The corner-stone of the social structure in France was the dogma that
work was degrading; and not only manual labor, but anything done with
the object of producing wealth was a degradation. The only honorable
occupation for a gentleman was either to pray or to fight.
Society in France was, therefore, divided into three classes: the
_Clergy_, called the "First Estate"; the _Nobility_, composing the
"Second Estate," and the working and trading classes, the "Third
Estate," or _Tiers État_.
Out of reverence for their spiritual office, precedence in rank was
given to the clergy. But the actual ruling class was the nobility.
The business of the clergy was to minister to souls. The business of
the nobility was warfare. That of the third estate, the toiling class,
being to _support the other two_. And whatever existed in the form of
property or wealth in feudal times was produced by the _Tiers État_.
The lowest stratum of the third estate was composed of "serfs." A serf
belonged absolutely, with all that he possessed, to his lord. He was
attached to his land, as are the trees which are rooted in it. There
was, however, a class of serfs above this whom we should now call
slaves, but who were by French law then designated as _Freemen_.
A freeman might go and come under certain restrictions. But this did
not by any means imply that he was freed from the proprietor to whom he
belonged, to whom he was inevitably bound for military service, or for
such contributions or claims as might be levied upon him.
As was to be expected, it was in the cities that this half-emancipated
class congregated; these cities as naturally becoming the centres of
the various industries required to supply the necessities and luxuries
of the two ruling classes. In this way there were being created
various centres of wealth, which meant power, and which would have to
be reckoned with in the future.
The thin edge of the wedge was inserted when individual freemen offered
money to their hard-pressed feudal lords in exchange for certain
privileges, and then for charters. And as more money was needed by
proprietors for their lavish expenditures, more freedom and more
charters were acquired, until, having purchased immunities and
privileges enough to make them to some extent self-governing, the town
became what was called a _commune_.
It was Louis VI., fifth king in the Capetian line, who completed this
work of emancipation by recognizing the communes as free cities, and
bestowing franchises clearly defining their rights. By this act the
body of the manufacturing class, or _burgesses_, was recognized as a
part of the body politic, and was _enfranchised_.
A free city was a small republic. The entire body of inhabitants must
take the communal oath, and when summoned by the tolling of the bell
must all appear at the meeting of the General Assembly for the purpose
of choosing their magistrates. This done, the assembly dissolved, and
the magistrates were left with a free hand to rule or ruin, until
checked by popular outbreak or a new election.
As is always the case, time developed two classes: an inferior
population, with a furious spirit of democracy, and a superior class,
more conservative, and desirous of keeping peace with the great
proprietors.
In this simple, humble fashion were the people groping toward freedom,
and experimenting with the alphabet of self-government.
The acknowledgment of the free cities by Louis VI., was the first move
toward an alliance between the king and the people; an alliance which
would eventually wrest the power from the hands of the nobles. But
that end was still far off. Another accession to the kingly power came
in the succeeding reign when Louis VII. married Eleanor, daughter of
the Duke of Aquitaine; and her great inheritance, the largest of the
feudal states, was thereby annexed to the crown: a marriage which made
some troublesome chapters in the history of two kingdoms, of which we
shall hear later. But, in the duel between king and peerage, the
balance of power was moving toward the throne.
At the time these things were happening that great event, the Crusades,
had already commenced.
It was in 1095 that Peter the Hermit, returning from a pilgrimage, by
command of the Pope went throughout Europe proclaiming the desecration
of the holy places. At a council held at Clermont in France, 1095, the
first Crusade was proclaimed by Urban II. Led by Peter the Hermit, a
vast undisciplined host, without preparation, rushed indiscriminately
toward Asia Minor, perishing by famine, disease, and the sword before
they reached their goal. Undismayed by this, another Crusade was
immediately organized under the direction of the greatest nobles in
France; and in three years (1099) the Holy City had been captured, the
Cross floated over the Holy Sepulchre, and Godfrey of Boulogne, leader
of the expedition, was proclaimed King of Jerusalem.
France had inaugurated the most extraordinary movement in the history
of civilization. Appealing as it did to the knightly and to the
romantic ideal, what an opportunity was here for idle adventurous
nobles, their occupation gone through changed conditions! If the
Church, by "the Truce of God," had bid them sheathe their swords, now
she bade them to be drawn in the defence of all that was sacred. The
entire body of nobility would have rushed if it could to the Holy Land.
Poor barons sold or mortgaged their lands and their castles, and the
Third Estate grew rich, and the free cities still freer, upon the
necessities of the hour. But all classes, from king to serf, were for
the first time moved by a common sentiment; and not alone France, but
the choicest and best of Europe was poured in one great volume of
passionate zeal into those successive waves which eight times inundated
Palestine. Private interests sacrificed or forgotten, life, treasure,
all eagerly given, for what? That a small bit of territory a thousand
miles distant be torn from profaning infidels, because it was the
birthplace of a religion these champions failed to comprehend; a
religion worn upon their battle-flags but not in their hearts.
The second Crusade, 1147, was led by Conrad, Emperor of Germany, and
Louis VII. of France. The profligate conduct of Queen Eleanor, who
accompanied her royal consort, led to serious political conditions.
Louis appealed to the pope, who consented to the divorce he desired.
This proved simply an exchange of thrones for the fascinating Eleanor.
