Before long Charles the Bald’s followers were dictating to him; and in the disaffection caused by his feebleness and cowardice prelates and nobles allied themselves against him. If they acknowledged the king’s authorityEstablishment of feudalism.at the assemblies of Yütz (near Thionville) in 844, they forced from him a promise that they should keep their fiefs and their dignities; and while establishing a right of control over all his actions they deprived him of his right of jurisdiction over them. Despite Charles’s resistance his royal power dwindled steadily: an appeal to Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, entailed concessions to the Church. In 856 some of his vassals deserted him and went over to Louis the German. To win them back Charles had to sign a new charter, by the terms of which loyalty was no longer a one-sided engagement but a reciprocal contract between king and vassal. He gave up his personal right of distributing the fiefs and honours which were the price of adherence, and thus lost for the Carolingians the free disposal of the immense territories they had gradually usurped; they retained the over-lordship, it is true, but this over-lordship, without usufruct and without choice of tenant, was but a barren possession.
Like their territories public authority little by little slipped from the grasp of the Carolingians, largely because of their abuse of their too great power. They had concentrated the entire administration in their own hands. LikeDecay of the Carolinglan power.Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald were omnipotent. There were no provincial assemblies, no municipal bodies, no merchant-gilds, no autonomous churches; the people had no means of making themselves heard; they had no place in an administration which was completely in the hands of a central hierarchy of officials of all ranks, from dukes toscabini, with counts, viscounts andcentenariiin between. However, these dukes and counts were not merely officials: they too had become lords offideles, of their ownadvocati,centenariiandscabini, whom they nominated, and of all the free men of the county, who since Charlemagne’s time had been first allowed and then commanded to “commend” themselves to a lord, receiving feudal benefices in return. Any deprivation or supersession of the count might impoverish, dispossess or ruin the vassals of the entire county; so that all, vassals or officials, small and great, feeling their danger, united their efforts, and lent each other mutual assistance against the permanent menace of an overweening monarchy. Hence, at the end of the 9th century, the heredity of offices as well as of fiefs. In the disordered state of society official stability was a valuable warrant of peace, and the administrative hierarchy, lay or spiritual, thus formed a mould for the hierarchy of feudalism. There was no struggle with the king, simply a cessation of obedience; for without strength or support in the kingdom he was powerless to resist. In vain Charles the Bald affirmed his royal authority in the capitularies of Quierzy-sur-Oise (857), Reims (860), Pistes (864), Gondreville (872) and Quierzy-sur-Oise (877); each time in exchange for assent to the royal will and renewal of oaths he had to acquiesce in new safeguards against himself and by so much to diminish that power of protection against violence and injustice for which the weak had always looked to the throne. Far from forbidding the relation of lord and vassal, Charles the Bald imposed it upon every man in his kingdom, himself proclaiming the real incapacity and failure of that theoretic royal power to which he laid claim. Henceforward royalty had no servants, since it performed no service. There was no longer the least hesitation over the choice between liberty with danger and subjection with safety; men sought and found in vassalage the right to live, and willingly bartered away their liberty for it.
The degeneration of the monarchy was clearly apparent on the death of Charles the Bald, when his son, Louis the Stammerer,Louis the Stammerer (877-879).was only assured of the throne, which had passed by right of birth under the Merovingians and been hereditary under the earlier Carolingians, through his election by nobles and bishops under the direction of Hugh the Abbot, successor of Robert the Strong, each voter having been won over by gift of abbeys, counties or manors. When Louis died two years later (879), the same nobles met, some at Creil, the rest at Meaux, and the first party chose Louis of Germany, who preferred Lorraine to the crown; while theLouis III. and Carloman (879-884).rest anointed Louis III. and Carloman, sons of the late king, themselves deciding how the kingdom was to be divided between the two princes. Thus the king no longer chose his own vassals; but vassals and fief-holders actually elected their king according to the material advantages they expected from him. Louis III. and Carloman justified their election by their brilliant victories over the Normans at Saucourt (881) and near Epernay (883); but at their deaths (882-884), the nobles, instead of taking Louis’s boy-son, Charles the Simple, as king, chose Charles the Fat, king of Germany, because he was emperor and seemedCharles the Fat. (884-888.)powerful. He united once more the dominions of Charlemagne; but he disgraced the imperial throne by his feebleness, and was incapable of using his immense army to defend Paris when it was besieged by the Normans. Expelled from Italy, he only came to France to buy a shameful peace. When he died in January 888 he had not a single faithful vassal, and the feudal lords resolved never again to place the sceptre in a hand that could not wield the sword.
The death-struggle of the Carolingians lasted for a century of uncertainty and anarchy, during which time the bishops, counts and lords might well have suppressed the monarchy had they been hostile to it. Such, however,Death-struggle of the Carolingians (888-987).was not their policy; on the contrary, they needed a king to act as agent for their private interests, since he alone could invest their rank and dignities with an official and legitimate character. They did not at once agree on Charles’s successor; for some of them chose Eudes (Odo), son of Robert the Strong, for his brilliant defence of Paris against the Normans in 885; others Guy, duke of Spoleto in Italy, who had himself crowned at Langres; while many wished for Arnulf, illegitimate son of Carloman, king of Germany and emperor. Eudes was victor in the struggle, and was crowned and anointed at Compiègne on the 29th of February 888; but five years later, meeting with defeat after defeat at the hands of the Normans, his followers deserted from him to Charles the Simple, grandson of Charles the Bald, who was also supported by Fulk, archbishop of Reims.
This first Carolingian restoration took place on the 28th of January 893, and thenceforward throughout this warlike period from 888 to 936 the crown passed from one dynastyKing Odo (888-893).to the other according to the interests of the nobles. After desperate strife, anagreementbetween the two rivals, Arnulf’s support, and the death of Odo, secured it for Charles III., surnamed the Simple. His subjects remained faithful to him for a good while, as he put an end to the Norman invasions which had desolated the kingdom for two centuries, and cowed those barbarians, much to the benefit of France. By the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte (911) their leader Rolf (Rollo) obtained one of Charles’s daughters in marriage and the district of the Lower Seine which the Normans had long occupied, on condition that he and his men ceased their attacks and accepted Christianity. Having thus tranquillized the west,Charles the Simple (893-929).Charles took advantage of Louis the Child’s death, and conquered Lorraine, in spite of opposition from Conrad, king of Germany (921). But his preference for his new conquest, and for a Lorrainer of low birth named Hagano, aroused the jealousy and discontent of his nobles. They first elected Robert, count of Paris (923), and then after his death in a successful battle near Soissons against Charles theSimple, Rudolph of Burgundy, his son-in-law. But Herbert of Vermandois, one of the successful combatants atRudolph of Burgundy (923-936).Soissons, coveted the countship of Laon, which Rudolph refused him; and he thereupon proclaimed Charles the Simple, who had confided his cause to him, as king once more. Seeing his danger Rudolph ceded the countship to Herbert, and Charles was relegated to his prison until his death in 929. After unsuccessful wars against the nobles of the South, against the Normans, who asserted that they were bound to no one except Charles the Simple, and against the Hungarians (who, now the Normans were pacified, were acting their part in the East), Rudolph had a return of good fortune in the years between 930 and 936, despite the intrigues of Herbert of Vermandois. Upon his death the nobles assembled to elect a king; and Hugh the Great, Rudolph’s brother-in-law, moved by irresolution as much as by prudence, instead of taking the crown, preferred to restore the Carolingians once more in the person of Charles the Simple’s son, Louis d’Outremer, himself claiming numerous privileges and enjoying the exercise of power unencumbered by a title which carried with it the jealousy of the nobles.
