand, but for a still more powerful reason. The county of Laon was the sole domain left the crown through the usurpations of feudalism. Louis, who would have been nothing more than a stranger in his kingdom if this were taken from him, preferred a one-sided struggle. Fortunately for him, the emperor Otto came to his rescue, but not before he was besieged in his own city, and deserted by his most faithful partisans. The presence of the imperial army saved him from disaster, but Otto when he went home did not leave him any the stronger. Incapable of holding his own so close to the duke of France, Louis appeared before the people of Aquitaine, always favourably disposed towards the Carlovingian kings, since they had nothing to fear from them and had shown no more preference for the kingship of Duke Rudolf than they had for that of Count Eudes. Well received everywhere, Louis nevertheless encountered but a sterile compassion, and must have thought himself fortunate in that the duke of France, become more formidable than ever since the death of Héribert de Vermandois, was willing to await an occasion of revolt or rather of war.
[Sidenote: [942-948 A.D.]]
Meanwhile William Longsword had met a tragic end, assassinated by Arnulf, count of Flanders, after an interview on one of the islands of the Somme, in December, 942. He left one son named Richard, only ten years old. The moment was now favourable for Louis to assert the royal authority, inactive in his hands. He appeared at once in Rouen, received the homage of the young Richard, and made himself the child’s guardian. The people nearly besieged the house in which he lodged when they learned that he intended to take the boy back to Laon, but a few tactful words calmed everything. But once he had the young duke in his palace he used no more caution. The child, separated from all his Norman attendants, even from his tutor, found himself in truth a captive. The people who looked after him were severely reprimanded on one occasion for having taken him outside the city on a hunt for birds. Evidently the king’s intention was to strengthen the royal crown by putting it under the protection of the ducal crown of Normandy. Osmond, Richard’s tutor, cut this dream short by a bold stratagem. Disguised as a groom he managed to get near his pupil, enveloped him in a bale of hay, and carried him thus on his shoulders to the outskirts of Laon, where horses were waiting. Touched to the quick Louis d’Outre-Mer appealed to the ambition of Hugh of France and proposed to share Normandy with him if he would help get it back. Hugh agreed, but scarcely was Louis established in Normandy than he forgot his promises and sent the duke back to Paris. But the king paid dearly for this breach of faith. At news of the subjection with which their Neustrian brothers were threatened, the Northmen sent a large fleet under the command of Harold, the Dane. A battle took place on the banks of the Dive, not far from Rouen, in which the French were completely routed (945). Louis, wandering swordless through the country at the will of his horse, whose bridle had been cut by sword-blows, met a soldier from Rouen who, anxious for the king’s safety, concealed him on an island in the Seine, where however he was discovered. The king’s liberty was negotiated with great show by Hugh of France, who finally got him out of the Normans’ hands. Great was the surprise when the end of this fine devotion became known. From his Norman prison Louis entered another which Hugh was determined he should not leave until he gave up the city and county of Laon. After this last misfortune Louis seemed less a king than a ruined lord. He filled the German court with his plaints, wrote to the pope, and summoned councils. Councils, pope, and emperor all failed before Hugh’s will. Finally tired of the fight, and knowing well that Louis would be none the more formidable with it, Hugh gave the county back to the king, who did not enjoy it for long. Four years later, while pursuing a wolf on the road from Rheims to Laon, Louis’ horse threw him and he died from the fall (954).
[Sidenote: [948-980 A.D.]]
Hugh had obtained a part of Burgundy on the return of Louis d’Outre-Mer; he now made use of the accession of Louis’ son Lothair, to have Aquitaine given him. But this time again, the royal sanction was powerless. William, duke of Aquitaine, received the invader in arms, and the war lasted for two years, when the duke of France died. He had named two kings and permitted a third to reign. Hugh Capet, his eldest son, inherited the duchy of France, and at the same time his father’s great influence, which he used in more moderate fashion.
He never came into hostility with Lothair throughout the latter’s whole reign. He looked on quietly while the king was active in the east, west, and north, trying to get his hands on Normandy, seizing some territory from the count of Flanders, which he had to give back, and making military excursions into Lorraine as far as the borders of Germany. This fruitless activity, this restless desire to attempt hopeless conquests, was in singular contrast with Hugh Capet’s power of repose. One would have said that the latter divined the future and that he disdained to forestall fortune by a single step in the belief of what would come to him.
In all this empty reign there is but one event that offers anything of interest. During an expedition in Lorraine (978), the principal object of his covetousness, Lothair came unexpectedly upon Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), where Otto II was then staying. The emperor was about to sit down to table when the arrival of the king of France forced him to flee, and Lothair ate the dinner prepared for Otto. Otto swore to sing to him beneath the walls of Paris such a Halleluiah as the king had never heard; and what seemed like an angry piece of bravado was really carried out. The emperor appeared with sixty thousand men upon the heights of Montmartre after having ravaged the country around Rheims, Laon, and Soissons, and caused to be intoned by a number of clerks the Halleluiah with which he had threatened Parisian ears, and in the chorus of which this whole army joined.[3] Paris was avenged for this din; for in crossing the Aisne, swollen by storms, on his return, Otto lost his booty, baggage, and all his rearguard (980). It is true that he carried away with him the remembrance of the most formidable psalmody of which history makes mention, and the honour of having planted his lance in one of the gates of Paris; but these were rather frivolous achievements for the son of Otto the Great, and his Halleluiah would certainly have produced much more effect had he taken his sixty thousand men to sing it at Rome.[f]
The campaign, however, was successful in having raised mutual disgust between Lothair and Hugh Capet, the latter finding himself exposed to incursions and ravage from the idle ambition and provocation of Lothair, who was unable to support him by any force; while Lothair, on his side, saw that Hugh merely protected his own territories, without caring for Laon or Lorraine. Lothair, therefore, became reconciled to Otto, held a meeting with him on the Maas, and, as the price of the emperor’s friendship, waived his pretensions to Lorraine, at which his followers’ hearts corda Francorum, says the Chronicle of St. Denis,[j] were much saddened. If the descendant of Charlemagne gave up his claims upon Lorraine to Otto, it was idle for Hugh Capet to remain in hostility with the German emperor. The latter, after his pacification with Lothair, had gone to Italy; thither Hugh Capet sent, proffering friendship and alliance with Otto. The reply was an invitation to the duke to visit the emperor in Italy: a request with which Hugh Capet complied, to the great anxiety and suspicion of Lothair, who, according to Richer,[k] used every effort to have Hugh’s return intercepted. The latter felt it necessary to pass the Alps in the disguise of a groom, and thus returned to his duchy.
[Sidenote: [980-987 A.D.]]
Otto II expired in 982. Henry of Bavaria claimed the throne, setting aside the right of the future Otto III, a boy of but five years of age; and Lothair, alive to every opportunity of gaining Lorraine, leagued with Henry, and undertook an expedition to the Rhine. The people of the country were, however, hostile to him, and he retreated with some difficulty. In the following year he was more fortunate; aided by Héribert of Troyes, he succeeded in winning possession of the strong town of Verdun, from the walls of which he repelled all the efforts of the Lorraine chiefs to expel him. A gleam of prosperity thus shone upon Lothair, when death carried him off in 986. His eldest son, who had been crowned by anticipation several years previous, succeeded to the hopeful position of his father. Even Hugh Capet seemed inclined to restore his friendship and protection, as the first act of the young king was, in concert with the duke, to march to the reduction of the archiepiscopal town of Rheims.
It is considered by M. Thierry, who has been in general followed by modern French historians, that the principal cause which about this time led to the enthronement of Hugh Capet as king of France or of the French, in place of the Carlovingian princes, was the antipathy of race, and especially that of French against Germans, which prompted the chiefs and the population of the central provinces to throw off the yoke of the Germans, which the Lorraine or Belgian princes were to a certain degree. A study of the records and chronicles of the time does not lead to this conclusion. On the contrary, they prove beyond a question that the personages and the party which were most influential in awarding the crown definitively to Hugh Capet were precisely Belgian or Lorraine, and attached moreover to German interests.
Hitherto the Carlovingian princes had maintained their hold and influence in their own circumscribed territories by the support of the archiepiscopal church of Rheims, which maintained its jealousy both of the duke of Paris and of the German emperor, labouring at the same time to save and to recover its church property, as best it might, from the counts ever ready to despoil it.
Adalbero, son of Godfrey, count of the Ardennes, had been promoted to that see, and had laboured to reform and restore it. The prelate Adalbero was not what his predecessor had been, a devoted partisan of the Carlovingian princes. He saw that they were too weak to protect the church, especially that of Rheims, which, situated between the frontiers of two great nations, was continually the spoil of both. Adalbero, connected with all the German noblesse and princely families of Lorraine, was for preserving that province for the young emperor Otto; and his letters of exhortation written by Gerbert, addressed to all the prelates and counts of the border region, entreat them to resist all the efforts of Lothair and Louis, whilst recommending that they make a friend of Hugh, duke of France.
