FEUDALISM.

MILITARY AND RELIGIOUS LIFE

THE MIDDLE AGES,

AND AT THE

PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE.

Origin.—Barbaric Laws.—Enfeoffment.—Charlemagne and the Church.—First Construction of Strongholds.—Vassal and Suzerain.—Feudal Rights.—The Truce of God.—Feudal Churches and Abbeys.—Communal Principles.—New Townships.—Origin of the French Bourgeoisie.—The English Magna Charta.—Alienation of Fiefs.—Liberation of the Serfs.—Imperial Cities.—Feudal Rights of the Bishops.—St. Louis.—Wars between France and England.—TheBulle d’Or.—The States-General.—Origin of the Third Estate.

Before presenting any manifestation of its existence, feudalism had long been gradually developing, and seemed to be moving forward invisibly at the head of the barbarian conquerors of Roman Gaul. From the day that their great leader, Clovis, shared amongst hisleudes, or companions-in-arms, the lands that they had won at the price of their blood while fighting under his orders—from the day when, by his miraculous baptism after the victory of Tolbiac (Fig. 1), he himself a proud Sicamber, submitted himself to and became a vassal of the Christian Church, simultaneously sprang into existence a theocratic and a martial aristocracy. In this simultaneous double origin might have already been perceived the hidden cause of the future inevitable antagonism between the modern influence of the cross and the material powerof the sword. Conspiracies, bloodthirsty executions, continual revolts, divers plots, in which were concerned at one time the king’s leudes, at another the principal clergy; ecclesiastical censures, ceaselessly threatening these blind and savage tyrants, who, while bending to the reproof, at the same time panted for revenge; curbless ambitions, terrible hatreds, the continued strife of opposing races; on one side the Gallo-Romanic (Figs. 2 and 3) and its heir the Gothic, on the other the barbarous Germanic and Slavonian, more or less christianized; all these were the endless signs by which the coming reign of feudalism, at each successive stage of modern civilisation, marked its advent. The politicalsystem which a barbarous legal code had inaugurated for the benefit of the leudes, was entirely opposed to the system sanctioned by the Roman law. It was the desire of the leudes that a seignior, the owner of the land and of the men who cultivated it, should possess the right of infeudalising, that is to say, of ceding, as an inferior freehold, a certain portion of his own estate, abandoning in so doing to the concessionary or vassal not only the rights of the soil, but the sovereignty over those who occupied it. For a vassal to forfeit his rights, he must first have failed to fulfil the engagements he undertook when he received the investiture of the fief. The cession of lands and the rights attached to it, which were the foundation of dawning feudalism, remained for more than a century in that state of oscillation which precedes a stable equilibrium.

Fig. 1.—Battle of Tolbiac and Baptism of King Clovis.—Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Mirouer Historial de France,” in folio, printed in Paris by Galliot du Pré in 1516.

Fig. 2.—Gallo-Roman Lords of the Fourth Century.—Sculpture from the Tomb of the Gallic Consul Jovinus, General under the Emperor Julian, at Rheims.

Fig. 3.—Mounted Barbarian in the Roman Service.—From an Antique Monument.

Master of France, of Germany, and of Italy, and protector of the Church, Charlemagne (Fig. 4) enjoyed all the prerogatives of the Western emperors. On two occasions he delivered the Holy Seat from its enemies, and in Germany as well as in Italy he placed his sword at the service of the Christian faith. One of the popes, Adrian, bestowed upon him the dignity of patron;another, Adrian’s successor, Leo III., placed, in the year 800, the imperial crown upon his head. Then might have been seen, better than in the days of the Roman and Greek Emperors, the spectacle of the Church protected by the head of the State, to whom the seignorial aristocracy paid feudal obedience, and who controlled with an iron hand their tendencies to schism. Feudalism, which was gathering strength, and which already knew its own power, never retrograded; it sometimes halted and was at rest, but it was only waiting a more propitious season to continue its path. Charlemagne’s successors were, in fact, neither the kings of France nor the emperors of Germany, but the feudal lords, the great landowners; and their power waxed all the greater from the fact that, in 853, an edict of Charles the Bald ordered the reconstruction of the ancient manors, the repair of their fortifications, and the construction of new ones, so as to arrest the devastating invasions of the Normans, of the Saracens, of the Hungarians, and of the Danes. Thus Europe became dotted with fortresses, behind which both nobles and villains found a refuge against the new flood of barbarians. There was soon scarcely a stream, a mountain pass, or an important road which was left undefended either by military posts or by strong walls (Figs. 5 to 10). The invaders, formerly rendered so bold and indomitable by the fear they had succeeded in inspiring, now ceased their raids, or at most ventured no farther than the shores on which they had disembarked. Little by little a sense of security returned to the inhabitants, and the welfare of the civilised world was assured. A service of this importance, rendered by the nobles and seigniorsto society at large, naturally gave them legitimate claims to the exclusive guardianship of the frontiers which they protected from the common enemy.

