Church--who came to the throne in 1226, while a child of
eleven years, was a king of so noble a type that he stands
nearly alone in history. Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor, and
King Alfred of England, are the only sovereigns who seem
worthy to be compared with him; and even the purity of those
rare souls is not quite so simple and so selfless, perhaps, as
that which shines in the beautiful character of this most
Christian king. His goodness was of that quality which rises
to greatness--above all other measures of greatness in the
distinction of men. It was of that quality which even a wicked
world is compelled to feel and to bend to as a power, much
exceeding the power of state-craft or of the sword. Of all the
kings of his line, this Saint Louis was probably the one who
had least thought of a royal interest in France distinct from
the interest of the people of France; and the one who
consciously did least to aggrandize the monarchy and enlarge
its powers; but no king before him or after him was so much
the true architect of the foundations of the absolute French
monarchy of later times. His constant purpose was to give
peace to his kingdom and justice to his people; to end
violence and wrong-doing.
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In pursuing this purpose, he gave a new character and a new
influence to the royal courts,--established them in public
confidence,--accustomed his subjects to appeal to them; he
denounced the brutal senselessness of trials by combat, and
commanded their abolition; he gave encouragement to the study
and the introduction of Roman law, and so helped to dispel the
crude political as well as legal ideas that feudalism rested
on. His measures in these directions all tended to the
undermining of the feudal system and to the breaking down of
the independence of the great vassals who divided sovereignty
with the king. At the same time the upright soul of King
Louis, devotedly pious son of the Church as he was, yielded
his conscience to it, and the just ordinances of his kingdom,
no more than he yielded to the haughty turbulence of the great
vassals of the crown.
The great misfortunes of the reign of Saint Louis were the two
calamitous Crusades in which he engaged (1248-1254, and 1270),
and in the last of which he died. They were futile in every
way--as unwisely conducted as they were unwisely conceived;
but they count among the few errors of a noble, great life.
Regarded altogether, in the light which after-history throws
back upon it, the reign of Louis IX. is more loftily
distinguished than any other in the annals of France.
Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface.
There is little to distinguish the reign of St. Louis' son,
Philip III., "le Hardi," "the Rash" (1270-1285), though the
remains of the great fief of Toulouse were added in his time
to the royal domain; but under the grandson of St. Louis, the
fourth Philip, surnamed "le Bel," there was a season of storms
in France. This Philip was unquestionably a man of clear, cold
intellect, and of powerful, unbending will. There was nothing
of the soldier in him, much of the lawyer-like mind and
disposition. The men of the gown were his counsellors; he
advanced their influence, and promoted the acceptance in
France of the principles of the Roman or civil law, which were
antagonistic to feudal ideas. In his attitude towards the
Papacy--which had declined greatly in character and power
within the century past--he was extraordinarily bold. His
famous quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII. resulted in
humiliations to the head of the Church from which, in some
respects, there was no recovery. The quarrel arose on
questions connected chiefly with the taxing of the clergy. The
Pope launched one angry Bull after another against the
audacious king, and the latter retorted with Ordinances which
were as effective as the Bulls. Excommunication was defied;
the Inquisition was suppressed in France; appeal taken to a
General Council of the Church. At last Boniface suffered
personal violence at the hands of a party of hired ruffians,
in French pay, who attacked him at his country residence, and
received such indignities that he expired soon after of shame
and rage. The pope immediately succeeding died a few months
later, and dark suspicions as to the cause of his death were
entertained; for he gave place (1305) to one, Clement V., who
was the tool of the French king, bound to him by pledges and
guarantees before his election. This Pope Clement removed the
papal residence from Rome to Avignon, and for a long
period--the period known as "the Babylonish Captivity"--the
Holy See was subservient to the monarchy of France.
In this contest with the Papacy, Philip threw himself on the
support of the whole body of his people, convoking (1302) the
first meeting of the Three Estates--the first of the few
general Parliaments--ever assembled in France.
Destruction of the Templars.
A more sinister event in the reign of Philip IV. was his
prosecution and destruction of the famous Order of the Knights
Templars. The dark, dramatic story has been told many times,
and its incidents are familiar. Perhaps there will never be
agreement as to the bottom of truth that might exist in the
charges brought against the Order; but few question the fact
that its blackest guilt in the eyes of the French King was its
wealth, which he coveted and which he was resolved to find
reasons for taking to himself. The knights were accused of
infidelity, blasphemy, and abominable vices. They were tried,
tortured, tempted to confessions, burned at the stake, and
their lands and goods were divided between the Crown and the
Knights of St. John.