Policy so hostile to them on the part of the prelate of Rheims excited the inveterate enmity of the Carlovingian princes; and, at length, Louis marched to reduce Rheims with an army that Adalbero could not for the moment resist, for he gave hostages to answer for his conduct before an assembly that was to be convened. The prelate did this, apparently, in connivance with Hugh Capet, between whom and Adalbero there was in all probability an early agreement to aim at the setting aside of the Carlovingians, and the division between the German emperor and Hugh Capet of the countries between France and Lorraine. The great obstacle to the completion of such a scheme, young king Louis, was at this very time carried off.[g] As the result of a fall from a horse “he was seized with a great pain in his liver and a burning fever; much blood flowed from his nose and throat”; he died May 21st, 987. Such is the simple account of the contemporary, Richer.[k] But if Adhémar de Chabannes[l] and other more recent chroniclers are to be believed Louis died “the same death as his father, of a poisoned draught given by his wife.” This more dramatic tradition has prevailed with the greatest number. The multitude were not willing to believe that so famous a dynasty could have come to an end by a burning fever or a commonplace accident. Both father and son died most opportunely for Hugh Capet, and what we know of the moral tone of that century allows us to suspect anything: but the testimony of Richer lends all the more weight to Hugh’s justification, since the monk of Rheims is a partisan of the ancient dynasty and not of the Capets.[h]
The meeting of chiefs and prelates already summoned at Compiègne to hear Louis’ accusation of Adalbero took place. But no accuser appeared. Charles the uncle of Louis held aloof. By his conduct as lord of Cambray, which dignity he had accepted under the suzerainty of the emperor, he had alienated the clergy, the French or Franci, both of Laon and of the duchy of France, as well as public opinion in general. He had made a lowly marriage, lived a dissipated life, and had, in fine, but few friends. Hugh Capet took upon himself to absolve Adalbero of the crime laid to his charge, that crime being treason to the Carlovingian family, which was then in the thoughts and purposes of all. It was, however, judged right to defer the final decision, and to appoint another meeting at Senlis, where, after due reflection and deliberation, a solemn resolve might be made. In the interval between the assemblies, Charles came to remonstrate with Adalbero. The prelate repelled him as one given to the worst vices and the worst associates. When the second meeting took place at Senlis, Adalbero represented Charles as unworthy of the crown, which he declared had never been hereditary. And no doubt Adalbero, as archbishop of Rheims, had in view the example of Hatto, archbishop of Mainz, who, on the extinction of the German Carlovingians, had rendered the crown of the empire elective, and attributed to the church and its metropolitan the chief influence in the election. Hugh Capet was therefore unanimously declared king in the midsummer of 987, and was solemnly crowned soon after at Noyon.[g]
FOOTNOTES
[1] [The gradual re-absorption of these fiefs or provinces into the royal domain is the story of the development of the French monarchy. They were annexed at different periods by conquest, purchase, voluntary or forced cession, confiscation, forfeiture, inheritance, marriage, or treaty. The reader is referred to the chronological table for the dates and manner of these annexations.]
[2] [“In this unseemly manner,” says White,[e] “the pirate of the Baltic, and worshipper of the almost forgotten Odin, took his place among the Christian chivalry of Europe as duke of Normandy and one of the twelve peers of France.” On his conversion Rollo took the name of Robert.]
[3] [It must be stated that this incident, though related by many historians, is based solely upon tradition.]
II. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CAPETIAN DYNASTY
[Sidenote: [987-1180 A.D.]]
The period of 240 years--from the accession of Hugh Capet to that of St. Louis--is described by Sismondi[i] as “a long interregnum, during which the authority of king was extinct, although the name continued to subsist.” A history of France, during this period, is a history not of its monarch but of its nobles. And as yet these details are neither heroic nor important enough to be interesting. A duke had sprung up in Aquitaine, a king in Provence. The establishment of the Norman princes has already been narrated. Betwixt them and Aquitaine, Anjou obeyed a warlike count. To the north, the first Baldwin possessed the county of Flanders betwixt the Somme and the Maas. The duchy of Burgundy was formed in the east; whilst that of Lorraine was altogether independent of France, and held by tongue as well as régime to the empire of Germany. Taking away these provinces from the map of France, a central portion will be found to remain betwixt the Loire and the Flemish border. Even here, however, the last Carlovingians possessed scarcely a castle which they could call their own. The counts of Paris possessed that city, as well as Orleans. The counts of Vermandois, whose capital was St. Quentin, at this time ruled Champagne also; but soon after that province came to increase the territories of the counts of Blois. The only town that obeyed the last reigning descendants of Charlemagne was Laon, and here they usually resided, unless when obliged to take refuge at Rheims, under the protection of the archbishop, against the attacks of the surrounding nobles.
Charles of Lorraine, the uncle of Louis V and sole heir of the Carlovingians, though thus prevented of his rights, was neither friendless nor vanquished. He soon took forcible possession of Laon and of Rheims, from which Hugh Capet was unable to drive him by force of arms. He adroitly, however, contrived to attach to his interests Ascelin, bishop of Laon, whom Charles, somewhat mistrusting, kept with him at Rheims. A conspiracy, formed by Ascelin, was attended with complete success. Charles was seized in his bed, and, together with his nephew, the archbishop of Rheims, delivered over to Hugh Capet. That monarch placed his prisoners in confinement at Orleans, where the competitor, Charles of Lorraine, soon after died (991).
[Sidenote: [991-996 A.D.]]
These, if we except a long quarrel respecting the archbishopric of Rheims, are the sole events of the reign of Hugh Capet, which is supposed to have occupied nine years. Some modern historians regard the founder of the third dynasty of French monarchs as a hero and a master spirit, whose talents won for him a crown. Others, amongst whom is Sismondi,[i] represent him as a pious sluggard, indebted solely to fortune for his elevation. Both are in extreme. We see no proof of his heroism. But his was an iron age, in which the exertions of individuals had slight power in changing the course of events. Nor does it follow that, because he was pious, he was pusillanimous. He made war on the count of Montreuil, to recover the relics of St. Riquier, which that count had stolen. Hugh Capet compelled him to surrender them, and himself bore the memorable remains on his royal shoulders to the abbey of the saint. Such is the account of the chroniclers. But if we observe that Hugh at the same time built and fortified Abbeville, the monarch will not seem altogether sunk in the superstitious votary.
“Who made thee count?” demanded Hugh Capet of a refractory noble, supposed by some to be Talleyrand, count of Angoulême. “The same right that made thee king,” was the bold reply. Such was the measure of the new monarch’s authority. The great feudatories, in consenting to place the crown on one of their own body, thought less of his elevation than of humbling the throne. Their views were sound, if they considered but themselves--short sighted, if they looked forward to posterity. Feudality ascended the throne with Hugh Capet; and, despite the precautions or intentions of the founders, the head of so powerful a system could not long remain powerless himself. Organised as society now was in regular and successive gradations of inferior and superior, a supreme chief became necessary to complete the whole. There was something wanting to crown the structure. The nobles imagined to adorn it with the lifeless image of royalty. But their statue, like Pygmalion’s, took life as it became the object of veneration, and grew at length to wield its sceptre with a muscular arm.
[Sidenote: [996-1035 A.D.]]
Hugh Capet had taken the precaution to have his son crowned and consecrated during his own lifetime. Thus, on the demise of the former, Robert II found himself the undisputed king of France. The young monarch was one of those soft, domestic tempers which fate so often misplaces on a throne. He had married Bertha, the widow of the count of Blois, and was tenderly attached to her. The spouses had the misfortune to be distantly related, and Robert had been godfather to one of Bertha’s children by her former husband. The pope considered these circumstances sufficient to render the marriage incestuous; and he accordingly issued a command to Robert, desiring him to put away Bertha, under pain of excommunication. The popes had erected themselves into the censors of princes, and they were especially rigid in prohibiting the marriage of cousins. Such unions, they said, drew down divine vengeance, and were to be avoided, lest they should produce national calamities. Nor was this mere superstition on their part: it had its policy. It was chiefly by intermarriages that the great aristocracy at this time increased their territories and influence. Every obstacle thrown in the way of these alliances consequently checked the growth of their exorbitant might; every difficulty or scruple, being in the power of the pontiff alone to remove, brought considerable advantage, both in revenue and respect, to the holy see. Robert struggled for four or five years in behalf of his legitimate wife, against the terrors of excommunication; but he was at length compelled to yield, to chase poor Bertha from his presence, and to take another wife, Constance, the daughter of the count of Toulouse. With her, a woman of more spirit than her predecessor, Robert was less happy. The monarch dreaded her, and was even obliged to do his alms in secret for fear of her reproof. His chief amusement was the singing and composing of psalms, to which the musical taste of that age was confined. In a pilgrimage to Rome, Robert left a sealed paper on the altar of the apostles. The priesthood expected it to contain a magnificent donation, and were not little surprised and disappointed to find it to contain but a hymn of the monarch’s composition. The piety of Robert was most exemplary. He was anxious to save his subjects from the crime of perjury; the means he took were to abstract privately the holy relics from the cases which contained them, and on which people were sworn. He substituted an ostrich’s egg, as an innocent object, incapable of taking vengeance on the false swearer.
Such are the facts which we have to relate of a reign of nearly thirty-five years. The good king Robert slumbered on his throne, with a want of vigour and capacity that would have caused a monarch of the first two races to totter from his seat, or at least would have transferred his authority to some minister or powerful duke. The Capetians as yet, however, unlike the Carlovingians, had neither power nor prerogative to tempt the ambition of a usurper. The very title of king was unenvied. And whilst the sovereign led the choir at St. Denis, France was not the less vigorously governed by its independent and feudal nobility.[b]
HENRY I (1031-1060 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1031-1060 A.D.]]
Robert’s son and successor, Henry I, had first of all to sustain a family war against his mother, Constance, who put his young brother Robert on the throne. The church declared for Henry, and the famous Robert the Magnificent, more commonly known as Robert le Diable, duke of the Normans, lent him the support of his sword and secured the crown upon Henry’s head. Henry vanquished his brother, pardoned and granted him the duchy of Burgundy, the first house of which was founded by Robert. During this reign a famine made terrible ravage among the French and in several places men ate one another. Following this scourge, troops of wolves devastated the country, and the lords, more terrible than wild beasts, carried on their barbaric wars in the midst of this widespread desolation.
The clergy with difficulty husbanded their anger in calling the vengeance of heaven upon this state of affairs and in affirming a multitude of miracles, and finally, in councils, ordered everyone to lay down his arms. They put forward the “Peace of God” in 1035, and threatened excommunication to those who violated so holy a decree. When the council in each province had formulated this peace deacons made it known to the people assembled in the churches. After the Gospel had been read the deacons mounted the pulpits and launched against infractors of the peace the following malediction: “Cursed be they who aid in doing evil; cursed be their arms and their horses! may they be banished with Cain, the fratricide, with Judas the traitor; with Dathan and Abiram, who descended living into hell. May their joy be extinguished at the sight of the holy angels as are these flames before your eyes.” At these words the priests who were holding lighted tapers threw them down and put them out, while the people, seized with fear, repeated with one voice, “May God thus extinguish the joy of those who will not accept peace and justice.”