Henry II. of England, already the possessor of immense estates in
France, inherited from his father, realized that with Aquitaine, Queen
Eleanor's dowry, added to his own, and these again to Normandy, a
marriage with the divorced wife of his rival would make him possessor
of more than three times the size of the domain controlled by the
French king.
The marriage was solemnized in 1152, and France saw her war with the
feudal barons overshadowed by the fight for her very life with England,
who had fastened this tremendous grasp upon her kingdom.
The first truly great Capetian king came with this emergency. Philip
Augustus, son of Louis VII., in the year 1180, when only fifteen years
of age, seized the reins with the hand of a born ruler. Before he was
twenty-one he had broken up a combination of feudal barons against him.
Then he turned to England. Queen Eleanor and her sons were conspiring
against Henry II. So he made friends with them. The palace on the
island in the Seine was an asylum where John and Richard might plot
against their father. And when a third Crusade was planned, 1189, it
had as leaders Philip Augustus of France, Richard I., who had just
succeeded his father, Henry II., as King of England, and Barbarossa
(Frederick I.), the great Emperor of Germany. Before the Holy Land was
reached the wise and crafty Philip Augustus and the fiery Richard had
quarrelled.
Philip had been carefully observing these two brothers who were
successively to wear the crown of England. He knew the foibles of the
romantic and picturesque Richard; and he also knew that John, corrupt
to the core, was a traitor to whom no trust would be sacred. In his
own cold-blooded fashion he intended to use them both.
John had conspired against his own father, now Philip would help him to
supplant his brother, while Richard was safely occupied in Palestine.
And when he had made John king, he, Philip Augustus, was to be rewarded
by the gift of Normandy! With this in view, Philip returned to France.
It was an ingenious plot, but all was spoiled by Richard's safe return
from the thrilling adventures of the Crusade. In 1199, however, the
crown passed naturally to John by the death of his brother, and this
vicious son of Eleanor was King of England.
There were other means of recovering his lost possessions. Philip
espoused the cause of the young Arthur, John's nephew, a rival claimant
to the English throne. And when that ill-fated Prince was murdered, as
is believed by the orders of his uncle, for this and other offences
King John, as Duke of Normandy--thence vassal to the King of
France--was summoned to be tried by his peers.
When after oft-repeated summons John refused to appear at Philip's
court, by feudal law the King of France had legal authority to take
possession of the dukedom.
In vain did King John strive to defend by arms his vanishing
possessions. In the war which ensued, all north of the Loire was
seized by Philip, and at one stroke he had mastered his enemies at home
and abroad.
Not only were Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou restored to France,
but they were hereafter to be held, not by dukes and counts, as before,
but by the king, as a part of the royal domain. And kingship, towering
high above all the great barons of France, had for the first time
become a reality.
It was Philip's policy of expansion which gave color to his reign; not
an expansion which would bring extension into foreign lands, but
solidity and firmness of outline to France itself. We have seen how
and why this policy was vigorously carried out in the north. The
growth toward the south is a less pleasant story.
The province of Toulouse, nominally subject to France, was actually
ruled by Raymond VI., "by grace of God" Count of Toulouse. Perhaps if
this province had not possessed and controlled several ports on the
Mediterranean, while France had none at all, it might not have been
discovered that this home of the "gay science," and of minstrelsy, and
of all that was gentle and refining, was in fact the nursery of a
dangerous heresy, and that the poetic, music-loving children of
Provence reviled the cross and worshipped the devil!
We can easily imagine that in this highly developed community there had
arisen a spirit of inquiry into prevailing conditions and beliefs in
the Church. And we can also imagine that a crafty sovereign saw in
this an opportunity to serve his own ends. And so, Pope Innocent III.
ordered a Crusade, and John de Montfort not only opened up the
Mediterranean ports for Philip, but brought Toulouse, the greatest of
the remaining feudal states, into subjection to the King of France; at
the same time forever silencing the voice of the heretic, of the
minstrel, and of the harp; even the speech, with its delicate
inflections and musical intonations, disappeared, to be heard
nevermore. Such, in brief, is the story of the "Albigensian War," so
called on account of the heresy having been brought into Provence by
the Albigenses from Switzerland.
After a century and a half Normandy was restored. Its reabsorption
into France marked the parting of the ways in two kingdoms. _Kingship_
was reinforced in one, and _citizenship_ developed in the other. In
England the nobles and the people drew closer together, resolved to
defend themselves from a vicious king, and this determined effort to
curtail the royal prerogative produced the _Magna Charta_, which
forever secured the liberties of Englishmen (1215). In France, on the
contrary, the power was moved in one volume toward the king and
despotism. Both nations were in the hands of fate--a fate, too, which
was using unscrupulous men to accomplish its great purposes for each.
But however we may disparage Philip's heart and aims, no one can deny
the breadth and superiority of his mind and his statesmanship. He was
a Charlemagne made on a smaller scale, and without a conscience. Not
one of the successors of Clovis or of Pepin had so intelligently
grasped the sources of permanent growth in a nation. He may have been
false of tongue and unprincipled in deed, but he took the free cities
under his personal protection, opened up trade with foreign lands,
beautified Paris and France. He may, under the cloak of religion, have
permitted unjustifiable cruelties against the most innocent, the most
gifted province in Europe, in order to secure access to the sea for
France. But he left the _communes_ richer and happier, his kingdom
freer from local tyrannies, transformed from a pandemonium of
struggling knights and barons into the nearest approach yet realized to
a modern state.