Fig. 4.—Statue of Charlemagne (formerly in the Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Paris).—Eleventh to Twelfth Century.

Towards the tenth century, every noble who desired to obtain from another noble, richer or more powerful than himself, a portion of land to be held as a fief, and who consented thus to become his vassal, personally declared in the chief’s presence that for the future he wished to be his faithful, devoted servant and his defender until death; with his sword girded to his side and his spurs on his heels, he solemnly swore this on the Holy Writ. In the subsequent ceremony ofhommage-ligethe vassal, bareheaded, knelt on one knee, and, placing his hands within those of his seignior, swore fealty to him, and undertook to follow him to the wars (Figs. 11 and 12), an obligation not entailed by the first act of homage, namely, that ofhommage-simple. Thenceforward the seignior ceded to him the land or the feudal domain, byinvestitureor byseizin, a ceremony often accompanied by the giving of a symbolical sign, such as a clod of earth, a little stick, or a stone, according to the custom of the soil. The investiture of kingdoms was conferred with the sword, that of provinces with a standard.

Fig. 5.—Tower of the Walls of Provins, Twelfth Century.

Fig. 6.—Tower of the Castle of Fougères, Twelfth Century.

Fig. 7.—Tower of the Castle of Loches, Twelfth Century.

Fig. 8.—Tower of Beaucaire, Thirteenth Century.

Fig. 9.—Tour du Télégraphe, Narbonne, Fourteenth Century.

Fig. 10.—Old Castle of Angoulême, Thirteenth Century.

The reciprocal obligations of the vassal and his suzerain were numerous, some moral, some material. The vassal was bound to loyally preserve the secrets confided to him by his suzerain (Fig. 13), to prevent and frustrate any treachery on the part of his enemies, to defend him at the risk of his own life,to resign his own horse on the battle-field should his lord have lost his, to go as a prisoner in his stead, to cause his honour to be respected, and to assist him with his advice. At the simple request of the suzerain, the vassal was bound to follow him to the field, either alone or accompanied with a specified number ofarmed men, according to the importance of the fief. The duration of this military service varied, in like manner, in proportion to the fief, from twenty to sixty days—a period that did not admit of very distant expeditions. The feudal seignior stood in place of the sovereign, and being invested with executive authority, had necessarily, in order to exercise it, recourse to the latent force distributed amongst his vassals, and he naturally did so in accordance with his own convenience. Justice, administered in this manner, was termedfiance, that is to say, public security. The seignior was wont to summon the men of his fief or fiefs to hisplaids, or assizes, either for the purpose of assisting him with their advice, to act with him as judges, or to carry out the sentences he pronounced. He had a right to two kinds of assistance—obligatory, orlegal aids, and voluntary, orgracious aids. Legal aids were due from the vassal under three sets of circumstances: when the seignior was taken prisoner and had to pay a ransom, when his eldest son was about to be made a knight, and when he gave away his eldest daughter in marriage. In feudal society these aids stood in the place of the public taxes, which in ancient times, as in our own days, were collected by the State alone; they differed, however, in this respect, that they were not due at any stated periods, nor perhaps could they ever be absolutely enforced, they were a kind of voluntary gift—from the bestowal of which, however, few vassals dared to free themselves.

Fig. 11.—Act of Faith and Homage, Twelfth Century.—Seal of Conon de Béthune, preserved in the National Archives of France.

Fig. 12.—Act of Faith and Homage, Thirteenth Century.—Seal representing Raimond de Mont-Dragon kneeling before the Archbishop of Arles, his Suzerain, in the National Archives of France.

The seignior, who never abdicated his sovereignty over his vassal, sometimes interfered in certain essential modifications necessary to the fief—modifications that the vassal was incompetent to undertake. These gave rise to new rights, and became a fresh source of revenue to the seignior. For instance, the seignior was entitled—first, to the right ofrelief, a sum of money payable by every person of full age who succeeded to the possession of a fief, which sum became larger as the line of succession became less direct; secondly, to the right ofalienation, payable by those who sold or alienated the fief in any way; thirdly, to the rights ofescheatand ofconfiscation, in accordance with which the fief reverted to the suzerain when the vassal died without leaving an heir, or when, from some act of his own, he had incurred the penalty of being deprived of his feudatory rights; fourthly, to the right ofguardianship, in virtue of which the seignior, during the minority of his vassals, held the ward and administration of the fief besides enjoying its revenues; fifthly, to the right ofmarriage, which consisted in finding a husband for the female inheritor of a fief; this right gave the seignior the privilege of forcing her to select one of the suitors that he chose to present to her.

