Volume II Part 6 (1/2)

It is desirable to give an idea and an example of the conduct which was already beginning to be adopted and of the authority which was already beginning to be exercised in France, amidst the feudal reaction that set in against Philip the Handsome and amidst the feeble government of his sons, by that magistracy, of such recent and petty origin, which was called upon to defend, in the king's name, order and justice against the count-less anarchical tyrannies scattered over the national territory.

During the early years of the fifteenth century, a lord of Gascony, Jordan de Lisle, ”of most n.o.ble origin, but most ign.o.ble deeds,” says a contemporary chronicler, ”abandoned himself to all manner of irregularities and crimes.” Confident in his strength and his connections,--for Pope John XXII. had given his niece to him in marriage,--”he committed homicides, entertained evil-doers and murderers, countenanced robbers, and rose against the king. He killed, with the man's own truncheon, one of the king's servants who was wearing the royal livery according to the custom of the royal servants. When his misdeeds were known, he was summoned for trial to Paris; and he went thither surrounded by a stately retinue of counts, n.o.bles, and barons of Aquitaine. He was confined, at first, in the prison of Chatelet; and when a hearing had been accorded to his reply and to what he alleged in his defence against the crimes of which he was accused, he was finally p.r.o.nounced worthy of death by the doctors of the parliament, and on Trinity-eve he was dragged at the tail of horses and hanged, as he deserved, on the public gallows at Paris.” It was, a.s.suredly, a difficult and a dangerous task for the obscure members of this parliament, scarcely organized as it was and quite lately established for a permanence in Paris, to put down such disorders and such men.

In the course of its long career the French magistracy has committed many faults; it has more than once either aspired to overstep its proper limits or failed to fulfil all its duties; but history would be ungrateful and untruthful not to bring into the light the virtues this body has displayed from its humble cradle, and the services it has rendered to France, to her security at home, to her moral dignity, to her intellectual glory, and to the progress of her civilization with all its brilliancy and productiveness, though it is still so imperfect and so thwarted.

Another fact which has held an important place in the history of France, and exercised a great influence over her destinies, likewise dates from this period; and that is the exclusion of women from the succession to the throne, by virtue of an article, ill understood, of the Salic law.

The ancient law of the Salian Franks, drawn up, probably, in the seventh century, had no statute at all touching this grave question; the article relied upon was merely a regulation of civil law prescribing that ”no portion of really Salic land (that is to say, in the full territorial owners.h.i.+p of the head of the family) should pa.s.s into the possession of women, but it should belong altogether to the virile s.e.x.” From the time of Hugh Capet heirs male had never been wanting to the crown, and the succession in the male line had been a fact uninterrupted indeed, but not due to prescription or law. Louis the Quarreller, at his death, on the 5th of June, 1316, left only a daughter, but his second wife, Queen Clemence, was pregnant. As soon as Philip the Long, then Count of Poitiers, heard of his brother's death, he hurried to Paris, a.s.sembled a certain number of barons, and got them to decide that he, if the queen should be delivered of a son, should be regent of the kingdom for eighteen years; but that if she should bear a daughter he should immediately take possession of the crown. On the 15th of November, 1316, the queen gave birth to a son, who was named John, and who figures as John I. in the series of French kings; but the child died at the end of five days, and on the 6th of January, 1317, Philip the Long was crowned king at Rheims. He forthwith summoned--there is no knowing exactly where and in what numbers--the clergy, barons, and third estate, who declared, on the 2d of February, that ”the laws and customs, inviolably observed among the Franks, excluded daughters from the crown.” There was no doubt about the fact; but the law was not established, nor even in conformity with the entire feudal system or with general opinion. And ”thus the kingdom went,” says Froissart, ”as seemeth to many folks, out of the right line.” But the measure was evidently wise and salutary for France as well as for the king-s.h.i.+p; and it was renewed, after Philip the Long died on the 3d of January, 1322, and left daughters only, in favor of his brother Charles the Handsome, who died, in his turn, on the 1st of January, 1328, and likewise left daughters only. The question as to the succession to the throne then lay between the male line represented by Philip, Count of Valois, grandson of Philip the Bold through Charles of Valois, his father, and the female line represented by Edward III., King of England, grandson, through his mother, Isabel, sister of the late King Charles the Handsome, of Philip the Handsome. A war of more than a century's duration between France and England was the result of this lamentable rivalry, which all but put the kingdom of France under an English king; but France was saved by the stubborn resistance of the national spirit and by Joan of Arc, inspired by G.o.d. One hundred and twenty-eight years after the triumph of the national cause, and four years after the accession of Henry IV., which was still disputed by the League, a decree of the parliament of Paris, dated the 28th of June, 1593, maintained, against the pretensions of Spain, the authority of the Salic law, and on the 1st of October, 1789, a decree of the National a.s.sembly, in conformity with the formal and unanimous wish of the memorials drawn up by the states-general, gave a fresh sanction to that principle, which, confining the heredity of the crown to the male line, had been salvation to the unity and nationality of the monarchy in France.

