Part 25 (1/2)
The Chatelet, on the contrary, was less involved in intrigue, less occupied with politics, and was daily engaged in adjudicating in cases of litigation, and thus it rendered innumerable services in promoting the public welfare, and maintained, and even increased, the respect which it had enjoyed from the commencement of its existence. In 1498, Louis XII.
required that the provost should possess the t.i.tle of doctor _in utroque jure_, and that his officers, whom he made to hold their appointments for life, should be chosen from amongst the most distinguished counsellors at law. This excellent arrangement bore its fruits. As early as 1510, the ”Usages of the City, Provosty, and Viscounty of Paris,” were published _in extenso_, and were then received with much ceremony at a solemn audience held on the 8th of March in the episcopal palace, and were deposited among the archives of the Chatelet (Fig. 315).
The Parliament held a very different line of policy from that adopted by the Chatelet, which only took a political part in the religious troubles of Protestantism and the League with a view to serve and defend the cause of the people. In spite of its fits of personal animosity, and its rebellious freaks, Parliament remained almost invariably attached to the side of the King and the court. It always leaned to the absolute maintenance of things as they were, instead of following progress and changes which time necessitated. It was for severe measures, for intimidation more than for gentleness and toleration, and it yielded sooner or later to the injunctions and admonitions of the King, although, at the same time, it often disapproved the acts which it was asked to sanction.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 316.--Seal of King Chilperic, found in his Tomb at Tournay in 1654.]
Secret Tribunals.
The Old Man of the Mountain and his Followers in Syria.--The Castle of Alamond, Paradise of a.s.sa.s.sins.--Charlemagne the Founder of Secret Tribunals amongst the Saxons.--The Holy Vehme.--Organization of the Tribunal of the _Terre Rouge_, and Modes adopted in its Procedures.--Condemnations and Execution of Sentences.--The Truth respecting the Free Judges of Westphalia.--Duration and Fall of the Vehmic Tribunal.--Council of Ten in Venice; its Code and Secret Decisions.--End of the Council of Ten.
During the Middle Ages, human life was generally held in small respect; various judicial inst.i.tutions--if not altogether secret, at least more or less enveloped in mystery--were remarkable for being founded on the monstrous right of issuing the most severe sentences with closed doors, and of executing these sentences with inflexible rigour on individuals who had not been allowed the slightest chance of defending themselves.
While pa.s.sing judgment in secret, they often openly dealt blows as unexpected and terrible as they were fatal. Therefore, the most innocent and the most daring trembled at the very name of the _Free Judges of the Terre-Rouge,_ an inst.i.tution which adopted Westphalia as the special, or rather as the central, region of its authority; the _Council of Ten_ exercised their power in Venice and the states of the republic; and the _a.s.sa.s.sins_ of Syria, in the time of St. Louis, made more than one invasion into Christian Europe. We must nevertheless acknowledge that, terrible as these mysterious inst.i.tutions were, the general credulity, the gross ignorance of the ma.s.ses, and the love of the marvellous, helped not a little to render them even more outrageous and alarming than they really were.
Marco Polo, the celebrated Venetian traveller of the thirteenth century, says, ”We will speak of the Old Man of the Mountain. This prince was named Alaodin. He had a lovely garden full of all manner of trees and fruits, in a beautiful valley, surrounded by high hills; and all round these plantations were various palaces and pavilions, decorated with works of art in gold, with paintings, and with furniture of silk. Therein were to be seen rivulets of wine, as well as milk, honey, and gentle streams of limpid water. He had placed therein damsels of transcendent beauty and endowed with great charms, who were taught to sing and to play all manner of instruments; they were dressed in silk and gold, and continually walked in these gardens and palaces. The reasons for which the Old Man had these palaces built were the following. Mahomet having said that those who should obey his will should go to paradise, and there find all kinds of luxuries, this prince wished it to be believed that he was the prophet and companion of Mahomet, and that he had the power of sending whom he chose to paradise. No one could succeed in entering the garden, because an impregnable castle had been built at the entrance of the valley, and it could only be approached by a covered and secret way. The Old Man had in his court some young men from ten to twenty years of age, chosen from those inhabitants of the hills who seemed to him capable of bearing arms, and who were bold and courageous. From time to time he administered a certain drink to ten or twelve of these young men, which sent them to sleep, and when they were in deep stupor, he had them carried into the garden. When they awoke, they saw all we have described: they were surrounded by the young damsels, who sang, played instruments together, caressed them, played all sorts of games, and presented them with the most exquisite wines and meats (Fig. 317). So that these young men, satiated with such pleasures, did not doubt that they were in paradise, and would willingly have never gone out of it again.
