This confusion, diversity, and strife, have doubtless cost us dear; they have retarded the progress of Europe; to them are owing the storms and agonies to which she has been a prey. Yet I am not of opinion that we should regret them. To nations, as well as to individuals, the opportunity of the most varied and complete development, of pushing onwards in all directions, and to an almost indefinite extent, compensates by itself alone for all the sacrifices it may have cost to obtain the faculty of enjoying it. Upon a comprehensive view, this agitation, violence, and laboriousness, have availed more than the simplicity with which other civilisations are marked, and the human race has thereby gained more than it has suffered.
We have now traced in its general features the state in which the fall of the Roman Empire left the world, and the different elements which were in turmoil and commixture, germinating European civilisation. Henceforth we shall see them advancing and acting. In the next lecture I shall endeavour to show what they became, and what they effected, in the epoch that we are accustomed to call the times of barbarism—that is to say, the period during which the chaos of the invasion lasted.
I have brought forward the fundamental elements of European civilisation by tracing them in its very cradle, at the moment that the Roman Empire fell. I have endeavoured to point out how great was their diversity, how constant their strife, and that none of them succeeded in gaining a mastery over our society, or at least in ruling it so effectually as to subject or expel the others. We have seen that in this consists the distinctive character of the European civilisation. We now come to its history, at its first start, in the ages that it is usual to designate 'the barbarous.' At the first glance that we cast upon this epoch, it is impossible not to be struck with a fact which seems in flat contradiction to what I have just advanced. In investigating the opinions that have been formed upon the antiquities of Europe, it is surprising to observe that the different elements of our civilisation—the monarchical, theocratical, aristocratical, and democratical principles—all lay claim to the original proprietorship of the European society, and all pretend that they have lost exclusive empire by the usurpations of contrary principles. If we turn to all that has been written, and listen to all that has been said, on this subject, we shall find that all the systems by means of which our groundworks are sought to be displayed or explained, maintain the exclusive predominance of one or other of the elements of European civilisation.
Thus there is a school of feudal advocates, the most celebrated of whom is M. de Boulainvilliers, who asserts that after the fall of the Roman Empire, the conquering nation, subsequently formed into a nobility, possessed all power and rights, that society was its lordship, that kings and people have despoiled it, and that, in fact, the aristocratic organisation was the primitive and veritable constitution of Europe.
Alongside of this school we find that of the monarchists, amongst whom is the Abbé Dubos, who maintain, on the contrary, that the European society belonged to royalty. They say that the German kings inherited all the rights of the Roman emperors, that the ancient populations—the Gauls amongst others—appealed to them, that they alone ruled legitimately, and that all the acquisitions of aristocracy are mere encroachments upon monarchy.
A third school presents itself, that of liberals, republicans, democrats, as you may choose to style them. If we follow the Abbé de Mably, we shall conclude that the government of society was handed over, from the dawning of the fifth century, to a system of free institutions, to assemblies of free men, to the people properly so called; that nobles and kings have enriched themselves with the spoils of primitive liberty, which shrunk under their attacks, but nevertheless reigned before them.
And above all these monarchical, aristocratical, and popular pretensions, rises the theocratic claim of the church, which says that, by virtue of her very mission and divine title, society belonged to her, that she alone had any right to govern it, and that she alone was the legitimate queen of the European world, reclaimed by her labours to civilisation and truth.
Thus we are placed in a peculiar position. We imagined that we had demonstrated that none of the elements of European civilisation has had exclusive sway in the course of its history, but that they have existed in a constant state of vicinage, of amalgamation, of strife, and of activity; and at our very first step, we find this directly contrary opinion maintained, that at its birth, in the bosom of barbaric Europe, some one or other of these elements had sole possession of society. And it is not in a single country, but in all the countries of Europe, that the advocates for the different principles of our civilisation have put forward their irreconcilable pretensions, under forms and at periods somewhat variable. The historical schools that we have just characterised are not confined to one country, but are met throughout Europe.
This fact is important, not in itself, but because it brings to light other facts which hold a material place in our history. Two important particulars are started by this simultaneous advocacy of the most incongruous pretensions to the exclusive possession of power in the first ages of modern Europe. The first is the principle or idea of political legitimacy, which has enacted a prominent part in the drama of European civilisation: the second is the actual and veritable character of the state of barbarian Europe of that epoch, with which we have specially to concern ourselves at this period of our inquiry.
I shall proceed to draw these two particulars from obscurity, and to sever them in succession from the contest of allegations which I have previously mentioned.