But passions were too rampant and ambitions, too indomitable for evil thus to be rooted out entirely. The Peace of God only multiplied perjurers without diminishing assassins. Five years later another law known as the “Truce of God” was substituted for it. The councils which proclaimed this did not try to stop the flow of all human passions but to control them and regulate war according to laws of honour and humanity. Recourse to force was no longer forbidden to those who could invoke no other law, but the employment of this means was submitted to wise restrictions. All military attack and all shedding of blood was forbidden from sunset Wednesday evening to sunrise Monday morning, as well as on all fast and feast days. A perpetual inviolability was accorded the churches, unarmed clerics, and monks, while the protection of the truce was extended to the peasants, their flocks, and implements of tillage. Promulgated first in Aquitaine, this wise and beneficial law was adopted throughout almost all Gaul, where the lords swore to observe it; and although it was often violated and soon fell into desuetude, it did much good in softening the manners of the nation and was the finest work of the mediæval clergy. Rumour spread that a horrible malady known as the “sacred fire” would punish infractors of the truce. The weakling king Henry, through “unreasonable pride,” was almost the only one to refuse to recognise it within his estates, giving as a pretext that it was an encroachment of the clergy upon his authority.
This king has left no creditable impression upon history.[d] Save for a few expeditions into Normandy, most of which were unfortunate, he did nothing. In 1046 he refused the homage of the duke of Upper and Lower Lorraine, and even allowed the count of Flanders to declare for the emperor of Germany as suzerain.[c]
It is said that from fear of unwittingly marrying a wife who might be allied to him by ties of blood, he sought one at the extremities of Europe, and married for his third wife the princess Anne, daughter of the grand duke Yaroslaff of Russia. Henry had three sons by this marriage, of whom he caused the eldest, Philip, to be made joint king in the last year of his life. He died in 1060 after a reign of twenty-nine years.[d]
Deeds of the Great Barons
[Sidenote: [1028-1054 A.D.]]
The king did nothing, but the great lords accomplished much. Three especially filled France with the noise of their ambitions and their wars. Robert, surnamed the Magnificent by the nobles and the Devil by the people, had usurped the ducal crown of Normandy by poisoning his brother Richard III and his chief barons at a feast (1028). By force of energy and courage he crushed the opposition which his crime aroused and, uncontested sovereign of Normandy, interfered with all his neighbours.
He upheld King Henry I against his brother, for which he received the French Vexin in return. He set out to oust Canute the Great from the throne of England for the profit of the sons of Ethelred, his cousin; but a storm having driven his fleet from the English coast upon that of Brittany, he invaded this country and forced the duke Alain to do him homage (1033). In 1035 struck with remorse he went to seek peace of conscience at Jerusalem. While returning he died in Asia Minor. Below Rouen, in one of the most beautiful positions in Normandy, you may see a hill covered with shapeless ruins. These are the remains of Robert le Diable’s castle, which, according to tradition, was haunted by evil spirits. The place is not far from the spot where John Lackland is said to have stabbed his nephew.
The son and successor of Robert the Magnificent was William the Bastard, who had much to do to obtain the obedience of his vassals: the battle of Val-des-Dunes, near Caen (1046), finally rid him of his adversaries. King Henry, his suzerain, who fought that day on his side, soon found the young duke too powerful, and formed an alliance of all his enemies. This was the cause of numerous encounters between the Normans and the French (inhabitants of the Île-de-France), the latter in every event sustained by the Angevins and the Bretons. The bloodiest of these combats was that fought at Mortemer in 1054. The king supported by the count of Anjou had entered Normandy through the county of Évreux, while his brother Eudes penetrated the Pays de Caux with horsemen from Picardy, Champagne, and Burgundy.
Duke William met this double invasion with two armies--that which marched against Eudes encountered, near Mortemer, the French, dispersed, and engaged in pillaging. The Normans killed some, took others, and put the rest to flight. Swift messengers bore the good news to the duke. “When night had come he despatched one of his men who climbed a tree near the king’s camp and began to utter loud cries. The sentinels asked why he thus cried aloud at an unseemly hour. ‘My name is Raoul de Ternois,’ he replied, ‘and I bring you bad news. Take your wagons and carts to Mortemer to carry away your friends who are dead, for the French came against us to test the Normans’ chivalry, and they have found it much greater than they liked. Eudes, their standard-bearer, has been put to flight in shame; and Guy, count of Ponthieu, has been taken. All the others have been made prisoners or are dead, or have had great difficulty in saving themselves by rapid flight. Announce at once this news to the king of the French, on the part of the duke of Normandy.’” The frightened king retired in all haste, and Geoffrey Martel was obliged to abandon to William the sovereignty of Maine.
Eudes II, count of Blois, desired to seize the kingdom of Provence and afterwards Lorraine, and to this reconstructed Lorraine he hoped to add the crown of Italy. But a battle in Barrois ended the schemes of the turbulent baron. Eudes was defeated and killed (1037); his wife alone was able to recognise his body among the corpses which strewed the field, and pay the last honours to his remains.
[Sidenote: [987-1066 A.D.]]
A prince against whom Eudes often fought, Fulk (Foulques) Nerra--or the Black--count of Anjou, was even more renowned. Thrice did he make pilgrimages to the Holy Land. On the last he caused himself to be drawn on a sledge, naked, and with rope around the neck, through the streets of Jerusalem, whipped the while with great blows by two valets, and crying with all his might, “Lord have mercy on the traitor, the perjurer Fulk.” Then he attempted to return on foot, but died on the way (1040). Fulk had indeed many crimes to expiate. Queen Constance was his niece. One day she complained to him of one of her husband’s favourites, and Fulk immediately despatched twelve knights with orders to stab the favourite wherever they might find him. Of his two wives, he had one burned to death, or according to other accounts stabbed her himself after she had been rescued from a precipice over which he tried to throw her; the other he compelled by ill treatment to retire to Palestine. His son Geoffrey Martel was also a fighter. He tried by force of arms in 1036 to compel his father to cede him the county of Anjou, but the old Fulk defeated and made him undergo the punishment of the harnescar. The rebel son had to travel several miles on all fours, a saddle on his back, to reach the count’s feet and implore his pardon.
Geoffrey Martel, jealous of the duke of Normandy’s power, united with Henry I against him. His successors kept up this policy and the kings of France found the Angevin counts useful allies against the Norman duke--now become kings of England, at least until the moment the counts inherited the English crown themselves. It is related that Geoffrey Martel’s wife was fond of reading, but such was the scarcity of books that she was obliged to give two hundred sheep, five quarters of wheat, and as much rye and millet for a manuscript of the homilies. The beautiful cathedral of Angers was begun under Fulk Nerra.[c]
PHILIP I (1060-1108 A.D.)
Philip I at the age of eight succeeded his father under the regency of Baldwin V, count of Flanders. The most important event of Philip’s minority, and one in which he took no part, was the conquest of England. The Norman knights were distinguished above all others by their immoderate desire for warlike adventure and their brilliant exploits. Some of them, landing sixty years before as pilgrims on the south coast of Italy, had helped the besieged inhabitants of Salerno to drive off a Saracen army. Inspired by the success of their compatriots, the sons of a petty nobleman, Tancred de Hauteville, followed by a band of adventurers, wrested Apulia from the Greeks, Lombards, and Arabs, and sustained with success a most unequal struggle against the German and Byzantine emperors, who joined forces to exterminate them. They made prisoner the German pope Leo IX, devoted to the family of the emperor Henry III; and, humbling themselves before their captive, obtained permission to hold their conquest as a fief of the church. Robert Guiscard completed the subjection of Apulia and Calabria, and his brother Roger conquered Sicily, and it was thus the Normans founded the kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the pope obtained suzerainty over it.
Norman valour was the talk of Europe, when William the Bastard, son of Robert the Magnificent, began to assemble an army for the conquest of England. Warriors, full of confidence in his destiny, rushed from all directions to his standard.[4] It was several hundred years since Britain had been conquered by the Saxons, and the country was now under the rule of King Harold, whom a storm had once wrecked, before he was king, upon the coast of Normandy. As William’s prisoner, Harold was compelled to cede the Norman his rights to the throne; and when free at this price no longer considered himself bound by an oath extracted under compulsion. It was the custom in those days to consider shipwrecked persons as delivered by the judgment of God to the lord of the shore on which the storm had cast them. They could be held captive and even put to torture for the sake of ransom. William recalled to Harold his promise, especially invoked the will of Edward the Confessor, the last king of England, and declared his willingness to abide by the decision of the church. The consistory, assembled at the Lateran, pronounced in William’s favour, and at the instigation of the monk Hildebrand awarded him the kingdom of England and sent him, together with a blessed standard, a diploma as sovereign of the country. A great battle fought between the two rivals near Hastings in 1066 decided the issue. Harold lost his life; and England, after a desperate struggle, became the conquest of the Normans. William divided the country into fiefs for his barons and knights, and thenceforth feudalism spread over England the network it had already fastened upon France, Germany, and Italy.
This great event inflamed people’s spirits and disposed them to adventurous expeditions in distant lands. It was the forerunner of the Crusades; although the latter had a nobler motive than the others, springing, as they did, from the enthusiasm of exalted piety.
[Sidenote: [1066-1073 A.D.]]
A great revolution was taking place at this time in the church. Nicholas II occupied the pontifical chair at this moment. He had for counsellor a monk who deplored the vices of the clergy and the degradation of the church as much as the encroachments of the temporal upon spiritual authority. This monk, this man so celebrated in ecclesiastical history, was Hildebrand. He resolved to deprive the princes and lords of every source of influence over the clergy, to strengthen the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and to raise the pope above the kings of the earth, hoping thus to regain for the church her virtue, her splendour, and all her power. Such a project of universal domination, which would seem like madness to-day, was in Hildebrand’s age a conception of genius. It was Hildebrand’s glory to have wished to free the church’s spiritual authority from all temporal bonds; it was his mistake to have listened too much to his own ambition in trying to enslave the political government of the princes to ecclesiastical authority. In 1073 Hildebrand was chosen by the people and clergy of Rome as successor to Pope Alexander II. He took the name of Gregory VII.
[Sidenote: [1071-1099 A.D.]]
Philip of France was leading a life filled with scandal and violence. To satisfy his unbridled desires he, like Henry IV of Germany, was carrying on, in contempt of Gregory’s prohibition, the most shameful traffic in clerical benefices. The angered pontiff threatened Philip with excommunication. The colossal structure raised by the pontiff did not perish with him; his successors bound it together. He founded the universal monarchy of the popes upon a durable basis and on the ruling spirit of the time, and this domination reached a century after him, its highest point. The Crusades contributed powerfully to hold it together. Gregory conceived the plan of these, but it was not given to him to carry it out. The first of these memorable events took place in the time of Philip I and in the pontificate of Urban II. Philip was not associated with the First Crusade; he took no part in any of the great enterprises which marked the age in which he lived, and his reign offers nothing worthy of remembrance.
