A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume I Part 11

They had but a short time previously received the first proof of their father's weakness. In 822, Louis, repenting of his severity towards his nephew, Bernard of Italy, whose eyes he had caused to be put out as a punishment for rebellion, and who had died in consequence, considered himself bound to perform at Attigny, in the church and before the people, a solemn act of penance; which was creditable to his honesty and piety, but the details left upon the minds of the beholders an impression unfavorable to the emperor's dignity and authority. In 829, during an a.s.sembly held at Worms, he, yielding to his wife's entreaties and doubtless also to his own yearnings towards his youngest son, set at nought the solemn act whereby, in 817, he had shared his dominions amongst his three elder sons; and took away from two of them, in Burgundy and Allemannia, some of the territories he had a.s.signed to them, and gave them to the boy Charles for his share. Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis thereupon revolted. Court rivalries were added to family differences.

The emperor had summoned to his side a young Southron, Bernard by name, duke of Septimania and son of Count William of Toulouse, who had gallantly fought the Saracens. He made him his chief chamberlain and his favorite counsellor. Bernard was bold, ambitious, vain, imperious, and restless. He removed his rivals from court, and put in their places his own creatures. He was accused not only of abusing the emperor's favor, but even of carrying on a guilty intrigue with the Empress Judith. There grew up against him, and, by consequence, against the emperor, the empress, and their youngest son a powerful opposition, in which certain ecclesiastics, and, amongst them, Wala, abbot of Corbie, cousin-german and but lately one of the privy counsellors of Charlemagne, joined eagerly. Some had at heart the unity of the empire, which Louis was breaking up more and more; others were concerned for the spiritual interests of the Church which Louis, in spite of his piety and by reason of his weakness, often permitted to be attacked. Thus strengthened, the conspirators considered themselves certain of success. They had the empress Judith carried off and shut up in the convent of St. Radegonde at Poitiers; and Louis in person came to deliver himself up to them at Compiegne, where they were a.s.sembled. There they pa.s.sed a decree to the effect that the power and t.i.tle of emperor were transferred from Louis to Lothaire, his eldest son; that the act whereby a share of the empire had but lately beer a.s.signed to Charles was annulled; and that the act of 817, which had regulated the part.i.tion of Louis's dominions after his death, was once more in force. But soon there was a burst of reaction in favor of the emperor; Lothaire's two brothers, jealous of his late elevation, made overtures to their father; the ecclesiastics were a little ashamed at being mixed up in a revolt; the people felt pity for the poor, honest emperor; and a general a.s.sembly, meeting at Nimeguen, abolished the acts of Compiegne, and restored to Louis his t.i.tle and his power. But it was not long before there was revolt again, originating this time with Pepin, king of Aquitaine. Louis fought him, and gave Aquitaine to Charles the Bald. The alliance between the three sons of Hermengarde was at once renewed; they raised an army; the emperor marched against them with his; and the two hosts met between Colmar and Bale, in a place called le Champ rouge (the field of red). Negotiations were set on foot; and Louis was called upon to leave his wife Judith and his son Charles, and put himself under the guardianship of his elder sons. He refused; but, just when the conflict was about to commence, desertion took place in Louis's army; most of the prelates, laics, and men-at-arms who had accompanied him pa.s.sed over to the camp of Lothaire; and the field of red became the field of falsehood (_le Champ du mensonge_).

Louis, left almost alone, ordered his attendants to withdraw, "being unwilling," he said, "that any one of them should lose life or limb on his account," and surrendered to his sons. They received him with great demonstrations of respect, but without relinquishing the prosecution of their enterprise. Lothaire hastily collected an a.s.sembly, which proclaimed him emperor, with the addition of divers territories to the kingdoms of Aquitaine and Bavaria: and, three months afterwards, another a.s.sembly, meeting at Compiegne, declared the Emperor Louis to have forfeited the crown, "for having, by his faults and incapacity, suffered to sink so sadly low the empire which had been raised to grandeur and brought into unity by Charlemagne and his predecessors." Louis submitted to this decision; himself read out aloud, in the church of St. Medard at Soissons, but not quite unresistingly, a confession, in eight articles, of his faults, and, laying his baldric upon the altar, stripped off his royal robe, and received from the hands of Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, the gray vestment of a penitent.

Lothaire considered his father dethroned for good, and himself henceforth sole emperor; but he was mistaken. For six years longer the scenes which have just been described kept repeating themselves again and again; rivalries and secret plots began once more between the three victorious brothers and their partisans; popular feeling revived in favor of Louis; a large portion of the clergy shared it; several counts of Neustria and Burgundy appeared in arms in the name of the deposed emperor; and the seductive and able Judith came afresh upon the scene, and gained over to the cause of her husband and her son a mult.i.tude of friends. In 834, two a.s.semblies, one meeting at St. Denis and the other at Thionville, annulled all the acts of the a.s.sembly of Compiegne, and for the third time put Louis in possession of the imperial t.i.tle and power. He displayed no violence in his use of it; but he was growing more and more irresolute and weak, when, in 838, the second of his rebellious sons, Pepin, king of Aquitaine, died suddenly. Louis, ever under the sway of Judith, speedily convoked at Worms, in 839, once more and for the last time, a general a.s.sembly, whereat, leaving his son Louis of Bavaria reduced to his kingdom in Eastern Europe, he divided the rest of his dominions into two nearly equal parts, separated by the course of the Meuse and the Rhone. Between these two parts he left the choice to Lothaire, who took the eastern portion, promising at the same time to guarantee the western portion to his younger brother Charles. Louis the Germanic protested against this part.i.tion, and took up arms to resist it.