What do the different elements of European civilisation—the theocratical, monarchical, aristocratical, and popular—claim when they assert themselves the first possessors of society in Europe? Is it not that each proclaims itself to be solely legitimate? Political legitimacy is evidently a right based on antiquity and duration. Priority of time is invoked as the source of right, as the proof of the legitimacy of power. And here I beg attention to the fact, that this pretension is not confined to one particular system or element of our civilisation, but that it spreads over all.We are accustomed in modern times to consider the idea of legitimacy as involved in only one system—the monarchical—which is a great mistake, for it is at issue in all the others. We have already seen that all the elements of our civilisation have endeavoured to monopolise it; and if we cast a look forward into the history of Europe, we shall see the most varied social forms and governments equally in possession of this character of legitimacy. The Italian and Swiss aristocracies and democracies, the republic of San Marino, like the greatest monarchies of Europe, have styled themselves, and have been esteemed, legitimate; they, exactly like the others, have founded their claim to legitimacy upon the antiquity of their institutions, upon the historical priority, and upon the prolonged duration, of their system of government.
If we go beyond Europe, and carry our observation to other times and countries, we encounter on all sides this idea of political legitimacy, and find it clinging to some portion of the ruling government, to some of its institutions, forms, or maxims. There is no country or time in which a certain portion of the social system, of the public powers, has not bestowed upon itself, and had recognised as inherent in it, this character of legitimacy derived from antiquity and stability.
And what is this principle! What are its elements? How came its introduction into European civilisation?
All systems of power are, at their origin, mixed up with force. I do not mean to say that they are all based upon force alone, or that if they had not originally had other titles than force, they would have been established. They most certainly needed others; powers are established in accordance with certain social wants, and with reference to the state of society, to manners and opinions. But we cannot avoid perceiving that force has sullied the foundation of all the systems of power in the world, whatever may have been their nature and form.
But every one repudiates this origin, all the systems of every description deny it, and there is none that will consent to spring from force. An invincible instinct apprises governments that force does not confer right, and that if their claims rested upon that alone, right could never be deduced. For this reason, when we recur to ancient times, and unmask the different systems and powers abandoned to violence, all hasten to exclaim, 'I was earlier, I subsisted previously, and by virtue of other titles; society belonged to me before this state of violence and strife in which you discover me; I was legitimate; my just prerogatives were contested and wrenched from me.'
This single fact demonstrates that the maxim of force is not the groundwork of political legitimacy, and that it reposes upon some other base. What is the effect of this formal repudiation of force by all the systems?Their acknowledgment that there is another legitimacy, the veritable foundation for all others, the legitimacy of reason, justice, and right. Such is the origin to which they are all eager to cling. And because they discard force as their initiatory element, they are driven to assert themselves robed with a different title, quoting their antiquity. The main characteristic, then, of political legitimacy, is to deny force as the source of power, and to allege it as cohesive with a moral idea and force, with the idea, in fact, of right, justice, and reason. This is the fundamental element which constitutes the principle of political legitimacy. It has taken its rise therefrom, receiving a helping hand from time and stability. We will trace the process.
Force having presided at the dawn of all governments and societies, time progresses and effects changes in the operations of force; it administers correctives, from the very circumstance that a society endures and is composed of men. Man bears within him a certain number of notions of order, justice, and reason, and a certain craving to give them sway, and to introduce them into the facts amidst which he lives. To attain this object, he labours unremittingly; and if the social state in which he is located continues, his labours are not fruitless. Man brings reason and right to bear in the sphere he moves in.
Independently of the exertions of man, there is a law of Providence too palpable to be denied, a law analogous to that which rules the material world, by which a certain measure of order, reason, and justice, is indispensable to the continuance of a society. Indeed, from the mere fact of durability, we may be assured that any particular society is not utterly absurd, insensate, or iniquitous, and that it is not entirely bare of that element of reason, truth, and justice, which can alone give life to any society. If, furthermore, the society is developed, if it becomes more vigorous and powerful, if its terms are from time to time accepted by an increasing number of people, then are we sure that by the action of time, more reason, justice, and right have been infused into it; for facts imperceptibly arrange themselves according to true legitimacy.
Thus has the idea of political legitimacy spread over the world, and from the world penetrated men's minds. For foundation or first origin, it has, in a certain degree, at least, moral legitimacy, justice, reason, and truth; and afterwards the sanction of time, which gives ground for belief that reason has become part and parcel of existing facts, that, in reality, true undeniable legitimacy has been introduced into external matters. In the epoch we are about to open upon, we shall find force and falsehood ingredients in the first composition of royalty, aristocracy, democracy, and even of the church; and then force and falsehood will be perceived undergoing gradual reformation under the plastic hand of time, and right and truth taking their places in civilisation. It is this introduction of right and truth into the social state that has developed by degrees the principle of political legitimacy, and it is thus that it has become established in modern civilisation.
