Part 31 (1/2)
110. The close of the Hundred Years' War was followed in England by the Wars of the Roses, between the rival houses which were struggling for the crown. The badge of the house of Lancaster, to which Henry VI belonged, was a red rose, and that of the duke of York, who proposed to push him off his throne, was a white one. Each party was supported by a group of the wealthy and powerful n.o.bles whose rivalries, conspiracies, treasons, murders, and executions fill the annals of England during the period which we have been discussing. Vast estates had come into the hands of the higher n.o.bility by inheritance, and marriages with wealthy heiresses. Many of the dukes and earls were related to the royal family and consequently were inevitably drawn into the dynastic struggles.
[Sidenote: Retainers.]
The n.o.bles no longer owed their power to va.s.sals who were bound to follow them to war. Like the king, they relied upon hired soldiers. It was easy to find plenty of restless fellows who were willing to become the retainers of a n.o.bleman if he would agree to clothe them with his livery and keep open house, where they might eat and drink their fill.
Their master was to help them when they got into trouble, and they on their part were expected to intimidate, misuse, and even murder at need those who opposed the interests of their chief. When the French war was over, the unruly elements of society poured back across the Channel and, as retainers of the rival lords, became the terror of the country. They bullied judges and juries, and helped the n.o.bles to control the selection of those who were sent to Parliament.
[Sidenote: Edward IV secures the crown.]
It is needless to speak of the several battles and the many skirmishes of the miserable Wars of the Roses. These lasted from 1455, when the duke of York set seriously to work to displace the weak-minded Lancastrian king, Henry VI, until the accession of Henry VII, of the house of Tudor, thirty years later. After several battles the Yorkist leader, Edward IV, a.s.sumed the crown in 1461 and was recognized by Parliament, which declared Henry VI and the two preceding Lancastrian kings usurpers.[191] Edward was a vigorous monarch and maintained his own until his death in 1483.
[Sidenote: Edward V, 1483; Richard III, 1483-1485.]
[Sidenote: Death of Richard in the battle of Bosworth Field.]
[Sidenote: Accession of Henry VII of the house of Tudor, 1485.]
[Sidenote: End of the Wars of the Roses.]
Edward's son, Edward V, was only a little boy, so that the government fell into the hands of the young king's uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. The temptation to make himself king was too great to be resisted, and Richard soon seized the crown. Both the sons of Edward IV were killed in the Tower of London, and with the knowledge of their uncle, as it was commonly believed. This murder made Richard unpopular even at a time when one could kill one's political rivals without incurring general opprobrium. A new aspirant to the throne organized a conspiracy. Richard III was defeated and slain in the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, and the crown which had fallen from his head was placed upon that of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. The latter had no particular right to it, although he was descended from Edward III through his mother. He hastened to procure the recognition of Parliament, and married Edward IV's daughter, thus blending the red and white roses in the Tudor badge.[192]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XI]
[Sidenote: The despotism of the Tudors.]
The Wars of the Roses had important results. Nearly all the powerful families of England had been drawn into the fierce struggles, and a great part of the n.o.bility, whom the kings had formerly feared, had perished on the battlefield or lost their heads in the ruthless executions carried out by each party after it gained a victory. This left the king far more powerful than ever before. He could now dominate Parliament, if he could not dispense with it. For a century and more the Tudor kings enjoyed almost despotic power. England ceased for a time to enjoy the free government for which the foundations had been laid under the Edwards and the Lancastrian kings, whose embarra.s.sments at home and abroad had made them constantly dependent upon the aid of the nation.[193]
[Sidenote: France establishes a standing army, 1439.]
111. In France the closing years of the Hundred Years' War had witnessed a great increase of the king's power through the establishment of a well-organized standing army. The feudal army had long since disappeared. Even before the opening of the war the n.o.bles had begun to be paid for their military services and no longer furnished troops as a condition of holding fiefs. But the companies of soldiers, although nominally under the command of royal officers, were often really independent of the king. They found their pay very uncertain, and plundered their countrymen as well as the enemy. As the war drew to a close, the lawless troopers became a terrible scourge to the country and were known as _flayers_, on account of the horrible way in which they tortured the peasants in the hope of extracting money from them. In 1439 the Estates General approved a plan devised by the king, for putting an end to this evil. Thereafter no one was to raise a company without the permission of the king, who was to name the captains and fix the number of the soldiers and the character of their arms.[194]
[Sidenote: The permanent tax fatal to the powers of the Estates General.]
The Estates agreed that the king should use a certain tax, called the _taille_, to support the troops necessary for the protection of the frontier. This was a fatal concession, for the king now had an army and the right to collect what he chose to consider a permanent tax, the amount of which he later greatly increased; he was not dependent, as was the English king, upon the grants made for brief periods by the representatives of the nation.
[Sidenote: The new feudalism.]
Before the king of France could hope to establish a compact, well-organized state it was necessary for him to reduce the power of his va.s.sals, some of whom were almost his equals in strength. The older feudal dynasties, as we have seen, had many of them succ.u.mbed to the attacks and the diplomacy of the kings of the thirteenth century, especially of St. Louis. But he and his successors had raised up fresh rivals by granting whole provinces, called _appanages_,[195] to their younger sons. In this way new and powerful lines of feudal n.o.bles were established, such, for example, as the houses of Orleans, Anjou, Bourbon, and, above all, of Burgundy. The accompanying map shows the region immediately subject to the king--the royal domain--at the time of the expulsion of the English. It clearly indicates what still remained to be done in order to free France from feudalism and make it a great nation. The process of reducing the prerogatives of the n.o.bles had been begun. They had been forbidden to coin money, to maintain armies, and to tax their subjects, and the powers of the king's judges had been extended over all the realm. But the task of consolidating France was reserved for the son of Charles VII, the shrewd and treacherous Louis XI (1461-1483).
[Sidenote: Extent of the Burgundian possessions in the fifteenth century.]
By far the most dangerous of Louis' va.s.sals were Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (1419-1467), and his impetuous son, Charles the Bold (1467-1477). Just a century before Louis XI came to the throne, the old line of Burgundian dukes had died out, and in 1363 the same King John whom the English captured and carried off to England, presented Burgundy to his younger son Philip.[196] By fortunate marriages and lucky windfalls the dukes of Burgundy had added a number of important fiefs to their original possessions, and Philip the Good ruled over Franche-Comte, Luxembourg, Flanders, Artois, Brabant, and other provinces and towns which lie in what is now Holland and Belgium.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Louis XI]
[Sidenote: Ambition of Charles the Bold, 1467-1477.]
Charles the Bold busied himself for some years before his father's death in forming alliances with the other powerful French va.s.sals and conspiring against Louis. Upon becoming duke himself he set his heart upon two things. He resolved, first, to conquer Lorraine, which divided his territories into two parts and made it difficult to pa.s.s from Franche-Comte to Luxembourg. In the second place, he proposed to have himself crowned king of the territories which his forefathers had acc.u.mulated and in this way establish a strong new state between France and Germany.