As long as a vassal scrupulously fulfilled his numerous and delicate obligations he might consider himself as the absolute master of his fief, he might partially or entirely sub-feudalise it, and become in his own turn the suzerain of vassals of an inferior order termedvavasseurs, who were bound to render to him the same obligations that he himself paid to his own seignior. On the other hand, the suzerain was bound to respect his contract, not to dispossess his vassal without a legitimate motive, but to protect him, and to render him on all occasions substantial justice. It was, moreover, to his interest to do this, for the prosperity of the fief depended upon the security and welfare of the vassal.

Fig. 13.—Act of Faith and Homage, with the Legend,Secretum meum mici(“My Secret is to myself”).—Seal of Gérard de Saint-Amand, 1199, National Archives of France.

Vassals of the same suzerain, residing in the same territory, and possessing fiefs of a similar value, were termedpairs(pares), or equals. Suzerains of every rank, the king included, had theirpairs, and all could claim the privilege of being tried by thesepairsin the presence of his immediate seignior. If the seignior refused to act justly, and the vassal considered himself unrighteously condemned, he had the right of making an appeal indefault of justiceto the suzerain of his own seignior. Another right of appeal, that of arms, prevailed also in feudal society. The nobles, as a rule, preferred to carry out their own justice rather than await from others a slow and uncertain decision. This was the cause of there being so many little wars and so many desperate and bloody struggles between different seigniorships. Might made right; but custom, nevertheless, to some extent regulated the formalities that preceded these internecine conflicts, so that the seignior or the vassal who was to be attacked might be forearmed, and might put himself upon his guard (Figs. 14 and 15). Further, to remedy as much as possible the calamitiesensuing from these perpetual contentions, the Church had the power of suspending and preventing them, under pain of excommunication, from sunset on Wednesday to sunrise on Monday during the festivals of Lent and Advent, and at all periods of high religious solemnity. This was thePeaceor theTruceof God.

Fig. 14.—Château de la Panouze (Aveyron), type of a French Feudal Castle of the Fourteenth Century, of which remains still exist.—From a Miniature in a Manuscript in the National Library of Paris.

The seigniors possessed no right of uniform justice. In France, a superior, a middle, and an inferior judicial court were recognised. The first alone possessed the power of life and death. The more considerable fiefs had usually attached to them the right to exercise the highest justice, but there were exceptions to this rule. Avavasseur, for instance, might sometimes appeal against this highest justice, while a seignior, who was only entitled to exercise the inferior justiciary rights, might inflict death on all robbers caughtin flagrante delictoon his lands.

Fig. 15.—View overlooking the Castle of Pierrefonds (beginning of the Fifteenth Century), as restored by M. Viollet-le-Duc, in his “Dictionnaire d’Architecture.”

The privilege of coining money, always a sure index of sovereignty, together with the exclusion of all foreign jurisdiction and of all externalauthority from the area of each fief, also constituted two important prerogatives. Finally, the fief, with its privileges, always remained intact; it passed invariably to the eldest of the family, on the sole condition of his paying homage to the suzerain.

Most of the churches and abbeys, such as those of Saint-Denis, of Saint-Martin des Champs, and of Saint-Germain des Prés (Fig. 16), which proudly reared their towers and spires opposite the Louvre of the kings of France, exercised on their own account all the feudal rights which they had acquired by reason of the territorial possessions as well as by the concessions lavishly ceded to them by their sovereigns. The archbishops, the bishops, and the abbots thus became temporal lords, and were consequently forced to have vassals for military service, to keep up a court of justice, and to support a mint, thus uniting—in the case of bishops who enjoyed the temporal rank of count—spiritual with political authority.

Fig. 16.—View of the Abbey of Saint-Germain des Prés, from the East, as it stood in 1361.—Fac-simile of an Engraving in the “Histoire de Saint-Germain des Prés,” by Dom Bouillard: in folio.A, Road leading to the River Seine; B, St. Peter’s Chapel; C, the Close; D, Road leading to the Pré-aux Clercs; E, Place of the Breach; F, Ditch; G, the Pope’s Gate; H, Cloister; I, Refectory; K, Dormitory; L, the Church; M, Chapel of the Virgin; N, Road between the Ditch and the Pré-aux-Clercs; O, space between the Barrier to the Rue des Ciseaux; P, Great Gate of the Monastery; Q, Road to the River; R, Barrier close to the Ditch; S, the Inn called the Chapeau Rouge; T, the Pillory.

Fig. 16.—View of the Abbey of Saint-Germain des Prés, from the East, as it stood in 1361.—Fac-simile of an Engraving in the “Histoire de Saint-Germain des Prés,” by Dom Bouillard: in folio.

A, Road leading to the River Seine; B, St. Peter’s Chapel; C, the Close; D, Road leading to the Pré-aux Clercs; E, Place of the Breach; F, Ditch; G, the Pope’s Gate; H, Cloister; I, Refectory; K, Dormitory; L, the Church; M, Chapel of the Virgin; N, Road between the Ditch and the Pré-aux-Clercs; O, space between the Barrier to the Rue des Ciseaux; P, Great Gate of the Monastery; Q, Road to the River; R, Barrier close to the Ditch; S, the Inn called the Chapeau Rouge; T, the Pillory.