In 1071 the widow of his guardian, Count Baldwin of Flanders, was robbed by the latter’s brother, Robert the Frisian, and she had recourse to Philip. The king took up arms in her behalf and marched against Robert, but suffered a shameful defeat at Cassel.[5] He also fought a twelve years’ war with William the Conqueror, but it was a war marked by no memorable event. William seduced Philip’s counsellors and partisans by offering them great domains in England. Philip on his side promised protection to the discontented element among the Normans and took the part of William’s eldest son Robert, in revolt against his father. After a truce and during an illness of the duke, the king made fun of the former’s extreme fatness by inquiring when he expected to be brought to bed. William heard of this and, furious, swore to bring the king the candles for the churching. He assembled a formidable army and was setting out to ravage Philip’s estates when he fell ill at Rouen and died there in 1087. When he was scarcely cold the lords who were with him departed in haste for their castles; his servants pillaged his effects, taking everything but the bed he lay on, and left the body of the conqueror naked on the mattress. A poor knight found it in this state and moved to pity covered it, at his own expense, with mourning robes and prepared to bury it. He had spoken the funeral service and the body was in the grave when a Norman named Asselin came forward and said, “This ground belongs to me; the man whose eulogy you have just pronounced robbed me of it. On this spot stood my father’s house, this man seized it against all justice and without paying a price for it. In God’s name I forbid you to cover the robber’s body with earth that is mine.” This is a memorable example of the vanity of an existence full of greatness and iniquity--a striking sign of the forerunner of the judgment which threatened, on the threshold of the other life, him who had founded his power on rapine and the extermination and misery of a people. This William, conqueror of a great realm and ravisher of immense domains in a foreign land, only obtained a resting-place in his native soil through pity; those who assisted at his funeral had to lay the price of it upon his coffin.
[Sidenote: [1087-1108 A.D.]]
None of his three sons paid him his last duties, but waged fierce war for his heritage.[d] William Rufus succeeded to the throne in England, and his brother Robert Courte-Heuse (Court-Hose or Short-Hose) in Normandy. But William was not content with his portion. He invaded Normandy in 1090, and also disturbed the peace of the French monarchy by a vigorous claim on the French Vexin and a war on the count of Maine. When Robert joined the First Crusade he mortgaged his duchy to his brother, who occupied it. But William’s tenure was short. An arrow in the New Forest ended his life (1100). Robert Courte-Heuse hastened home and resumed his rule, but Henry I, the Conqueror’s youngest son who succeeded William Rufus in England, thirsted likewise for the paternal dominions. In 1104 he appeared in Normandy and two years later the struggle was over. At the battle of Tinchebray Robert lost his lands and his liberty. Normandy passed to the English crown.[a]
The death of the Conqueror was a great cause of joy to Philip and enabled him to continue his indolent and scandalous career. He had married Bertha, daughter of Count Florent of Holland, but tired of her and shut her up while he eloped with Bertrade, wife of Fulk le Réchin, count of Anjou, and married her. Pope Urban ordered the dissolution of this marriage, and on the refusal to obey a council assembled at Autun in 1094 excommunicated the king. Philip no longer wished to wear the external marks of royalty; he was afflicted with grievous infirmities, which he recognised as the chastisement of God; so in 1100 he associated his son Louis with the crown, and thenceforth reigned only in name. A terrible fear of hell seized upon him. In humility he renounced burial in the sepulchre of the kings at St. Denis, and died in 1108 in the habit of a Benedictine monk.[d]
LOUIS THE FAT AND LOUIS THE YOUNG (1108-1180 A.D.)
Feebleness and inertness mark the reign of the first four Capetians. In the successor of Philip the race began to partake in the general activity of the age.
The reign of Louis VI, better known as Louis le Gros, or the Fat, began in the lifetime of his predecessor. He was the first French monarch that entertained any settled maxim of government, or whose ideas reached a system of policy. His predecessors had been the creatures, the followers, of events. Louis knew how to control these. The whole effort and aim of his reign was to reduce the barons of the duchy of France to obedience. His views did not extend to the kingdom. He prudently limited his exertions to the counties within or bordering upon his power. History may disdain to recount minutely the wars carried on by Louis against the barons of Montmorency, whose castle rose within view of his capital, or against the lords of Puiset, of Montlhéry, or of Coucy, possessors of strongholds within a few leagues of Paris, from whence they were wont to sally forth to the plunder of travellers and merchants. And yet, of all the wars that adorn or sully the French annals, none was more wise in aim, more useful or important in consequences, than these petty enterprises of Louis.
His first attempt was against the Burchards, lords of Montmorency, who were continually in quarrel with the abbaye of St. Denis; and, if we are to believe the chronicles of the day, written for the most part in that famous convent, the Montmorencys were impious spoliators and enemies of the church. Louis stood forth the champion of the clergy, and brought the Burchards to reason. His next efforts were directed against the château of Montlhéry and its rapacious owners, who interrupted all communication betwixt the royal towns of Paris and Orleans, greatly to the detriment of commerce and the annoyance of the townsfolk. Louis here took care to have a pretext also. He did not assert his royal authority and arm to avenge it. It was as the ally of the clergy that he subdued the Montmorencys; it was as the friend of commerce, and the avenger of the plundered burgesses, that he besieged Montlhéry. Louis XI did not use more policy and feint in his undermining of the aristocracy than did Louis VI; the latter, unfortunately for his own fame, having only the smaller sphere of action (1101).
[Sidenote: [1101-1119 A.D.]]
Nevertheless, the name of Louis the Fat stands connected with one of the most important revolutions in the civil history of France, viz., the enfranchisement of the communes or commons, as the early municipalities were called. From him towns received their first charters; from his reign their first liberties date. In some towns the bishops favoured, in some they opposed, the enfranchisement of the commons. The barons were, in general, averse. The king was obliged to wage a tedious war against the family of Coucy, which, by means of a fortress, kept possession of the town of Amiens. He at length took and razed it; and the seigniory of the De Coucys merged in the township of Amiens.
It was not merely by military exploits, and by the elevation of the tiers état or third estate, that the royal authority progressed during the reign of Louis VI. The judicial authority attributed to the monarch by the feudal system, and exercised by him in his court or council of peers, made him the arbiter of disputed successions. It was thus that Philip I had extended his influence over the province of Berri. His son Louis interfered in the quarrels of the house of Bourbon, where a minor struggled against the usurpation of his uncle. Louis entered the Bourbonnais with an army in 1115, took Germigny, the principal fortress of Aymon de Bourbon, and compelled him to submit. Not since the early Carlovingians had the banners of a king of France been seen so far from his capital.
[Sidenote: [1119-1127 A.D.]]
The continued rivalry betwixt the Normans, or English, and the French excited and kept alive the warlike spirit of both nations. Henry I reigned in England, and also in Normandy, which he had usurped from his brother Robert. Louis took the part of the latter, as well as of his son William Clito; and mutual wars, or rather ravages, were frequent, with intervals of peace, betwixt the nations.[b] The principal feud between Henry and Louis was produced by accident.
Battle of Brenneville
On the 20th of August, 1119, Louis and Henry found themselves unexpectedly face to face on the plain of Brenmule or Brenneville, three leagues from Les Andelys. Henry descended from the height of Verclive with his sons Richard and Robert, five hundred men-at-arms, and some infantry. Louis, seeing that what he had long desired was now approaching, marched straight at the enemy at the head of four hundred knights, accompanied by William Clito, who had taken arms to deliver his father from a long captivity and to win back the heritage of his ancestors. William de Crespigny, a Norman knight on Clito’s side, charged first with eighty men-at-arms, penetrated as far as King Henry himself, and smote him such a blow on the head as, but for his cap of mail, must have split his skull; but Crespigny was instantly thrown from his horse and made prisoner with most of his followers. The knights of the Vexin and the rest of the French then fell impetuously on the Anglo-Normans, and at first caused them to give way, but Henry’s soldiers, closing up their ranks, pressed between them and overthrew the assailants, who were thrown into disorder by the sheer force of their charge. King Louis, seeing his followers in disarray and anxious to effect a retreat in order to avoid an irreparable loss, fled at full gallop, leaving his royal banner and 140 of his knights in the hands of the conquerors.
“Of nine hundred knights who were present at this battle,” says Ordericus Vitalis,[g] “there were only three killed; for they were completely cased in iron and, moreover, mutually sparing one another as much from the fear of God as for the sake of brotherhood in arms. They concerned themselves less to kill the flying than to take them prisoners.”
The king of the French, divided from his companions in his fright, lost his way in a forest (that of Lyons) where a peasant, who did not know him, guided him to Les Andelys in the hope of a large reward. King Henry bought the silver standard of Louis for forty marks from a man-at-arms, who had seized it and kept it as a witness of his victory; but the next day he sent back to King Louis his horse with its saddle, its rein, and all the royal trappings (Louis had apparently changed horses that he might fly without being recognised). And William Ætheling had sent back to his cousin, William Clito, the palfrey which the latter had lost in the battle, with other presents which King Henry had thought needful for an exile.[e] After this defeat Louis had to abandon William Clito’s cause. Pope Calixtus II arranged a peace and Henry I embarked for England with his family and his court. The journey is memorable for the loss of the “White Ship” (Blanche Nef) in which the most renowned knights and the heirs of the most illustrious house of the Norman race, including the two sons and a daughter of the king, perished. One child alone remained to the bereaved monarch, Matilda or Maud, the wife of the emperor Henry V but afterwards married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou.[a]
[Sidenote: [1127-1149 A.D.]]