This restoration was no more peaceful than its predecessor. The Carolingians had as it were a fresh access of energy, and the struggle against the Robertinians went on relentlessly. Both sides employed similar methods: one was supportedLouis IV. the Foreigner (936-954.)by Normandy, the other by Germany; the archbishop of Reims was for the Carolingians, the Robertinians had to be content with the less influential bishop of Sens. Louis soon proved to Hugh the Great, who was trying to play the part of a mayor of the palace, that he was by no means aroi fainéant; and the powerful duke of the Franks, growing uneasy, allied himself with Herbert of Vermandois, William of Normandy and his brother-in-law Otto I. king of Germany, who resented the loss of Lorraine. Louis defended himself with energy, aided chiefly by the nobles of the South, by his relative Edmund, king of the English, and then by Otto himself, whose brother-in-law he also had become. A peace advantageous to him was made in 942, and on the deaths of his two opponents, Herbert of Vermandois and William of Normandy, all seemed to be going well for him; but his guardianship of Richard, son of the duke of Normandy, aroused fresh strife, and on the 13th of July 945 he fell into an ambush and suffered a captivity similar to his father’s of twenty-two years before. No one had befriended Charles the Simple, but Louis had his wife Gerberga, who won over to his cause the kings of England and Germany and even Hugh. Hugh set him free, insisting, as payment for his aid, on the cession of Laon, the capital of the kingdom and the last fortified town remaining to the Carolingians (946). Louis was hardly free before he took vengeance, harried the lands of his rival, restored to the archiepiscopal throne of Reims Artald, his faithful adviser, in place of the son of Herbert of Vermandois, and managed to get Hugh excommunicated by the council of Ingelheim (948) and by the pope. A two years’ struggle wearied the rivals, and they made peace in 950. Louis once more held Laon, and in the following year further strengthened his position by a successful expedition into Burgundy. Still his last years were not peaceful; for besides civil wars there were two Hungarian invasions of France (951 and 954).
Louis’s sudden death in 954 once more placed the Carolingian line in peril, since he had not had time to have his son Lothair crowned. For a third time Hugh had the disposal of the crown, and he was no more tempted to take it himselfLothair (954-986).in 954 than in 923 or 936: it was too profitless a possession. Thanks to Hugh’s support and to the good offices of Otto and his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne and duke of Lorraine, Lothair was chosen king and crowned at Reims. Hugh exacted, as payment for his disinterestedness and fidelity, a renewal of his sovereignty over Burgundy with that of Aquitaine as well; he was in fact the viceroy of the kingdom, and others imitated him by demanding indemnities, privileges and confirmation of rights, as was customary at the beginning of a reign. Hugh strengthened his position in Burgundy, Lorraine and Normandy by means of marriages; but just as his power was at its height he died (956). His death and the minority of his sons, Hugh Capet and Eudes, gave the Carolingian dynasty thirty years more of life.
For nine years (956-965) Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, was regent of France, and thanks to him there was a kind ofentente cordialebetween the Carolingians and the Robertinians and Otto. Bruno made Lothair recognize Hugh as duke of France and Eudes as duke of Burgundy; but the sons preserved the father’s enmity towards king Louis, despite the archbishop’s repeated efforts. His death deprived Lothair of a wise and devoted guardian, even if it did set him free from German influence; and the death of Odalric, archbishop of Reims, in 969, was another fatal loss for the Carolingians, succeeded as he was by Adalbero, who, though learned, pious and highly intelligent, was none the less ambitious. On the death of Otto I. (973) Lothair wished to regain Lorraine; but his success was small, owing to his limited resources and the uncertain support of his vassals. In 980, regretting his fruitless quarrel with Otto II., who had ravaged the whole country as far as Paris, and fearing that even with the support of the house of Vermandois he would be crushed like his father Louis IV. between the duke of France and the emperor, who could count on the archbishop of Reims, Lothair made peace with Otto—a great mistake, which cost him the prestige he had gained among his nobles by his fairly successful struggle with the emperor, drawing down upon him, moreover, the swift wrath of Hugh, who thought himself tricked. Otto, meanwhile, whom he was unwise enough to trust, made peace secretly with Hugh, as it was his interest to play off his two old enemies one against the other. However, Otto died first (983), leaving a three-year-old son, Otto III., and Lothair, hoping for Lorraine, upheld the claims of Henry of Bavaria, who wished to oust Otto. This was a war-signal for Archbishop Adalbero and his adviser Gerbert, devoted to the idea of the Roman empire, and determined that it should still be vested in the race of Otto, which had always been beneficent to the Church.
They decided to set the Robertinians against the Carolingians, and on their advice Hugh Capet dispersed the assembly of Compiègne which Lothair had commissioned to examine Adalbero’s behaviour. On Lothair’s death inLouis V. (986-987).986, Hugh surrounded his son and successor, Louis V., with intrigues. Louis was a weak-minded and violent young man with neither authority nor prestige, and Hugh tried to have him placed under tutelage. After Louis V.’s sudden death, aged twenty, in 987, Adalbero and Gerbert, with the support of the reformed Cluniac clergy, at the Assembly of Senlis eliminated from the succession the rightful heir, Charles of Lorraine, who, without influence or wealth, had become a stranger in his own country, and elected Hugh Capet, who, though rich and powerful, was superior neither in intellect nor character. Thus the triple alliance of Adalbero’s bold and adroit imperialism with the cautious and vacillating ambition of the duke of the Franks, and the impolitic hostility towards Germany of the ruined Carolingians, resulted in the unlooked-for advent of the new Capetian dynasty.
This event completed the evolution of the forces that had produced feudalism, the basis of the medieval social system. The idea of public authority had been replaced by one that was simpler and therefore better fitted for a half-civilizedDismemberment of the kingdom.society—that of dependence of the weak on the strong, voluntarily entered on by means of mutual contract. Feudalism had gained ground in the 8th century; feudalism it was which had raised the first Carolingian to the throne as being the richest and most powerful person in Austrasia; and Charlemagne with all his power had been as utterly unable as the Merovingians to revive the idea of an abstract and impersonal state. Charlemagne’s vassals, however, had needed him; while from Charles the Bald onward it was the king who needed the vassals—a change more marked with each successive prince. The feudal system had in fact turned against the throne, the vassals using it to secure a permanent hold upon offices andfiefs, and to get possession of estates and of power. After Charles the Bald’s death royalty had only, so to speak, a shell—administrative officialdom. No longer firmly rooted in the soil, the monarchy was helpless before local powers which confronted it, seized upon the land, and cut off connexion between throne and people. The king, the supreme lord, was the only lord without lands, a nomad in his own realms, merely lingering there until starved out. Feudalism claimed its new rights in the capitulary of Quierzy-sur-Oise in 857; the rights of the monarchy began to dwindle in 877.
But vassalage could only be a cause of disintegration, not of unity, and that this disintegration did not at once spread indefinitely was due to the dozen or so great military commands—Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine, &c.—which Charles the Bald had been obliged to establish on a strong territorial basis. One of these great vassals, the duke of France, was amply provided with estates and offices, in contrast to the landless Carolingian, and his power, like that of the future kings of Prussia and Austria, was based on military authority, for he had a frontier—that of Anjou. Then the inevitable crisis had come. For a hundred years the great feudal lords had disposed of the crown as they pleased, handing it back and forward from one dynasty to another. At the same time the contrast between the vast proportions of the Carolingian empire and its feeble administrative control over a still uncivilized community became more and more accentuated. The Empire crumbled away by degrees. Each country began to lead its own separate existence, stammering its own tongue; the different nations no longer understood one another, and no longer had any general ideas in common. The kingdoms of France and Germany, still too large, owed their existence to a series of dispossessions imposed on sovereigns too feeble to hold their own, and consisted of a great number of small states united by a very slight bond. At the end of the 10th century the duchy of France was the only central part of the kingdom which was still free and without organization. The end was bound to come, and the final struggle was between Laon, the royal capital, and Reims, the ecclesiastical capital, the former carrying with it the soil of France, and the latter the crown. The Capets captured the first in 985 and the other in 987. Thenceforth all was over for the Carolingians, who were left with no heritage save their great name.