”At the end of four or five days, the Old Man sent them to sleep again, and had them removed from the garden in the same way in which they had been brought in. He then called them before him, and asked them where they had been. 'By your grace, lord,' they answered, 'we have been in paradise.' And then they related, in the presence of everybody, what they had seen there. This tale excited the astonishment of all those who heard it, and the desire that they might be equally fortunate. The Old Man would then formally announce to those who were present, as follows: 'Thus saith the law of our prophet, He causes all who fight for their Lord to enter into paradise; if you obey me you shall enjoy that happiness.' By such words and plans this prince had so accustomed them to believe in him, that he whom he ordered to die for his service considered himself lucky. All the n.o.bles or other enemies of the Old Man of the Mountain were put to death by the a.s.sa.s.sins in his service; for none of them feared death, provided he complied with the orders and wishes of his lord. However powerful a man might be, therefore, if he was an enemy of the Old Man's, he was sure to meet with an untimely end.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 317.--The Castle of Alamond and its Enchantments.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in ”Marco Polo's Travels,”
Ma.n.u.script of the Fifteenth. Century, in the Library of the a.r.s.enal of Paris.]
In his story, which we translate literally from the original, written in ancient French, the venerable traveller attributes the origin of this singular system of exercising power over the minds of persons to a prince who in reality did but keep up a tradition of his family; for the Alaodin herein mentioned is no other than a successor of the famous Ha.s.san, son of Ali, who, in the middle of the eleventh century, took advantage of the wars which devastated Asia to create himself a kingdom, comprising the three provinces of Turkistan, Djebel, and Syria. Ha.s.san had embraced the doctrine of the Ishmaelian sect, who pretended to explain allegorically all the precepts of the Mahometan religion, and who did away with public wors.h.i.+p, and originated a creed which was altogether philosophical. He made himself the chief exponent of this doctrine, which, by its very simplicity, was sure to attract to him many people of simple and sincere minds. Attacked by the troops of the Sultan Sindgar, he defended himself vigorously and not unsuccessfully; but, fearing lest he should fall in an unequal and protracted struggle against an adversary more powerful than himself, he had recourse to cunning so as to obtain peace. He entranced, or fascinated probably, by means a.n.a.logous to those related by Marco Polo, a slave, who had the daring, during Sindgar's sleep, to stick a sharp dagger in the ground by the side of the Sultan's head. On waking, Sindgar was much alarmed. A few days after, Ha.s.san wrote to him, ”If one had not good intentions towards the Sultan, one might have driven the dagger, which was stuck in the earth by his head, into his bosom.” The Sultan Sindgar then made peace with the chief of the Ishmaelians, whose dynasty lasted for one hundred and seventy years.
The Castle of Alamond, built on the confines of Persia, on the top of a high mountain surrounded with trees, after having been the usual residence of Ha.s.san, became that of his successors. As in the native language the same word means both _prince_ and _old man_, the Crusaders who had heard the word p.r.o.nounced confounded the two, and gave the name of _Old Man of the Mountain_ to the Ishmaelian prince at that time inhabiting the Castle of Alamond, a name which has remained famous in history since the period when the Sire de Joinville published his ”Memoires.”
Ancient authors call the subjects of Ha.s.san, _Haschichini, Heississini, a.s.sissini, a.s.sa.s.sini_, various forms of the same expression, which, in fact, has pa.s.sed into French with a signification which recalls the sanguinary exploits of the Ishmaelians. In seeking for the etymology of this name, one must suppose that Haschichini is the Latin transformation of the Arabic word Hachychy, the name of the sect of which we are speaking, because the ecstacies during which they believed themselves removed to paradise were produced by means of _haschisch_ or _haschischa_.
We know that this inebriating preparation, extracted from hemp, really produces the most strange and delicious hallucinations on those who use it. All travellers who have visited the East agree in saying that its effects are very superior to those of opium. We evidently must attribute to some ecstatic vision the supposed existence of the enchanted gardens, which Marco Polo described from popular tales, and which, of course, never existed but in the imagination of the young men, who were either mentally excited after fasting and prayer, or intoxicated by the haschischa, and consequently for a time lulled in dreams of celestial bliss which they imagined awaited them under the guidance of Ha.s.san and his descendants.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 318.--The Old Man of the Mountain giving Orders to his Followers.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the ”Travels of Marco Polo,”
Ma.n.u.script of the Fifteenth Century (Library of the a.r.s.enal of Paris).]