Another enterprise of Louis, in the year 1121, marks the rapid increase of the king’s influence. A few years since he had established his authority in the Bourbonnais: now he extended it to Auvergne. In a quarrel betwixt the count and the bishop of Clermont, the latter appealed to Louis, who summoned the count to his supreme court, and, on his refusal to appear, marched with an army and subdued him, as he had previously the lord of Bourbon. The counts of Anjou and of Nevers aided him in the expedition. They felt no reluctance in carrying into effect the decrees of that court of peers of which they formed a part. Louis was not so fortunate in his treatment of Flanders as in his subjugation of Aquitaine. The Flemings, indeed, proved always intractable to French treatment whether of amity or hostility. The count of that province, perplexed and curbed by the frowardness of the townsfolk and the middle class, sought to taunt the family of Van der Straten by asserting they were serfs. One of them replied by cleaving the young count’s skull as he knelt at prayers. There being no heir to the family of Flanders, Louis sought to give the county to William Clito (1127). This unfortunate prince soon after fell in an engagement; and Flanders passed to Theodoric of Alsace, a descendant of Robert the Frisian (1129). Louis VI died in 1137. It is strange that history could find for this monarch no epithet save that of the Fat, at the same time that it records innumerable proofs of a talented mind, of an active and enterprising spirit.
Towards the conclusion of this monarch’s reign, fortune came to reward and crown his efforts for the extension of the royal authority. William, count of Poitiers, about to undertake a pilgrimage, from which he had the presentiment that he never should return, offered his daughter Eleanor in marriage to Louis the Young, son of Louis the Fat. She was the heiress of her father’s possessions, which surpassed in extent and importance those of the king of France himself, comprising Guienne and Poitou--all the country, in fact, betwixt the Loire and the Adour. The marriage was celebrated at Bordeaux; and soon after it arrived tidings of the deaths both of the king and of the count of Poitiers. Thus Louis VII, or the Young, succeeded to dominions and authority infinitely more ample than those which his father had inherited. But the want of talent in the son did away with all these advantages. Nevertheless he commenced his reign with spirit. He chastised several refractory nobles, and resolved to support the queen’s rights to the county of Toulouse. Louis besieged that town. He failed in taking it, indeed; but the king of France, at the head of an army, made his name and power known for the first time to the inhabitants of the south. During a war carried on about the same time against Thibaut, count of Champagne, an accident occurred which had a marked effect upon the future conduct and character of Louis the Young. He had taken by storm the castle of Vitry, and set fire to it. The flames chanced to catch the neighbouring church, into which the population had crowded, to preserve themselves from the fury of the soldiery. It appears that they had no means of escape. Thirteen hundred men, women, and children perished in the conflagration. Louis was horror-struck on beholding the mass of half consumed bodies, and the weight of the remorse hung ever after upon him, and weighed down his spirit. It was the chief cause that induced him to receive the cross, and to lead that expedition to Jerusalem which is known in history as the Second Crusade.
Not a single feat of arms marked the stay of Louis in Palestine, where he lingered till 1149, ashamed to return. The ignominy of this ill success, and the desertion of his followers, fell upon King Louis; and he felt it, not to rally and redeem his character, but to sink under the shame. He abandoned the feelings of the monarch and the warrior for those of the pilgrim; refused at first to undertake any enterprise against the infidels, and stole from Antioch to Jerusalem like a craven. If his subjects were discontented with such weakness in their sovereign, Eleanor of Aquitaine was still more disgusted with such a husband: she refused longer to remain on any friendly terms with him.[b] On his return the king repudiated his wife, who had so displeased him during the crusade. [Queen Eleanor at once petitioned the pope for a divorce. In 1152 the pope granted her wish.] Shortly afterwards a new marriage transferred her duchy of Guienne to Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou, duke of Normandy and heir to the English crown. When, two years later, Henry entered into possession of his heritage, and afterwards added Brittany, through the marriage of one of his sons with the only daughter of the count of that country, he found himself master of almost the whole of western France.[c]
[Sidenote: [1103-1180 A.D.]]
Hence dates the rivalry betwixt the kings which fills up the rest of their reigns. But in that age war tended more to mutual annoyance than to conquest: it was a livelihood to the needy, a portion to the powerful; and neither were very serious or bent upon the destruction of an enemy. Feudal rights and supremacy were also held in high respect; and the name of suzerain, though but a name, often supplied to Louis the place of the armies of his vassal Henry. In time the church came to fling itself into the scale. The persecution and murder of Thomas à Becket roused all the clergy in enmity to Henry, and Louis took advantage of their aid. Later still, the French monarch used the more unworthy expedient of exciting the sons of Henry to rebel against their parent; and throughout he contrived to supply by intrigue what he wanted in martial spirit, activity, and power. Louis VII married Alix of Champagne, after the divorce; he was long without a son, and at length, so the story goes, he obtained one by dint of prayer. When the life of the prince was threatened by a fever, the anxious parent undertook a pilgrimage to Canterbury, to the tomb of Thomas à Becket, for his recovery. The young Philip recovered; but Louis, on his return, was struck with a palsy, under which he lingered for the space of a year, and died in 1180.[b]
The Abbot Suger
[Sidenote: [1081-1149 A.D.]]
On his return from the crusade, Louis found his country in a most peaceful and flourishing condition owing to the skilful administration of his preceptor the abbot Suger, whom he had left in charge of affairs.[a] Suger is indubitably the most illustrious, perhaps, even, the only historian who has a place in the general history of France, and who really influenced her destinies. Such a fame cannot be usurped; whoso possesses it merits it.
No great and lasting memorials were raised in France by Suger and his master, Louis the Fat; they made no great conquests, established no memorable laws; it is even a mistake to ascribe to them the honour of being the first to enfranchise the communes. This enfranchisement had preceded them; it arose from causes beyond their control, fulfilled its destiny without their aid, and was as often opposed as seconded by them. But Louis the Fat and Suger, the one as king, the other as minister, were the first since Charlemagne to have a true and just perception of their position and mission, and to bind themselves to act upon it. This great idea, without which there can be nothing of state or king, the idea of a public authority, devoted to the maintenance of public order, called to something higher than ministration to the interests and personal caprices of its temporary holder, had been conceived by the giant mind of Charlemagne, but, despite his genius and a long reign, it was not for him to put it into action, to found a throne and a nation. Certain customs of unity, of regularity, of government, in short, existed indeed in the earlier years of Louis le Débonnaire’s reign, but they soon vanished, society and authority alike fell into decay, and for two centuries there was neither king, kingdom, nor nation, Frank nor French.
Hugh Capet, in taking the title of king, laid the first stone of a new monarchy in the very heart of feudalism. But it was no more than a title of vague meaning and no import under him. He had not the force of character, nor is there anything to indicate that he had the design, to raise the sovereignty above suzerainty and reunite in one body the scattered members of the nation. Under his immediate successors the power of the throne drooped more and more. In the reigns of Robert, Henry I, and Philip I, one can scarcely discern any traces of national and monarchical unity. Isolation and independence waxed stronger, not only in the case of powerful or distant feudatories, but also among the nearest and humblest vassals of the crown. Only the feudal tie continued in force, a real and precious tie since it still maintained a show of confederation under a leader and prevented the utter dismemberment of the government and the country; but its influence, always more moral than political, yielded at the least shock and seemed even on the point of disappearance. With Louis the Fat a new era begins; the extent of his power, even the sphere of his activities, is still very restricted; the results of his endeavours are, for the present at least, of little value. It is almost always in the outskirts of Paris, against the simple squires, for the securing of a route, for the protection of merchants, that his courage and wisdom are exercised. Nevertheless in these small undertakings, and in certain others more remote, we can see a definite design of central and regular government; sovereignty separates itself from suzerainty, and in its own name claims, though timidly, rights of another sort. It presents itself to us as a power general and superior, called to maintain justice and order, to the advantage of all, and against all comers--a power all too weak for such a task, but awake to a perception of its dignity and its mission, and to a dawning of the same in the mind of its subjects. Such is the true character of the reign of Louis the Fat; he did little for the liberties of the public, much for the forming of the state and national government. He guided sovereignty in its first steps out of a feudal régime, gave to it other principles, placed it in a different attitude; and it is in this work, the development of which decided the lot of France, that Suger rendered powerful assistance during twenty five years’ administration.
He did not seem marked out by birth for so great things, his father, Hélinand, being only a man of the people, living, according to the most probable supposition, at St. Omer, where Suger was born in 1081. But even at that date the church busied herself in searching out and welcoming, even from among the lowest ranks, men capable of serving and honouring her. Everywhere present and active, in touch with all the social conditions, associating alike with poor and rich, dwelling with the humble as with the great, she went forward to meet even childhood on its way, studying its varying dispositions, surrounding its earliest days, unfolding to it a brilliant career, the only one which invited development of its intellectual faculties, in which every reward was accessible to merit, and, finally, in which principles of equality and co-operation reigned. The monastery of St. Denis received and brought up the young Suger; he passed ten years in the dependent priory of Lettrée, and when, in 1095, Philip intrusted the education of his son, Louis the Fat, to the monks of St. Denis, Abbot Adam recalled Suger into the abbey itself that he might become the companion of the young prince. Thus sprang up between the children the intimacy which was to bind them together all their lives. In 1098, Louis returned to his father’s house, and Suger went to complete his studies in the monastery of Florent-de-Saumur, where the sciences of the day flourished under Abbot William. In returning to St. Denis in 1103 he speedily became the confidant of Abbot Adam, who, not content with employing him in all matters relating to the monastery, frequently took him to court where Prince Louis, who now for four years had had a share in the throne, knit yet more closely the bonds that had bound him to his childhood’s friend. From this date there is no further need to trace the life of Suger; it is part of history and nearly all the details that have come down to us are to be found either in his Vie de Louis VI[k] or in the Panegyric written upon him by the monk William, his secretary.
Before his elevation to the dignity of abbot of St. Denis, when charged with diverse missions either to ecclesiastical gatherings or to the court at Rome, or even called upon to defend with mailed fist certain domains belonging to St. Denis against the brigand nobles who ravaged them, he displayed in turn the tact of the ecclesiastic and the courage of the knight. Later on, when Louis had constituted him his most intimate adviser, it seems that so much power temporarily dazzled Suger. St. Bernard speaks of his pomp and pride, and of the disorder introduced into his abbey. “The interior of the monastery,” he says, “is filled with knights, sometimes it is even open to women; one hears business of all sorts being transacted there; there quarrels break out; lastly it is there that that which is Cæsar’s is rendered unto Cæsar, without deduction or delay, but never unto God that which is God’s.” Whether it be that St. Bernard’s warnings aroused Suger from this first intoxication of power, or whether he perceived of himself the harm the scandal would do him, he did not delay putting an end to it. In 1127 he introduced drastic reforms into his abbey, compelled his monks to submit to them, and scrupulously conformed himself, and very shortly his power in the court was but more firmly established by this episode. Proud of the austerity of his morals, whilst at the same time profiting by his influence, the church cried him up on all occasions, and bishops and abbots of the most celebrated monasteries contemplated with equal pride the gorgeous church rebuilt by him at St. Denis, and the humble cell, barely fifteen feet long by ten feet wide, where he applied himself in solitude to religious exercises. After the death of Louis the Fat his power increased yet more; the indolent and incompetent Louis the Young shifting to his shoulders the whole weight of the government.