Was the day won for the House of Capet? In the 11th century the kings of that line possessed meagre domains scattered about in the Île de France among the seigniorial possessions of Brie, Beauce, Beauvaisis and Valois. They wereThe House of Capet.hemmed in by the powerful duchy of Normandy, the counties of Blois, Flanders and Champagne, and the duchy of Burgundy. Beyond these again stretched provinces practically impenetrable to royal influence: Brittany, Gascony, Toulouse, Septimania and the Spanish March. The monarchy lay stifling in the midst of a luxuriant feudal forest which surrounded its only two towns of any importance: Paris, the city of the future, and Orleans, the city of learning. Its power, exercised with an energy tempered by prudence, ran to waste like its wealth in a suzerainty over turbulent vassals devoid of common government or administration, and was undermined by the same lack of social discipline among its vassals which had sapped the power of the Carolingians. The new dynasty was thus the poorest and weakest of the great civil and ecclesiastical lordships which occupied the country from the estuary of the Scheldt to that of the Llobregat, and bounded approximately by the Meuse, the Saône and the ridge of the Cévennes; yet it cherished a great ambition which it revealed at times during its first century (987-1108)—a determination not to repeat the Carolingian failure. It had to wait two centuries after the revolution of 987 before it was strong enough to take up the dormant tradition of an authority like that of Rome; and until then it cunningly avoided unequal strife in which, victory being impossible, reverses might have weakened those titles, higher than any due to feudal rights, conferred by the heritage of the Caesars and the coronation at Reims, and held in reserve for the future.
The new dynasty thus at first gave the impression rather of decrepitude than of youth, seeming more a continuation of the Carolingian monarchy than a new departure. Hugh Capet’s reign was one of disturbance and danger;Hugh Capet (987-996).behind his dim personality may be perceived the struggle of greater forces—royalty and feudalism, the French clergy and the papacy, the kingdom of France and the Empire. Hugh Capet needed more than three years and the betrayal of his enemy into his hands before he could parry the attack of a quite second-rate adversary, Charles of Lorraine (990), the last descendant of Charlemagne. The insubordination of several great vassals—the count of Vermandois, the duke of Burgundy, the count of Flanders—who treated him as he had treated the Carolingian king; the treachery of Arnulf, archbishop of Reims, who let himself be won over by the empress Theophano; the papal hostility inflamed by the emperor against the claim of feudal France to independence,—all made it seem for a time as though the unity of the Roman empire of the West would be secured at Hugh’s expense and in Otto’s favour; but as a matter of fact this papal and imperial hostility ended by making the Capet dynasty a national one. When Hugh died in 996, he had succeeded in maintaining his liberty mainly, it is true, by diplomacy, not force, despite opposing powers and his own weakness. Above all, he had secured the future by associating his son Robert with him on the throne; and although the nobles and the archbishop of Reims were disturbed by this suspension of the feudal right of election, and tried to oppose it, they were unsuccessful.
Robert the Pious, a crowned monk, resembled his father in eschewing great schemes, whether from timidity or prudence; yet from 996 to 1031 he preserved intact the authorityRobert the Pious (996-1031).he had inherited from Hugh, despite many domestic disturbances. He maintained a defiant attitude towards Germany; increased his heritage; strengthened his royal title by the addition of that of duke of Burgundy after fourteen years of pillage; and augmented the royal domain by adding several countships on the south-east and north-west. Limited in capacity, he yet understood the art of acquisition.
Henry I., his son, had to struggle with a powerful vassal, Eudes, count of Chartres and Troyes, and was obliged for a time to abandon his father’s anti-German policy. Eudes, who was rash and adventurous, in alliance with theHenry I. (1031-1060).queen-mother, supported the second son, Robert, and captured the royal town of Sens. In order to retake it Henry ceded the beautiful valley of the Saône and the Rhône to the German emperor Conrad, and henceforth the kingdom of Burgundy was, like Lorraine, to follow the fortunes of Germany. Henry had besides to invest his brother with the duchy of Burgundy—a grave error which hampered French politics during three centuries. Like his father, he subsequently managed to retrieve some of the crown lands from William the Bastard, the too-powerful duke of Normandy; and he made a praiseworthy though fruitless attempt to regain possession of Lorraine for the French crown. Finally, by the coronation of his son Philip (1059) he confirmed the hereditary right of the Capets, soon to be superior to the elective rights of the bishops and great barons of the kingdom. The chief merit of these early Capets, indeed, was that they had sons, so that their dynasty lasted on without disastrous minorities or quarrels over the division of inheritance.
Philip I. achieved nothing during his long reign of forty-eight years except the necessary son, Louis the Fat. Unsuccessful even in small undertakings he was utterly incapable of great ones; and the two important events of hisPhilip I. (1060-1108).reign took place, the one against his will, the other without his help. The first, which lessened Norman aggression in his kingdom, was William the Bastard’s conquest of England (1066); the second was the First Crusade preached by the French pope Urban II. (1095). A few half-hearted campaigns against recalcitrant vassals and a long and obstinate quarrel with the papacy over his adulterous union with Bertrade de Montfort, countess of Anjou, represented the total activityof Philip’s reign; he was greedy and venal, by no means disdaining the petty profits of brigandage, and he never left his own domains.
After a century’s lethargy the house of Capet awoke once more with Louis VI. and began the destruction of the feudal polity. For thirty-four years of increasing warfare this active and energetic king, this brave and persevering soldier,Louis VI. the Fat (1108-1137).never spared himself, energetically policing the royal demesne against such pillagers as Hugh of Le Puiset or Thomas of Marle. There was, however, but little difference yet between a count of Flanders or of Chartres and Louis VI., the possessor of a but small and perpetually disturbed realm, who was praised by his minister, the monk Suger, for making his power felt as far as distant Berril. This was clearly shown when he attempted to force the great feudal lords to recognize his authority. His bold endeavour to establish William Clito in Flanders ended in failure; and his want of strength was particularly humiliating in his unfortunate struggle with Henry I., king of the English and duke of Normandy, who was powerful and well served, the real master of a comparatively weak baronage. Louis only escaped being crushed because he remembered, as did his successors for long after him, that his house owed its power to the Church.
The Church has never loved weakness; she has always had a secret sympathy for power, whatever its source, when she could hope to capture it and make it serve her ends. Louis VI. defended her against feudal robbers; and she supported him in his struggles against the nobles, making him, moreover, by his son’s marriage with the heiress of Aquitaine, the greatest and richest landholder of the kingdom. But Louis was not the obedient tool she wished for. With equal firmness and success he vindicated his rights, whether against the indirect attacks of the papacy on his independence, or the claims of the ecclesiastical courts which, in principle, he made subordinate to the jurisdiction of the crown; whether in episcopal elections, or in ecclesiastical reforms which might possibly imperil his power or his revenues. The prestige of this energetic king, protector of the Church, of the infant communes in the towns, and of the peasants as against the constant oppressions of feudalism, became still greater at the end of his reign, when an invasion of the German emperor Henry V. in alliance with Henry Beauclerk of Normandy (Henry I. of England), rallied his subjects round the oriflamme of St Denis, awakening throughout northern France the unanimous and novel sentiment of national danger.