This twofold power made the prelate the suzerain of all the seigniors in his diocese. Towards the end of the tenth century the feudal ecclesiastics, by reason of the permission granted to laymen to bequeath their property to the Church, as well as of the strictness of the laws which forbade the alienation of ecclesiastical property, possessed a fifth part of all French and English soil, and nearly a third of Germany; whilst the last surviving Carlovingian could only claim the town of Laon, where he resided, to such an extent had his predecessors despoiled themselves of their lands in favour of their great vassals, who still, however, recognised him as their suzerain. In the eleventh century Europe was divided into a multitude of fiefs, each having its own mode of life, its own laws, its own customs, and its ecclesiastical or lay head, who was as independent as he well could be. Around these, but under certain conditions of dependence and of subordination, was developed the much more numerous class of freedmen. Gradually manual labour and the efforts of a growing intelligence led to the political existence of the bourgeois, those worthy representatives of the labouring portion of society. The part which was taken by the latter was not always of a passive character. As early as the year 987 the villains of Normandy rebelled and leagued themselves against their feudal lords, claiming the right of fishing and of the chase, and the privilege of having an administration and a magistracy of their own; it was thus that the innate power of the people revealed itself: the towns and the boroughs were peopled with inhabitantswho held their homes in tenure from the seigniors—who were the proprietors of the soil—under certain servile obligations as to the payment of taxes. As soon as the establishment of the hierarchy of fiefs had put an end to discord and anarchy, the germs of the Great Revolution—destined to restore civil liberty to the heirs of the countless inhabitants whom the misfortunes of Gaul and the tyranny of the emperors had reduced to servitude—began to show themselves. It was in this wise that the communal movement originated, and the town of Mans is generally credited with having been the first to set the example of having, through the agency of the working classes, conspired against the seignior. We find in the annals of Metz, about the year 1098, record of the election for life of amaître-échevin(high-sheriff), named Millon, in place of one, by name Hennolu-Bertin, who had been elected for one year, but who, doubtless, was not the first in his office. And we find an echevinal council, termed the council of the twelve, enjoying functions at once magisterial, administrative, and military. Metz possessed at the same time, by the side of their communal organization, a count of the name of Gerald, who was succeeded in 1063 by another count named Folmar. It had also a bishop, rich, powerful, firm, full of learning, named Adalbéron, a favourite both with the Pope and with the Emperor, influential enough to obtain anything, but never asking anything but what was just. It was, therefore, under the protection of the sword of the count and of the crozier of the bishop that the municipal liberties of Metz began to grow—liberties that became within a single century so developed and powerful that Bertram, another bishop of Saxon origin, undertook the task of restricting them, and endeavoured to regulate them by a charter which restored to the Church its electoral but not its governmental influence. This first communal organization, a type of many other municipalities in France and in Germany, was inaugurated without bloodshed. But this was not everywhere the case; at Cambrai, for instance, the commune was only established after a century of open warfare between the inhabitants and the bishop, their suzerain. At Laon—that ancient feudal city where the nobility and the burgesses engaged in all kinds of brigandage, where the bishop, who was a famous warrior and huntsman, was in the habit of sharing with the dignitaries of his cathedral and with the aristocracy of the town the fruit of his exactions—the commune inaugurated itself with the blood of their bishop, who was assassinated in the midst of a terrible insurrection. The towns of Amiens, of Beauvais, of Noyon, of Saint-Quentin,of Sens, of Soissons (Fig. 17), and of Vézelay, underwent nearly the same vicissitudes that Cambrai and Laon had experienced, and finally attained, after similar trials, a similar position. Perhaps Cambrai, of all the French communes, was the most exacting towards the feudal power that it was trampling under foot. “Ni l’évêque, ni l’Empereur, ne peuvent mia asseoir ne taxe, ne tribut, et n’en peult issir la malice, fors que pour la bonne garde et défense de la ville, et ce depuis coq chantant jusques à la nuit.”[1]No vassal had ever claimed or obtained more in the exercise of his feudal rights (Fig. 18).

Fig. 17.—Seal of the Commune of Soissons, representing the Mayor of Soissons, armed at all points, in the midst of the Sheriffs of the Town (1228).—National Archives of France.

The inauguration of the communal system had taken place without a struggle, and almost without opposition, as a useful and necessary reform at Metz, at Rheims, in a few midland towns, such as Bourges, Moulins, Lyons,Périgeux, and in most of the southern cities, such as Arles, Aigues-Mortes (Fig. 19), Marseilles, Narbonne, Cahors (Fig. 20), Carcassonne (Fig. 21), Nîmes, and Bordeaux. This was explained by the fact that this independent action of the people had been prepared by the system adopted by the Franks, who allowed no difference to exist between the condition of the conquered and of the conquerors. The rights they might enjoy and the duties they were to perform had been equally shared amongst all the freedmen of the monarchy without any distinction as to nationality; the Franks would have feared, had they acted differently, that they were reserving for the sovereign the possibility of using the oppressed nations as a weapon to overcome the conquerors themselves, and that in this way they might be leaving a loophole through which the monarchy might degenerate into despotism.