When attempts have been made at various times to raise this idea as the banner of absolute power, its real origin has been grossly mistaken or perverted. So utterly apart is it from identification with absolute power, that right and justice are the titles by which it has been diffused, and has taken root in the world. It is not in any degree exclusive, it appertains to none in particular, but is planted wherever right finds development. Political legitimacy, I assert again, is as much bound up with liberty as with power, and with individual rights equally with the forms, whatever they may be, by which public functions are exercised. We will meet it in our progress, in the most discordant systems—equally in the feudal system, in the municipalities of Flanders and Germany, in the republics of Italy, as in monarchy. It is a character partaken of by all the different elements of modern civilisation, and it behoves us fully to comprehend it in investigating the history of that civilisation.
The second fact which is brought to light by the simultaneous pretensions of which I have so often spoken, is the real character of the epoch styled barbarous. As I have said, all the elements of European civilisation assert that they possessed Europe at that period; as a consequence, none of them predominated. When a social form domineers in the world, there is not so much difficulty in recognising it. When we come to the tenth century, we shall have no hesitation in recognising the preponderance of the feudal system; in the seventeenth, we shall have no doubt in affirming the prevalence of the monarchical principle; and if we regard the Flemish corporations or the Italian republics, we shall immediately declare the sway of the democratic principle. When a principle is really predominant in the world, there is no possibility of mistaking it.
The contest that has arisen among the various systems which are included in European civilisation, upon the question as to which ruled it at its origin, proves that they had all a co-existence therein, without any one so generally or assuredly prevailing as to impress upon society its form and name.
And herein lies the actual character of the barbarous epoch—a chaos of all the elements, an outburst of all the systems, a universal hubbub, in which the struggle was neither permanent nor systematic. By examining, in all its phases, the social state of that era, I might demonstrate the impossibility of discovering any fact or principle approaching to a general or established recognition. I will confine myself to two essential points—the state of individuals, and the state of institutions. They will suffice to depict the entire society.
We discern four classes of persons at this epoch: 1st, The free men—that is to say, those who depended upon no superior or patron, who held their possessions, and regulated their lives, in full liberty, without any tie binding them to another man; 2d, Theleudes, fideles, anstrustions, &c. bound by a relation—first that of companion to a chief, then of vassal to a suzerain—to another man towards whom they had contracted the obligation of a service, in respect of a grant of lands or other gifts; 3d, The freedmen; 4th, The slaves.
But these different classes were not immovably fixed; men, when once included within their limits, did not remain there for ever; the relations of the various classes were neither definite nor permanent. Among the free men were some ever and anon leaving their position to assume service under a particular person, receiving from him some gift, and passing into the class of leudes; whilst others fell into that of slaves. On the other hand, some leudes struggled to get rid of their patron, to re-establish their independence, and return into the free class. On all sides was a continual movement and transition from one class to another, a general uncertainty and instability in the mutual bearings of the classes: no man adhered to his position, and no position remained unchanged.
Tenures of land were in the same state; they were distinguished as allodial, or completely free, and beneficiary, or subject to certain obligations towards a superior. It is well known that attempts have been made to establish, in this last class of tenures, a precise and determined system; it has been said that the grants were made for a certain number of years, then for life, and that finally they became hereditary. The attempts are vain; all these varieties of tenure existed simultaneously; the self-same epoch displays benefices for years, for life, to heirs; and even the same lands passed in a few years through those different states. Nothing was more stable or generalised in the condition of landed property than in that of individuals. The difficult transition is everywhere perceptible from the wandering to the sedentary life, from relations merely personal to those in combination with bodies of men and the rights of property, which are real, substantial, obligatory relations. In this state of transition all was confused, partial, and disordered.
The same instability and turmoil marked the institutions. Three systems were in juxtaposition—royalty, aristocratical institutions, or superiorities over men and lands in gradation, and free institutions, or assemblies of free men deliberating in common. No one of these systems was in possession of society, no one had a preference. Free institutions existed, but the men who should have taken part in the assemblies did not attend. The signorial jurisdiction, likewise, was not exercised.Royalty, which is the most simple institution, and the easiest to determine, had no fixed character: election and hereditary right were mingled together: sometimes the son succeeded his father; sometimes a selection was made out of the royal family; and sometimes a pure and simple election took place of a distant relative, or perhaps of a stranger. We find nothing settled in any system; all the institutions, like the social conditions, existed together, were confounded, and continually changing.
Countries were in the same unsettled state. They were created and suppressed, united and divided. Frontiers, governments, nations, ceased to be distinguishable. A universal confusion in positions, principles, facts, races, and tongues, was the condition of barbarian Europe.
Within what limits is this strange epoch contained? Its commencement is well marked—it occurred at the fall of the Roman Empire. But when did it end? In order to answer this question, we must inquire to what this state of society was owing, what were the causes of the barbarism.