Unfortunately his successor, Louis VII., almost destroyed his work by a colossal blunder, although circumstances seemed much in his favour. Germany and England, the two powers especially to be dreaded, were busy withLouis VII. the Young (1137-1180).internal troubles and quarrels of succession. On the other hand, thanks to his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, Louis’s own domains had been increased by the greater part of the country between the Loire and the Pyrenees; while his father’s minister, the monk Suger, continued to assist him with his moderation and prudence. His first successes against Theobald of Champagne, who for thirty years had been the most dangerous of the great French barons and had refused a vassal’s services to Louis VI., as well as the adroit diplomacy with which he wrested from Geoffrey the Fair, count of Anjou, a part of the Norman Vexin long claimed by the French kings, in exchange for permitting him to conquer Normandy, augured well for his boldness and activity, had he but confined them to serving his own interests. The second crusade, undertaken to expiate his burning of the church of Vitry, inaugurated a series of magnificent but fruitless exploits; while his wife was the cause of domestic quarrels still more disastrous. Piety and a thirst for glory impelled Louis to take the lead in thisThe second crusade.fresh expedition to the Holy Land, despite the opposition of Suger, and the hesitation of the pope, Bernard of Clairvaux and the barons. The alliance with the German king Conrad III. only enhanced the difficulties of an enterprise already made hazardous by the misunderstandings between Greeks and Latins. The Crusade ended in the double disaster of military defeat and martial dishonour (1147-1149); and Suger’s death in 1151 deprived Louis of a counsellor who had exercised the regency skilfully and with success, just at the very moment when his divorce from Eleanor was to jeopardize the fortunes of the Capets.
For the proud and passionate Eleanor married, two months later (May 1152), the young Henry, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy, who held, besides these great fiefs, the whole of the south-west of France, and in twoRivalry of the Capets and Angevins.years’ time the crown of England as well. Henry and Louis at once engaged in the first Capet-Angevin duel, destined to last a hundred years (1152-1242). When France and England thus entered European history, their conditions were far from being equal. In England royal power was strong; the size of the Angevin empire was vast, and the succession assured. It was only abuse of their too-great powers that ruined the early Angevin kings. France in the 12th century was merely a federation of separate states, jealously independent, which the king had to negotiate with rather than rule; while his own possessions, shorn of the rich heritage of Aquitaine, were, so to speak, swamped by those of the English king. For some time it was feared that the French kingdom would be entirely absorbed in consequence of the marriage between Louis’s daughter and Henry II.’s eldest son. The two rivals were typical of their states, Henry II. being markedly superior to Louis in political resource, military talent and energy. He failed, however, to realize his ambition of shutting in the Capet king and isolating him from the rest of Europe by crafty alliances, notably that with the emperor Frederick Barbarossa—while watching an opportunity to supplant him upon the French throne. It is extraordinary that Louis should have escaped final destruction, considering that Henry had subdued Scotland, retaken Anjou from his brother Geoffrey, won a hold over Brittany, and schemed successfully for Languedoc. But the Church once more came to the rescue of her devoted son. The retreat to France of Pope Alexander III., after he had been driven from Rome by the emperor Frederick in favour of the anti-pope Victor, revived Louis’s moral prestige. Henry II.’s quarrel with Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, which ran its course in France (1164-1171) as a struggle for the independence and reform of the Church, both threatened by the Constitutions of Clarendon, and ended with the murder of Becket in 1172, gave Louis yet another advantage over his rival. Finally the birth of Philip Augustus (1165), after thirty years of childless wedlock, saved the kingdom from a war of succession just at the time when the powerful Angevin sway, based entirely upon force, was jeopardized by the rebellion of Henry II.’s sons against their father. Louis naturally joined the coalition of 1173, but showed no more vigour in this than in his other wars; and his fate would have been sealed had not the pope checked Henry by the threat of an interdict, and reconciled the combatants (1177). Louis had still time left to effect the coronation of his son Philip Augustus (1179), and to associate him with himself in the exercise of the royal power for which he had grown too old and infirm.
Philip Augustus, who was to be the bitterest enemy of Henry II. and the Angevins, was barely twenty before he revealed the full measure of his cold energy and unscrupulous ambition. In five years (1180-1186) he rid himselfPhilip Augustus (1180-1223).of the overshadowing power of Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, and his own uncles, the counts of Champagne; while the treaty of May 20th, 1186, was his first rough lesson to the feudal leagues, which he had reduced to powerlessness, and to the subjugated duke of Burgundy and count of Flanders. Northern and eastern France recognized the suzerainty of the Capet, and Philip Augustus was now bold enough to attack Henry II., the master of the west, whose friendly neutrality (assured by the treaty of Gisors) had made possible the successive defeats of the great French barons. Like his father, Philip understood how to make capital out of the quarrels of the aged and ailing Henry II. with his sons, especially with Richard, who claimed his French heritage in his father’s lifetime, and raised up enemies for the disunited Angevins evenin Germany. After two years of constant defeat, Henry’s capitulation at Azai proved once more that fortune is never with the old. The English king had to submit himself to “the advice and desire of the king of France,” doing him homage for all continental fiefs (1187-1189).
The defection of his favourite son John gave Henry his deathblow, and Philip Augustus found himself confronted by a new king of England, Richard Cœur de Lion, as powerful, besides being younger and more energetic. Philip’sPhilip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion.ambition could not rest satisfied with the petty principalities of Amiens, Vermandois and Valois, which he had added to the royal demesne. The third crusade, undertaken, sorely against Philip’s will, in alliance with Richard, only increased the latent hostility between the two kings; and in 1191 Philip abandoned the enterprise in order to return to France and try to plunder his absent rival. Despite his solemn oath no scruples troubled him: witness the large sums of money he offered to the emperor Henry VI. if he would detain Richard, who had been made prisoner by the duke of Austria on his return from the crusade; and his negotiations with his brother John Lackland, whom he acknowledged king of England in exchange for the cession of Normandy. But Henry VI. suddenly liberated Richard, and in five years that “devil set free” took from Philip all the profit of his trickery, and shut him off from Normandy by the strong fortress of Château-Gaillard (1194-1199).
Happily an accident which caused Richard’s death at the siege of Chalus, and the evil imbecility of his brother and successor, John Lackland, brilliantly restored the fortunes of the Capets. The quarrel between John and hisPhilip Augustus and John Lackland.nephew Arthur of Brittany gave Philip Augustus one of those opportunities of profiting by family discord which, coinciding with discontent among the various peoples subject to the house of Anjou, had stood him in such good stead against Henry II. and Richard. He demanded renunciation on John’s part, not of Anjou only, but of Poitou and Normandy—of all his French-speaking possessions, in fact—in favour of Arthur, who was supported by William des Roches, the most powerful lord of the region of the Loire. Philip’s divorce from Ingeborg of Denmark, who appealed successfully to Pope Innocent III., merely delayed the inevitable conflict. John of England, moreover, was a past-master in the art of making enemies of his friends, and his conduct towards his vassals of Aquitaine furnished a judicial pretext for conquest. The royal judges at Paris condemned John, as a felon, to death and the forfeiture of his fiefs (1203), and the murder of Arthur completed his ruin. Philip Augustus made a vigorous onslaught on Normandy in right of justice and of superior force, took the formidable fortress of Château-Gaillard on the Seine after several months’ siege, and invested Rouen, which John abandoned, fleeing to England. In Anjou, Touraine, Maine and Poitou, lords, towns and abbeys made their submission, won over by Philip’s bribes despite Pope Innocent III.’s attempts at intervention. In 1208 John was obliged to own the Plantagenet continental power as lost. There were no longer two rival monarchies in France; the feudal equilibrium was destroyed, to the advantage of the duchy of France.
But Philip in his turn nearly allowed himself to be led into an attempt at annexing England, and so reversing for his own benefit the work of the Angevins (1213); but, happily for the future of the dynasty, Pope Innocent III. prevented this. Thanks to the ecclesiastical sanction of his royalty, Philip had successfully braved the pope for twenty years, in the matter of Ingeborg and again in that of the German schism, when he had supported Philip of Swabia against Otto of Brunswick, the pope’s candidate. In 1213, John Lackland, having been in conflict with Innocent regarding the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, had made submission and done homage for his kingdom, and Philip wished to take vengeance for this at the expense of the rebellious vassals of the north-west, and of Renaud and Ferrand, counts of Boulogne and Flanders, thus combating English influence in those quarters.