Flemish Wealth and Independence.
The wilful king had little mercy in his cold heart and few
scruples in his calculating brain. His character was not
admirable; but the ends which he compassed were mostly good
for the strength and independence of the monarchy of France,
and, on the whole, for the welfare of the people subject to
it. Even the disasters of his reign had sometimes their good
effect: as in the case of his failure to subjugate the great
county of Flanders. Originally a fief of the Kings of France,
it had been growing apart from the French monarchy, through
the independent interests and feelings that rose in it with
the increase of wealth among its singularly industrious and
thrifty people. The Low Countries, or Netherlands, on both
sides of the Rhine, had been the first in western Europe to
develop industrial arts and the trade that goes with them in a
thoroughly intelligent and systematic way. The Flemings were
leaders in this industrial development. Their country was full
of busy cities,--communes, with large liberties in
possession,--where prosperous artisans, pursuing many crafts,
were organized in gilds and felt strong for the defense of
their chartered rights. Ghent exceeded Paris in riches and
population at the end of the thirteenth century. Bruges was
nearly its equal; and there were many of less note. The
country was already a prize to be coveted by kings; and the
kings of France, who claimed the rights of feudal superiority
over its count, had long been seeking to make their
sovereignty direct, while the spirit of the Flemings carried
them more and more toward independence.
In 1294, Philip IV. became involved in war with Edward I. of
England over Guienne. Flanders, which traded largely with
England and was in close friendship with the English king and
people, took sides with the latter, and was basely abandoned
when Philip and Edward made peace, in 1302. The French king
then seized his opportunity to subjugate the Flemings, which
he practically accomplished for a time, mastering all of their
cities except Ghent. His need and his greed made the burden of
taxes which he now laid on these new subjects very heavy and
they were soon in revolt. By accident, and the folly of the
French, they won a fearfully decisive victory at Courtray,
where some thousands of the nobles and knights of France
charged blindly into a canal, and were drowned, suffocated and
slaughtered in heaps. The carnage was so great that it broke
the strength of the feudal chivalry of France, and the French
crown, while it lost Flanders, yet gained power from the very
disaster.
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In 1314, Philip IV. died, leaving three sons, who occupied the
throne for brief terms in succession: Louis X, surnamed Hutin
(disorder), who survived his father little more than a year;
Philip V., called "the Long" (1316-1322), and Charles IV.,
known as "the Fair" (1322-1328). With the death of Charles the
Fair, the direct line of the Capetian Kings came to an end,
and Philip, Count of Valois, first cousin of the late kings,
and grandson of Philip III., came to the throne, as Philip
VI.--introducing the Valois line of kings.
Claims of Edward III. of England.
The so-called Salic law, excluding females, in France, from
the throne, had now, in the arrangement of these recent
successions, been affirmed and enforced. It was promptly
disputed by King Edward III. of England, who claimed the
French crown by right of his mother, daughter of Philip IV.
and sister of the last three kings. His attempt to enforce
this claim was the beginning of the wicked, desolating
"Hundred Years War" between England and France, which
well-nigh ruined the latter, while it contributed in the
former to the advancement of the commons in political power.
England after the Norman Conquest.
The England of the reign of Edward III., when the Hundred
Years War began, was a country quite different in condition
from that which our narrative left, at the time it had yielded
(about 1071) to William the Norman conqueror. The English
people were brought low by that subjugation, and the yoke
which the Normans laid upon them was heavy indeed. They were
stripped of their lands by confiscation; they were disarmed
and disorganized; every attempt at rebellion failed miserably,
and every failure brought wider confiscations. The old
nobility suffered most and its ranks were thinned. England
became Norman in its aristocracy and remained English in its
commons and its villeinage.
Modified Feudalism in England.
Before the Conquest, feudalism had crept into its southern
parts and was working a slow change of its old free Germanic
institutions. But the Normans quickened the change and widened
it. At the same time they controlled it in certain ways,
favorably both to the monarchy and the people. They
established a feudal system, but it was a system different
from that which broke up the unity of both kingdoms of the
Franks. William, shrewd statesman that he was, took care that
no dangerous great fiefs should be created; and he took care,
too, that every landlord in England should swear fealty direct
to the king,--thus placing the Crown in immediate relations
with all its subjects, permitting no intermediary lord to take
their first allegiance to himself and pass it on at second
hand to a mere crowned overlord.