His father, the emperor, set himself in motion towards the Rhine, to reduce him to submission; but, on arriving close to Mayence, he caught a violent fever, and died on the 20th of June, 840, at the castle of Ingelheim, on a little island in the river. His last acts were a fresh proof of his goodness towards even his rebellious sons, and of his solicitude for his last-born. He sent to Louis the Germanic his pardon, and to Lothaire the golden crown and sword, at the same time bidding him fulfil his father's wishes on behalf of Charles and Judith.

There is no telling whether, in the credulousness of his good nature, Louis had, at his dying hour, any great confidence in the appeal he made to his son Lothaire, and in the impression which would be produced on his other son, Louis of Bavaria, by the pardon bestowed. The prayers of the dying are of little avail against violent pa.s.sions and barbaric manners.

Scarcely was Louis the Debonnair dead, when Lothaire was already conspiring against young Charles, and was in secret alliance, for his despoilment, with Pepin II., the late king of Aquitaine's son, who had taken up arms for the purpose of seizing his father's kingdom, in the possession of which his grandfather Louis had not been pleased to confirm him. Charles suddenly learned that his mother Judith was on the point of being besieged in Poitiers by the Aquitanians; and, in spite of the friendly protestations sent to him by Lothaire, it was not long before he discovered the plot formed against him. He was not wanting in shrewdness or energy; and, having first provided for his mother's safety, he set about forming an alliance, in the cause of their common interests, with his other brother, Louis the Germanic, who was equally in danger from the ambition of Lothaire. The historians of the period do not say what negotiator was employed by Charles on this distant and delicate mission; but several circ.u.mstances indicate that the Empress Judith herself undertook it; that she went in quest of the king of Bavaria; and that it was she who, with her accustomed grace and address, determined him to make common cause with his younger against their eldest brother. Divers incidents r.e.t.a.r.ded for a whole year the outburst of this family plot, and of the war of which it was the precursor. The position of the young King Charles appeared for some time a very bad one; but "certain chieftains,"

says the historian Nithard, "faithful to his mother and to him, and having nothing more to lose than life or limb, chose rather to die gloriously than to betray their king." The arrival of Louis the Germanic with his troops helped to swell the forces and increase the confidence of Charles; and it was on the 21st of June, 841, exactly a year after the death of Louis the Debonnair, that the two armies, that of Lothaire and Pepin on the one side, and that of Charles the Bald and Louis the Germanic on the other, stood face to face in the neighborhood of the village of Fontenailles, six leagues from Auxerre, on the rivulet of Audries. Never, according to such evidence as is forthcoming, since the battle on the plains of Chalons against the Huns, and that of Poitiers against the Saracens, had so great ma.s.ses of men been engaged. "There would be nothing untruthlike," says that scrupulous authority, M.

Fauriel, "in putting the whole number of combatants at three hundred thousand; and there is nothing to show that either of the two armies was much less numerous than the other." However that may be, the leaders hesitated for four days to come to blows; and whilst they were hesitating, the old favorite not only of Louis the Debonnair, but also, according to several chroniclers, of the Empress Judith, held himself aloof with his troops in the vicinity, having made equal promise of a.s.sistance to both sides, and waiting, to govern his decision, for the prospect afforded by the first conflict. The battle began on the 25th of June, at daybreak, and was at first in favor of Lothaire; but the troops of Charles the Bald recovered the advantage which had been lost by Louis the Germanic, and the action was soon nothing but a terribly simple scene of carnage between enormous ma.s.ses of men, charging hand to hand, again and again, with a front extending over a couple of leagues. Before midday the slaughter, the plunder, the spoliation of the dead--all was over; the victory of Charles and Louis was complete the victors had retired to their camp, and there remained nothing on the field of battle but corpses in thick heaps or a long line, according as they had fallen in the disorder of flight or steadily fighting in their ranks. . . .

"Accursed be this day!" cries Angilbert, one of Lothaire's officers, in rough Latin verse; "be it unnumbered in the return of the year, but wiped out of all remembrance! Be it unlit by the light of the sun! Be it without either dawn or twilight! Accursed, also, be this night, this awful night in which fell the brave, the most expert in battle! Eye ne'er hath seen more fearful slaughter: in streams of blood fell Christian men; the linen vestments of the dead did whiten the champaign even as it is whitened by the birds of autumn!"

In spite of this battle, which appeared a decisive one, Lothaire made zealous efforts to continue the struggle; he scoured the countries wherein he hoped to find partisans: to the Saxons he promised the unrestricted re-establishment of their pagan worship, and several of the Saxon tribes responded to his appeal. Louis the Germanic and Charles the Bald, having information of these preliminaries, resolved to solemnly renew their alliance; and, seven months after their victory at Fontenailles, in February, 842, they repaired both of them, each with his army, to Argentaria, on the right bank of the Rhine, between Bale and Strasbourg, and there, at an open-air meeting, Louis first, addressing the chieftains about him in the German tongue, said, "Ye all know how often, since our father's death, Lothaire hath attacked us, in order to destroy us, this my brother and me. Having never been able, as brothers and Christians, or in any just way, to obtain peace from him, we were constrained to appeal to the judgment of G.o.d. Lothaire was beaten and retired, whither he could, with his following; for we, restrained by paternal affection and moved with compa.s.sion for Christian people, were unwilling to pursue them to extermination. Neither then nor aforetime did we demand ought else save that each of us should be maintained in his rights. But he, rebelling against the judgment of G.o.d, ceaseth not to attack us as enemies, this my brother and me; and he destroyeth our peoples with fire and pillage and the sword. That is the cause which hath united us afresh; and, as we trove that ye doubt the soundness of our alliance and our fraternal union, we have resolved to bind ourselves afresh by this oath in your presence, being led thereto by no prompting of wicked covetousness, but only that we may secure our common advantage in case that, by your aid, G.o.d should cause us to obtain peace. If, then, I violate--which G.o.d forbid--this oath that I am about to take to my brother, I hold you all quit of submission to me and of the faith ye have sworn to me."

