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 kingship. 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

analogous in their aim, and in every case neither assuming nor pretending

to assume 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 municipal 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 Constituent Assembly, 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 anticipated 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 assumed 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

entitle 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 substitute, or would fain

substitute, 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

documents 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

countships of Normandy,” says William of Jumiege, “all the peasants,

assembling 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 assembly 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

assemblage. 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.”

[Illustration: 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 fashion, and we shall work our will on flood and in field

and wood.”

These two passages 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 municipal 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, Marseilles, Arles, Nismes,

Narbonne, Toulouse, &c. At Arles the municipality actually bore the name

of commune (_communitas_), Toulouse gave her municipal 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 municipalities appears but rarely

and confusedly in history; but in this there is nothing peculiar to the

towns and the municipal regimen, for confusion and obscurity were at that

time universal, and the nascent feudal system was plunged therein as well

as the dying little municipal systems were. Many Roman municipalities

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 municipal 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 municipality 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

illustrious parents who, as worldly dignity is accounted, were notable by

reason of senatorial rank; and Gregory of Tours quotes a judgment

delivered by the principals (_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 municipal 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 municipal

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 kingship 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

assumed 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 municipal 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 municipal franchises and its privileges; they never

raised it to a commune, properly so called, by a charter sworn to and

guaranteed by independent institutions, 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 space 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 kingship 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.

[Illustration: 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 title 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 institution of communes. He saw in this institution a sort of

necessity beneath which it would be inevitable sooner or later, Willy

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 documents entitled _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 noble idea before the word commune had served at Noyon as

the rallying cry of popular insurrection. Of his own mere motion he

convoked in assembly all the inhabitants of the town, clergy, knights,

traders, and craftsmen. He presented them with a charter which

constituted the body of burghers an association 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 ownership of their property, and the right of not being handed

over to justice save before their own municipal 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

pronounced 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 God 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, constituted

by the counsel and in an assembly 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 God 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.

I have taken my side in the opinions of the world, and with calmness and

indifference on my own account I expect to be exposed to all sorts of

language, to be as it were beaten with rods. I proceed with my task,

being fully purposed to bear with equanimity the judgments of all who

come snarling after me.”

Laon was at the end of the eleventh century one of the most important

towns in the kingdom of France. It was full of rich and industrious

inhabitants; the neighboring people came thither for provisions or

diversion; and such concourse led to the greatest disturbances. “The

nobles and their servitors,” says M. Augustin Thierry, “sword in hand,

committed robbery upon the burghers; the streets of the town were not

safe by night or even by day, and none could go out without running a

risk of being stopped and robbed or killed. The burghers in their turn

committed violence upon the peasants, who came to buy or sell at the

market of the town.” “Let me give as example,” says Guibert of Nogent,

“a single fact, which, had it taken place amongst the Barbarians or the

Scythians, would assuredly have been considered the height of wickedness,

in the judgment even of those who recognize no law. On Saturday the

inhabitants of the country places used to leave their fields, and come

from all sides to Laon to get provisions at the market. The townsfolk

used then to go round the place, carrying in baskets, or bowls, or

otherwise, samples of vegetables, or grain, or any other article, as if

they wished to sell. They would offer them to the first peasant who was

in search of such things to buy; he would promise to pay the price agreed

upon; and then the seller would say to the buyer, ‘Come with me to my

house to see and examine the whole of the articles I am selling you.’ The

other would go; and then, when they came to the bin containing the goods,

the honest seller would take off and hold up the lid, saying to the

buyer, ‘Step hither, and put your head or arms into the bin, to make

quite sure that it is all exactly the same goods as I showed you

outside.’ And then when the other, jumping on to the edge of the bin,

remained leaning on his belly, with his head and shoulders hanging down,

the worthy seller, who kept in the rear, would hoist up the thoughtless

rustic by the feet, push him suddenly into the bin, and, clapping on the

lid as he fell, keep him shut up in this safe prison until he had bought

himself out.”

In 1106 the bishopric of Laon had been two years vacant. It was sought

after and obtained for a sum of money, say contemporaries, by Gaudri, a

Norman by birth, referendary of Henry I., King of England, and one of

those Churchmen who, according to M. Augustin Thierry’s expression, “had

gone in the train of William the Bastard to seek their fortunes amongst

the English by seizing the property of the vanquished.” It appears that

thenceforth the life of Gaudri had been scarcely edifying; he had, it is

said, the tastes and habits of a soldier; he was hasty and arrogant, and

he liked beyond everything to talk of fighting and hunting, of arms, of

horses, and of hounds. When he was repairing with a numerous following

to Rome, to ask for confirmation of his election, he met at Langres Pope

Pascal II., come to France to keep the festival of Christmas at the abbey

of Cluny. The pope had no doubt heard something about the indifferent

reputation of the new bishop, for, the very day after his arrival at

Langres, he held a conference with the ecclesiastics who had accompanied

Gaudri, and plied them with questions concerning him. “He asked us

first,” says Guibert of Nogent, who was in the train, “why we had chosen

a man who was unknown to us. As none of the priests, some of whom did

not know even the first rudiments of the Latin language, made any answer

to this question, he turned to the abbots. I was seated between my two

colleagues. As they likewise kept silence, I began to be urged, right

and left, to speak. I was one of those whom this election had

displeased; but with culpable timidity I had yielded to the authority of

my superiors in dignity. With the bashfulness of youth I could only with

great difficulty and much blushing prevail upon myself to open my mouth.

The discussion was carried on, not in our mother tongue, but in the

language of scholars. I therefore, though with great confusion of mind

and face, betook myself to speaking in a manner to tickle the palate of

him who was questioning us, wrapping up in artfully arranged form of

speech expressions which were softened down, but were not entirely

removed from the truth. I said that we did not know, it was true, to the

extent of having been familiar by sight and intercourse with him, the man

of whom we had made choice, but that we had received favorable reports of

his integrity. The pope strove to confound my arguments by this

quotation from the Gospel: ‘He that hath seen giveth testimony.’ But as

he did not explicitly raise the objection that Gaudri had been elected by

desire of the court, all subtle subterfuge on any such point became

useless; so I gave it up, and confessed that I could say nothing in

opposition to the pontiff’s words; which pleased him very much, for he

had less scholarship than would have become his high office. Clearly

perceiving, however, that all the phrases I had piled up in defence of

our election had but little weight, I launched out afterwards upon the

urgent straits wherein our Church was placed, and on this subject I gave

myself the more rein in proportion as the person elected was unfitted for

the functions of the episcopate.”