I think two main ones are discoverable. The one physical, arising outwardly from the course of events; and the other moral, working inwardly from the mental state of man himself.
The physical cause was the prolongation of the invasion. We are not to conclude that the invasion of the barbarians was arrested at the fifth century, nor that because the Roman Empire had fallen, and barbaric kingdoms were founded on its ruins, the populations brought their movements to a close. On the contrary, they continued long after the fall of the Empire, of which we have all-sufficient proof.
We see the Frank kings, even of the first race, continually compelled to make war beyond the Rhine; we see Clotaire, Dagobert, incessantly engaged in expeditions into Germany, fighting against the Thuringians, the Danes, and the Saxons, who occupied the right bank of the Rhine. For what reason? Because those nations wished to cross the river, and gather their share of the spoils of the Empire. What caused, about the same period, those great invasions of Italy by the Franks established in Gaul, principally of the eastern or Austrasian Franks? Why did they precipitate themselves on Switzerland, pass the Alps, and enter Italy? Because they were pushed on the north-east by new populations; their expeditions were undertaken from necessity, and were not mere forays for pillage; their settlements were interfered with, and they went forth to seek others. Then a new German nation appeared upon the stage, and founded in Italy the kingdom of the Lombards. In Gaul, the first Frank dynasty was subverted: the Carlovingians succeeded the Merovingians. It is now acknowledged that this change of dynasty was in truth an accession of population which displaced the western for the eastern Franks.The change was effected, and the second race reigned. Charlemagne began against the Saxons what the Merovingians had directed against the Thuringians, and became involved in ceaseless wars with the nations beyond the Rhine. And these were urged onwards by the Obotrites, the Wiltzes, the Sorabes, the Bohemians, by the whole Slavonic race which pressed upon the Germanic, and from the sixth to the ninth century goaded it to advance towards the west. To the whole of the north-east, the invading movement continued and controlled events.
In the south a movement of the same nature occurred, occasioned by the Moslem Arabs. Whilst the Germanic and Slavonic populations crowded along the Rhine and the Danube, the Arabs began their career of conquest on all the coasts of the Mediterranean.
The invasion of the Arabs had a peculiar character. The spirit of conquest and that of proselytism were united; their invasion was made both to conquer territory and spread their faith. There was a great difference between this movement and that of the Germans. In the Christian world, the spiritual and temporal arms were disjoined. Zeal for the propagation of a faith was not felt by the same men who burned with the desire of conquest. The Germans on their conversion had preserved their manners, sentiments, and tastes; earthly interests and passions continued to sway them; and though they might be Christians, they were not missionaries. The Arabs, on the contrary, were conquerors and missionaries; with them the sword and the Word were wielded by the same hands. At a later date, this circumstance gave the unfortunate turn to the Mussulman civilisation; for it is from the unity of the temporal and spiritual powers, from the confused mixture of moral influence with material force, that the tyranny which seems inherent in that civilisation took its rise; and such is, as I believe, the principal cause of the stagnant state into which it has fallen. But this was far from appearing at the first outburst; on the contrary, a prodigious power was thereby imparted to the Arab invasion. Strengthened as it was by moral ideas and passions, it gained, upon the instant, a lustre and greatness which had been signally wanting to the German invasion; more energy and enthusiasm were displayed in it, and the minds of men were affected by it in a very different manner.
Such was the situation of Europe from the fifth to the ninth century; pressed on the south by the Mohammedans, on the north by the Germans and Slavi, the interior of the European region was inevitably kept in continual disorder by the reaction of this double invasion. Populations were incessantly displaced and hurled upon each other; no settlement could be established; the nomade life recommenced in every quarter.There was certainly some difference in this respect amongst the various countries; the turmoil was greater in Germany than in the rest of Europe, for it was the very furnace of agitation; and France was more convulsed than Italy. But nowhere could society get fixed or regulated; barbarism was prolonged on all sides, from the same cause which had given it a commencement.
So much for the material cause which sprang from the course of events. I now come to the moral cause, founded upon the internal state of mankind, which was not less powerful.
Whatever external events may be, it is, after all, man himself who makes his world; it is from the ideas and sentiments, the moral and intellectual dispositions of men, that the world is regulated in its progress; it is upon the inward state of men that the outward state of society depends.
What is needful to men in order to found a society at all durable and regular? It is evidently requisite that they have a certain number of ideas sufficiently expansive to suit that society, and to be applicable to its wants and relations. It is furthermore necessary that these ideas be common to the majority of the members of the society, and that they exercise some sway over their desires and actions.