Charles repeated this speech, word for word, to his own troops, in the Romance language, in that idiom derived from a mixture of Latin and of the tongues of ancient Gaul, and spoken, thenceforth, with varieties of dialect and p.r.o.nunciation, in nearly all parts of Frankish Gaul. After this address, Louis p.r.o.nounced and Charles repeated after him, each in his own tongue, the oath couched in these terms: "For the love of G.o.d, for the Christian people, and for our common weal, from this day forth and so long as G.o.d shall grant me power and knowledge, I will defend this my brother, and will be an aid to him in everything, as one ought to defend his brother, provided that he do likewise unto me; and I will never make with Lothaire any covenant which may be, to my knowledge, to the damage of this my brother."

When the two brothers had thus sworn, the two armies, officers and men, took, in their turn, a similar oath, going bail, in a ma.s.s, for the engagements of their kings. Then they took up their quarters, all of them, for some time, between Worms and Mayence, and followed up their political proceeding with military fetes, precursors of the knightly tournaments of the middle ages. "A place of meeting was fixed," says the contemporary historian Nithard, "at a spot suitable for this kind of exercises. Here were drawn up, on one side, a certain number of combatants, Saxons, Vasconians, Austrasians, or Britons; there were ranged, on the opposite side, an equal number of warriors, and the two divisions advanced, each against the other, as if to attack. One of them, with their bucklers at their backs, took to flight, as if to seek, in the main body, shelter against those who were pursuing them; then suddenly, facing about, they dashed out in pursuit of those before whom they had just been flying. This sport lasted until the two kings, appearing with all the youth of their suites, rode up at a gallop, brandishing their spears and chasing first one lot and then the other It was a fine sight to see so much temper amongst so many valiant folks, for great as were the number and the mixture of different nationalities, no one was insulted or maltreated, though the contrary is often the case amongst men in small numbers and known one to another."

After four or five months of tentative measures or of incidents which taught both parties that they could not, either of them, hope to completely destroy their opponents, the two allied brothers received at Verdun, whither they had repaired to concert their next movement, a messenger from Lothaire, with peaceful proposals which they were unwilling to reject. The princ.i.p.al was that, with the exception of Italy, Aquitaine, and Bavaria, to be secured without dispute to their then possessors, the Frankish empire should be divided into three portions, that the arbiters elected to preside over the part.i.tion should swear to make it as equal as possible, and that Lothaire should have his choice, with the t.i.tle of Emperor. About mid June, 842, the three brothers met on an island of the Saone, near Chalons, where they began to discuss the questions which divided them; but it was not till more than a year after, in August, 843, that a.s.sembling all three of them, with their umpires, at Verdun, they at last came to an agreement about the part.i.tion of the Frankish empire, save the three countries which it had been beforehand agreed to except. Louis kept all the provinces of Germany of which he was already in possession, and received besides, on the left bank of the Rhine, the towns of Mayence, Worms, and Spire, with the territory appertaining to them. Lothaire, for his part, had the eastern belt of Gaul, bounded on one side by the Rhine and the Alps, on the other by the courses of the Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone, starting from the confluence of the two latter rivers, and, further, the country comprised between the Meuse and the Scheldt, together with certain countships lying to the west of that river. To Charles fell all the rest of Gaul: Vasconia or Biscaye, Septimania, the marches of Spain, beyond the Pyrenees, and the other countries of Southern Gaul which had enjoyed hitherto, under the t.i.tle of the Kingdom of Aquitaine, a special government subordinated to the general government of the empire, but distinct from it, lost this last remnant of their Gallo-Roman nationality, and became integral portions of Frankish Gaul, which fell by part.i.tion to Charles the Bald, and formed one and the same kingdom under one and the same king.

Thus fell through and disappeared, in 843, by virtue of the treaty of Verdun, the second of Charlemagne's grand designs, the resuscitation of the Roman empire by means of the Frankish and Christian masters of Gaul.

The name of emperor still retained a certain value in the minds of the people, and still remained an object of ambition to princes; but the empire was completely abolished, and in its stead sprang up three kingdoms, independent one of another, without any necessary connection or relation. One of the three was thenceforth France.

In this great event are comprehended two facts; the disappearance of the empire and the formation of the three kingdoms which took its place. The first is easily explained. The resuscitation of the Roman empire had been a dream of ambition and ignorance on the part of a great man, but a barbarian. Political unity and central absolute power had been the essential characteristics of that empire. They became introduced and established, through a long succession of ages, on the ruins of the splendid Roman republic, destroyed by its own dissensions, under favor of the still great influence of the old Roman senate, though fallen from its high estate, and beneath the guardianship of the Roman legions and imperial pretorians. Not one of these conditions, not one of these forces, was to be met with in the Roman world reigned over by Charlemagne. The nation of the Franks and Charlemagne himself were but of yesterday; the new emperor had neither ancient senate to hedge at the same time that it obeyed him, nor old bodies of troops to support him.