The effect of this diluted organization of feudalism in
England was to make the monarchy so strong, from the
beginning, that both aristocracy and commons were naturally
put on their defence against it, and acquired a feeling of
association, a sense of common interest, a habit of alliance,
which became very important influences in the political
history of the nation. In France, as we have seen, there had
been nothing of this. There, at the beginning, the feudal
aristocracy was dominant, and held itself so haughtily above
the commons, or Third Estate, that no political cooperation
between the two orders could be thought of when circumstances
called for it. The kings slowly undermined the aristocratic
power, using the communes in the process; and when, at last,
the power of the monarchy had become threatening to both
orders in the state, they were separated by too great an
alienation of feeling and habit to act well together.
It was the great good fortune of England that feudalism was
curbed by a strong monarchy. It was the greater good fortune
of the English people that their primitive Germanic
institutions--their folk-moots, and their whole simple popular
system of local government--should have had so long and sturdy
a growth before the feudal scheme of society began seriously
to intrude upon them. The Norman conqueror did no violence to
those institutions. He claimed to be a lawful English king,
respecting English laws. The laws, the customs, the
organization of government, were, indeed, greatly modified in
time; but the modification was slow, and the base of the whole
political structure that rose in the Anglo-Norman kingdom
remained wholly English.
Norman Influences in England.
The Normans brought with them into England a more active,
enterprising, enquiring spirit than had animated the land
before. They brought an increase of learning and of the
appetite for knowledge. They brought a more educated taste in
art, to improve the building of the country and its
workmanship in general. They brought a wider acquaintance with
the affairs of the outside world, and drew England into
political relations with her continental neighbors, which were
not happy for her in the end, but which may have contributed
for a time to her development. They brought, also, a more
powerful organization of the Church, which gave England
trouble in later days.
The Conqueror's Sons.
When the Conqueror died (1087), his eldest son Robert
succeeded him in Normandy, but he wished the crown of England
to go to his son William, called Rufus, or "the Red." He could
not settle the succession by his will, because in theory the
succession was subject to the choice or assent of the nobles
of the realm. But, in fact, William Rufus became king through
mere tardiness of opposition; and when, a few months after his
coronation, a formidable rebellion broke out among the Normans
in England, who preferred his wayward brother Robert, it was
the native English who sustained him and established him on
the throne. The same thing occurred again after William Rufus
died (1100). The Norman English tried again to bring in Duke
Robert, while the native English preferred the younger
brother, Henry, who was born among them. They won the day.
Henry I., called Beauclerc, the Scholar, was seated on the
throne. Unlike William Rufus, who had no gratitude for the
support the English gave him, and ruled them harshly, Henry
showed favor to his English subjects, and, during his reign of
thirty-five years, the two races were so effectually
reconciled and drawn together that little distinction between
them appears thereafter.
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Henry acquired Normandy, as well as England, uniting again the
two sovereignties of his father. His thriftless brother,
Robert, had pledged the dukedom to William Rufus, who lent him
money for a crusading expedition. Returning penniless, Robert
tried to recover his heritage; but Henry claimed it and made
good the claim.
Anarchy in Stephen's Reign.
At Henry's death, the succession fell into dispute. He had
lost his only son. His daughter, Matilda, first married to the
Emperor Henry V., had subsequently wedded Count Geoffrey of
Anjou, by whom she had a son. Henry strove, during his life,
to bind his nobles by oath to accept Matilda and her son as
his successors. But on his death (1135) their promises were
broken. They gave the crown to Stephen of Blois, whose mother
was Henry's sister; whereupon there ensued the most dreadful
period of civil war and anarchy that England ever knew.
Stephen, at his coronation, swore to promises which he did not
keep, losing many of his supporters for that reason; the
Empress Matilda and her young son Henry had numerous
partisans; and each side was able to destroy effectually the
authority of the other. "The price of the support given to
both was the same--absolute licence to build castles, to
practise private war, to hang their private enemies, to
plunder their neighbours, to coin their money, to exercise
their petty tyrannies as they pleased." "Castles innumerable
sprang up, and as fast as they were built they were filled
with devils; each lord judged and taxed and coined. The feudal
spirit of disintegration had for once its full play. Even
party union was at an end, and every baron fought on his own
behalf. Feudalism had its day, and the completeness of its
triumph ensured its fall" (Stubbs).
Angevin Kings of England.
At length, in 1153, peace was made by a treaty which left
Stephen in possession of the throne during his life, but made
Henry, already recognized as Duke of Normandy, his heir.