This was a return to the old Capet policy; but it was also menacing to many interests, and sure to arouse energetic resistance. John seized the opportunity to consolidate against Philip a European coalition, which includedCoalition against Philip Augustus. (1214).most of the feudal lords in Flanders, Belgium and Lorraine, and the emperor Otto IV. So dangerous did the French monarchy already seem! John began operations with an attack from Anjou, supported by the notably capricious nobles of Aquitaine, and was routed by Philip’s son at La Roche aux Moines, near Angers, on the 2nd of July 1214. Twenty-five days later the northern allies, intending to surprise the smaller French army on its passage over the bridge at Bouvines, themselves sustained a complete defeat. This first national victory had not only a profound effect on the whole kingdom, but produced consequences of far-reaching importance: in Germany it brought about Otto’s fall before Frederick II.; in England it introduced the great drama of 1215, the first act of which closed with Magna Carta—John Lackland being forced to acknowledge the control of his barons, and to share with them the power he had abused and disgraced. In France, on the contrary, the throne was exalted beyond rivalry, raised far above a feudalism which never again ventured on acts of independence or rebellion. Bouvines gave France the supremacy of the West. The feudalism of Languedoc was all that now remained to conquer.
The whole world, in fact, was unconsciously working for Philip Augustus. Anxious not to risk his gains, but to consolidate them by organization, Philip henceforth until his death in 1223 operated through diplomacy alone, leaving to others the toil and trouble of conquests, the advantages of which were not for them. When his son Louis wished to wrest the English crown from John, now crushed by his barons, Philip intervened without seeming to do so, first with the barons, then with Innocent III., supporting and disowning his son by turns; until the latter, held in check by Rome, was forced to sign the treaty of Lambeth (1217). When the Church and the needy and fanatical nobles of northern and central France destroyed the feudal dynasty of Toulouse and the rich civilization of the south in the Albigensian crusade, it was for Philip Augustus that their leader, Simon de Montfort, all unknowing, conquered Languedoc. At last, instead of the two Frances of thelangue d’ocand thelangue d’oïl, there was but one royal France comprising the whole kingdom.
Philip Augustus was not satisfied with the destruction of a turbulent feudalism; he wished to substitute for it such unity and peace as had obtained in the Roman Empire; and just as he had established his supremacy over theAdministration of Philip Augustus.feudal lords, so now he managed to extend it over the clergy, and to bend them to his will. He took advantage of their weakness in the midst of an age of violence. By contracts of “pariage” the clergy claimed and obtained the king’s protection even in places beyond the king’s jurisdiction, to their common advantage. Philip thus set the feudal lords one against the other; and against them all, first the Church, then the communes. He exploited also the townspeople’s need for security and the instinct of independence which made them claim a definite place in the feudal hierarchy. He was the actual creator of the communes, although an interested creator, since they made a breach in the fortress of feudalism and extended the royal authority far beyond the king’s demesne. He did even more: he gave monarchy the instruments of which it still stood in need, gathering round him in Paris a council of men humble in origin, but wise and loyal; while in 1190 he institutedbaillisand seneschals throughout his enlarged dominions, all-powerful over the nobles and subservient to himself. He filled his treasury with spoils harshly wrung from all classes; thus inaugurating the monarchy’s long and patient labours at enlarging the crown lands bit by bit through taxes on private property. Finally he created an army, no longer the temporary feudalost, but a more or less permanent royal force. By virtue of all these organs of government the throne guaranteed peace, justice and a secure future, having routedfeudalism with sword and diplomacy. Philip’s son was the first of the Capets who was not crowned during his father’s lifetime; a fact clearly showing that the principle of heredity had now been established beyond discussion.
Louis VIII.’s short reign was but a prolongation of Philip’s in its realization of his two great designs: the recovery fromLouis VIII. (1223-1226).Henry III. of England of Poitou as far as the Garonne; and the crusade against the Albigenses, which with small pains procured him the succession of Amaury de Montfort, and the Languedoc of the counts of Toulouse, if not the whole of Gascony. Louis VIII. died on his return from this short campaign without having proved his full worth.
But the history of France during the 11th and 12th centuries does not entirely consist of these painful struggles of the Capet dynasty to shake off the fetters of feudalism. France, no longer split up into separate fragments, now beganUniversal French activity.to exercise both intellectual and military influence over Europe. Everywhere her sons gave proof of rejuvenated activity. The Christian missions which others were reviving in Prussia and beginning in Hungary were undertaken on a vaster scale by the Capets. These “elder sons of the Church” made themselves responsible for carrying out the “work of God,” and French pilgrims in the Holy Land prepared the great movement of the Crusades against the infidels. Religious faith, love of adventure, the hope of making advantageous conquests, anticipations of a promised paradise—all combined to force this advance upon the Orient, which though failing to rescue the sepulchre of Christ, the ephemeral kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, the dukedom of Athens, or the Latin empire of Constantinople, yet gained for France that prestige for military glory and religious piety which for centuries constituted her strength in the Levant (seeCrusades). At the call of the pope other members of the French chivalry also made victorious expeditions against the Mussulmans, and founded the Christian kingdom of Portugal. Obeying that enterprising spirit which was to take them to England half a century later, Normans descended upon southern Italy and wrested rich lands from Greeks and Saracens.
In the domain of intellect the advance of the French showed a no less dazzling and a no less universal activity; they sang as well as they fought, and their epics were worthy of their swordsmanship, while their cathedrals wereIntellectual development.hymns in stone as ardent as their soaring flights of devotion. In this period of intense religious life France was always in the vanguard. It was the ideas of Cluniac monks that freed the Church from feudal supremacy, and in the 11th century produced a Pope Gregory VII.; the spirit of free investigation shown by the heretics of Orleans inspired the rude Breton, Abelard, in the 12th century; and with Gerbert and Fulbert of Chartres the schools first kindled that brilliant light which the university of Paris, organized by Philip Augustus, was to shed over the world from the heights of Sainte-Geneviève. In the quarrels of the priesthood under the Empire it was St Bernard, the great abbot of Clairvaux, who tried to arrest the papacy on the slippery downward path of theocracy; finally, it was in Suger’s church of St Denis that French art began that struggle between light against darkness which, culminating in Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, was to teach the architects of the world the delight of building with airiness of effect. The old basilica which contains the history of the monarchy sums up the whole of Gothic art to this day, and it was Suger who in the domain of art and politics brought forward once more the conception of unity. The courteous ideal of French chivalry, with its “delectable” language, was adopted by all seigniorial Europe, which thus became animated, as it were, by the life-blood of France. Similarly, in the universal movement of those forces which made for freedom, France began the age-long struggle to maintain the rights of civil society and continually to enlarge the social categories. The townsman enriched by commerce and the emancipated peasant tried more or less valiantly to shake off the yoke of the feudal system, which had been greatly weakened, if not entirely broken down, by the crusades. Grouped around their belfry-towers and organized within their gilds, they made merry in their free jocular language over their own hardships, and still more over the vices of their lords. They insinuated themselves into the counsels of their ignorant masters, and though still sitting humbly at the feet of the barons, these upright and well-educated servitors were already dreaming of the great deeds they would do when their tyrants should have vacated their high position, and when royalty should have summoned them to power.