[Sidenote: [1147-1149 A.D.]]
Suger’s regency during this king’s crusade, from the year 1147 to the year 1149, is the most brilliant period of his career. He firmly upheld the royal authority, rebuked the usurpations of the vassals, established some degree of order wherever his influence attained to, met the king’s expenses in Palestine by his excellent administration of the crown revenues, and the advancement of his domains, and, finally, won such fame throughout the length and breadth of Europe that persons from Italy and England came to study the salutary results of his government, and the title of “the Solomon of the century” was bestowed upon him by foreigners contemporary with him. Hitherto only illustrious bishops, or learned and subtle theologians had attained this European distinction by their authority in the church or by their writings; no other man had ever won it on the sole merit of his political conduct, and from the ninth to the twelfth century Suger remains the first example of a minister who won admiration for his skill and wisdom from beyond the mountains and over the seas. He did not show any anxiety to retain this absolute power which the king’s absence conferred on him, and, by a rare unselfishness, the interests of the state preoccupied him more than his personal ambitions. He was himself opposed to a crusade from which he foresaw dangers, and had only yielded at the instance of St. Bernard’s ardent entreaties, the pope’s orders, and the prevailing opinion of the day. When certain of the nobles, Robert de Dreux, his brother, among them, who had accompanied Louis, abandoned him in Palestine and returned without him to France, Suger never ceased from urging his immediate return to his dominions.
“The disturbers of the public peace,” he wrote, “have returned, whilst you, under bond to defend your subjects, remain as it were captive in a foreign land. Of what are you thinking, sire, thus to leave the flock intrusted to you at the mercy of the wolves? How can you disguise from yourself the perils with which the robbers who have outstripped you menace the state? No, it is not permissible for you to remain any longer so far away from us. Everything here craves your presence. Therefore we pray your highness, we exhort your piety, we call upon your goodness of heart, finally we conjure you by the faith which binds reciprocally prince and subject, not to prolong beyond Easter your sojourn in Syria, lest a longer delay render you guilty in the eyes of the Lord of disregarding the oath which you swore on assuming the crown. You will, I think, find cause for contentment in our conduct. We have placed in the hands of the knights Templar the money which we had intended to send you. We have further repaid to the count of Vermandois the £3,000 which he had lent us for your use. At the present time your land and your people enjoy a happy peace. We lay in store against your return the broken victuals for the fiefs dependent on you, the tallage and victuals which we levy from your domains. You will find your houses and palaces in good preservation owing to the care we have taken in doing repairs. I have now reached the decline of life, but I dare venture to say that the works I engaged to do from love to God and devotion to your person have hastened my old age. With regard to the queen, your wife, I advise that you conceal the dissatisfaction she causes you till such time as, restored to your realm, you can quietly deliberate over that and other matters.”
Louis kept them waiting for him yet a long time. Suger had to fight against the pretensions and plottings of Robert de Dreux and his party. He realised that single-handed he would not be able to hold his own, and boldly summoned to Soissons an assembly of the bishops and principal barons of the realm. This generous appeal to the opinions and the liberties of the times had the result he anticipated: the assembly sided with him and strengthened him against his enemies. Defeated in their purpose in France, they made an attack on him in Palestine, this time within the mind of the king himself, who, frivolous and credulous, at first believed all their accusations. But on passing through Italy on his return to his dominions Louis received through Pope Eugenius III, friend and admirer of Suger, a completely different impression, in which he was fully confirmed on arriving in France by the good order which he there found established, the resources husbanded for him by Suger, and the eagerness shown by the regent to hand over to the king his rightful authority.
Other ideas were at work in the old man’s brain. He had disapproved of his master’s crusade as fatal to the interests of the kingdom; but the misfortunes to the Christians in the East, and regret at seeing the Holy Land on the point of once more falling into the hands of the infidels, preoccupied his mind continually. He conceived the idea of himself attempting a fresh expedition to Palestine, of raising an army at his own expense, of devoting all his wealth and influence to the cause, of inducing the leading bishops to follow his example, and of personally heading an undertaking by which he hoped Jerusalem would be saved without imperilling France and his king. In the narrative of William, his biographer, we can see with what ardour and perseverance he threw himself into this project, even after illness forbade him to hope for the glory resulting from it. He had already chosen the leader whom he deemed most competent to replace him and had presented him with the sums of money collected for carrying out the scheme, when death overtook him, January 12th, 1151, at the age of seventy.[h]
EMANCIPATORY MOVEMENTS AFTER THE CRUSADES
[Sidenote: [1000-1151 A.D.]]
The grand movement of the crusade having for a while withdrawn men from local servitude, and led them abroad through Europe and Asia, they sought Jerusalem and found freedom. That liberating trumpet of the archangel, which was thought to have been heard in the year 1000, sounded a century later in the preaching of the crusade. The village awoke at the foot of the feudal castle, whose shade hung heavy over it. The pitiless man who descended from his vulture’s eyrie only to despoil his vassals, now himself armed them, led them, lived with them, suffered with them. Communion in misery softened his heart. Many a serf could say to the baron, “My lord, I found you a draft of water in the desert; I shielded you with my body at the siege of Antioch, or Jerusalem.”
The Communes
Humanity, then, began again to honour itself, even in its most miserable conditions. The first communal revolutions preceded, or closely followed, the year 1100. They began to think that every man was entitled to dispose of the fruits of his own labour, and to give away his own children in marriage; they emboldened themselves to think that they had a right to come and go, to buy and sell, and they suspected, in their presumption, that it might very possibly be that men were equal.
Until then, that formidable thought of equality had not come forth in a very precise and tangible form. We are told, indeed, that the peasants of Normandy revolted in the year 1000, but they were easily put down; a few knights ravaged the country, dispersed the villeins, cut off their feet and hands, and there was an end of the matter. The peasants, in general, were too much isolated from each other; their jacqueries were always unsuccessful throughout the Middle Ages. Unhappily, too, it must be owned, they were too degraded by slavery, too brutalised by the excess of their woes; their triumph would have been that of barbarism. It was especially in the populous boroughs, grouped round the castles, and, above all, round the churches, that ideas of emancipation fermented. The lay, or ecclesiastical lords had encouraged the population of those boroughs by concessions of land, being desirous of augmenting their own strength and the number of their vassals. These towns were not large and commercial cities, like those of the south of France and Italy, but they had some rude branches of trade, some blacksmiths, many weavers, butchers, and innkeepers, in the towns of transit. Sometimes the lords invited skilful workmen to settle in their towns, such, at least, as could embroider a stole, or forge armour; it was absolutely necessary to leave those men a little liberty, for, otherwise, as they carried their all in their hands, they would have left the country.
The growth of freedom, then, was destined to commence by the central towns of France, which, obtaining their franchises by fair means or by force, received the name of privileged towns, or communes. The occasion of this result was, generally, the defence made by the inhabitants against the oppression and robbery of the feudal lords, and, in particular, the defence of the Île-de-France against Normandy, the feudal country par excellence. “At this period,” says Ordericus Vitalis,[g] “popular communality was established by the bishops in such wise that the priests accompanied the king to siege or battle, with the banners of their parishes and all their parishioners.” According to the same historian, it was a Montfort (an illustrious family, which was, in the following century, to destroy the liberties of the south of France, and to lay the foundation of those of England), it was Amaury de Montfort, who advised Louis the Fat, after his defeat at Brenneville, to employ against the Normans the men of the communes, marching under the banners of their parishes (1119). But when these communes returned within their own walls, they became more urgent in their demands; it was a mortal blow to their humility, to have once seen the great war-steeds and the noble knights flying before their parochial banners; to have put an end, with Louis the Fat, to the highway robberies of the Rocheforts; to have harried the lair of the De Coucys. They said, with the poet of the twelfth century: “We are men as well as they; our hearts are as great; we are as capable of endurance as they.” They all wanted some franchise, some privilege, and for this they offered money--which they contrived to find, indigent and wretched as they were. Poor artisans, blacksmiths, or weavers, allowed, as a matter of favour, to set themselves down at the foot of a castle; fugitive serfs, who had taken refuge round a church, such were the founders of liberty; they stinted themselves of bread to obtain them, and the lords and the king were eager to sell diplomas so well paid for.
This revolution was accomplished everywhere, under a thousand forms, and with little noise; it was only prominently remarked in some towns of Oise and Somme, which, being placed in less favourable circumstances, divided between two lords, lay and ecclesiastical, applied to the king to obtain a solemn guarantee for concessions often violated, and which maintained a precarious liberty at the cost of many centuries of civil war. It was upon these towns that the name of “communes” was more particularly bestowed. These wars are a small, but dramatic incident in the great revolution which was taking place silently, and under various forms, in all the towns of the north of France.
It was in the valiant and choleric Picardy, the communes of which had so well beaten the Normans; it was in the country of Calvin, and so many other revolutionary spirits, that these explosions took place.[f] Le Mans in 1066, then Cambray in 1076, gave the signal, followed by Noyon, Beauvais, St. Quentin, Laon, Amiens and Soissons. All wrested communal charters from their lords, mostly of the ecclesiastical order. In 1112 the bishop of Laon attempted to repeal the communal charter he had granted, somewhat under compulsion, three years before. His house was surrounded; the nobles who came to his assistance were killed, and the prelate himself fell under the blows of an axe. The king came and the commune was abolished. But before sixteen years had passed the communal party regained the ascendancy. In 1128 the king ratified a new charter granted by the bishop.[c] Great or small, the Picard communes were heroic, and bravely did they fight. They too had their belfry, their tower, not inclined and faced with marble, like the miranda of Italy, but furnished with a sonorous bell, that summoned the citizens, not in vain, to battle against the bishop or the lord. Women went forth to these fights, against men. Eighty women insisted on taking part in the attack upon the castle of Amiens, and were wounded there.