Political unity and absolute power were repugnant alike to the intellectual and the social condition, to the national manners and personal sentiments of the victorious barbarians. The necessity of placing their conquests beyond the reach of a new swarm of barbarians and the personal ascendency of Charlemagne were the only things which gave his government a momentary gleam of success in the way of unity and of fact.i.tious despotism under the name of empire. In 814, Charlemagne had made territorial security an accomplished fact; but the personal power he had exercised disappeared with him. The new Gallo-Frankish community recovered, under the mighty but gradual influence of Christianity, its proper and natural course, producing disruption into different local communities and bold struggles for individual liberties, either one with another, or against whosoever tried to become their master.

As for the second fact, the formation of the three kingdoms which were the issue of the treaty of Verdun, various explanations have been given of it. This distribution of certain peoples of Western Europe into three distinct and independent groups, Italians, Germans, and French, has been attributed at one time to a diversity of histories and manners; at another to geographical causes and to what is called the rule of natural frontiers; and oftener still to a spirit of nationality and to differences of language. Let none of these causes be gainsaid; they all exercised some sort of influence, but they are all incomplete in themselves and far too redolent of theoretical system. It is true that Germany, France, and Italy began, at that time, to emerge from the chaos into which they had been plunged by barbaric invasion and the conquests of Charlemagne, and to form themselves into quite distinct nations; but there were in each of the kingdoms of Lothaire, of Louis the Germanic, and of Charles the Bald, populations widely differing in race, language, manners, and geographical affinity, and it required many great events and the lapse of many centuries to bring about the degree of national unity they now possess. To say nothing touching the agency of individual and independent forces, which is always considerable, although so many men of intellect ignore it in the present day, what would have happened, had any one of the three new kings, Lothaire, or Louis the Germanic, or Charles the Bald, been a second Charlemagne, as Charlemagne had been a second Charles Martel? Who can say that, in such a case, the three kingdoms would have taken the form they took in 843?

Happily or unhappily, it was not so; none of Charlemagne's successors was capable of exercising on the events of his time, by virtue of his brain and his own will, any notable influence. Not that they were all unintelligent, or timid, or indolent. It has been seen that Louis the Debonnair did not lack virtues and good intentions; and Charles the Bald was clear-sighted, dexterous, and energetic; he had a taste for information and intellectual distinction; he liked and sheltered men of learning and letters, and to such purpose that, instead of speaking, as under Charlemagne, of the school of the palace, people called the palace of Charles the Bald the palace of the school. Amongst the eleven kings who after him ascended the Carlovingian throne, several, such as Louis III. and Carloman, and, especially, Louis the Ultramarine (d'Outremer) and Lothaire, displayed, on several occasions, energy and courage; and the kings elected, at this epoch, without the pale of the Carlovingian dynasty--Eudes in 887 and Raoul in 923--gave proofs of a valor both discreet and effectual. The Carlovingians did not, as the Merovingians did, end in monkish retirement or shameful inactivity even the last of them, and the only one termed sluggard, Louis V., was getting ready, when he died, for an expedition in Spain against the Saracens. The truth is that, mediocre or undecided or addle-pated as they may have been, they all succ.u.mbed, internally and externally, without initiating and without resisting, to the course of events, and that, in 987, the fall of the Carlovingian line was the natural and easily accomplished consequence of the new social condition which had been preparing in France under the empire.

CHAPTER XIII.----FEUDAL FRANCE AND HUGH CAPET.

The reader has just seen that, twenty-nine years after the death of Charlemagne, that is, in 843, when, by the treaty of Verdun, the sons of Louis the Debonnair had divided amongst them his dominions, the great empire split up into three distinct and independent kingdoms--the kingdoms of Italy, Germany, and France. The split did not stop there.

Forty-five years later, at the end of the ninth century, shortly after the death of Charles the Fat, the last of the Carlovingians who appears to have re-united for a while all the empire of Charlemagne, this empire had begotten seven instead of three kingdoms, those of France, of Navarre, of Provence or Cisjuran Burgundy, of Trans-juran Burgundy, or Lorraine, of Allemannia, and of Italy. This is what had become of the fact.i.tious and ephemeral unity of that Empire of the West which Charlemagne had wished to put in the place of the Roman empire.

We will leave where they are the three distinct and independent kingdoms, and turn our introspective gaze upon the kingdom of France. There we recognize the same fact; there the same work of dismemberment is going on. About the end of the ninth century there were already twenty-nine provinces or fragments of provinces which had become petty states, the former governors of which, under the names of dukes, counts, marquises, and viscounts, were pretty nearly real sovereigns. Twenty-nine great fiefs, which have played a special part in French history, date back to this epoch.

These petty states were not all of equal importance or in possession of a perfectly similar independence; there were certain ties uniting them to other states, resulting in certain reciprocal obligations which became the basis, or, one might say, the const.i.tution of the feudal community; but their prevailing feature was, nevertheless, isolation, personal existence. They were really petty states begotten from the dismemberment of a great territory; those local governments were formed at the expense of a central power.

From the end of the ninth pa.s.s we to the end of the tenth century, to the epoch when the Capetians take the place of the Carlovingians. Instead of seven kingdoms to replace the empire of Charlemagne, there were then no more than four. The kingdoms of Provence and Trans-juran Burgundy had formed, by re-union, the kingdom of Arles. The kingdom of Lorraine was no more than a duchy in dispute between Allemannia and France. The Emperor Otho the Great had united the kingdom of Italy to the empire of.