[Illustration: Burghers of Laon----220]

Gaudri was indeed very scantily fitted for the office of bishop, as the

town of Laon was not slow to perceive. Scarcely had he been installed

when he committed strange outrages. He had a man’s eyes put out on

suspicion of connivance with his enemies; and he tolerated the murder of

another in the metropolitan church. In imitation of rich crusaders on

their return from the East, he kept a black slave, whom he employed upon

his deeds of vengeance. The burghers began to be disquieted, and to wax

wroth. During a trip the bishop made to England, they offered a great

deal of money to the clergy and knights who ruled in his absence, if they

would consent to recognize by a genuine Act the right of the commonalty

of the inhabitants to be governed by authorities of their own choice.

“The clergy and knights,” says a contemporary chronicler, “came to an

agreement with the common folk in hopes of enriching themselves in a

speedy and easy fashion.” A commune was therefore set up and proclaimed

at Laon, on the model of that of Noyon, and invested with effective

powers. The bishop, on his return, was very wroth, and for some days

abstained from re-entering the town. But the burghers acted with him, as

they had with his clergy and the knights: they offered him so large a sum

of money that “it was enough,” says Guibert of Nogent, “to appease the

tempest of his words.” He accepted the commune, and swore to respect it.

The burghers wished to have a higher warranty; so they sent to Paris, to

King Louis the Fat, a deputation laden with rich presents. “The king,”

says the chronicler, “won over by this plebeian bounty, confirmed the

commune by his own oath,” and the deputation took back to Laon their

charter sealed with the great seal of the crown, and augmented by two

articles to the following purport: “The folks of Laon shall not be liable

to be forced to law away from their town; if the king have a suit against

any one amongst them, justice shall be done him in the episcopal court.

For these advantages, and others further granted to the aforesaid

inhabitants by the king’s munificence, the folks of the commune have

covenanted to give the king, besides the old plenary court dues, and

man-and-horse dues [dues paid for exemption from active service in case

of war], three lodgings a year, if he come to the town, and, if he do not

come, they will pay him instead twenty livres for each lodging.”

For three years the town of Laon was satisfied and tranquil; the burghers

were happy in the security they enjoyed, and proud of the liberty they

had won. But in 1112 the knights, the clergy of the metropolitan church,

and the bishop himself had spent the money they had received, and keenly

regretted the power they had lost; and they meditated reducing to the old

condition the serfs emancipated from the yoke. The bishop invited King

Louis the Fat to come to Laon for the keeping of Holy Week, calculating

upon his presence for the intimidation of the burghers. “But the

burghers, who were in fear of ruin, says Guibert of Nogent, “promised the

king and those about him four hundred livres, or more, I am not quite

sure which; whilst the bishop and the grandees, on their side, urged the

monarch to come to an understanding with them, and engaged to pay him

seven hundred livres. King Louis was so striking in person that he

seemed made expressly for the majesty of the throne; he was courageous in

war, a foe to all slowness in business, and stout-hearted in adversity;

sound, however, as he was on every other point, he was hardly

praiseworthy in this one respect, that he opened too readily both heart

and ear to vile fellows corrupted by avarice. This vice was a fruitful

source of hurt, as well as blame, to himself, to say nothing of

unhappiness to many. The cupidity of this prince always caused him to

incline towards those who promised him most. All his own oaths, and

those of the bishops and the grandees, were consequently violated.” The

charter sealed with the king’s seal was annulled; and on the part of the

king and the bishop, an order was issued to all the magistrates of the

commune to cease from their functions, to give up the seal and banner of

the town, and to no longer ring the belfry chimes which rang out the

opening and closing of their audiences. But at this proclamation, so

violent was the uproar in the town, that the king, who had hitherto

lodged in a private hotel, thought it prudent to leave, and go to pass

the night in the episcopal palace, which was surrounded by strong walls.

Not content with this precaution, and probably a little ashamed of what

he had done, he left Laon the next morning at daybreak, with all his

train, without waiting for the festival of Easter, for the celebration

of which he had undertaken his journey.

All the day after his departure the shops of the tradespeople and the

houses of the innkeepers were kept closed; no sort of article was offered

for sale; everybody remained shut up at home. But when there is wrath at

the bottom of men’s souls, the silence and stupor of the first paroxysm

are of short duration. Next day a rumor spread that the bishop and the

grandees were busy “in calculating the fortunes of all the citizens, in

order to demand that, to supply the sum promised to the king, each should

pay on account of the destruction of the commune as much as each had

given for its establishment.” In a fit of violent indignation the

burghers assembled; and forty of them bound themselves by oath, for life

or death, to kill the bishop and all those grandees who had labored for

the ruin of the commune. The archdeacon, Anselm, a good sort of man, of

obscure birth, who heartily disapproved of the bishop’s perjury, went

nevertheless and warned him, quite privately, and without betraying any

one, of the danger that threatened him, urging him not to leave his

house, and particularly not to accompany the procession on Easter-day.

“Pooh!” answered the bishop, “I die by the hands of such fellows!” Next

day, nevertheless, he did not appear at matins, and did not set foot

within the church; but when the hour for the procession came, fearing to

be accused of cowardice, he issued forth at the head of his clergy,

closely followed by his domestics and some knights with arms and armor

under their clothes. As the company filed past, one of the forty

conspirators, thinking the moment favorable for striking the blow, rushed

out suddenly from under an arch, with a shout of “_Commune! commune!_”

A low murmur ran through the throng; but not a soul joined in the shout

or the movement, and the ceremony carne to an end without any explosion.

The day after, another solemn procession was to take place to the church

of St. Vincent. Somewhat reassured, but still somewhat disquieted, the

bishop fetched from the domains of the bishopric a body of peasants, some

of whom he charged to protect the church, others his own palace, and once

more accompanied the procession without the conspirators daring to attack

him. This time he was completely reassured, and dismissed the peasants

he had sent for. “On the fourth day after Easter,” says Guibert of

Nogent, “my corn having been pillaged in consequence of the disorder that

reigned in the town, I repaired to the bishop’s, and prayed him to put a

stop to this state of violence. ‘What do you suppose,’ said he to me,

‘those fellows can do with all their outbreaks? Why, if my blackamoor

John were to pull the nose of the most formidable amongst them, the poor

devil durst not even grumble. Have I not forced them to give up what

they called their commune, for the whole duration of my life?’ I held my

tongue,” adds Guibert; “many folks besides me warned him of his danger;

but he would not deign to believe anybody.”

Three days later all seemed quiet; and the bishop was busy with his

archdeacon in discussing the sums to be exacted from the burghers. All

at once a tumult arose in the town; and a crowd of people thronged the

streets, shouting “_Commune! commune!_” Bands of burghers armed with

swords, axes, bows, hatchets, clubs, and lances, rushed into the

episcopal palace. At the news of this, the knights who had promised the

bishop to go to his assistance if he needed it came up one after another

to his protection; and three of them, in succession, were hotly attacked

by the burgher bands, and fell after a short resistance. The episcopal

palace was set on fire. The bishop, not being in a condition to repulse

the assaults of the populace, assumed the dress of one of his own

domestics, fled to the cellar of the church, shut himself in, and

ensconced himself in a cask, the bung-hole of which was stopped up by a

faithful servitor. The crowd wandered about everywhere in search of him

on whom they wished to wreak their vengeance. A bandit named Teutgaud,

notorious in those times for his robberies, assaults, and murders of

travellers, had thrown himself headlong into the cause of the commune.