CHAPTER XIX.----THE COMMUNES AND THE THIRD ESTATE.

The history of the Merovingians is that of barbarians invading Gaul and settling upon the ruins of the Roman empire. The history of the Carlovingians is that of the greatest of the barbarians taking upon himself to resuscitate the Roman empire, and of Charlemagne's descendants disputing amongst themselves for the fragments of his fabric, as fragile as it was grand. Amidst this vast chaos and upon this double ruin was formed the feudal system, which by transformation after transformation became ultimately France. Hugh Capet, one of its chieftains, made himself its king. The Capetians achieved the French kings.h.i.+p. We have traced its character and progressive development from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, through the reigns of Louis the Fat, of Philip Augustus, of St. Louis, and of Philip the Handsome, princes very diverse and very unequal in merit, but all of them able and energetic. This period was likewise the cradle of the French nation. That was the time when it began to exhibit itself in its different elements, and to arise under monarchical rule from the midst of the feudal system. Its earliest features and its earliest efforts in the long and laborious work of its development are now to be set before the reader's eyes.

The two words inscribed at the head of this chapter, the Communes and the Third-Estate, are verbal expressions for the two great facts at that time revealing that the French nation was in labor of formation. Closely connected one with the other and tending towards the same end, these two facts are, nevertheless, very diverse, and even when they have not been confounded, they have not been with sufficient clearness distinguished and characterized, each of them apart. They are diverse both in their chronological date and their social importance. The Communes are the first to appear in history. They appear there as local facts, isolated one from another, often very different in point of origin, though a.n.a.logous in their aim, and in every case neither a.s.suming nor pretending to a.s.sume any place in the government of the state. Local interests and rights, the special affairs of certain populations agglomerated in certain spots, are the only objects, the only province of the communes.

With this purely munic.i.p.al and individual character they come to their birth, their confirmation, and their development from the eleventh to the fourteenth century; and at the end of two centuries they enter upon their decline, they occupy far less room and make far less noise in history.

It is exactly then that the Third Estate comes to the front, and uplifts itself as a general fact, a national element, a political power. It is the successor, not the contemporary, of the Communes; they contributed much towards, but did not suffice for its formation; it drew upon other resources, and was developed under other influences than those which gave existence to the communes. It has subsisted, it has gone on growing throughout the whole course of French history; and at the end of five centuries, in 1789, when the Communes had for a long while sunk into languishment and political insignificance, at the moment at which France was electing her Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, the Abbe Sicyes, a man of powerful rather than scrupulous mind, could say, ”What is the Third Estate?

Everything. What has it hitherto been in the body politic? Nothing.

What does it demand? To be something.”

These words contain three grave errors. In the course of government anterior to 1789, so far was the third estate from being nothing, that it had been every day becoming greater and stronger. What was demanded for it in 1789 by M. Sicyes and his friends was not that it might become something, but that it should be everything. That was a desire beyond its right and its strength; and the very Revolution, which was its own victory, proved this. Whatever may have been the weaknesses and faults of its foes, the third estate had a terrible struggle to conquer them; and the struggle was so violent and so obstinate that the third estate was broken up therein, and had to pay dearly for its triumph. At first it obtained thereby despotism instead of liberty; and when liberty returned, the third estate found itself confronted by twofold hostility, that of its foes under the old regimen and that of the absolute democracy which claimed in its turn to be everything. Outrageous claims bring about in-tractable opposition and excite unbridled ambition. What there was in the words of the Abbe Sicyes in 1789 was not the verity of history; it was a lying programme of revolution.