Fig. 18.—Thomas of Savoy, Count of Flanders, and Joan his Wife, grant to the Town of Cambrai the Charter of Peace made between the Counts of Hainaut and the Chapter of Cambrai in 1240.—Miniature from the “Chroniques de Hainaut,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).

Beyond the Alps, particularly in Lombardy, under the fostering action of liberal institutions, commerce and manufactures developed themselves, particularly at Milan, Pavia, Verona, and Florence; and in a still higher degree, owing to their position on the sea-board, at Venice and Genoa. In these rich and prosperous cities the seignorial nobility and the Church reigned side by side, enjoying a nearly equal and parallel influence, and when feudalism attempted to absorb them by its inflexible despotism, the manufacturing and the commercial classes, selecting as their leaders a few more prominent of the artisans and some of the most respected of the clergy, allied themselves with the lesser rural nobles, and, with the assistance of the latter’s vassals, succeeded in repulsing its crushing yoke. This, however, was not accomplished without tremendous struggles, nor without painful trials and heavy sacrifices.

Fig. 19.—Fortified Gate of the Town of Aigues-Mortes, which Town obtained in 1246 a Communal Charter (Military Architecture of the Thirteenth Century).

In the Low Countries, which had always so highly exalted the sentiment of local patriotism, the struggle of the villains against the nobles, whether lay or ecclesiastic, differed but little from the struggle of the towns in the north of France against the seigniors, but it assumed larger proportions in accordance with the immense resources of every kind which they had at their disposal. The feudal lord had his drawbridge, his battlements, and his men-at-armscased in iron; but his rebellious vassal could boast on his side, besides the narrow and winding streets of his stronghold and the number of his fellow-combatants, many warlike engines and well-made weapons which he himself had manufactured. When feudalism, in order to crush what it then termed the populace, summoned to its banner hordes of adventurers recruited from all parts of the world, it was encountered by undisciplined levies of armed mechanics and artisans, who issued forth from Ghent, from Bruges, and from Liége, and not unfrequently returned victorious.

Fig. 20.—Fortified Bridge, from Valentré to Cahors (1308).

Fig. 21.—Plan of the Fortified City of Carcassonne (Thirteenth Century).

Beyond the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine, feudalism flourished. Lofty fortresses, surrounded with a triple moat, everywhere cast their shadows athwart the land, though the towns enjoyed a full share of municipal liberty, and were not unfrequently the disinterested spectators of the terrible struggles that the feudal nobility carried on between themselves. Nowhere did feudalism display more arrogance or more barbarity than in Germany, which resembled some vast camp to which the nobles flocked to meet face to face in desperate combat.

When it came to pass that the industrial and populous towns of Germanycried out for municipal liberties similar to those enjoyed by the towns of France, Italy, and the Low Countries, the emperor hastened to grant and confirm their desires. He did more, he gave them the right ofimmediate appealagainst the princes of the empire—that is to say, any towns situated in the territory of any prince were responsible, not to the latter, but directly and immediately to the emperor himself, who thus laid for himself the foundations of strong natural supports in the very heart of the larger fiefs. The towns of Germany, already rich and flourishing, increased their commerce and their wealth, thanks to the new position they thus acquired.

The Emperor Henry V. greatly assisted this pacific revolution by granting privileges to the lower class of citizens and to the artisans, who up to that time had, according to the spirit of the Roman law, lived apart from the freedmen and remained at the lowest degree of the social scale. He relieved them, in particular, from the bondage of a custom by virtue of which the seignior at their deaths became entitled to all their personal property, or, at least, enjoyed the power of claiming everything worth having which they had left behind them.

In many towns Henry V. deprived the bishop of his temporal authority, and formed the burgesses into companies or guilds according to the nature of their manual occupation, a custom that was immediately imitated and adopted in other commercial countries. The bourgeoisie, organized in this manner into distinct groups, soon elected councils among themselves, the members of which, under the rule ofsenators,prud’hommes,bonshommes,echevins, andjurymen, began by assisting the representative of the imperial authority, whether duke, count, judge, or bishop, and ended by exercising a special and independent authority of their own, not over the vassals, but over citizens and commoners.