It is clear that if men have no ideas extending beyond their own existence, if their intellectual horizon be limited to themselves, if they give unrestrained play to the fury of their passions and inclinations, if they have not amongst them a certain number of notions and sentiments held in common, around which they may be rallied, then it is clear, I repeat, that no society can possibly exist among them, and that each individual will be an element of disorder and dissolution in any society into which he enters.
Wherever individuality gains a nearly absolute sway, where man considers only himself, where his ideas stretch not beyond his own person, where he listens only to his own passions, society (meaning thereby a society calculated for some small degree of extension and permanence) is almost an impossibility. Now this was the moral state of the conquerors of Europe in the epoch treated of. I observed, in the preceding lecture, that we are indebted to the Germans for the vigorous sentiment of individual liberty, of human individuality. But in a state of extreme coarseness and ignorance, this sentiment is pure selfishness in all its brutality and unsociability. It was at this point among the Germans from the fifth to the eighth century. They were concerned only for their own interests, with their own passions and inclinations, and how could they thus accommodate themselves to a state approaching the social? Attempts were made to induce them to enter into it; they even tried it of themselves. But from some act of recklessness, some burst of passion, or some deficiency in understanding, they broke immediately loose.Society was incessantly endeavouring to form itself, but as incessantly was it routed by the act of man, by the absence of those moral conditions which are essential to its existence.
Such were the two disposing causes of the barbaric state. So long as they lasted, barbarism continued. Let us inquire how, and when, they finally ceased.
Europe laboured to get out of this state. It is the nature of man to struggle to emerge from such a chaos, even though he has been plunged into it by his own fault. However brutal and ignorant, however much devoted to his own gratification and passions, there is within him a voice or instinct which repeats to him that he is made for something else, that he has another capacity and destiny. In the midst of his disorganisation, a taste for order and advancement pursues and torments him. Longings for justice, for foresight, for development, agitate his breast even under the yoke of the most boorish selfishness. He feels himself urged to reform the material world, society, and himself; and he labours for this object without much cognisance of the want that goads him. Thus the barbarians aspired at civilisation, although utterly incapable of it, I may say, indeed, utterly detesting it, when its restraints were felt.
There remained, likewise, some considerable remnants of the Roman civilisation. The name of the Empire, the remembrance of that great and glorious society, agitated the memories of men, especially of the town senators, the bishops, the priests, and of all those who had their origin in the Roman era.
Many of the barbarians themselves, or of their barbarian forefathers, had been witnesses of the grandeur of the Empire; they had served in its armies, or fought against it. The image and name of the Roman civilisation had an imposing effect upon them, and they experienced a desire to imitate it, to bring it back, or to preserve some portion of it. In this was an additional stimulus to drive them from the state of barbarism which I have described.
There was a third, which suggests itself to every mind—I mean the Christian church. The church was a society regularly constituted, having principles, rules, and discipline of its own, and actuated by an ardent zeal to extend its influence, and to vanquish its conquerors. Among the Christians of that epoch, in the ranks of the clergy, there were men who had pondered deeply upon all moral and political questions, who held fixed opinions and energetic sentiments upon all things, and strove strenuously to propagate them and render them paramount. No society ever made such efforts as did the Christian church, from the fifth to the tenth century, to extend its sphere, and smooth the external world into its own likeness. When we study its particular history, we shall perceive the full extent of its labours. It attacked barbarism, as it were, on all its sides, to civilise by subduing it.
Finally, there existed a fourth cause of civilisation, one which it is impossible accurately to weigh, but which is not the less real on that account—namely, the influence of great men. No one can say why a great man comes at a particular era, or what he infuses of his own into the development of the world; the secret remains with Providence, but the fact is certain. There are men whom the spectacle of anarchy or of social stagnation strikes and distresses, who are intellectually shocked thereat as with a fact which should not be, and who become possessed with an uncontrollable desire to change it, and to plant some rule, some uniformity, regularity, and permanency in the world before them: a terrible, and often a tyrannical power, committing a thousand iniquities and errors, for human weakness accompanies it; yet a glorious and salutary power, for it gives to humanity a vigorous jerk, an admirable impulse.
These different causes and influences originated various attempts to emancipate European society from the clutch of barbarism, in the epoch stretching from the fifth to the ninth century.
The first of these attempts (although it may have had little effect, yet requires to be noticed, for it emanated from the barbarians themselves) was the digesting the barbarian laws. Between the sixth and eighth centuries, the laws of almost all the barbarous tribes were written. Formerly it was otherwise, these people having mere customs for governance before they established themselves on the ruins of the Roman Empire. There were the laws of the Burgundians, of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks, of the Visigoths, the Lombards, the Saxons, the Frisons, the Bavarians, the Allemanni, &c. Here was evidently a commencement of civilisation, an endeavour to transfer society to the empire of general and regular principles. It was impossible for much success to attend it, for it presented the laws of a society which no longer existed, the laws of the social state of the barbarians before their establishment on the Roman territory, before they had changed a wandering for a sedentary life, and the condition of nomad warriors for that of proprietors. Here and there are found some articles as to the lands which the barbarians had acquired, and as to their relations with the old inhabitants of the country, and even attempts are made to regulate some of the new circumstances with which they were mixed up; but the ground-work of the majority of these laws is the ancient life and state of things in Germany, which were utterly inapplicable to the new society, and have had but little influence in its development.