The bishop, who knew him, had by way of pleasantry and on account of his

evil mien given him the nickname of _Isengrin_. This was the name which

was given in the fables of the day to the wolf, and which corresponded to

that of Master Reynard. Teutgaud and his men penetrated into the cellar

of the church; they went along tapping upon all the casks; and on what

suspicion there is no knowing, but Teutgaud halted in front of that in

which the bishop was huddled up, and had it opened, crying, “Is there any

one here?” “Only a poor prisoner,” answered the bishop, trembling. “Ha!

ha!” said the playful bandit, who recognized the voice, “so it is you,

Master Isengrin, who are hiding here! “And he took him by the hair, and

dragged him out of his cask. The bishop implored the conspirators to

spare his life, offering to swear on the Gospels to abdicate the

bishopric, promising them all the money he possessed, and saying that if

they pleased he would leave the country. The reply was insults and

blows. He was immediately despatched; and Teutgaud, seeing the episcopal

ring glittering on his finger, cut off the finger to get possession of

the ring. The body, stripped of all covering, was thrust into a corner,

where passers-by threw stones or mud at it, accompanying their insults

with ribaldry and curses.

[Bishop Gaudri dragged from the Cask----224]

Murder and arson are contagious. All the day of the insurrection and all

the following night armed bands wandered about the streets of Laon

searching everywhere for relatives, friends, or servitors of the bishop,

for all whom the angry populace knew or supposed to be such, and wreaking

on their persons or their houses a ghastly or a brutal vengeance. In a

fit of terror many poor innocents fled before the blind wrath of the

populace; some were caught and cut down pell-mell amongst the guilty;

others escaped through the vineyards planted between two hills in the

outskirts of the town. “The progress of the fire, kindled on two sides

at once, was so rapid,” says Guibert of Nogent, “and the winds drove the

flames so furiously in the direction of the convent of St. Vincent, that

the monks were afraid of seeing all they possessed become the fire’s

prey, and all the persons who had taken refuge in this monastery trembled

as if they had seen swords hanging over their heads.” Some insurgents

stopped a young man who had been body-servant to the bishop, and asked

him whether the bishop had been killed or not; they knew nothing about

it, nor did he know any more; he helped them to look for the corpse, and

when they came upon it, it had been so mutilated that not a feature was

recognizable. “I remember,” said the young man, “that when the prelate

was alive he liked to talk of deeds of war, for which to his hurt he

always showed too much bent; and he often used to say that one day in a

sham-fight, just as he was, all in the way of sport, attacking a certain

knight, the latter hit him with his lance, and wounded him under the

neck, near the tracheal artery.” The body of Gaudri was eventually

recognized by this mark, and “Archdeacon Anselm went the next day,” says

Guibert of Nogent, “to beg of the insurgents permission at least to bury

it, if only because it had once borne the title and worn the insignia of

bishop. They consented, but reluctantly. It were impossible to tell how

many threats and insults were launched against those who undertook the

obsequies, and what outrageous language was vented against the dead

himself. His corpse was thrown into a half-dug hole, and at church there

was none of the prayers or ceremonies prescribed for the burial of, I

will not say a bishop, but the worst of Christians.” A few days

afterwards, Raoul, Archbishop of Rheims, came to Laon to purify the

church. “The wise and venerable archbishop,” says Guibert, “after

having, on his arrival, seen to more decently disposing the remains of

some of the dead and celebrated divine service in memory of all, amidst

the tears and utter grief of their relatives and connections, suspended

the holy sacrifice of the mass, in order to deliver a discourse, touching

those execrable institutions of communes, whereby we see serfs, contrary

to all right and justice, withdrawing themselves by force from the lawful

authority of their masters.”

Here is a striking instance of the changeableness of men’s feelings and

judgments; and it causes a shock even when it is natural and almost

allowable. Guibert of Nogent, the contemporary historian, who was but

lately loud in his blame of the bishop of Laon’s character and conduct,

now takes sides with the reaction aroused by popular excesses and

vindictiveness, and is indignant with “those execrable institutions of

communes,” the source of so many disturbances and crimes. The burghers

of Laon themselves, “having reflected upon the number and enormity of the

crimes they had committed, shrank up with fear,” says Guibert, “and

dreaded the judgment of the king.” To protect themselves against the

consequences of his resentment, they added a fresh wound to the old by

summoning to their aid Thomas de Marle, son of Lord Enguerrand de Coucy.

“This Thomas, from his earliest youth, enriched himself by plundering the

poor and the pilgrim, contracted several incestuous marriages, and

exhibited a ferocity so unheard of in our age, that certain people, even

amongst those who have a reputation for cruelty, appear less lavish of

the blood of common sheep than Thomas was of human blood. Such was the

man whom the burghers of Laon implored to come and put himself at their

head, and whom they welcomed with joy when he entered their town. As for

him, when he had heard their request, he consulted his own people to know

what he ought to do; and they all replied that his forces were not

sufficiently numerous to defend such a city against the king. Thomas

then induced the burghers to go out and hold a meeting in a field where

he would make known to them his plan. When they were about a mile from

the town, he said to them, ‘Laon is the head of the kingdom; it is

impossible for me to keep the king from making himself master of it. If

you dread his arms, follow me to my own land, and you will find in me a

protector and a friend.’ These words threw them into an excess of

consternation; soon, however, the popular party, troubled at the

recollection of the crime they had committed, and fancying they already

saw the king threatening their lives, fled away to the number of a great

many in the wake of Thomas. Teutgaud himself, that murderer of Bishop

Gaudri, hastened to put himself under the wing of the Lord of Marie.

Before long the rumor spread abroad amongst the population of the

country-places near Laon that that town was quite empty of inhabitants;

and all the peasants rushed thither and took possession of the houses

they found without defenders. Who could tell, or be believed if he were

to attempt to tell, how much money, raiment, and provision of all kinds

was discovered in this city? Before long there arose between the first

and last comers disputes about the partition of their plunder; all that

the small folks had taken soon passed into the hands of the powerful; if

two men met a third quite alone they stripped him; the state of the town

was truly pitiable. The burghers who had quitted it with Thomas de Marle

had beforehand destroyed and burned the houses of the clergy and grandees

whom they hated; and now the grandees, escaped from the massacre, carried

off in their turn from the houses of the fugitives all means of

subsistence and all movables to the very hinges and bolts.”