It will be asked, what then was the commune which had established itself with more or less effort and sacrifice in the principal parts of Europe? and further, as the commune had succeeded in one way or another in establishing itself, what privileges or immunities remained to the feudal lord, whether clerical or lay? Guilbert de Nogent, the open adversary of communal institutions, will perhaps give the best answer to these inquiries: “Those who pay taxes now pay only once a year the rent they owe to their seignior. If they commit some misdemeanour they have at the mostto pay a fine, the amount of which is legally fixed; as for the moneys that were wont to be levied from the serfs, they are now quite exempt from them.” Guilbert de Nogent might have indicated other victories obtained by the bourgeois, victories that were still more important in their moral influence, and which sooner or later were destined to change the face of society. As for the more intelligent seigniors who better understood their own personal interest, as well as the logical results of a paternal administration, they attempted to favour the instinctive movement of the rural populations, who, to shield themselves from the tyranny, the exactions, and the bad treatment of their feudal masters, were in the habit of seeking shelter and protection from some lord more humane or more politic than the rest, and who used, on the faith of a communal charter, to settle beside the ramparts of some seignorial manor (Fig. 22), around some loopholed church, or in the shade of some fortified monastery.

Fig. 22.—Seal of the Lord of Corbeil (1196).—National Archives of France.

The seignior in these cases was the gainer of so many able-bodied men, either artisans or agriculturists, but soldiers in case of need; and he was the gainer, moreover, in matters of revenue and influence.

It can easily be understood that in those times many charters were drawn up similar to the following, which is worth quoting as a type: “I, Henry,Count of Troyes, make known to all present and to come, that I have established the undermentioned rules for the inhabitants of my new town (in the neighbourhood of Pont-sur-Seine) between the bridges of Pugny. Every man inhabiting the said town shall pay every year twelve deniers and a measure of oats as the price of his dwelling, and if he desires to hold a portion of land or meadow, he must pay four deniers yearly for every acre. The houses, vines, and fields may be sold or alienated at the pleasure of the holder. The men who reside in the said town shall go neither to theost(an army in the field), nor shall they join any expedition unless I myself am at their head. I hereby allow them, moreover, to have six aldermen to administer the ordinary business of the town and to assist my provost in his duties. I have decreed that no seignior, be he knight or other, shall be allowed to withdraw from the town any of the men inhabitants for any reason whatsoever, unless such be his own men, or unless he owe the seignior any arrears of taxes.—Given at Provins, in the year of the Incarnation, 1175.” This name ofVille-neuve, which is so often found repeated in the charters and deeds of the Middle Ages, as, for example, Ville-neuve-l’Etang, Ville-neuve-Saint-George, Ville-neuve-le-Roi, Ville-neuve-lez-Avignon, &c., is evidence of what was an ordinary event in the twelfth century, namely, the creation of a free town, enfranchised from its birth, and subject to some small and insignificant payments to the seignior, and whose inhabitants, but yesterday serfs or villains, were now proprietors of portions of the soil, which they might dispose of or bequeath, either by gift or by testamentary disposition, under the immediate protection of their nominal seignior.

Fig. 23.—Ferrand of Portugal, Count of Flanders, made Prisoner at the Battle of Bouvines, and taken to Paris: “The Clergy and Laity singing Hymns and Songs.”—Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Chroniques de Hainaut,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).

Some ancient towns of the royal domains of France, such as Paris, Orleans, Meaux, Senlis, and others, which do not seem to have preserved the least trace of Roman institutions, always excepting the company of theNautes Parisiennes, who were the true founders of the ancient municipality of Paris, were each governed by a provost, who was the officer and lieutenant of the king, their seignior, and they further enjoyed certain special liberties and privileges. In 1137, Louis VII., at the suggestion of his minister, Suger, forbade his provost and officers to annoy the burgesses in any manner whatsoever, and fixed the amount of their taxation himself. Ten years later, the same sovereign abolished the right of mortmain, repressed the abuses of the fiscal taxes, instituted a judicial system, and greatly encouraged commerce. It was not as king, but as seignior suzerain, that Louis VII. acted in this manner.The French, bourgeoisie was at this time of but recent origin; it had sprung from a triumphant villanage, and was beginning to form a new branch, from which was to issue, a few centuries later, the third estate. Legal jurisdiction and the right of coinage, feudal privileges of which the royal suzerain had always been very jealous, were favours it then but seldom enjoyed. Philip-Augustus understood better than his predecessors the interests of the royal power, for he graciously granted seventy-eight communal charters; he was rewarded by the effectual assistance the communal levies afforded him at the battle of Bouvines (1214), when he was fortunate enough to overthrow thecoalition that foreign feudalism had formed with his rebellious great vassals. He forced the latter to return to their duty, and one of them, the Count of Flanders, remained twelve years a prisoner in the principal tower of the Louvre (Fig. 23). Philip-Augustus had not shrunk from granting a legal constitution to the bourgeoisie of Paris and the principal towns, in opposition to the feudal nobility.