We have antic.i.p.ated dates in order to properly characterize and explain the facts as they present themselves, by giving a glimpse of their scope and their attainment. Now that we have clearly marked the profound difference between the third estate and the communes, we will return to the communes alone, which had the priority in respect of time. We will trace the origin and the composition of the third estate, when we reach the period at which it became one of the great performers in the history of France by reason of the place it a.s.sumed and the part it played in the states-general of the kingdom.

In dealing with the formation of the communes from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the majority of the French historians, even M. Thierry, the most original and clear-sighted of them all, often ent.i.tle this event the communal revolution. This expression hardly gives a correct idea of the fact to which it is applied. The word revolution, in the sense, or at least the aspect, given to it amongst us by contemporary events, points to the overthrow of a certain regimen, and of the ideas and authority predominant thereunder, and the systematic elevation in their stead of a regimen essentially different in principle, and in fact. The revolutions of our day subst.i.tute, or would fain subst.i.tute, a republic for a monarchy, democracy for aristocracy, political liberty for absolute power. The struggles which from the eleventh to the fourteenth century gave existence to so many communes had no such profound character; the populations did not pretend to any fundamental overthrow of the regimen they attacked; they conspired together, they swore together, as the phrase is according to the doc.u.ments of the time--they rose to extricate themselves from the outrageous oppression and misery they were enduring, but not to abolish feudal sovereignty and to change the personality of their masters. When they succeeded they obtained those treaties of peace called charters, which brought about in the condition of the insurgents salutary changes accompanied by more or less effectual guarantees. When they failed or when the charters were violated, the result was violent reactions, mutual excesses; the relations between the populations and their lords were tempestuous and full of vicissitudes; but at bottom neither the political regimen nor the social system of the communes was altered. And so there were, at many spots without any connection between them, local revolts and civil wars, but no communal revolution.

One of the earliest facts of this kind which have been set forth with some detail in history clearly shows their primitive character; a fact the more remarkable in that the revolt described by the chroniclers originated and ran its course in the country among peasants with a view of recovering complete independence, and not amongst an urban population with a view of resulting in the erection of a commune. Towards the end of the tenth century, under Richard II., Duke of Normandy, called the Good, and whilst the good King Robert was reigning in France, ”In several counts.h.i.+ps of Normandy,” says William of Jumiege, ”all the peasants, a.s.sembling in their conventicles, resolved to live according to their inclinations and their own laws, as well in the interior of the forests as along the rivers, and to reck nought of any established right. To carry out this purpose these mobs of madmen chose each two deputies, who were to form at some central point an a.s.sembly charged to see to the execution of their decrees. As soon as the duke (Richard II.) was informed thereof, he sent a large body of men-at-arms to repress this audaciousness of the country districts and to scatter this rustic a.s.semblage. In execution of his orders, the deputies of the peasants and many other rebels were forthwith arrested, their feet and hands were cut off, and they were sent away thus mutilated to their homes, in order to deter their like from such enterprises, and to make them wiser, for fear of worse. After this experience the peasants left off their meetings and returned to their ploughs.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Peasants resolved to Live according to their own Inclinations and their own Laws----209]

It was about eighty years after the event when the monk William of Jumiege told the story of this insurrection of peasants so long anterior, and yet so similar to that which more than three centuries afterwards broke out in nearly the whole of Northern. France, and which was called the Jacquery. Less than a century after William of Jumiege, a Norman poet, Robert Wace, told the same story in his Romance of Rou, a history in verse of Rollo and the first dukes of Normandy: ”The lords do us nought but ill,” he makes the Norman peasants say: with them we have nor gain nor profit from our labors; every day is for us a day of suffering, of travail, and of fatigue; every day our beasts are taken from us for forced labor and services . . . why put up with all this evil, and why not get quit of travail? Are not we men even as they are? Have we not the same stature, the same limbs, the same strength--for suffering? Bind we ourselves by oath; swear we to aid one another; and if they be minded to make war on us, have we not for every knight thirty or forty young peasants ready and willing to fight with club, or boar-spear, or arrow, or axe, or stones, if they have not arms? Learn we to resist the knights, and we shall be free to hew down trees, to hunt game, and to fish after our fas.h.i.+on, and we shall work our will on flood and in field and wood.”