The rumor of so many disasters, crimes, and reactions succeeding one

another spread rapidly throughout all districts. Thomas de Marle was put

under the ban of the kingdom, and visited with excommunication “by a

general assembly of the Church of the Gauls,” says Guibert of Nogent,

“assembled at Beauvais; “and this sentence was read every Sunday after

mass in all the metropolitan and parochial churches. Public feeling

against Thomas de Marle became so strong that Enguerrand de Bowes, Lord

of Coucy, who passed, says Suger, for his father, joined those who

declared war against him in the name of Church and King. Louis the Fat

took the field in person against him. “Men-at-arms, and in very small

numbers, too,” says Guibert of Nogent, “were with difficulty induced to

second the king, and did not do so heartily; but the light-armed infantry

made up a considerable force, and the Archbishop of Rheims and the

bishops had summoned all the people to this expedition, whilst offering

to all absolution from their sins. Thomas de Marle, though at that time

helpless and stretched upon his bed, was not sparing of scoffs and

insults towards his assailants; and at first he absolutely refused to

listen to the king’s summons.” But Louis persisted without wavering in

his enterprise, exposing himself freely, and in person leading his

infantry to the attack when the men-at-arms did not come on or bore

themselves slackly. He carried successively the castles of Crecy and

Nogent, domains belonging to Thomas de Marle, and at last reduced him to

the necessity of buying himself off at a heavy ransom, indemnifying the

churches he had spoiled, giving guarantees for future behavior, and

earnestly praying for re-admission to the communion of the faithful. As

for those folks of Laon, perpetrators of or accomplices in the murder of

Bishop Gaudri, who had sought refuge with Thomas de Marle, the king

showed them no mercy. “He ordered them,” says Suger, “to be strung up to

the gibbet, and left for food to the voracity of kites, and crows, and

vultures.”

There are certain discrepancies between the two accounts, both

contemporaneous, which we possess of this incident in the earliest years

of the twelfth century, one in the Life of Louis the Fat, by Suger, and

the other in the Life of Guibert of Nogent, by himself. They will be

easily recognized on comparing what was said, after Suger, in Chapter

XVIII. of this history, with what has just been said here after Guibert.

But these discrepancies are of no historical importance, for they make no

difference in respect of the essential facts characteristic of social

condition at the period, and of the behavior and position of the actors.

Louis the Fat, after his victory over Thomas de Marle and the fugitives

from Laon, went to Laon with the Archbishop of Rheims; and the presence

of the king, whilst restoring power to the foes of the commune, inspired

them, no doubt, with a little of the spirit of moderation, for there was

an interval of peace, during which no attention was paid to anything but

expiatory ceremonies and the restoration of the churches which had been a

prey to the flames. The archbishop celebrated a solemn mass for the

repose of the souls of those who had perished during the disturbances,

and he preached a sermon exhorting serfs to submit themselves to their

masters, and warning them on pain of anathema from resisting by force.

The burghers of Laon, however, did not consider every sort of resistance

forbidden, and the lords had, no doubt, been taught not to provoke it,

for in 1128, sixteen years after the murder of Bishop Gaudri, fear of a

fresh insurrection determined his successor to consent to the institution

of a new commune, the charter of which was ratified by Louis the Fat in

an assembly held at Compiegne. Only the name of commune did not recur in

this charter; it was replaced by that of Peace-establishment; the

territorial boundaries of the commune were called peace-boundaries, and

to designate its members recourse was had to the formula, _All those who

have signed this peace_. The preamble of the charter runs, “In the name

of the holy and indivisible Trinity, we Louis, by the grace of God king

of the French, do make known to all our lieges present and to come that,

with the consent of the barons of our kingdom and the inhabitants of the

city of Laon, we have set up in the said city a peace-establishment.”

And after having enumerated the limits, forms, and rules of it, the

charter concludes with this declaration of amnesty: “All former

trespasses and offences committed before the ratification of the present

treaty are wholly pardoned. If any one, banished for having trespassed

in past time, desire to return to the town, he shall be admitted and

shall recover possession of his property. Excepted from pardon, however,

are the thirteen whose names do follow; “and then come the names of the

thirteen excepted from the amnesty and still under banishment.

“Perhaps,” says M. Augustin Thierry, “these thirteen under banishment,

shut out forever from their native town at the very moment it became

free, had been distinguished amongst all the burghers of Laon by their

opposition to the power of the lords; perhaps they had sullied by deeds

of violence this patriotic opposition; perhaps they had been taken at

haphazard to suffer alone for the crimes of their fellow-citizens.” The

second hypothesis appears the most probable; for that deeds of violence

and cruelty had been committed alternately by the burghers and their foes

is an ascertained fact, and that the charter of 1128 was really a work of

liberal pacification is proved by its contents and wording. After such

struggles and at the moment of their subsidence some of the most violent

actors always bear the burden of the past, and amongst the most violent

some are often the most sincere.

For forty-seven years after the charter of Louis the Fat the town of Laon

enjoyed the internal peace and the communal liberties it had thus

achieved; but in 1175 a new bishop, Roger de Rosoy, a man of high birth,

and related to several of the great lords his neighbors, took upon

himself to disregard the regimen of freedom established at Laon. The

burghers of Laon, taught by experience, applied to the king, Louis the

Young, and offered him a sum of money to grant them a charter of commune.

Bishop Roger, “by himself and through his friends,” says a chronicler, a

canon of Laon, “implored the king to have pity on his Church, and abolish

the serfs’ commune; but the king, clinging to the promise he had received

of money, would not listen to the bishop or his friends,” and in 1177

gave the burghers of Laon a charter which confirmed their peace-

establishment of 1128. Bishop Roger, however, did not hold himself

beaten. He claimed the help of the lords his neighbors, and renewed the

war against the burghers of Laon, who, on their side, asked and obtained

the aid of several communes in the vicinity. In an access of democratic

rashness, instead of awaiting within their walls the attack of their

enemies, they marched out without cavalry to the encounter, ravaging as

they went the lands of the lords whom they suspected of being

ill-disposed towards them; but on arriving in front of the bishop’s

allies, “all this rustic multitude,” says the canon-chronicler, “terror-

stricken at the bare names of the knights they found assembled, took

suddenly to flight, and a great number of the burghers were massacred

before reaching their city.” Louis the Young then took the field to help

them; but Baldwin, Count of Hainault, went to the aid of the Bishop of

Laon with seven hundred knights and several thousand infantry. King

Louis, after having occupied and for some time held in sequestration the

lands of the bishop, thought it advisable to make peace rather than

continue so troublesome a war, and at the intercession of the pope and

the Count of Hainault he restored to Roger de Rosoy his lands and his

bishopric on condition of living in peace with the commune. And so long

as Louis VII. lived, the bishop did refrain from attacking the liberties

of the burghers of Laon; but at the king’s death, in 1180, he applied to

his successor, Philip Augustus, and offered to cede to him the lordship

of Fere-sur-Oise, of which he was the possessor, provided that Philip by

charter abolished the commune of Laon. Philip yielded to the temptation,

and in 1190 published an ordinance to the following purport: “Desiring to

avoid for our soul every sort of danger, we do entirely quash the commune

established in the town of Laon as being contrary to the rights and

liberties of the metropolitan church of St. Mary, in regard for justice

and for the sake of a happy issue to the pilgrimage which we be bound to

make to Jerusalem.” But next year, upon entreaty and offers from the

burghers of Laon, Philip changed his mind, and without giving back the

lordship of Fere-sur-Oise to the bishop, guaranteed and confirmed in

perpetuity the peace-establishment granted in 1128 to the town of Laon,

“on the condition that every year at the feast of All Saints they shall

pay to us and our successors two hundred livres of Paris.” For a century

all strife of any consequence ceased between the burghers of Laon and

their bishop; there was no real accord or good under-standing between

them, but the public peace was not troubled, and neither the Kings of

France nor the great lords of the neighborhood interfered in its affairs.