By the beginning of the 13th century the Capet monarchy was so strong that the crisis occasioned by the sudden deathLouis IX. (1226-1270).of Louis VIII. was easily surmounted by the foreign woman and the child whom he left behind him. It is true that that woman was Blanche of Castile, and that child the future Louis IX. A virtuous and very devout Spanish princess, Blanche assumed the regency of the kingdom and the tutelage of her child, and carried them on for nine years with so much force of character and capacityBlanche of Castile.for rule that she soon impressed the clamorous and disorderly leaders of the opposition (1226-1235). By the treaty of Meaux (1229), her diplomacy combined with the influence of the Church to prepare effectually for the annexation of Languedoc to the kingdom, supplementing this again by a portion of Champagne; and the marriage of her son to Margaret of Provence definitely broke the ties which held the country within the orbit of the German empire. She managed also to keep out of the great quarrel between Frederick II. and the papacy which was convulsing Germany. But her finest achievement was the education of her son; she taught him that lofty religious morality which in his case was not merely a rule for private conduct, but also a political programme to which he remained faithful even to the detriment of his apparent interests. With Louis IX. morality for the first time permeated and dominated politics; he had but one end: to do justice to every one and to reconcile all Christendom in view of a general crusade.
The oak of Vincennes, under which the king would sit to mete out justice, cast its shade over the whole political action of Louis IX. He was the arbiter of townspeople, of feudal lords and of kings. The interdiction of the judicialLouis IX.’s policy of arbitration.duel, the “quarantaine le roi,”i.e.“the king’s truce of forty days” during which no vengeance might be taken for private wrongs, and the assurement,29went far to diminish the abuses of warfare by allowing his mediation to make for a spirit of reconciliation throughout his kingdom. When Thibaud (Theobald), count of Champagne, attempted to marry the daughter of Pierre Mauclerc, duke of Brittany, without the king’s consent, Louis IX., who held the county of Champagne at his mercy, contented himself with exacting guarantees of peace. Beyond the borders of France, at the time of the emperor Frederick II.’s conflict with a papacy threatened in its temporal powers, though he made no response to Frederick’s appeal to the civil authorities urging them to present a solid front against the pretensions of the Church, and though he energetically supported the latter, yet he would not admit her right to place kingdoms under interdict, and refused the imperial crown which Gregory IX. offered him for one of his brothers. He always hoped to bring about an honourable agreement between the two adversaries, and in his estimationthe advantages of peace outweighed personal interest. In matters concerning the succession in Flanders, Hainaut and Navarre; in the quarrels of the princes regarding the Empire, and in those of Henry III. of England with his barons; it was because of his justice and his disinterestedness that he was appealed to as a trusted mediator. His conduct towards Henry III. was certainly a most characteristic example of his behaviour.
The king of England had entered into the coalition formed by the nobility of Poitou and the count of Toulouse to prevent the execution of the treaty of 1229 and the enfeoffment of Poitou to the king’s brother Alphonse. Louis IX.Louis IX. and Henry III.defeated Henry III. twice within two days, at Taillebourg and at Saintes, and obliged him to demand a truce (1242). It was forbidden that any lord should be a vassal both of the king of France and of the king of England. After this Louis IX. had set off upon his first crusade in Egypt (1248-54), and on his return he wanted to make this truce into a definite treaty and to “set love” between his children and those of the English king. By a treaty signed at Paris (1259), Henry III. renounced all the conquests of Philip Augustus, and Louis IX. those of his father Louis VIII.—an example unique in history of a victorious king spontaneously giving up his spoil solely for the sake of peace and justice, yet proving by his act that honesty is the best policy; for monarchy gained much by that moral authority which made Louis IX. the universal arbitrator.
But his love of peace and concord was not always “sans grands despens” to the kingdom. In 1258, by renouncing his rights over Roussillon and the countship of Barcelona, conquered by Charlemagne, he made an advantageous bargainThe crusade of Tunis.because he kept Montpellier; but he committed a grave fault in consenting to accept the offers regarding Sicily made by Pope Urban IV. to his brother the count of Anjou and Provence. That was the origin of the expeditions into Italy on which the house of Valois was two centuries later to squander the resources of France unavailingly, compromising beyond the Alps its interests in the Low Countries and upon the Rhine. But Louis IX.’s worst error was his obsession with regard to the crusades, to which he sacrificed everything. Despite the signal failure of the first crusade, when he had been taken prisoner; despite the protests of his mother, of his counsellors, and of the pope himself, he flung himself into the mad adventure of Tunis. Nowhere was his blind faith more plainly shown, combined as it was with total ignorance of the formidable migrations that were convulsing Asia, and of the complicated game of politics just then proceeding between the Christian nations and the Moslems of the Mediterranean. At Tunis he found his death, on the 25th of August 1270.
The death of Louis IX. and that of his brother Alphonse of Poitiers, heir of the count of Toulouse, made Philip III., the Bold, legitimate master of northern France and undisputed sovereign of southern France. From the latterPhilip III., the Bold (1270-1285).he detached thecomtatVenaissin in 1274 and gave it to the papacy, which held it until 1791. But he had not his father’s great soul nor disinterested spirit. Urged by Pope Martin IV. he began the fatal era of great international wars by his unlucky crusade against the king of Aragon, who, thanks to the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, substituted his own predominance in Sicily for that of Charles of Anjou. Philip returned from Spain only to die at Perpignan, ending his insignificant reign as he had begun it, amid the sorrows of a disastrous retreat (1270-1285). His reign was but a halting-place of history between those of Louis IX. and Philip the Fair, just when the transition was taking place from the last days of the middle ages to the modern epoch.
The middle ages had been dominated by four great problems. The first of these had been to determine whether there should be a universal empire exercising tutelage over the nations; and if so, to whom this empire shouldPhilip IV. the Fair (1285-1314).belong, to pope or emperor. The second had been the extension to the East of that Catholic unity which reigned in the West. Again, for more than a century, the question had also been debated whether the English kings were to preserve and increase their power over the soil of France. And, finally, two principles had been confronting one another in the internal life of all the European states: the feudal and the monarchical principles. France had not escaped any of these conflicts; but Philip the Fair was the initiator or the instrument (it is difficult to say which) who was to put an end to both imperial and theocratic dreams, and to the international crusades; who was to remove the political axis from the centre of Europe, much to the benefit of the western monarchies, now definitely emancipated from the feudal yoke and firmly organized against both the Church and the barons. The hour had come for Dante, the great Florentine poet, to curse the man who was to dismember the empire, precipitate the fall of the papacy and discipline feudalism.
Modern in his practical schemes and in his calculated purpose, Philip the Fair was still more so in his method, that of legal procedure, and in his agents, the lawyers. With him the French monarchy defined its ambitions, and littleLitigious character of Philip the Fair’s reign.by little forsook its feudal and ecclesiastical character in order to clothe itself in juridical forms. His aggressive and litigious policy and his ruthless financial method were due to those lawyers of the south and of Normandy who had been nurtured on Roman law in the universities of Bologna or Montpellier, had practised chicanery in the provincial courts, had gradually thrust themselves into the great arena of politics, and were now leading the king and filling his parlement. It was no longer upon religion or morality, it was upon imperial and Roman rights that thesechevaliers ès loisbased the prince’s omnipotence; and nothing more clearly marks the new tradition which was being elaborated than the fact that all the great events of Philip the Fair’s reign were lawsuits.