These two pa.s.sages have already been quoted in Chapter XIV. of this history in the course of describing the general condition of France under the Capetians before the crusades, and they are again brought forward here because they express and paint to the life the chief cause which from the end of the tenth century led to so many insurrections amongst the rural as well as urban populations, and brought about the establishment of so many communes.

We say the chief cause only, because oppression and insurrection were not the sole origin of the communes. Evil, moral and material, abounds in human communities, but it never has the sole dominion there; force never drives justice into utter banishment, and the ruffianly violence of the strong never stifles in all hearts every sympathy for the weak. Two causes, quite distinct from feudal oppression, viz., Roman traditions and Christian sentiments, had their share in the formation of the communes and in the beneficial results thereof.

The Roman munic.i.p.al regimen, which is described in M. Guizot's _L'Essais sur l'Histoire de France_ (1st Essay, pp. 1-44), did not everywhere perish with the empire; it kept its footing in a great number of towns, especially in those of Southern Gaul, Ma.r.s.eilles, Arles, Nismes, Narbonne, Toulouse, &c. At Arles the munic.i.p.ality actually bore the name of commune (_communitas_), Toulouse gave her munic.i.p.al magistrates the name of _Capitouls,_ after the Capitol of Rome, and in the greater part of the other towns in the south they were called Consuls. After the great invasion of barbarians from the seventh to the end of the eleventh century, the existence of these Roman munic.i.p.alities appears but rarely and confusedly in history; but in this there is nothing peculiar to the towns and the munic.i.p.al regimen, for confusion and obscurity were at that time universal, and the nascent feudal system was plunged therein as well as the dying little munic.i.p.al systems were. Many Roman munic.i.p.alities were still subsisting without influencing any event of at all a general kind, and without leaving any trace; and as the feudal system grew and grew they still went on in the midst of universal darkness and anarchy.

They had penetrated into the north of Gaul in fewer numbers and with a weaker organization than in the south, but still keeping their footing and vaunting themselves on their Roman origin in the face of their barbaric conquerors. The inhabitants of Rheims remembered with pride that their munic.i.p.al magistracy and its jurisdiction were anterior to Clovis, dating as they did from before the days of St. Remigius, the apostle of the Franks. The burghers of Metz boasted of having enjoyed civil rights before there was any district of Lorraine: ”Lorraine,” said they, ”is young, and Metz is old.” The city of Bourges was one of the most complete examples of successive transformations and denominations attained by a Roman munic.i.p.ality from the sixth to the thirteenth century under the Merovingians, the Carlovingians, and the earliest Capetians.

At the time of the invasion it had arenas, an amphitheatre, and all that characterized a Roman city. In the seventh century, the author of the life of St. Estadiola, born at Bourges, says that ”she was the child of ill.u.s.trious parents who, as worldly dignity is accounted, were notable by reason of senatorial rank; and Gregory of Tours quotes a judgment delivered by the princ.i.p.als (_primores_) of the city of Bourges. Coins of the time of Charles the Bald are struck with the name of the city of Bourges and its inhabitants (_Bituriges_). In 1107, under Philip I., the members of the munic.i.p.al body of Bourges are named _prud'hommes_. In two charters, one of Louis the Young, in 1145, and the other of Philip Augustus, in 1218, the old senators of Bourges have the name at one time of _bons hommes,_ at another of _barons_ of the city. Under different names, in accordance with changes of language, the Roman munic.i.p.al regimen held on and adapted itself to new social conditions.