Allemannia. Overtures had produced their effects amongst the great states. But in the interior of the kingdom of France, dismemberment had held on its course; and instead of the twenty-nine petty states or great fiefs observable at the end of the ninth century, we find at the end of the tenth, fifty-five actually established. (_Vide_ Guizot's _Histoire de la Civilisation,_ t. ii., pp. 238-246.)

Now, how was this ever-increasing dismemberment accomplished? What causes determined it, and little by little made it the subst.i.tute for the unity of the empire? Two causes, perfectly natural and independent of all human calculation, one moral and the other political. They were the absence from the minds of men of any general and dominant idea; and the reflux, in social relations and manners, of the individual liberties but lately repressed or regulated by the strong hand of Charlemagne. In times of formation or transition, states and governments conform to the measure, one had almost said to the height, of the men of the period, their ideas, their sentiments, and their personal force of character; when ideas are few and narrow, when sentiments spread only over a confined circle, when means of action and expansion are wanting to men, communities become petty and local, just as the thoughts and existence of their members are. Such was the state of things in the ninth and tenth centuries; there was no general and fructifying idea, save the Christian creed; no great intellectual vent; no great national feeling; no easy and rapid means of communication; mind and life were both confined in a narrow s.p.a.ce, and encountered, at every step, stoppages and obstacles well nigh insurmountable. At the same time, by the fall of the empires of Rome and of Charlemagne, men regained possession of the rough and ready individual liberties which were the essential characteristic of Germanic manners: Franks, Visigoths, Burgundians, Saxons, Lombards, none of these new peoples had lived as the Greeks and Romans had, under the sway of an essentially political idea, the idea of city, state, and fatherland: they were free men, and not citizens; comrades, not members of one and the same public body. They gave up their vagabond life; they settled upon a soil conquered by themselves and part.i.tioned amongst themselves; and there they lived each by himself, master of himself and all that was his, family, servitors, husbandmen, and slaves: the territorial domain became the fatherland, and the owner remained a free man, a local and independent chieftain, at his own risk and peril. And this, quite naturally, grew up feudal France, when the new comers, settled in their new abodes, were no more swayed or hampered by the vain attempt to re-establish the Roman empire.

The consequences of such a state of things and of such a disposition of persons were rapidly developed. Territorial ownership became the fundamental characteristic of and warranty for independence and social importance. Local sovereignty, if not complete and absolute, at least in respect of its princ.i.p.al rights, right of making war, right of judicature, right of taxation, and right of regulating the police, became one with the territorial ownership, which before long grew to be hereditary, whether, under the t.i.tle of _alleu (allodium)_, it had been originally perfectly independent and exempt from any feudal tie, or, under the t.i.tle of benefice, had arisen from grants of land made by the chieftain to his followers, on condition of certain obligations. The offices, that is, the divers functions, military or civil, conferred by the king on his lieges, also ended by becoming hereditary. Having become established in fact, this heirship in lands and local powers was soon recognized by the law. A capitulary of Charles the Bald, promulgated in 877, contains the two following provisions:--

"If, after our death, any one of our lieges, moved by love for G.o.d and our person, desire to renounce the world, and if he have a son or other relative capable of serving the public weal, let him be free to transmit to him his benefices and his honor, according to his pleasure."

"If a count of this kingdom happen to die, and his son be about our person, we will that our son; together with those of our lieges who may chance to be the nearest relatives of the deceased count, as well as with the other officers of the said countship and the bishop of the diocese wherein it is situated, shall provide for its administration until the death of the heretofore count shall have been announced to us and we have been enabled to confer on the son, present at our court, the honors wherewith his father was invested."

Thus the king still retained the nominal right of conferring on the son the offices or local functions of the father, but he recognized in the son the right to obtain them. A host of doc.u.ments testify that at this epoch, when, on the death of a governor of a province, the king attempted to give his countship to some one else than his descendants, not only did personal interest resist, but such a measure was considered a violation of right. Under the reign of Louis the Stutterer, son of Charles the Bald, two of his lieges, Wilhelm and Engelschalk, held two countships on the confines of Bavaria; and, at their death, their offices were given to Count Arbo, to the prejudice of their sons. "The children and their relatives," says the chronicler, "taking that as a gross injustice, said that matters ought to go differently, and that they would die by the sword or Arbo should give up the courtship of their family." Heirship in territorial ownerships and their local rights, whatever may have originally been their character; heirship in local offices or powers, military or civil, primarily conferred by the king; and, by consequence, hereditary union of territorial ownership and local government, under the condition, a little confused and precarious, of subordinated relations and duties between suzerain and va.s.sal--such was, in law and in fact, the feudal order of things. From the ninth to the tenth century it had acquired full force.

This order of things being thus well defined, we find ourselves face to face with an indisputable historic fact: no period, no system has ever, in France, remained so odious to the public instincts. And this antipathy is not peculiar to our age, nor merely the fruit of that great revolution which not long since separated, as by a gulf, the French present from its past. Go back to any portion of French history, and stop where you will; and you will everywhere find the feudal system considered, by the ma.s.s of the population, a foe to be fought and fought down at any price. At all times, whoever dealt it a blow has been popular in France.

The reasons for this fact are not all, or even the chief of them, to be traced to the evils which, in France, the people had to endure under the feudal system. It is not evil plight which is most detested and feared by peoples; they have more than once borne, faced, and almost wooed it, and there are woful epochs, the memory of which has remained dear. It is in the political character of feudalism, in the nature and shape of its power, that we find lurking that element of popular aversion which, in France at least, it has never ceased to inspire.