The communal movement, a natural development of the legal rights introduced by the Franks, was scarcely felt in England. Already, long before the Norman Conquest, under the Anglo-Saxon rule, many busy towns, wealthy and populous, such as Canterbury, London, Oxford, and York, took a share in public affairs, a limited share, it is true, but one sufficient for their wellbeing and prosperity. The victorious invasion of William of Normandy, so fatal to the whole country, was still more so to the large towns, which were compelled to behold their own material ruin, the sequestration and confiscation of their property, the dispersion and infeudation of their inhabitants, their agriculturists and their farmers. Unable any longer to invoke the protection of an easy-natured sovereign, they were forced to bow their heads beneath the sway of strangers, lucky adventurers, bold, exacting, despotic, and cruel men, believing in no faith and obeying no law, the very dregs of French feudalism. King Henry I., the third son of William the Conqueror, after many sanguinary struggles, in which his barons were not found wanting in fealty to him, granted them the celebrated charter called Magna Charta—usually, though, erroneously, considered the fundamental origin of English liberties, which, however, really dated from a prior period; at the same time (1132) he released the burgesses of London from the lamentable state of degradation in which they had existed since the Conquest. In the reign of Henry II.—an administrative and judicial reformer—not in England alone, but in those parts of Scotland and Ireland which he had conquered (1154–1182), the inhabitants of many towns acquired the right to purchase the freehold of the soil they occupied, and to free themselves from several special taxes by paying a fixed sum to the feudal lord. Thenceforward arose that haughty bourgeoisie, with which the barons had soon to reckon, a class which John Lackland favoured proportionately as he dreaded the continual rebellions of the feudal seigniors. Twice was Prince Louis, the son of Philip-Augustus, summoned by the Anglo-Norman barons to cross the channel with an army to force the English king to fulfil theclauses of the charters he had granted to his great vassals (1215–1216); on the other hand, the towns and communes, grown rich and powerful, thanks to the privileges which had been granted to them as well as to the intelligent activity of their manufactures, forced the nobles to respect them. The latter no longer attempted to compel assistance, but solicited it, often even humbly, so that the communes and the landed aristocracy held an equal position in the feudal hierarchy. The title ofnobleandbaron, bestowed on the leading citizens of London and the Cinque Ports, raised the middle-class to a higher position. Indeed, to enable it, already powerful by its wealth and by its alliances, to become a political body, it only needed the privilege of sending representatives to parliament, a privilege which was granted in 1264 to the principal towns of the kingdom.

Fig. 24.—Philip III., called “the Bold,” in Royal Costume.—From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).

In France, about the same period, the industrial and trading bourgeoisie had seats in the privy council of St. Louis, and, advancing in letters and science, it gradually obtained possession of all the chairs at the university. As early as the reign of Philip the Bold (Fig. 24), it occupied all the higher positions in the judicature, and hence it assumed a place in the great bailiwicks and parliaments, from which the feudal nobility did not condescend to oust it, and which, after a time, enabled it to offer a successful resistance to theabuse of power on the part of this same nobility, whose authority steadily diminished. Admitted by Philippe-le-Bel to the general assemblies of the nation and to the sessions of the states-general, the bourgeoisie became one of the states, an order of the kingdom, that is, thetiers-état. It absorbed the offices pertaining to the general administration and to finance, it furnished the lower orders of the clergy with most of their distinguished representatives, and the municipalities with the most gifted of their magistrates; it acquired the right of purchasing offices which carried nobility with them, of possessing seignorial domains with high and petty justice, and thus it forced its way like ivy into the crevices of the feudal edifice, which stone by stone crumbled to pieces. Philippe-le-Bel, surnamed theKing of the Lawyers—who helped him in a material degree to carry out his designs—showed himself, as a natural consequence, the King of the Commons (tiers-état), and the secret enemy of the Church and the nobility. The latter, valiant and chivalrous, but devoid of forethought, rushing headlong into every kind of adventure, and caring only for deeds of daring and warlike achievements, regardless of their material interests, gradually allowed themselves to be divested of a considerable part of their domains by the bourgeoisie, who lent them money upon mortgage, and by thevouésorprocureurs, who ruined them. The decadence of their wealth dated from the First Crusade, when they encumbered their estates to pay the expenses of distant expeditions, which they undertook almost entirely at their own cost; and when they wished to recover possession of the properties which they had handed over to some third party, they found them loaded with fresh debts, which had been contracted during their absence, and producing but nominal revenues for want of hands to cultivate the soil. They then were obliged to sell a portion of the property, and that at a great loss. The only resource remaining was the concession of their feudal privileges, and in this way the nobility lost the right of coining money and of exercising justice, while the sovereigns—Philippe-le-Bel in particular—seconded by the bourgeoisie, increased their absolute power.

The massacre of more than six thousand chevaliers at Courtray (1302), by the Flemish militia (Fig. 25), was a heavy blow to the pride of the generous but reckless nobility of France. It was humiliating to these lords to find that the villains knew how to wield the arms which they had been in the habit of making for others; they saw that they possessed the courage and skill needed to win battles, and that henceforward they must be reckonedupon as a force able to take the field as well as formidable when engaged in street riots.