So, likewise, Joan Hachette fought afterwards, at the siege of Beauvais. A sprightly and laughter-loving population it was, of impetuous soldiers and merry story-tellers, a country of light manners, of smutty fabliaux, of good songs. It was their delight, in the twelfth century, to see the count of Amiens, mounted upon his big horse, venturing beyond the pont-levis, and caracoling clumsily; thereupon the innkeepers and the butchers planted themselves boldly at their doors, and startled the feudal animal with their loud laughter.
It has been said that the king founded the communes, but the reverse is, rather, the fact--it was the communes that founded the king; without them he could not have repulsed the Normans. Those conquerors of England and of the Two Sicilies would, probably, have conquered France; it was the communes, or, to employ a more general and more exact word, it was the bourgeoisies which, under the banner of the parish saint, achieved the security of public peace between the Oise and the Loire; and the king, mounted on horseback, carried the banner of the abbey of St. Denis, at the head of the lords. A vassal, as count of Vexin, abbot of St. Martin de Tours, canon of St. Quentin, defender of the churches, he waged holy war against the brigandage of the lords of Montmorency and Puiset, and against the execrable ferocity of the Coucys. He had upon his side the nascent bourgeoisie and the church; feudalism had had all the rest, all the strength and the glory; the poor helpless king was smothered between the vast dominations of his vassals.
Philosophy and Thought; Abelard and St. Bernard
[Sidenote: [1079-1115 A.D.]]
The chain of free-thinkers, broken, it would seem, after Johannes Scotus, had its links reunited by the great Gerbert, who became pope in the year 1000. Educated at Cordova, and admitted a master at Rheims, Gerbert had for disciple Fulbert of Chartres, whose pupil Bérenger [Berengarius] of Tours affrighted the church by the first doubt cast upon the Eucharist. Soon after, the canon Rosselin of Compiègne dared to touch upon the question of the Trinity. He taught, moreover, that general ideas were but words: “The virtuous man is a reality; virtue is but a sound.” This bold reform gave a violent shock to all poetry, to all religion; it accustomed men to see nothing but personifications in those ideas that had been regarded as real things; it was nothing less than a transition from poetry to prose. This logical heresy inspired the contemporaries of the First Crusade with horror; nominalism, as it was called, was stifled for a while.
Champions were not wanting to the church against the innovators. The Lombards, Lanfranc and St. Anselm, both of them archbishops of Canterbury, combated Bérenger and Rosselin. St. Anselm, an original genius, anticipated the famous argument of Descartes, for the existence of God: “If God did not exist, I could not conceive him.” It was a great delight for him to have made this discovery, after a long fit of sleeplessness. Another conflict of an intellectual kind, and one of a much graver nature, was about to begin, so soon as the question should have come down from politics to theology and morals, and the very morality of Christianity should have been brought in question. Thus, Pelagius came after Arius, and Abelard after Bérenger.
The church seemed at peace; the school of Laon and that of Paris were occupied by two pupils of St. Anselm of Canterbury, Anselm of Laon, and William of Champeaux. Great signs and tokens, however, were appearing; the Vaudois had translated the Bible into the vulgar tongue; the Institutes were also translated, and law was taught, simultaneously with theology, at Orleans and at Angers. The mere existence of the school of Paris was an immense innovation and danger. The ideas which, till then, had been dispersed, and exposed to close inspection in the various ecclesiastical schools, were about to converge to a centre. The conquests of the Normans and the First Crusade had carried that potent philosophic idiom everywhere--into England, into Sicily, into Jerusalem. This circumstance alone gave France, especially central France and Paris, an immense attractive force. The French of Paris became gradually proverbial; feudalism had found its political centre in the royal city, and that city was now about to become the capital of human thought.
He who began this revolution was not a priest; he was a handsome young man, of brilliant and engaging qualities, and of noble race. No one, like him, could write love verses in the vulgar tongue, and he sang them himself; then his erudition was extraordinary for the times--he was the only man who knew Greek and Hebrew.[6] Perhaps he had frequented the Jewish schools (there were many of them in the south), or the rabbis of Troyes, Vitry, or Orleans. There were then two principal schools in Paris; the old episcopal school of Notre Dame, and that of St. Geneviève, on the mountain, where William of Champeaux was in the zenith of his fame. Abelard became one of his pupils, laid his doubts before him, puzzled his master, made sport of him, and put him to silence. He would have done the same with Anselm of Laon, had not the professor, who was a bishop, expelled him from his diocese. Thus did the knight-errant of dialectics go about unhorsing the most famous champions. He says himself that he renounced the other kind of tilting, that of the tournaments, only from his love for the war of words. Thenceforth, victorious and unrivalled, he taught at Paris and at Melun, where Louis the Fat resided, and where the lords were beginning to gather in great numbers. These knights encouraged a man of their own order, who had beaten the priests upon their own ground, and who put the most self-sufficient of the clerks to silence.
The whole body of Christianity was at stake; it was attacked at its base. If original sin, as Abelard said, was not a sin, but a penalty, that penalty was unjust, and redemption was useless. Abelard defended himself from such a conclusion; but he justified Christianity by means of such feeble arguments, that he rather did it more damage by declaring that he had no better answer to give. He suffered himself to be brought to a stand by means of the argumentum ad absurdum, and then he appealed to authority and faith. And so, then, man was no longer guilty; the flesh was justified and restored to honour; all the sufferings with which men had immolated themselves were superfluous. What became of so many voluntary martyrs, so many fastings and mortifications--the vigils of monks, the tribulations of hermits, the countless tears shed before God? All was vanity--mockery. God was an amiable and easy God, who had nothing to do with all this.
The church was then under the sway of a monk, a simple abbot of Clairvaux, St. Bernard. He was of noble birth, like Abelard, a native of Upper Burgundy. He had been brought up in the puissant house of Cîteaux, the sister and rival of Cluny, which sent forth so many illustrious preachers, and which, half a century afterwards, made the crusade against the Albigenses. But St. Bernard thought Cîteaux too splendid and too rich: he went into needy Champagne, and founded the monastery of Clairvaux in the “Valley of Wormwood.” There he was free to lead that life of sorrows that was needful to him: nothing could win him from it; never would he hear of being anything else than a monk, though he might have become archbishop and pope. Constrained to reply to all the kings who consulted him, he found himself all-potent in spite of himself, and condemned to govern Europe. A letter from St. Bernard made the army of the king of France withdraw from Champagne. When schism broke out, by the simultaneous elevation of Innocent II and of Anacletus, St. Bernard was appointed by the church of France to choose between them, and he chose Innocent. But these were not his greatest affairs, as his letters inform us; he lent, not gave, himself to the world; his love and his treasure were elsewhere. Living in the inward life, in prayer and sacrifice, no one could make himself more alone in the midst of bustle; the senses no longer spoke to him of the world. He walked a whole day, says his biographer, along the Lake of Lausanne, and in the evening he asked where the lake was. He drank oil for water, and took clotted blood for butter. He could hardly support himself erect, and yet he found strength to preach the crusade to a hundred thousand men. The multitude thought it was a spirit, rather than a man they saw, when he appeared thus before them, with his red and white beard, his fair and hoary hair; meagre and weak, with but a scarcely visible indication of life upon his cheeks. His sermons were terrible; mothers kept their sons away from them, and wives their husbands; they would else have all followed him to the monasteries. As for him, when he had sent forth the breath of life over the multitude, he returned with speed to Clairvaux, reconstructed his little hut of boughs and foliage near the convent, and assuaged a little his love-sick soul in writing the exposition of the “Song of Songs” which employed his whole life.
Imagine with what grief such a man must have heard of Abelard’s success--of the usurpations of logic over religion; the prosaic victory of reasoning over faith; the flame of the sacrifice becoming stifled and extinguished in the world. It was robbing him of his God. St. Bernard was not to be compared with his rival as a logician; but the latter himself wrought his own downfall. He undertook to deduce its consequences from his doctrine, and he applied it to his conduct in life. He had reached that excess of prosperity in which the infatuation common to our nature plunges us into some great fault. Everything succeeded with him; men held their peace before him; women all regarded with looks of love an engaging, invincible young man, beautiful in face and all-powerful in mind, who had a whole people for his followers. “I had reached such a pass,” he says, “that honour what woman I would with my love, I had no refusal to fear.” Rousseau says precisely the same thing in his Confessions in relating the success of the Nouvelle Héloïse.
[Sidenote: [1115-1140 A.D.]]
The Héloïse of the twelfth century was the niece of the canon Fulbert, very young, beautiful, learned, and already celebrated; she was intrusted by her uncle to the teaching of Abelard, who seduced her. This fault had not even love for its excuse; it was deliberately, in cold blood, by way of pastime, that Abelard betrayed the confidence of Fulbert. We know that he was cruelly punished by mutilation for his crime; he renounced the world, and became a Benedictine at St. Denis, about the year 1119. Thither he was pursued by ecclesiastical persecutions, and he found no rest there. The archbishop of Rheims, the friend of St. Bernard, assembled a council against him at Soissons; Abelard was like to have been stoned by the people; he was frightened, shed many tears, burned his books, and said whatever they pleased. He was condemned without inquiry, his enemies alleging that it was enough that he had taught without the authority of the church.