An attempt of another nature was commenced in Italy and the south of Gaul at the same period. The Roman society had not perished there so completely as in other quarters; in the cities there remained a somewhat greater degree of order and energy. Civilisation attempted to rear itself there again.For example, we find the municipal system recover breath, as it were, and exercise some influence upon the general course of events, in the kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy, under Theodoric, although both king and nation were barbarian. The Roman society had humanised the Goths, and to a certain extent assimilated them with itself. The same fact is perceptible in the south of Gaul. At the commencement of the sixth century, a Visigoth king of Toulouse, Alaric, caused the Roman laws to be collected, and published a code for his Roman subjects, under the name of theBrevarium Aniani.
It was the church which endeavoured to give a new beginning to civilisation in Spain. Instead of the old German assemblies of warriors (themalla), the council of Toledo held sway in Spain, and although influential laymen attended the council, the bishops governed it. In the laws of the Visigoths there is not a barbaric enactment; the compilation is evidently the work of the philosophers of the era, the clergy. They abound in general ideas and in theories which are completely foreign to barbarian manners. Thus it is known that the legislation of the barbarians was a personal legislation; that is to say, the same law applied only to men of the same race. The Roman law governed the Romans, the Franco law governed the Franks; each people had its own law, although they were united under the same government, and inhabited the same territory. This is the system which is called personal legislation, in opposition to the system of real legislation, founded upon territorial distinctions. Now the legislation of the Visigoths was not personal, but territorial. All the inhabitants of Spain, whether Romans or Visigoths, were subject to the same law. But there are still more evident traces of philosophy to be found. Amongst the barbarians, men were valued at a fixed rate, according to their situations; the barbarian, the Roman, the freeman, the vassal, &c. were not estimated at the same sum; their lives were made matter of tariff. The principle of men being of equal value in the eyes of the law, was established in the code of the Visigoths. With regard to the system of procedure, we find the oath ofcompurgatoresand the judicial combat displaced for the proof by witnesses, and such a rational examination into facts as might be adopted in any civilised society. In a word, the whole Visigoth code bears a wise, systematic, and social character. We perceive in it the labours of that same clergy which held command in the councils of Toledo, and operated so powerfully on the government of the country.
Therefore in Spain, up to the great invasion of the Arabs, it was the theocratic principle which laboured to raise up civilisation.
In France, the same endeavour was the work of a different influence; it originated with great men, especially with Charlemagne. If we examine his reign in its various phases, we shall find that the prevailing idea of his mind was the civilisation of his people. First, with regard to his wars. He was constantly in the field, ranging from the south to the north-east, from the Ebro to the Elbe or the Weser. These were not mere arbitrary expeditions, arising from an insatiable thirst for conquests. I do not assert that all he did may be systematically accounted for, or that his plans display a profound diplomatic or strategetic wit, but he obeyed the impulse of a great necessity resulting from his scheme to repress barbarism. During the whole period of his reign, he was employed in arresting the double invasion of the Mussulmans on the south, of the Germans and Slavi on the north, in prosecution of that object. This is the character of the military part of the reign of Charlemagne: as I have previously said, this was also the end and purpose of his expeditions against the Saxons.
Passing from his wars to his internal government, we find the same principle in activity, the attempt to introduce order and uniformity into the administration of all the countries which he possessed. I cannot call them akingdomor astate, for these expressions are of too regular a stamp, and raise ideas too little in accordance with the society over which Charlemagne presided. This much, however, is certain, that he, master of an immense territory, was indignant at beholding all things therein in a most dissevered, anarchical, and brutish condition, and devoted his energies to soften its hideousness. His first measure was to despatch hismissi dominiciinto the different districts of his possessions, to inquire into facts, and either reform them, or report them to him. He afterwards held general assemblies with much more regularity than his predecessors, which he compelled almost all the influential men of his territories to attend. These were not free assemblies; nor were they summoned for what we would call deliberation. They were used by Charlemagne as a means of getting information as to facts, and of introducing some regularity and union among his disorganised subjects.
In whatever point of view the reign of Charlemagne is considered, the same character is found predominant, a contest against the barbaric state, the genius of civilisation at work. This is the spirit which is evinced in his eagerness to institute schools, in his taste for learned men, in his predilection for ecclesiastical influence, and in his adoption of everything which appeared to him capable of acting beneficially either on society as a whole, or on man as an individual.