In our own day there has been far too much inclination to dispute, and M. Augustin Thierry has, in M. Guizot's opinion, made far too little of, the active and effective part played by the kings.h.i.+p in the formation and protection of the French communes. Not only did the kings, as we shall presently see, often interpose as mediators in the quarrels of the communes with their laic or ecclesiastical lords, but many amongst them a.s.sumed in their own domains and to the profit of the communes an intelligent and beneficial initiative. The city of Orleans was a happy example of this. It was of ancient date, and had prospered under the Roman empire; nevertheless the continuance of the Roman munic.i.p.al regimen does not appear there clearly as we have just seen that it did in the case of Bourges; it is chiefly from the middle ages and their kings that Orleans held its munic.i.p.al franchises and its privileges; they never raised it to a commune, properly so called, by a charter sworn to and guaranteed by independent inst.i.tutions, but they set honestly to work to prevent local oppression, to reform abuses, and make justice prevail there. From 1051 to 1281 there are to be found in the _Recueil des ordonnances des rois_ seven important charters relating to Orleans. In 1051, at the demand of the people of Orleans and its bishop, who appears in the charter as the head of the people, the defender of the city, Henry I. secures to the inhabitants of Orleans freedom of labor and of going to and fro during the vintages, and interdicts his agents from exacting anything upon the entry of wines. From 1137 to 1178, during the administration of Suger, Louis the Young in four successive ordinances gives, in respect of Orleans, precise guarantees for freedom of trade, security of person and property, and the internal peace of the city; and in 1183 Philip Augustus exempts from all talliage, that is, from all personal impost, the present and future inhabitants of Orleans, and grants them divers privileges, amongst others that of not going to law-courts farther from their homes than Etampes. In 1281 Philip the Bold renews and confirms the concessions of Philip Augustus. Orleans was not, within the royal domain, the only city where the kings of that period were careful to favor the progress of the population, of wealth, and of security; several other cities, and even less considerable burghs, obtained similar favor; and in 1155 Louis the Young, probably in confirmation of an act of his father, Louis the Fat, granted to the little town of Lorris, in Gatinais (nowadays chief place of a canton in the department of the Loiret), a charter, full of detail, which regulated its interior regimen in financial, commercial, judicial, and military matters, and secured to all its inhabitants good conditions in respect of civil life. This charter was in the course of the twelfth century regarded as so favorable that it was demanded by a great number of towns and burghs; the king was asked for _the customs of Lorris_ (_consuetudines Lauracienses_), and in the s.p.a.ce of fifty years they were granted to seven towns, some of them a considerable distance from Orleanness. The towns which obtained them did not become by this qualification communes properly so called in the special and historical sense of the word; they had no jurisdiction of their own, no independent magistracy; they had not their own government in their hands; the king's officers, provosts, bailiffs, or others, were the only persons who exercised there a real and decisive power. But the king's promises to the inhabitants, the rights which he authorized them to claim from him, and the rules which he imposed upon his officers in their government, were not concessions which were of no value or which remained without fruit. As we follow in the course of our history the towns which, without having been raised to communes properly so called, had obtained advantages of that kind, we see them developing and growing in population and wealth, and sticking more and more closely to that kings.h.i.+p from which they had received their privileges, and which, for all its imperfect observance and even frequent violation of promises, was nevertheless accessible to complaint, repressed from time to time the misbehavior of its officers, renewed at need and even extended privileges, and, in a word, promoted in its administration the progress of civilization and the counsels of reason, and thus attached the burghers to itself without recognizing on their side those positive rights and those guarantees of administrative independence which are in a perfect and solidly constructed social fabric the foundation of political liberty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Insurrection in favor of the Commune at Cambrai----214]

Nor was it the kings alone who in the middle ages listened to the counsels of reason, and recognized in their behavior towards their towns the rights of justice. Many bishops had become the feudal lords of the episcopal city; and the Christian spirit enlightened and animated many amongst them just as the monarchical spirit sometimes enlightened and guided the kings. Troubles had arisen in the town of Cambrai between the bishops and the people. ”There was amongst the members of the metropolitan clergy,” says M. Augustin Thierry, ”a certain Baudri de Sarchainville, a native of Artois, who had the t.i.tle of chaplain of the bishopric. He was a man of high character and of wise and reflecting mind. He did not share the violent aversion felt by most of his order for the inst.i.tution of communes. He saw in this inst.i.tution a sort of necessity beneath which it would be inevitable sooner or later, w.i.l.l.y nilly, to bow, and he thought it was better to surrender to the wishes of the citizens than to shed blood in order to postpone for a while an unavoidable revolution. In 1098 he was elected Bishop of Noyon. He found this town in the same state in which he had seen that of Cambrai.