It was a confederation of petty sovereigns, of petty despots, unequal amongst themselves, and having, one towards another, certain duties and rights, but invested in their own domains, over their personal and direct subjects, with arbitrary and absolute power. That is the essential element of the feudal system; therein it differs from every other aristocracy, every other form of government.

There has been no scarcity in this world of aristocracies and despotisms.

There have been peoples arbitrarily governed, nay, absolutely possessed by a single man, by a college of priests, by a body of patricians. But none of these despotic governments was like the feudal system.

In the case where the sovereign power has been placed in the hands of a single man, the condition of the people has been servile and woful. At bottom the feudal system was somewhat better; and it will presently be explained why. Meanwhile, it must be acknowledged that that condition often appeared less burdensome, and obtained more easy acceptance than the feudal system. It was because, under the great absolute monarchies, men did, nevertheless, obtain some sort of equality and tranquillity. A shameful equality and a fatal tranquillity, no doubt; but such as peoples are sometimes contented with under the dominance of certain circ.u.mstances, or in the last gasp of their existence. Liberty, equality, and tranquillity were all alike wanting, from the tenth to the thirteenth century, to the inhabitants of each lord's domains; their sovereign was at their very doors, and none of them was hidden from him, or beyond reach of his mighty arm. Of all tyrannies, the worst is that which can thus keep account of its subjects, and which sees, from its seat, the limits of its empire. The caprices of the human will then show themselves in all their intolerable extravagance, and, moreover, with irresistible promptness. It is then, too, that inequality of conditions makes itself more rudely felt; riches, might, independence, every advantage and every right present themselves every instant to the gaze of misery, weakness, and servitude. The inhabitants of fiefs could not find consolation in the bosom of tranquillity; incessantly mixed up in the quarrels of their lord, a prey to his neighbors' devastations, they led a life still more precarious and still more restless than that of the lords themselves, and they had to put up at one and the same time with the presence of war, privilege, and absolute power. Nor did the rule of feudalism differ less from that of a college of priests or a senate of patricians than from the despotism of an individual. In the two former systems we have an aristocratic body governing the ma.s.s of the people; in the feudal system we have an aristocracy resolved into individuals, each of whom governs on his own private account a certain number of persons dependent upon him alone. Be the aristocratic body a clergy, its power has its root in creeds which are common to itself and its subjects. Now, in every creed common to those who command and those who obey there is a moral tie, an element of sympathetic equality, and on the part of those who obey a tacit adhesion to the rule. Be it a senate of patricians that reigns, it cannot govern so capriciously, so arbitrarily, as an individual. There are differences and discussions in the very bosom of the government; there may be, nay, there always are, formed factions, parties which, in order to arrive at their own ends, strive to conciliate the favor of the people, sometimes take in hand its interests, and, however bad may be its condition, the people, by sharing in its masters'

rivalries, exercises some sort of influence over its own destiny.

Feudalism was not, properly speaking, an aristocratic government, a senate of kings--to use the language used by Cineas to Pyrrhus; it was a collection of individual despotisms, exercised by isolated aristocrats, each of whom, being sovereign in his own domains, had to give no account to another, and asked n.o.body's opinion about his conduct towards his subjects.

Is it astonishing that such a system incurred, on the part of the peoples, more hatred than even those which had reduced them to a more monotonous and more lasting servitude? There was despotism, just as in pure monarchies, and there was privilege, just as in the very closest aristocracies. And both obtruded themselves in the most offensive, and, so to speak, crude form. Despotism was not tapered off by means of the distant and elevation of a throne; and privilege did not veil itself behind the majesty of a large body. Both were the appurtenances of an individual ever present and ever alone, ever at his subjects' doors, and never called upon, in dealing with their lot, to gather his peers around him.

And now we will leave the subjects in the case of feudalism, and consider the masters, the owners of fiefs, and their relations one with another.

We here behold quite a different spectacle; we see liberties, rights, and guarantees, which not only give protection and honor to those who enjoy them, but of which the tendency and effect are to open to the subject population an outlet towards a better future.

It could not, in fact, be otherwise: for, on the one hand, feudal society was not wanting in dignity and glory; and, on the other, the feudal system did not, as the theocracy of Egypt or the despotism of Asia did, condemn its subjects irretrievably to slavery. It oppressed them; but they ended by having the power as well as the will to go free.

It is the fault of pure monarchy to set up power so high, and encompa.s.s it with such splendor, that the possessor's head is turned, and that those who are beneath it dare scarcely look upon it. The sovereign thinks himself a G.o.d; and the people fall down and worship him. But it was not so in society under owners of fiefs: the grandeur was neither dazzling nor unapproachable; it was but a short step from va.s.sal to suzerain; they lived familiarly one with another, without any possibility that superiority should think itself illimitable, or subordination think itself servile. Thence came that extension of the domestic circle, that enn.o.blement of personal service, from which sprang one of the most generous sentiments of the middle ages, fealty, which reconciled the dignity of the man with the devotion of the va.s.sal.

Further, it was not from a numerous aristocratic senate, but from himself, and almost from himself alone, that every possessor of fiefs derived his strength and his l.u.s.tre. Isolated as he was in his domains, it was for him to maintain himself therein, to extend them, to keep his subjects submissive and his va.s.sals faithful, and to correct those who were wanting in obedience to him, or who ignored their duties as members of the feudal hierarchy. It was, as it were, a people consisting of scattered citizens, of whom each, ever armed, accompanied by his following or intrenched in his castle, kept watch himself over his own safety and his own rights, relying far more on his own courage and his own renown than on the protection of the public authorities. Such a condition bears less resemblance to an organized and settled society than to a constant prospect of peril and war; but the energy and the dignity of the individual were kept up in it, and a more extended and better regulated society might issue therefrom.