The first of these was with the papacy. The famous quarrel between the priesthood and the Empire, which had culminated at Canossa under Gregory VII., in the apotheosis of the Lateran council under Innocent III., and againPhilip the Fair and the Papacy.in the fall of the house of Hohenstaufen under Innocent IV., was reopened with the king of France by Boniface VIII. The quarrel began in 1294 about a question of money. In his bullClericis laicosthe pope protested against the taxes levied upon the French clergy by the king, whose expenses were increasing with his conquests. But he had not insisted; because Philip, between feudal vassals ruined by the crusades and lower classes fleeced by everybody, had threatened to forbid the exportation from France of any ecclesiastical gold and silver. In 1301 and 1302 the arrest of Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, by the officers of the king, and the citation of this cleric before the king’s tribunal for the crime oflèse-majesté, revived the conflict and led Boniface to send an order to free Saisset, and to put forward a claim to reform the kingdom under the threat of excommunication. In view of the gravity of the occasion Philip made an unusually extended appeal to public opinion by convoking the states-general at Notre-Dame in Paris (1302). Whatever were their views as to the relations between ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction, the French clergy, ruined by the dues levied by the papal court, ranged themselves on the national side with the nobility and thebourgeoisie; whereupon the king, with a bold stroke far ahead of his time, gave tit for tat. His chancellor, Nogaret, went to Anagni to seize the pope and drag him before a council; but Boniface died without confessing himself vanquished. As a matter of fact the king and his lawyers triumphed, where the house of Swabia had failed. After the death of Boniface the splendid fabric of the medieval theocracy gave place to the rights of civil society, the humiliation of Avignon, the disruption of the great schism, the vain efforts of the councils for reform, and the radical and heretical solutions of Wycliffe and Huss.
The affair of the Templars was another legal process carried out by the same Nogaret. Of course this military religious order had lost utility and justification when the Holy Land had been evacuated and the crusades were over.Philip the Fair and the Templars.Their great mistake had lain in becoming rich, and rich to excess, through serving as bankers to princes, kings and popes; for great financial powers soon becameunpopular. Philip took advantage of this hatred of the lower classes and the cowardice of his creature, Pope Clement V., to satisfy his desire for money. The trial of the order (1307-1313) was a remarkable example of the use of the religious tribunal of the Inquisition as a political instrument. There was a dramatic completeness about this unexpected result of the crusades. A general arbitrary arrest of the Templars, the sequestration of their property, examination under torture, the falsifying of procedure, extortion of money from the pope, theauto-da-féof innocent victims, the dishonest pillaging of their goods by the joint action of the king and the pope: such was the outcome of this vast process of secularization, which foreshadowed the events of the 16th and 18th centuries.
External policy had the same litigious character. Philip the Fair instituted suits against his natural enemies, the king of England and the count of Flanders, foreign princes holding possessions within his kingdom; and againstPhilip the Fair and Edward I.the emperor, whose ancient province of Lorraine and kingdom of Arles constantly changed hands between Germany and France. Philip began by interfering in the affairs of Sicily and Aragon, his father’s inheritance; after which, on the pretext of a quarrel between French and English sailors, he set up his customary procedure: a citation of the king of England before the parlement of Paris, and in case of default a decree of forfeiture; the whole followed by execution—that is to say by the unimportant war of 1295. A truce arranged by Boniface VIII. restored Guienne to Edward I., gave him the hand of Philip’s sister for himself and that of the king’s daughter for his son (1298).
A still more lengthy and unfortunate suit was the attempt of Philip the Fair and his successors to incorporate the Flemish fief like the English one (1300-1326), thus coming into conflict with proud and turbulent republicsPhilip the Fair and Flanders.composed of wool and cloth merchants, weavers, fullers and powerful counts. Guy de Dampierre, count of Namur, who had become count of Flanders on the death of his mother Margaret II. in 1279—an ambitious, greedy and avaricious man—was arrested at the Louvre on account of his attempt to marry his daughter to Edward I.’s eldest son without the consent of his suzerain Philip. Released after two years, he sided definitely with the king of England when the latter was in arms against Philip; and being only weakly supported by Edward, he was betrayed by the nobles who favoured France, and forced to yield up not only his personal liberty but the whole of Flanders (1300). The Flemings, however, soon wearying of the oppressive administration of the French governor, Jacques de Châtillon, and the recrudescence of patrician domination, rose and overwhelmed the French chivalry at Courtrai (1302)—a prelude to the coming disasters of the Hundred Years’ War. Philip’s double revenge, on sea at Zierikzee and on land at Mons-en-Pévèle (1304), led to the signing of a treaty at Athis-sur-Orge (1305).
The efforts of Philip the Fair to expand the limits of his kingdom on the eastern border were more fortunate. His marriage had gained him Champagne; and he afterwards extended his influence over Franche Comté,Eastern policy of Philip the Fair.Bar and the bishoprics of Lorraine, acquiring also Viviers and the important town of Lyons—all this less by force of arms than by the expenditure of money. Disdaining the illusory dream of the imperial crown, still cherished by his legal advisers, he pushed forward towards that fluctuating eastern frontier, the line of least resistance, which would have yielded to him had it not been for the unfortunate interruption of the Hundred Years’ War.
His three sons, Louis X., Philip V. the Tall, and Charles IV., continued his work. They increased the power of the monarchy politically by destroying the feudal reaction excited in 1314 by the tyrannical conduct of the jurists, likeThe sons of Philip the Fair (1314-1328).Enguerrand de Marigny, and by the increasing financial extortions of their father; and they also—notably Philip V., one of the most hard-working of the Capets—increased it on the administrative side by specializing the services of justice and of finance, which were separated from the king’s council. Under these mute self-effacing kings the progress of royal power was only the more striking. With them the senior male line of the house of Capet became extinct.
During three centuries and a half they had effected great things: they had founded a kingdom, a royal family and civil institutions. The land subject to Hugh Capet in 987, barely representing two of the modern departmentsThe royal house of Capet.of France, in 1328 covered a space equal to fifty-nine of them. The political unity of the kingdom was only fettered by the existence of four large isolated fiefs: Flanders on the north, Brittany on the west, Burgundy on the east and Guienne on the south. The capital, which for long had been movable, was now established in the Louvre at Paris, fortified by Philip Augustus. Like the fiefs, feudal institutions at large had been shattered. The Roman tradition which made the will of the sovereign law, gradually propagated by the teaching of Roman law—the law of servitude, not of liberty—and already proclaimed by the jurist Philippe de Beaumanoir as superior to the customs, had been of immense support to the interest of the state and the views of the monarchs; and finally the Capets, so humble of origin, had created organs of general administration common to all in order to effect an administrative centralization. In their grand council and their domains they would have none but silent, servile and well-disciplined agents. The royal exchequer, which was being painfully elaborated in thechambre des comptes, and the treasury of the crown lands at the Louvre, together barely sufficed to meet the expenses of this more complicated and costly machinery. The uniform justice exercised by the parlement spread gradually over the whole kingdom by means ofcas royaux(royal suits), and at the same time the royal coinage became obligatory. Against this exaltation of their power two adversaries might have been formidable; but one, the Church, was a captive in Babylon, and the second, the people, was deprived of the communal liberties which it had abused, or humbly effaced itself in the states-general behind the declared will of the king. This well-established authority was also supported by the revered memory of “Monseigneur Saint Louis”; and it is this prestige, the strength of this ideal superior to all other, that explains how the royal prerogative came to survive the mistakes and misfortunes of the Hundred Years’ War.
On the extinction of the direct line of the Capets the crown passed to a younger branch, that of the Valois. Its seven representatives (1328-1498) were on the whole very inferior to the Capets, and, with the exception ofAdvent of the Valois.Charles V. and Louis XI., possessed neither their political sense nor even their good common sense; they cost France the loss of her great advantage over all other countries. During this century and a half France passed through two very severe crises; under the first five Valois the Hundred Years’ War imperilled the kingdom’s independence; and under Louis XI. the struggle against the house of Burgundy endangered the territorial unity of the monarchy that had been established with such pains upon the ruins of feudalism.