An attempt of the same nature was made by King Alfred in England somewhat later.
Thus the different causes which I have particularised, as tending to put an end to barbarism, were in action, in some quarter or other of Europe, from the fifth to the ninth century.
Not one was successful. Charlemagne failed to give stability to his great empire, and the system of government which he wished to institute. In Spain, the church was not more happy in its endeavours to establish the theocratic principle. In Italy and the south of Gaul, although the Roman civilisation made various efforts to rise again, it was not until afterwards, towards the end of the tenth century, that it really assumed any vigour. Up till that period, all the endeavours to extinguish barbarism were fruitless: they proceeded on the idea that men were more advanced than the reality demonstrated: they all strove for a society more extended and regular than comported with the actual diffusion of coercive influences, and the state of men's minds. However, they were not completely thrown away. At the commencement of the tenth century, there was no longer any question about the great empire of Charlemagne, or the glorious councils of Toledo, but barbarism did not the less surely approach extinction. Two great results were obtained:
1st, The invading movements were arrested both on the north and the south. After the dismemberment of the empire of Charlemagne, a strong barrier was opposed to the tribes still pushing to the west, by the nations established on the right bank of the Rhine. The Normans prove this fact incontestibly; for up to this era, excepting the tribes that had fallen on Britain, the action of maritime invasion had not been considerable. It was in the course of the ninth century that it became constant and general, and principally because invasions by land were rendered very difficult, since society had acquired more fixed and assured frontiers on that side. That portion of the roving population which could not be driven back, was yet constrained to turn away and pursue its adventurous career on the sea. Whatever evil the Norman invasions inflicted on the west, they were much less fatal than the inroads by land, and gave infinitely less general disturbance to the infant society.
In the south, the same consequence ensued. The Arabs took up quarters in Spain, and the struggle between them and the Christians continued, but it was no longer attended with the displacement of the population. The Saracenic bands still infested from time to time the coasts of the Mediterranean, but Islamism had evidently ceased its grand march.
2d, In the interior of the European territory, the wandering life came to a cessation; populations were settled, property was fixed, and the relations of men no longer varied from day to day at the impulse of force or chance. The internal and moral state of man himself began to change, his ideas and sentiments acquired some stability as well as his life; he became attached to the locality he inhabited, to the ties he had contracted, to those domains which he flattered himself with leaving to his children, to that abode which in time he was to designate his castle, and to that miserable assemblage of colonists and slaves which was one day to rise into a village.Small societies, petty states, were everywhere formed, hewn, so to express myself, according to the extent of ideas and knowledge possessed by men. Amongst these societies a bond of confederation, which did not destroy individual independence, was gradually introduced, according to a principle which lurked in the barbarian manners. On one hand, every considerable personage established himself in his domains with his family and retainers; on the other, a certain gradation of services and rights was instituted among these warlike proprietors scattered over the territory. What was the result?—the feudal system, which ultimately arose from the bosom of barbarism. Of the different elements of our civilisation, it was natural that the Germanic should first of all prevail, for it had the force, and it had conquered Europe; and the first social form and organisation were necessarily received from it.
The feudal system, its character, and the part which it has played in the history of European civilisation, will be the object of the next lecture. In the very heart of the victorious feudal regime, we shall, however, encounter at every step the other elements of our civilisation, royalty, the church, and corporations; and we shall have little difficulty in concluding that they were not destined to be crushed under that feudal form to which they assimilated themselves, whilst struggling against it, and waiting for the hour that victory might declare for them in their turn.
We have now surveyed the state of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, in the first epoch of modern history—namely, the barbaric. We have seen that, at the end of that era, at the commencement of the tenth century, the first principle or system which was developed, and which took possession of European society, was the feudal system, the earliest offspring of barbarism. It is therefore the feudal system that we shall make the present object of our inquiry.
I need scarcely here repeat that it is not the history of events, properly so called, that I treat of. I am not called upon to detail the destinies of feudalism: it is the history of civilisation with which I concern myself, and that is the general, hidden fact, which I seek for under all the exterior facts which envelope it.
Thus events, social crises, and the various states through which society has passed, interest us only in their relations with the development of civilisation; we have to inquire how they opposed or aided it, what they gave to it, and what they abstained from giving. It is simply in this point of view that we take the feudal system into consideration.
On commencing this inquiry, we determined what civilisation was, we endeavoured to distinguish its elements, and we became aware that it involved, in one respect, the development of man himself, of the individual, of human nature; and in the other, that of his outward and visible condition, of society. Every time, therefore, that we open out an event, a system, a general order of things, we have this double question to ask: What has it effected for or against the development of humanity—what for or against the development of society?