And it did issue. This society of the future was not slow to sprout and grow in the midst of that feudal system so turbulent, so oppressive, so detested. For five centuries, from the invasion of the barbarians to the fall of the Carlovingians, France presents the appearance of being stationary in the middle of chaos. Over this long, dark s.p.a.ce of anarchy, feudalism is slowly taking shape, at the expense, at one time, of liberty, at another, of order; not as a real rectification of the social condition, but as the only order of things which could possibly acquire fixity, as, in fact, a sort of unpleasant but necessary alternative. No sooner is the feudal system in force, than, with its victory scarcely secured, it is attacked in the lower grades by the ma.s.s of the people attempting to regain certain liberties, ownerships, and rights, and in the highest by royalty laboring to recover its public character, to become once more the head of a nation. It is no longer the case of free men in a vague and dubious position, unsuccessfully defending, against the nomination of the chieftains whose lands they inhabit, the wreck of their independence, whether Gallic, or Roman, or barbaric; it is the case of burgesses, agriculturists, and serfs, who know well what their grievances and who their oppressors are, and who are working to get free. It is no longer the case of a king doubtful about his t.i.tle and the nature of his power, at one time a chieftain of warriors, at another the anointed of the Most High; here a mayor of the palace of some sluggard barbarian, there the heir of the emperors of Rome; a sovereign tossing about confusedly amidst followers or servitors eager at one time to invade his authority, at another to render themselves completely isolated: it is the case of one of the premier feudal lords exerting himself to become the master of all, to change his suzerainty into sovereignty. Thus, in spite of the servitude into which the people had sunk at the end of the tenth century, from this moment the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the people makes way. In spite of the weakness, or rather nullity, of the regal power at the same epoch, from this moment the regal power begins to gain ground. That monarchical system which the genius of Charlemagne could not found, kings far inferior to Charlemagne will little by little make triumphant. Those liberties and those guarantees which the German warriors were incapable of transmitting to a well-regulated society, the commonalty will regain one after another.

Nothing but feudalism could have sprung from the womb of barbarism; but scarcely is feudalism established when we see monarchy and liberty nascent and growing in its womb.

From the end of the ninth to the end of the tenth century, two families were, in French history, the representatives and instruments of the two systems thus confronted and conflicting at that epoch, the imperial which was falling, and the feudal which was rising. After the death of Charlemagne, his descendants, to the number of ten, from Louis the Debonnair to Louis the Sluggard, strove obstinately, but in vain, to maintain the unity of the empire and the unity of the central power. In four generations, on the other hand, the descendants of Robert the Strong climbed to the head of feudal France. The former, though German in race, were imbued with the maxims, the traditions, and the pretensions of that Roman world which had been for a while resuscitated by their glorious ancestor; and they claimed it as their heritage. The latter preserved, at their settlement upon Gallo-Roman territory, Germanic sentiments, manners, and instincts, and were occupied only with the idea of getting more and more settled, and greater and greater in the new society which was little by little being formed upon the soil won by the barbarians, their forefathers. Louis the Ultra-marine and Lothaire were not, we may suppose, less personally brave than Robert the Strong and his son Eudes; but when the Northmen put the Frankish dominions in peril, it was not to the descendants of Charlemagne, not to the emperor Charles the Fat, but to the local and feudal chieftain, to Eudes, count of Paris, that the population turned for salvation: and Eudes it was who saved them.

In this painful parturition of French monarchy, one fact deserves to be remarked, and that is, the lasting respect attached, in the minds of the people, to the name and the reminiscences of the Carlovingian rule, notwithstanding its decay. It was not alone the l.u.s.tre of that name, and of the memory of Charlemagne which inspired and prolonged this respect; a certain instinctive feeling about the worth of hereditary monarchy, as an element of stability and order, already existed amongst the populations, and glimpses thereof were visible amongst the rivals of the royal family in the hour of its dissolution. It had been consecrated by religion; the t.i.tle of anointed of the Most High was united, in its case, to that of lawful heir. Why did Hugh the Great, duke of France, in spite of favorable opportunities and very palpable temptations, abstain perseveringly from taking the crown, and leave it tottering upon the heads of Louis the Ultramarine and Lothaire? Why did his son, Hugh Capet himself, wait, for his election as king, until Louis the Sluggard was dead, and the Carlovingian line had only a collateral and discredited representative? In these hesitations and lingerings of the great feudal chieftains, there is a forecast of the authority already vested in the principle of hereditary monarchy, at the very moment when it was about to be violated, and of the great part which would be played by that principle in the history of France.

At last the day of decision arrived for Hugh Capet. There is nothing to show that he had conspired to hasten it, but he had foreseen the probability of it, and, if he had done nothing to pave the way for it, he had held himself, so far as he was concerned, in readiness for it.