Charles the Fair having died and left only a daughter, the nation’s rights, so long in abeyance, were once more regained. An assembly of peers and barons, relying on two precedents under Philip V. and Charles IV., declaredPhilip VI. (1328-1350).that “no woman, nor therefore her son, could in accordance with custom succeed to the monarchy of France.” This definite decision, to which the name of the Salic law was given much later, set aside Edward III., king of England, grandson of Philip the Fair, nephew of the late kings and son of their sister Isabel. Instead it gave the crown to the feudal chief, the hard and coarse Philip VI. of Valois, nephew of Philip the Fair. This at once provoked war between the two monarchies, English and French, which, including periods of truce, lasted for a hundred and sixteen years. Of active warfare there were two periods, both disastrous to begin with, but ending favourably: one lasted from 1337 to 1378 and the other from 1413 to 1453, thirty-three years of distress and folly coming in between.
However, the Hundred Years’ War was not mainly caused by the pretensions of Edward III. to the throne of the Capets; since after having long hesitated to do homage to Philip VI. for his possessions in Guienne, Edward atThe Hundred Years’ War.last brought himself to it—though certainly only after lengthy negotiations, and even threats of war in 1331. It is true that six years later he renounced his homage and again claimed the French inheritance; but this was on the ground of personal grievances, and for economic and political reasons. There was a natural rivalry between Edward III. and Philip VI., both of them young, fond of the life of chivalry, festal magnificence, and the “belles apertises d’armes.” This rivalry was aggravated by the enmity between Philip VI. and Robert of Artois, his brother-in-law, who, after having warmly supported the disinheriting of Edward III., had been convicted of deceit in a question of succession, had revenged himself on Philip by burning his waxen effigy, and had been welcomed with open arms at Edward’s court. Philip VI. had taken reprisals against him in 1336 by making his parlement declare the forfeiture of Edward’s lands and castles in Guienne; but the Hundred Years’ War, at first simply a feudal quarrel between vassal and suzerain, soon became a great national conflict, in consequence of what was occurring in Flanders.
The communes of Flanders, rich, hard-working, jealous of their liberties, had always been restive under the authority of their counts and the influence of their suzerain, the king of France. The affair at Cassel, where Philip VI. had avenged the injuries done by the people of Bruges in 1325 to their count, Louis of Nevers, had also compromised English interests. To attack the English through their colonies, Guienne and Flanders, was to injure them in their most vital interests—cloth and claret; for England sold her wool to Bruges in order to pay Bordeaux for her wine. Edward III. had replied by forbidding the exportation of English wool, and by threatening the great industrial cities of Flanders with the transference to England of the cloth manufacture—an excellent means of stirring them up against the French, as without wool they could do nothing. Workless, and in desperation, they threw themselves on Edward’s mercy, by the advice of a rich citizen of Ghent, Jacob van Artevelde (q.v.); and their last scruples of loyalty gave way when Edward decided to follow the counsels of Robert of Artois and of Artevelde, and to claim the crown of France.
The war began, like every feudal war of that day, with a solemn defiance, and it was soon characterized by terrible disasters. The destruction of the finest French fleet that had yet been seen, surprised in the port ofThe defeat at Sluys.Sluys, closed the sea to the king of France; the struggle was continued on land, but with little result. Flanders tired of it, but fortunately for Edward III. Brittany now took fire, through a quarrel of succession, analogous to that in France, between Charles of Blois (who had married the daughter of the late duke and was a nephew of Philip VI., by whom he was supported) and John of Montfort, brother of the old duke, who naturally asked assistance from the king of England. But here, too, nothing important was accomplished; the capture of John of Montfort at Nantes deprived Edward of Brittany at the very moment when he finally lost Flanders by the death of Artevelde, who was killed by the people of Ghent in 1345. Under the influence of Godefroi d’Harcourt, whom Philip VI. had wished to destroy on account of his ambitions with regard to the duchy of Normandy, Edward III. now invaded central France, ravaged Normandy, getting as near to Paris as Saint-Germain; and profiting by Philip VI.’s hesitation and delay, he reached the north with his spoils by dint of forced marches. Having been pursued and encountered atThe defeat at Crécy and the taking of Calais.Crécy, Edward gained a complete victory there on the 26th of April 1346. The seizure of Calais in 1347, despite heroic resistance, gave the English a port where they could always find entry into France, just when the queen of England had beaten David of Scotland, the ally of France, at Neville’s Cross, and when Charles of Blois, made prisoner in his turn, was held captive in London. The Black Death put the finishing touch to the military disasters and financial upheavals of this unlucky reign; though before his death in 1350 Philip VI. was fortunate enough to augment his territorial acquisitions by the purchase of the rich port of Montpellier, as well as by that of Dauphiné, which extended to the Alpine frontier, and was to become the appanage of the eldest son of the king of France (seeDauphinéandDauphin).
Philip VI.’s successor was his son John the Good—or rather, the stupid and the spendthrift. This noble monarch was unspeakably brutal (as witness the murders, simply onJohn the Good (1350).suspicion, of the constable Raoul de Brienne, count of Eu, and of the count of Harcourt) and incredibly extravagant. His need of money led him to debase the currency eighty-one times between 1350 and 1355. And this money, so necessary for the prosecution of the war with England, which had been interrupted for a year, thanks to the pope’s intervention, was lavished by him upon his favourite, Charles of La Cerda. The latter was murdered in 1354 by order of Charles of Navarre, the king’s son-in-law, who also prevented the levying of the taxes voted by the states in 1355 with the object of replenishing the treasury. The Black Prince took this opportunity to ravage the southern provinces, and then marched to join the duke of Lancaster and Charles ofDefeat at Poitiers.Navarre in Normandy. John the Good managed to bring the English army to bay at Maupertuis, not far from Poitiers; but the battle was conducted with such a want of intelligence on his part that the French army was overwhelmed, though very superior in numbers, and King John was made prisoner, after a determined resistance, on the 19th of September 1356.
The disaster at Poitiers almost led to the establishment in France of institutions analogous to those which England owed to Bouvines. The king a prisoner, the dauphin discredited and deserted, and the nobility decimated,The states of 1355-1356.the people—that is to say, the states-general—could raise their voice. Philip the Fair had never regarded the states-general as a financial institution, but merely as a moral support. Now, however, in order to obtain substantial help from taxes instead of mere driblets, the Valois needed a stronger lever than cunning or force. War against the English assured them the support of the nation. Exactions, debasement of the currency and extortionate taxation were ruinous palliatives, and insufficient to supply a treasury which the revenue from crown lands and various rights taken from the nobles could not fill even in times of peace. By the 14th century the motto “N’impose qui ne veut” (i.e.no taxation without consent) was as firmly established in France as in England. After Crécy Philip VI. called the states together regularly, that he might obtain subsidies from them, as an assistance, an “aid” which subjects could not refuse their suzerain. In return for this favour, which the king could not claim as a right, the states, feeling their power, began to bargain, and at the session of November 1355 demanded the participation of all classes in the tax voted, and obtained guarantees both for its levy and the use to be made of it. A similar situation in England had given birth to political liberty; but in France the great crisis of the early 15th century stifled it. It was with this money that John the Good got himself beaten and taken prisoner at Poitiers. Once more the states-general had to be convoked. Confronted by a pale weakly boy like the dauphin Charles and the remnants of the discredited council, the situation of the states was strongerRobert le Coq and Étienne Marcel.than ever. Predominant in influence were the deputies from the towns, and above all the citizens of the capital, led by Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon, and Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris. Having no cause for confidence in the royal administration, the states refused to treat with the dauphin’s councillors, and proposed to take him under their own tutelage. He himself hesitated whether to sacrifice the royal authority, or else, without resources or support, to resist an assembly backed by public opinion. He decided for resistance. Under pretext ofgrave news received from his father, and of an interview at Metz with his uncle, the emperor Charles IV., he begged the states to adjourn till the 3rd of November 1356. This was a politicalcoup d’état, and when the time had expired he attempted a financialcoup d’étatby debasing the currency. An uprising obliged him to call the states-general together again in February 1357, when they transformed themselves into a deliberative, independent and permanent assembly by means of theGrande Ordonnance.