In 1294 some knights and clergy of the metropolitan chapter of Laon took

to quarrelling with some burghers; and on both sides they came to deeds

of violence, which caused sanguinary struggles in the streets of the town

and even in the precincts of the episcopal palace. The bishop and his

chapter applied to the pope, Boniface VIII., who applied to the king,

Philip the Handsome, to put an end to these scandalous disturbances.

Philip the Handsome, in his turn, applied to the Parliament of Paris,

which, after inquiry, “deprived the town of Laon of every right of

commune and college, under whatsoever name.” The king did not like to

execute this decree in all its rigor. He granted the burghers of Laon a

charter which maintained them provisionally in the enjoyment of their

political rights, but with this destructive clause: “Said commune and

said shrievalty shall be in force only so far as it shall be our

pleasure.” For nearly thirty years, from Philip the Handsome to Philip

of Valois, the bishops and burghers of Laon were in litigation before the

crown of France, the former for the maintenance of the commune of Laon in

its precarious condition and at the king’s good pleasure, the latter for

the recovery of its independent and durable character. At last, in 1331,

Philip of Valois, “considering that the olden commune of Laon, by reason

of certain misdeeds and excesses, notorious, enormous, and detestable,

had been removed and put down forever by decree of the court of our most

clear lord and uncle, King Philip the Handsome, confirmed and approved by

our most dear lords, Kings Philip and Charles, whose souls are with God,

we, on great deliberation of our council, have ordained that no commune,

corporation, college, shrievalty, mayor, jurymen, or any other estate or

symbol belonging thereto, be at any time set up or established at Laon.”

By the same ordinance the municipal administration of Laon was put under

the sole authority of the king and his delegates; and to blot out all

remembrance of the olden independence of the commune, a later ordinance

forbade that the tower from which the two huge communal bells had been

removed should thenceforth be called belfry-tower.

[Illustration: The Cathedral of Laon----233]

The history of the commune of Laon is that of the majority of the towns

which, in Northern and Central France, struggled from the eleventh to the

fourteenth century to release themselves from feudal oppression and

violence. Cambrai, Beauvais, Amiens, Soissons, Rheims, Vezelay, and

several other towns displayed at this period a great deal of energy and

perseverance in bringing their lords to recognize the most natural and

the most necessary rights of every human creature and community. But

within their walls dissensions were carried to extremity, and existence

was ceaselessly tempestuous and troublous; the burghers were hasty,

brutal, and barbaric,--as barbaric as the lords against whom they were

defending their liberties. Amongst those mayors, sheriffs, jurats, and

magistrates of different degrees and with different titles, set up in the

communes, many came before very long to exercise dominion arbitrarily,

violently, and in their own personal interests. The lower orders were in

an habitual state of jealousy and sedition of a ruffianly kind towards

the rich, the heads of the labor market, the controllers of capital and

of work. This reciprocal violence, this anarchy, these internal evils

and dangers, with their incessant renewals, called incessantly for

intervention from without; and when, after releasing themselves from

oppression and iniquity coming from above, the burghers fell a prey to

pillage and massacre coming from below, they sought for a fresh protector

to save them from this fresh evil. Hence that frequent recourse to the

king, the great suzerain whose authority could keep down the bad

magistrates of the commune or reduce the mob to order; and hence also,

before long, the progressive downfall, or, at any rate, the utter

enfeeblement of those communal liberties so painfully won. France was at

that stage of existence and of civilization at which security can hardly

be purchased save at the price of liberty. We have a phenomenon peculiar

to modern times in the provident and persistent effort to reconcile

security with liberty, and the bold development of individual powers with

the regular maintenance of public order. This admirable solution of the

social problem, still so imperfect and unstable in our time, was unknown

in the middle ages; liberty was then so stormy and so fearful, that

people conceived before long, if not a disgust for it, at any rate a

horror of it, and sought at any price a political regimen which would

give them some security, the essential aim of the social estate. When we

arrive at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth

century, we see a host of communes falling into decay or entirely

disappearing; they cease really to belong to and govern themselves; some,

like Laon, Cambrai, Beauvais, and Rheims, fought a long while against

decline, and tried more than once to re-establish themselves in all their

independence; but they could not do without the king’s support in their

resistance to their lords, laic or ecclesiastical; and they were not in a

condition to resist the kingship, which had grown whilst they were

perishing. Others, Meulan and Soissons, for example (in 1320 and 1335),

perceived their weakness early, and themselves requested the kingship to

deliver them from their communal organization, and itself assume their

administration. And so it is about this period, under St. Louis and

Philip the Handsome, that there appear in the collections of acts of the

French kingship, those great ordinances which regulate the administration

of all communes within the kingly domains. Hitherto the kings had

ordinarily dealt with each town severally; and as the majority were

almost independent, or invested with privileges of different kiwis and

carefully respected, neither the king nor any great suzerain dreamed of

prescribing general rules for communal regimen, nor of administering

after a uniform fashion all the communes in their domains. It was under

St. Louis and Philip the Handsome that general regulations on this

subject began. The French communes were associations too small and too

weak to suffice for self-maintenance and self-government amidst the

disturbances of the great Christian community; and they were too numerous

and too little enlightened to organize themselves into one vast

confederation, capable of giving them a central government. The communal

liberties were not in a condition to found in France a great republican

community; to the kingship appertained the power and fell the honor of

presiding over the formation and the fortunes of the French nation.

But the kingship did not alone accomplish this great work. At the very

time that the communes were perishing and the kingship was growing, a new

power, a new social element, the Third Estate, was springing up in

France; and it was called to take a far more important place in the

history of France, and to exercise far more influence upon the fate of

the French father-land, than it had been granted to the communes to

acquire during their short and incoherent existence.