In this investigation, it is impossible for us to avoid encountering in our progress very important questions in moral philosophy. When we would decide to what extent an event or system has contributed to the development of man and of society, it behoves us to ascertain what is the true development of society and of humanity, and whether certain developments are not deceitful and illegitimate, tending to pervert rather than to ameliorate, and leading to a retrograde instead of an advancing movement.
We shall not attempt to elude the task that is imposed upon us. Not only should we thereby emasculate and degrade our ideas, and the facts themselves, but the actual state of the world compels us frankly to adopt as law this unquestionable alliance between philosophy and history. This conjunction is precisely one of the features, if not the main and essential feature, of our age. We are called upon to study, and to give simultaneous weight to science and reality, to theory and practice, to right and fact. In previous times, these two powers have lived apart: the world was accustomed to behold scientific theory and practice take different routes, without acknowledging each other, or at least without forming a union. And when doctrines or general ideas operated upon events, and stirred up the world, they have succeeded in doing so only by the impulsion of fanaticism. The sway over human societies, and the direction of their affairs, have hitherto been divided between two sorts of influences: on the one hand, the believers, the men of general ideas and of principles, the fanatics; on the other, men strangers to all rational principle, making circumstances their only rule of conduct, practicians, libertines, as the seventeenth century called them. This state of things has now ceased; neither the fanatics nor the libertines can any longer wield predominance. In order to govern and have influence amongst men at present, it is necessary to ascertain and comprehend both general ideas and circumstances; it is necessary to have the capacity to keep count of principles and facts, to respect truth and expediency, and to avoid as well the blind presumption of the fanatics, as the insensate disdain of the libertines. The development of the human mind and of the social state has conducted us to this point: on the one hand, the human understanding, elevated and unshackled, has a clearer conception of the entirety of things, can direct its scrutiny to all questions, and bring everything that has being into its combinations; on the other hand, society is brought to that state of advancement that it can bear testing by the application of truth; and facts may be supported by appeal to principles, without inspiring, by such comparison, an overwhelming discouragement or disgust, in spite of their great imperfection. Therefore, by passing, as occasions arise, from the examination of circumstances to that of ideas, from an exposition of facts to an inquiry into theories, I shall only follow the natural tendency, the tone and the demands of our age. Perhaps, also, there is an additional reason in favour of this method, derived from the actual disposition of men's minds. For some time past, a decided taste, I will even say a sort of predilection, for facts, for the practical point of view and the positive side of human affairs, has manifested itself amongst us. We have been so much a prey to the despotism of general ideas and theories, and they have cost us in many respects so dear, that they have become objects of partial distrust. We prefer to appeal to facts, to special circumstances, and to the tests of application.Nor is this matter for regret: it is a fresh advance, a great step towards the knowledge and empire of truth; taking care, nevertheless, that we avoid being carried too far by this disposition, and provided we always bear in mind that truth alone has a prerogative to reign in the world, and that facts have no merit but as they give it expression, and take form upon its model; that all true greatness springs from thought, and is indebted to it for fruitfulness. The civilisation of our country has this peculiar character, that it has never been wanting in intellectual grandeur: it has always been rich in ideas: the influence of the human understanding has been great in French society, perhaps greater than anywhere else. It must not lose this glorious feature, it must not fall into that somewhat subordinate and material state which characterises other societies. Intellect and thought must still hold in France at least the place that they have hitherto occupied.
We shall therefore on no account shun general and philosophical questions; we shall not beat about in search of them, but when facts bring us on them, we shall face them without hesitation or embarrassment. More than one occasion for this hardihood will present itself, on considering the feudal system in its relation to the history of European civilisation.
That the feudal system was necessary, and the only possible social state, in the tenth century, is proved by the universality of its establishment. Wherever barbarism ceased, everything took the feudal form. At the first moment, men saw in it only the last stage of chaos. All unity and general civilisation seemed finally prorogued; society was seen dismembered on all sides, and a multitude of petty, obscure, isolated, and incohesive societies, to arise. This appeared to contemporaries the dissolution of all things, a universal anarchy. Both the poets and chroniclers of the era believed the end of the world at hand. Yet this feudal society was so necessary and inevitable, so completely the only possible consequence of the anterior state, that all entered into it, all adopted its form. Even elements the most foreign to the system—the church, municipalities, royalty—were constrained to accommodate themselves to it: churches became superiors and vassals, towns had lords and vassals, and royalty was hid under the mask of paramount lordship. All things were given as fiefs— not only lands, but certain rights, as those of cutting in forests, and of fishing: churches gave their casualties to be held in fief, revenues from baptisms, and the churchings of women. And in the same manner that all the general elements of society entered into the feudal frame, the minor details and circumstances of common life became its objects.