Shut up at St. Médard de Soissons, and afterwards a refugee at St. Denis, he was obliged to fly from that asylum. He had presumed to doubt that St. Denis, the Areopagite, had ever visited France.[7] To impugn that legend was to attack the religion of the monarchy; and from that moment the court withdrew its protection from him. He fled to the dominions of the count of Champagne, and hid himself in a desert place on the Ardusson, two leagues from Nogent. Reduced now to poverty, and having but one clerk with him, he built a hut of reeds and an oratory in honour of that Trinity he was accused of denying, and named his hermitage the Comforter, the Paraclet. But his disciples, having learned where he was, flocked round him; they built them huts, and a town rose in the desert, dedicated to science and to liberty. A little more, and he would once more have appeared as a public teacher; but he was compelled again to hold his peace, and to accept the priory of St. Gildas de Ruys in Brittany, the language of which he did not understand. It was his fate to find no rest; his Breton monks, whose habits he endeavoured to reform, endeavoured to give him poison in the chalice. Thenceforth, the unfortunate man led a wandering life, and even thought, it is said, of taking refuge in some land of the infidels; but first he would once measure his strength against that of the terrible adversary who everywhere pursued him with his zeal and his sanctity. At the instigation of Arnold of Brescia, he challenged St. Bernard to a logical duel before the Council of Sens. The king, the counts of Champagne and Nevers, and a host of bishops were to be present, and to judge of the hits. St. Bernard repaired to the rendezvous reluctantly, conscious as he was of his inferiority. But the threats of the people and the timidity of his rival relieved him from all embarrassment. Abelard durst not defend himself, but contented himself with appealing to the pope. Innocent II owed everything to St. Bernard, and hated Abelard for the sake of his disciple, Arnold of Brescia, who was then roaming over Italy, and summoning the towns to freedom. He ordered Abelard to be shut up; but the latter had anticipated him by voluntarily taking refuge in the monastery of Cluny. The abbot, Peter the Venerable, answered for Abelard, who died there two years afterwards. Such was the end of the restorer of philosophy in the Middle Ages--the son of Pelagius, the father of Descartes, and a Breton like them. From another point of view, he may be regarded as a precursor of the humane and sentimental school, which was revived in the persons of Fénelon and Rousseau.
[Sidenote: [1140-1142 A.D.]]
There is no memory more popular in France than that of Abelard’s mistress. The fall of the man made the grandeur of the woman; but for Abelard’s misfortune, Héloïse would have been unknown; she would have remained obscure and in the shade, she would have desired no other glory than that of her spouse. At the period of their separation, he made her take the veil, and built for her the Paraclet, of which she became the abbess. There she held a great school of theology, Greek, and Hebrew. Many similar monasteries rose around the Paraclet, and some years after the death of Abelard, Héloïse was declared head of an order by the pope. But her glory consists in her love, so constant and so disinterested--a love to which Abelard’s coldness and hardness of heart give a new lustre. Let us compare the language of the two lovers:
“Fulbert,” says Abelard, “gave her up, without reserve, to my control, so that, upon my return from the schools, I should apply myself to her instruction, and, if I found her negligent, should chastise her severely. Was not this giving full license to my desires, so that, if I did not succeed by caresses, I might compass my end by threats and blows?”
This dastardly brutality of a pedant of the twelfth century is in strange contrast with the exalted and disinterested sentiments expressed by Héloïse. “God knows, in thee, I sought but thee; nothing of thee but thyself; such was the sole object of my desire. I was ambitious of no advantage, not even of the bond of wedlock; I thought not, thou well knowest, of satisfying either my own wishes or my own pleasure, but thine. If the name of spouse is more holy, sweeter to me seemed that of thy mistress, that (be not angry) of thy concubine (concubinæ vel seorti). The more I humbled myself for thee, the more I hoped to gain in thy heart. Yes, though the master of the world, though the emperor had been willing to honour me with the name of his spouse, I would rather have been called thy mistress than his wife and his empress (tua dici meretrix, quàm illius imperatrix).” She accounts in a singular manner for her having long refused to be the wife of Abelard: “Would it not have been an unseemly, a deplorable thing, that one woman should appropriate and take for herself alone, him whom nature had created for all mankind? What mind, intent upon the meditations of philosophy or of sacred things, could endure the crying of children, the prating of nurses, the disturbance and tumult of serving-men and women?”
The mere form of the letters that passed between Abelard and Héloïse shows how little the passion of the latter was returned. Abelard divides and subdivides his mistress’s letters; he replies to them methodically, and by chapters. He heads his own: “To the spouse of Christ, the slave of Christ”; or “To his dear sister in Christ, Abelard her brother in Christ.” Héloïse’s tone is very different: “To her master, nay, father; to her husband, nay, brother; his handmaid, his spouse, nay, his daughter, his sister; Héloïse to Abelard.”[f]
Abelard and the University
[Sidenote: [1100-1150 A.D.]]
Hasting Rashdall describes the relations between Abelard’s influence in Paris and the ultimate development of the University of Paris as follows:
“The less imaginative historians of the University of Paris have generally been contented with tracing its origin to the teaching of Abelard. And it was undoubtedly to the intellectual movement of which Abelard is the most conspicuous representative that the rise of the university must ultimately be ascribed. But there was nothing in the organisation of the schools wherein Abelard taught to distinguish them from any other cathedral schools which might for a time be rendered famous by the teaching of some illustrious master. In the age of Abelard there were three great churches at Paris more or less famous for their schools. In the first place there was the cathedral (Notre Dame), whose schools were presided over by William of Champeaux. Then, on the left bank of the Seine, there was the collegiate church of St. Geneviève; and there was the church of the Canons Regular of St. Victor’s, where a school for external scholars was started by William after his retirement from the world. St. Victor’s became the head-quarters of the old traditional or positive theology, and it had ceased to exist, or ceased to attract secular students, before the first traces of a university organisation begin to appear. With both the secular schools of Paris, Abelard was at one time or other connected. Denifle’s repudiation of the old view that the university arose from a junction between the arts schools of St. Geneviève and the theological schools of Notre Dame goes slightly beyond the evidence, but in the main he is unquestionably right in contending that it was the cathedral schools which eventually developed into the university.
“It was the fame of Abelard which first drew to the streets of Paris the hordes of students whose presence involved that multiplication of masters by whom the university was ultimately formed. In that sense, and in that sense only the origin of the University of Paris may be connected with the name and age of Abelard. Of a university or a recognised society of masters we hear nothing; nay, the existence of such an institution was impossible at a time when the single master of the cloister school seems to have been as a rule the only recognised master in or around each particular church.”[m]
The Position of Woman
Abelard had propounded the ideal of pure and disinterested love in his writings, as the consummation of the religious soul. Woman rose up to it, for the first time, in the writings of Héloïse; but still indeed referring it to man, to her spouse, to her visible God.
The restoration of woman, which had begun with Christianity, took place chiefly in the twelfth century. A slave in the East, even in the Greek gynæceum a recluse, emancipated by imperial jurisprudence, she was recognised by the new religion as man’s equal. Still Christianity, but just liberated from pagan sensuality, continued to fear and distrust woman; men knew themselves to be weak and fond, and they repudiated her all the more strongly, the more they felt how they sympathised with her in their hearts. Hence, the harsh, and even contemptuous expressions with which they labour to fortify themselves. Woman is usually designated by the ecclesiastical writers, and in the Capitularies, by that degrading, but most expressive phrase, “the weaker vessel” (vas infirmius). When Gregory VII wished to free the clergy from its double bond, woman and land, there was a new outburst of invective against that dangerous Eve whose seduction wrought Adam’s ruin, and who evermore pursues him in his sons.
A quite opposite movement began in the twelfth century. Free mysticism undertook to raise up what sacerdotal harshness had trampled under foot. It was especially a Breton, Robert d’Arbrissel, who fulfilled this mission of love. He reopened the bosom of Christ to women, founded asylums for them, built them Fontevrault, and there were soon Fontevraults all over Christendom. The enterprising charity of Robert applied itself, by preference, to great sinners of the female sex. He taught the clemency of God, and his immeasurable mercy in the vilest haunts. It was a curious thing to see the blessed Robert d’Arbrissel holding forth day and night amidst a crowd of disciples of both sexes, all resting together around him. The bitter sarcasms of his enemies had no effect upon the charitable and courageous Breton, nor even the scandals to which these meetings gave occasion; he covered all with the wide mantle of grace.
As grace prevailed over the law, a great religious revolution took place. Piety became converted into an enthusiasm of chivalric gallantry; the mystical church of Lyons celebrated a festival of the Immaculate Conception (1134), thus exalting the ideal of maternal purity precisely at the period when Héloïse was expressing the pure disinterestedness of love in her famous letters. Woman reigned in heaven; she reigned also upon earth. We see her interfere, and with authority, in the affairs of this world. Bertrade de Montfort ruled at once over her first husband, Fulk of Anjou, and her second, Philip I, king of France. Louis VII dates his acts from the coronation of his wife Adela. Women, natural judges in poetical contests, and in the courts of love, sat also as judges in grave matters, and upon an equality with their husbands. The king of France expressly recognises this right.
In the first half of the twelfth century women were everywhere restored to that right of inheritance from which they had been excluded by feudal barbarism in England, Castile, Aragon, Jerusalem, Burgundy, Flanders, Hainault, Vermandois, Aquitaine, Provence, and Lower Languedoc. The rapid extinction of male heirs, the softening of manners, and the progress of equity, restored the right of inheritance to women. They brought sovereignties with them into foreign houses; they linked and bound the world together, accelerated the agglomeration of states, and prepared the way for the centralisation of the great monarchies.
One royal house alone, that of the Capets, did not recognise the right of women; it remained safe from the mutations which transferred the other states from one dynasty to another; it received and it did not give. Foreign queens might come; the female, the movable element, might be renewed, but the male element did not come to it from without, it remained always the same, and with it remained an identity of spirit and a perpetuity of system. This fixity of the dynasty is one of those things which have most contributed to insure the unity and the personality of this mobile country. The common characteristic of the period following the crusade, is an attempt at emancipation. The crusade in its immense movement had been an occasion--an impulse; when the occasion came, the attempt took place, an attempt for the emancipation of the people in the communes, for the emancipation of women, for that of philosophy and of pure thought. This echo of the crusade, like the crusade itself, was to display all its potency and its effect in France, among the most sociable of nations.[f]
FOOTNOTES
[4] [Contemporaries assign very varied and incoherent numbers for the size of William’s army. One of them, Hugues de Fleury, estimates it at 150,000 men. Modern historians have cut this down to about 60,000, which is still regarded by some as too high.]
[5] [The trouble with Robert did not end until 1076, when a treaty was made and the king received the homage of Flanders.]
[6] [She (Héloïse) was perfect mistress of Latin and knew enough Greek and Hebrew to form the basis of her future proficiency. He (Abelard) knew nothing of Greek or Hebrew, although all his biographers except M. Rémusat assume that he knew them both.--G. W. LEWES.[l]]
[7] [A legend had identified St. Denis who flourished in the third century with Dionysius the Areopagite who was converted by St. Paul.]