It may astonish many who study the records of French history from the

eleventh to the fourteenth century, not to find anywhere the words third

estate; and a desire may arise to know whether those inquirers of our day

who have devoted themselves professedly to this particular study, have

been more successful in discovering that grand term at the time when it

seems that we ought to expect to meet with it. The question was,

therefore, submitted to a learned member of the _Academie des

Inscriptions et Belles-lettres,_ M. Littre, in fact, whose _Dictionnaire

etymologique de la Langur Francaise_ is consulted with respect by the

whole literary world, and to a young magistrate, M. Picot, to whom the

_Acacdemie des Sciences morales et politiques_ but lately assigned the

first prize for his great work on the question it had propounded, as to

the history and influence of states-general in France; and here are

inserted, textually, the answers given by two gentlemen of so much

enlightenment and authority upon such a subject.

M. Littre, writing on the 3d of October, 1871, says, “I do not find, in

my account of the word, third estate before the sixteenth century. I

quote these two instances of it: ‘As to the third order called third

estate . . .’ (_La Noue, Discours,_ p. 541); and ‘clerks and deputies

for the third estate, same for the estate of labor (laborers).’

(_Coustumier general,_ t. i. p. 335.) In the fifteenth century, or at

the end of the fourteenth, in the poems of Eustace Deschamps, I have--

‘_Prince, dost thou yearn for good old times again?

In good old ways the Three Estates restrain._’

“At date of fourteenth century, in Du Cange, we read under the word

status, ‘_Per tres status concilii generalis Praelatorum, Baronum,

nobilium et universitatum comitatum._’ According to these documents, I

think it is in the fourteenth century that they began to call the three

orders _tres status_, and that it was only in the sixteenth century that

they began to speak in French of the _tiers estat_ (third estate). But I

cannot give this conclusion as final, seeing that it is supported only by

the documents I consulted for my dictionary.”

M. Picot replied on the 3d of October, 1871, “It is certain that acts

contemporary with King John frequently speak of the ‘three estates,’ but

do not utter the word _tiers-etat_ (third estate). The great chronicles

and Froissart say nearly always, ‘the church-men, the nobles, and the

good towns.’ The royal ordinances employ the same terms; but sometimes,

in order not to limit their enumeration to the deputies of closed cities,

they add, _the good towns, and the open country_ (Ord. t. iii p. 221,

note). When they apply to the provincial estates of the _Oil_ tongue it

is the custom to say, the burghers and inhabitants; when it is a question

of the Estates of Languedoc, the commonalties of the seneschalty. Such

were, in the middle of the fourteenth century, the only expressions for

designating the third order.

“Under Louis XI., Juvenal des Ursins, in his harangue, addresses the

deputies of the third by the title of _burghers and inhabitants of the

good towns_. At the States of Tours, the spokesman of the estates, John

de Rely, says, _the people of the common estate, the estate of the

people_. The special memorial presented to Charles VIII. by the three

orders of Languedoc likewise uses the word _people_.

“It is in Masselin’s report and the memorial of grievances presented in

1485 that I meet for the first time with the expression third estate

(_tiers-etat_). Masselin says, ‘It was decided that each section should

furnish six commissioners, two ecclesiastics, two nobles, and two of the

third estate (_duos ecclesiasticos, duos nobiles, et duos tertii

status._)’ (_Documents inedits sur l’Histoire de France; proces-verbal de

Masselin,_ p. 76.) The commencement of the chapter headed _Of the Commons

(du commun)_ is, ‘For the third and common estate the said folks do

represent . . .’ and a few lines lower, comparing the kingdom with the

human body, the compilers of the memorial say, ‘The members are the

clergy, the nobles, and the folks of the third estate. (_Ibid. after

the report of Masselin, memorial of grievances,_ p. 669.)

“Thus, at the end of the fifteenth century, the expression third estate

was constantly employed; but is it not of older date? There are words

which spring so from the nature of things that they ought to be

contemporaneous with the ideas they express; their appearance in language

is inevitable, and is scarcely noticed there. On the day when the

deputies of the communes entered an assembly, and seated themselves

beside the first two orders, the new comer, by virtue of the situation

and rank occupied, took the name of third order; and as our fathers used

to speak of the third denier (_tiers denier_), and the third day (_tierce

journee_), so they must have spoken of the (_tiers-etat_) third estate.

It was only at the end of the fifteenth century that the expression

became common; but I am inclined to believe that it existed in the

beginning of the fourteenth.

“For an instant I had imagined, in the course of my researches, that,

under King John, the ordinances had designated the good towns by the name

of third estate. I very soon saw my mistake; but you will see how near I

found myself to the expression of which we are seeking the origin. Four

times, in the great ordinance of December, 1335, the deputies wrest from

the king a promise that in the next assemblies the resolutions shall be

taken according to the unanimity of the orders ‘without two estates, if

they be of one accord, being able to bind the _third._’ At first sight it

might be supposed that the deputies of the towns had an understanding to

secure themselves from the dangers of common action on the part of the

clergy and noblesse, but a more attentive examination made me fly back to

a more correct opinion: it is certain that the three orders had combined

for mutual protection against an alliance of any two of them. Besides,

the States of 1576 saw how the clergy readopted to their profit, against

the two laic orders, the proposition voted in 1355. It is beyond a doubt

that this doctrine served to keep the majority from oppressing the

minority whatever may have been its name. Only, in point of fact, it was

most frequently the third estate that must have profited by the

regulation.

“In brief, we may, before the fifteenth century, make suppositions, but

they are no more than mere conjectures. It was at the great States of

Tours, in 1468, that, for the first time, the third order bore the name

which has been given to it by history.”

The fact was far before its name. Had the third estate been centred

entirely in the communes at strife with their lords, had the fate of

burgherdom in France depended on the communal liberties won in that

strife, we should see, at the end of the thirteenth century, that element

of French society in a state of feebleness and decay. But it was far

otherwise. The third estate drew its origin and nourishment from all

sorts of sources; and whilst one was within an ace of drying up, the

others remained abundant and fruitful. Independently of the commune

properly so called and invested with the right of self-government, many

towns had privileges, serviceable though limited franchises, and under

the administration of the king’s officers they grew in population and

wealth. These towns did not share, towards the end of the thirteenth

century, in the decay of the once warlike and victorious communes. Local

political liberty was to seek in them; the spirit of independence and

resistance did not prevail in them; but we see growing up in them another

spirit which has played a grand part in French history, a spirit of

little or no ambition, of little or no enterprise, timid even and

scarcely dreaming of actual resistance, but honorable, inclined to order,

persevering, attached to its traditional franchises, and quite able to

make them respected, sooner or later. It was especially in the towns

administered in the king’s name and by his provosts that there was a

development of this spirit, which has long been the predominant

characteristic of French burgherdom. It must not be supposed that, in

the absence of real communal independence, these towns lacked all

internal security. The kingship was ever fearful lest its local officers

should render themselves independent, and remembered what had become in

the ninth century of the crown’s offices, the duchies and the countships,

and of the difficulty it had at that time to recover the scattered

remnants of the old imperial authority. And so the Capetian kings with

any intelligence, such as Louis VI., Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and