Fig. 25.—Flemish Warrior in the Uniform of the Van Artevelde Militia: Stone Statue formerly in one of the niches in the Belfry at Ghent, now in the Ruins of St. Bavon of Ghent (Fourteenth Century).

In Germany, the fall of the Hohenstaufen family, formerly Dukes of Swabia and Franconia, favoured the enfranchisement of towns; all the cities in these two principalities, hitherto subject to the mediatised lords, reverted to the emperor, who, without any real power over them, left them free to establish the franchise and immunities of a republic. In order to increase their populations, they followed the example of the sovereigns and feudal lords of France and Lombardy in regard to the formation ofnew towns, establishing around their walls, as feudalism had done outside its donjons, fields of refuge. These were occupied by a host of strangers, who received the designation ofPfahlbürger—citizens of the palisades, or faubourgians, originally sheltered and protected by a wooden barrier. These receded in proportion as the number of inhabitants increased, and according as their trade developed. Many serfs deserted the neighbouring fiefs to seek in these free towns the independence, position, success, and all the advantages which they could not enjoy under the feudal régime. Their lords demanded their extradition by virtue of their feudal rights, accompanying the demand with threats, which were sometimes effectual; but the free towns, not less interested in keeping the fugitive than the latter was in remaining with them, endeavoured to gain time and to favour his retreat until after the expiration of three hundred and sixty-five days, when the right of the lord to his liegeman or vassal ceased.

The imperial towns—which, from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, after having freed themselves from the fetters of feudalism, had risen to such a height of independence that the emperor himself had but a nominal supremacy over them—were Ratisbon, in Bavaria; Augsburg and Ulm, inSwabia; Nuremberg, Spiers, Worms, and Frankfort-on-the-Main, in Franconia; Magdeburg, in Saxony; Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck, in the Hanseatic League; Aix-la-Chapelle, Bonn, Cologne, Coblentz, Mayence, Strasburg, and Metz, in the Rhenish and Lotharingian provinces. These towns, essentially industrial and commercial, in which the middle-classes were for the most part supreme, formed vast emporiums, teeming with the products of the north, the south, and the east. They were looked upon as the store-houses and arsenals of Europe. Feudalism, unable to produce anything for itself, was always replenishing from these depôts the resources necessary for equipping and revictualling its armies. From them came the arms and the engines of warfare, as well as the special workmen, the cross-bowmen, the carpenters, the founders, and the artillerymen, who composed thepersonnelof the artillery at this period. If the free towns had arrived at a common understanding, and formed a pacific league between themselves, they would have presented a serious obstacle to the struggles of the suzerain lords; but their distance from each other, especially those in the centre of Germany, prevented them from coming to such an arrangement. Nor could they, as in England, form an alliance with the feudal nobility, nor, as in France, make common cause with the suzerain. As the emperor left them to act independently, they were obliged to organize their own defence, to contract alliances with some powerful neighbour, and weaken, by dividing them, those enemies whom they deemed stronger than themselves. Thus these free towns never constituted a homogeneous body; they were isolated and spread over a vast extent of territory, being only brought together by feelings of interest and sympathy, but without any mutual tie or political cohesion. The lord with whom they were at war to-day, would enter their service and pay the next, with the title ofsoldarien; and at times a single town would have as many as two or three hundred of these allies, who were always followed by a swarm of marauders, and who spread desolation throughout the land. The lords who were without fortune, who represented the petty feudalism of the country districts, finding in the service of these towns a means for keeping up their state and paying their followers, passed from one to the other, and only enlisted under the standard of a sovereign prince for want of better employment, for the latter did not as a rule pay so well as these free towns.

From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the position of the bishop,in point of political influence, did not improve in these free or republican towns, either in England, France, or Germany. Suzerain lord by moral authority, he was only so to a very limited degree (Fig. 26) in respect to his temporal power. He only exercised justice over his vassals, or at most over the members of the secular and inferior clergy, for the canons, the incumbents, and even the deacons, enjoying as they did special immunities, would have appealed, in the event of a dispute or of censure, to their metropolitan archbishop, or even to Rome. It is true that the lay depositaries of municipal authority did not, on their side, take any judicial steps against the ecclesiastics, except in case of conspiracy against the State, which alone rendered them answerable to secular justice. Outside the subordinates of the bishop and the chapter, the episcopal court or tribunal took cognizance of the crimes, the offences, and misdemeanours against religion of which any citizen might be guilty, and also of the heresies, blasphemies, breaking of images, glaring infractions of the commandments of God and of the Church, insults and assaults of the priests, &c. And even in these cases, where the delinquent could plead nobility, and especially when he belonged to the higher classes of feudalism, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical tribunals could not reach him. As the nobility could always claim to be judged by their peers, there was rarely any infraction of this feudal principle, and then only where some diocesan bishop or metropolitan was powerful enough to substitute his own will for the customary right.

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