Stephen died the following year, and Henry II., now twenty-one
years old, came quietly into his kingdom, beginning a new
royal line, called the Angevin kings, because of their descent
from Geoffrey of Anjou; also taking the name Plantagenets from
Geoffrey's fashion of wearing a bit of broom, Planta Genista,
in his hat.
Henry II. proved, happily, to be a king of the strong
character that was needed in the England of that wretched
time. He was bold and energetic, yet sagacious, prudent,
politic. He loved power and he used it with an unsparing hand;
but he used it with wise judgment, and England was the better
for it. He struck hard and persistently at the lawlessness of
feudalism, and practically ended it forever as a menace to
order and unity of government in England. He destroyed
hundreds of the castles which had sprung up throughout the
land in Stephen's time, to be nests of robbers and strongholds
of rebellion. He humbled the turbulent barons. He did in
England, for the promotion of justice, and for the enforcement
of the royal authority, what Louis IX. did a little later in
France: that is, he reorganized and strengthened the king's
courts, creating a judicial system which, in its most
essential features, has existed to the present time. His
organizing hand brought system and efficiency into every
department of the government. He demanded of the Church that
its clergy should be subject to the common laws of the
kingdom, in matters of crime, and to trial before the ordinary
courts; and it was this most just reform of a crying
abuse--the exemption of clerics from the jurisdiction of
secular courts--which brought about the memorable collision
of King Henry with Thomas Becket, the inflexible archbishop of
Canterbury. Becket's tragical death made a martyr of him, and
placed Henry in a penitential position which checked his great
works of reform; but, on the whole, his reign was one of
splendid success, and shines among the epochs that throw light
on the great after-career of the English nation.
Aside from his importance as an English statesman, Henry II.
figured largely, in his time, among the most powerful of the
monarchs of Europe. His dominions on the continent embraced
much more of the territory of modern France than was ruled
directly by the contemporary French king, though nominally he
held them as a vassal of the latter. Normandy came to him from
his grandfather; from his father he inherited the large
possessions of the House of Anjou; by his marriage with
Eleanor of Aquitaine (divorced by Louis VII. of France, as
mentioned already) he acquired her wide and rich domain. On
the continent, therefore, he ruled Normandy, Maine, Touraine,
Anjou, Guienne, Poitou and Gascony. He may be said to have
added Ireland to his English kingdom, for he began the
conquest. He held a great place, in his century, and
historically he is a notable figure in the time.
His rebellious, undutiful son Richard, Cœur de Lion, the
Crusader, the hard fighter, the knight of many rude
adventures, who succeeded Henry II. in 1189, is popularly
better known than he; but Richard's noisy brief career shows
poorly when compared with his father's life of thoughtful
statesmanship. It does not show meanly, however, like that of
the younger son, John, who came to the throne in 1199. The
story of John's probable murder of his young nephew, Arthur,
of Brittany, and of his consequent loss of all the Angevin
lands, and of Normandy (excepting only the Norman islands, the
Jerseys, which have remained English to our own day) has been
briefly told heretofore, when the reign of Philip Augustus of
France was under review.
{1033}
The whole reign of John was ignominious. He quarreled with the
Pope--with the inflexible Innocent III., who humbled many
kings--over a nomination to the Archbishopric of Canterbury
(1205); his kingdom was put under interdict (1208); he was
threatened with deposition; and when, in affright, he
surrendered, it was so abjectly done that he swore fealty to
the Pope, as a vassal to his suzerain, consenting to hold his
kingdom as a fief of the Apostolic See. The triumph of the
Papacy in this dispute brought one great good to England. It
made Stephen Langton Archbishop of Canterbury, and thereby
gave a wise and righteous leader to the opponents of the
king's oppressive rule. Lords and commons, laity and clergy,
were all alike sufferers from John's greed, his perfidy, his
mean devices and his contempt of law. Langton rallied them to
a sober, stern, united demonstration, which awed King John,
and compelled him to put his seal to Magna Charta--the grand
Charter of English liberties (1215). A few weeks later he
tried to annul what he had done, with encouragement from the
Pope, who anathematized the Charter and all who had to do with
it. Then certain of the barons, in their rage, offered the
English crown to the heir of France, afterwards Louis VIII.;
and the French prince actually came to England (1216) with an
army to secure it. But before the forces gathered on each side
were brought to any decisive battle, John died. Louis'
partisans then dropped away from him and the next year, after
a defeat at sea, he returned to France.
Henry III. and the Barons' War.