Philip the Handsome, were careful to keep a hand over their provosts,

sergeants, and officers of all kinds, in order that their power should

not grow so great as to become formidable. At this time, besides,

Parliament and the whole judicial system was beginning to take form; and

many questions relating to the administration of the towns, many disputes

between the provosts and burghers, were carried before the Parliament of

Paris, and there decided with more independence and equity than they

would have been by any other power. A certain measure of impartiality is

inherent in judicial power; the habit of delivering judgment according to

written texts, of applying laws to facts, produces a natural and almost

instinctive respect for old-acquired rights. In Parliament the towns

often obtained justice and the maintenance of their franchises against

the officers of the king. The collection of kingly ordinances at this

time abounds with instances of the kind. These judges, besides, these

bailiffs, these provosts, these seneschals, and all these officers of the

king or of the great suzerains, formed before long a numerous and

powerful class. Now the majority amongst them were burghers, and their

number and their power were turned to the advantage of burgherdom, and

led day by day to its further extension and importance. Of all the

original sources of the third estate, this it is, perhaps, which has

contributed most to bring about the social preponderance of that order.

Just when burgherdom, but lately formed, was losing in many of the

communes a portion of its local liberties, at that same moment it was

seizing by the hand of Parliaments, provosts, judges, and administrators

of all kinds, a large share of central power. It was through burghers

admitted into the king’s service and acting as administrators or judges

in his name that communal independence and charters were often attacked

and abolished; but at the same time they fortified and elevated

burgherdom, they caused it to acquire from day to day more wealth, more

credit, more importance and power in the internal and external affairs of

the state.

Philip the Handsome, that ambitious and despotic prince, was under no

delusion when in 1302, 1308, and 1314, on convoking the first states-

general of France, he summoned thither “the deputies of the good towns.”

He did not yet give them the name of third estate; but he was perfectly

aware that he was thus summoning to his aid against Boniface VIII. and

the Templars and the Flemings a class already invested throughout the

country with great influence and ready to lend him efficient support.

His son, Philip the Long, was under no delusion when in 1317 and 1321 he

summoned to the states-general “the commonalties and good towns of the

kingdom “to decide upon the interpretation of the Salle law as to the

succession to the throne, “or to advise as to the means of establishing a

uniformity of coins, weights, and measures;” he was perfectly aware that

the authority of burgherdom would be of great assistance to him in the

accomplishment of acts so grave. And the three estates played the

prelude to the formation, painful and slow as it was, of constitutional

monarchy, when, in 1338, under Philip of Valois, they declared, “in

presence of the said king, Philip of Valois, who assented thereto, that

there should be no power to impose or levy talliage in France if urgent

necessity or evident utility did not require it, and then only by grant

of the people of the estates.”

In order to properly understand the French third estate and its

importance, more is required than to look on at its birth; a glance must

be taken at its grand destiny and the results at which it at last

arrived. Let us, therefore, anticipate centuries and get a glimpse, now

at once, of that upon which the course of events from the fourteenth to

the nineteenth century will shed full light.

Taking the history of France in its entirety and under all its phases,

the third estate has been the most active and determining element in the

process of Freneh civilization. If we follow it in its relation with the

general government of the country, we see it at first allied for six

centuries to the kingship, struggling without cessation against the

feudal aristocracy and giving predominance in place thereof to a single

central power, pure monarchy, closely bordering, though with some

frequently repeated but rather useless reservations, on absolute

monarchy. But, so soon as it had gained this victory and brought about

this revolution, the third estate went in pursuit of a new one, attacking

that single power to the foundation of which it had contributed so much

and entering upon the task of changing pure monarchy into constitutional

monarchy. Under whatever aspect we regard it during these two great

enterprises, so different one from the other, whether we study the

progressive formation of French society or that of its government, the

third estate is the most powerful and the most persistent of the forces

which have influenced French civilization.

This fact is unique in the history of the world. We recognize in the

career of the chief nations of Asia and ancient Europe nearly all the

great facts which have agitated France; we meet in them mixture of

different races, conquest of people by people, immense inequality between

classes, frequent changes in the forms of government and extent of public

power; but nowhere is there any appearance of a class which, starting

from the very lowest, from being feeble, despised, and almost

imperceptible at its origin, rises by perpetual motion and by labor

without respite, strengthens itself from period to period, acquires in

succession whatever it lacked, wealth, enlightenment, influence, changes

the face of society and the nature of government, and arrives at last at

such a pitch of predominance that it may be said to be absolutely the

country. More than once in the world’s history the external semblances

of such and such a society have been the same as those which have just

been reviewed here, but it is mere semblance. In India, for example,

foreign invasions and the influx and establishment of different races

upon the same soil have occurred over and over again; but with what

result? The permanence of caste has not been touched; and society has

kept its divisions into distinct and almost changeless classes. After

India take China. There too history exhibits conquests similar to the

conquest of Europe by the Germans; and there too, more than once, the

barbaric conquerors settled amidst a population of the conquered. What

was the result? The conquered all but absorbed the conquerors, and

changelessness was still the predominant characteristic of the social

condition. In Western Asia, after the invasions of the Turks, the

separation between victors and vanquished remained insurmountable; no

ferment in the heart of society, no historical event, could efface this

first effect of conquest. In Persia, similar events succeeded one

another; different races fought and intermingled; and the end was

irremediable social anarchy, which has endured for ages without any

change in the social condition of the country, without a shadow of any

development of civilization.

So much for Asia. Let us pass to the Europe of the Greeks and Romans.

At the first blush we seem to recognize some analogy between the progress

of these brilliant societies and that of French society; but the analogy

is only apparent; there is, once more, nothing resembling the fact and

the history of the French third estate. One thing only has struck sound

judgments as being somewhat like the struggle of burgherdom in the middle

ages against the feudal aristocracy, and that is the struggle between the

plebeians and patricians at Rome. They have often been compared; but it

is a baseless comparison. The struggle between the plebeians and

patricians commenced from the very cradle of the Roman republic; it was

not, as happened in the France of the middle ages, the result of a slow,

difficult, incomplete development on the part of a class which, through a

long course of great inferiority in strength, wealth, and credit, little

by little extended itself and raised itself, and ended by engaging in a

real contest with the superior class. It is now acknowledged that the

struggle at Rome between the plebeians and patricians was a sequel and a

prolongation of the war of conquest, was an effort on the part of the

aristocracy of the cities conquered by Rome to share the rights of the

conquering aristocracy. The families of plebeians were the chief

families of the vanquished peoples; and though placed by defeat in a

position of inferiority, they were not any the less aristocratic

families, powerful but lately in their own cities, encompassed by

clients, and calculated from the very first to dispute with their

conquerors the possession of power. There is nothing in all this like

that slow, obscure, heart-breaking travail of modern burgherdom escaping,

full hardly, from the midst of slavery or a condition approximating to

slavery, and spending centuries, not in disputing political power, but in

winning its own civil existence. The more closely the French third

estate is examined, the more it is recognized as a new fact in the

world’s history, appertaining exclusively to the civilization of modern,

Christian Europe.