The Haschischini, whom certain contemporary historians describe to us as infatuated by the hope of some future boundless felicity, owe their melancholy celebrity solely to the blind obedience with which they executed the orders of their chiefs, and to the coolness with which they sought the favourable moment for fulfilling their sanguinary missions (Fig. 318). The Old Man of the Mountain (the master of daggers, _magister cultellorum_, as he is also called by the chronicler Jacques de Vintry), was almost continually at war with the Mussulman princes who reigned from the banks of the Nile to the borders of the Caspian Sea. He continually opposed them with the steel of his fanatical emissaries; at times, also, making a traffic and merchandise of murder, he treated for a money payment with the sultans or emirs, who were desirous of ridding themselves of an enemy. The Ishmaelians thus put to death a number of princes and Mahometan n.o.bles; but, at the time of the Crusades, religious zeal having incited them against the Christians, they found more than one notable victim in the ranks of the Crusaders. Conrad, Marquis of Montferrat, was a.s.sa.s.sinated by them; the great Salah-Eddin (Saladin) himself narrowly escaped them; Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus were pointed out to the a.s.sa.s.sins by the Old Man, who subsequently, on hearing of the immense preparations which Louis IX. was making for the Holy War, had the daring to send two of his followers to France, and even into Paris, with orders to kill that monarch in the midst of his court. This king, after having again escaped, during his sojourn in Palestine, from the murderous attempts of the savage messengers of the Prince of Alamond, succeeded, by his courage, his firmness, and his virtues, in inspiring these fanatics with so much respect, that their chief, looking upon him as protected by heaven, asked for his friends.h.i.+p, and offered him presents, amongst which was a magnificent set of chessmen, in crystal, ornamented with gold and amber.
The successors of Ha.s.san, simultaneously attacked by the Moguls under Houlayon, and by the Egyptians commanded by the Sultan Bibars, were conquered and dispossessed of their States towards the middle of the thirteenth century; but, long after, the Ishmaelians, either because their chiefs sought to recover their power, or because they had placed their daggers at the disposal of some foreign foe, continued notorious in history. At last the sect became extinct, or, at least, retired into obscurity, and renounced its murderous profession, which had for so long made its members such objects of terror.
We have thus seen how a legion of fanatics in the East made themselves the blind and formidable tools of a religious and political chieftain, who was no less ambitious than revengeful. If we now turn our attention to Germany, we shall here find, almost at the same period, a local inst.i.tution which, although very different from the sanguinary court of the Old Man of the Mountain, was of an equally terrible and mysterious character. We must not, however, look at it from the same point of view, for, having been founded with the object of furthering and defending the establishment of a regular social state, which had been approved and sanctioned by the sovereigns, and recognised by the Church, it at times rendered great service to the cause of justice and humanity at a period when might usurped right, and when the excesses and the crimes of shameless evil-doers, and of petty tyrants, entrenched in their impregnable strongholds, were but too often made lawful from the simple fact that there was no power to oppose them.
The secret tribunal of Westphalia, which held its sittings and pa.s.sed sentence in private, and which carried out its decrees on the spot, and whose rules, laws, and actions were enveloped in deep mystery, must unquestionably be looked upon as one of the most remarkable inst.i.tutions of the Middle Ages.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Figs. 319 and 320.--Hermensul or Irmensul and Crodon, Idols of the Ancient Saxons.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the ”Annales Circuli Westphaliae,” by Herman Stangefol: in 4to, 1656.--The Idol Hermensul appears to have presided over Executive Justice, the attributes of which it holds in its hands.]
It would be difficult to state exactly at what period this formidable inst.i.tution was established. A few writers, and amongst these Sebastian Munster, wish us to believe that it was founded by Charlemagne himself.
They affirm that this monarch, having subjugated the Saxons to his sway, and having forced them to be baptized, created a secret tribunal, the duties of which were to watch over them, in order that they might not return to the errors of Paganism. However, the Saxons were incorrigible, and, although Christians, they still carried on the wors.h.i.+p of their idols (Figs. 319 and 320); and, for this reason, it is said by these authorities that the laws of the tribunal of Westphalia were founded by Charlemagne.
It is well known that from the ninth to the thirteenth century, all that part of Germany between the Rhine and the Weser suffered under the most complete anarchy. In consequence of this, and of the increase of crime which remained unpunished, energetic men established a rigorous jurisdiction, which, to a certain extent, suppressed these barbarous disorders, and gave some a.s.surance to social intercourse; but the very mystery which gave weight to the inst.i.tution was the cause of its origin being unknown. It is only mentioned, and then cursorily, in historical doc.u.ments towards the early part of the fifteenth century. This court of judicature received the name of _Femgericht_, or _Vehmgericht_, which means Vehmic tribunal. The origin of the word _Fem_, _Vehm_, or _Fam_, which has given rise to many scientific discussions, still remains in doubt. The most generally accepted opinion is, that it is derived from a Latin expression--_vemi_ (_vae mihi_), ”woe is me!”
The special dominion over which the Vehmic tribunal reigned supreme was Westphalia, and the country which was subjected to its laws was designated as the _Terre Rouge_. There was no a.s.sembly of this tribunal beyond the limits of this Terre Rouge, but it would be quite impossible to define these limits with any accuracy. However, the free judges, a.s.suming the right of suppressing certain crimes committed beyond their territory, on more than one occasion summoned persons living in various parts of Germany, and even in provinces far from Westphalia, to appear before them.