Part 3 (1/2)

Philip, King of France, saw with dismay his richest province ruled by a king of England, and his own va.s.sal wearing a crown with power superior to his own! A door had thus opened through which would enter entangling complications and countless woes in the future.

While William was trampling England into the dust, and with pitiless hand rivetting a feudal chain upon the Saxons, another and greater centre of power was developing at Rome, where the monk Hildebrand, who had now become Pope Gregory VII., claimed a universal sovereignty from which there was no appeal. Christ was King of Kings. So, as His vicegerent upon earth, the authority of the pope was absolute in Christendom.

The moment of this supreme elevation in the Church was reached at Canossa, 1072, when Henry, the excommunicated Emperor of Germany, came barefooted, in winter, and prostrated himself before Gregory VII. If Charlemagne had worn the Church as a precious jewel in his crown in the ninth century, now in the eleventh the Church wore all the European states as a tiara of jewels in her mitre. With supreme wisdom, and with a sure instinct for power, her supremacy had been rooted first in the hearts of the people, then the mailed hand laid upon their rulers.

CHAPTER VII.

The corner-stone of the social structure in France was the dogma that work was degrading; and not only manual labor, but anything done with the object of producing wealth was a degradation. The only honorable occupation for a gentleman was either to pray or to fight.

Society in France was, therefore, divided into three cla.s.ses: the _Clergy_, called the ”First Estate”; the _n.o.bility_, composing the ”Second Estate,” and the working and trading cla.s.ses, the ”Third Estate,” or _Tiers etat_.

Out of reverence for their spiritual office, precedence in rank was given to the clergy. But the actual ruling cla.s.s was the n.o.bility.

The business of the clergy was to minister to souls. The business of the n.o.bility was warfare. That of the third estate, the toiling cla.s.s, being to _support the other two_. And whatever existed in the form of property or wealth in feudal times was produced by the _Tiers etat_.

The lowest stratum of the third estate was composed of ”serfs.” A serf belonged absolutely, with all that he possessed, to his lord. He was attached to his land, as are the trees which are rooted in it. There was, however, a cla.s.s of serfs above this whom we should now call slaves, but who were by French law then designated as _Freemen_.

A freeman might go and come under certain restrictions. But this did not by any means imply that he was freed from the proprietor to whom he belonged, to whom he was inevitably bound for military service, or for such contributions or claims as might be levied upon him.

As was to be expected, it was in the cities that this half-emanc.i.p.ated cla.s.s congregated; these cities as naturally becoming the centres of the various industries required to supply the necessities and luxuries of the two ruling cla.s.ses. In this way there were being created various centres of wealth, which meant power, and which would have to be reckoned with in the future.

The thin edge of the wedge was inserted when individual freemen offered money to their hard-pressed feudal lords in exchange for certain privileges, and then for charters. And as more money was needed by proprietors for their lavish expenditures, more freedom and more charters were acquired, until, having purchased immunities and privileges enough to make them to some extent self-governing, the town became what was called a _commune_.

It was Louis VI., fifth king in the Capetian line, who completed this work of emanc.i.p.ation by recognizing the communes as free cities, and bestowing franchises clearly defining their rights. By this act the body of the manufacturing cla.s.s, or _burgesses_, was recognized as a part of the body politic, and was _enfranchised_.

A free city was a small republic. The entire body of inhabitants must take the communal oath, and when summoned by the tolling of the bell must all appear at the meeting of the General a.s.sembly for the purpose of choosing their magistrates. This done, the a.s.sembly dissolved, and the magistrates were left with a free hand to rule or ruin, until checked by popular outbreak or a new election.

As is always the case, time developed two cla.s.ses: an inferior population, with a furious spirit of democracy, and a superior cla.s.s, more conservative, and desirous of keeping peace with the great proprietors.

In this simple, humble fas.h.i.+on were the people groping toward freedom, and experimenting with the alphabet of self-government.

The acknowledgment of the free cities by Louis VI., was the first move toward an alliance between the king and the people; an alliance which would eventually wrest the power from the hands of the n.o.bles. But that end was still far off. Another accession to the kingly power came in the succeeding reign when Louis VII. married Eleanor, daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine; and her great inheritance, the largest of the feudal states, was thereby annexed to the crown: a marriage which made some troublesome chapters in the history of two kingdoms, of which we shall hear later. But, in the duel between king and peerage, the balance of power was moving toward the throne.

At the time these things were happening that great event, the Crusades, had already commenced.

It was in 1095 that Peter the Hermit, returning from a pilgrimage, by command of the Pope went throughout Europe proclaiming the desecration of the holy places. At a council held at Clermont in France, 1095, the first Crusade was proclaimed by Urban II. Led by Peter the Hermit, a vast undisciplined host, without preparation, rushed indiscriminately toward Asia Minor, peris.h.i.+ng by famine, disease, and the sword before they reached their goal. Undismayed by this, another Crusade was immediately organized under the direction of the greatest n.o.bles in France; and in three years (1099) the Holy City had been captured, the Cross floated over the Holy Sepulchre, and G.o.dfrey of Boulogne, leader of the expedition, was proclaimed King of Jerusalem.

France had inaugurated the most extraordinary movement in the history of civilization. Appealing as it did to the knightly and to the romantic ideal, what an opportunity was here for idle adventurous n.o.bles, their occupation gone through changed conditions! If the Church, by ”the Truce of G.o.d,” had bid them sheathe their swords, now she bade them to be drawn in the defence of all that was sacred. The entire body of n.o.bility would have rushed if it could to the Holy Land.

Poor barons sold or mortgaged their lands and their castles, and the Third Estate grew rich, and the free cities still freer, upon the necessities of the hour. But all cla.s.ses, from king to serf, were for the first time moved by a common sentiment; and not alone France, but the choicest and best of Europe was poured in one great volume of pa.s.sionate zeal into those successive waves which eight times inundated Palestine. Private interests sacrificed or forgotten, life, treasure, all eagerly given, for what? That a small bit of territory a thousand miles distant be torn from profaning infidels, because it was the birthplace of a religion these champions failed to comprehend; a religion worn upon their battle-flags but not in their hearts.

The second Crusade, 1147, was led by Conrad, Emperor of Germany, and Louis VII. of France. The profligate conduct of Queen Eleanor, who accompanied her royal consort, led to serious political conditions.

Louis appealed to the pope, who consented to the divorce he desired.

This proved simply an exchange of thrones for the fascinating Eleanor.

Henry II. of England, already the possessor of immense estates in France, inherited from his father, realized that with Aquitaine, Queen Eleanor's dowry, added to his own, and these again to Normandy, a marriage with the divorced wife of his rival would make him possessor of more than three times the size of the domain controlled by the French king.

The marriage was solemnized in 1152, and France saw her war with the feudal barons overshadowed by the fight for her very life with England, who had fastened this tremendous grasp upon her kingdom.