Not only is the fact new, but it has for France an entirely special

interest, since--to employ an expression much abused in the present day--

it is a fact eminently French, essentially national. Nowhere has

burgherdom had so wide and so productive a career as that which fell to

its lot in France. There have been communes in the whole of Europe, in

Italy, Spain, Germany, and England, as well as in France. Not only have

there been communes everywhere, but the communes of France are not those

which, as communes, under that name and in the middle ages, have played

the chiefest part and taken the highest place in history. The Italian

communes were the parents of glorious republics. The German communes

became free and sovereign towns, which had their own special history, and

exercised a great deal of influence upon the general history of Germany.

The communes of England made alliance with a portion of the English

feudal aristocracy, formed with it the preponderating house in the

British government, and thus played, full early, a mighty part in the

history of their country. Far were the French communes, under that name

and in their day of special activity, from rising to such political

importance and to such historical rank. And yet it is in France that the

people of the communes, the burgherdom, reached the most complete and

most powerful development, and ended by acquiring the most decided

preponderance in the general social structure. There have been communes,

we say, throughout Europe; but there has not really been a victorious

third estate anywhere, save in France. The revolution of 1789, the

greatest ever seen, was the culminating point arrived at by the third

estate; and France is the only country in which a man of large mind

could, in a burst of burgher’s pride, exclaim, “What is the third estate?

Everything.”

Since the explosion, and after all the changes, liberal and illiberal,

due to the revolution of 1789, there has been a common-place, ceaselessly

repeated, to the effect that there are no more classes in French society

--there is only a nation of thirty-seven millions of persons. If it be

meant that there are now no more privileges in France, no special laws

and private rights for such and such families, proprietorships, and

occupations, and that legislation is the same, and there is perfect

freedom of movement for all, at all steps of the social ladder, it is

true; oneness of laws and similarity of rights, is now the essential and

characteristic fact of civil society in France, an immense, an excellent,

and a novel fact in the history of human associations. But beneath the

dominance of this fact, in the midst of this national unity and this

civil equality, there evidently and necessarily exist numerous and

important diversities and inequalities, which oneness of laws and

similarity of rights neither prevent nor destroy. In point of property,

real or personal, land or capital, there are rich and poor; there are the

large, the middling, and the small property. Though the great

proprietors may be less numerous and less rich, and the middling and the

small proprietors more numerous and more powerful than they were of yore,

this does not prevent the difference from being real and great enough to

create, in the civil body, social positions widely different and unequal.

In the professions which are called liberal, and which live by brains and

knowledge, amongst barristers, doctors, scholars, and literates of all

kinds, some rise to the first rank, attract to themselves practice and

success, and win fame, wealth, and influence; others make enough, by hard

work, for the necessities of their families and the calls of their

position; others vegetate obscurely in a sort of lazy discomfort. In the

other vocations, those in which the labor is principally physical and

manual, there also it is according to nature that there should be

different and unequal positions; some, by brains and good conduct, make

capital, and get a footing upon the ways of competence and progress;

others, being dull, or idle, or disorderly, remain in the straitened and

precarious condition of existence depending solely on wages. Throughout

the whole extent of the social structure, in the ranks of labor as well

as of property, differences and inequalities of position are produced or

kept up and co-exist with oneness of laws and similarity of rights.

Examine any human associations, in any place and at any time, and

whatever diversity there may be in point of their origin, organization,

government, extent, and duration, there will be found in all three types

of social position always fundamentally the same, though they may appear

under different and differently distributed forms; 1st, men living on

income from their properties, real or personal, land or capital, without

seeking to increase them by their own personal and assiduous labor; 2d,

men devoted to working up and increasing, by their own personal and

assiduous labor, the real or personal properties, land or capital they

possess; 3d, men living by their daily labor, without land or capital to

give them an income. And these differences, these inequalities in the

social position of men, are not matters of accident or violence, or

peculiar to such and such a time, or such and such a country; they are

matters of universal application, produced spontaneously in every human

society by virtue of the primitive and general laws of human nature, in

the midst of events and under the influence of social systems utterly

different.

These matters exist now and in France as they did of old and elsewhere.

Whether you do or do not use the name of classes, the new French social

fabric contains, and will not cease to contain, social positions widely

different and unequal. What constitutes its blessing and its glory is,

that privilege and fixity no longer cling to this difference of

positions; that there are no more special rights and advantages legally

assigned to some and inacessible to others; that all roads are free and

open to all to rise to everything; that personal merit and toil have an

infinitely greater share than was ever formerly allowed to them in the

fortunes of men. The third estate of the old regimen exists no more; it

disappeared in its victory over privilege and absolute power; it has for

heirs the middle classes, as they are now called; but these classes,

whilst inheriting the conquests of the old third estate, hold them on new

conditions also, as legitimate as binding. To secure their own

interests, as well as to discharge their public duty, they are bound to

be at once conservative and liberal; they must, on the one hand, enlist

and rally beneath their flag the old, once privileged superioritics,

which have survived the fall of the old regimen, and, on the other hand,

fully recognize the continual upward movement which is fermenting in the

whole body of the nation. That, in its relations with the aristocratic

classes, the third estate of the old regimen should have been and for a

long time remained uneasy, disposed to take umbrage, jealous and even

envious, is no more than natural; it had its rights to urge and its

conquests to gain; nowadays its conquests have been won, the rights are

recognized, proclaimed, and exercised; the middle classes have no longer

any legitimate ground for uneasiness or envy; they can rest with full

confidence in their own dignity and their own strength; they have

undergone all the necessary trials, and passed all the necessary tests.

In respect of the lower orders, and the democracy properly so called, the

position of the middle classes is no less favorable; they have no fixed

line of separation; for who can say where the middle classes begin and

where they end? In the name of the principles of common rights and

general liberty they were formed; and by the working of the same

principles they are being constantly recruited, and are incessantly

drawing new vigor from the sources whence they sprang. To maintain

common rights and free movement upwards against the retrograde tendencies

of privilege and absolute power, on the one hand, and on the other

against the insensate and destructive pretensions of levellers and

anarchists, is now the double business of the middle classes; and it is

at the same time, for themselves, the sure way of preserving

preponderance in the state, in the name of general interests, of which

those classes are the most real and most efficient representatives.

On reaching, in our history, the period at which Philip the Handsome, by

giving admission amongst the states-general to the “burghers of the good

towns,” substituted the third estate for the communes, and the united

action of the three great classes of Frenchmen for their local struggles,

we did well to halt a while, in order clearly to mark the position and

part of the new actor in the great drama of national life. We will now

return to the real business of the drama, that is, to the history of

France, which became, in the fourteenth century, more complex, more

tragic, and more grand than it had ever yet been.