During a trip which he made to Rome in 981, he had entered into kindly personal relations with the Emperor Otho II., king of Germany, the most important of France's neighbors, and the most disposed to meddle in her affairs. In France, Hugh Capet had formed a close friendship with Adalberon, archbishop of Rheims, the most notable and most able of the French prelates. The event showed the value of such a friend. On the 21st of May, 987, King Louis V. died without issue; and, after his obsequies, the grandees of the kingdom met together at Senlis. We will here borrow the text of a contemporary witness, Richer, the only one of the chroniclers of that age who deserves the name of historian, whether for the authenticity of his testimony or the extent and clearness of his narrative. "The bishop," he says, "took his place, together with the duke, in the midst of the a.s.sembly, and said to them, 'I come and sit down amongst you to treat of the affairs of the state. Far from me be any design of saying anything but what has for aim the advantage of the common weal. As I do not see here all the princes whose wisdom and energy might be useful in the government of the kingdom, it seems to me that the choice of a king should be put off for some time, in order that, at a period fixed upon, all may be able to meet in a.s.sembly, and that every opinion, having been discussed and set forth in the face of day, may thus produce its full effect. May it please you, then, all of ye who are here a.s.sembled to deliberate, to bind yourselves in conjunction with me by oath to this ill.u.s.trious duke, and to promise between his hands not to engage yourselves in any way in the election of a Head, and not to do anything to this end until we be re-a.s.sembled here to deliberate upon that choice.' This opinion was well received and approved of by all: oath was taken between the hands of the duke, and the time was fixed at which the meeting should a.s.semble again."

Before the day fixed for re-a.s.sembling, the last of the descendants of Charlemagne, Charles, duke of Lower Lorraine, brother of the late King Lothaire, and paternal uncle of the late King Louis, "went to Rheims in quest of the archbishop, and thus spake to him about his rights to the throne: 'All the world knoweth, venerable father, that, by hereditary right, I ought to succeed my brother and my nephew. I am wanting in nought that should be required, before all, from those who ought to reign, to wit, birth and the courage to dare. Wherefore am I thrust out from the territory which all the world knows to have been possessed by my ancestors? To whom could I better address myself than to you, when all the supports of my race have disappeared? To whom, bereft as I am of honorable protection, should I have recourse but to you? By whom, if not by you, should I be restored to the honors of my fathers? Please G.o.d things turn out favorably for me and for my fortunes! Rejected, what, can become of me save to be exhibited as a spectacle to all who look on me? Suffer yourself to be moved by some feeling of humanity: be compa.s.sionate towards a man who has been tried by so many reverses!'"

Such language was more calculated to inspire contempt than compa.s.sion.

"The metropolitan, firm in his resolution, gave for answer these few words: 'Thou hast ever been a.s.sociated with the perjured, the sacrilegious, and the wicked of every sort, and now thou art still unwilling to separate from them: how canst thou, in company with such men, and by means of such men, seek to attain to the sovereign power?'

And when Charles replied that he must not abandon his friends, but rather gain over others, the bishop said to himself, 'Now that he possesses no position of dignity, he hath allied himself with the wicked, whose companionship he will not, in any way, give up: what misfortune would it be for the good if he were elected to the throne!' To Charles, however, he made answer that he would do nought without the consent of the princes; and so left him."

At the time fixed, probably the 29th or 30th of June, 987, the grandees of Frankish Gaul who had bound themselves by oath re-a.s.sembled at Senlis.

Hugh Capet was present with his brother Henry of Burgundy, and his brother-in-law Richard the Fearless, duke of Normandy. The majority of the direct va.s.sals of the crown were also there--Foulques Nerra (the Black), count of Anjou; Eudes, count of Blois, Chartres, and Tours; Bouchard, count of Vent-Mine and Corbeil; Gautier, count of Vexin; and Hugh, count of Maine. Few counts came from beyond the Loire; and some of the lords in the North, amongst others Arnulf II., count of Flanders, and the lords of Vermandois were likewise missing. "When those present were in regular a.s.sembly, Archbishop Adalheron, with the a.s.sent of Duke Hugh, thus spake unto them: 'Louis, of blessed memory, having been taken from us without leaving issue, it hath become necessary to engage seriously in seeking who may take his place upon the throne, to the end that the common weal remain not in peril, neglected and without a head. That is why on the last occasion we deemed it useful to put off this matter, in order that each of ye might come hither and submit to the a.s.sembly the opinion with which G.o.d should have inspired him, and that from all those sentiments might be drawn what is the general will. Here be we a.s.sembled: let us, then, be guided by our wisdom and our good faith to act in such sort that hatred stifle not reason, and affection distort not truth. We be not ignorant that Charles hath his partisans, who maintain that he ought to come to the throne transmitted to him by his relatives.

But if we examine this question, the throne is not acquired by hereditary right, and we be bound to place at the head of the kingdom none but him who not only hath the distinction of corporeal n.o.bility, but hath also honor to recommend him and magnanimity to rest upon. We read in the annals that to emperors of ill.u.s.trious race, whom their own laches caused to fall from power, succeeded others, at one time similar, at another different; but what dignity could we confer on Charles, who hath not honor for his guide, who is enfeebled by lethargy, and who, finally, hath lost head so far that he hath no shame in serving a foreign king, and in misuniting himself to a woman taken from the rank of the knights his va.s.sals? How could the puissant duke brook that a woman issuing from a family of his va.s.sals should become queen, and have dominion over him?

How could he walk behind her whose equals and even superiors bend the knee before him and place their hands beneath his feet? Examine carefully into the matter, and consider that Charles hath been rejected more through his own fault than that of others. Decide ye rather for the good than the ill of the common weal. If ye wish it ill, make Charles sovereign; if ye hold to its prosperity, crown Hugh, the ill.u.s.trious duke. Let attachment to Charles seduce n.o.body, and let hatred towards the duke distract n.o.body, from the common interest. . . . Give us then, for our head, the duke, who has deeds, n.o.bility, and troops to recommend him; the duke, in whom ye will find a defender not only of the common weal, but also of your private interests. Thanks to his benevolence, ye will have in him a father. Who hath had recourse to him and hath not found protection? Who, that hath been torn from the care of home, hath not been restored thereto by him?'