The burghers were at daily loggerheads with the metropolitan clergy, and the registers of the Church contained a host of doc.u.ments ent.i.tled _Peace made between us and the burghers of Noyon._ But no reconciliation was lasting; the truce was soon broken, either by the clergy or by the citizens, who were the more touchy in that they had less security for their persons and their property. The new bishop thought that the establishment of a commune sworn to by both the rival parties might become a sort of compact of alliance between them, and he set about realizing this n.o.ble idea before the word commune had served at Noyon as the rallying cry of popular insurrection. Of his own mere motion he convoked in a.s.sembly all the inhabitants of the town, clergy, knights, traders, and craftsmen. He presented them with a charter which const.i.tuted the body of burghers an a.s.sociation forever under magistrates called jury-men, like those of Cambrai. 'Whosoever,' said the charter, 'shall desire to enter this commune shall not be able to be received as a member of it by a single individual, but only in the presence of the jurymen. The sum of money he shall then give shall be employed for the benefit of the town, and not for the private advantage of any one whatsoever. If the commune be outraged, all those who have sworn to it shall be bound to march to its defence, and none shall be empowered to remain at home unless he be infirm or sick, or so poor that he must needs be himself the watcher of his own wife and children lying sick. If any one have wounded or slain any one on the territory of the commune, the jurymen shall take vengeance therefor.'”

The other articles guarantee to the members of the commune of Noyon the complete owners.h.i.+p of their property, and the right of not being handed over to justice save before their own munic.i.p.al magistrates. The bishop first swore to this charter, and the inhabitants of every condition took the same oath after him. In virtue of his pontifical authority he p.r.o.nounced the anathema, and all the curses of the Old and New Testament, against whoever should in time to come dare to dissolve the commune or infringe its regulations. Furthermore, in order to give this new pact a stronger warranty, Baudri requested the hing of France. Louis the Fat, to corroborate it, as they used to say at the time, by his approbation and by the great seal of the crown. The king consented to this request of the bishop, and that was all the part taken by Louis the Fat in the establishment of the commune of Noyon. The king's charter is not preserved, but, under the date of 1108, there is extant one of the bishop's own, which may serve to substantiate the account given:--

”Baudri, by the grace of G.o.d Bishop of Noyon, to all those who do preserve and go on in the faith:

”Most dear brethren, we learn by the example and words of-the holy Fathers, that all good things ought to be committed to writing, for fear lest hereafter they come to be forgotten. Know, then, all Christians present and to come, that I have formed at Noyon a commune, const.i.tuted by the counsel and in an a.s.sembly of clergy, knights, and burghers; that I have confirmed it by oath, by pontifical authority, and by the bond of anathema; and that I have prevailed upon our lord King Louis to grant this commune and corroborate it with the king's seal. This establishment formed by me, sworn to by a great number of persons, and granted by the king, let none be so bold as to destroy or alter; I give warning thereof, on behalf of G.o.d and myself, and I forbid it in the name of pontifical authority. Whosoever shall transgress and violate the present law, be subjected to excommunication; and whosoever, on the contrary, shall faithfully keep it, be preserved forever amongst those who dwell in the house of the Lord.”

This good example was not without fruit. The communal regimen was established in several towns, notably at St. Quentin and at Soissons, without trouble or violence, and with one accord amongst the laic and ecclesiastical lords and the inhabitants.

We arrive now at the third and chief source of the communes, at the case of those which met feudal oppression with energetic resistance, and which, after all the sufferings, vicissitudes, and outrages, on both sides, of a prolonged struggle, ended by winning a veritable administrative, and, to a certain extent, political independence. The number of communes thus formed from the eleventh to the thirteenth century was great, and we have a detailed history of the fortunes of several amongst them, Cambrai, Beauvais, Laon, Amiens, Rheims, Etampes, Vezelay, &c. To give a correct and vivid picture of them we will choose the commune of Laon, which was one of those whose fortunes were most checkered as well as most tragic, and which after more than two centuries of a very tempestuous existence was sentenced to complete abolition, first by Philip the Handsome, then by Philip the Long and Charles the Handsome, and, finally, by Philip of Valois, ”for certain misdeeds and excesses notorious, enormous, and detestable, and on full deliberation of our council.” The early portion of the history connected with the commune of Laon has been narrated for us by Guibert, an abbot of Nogent- sous-Coucy, in the diocese of Laon, a contemporary writer, sprightly and bold. ”In all that I have written and am still writing,” says he, ”I dismiss all men from my mind, caring not a whit about pleasing anybody.