THE DEVELOPMENT OF FRANCE
[Sidenote: Importance of studying the beginnings of the modern European
states.]
46. There is no more interesting or important phase of mediæval history
than the gradual emergence of the modern national state from the feudal
anarchy into which the great empire of Charlemagne fell during the
century after his death. No one should flatter himself that he has
grasped the elements of the history of western Europe unless he can
trace in a clear, if general, way the various stages by which the states
which appear now upon the map of Europe--the French republic, the German
Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the kingdoms of Italy, Great Britain, and
Spain--have grown out of the disorganized Europe of the ninth century.
It might be inferred from what has been said in the preceding chapters
that the political history of western Europe during the two or three
centuries following the deposition of Charles the Fat was really only
the history of innumerable feudal lords. Yet even if the kings of
mediæval Europe were sometimes less powerful than some of their mighty
subjects, still their history is more important than that of their
vassals. It was the kings, and not their rivals, the dukes and counts,
who were to win in the long run and to establish national governments in
the modern sense of the term. It was about them that the great European
states, especially France, Spain, and England, grew up.
[Sidenote: Struggle between the Carolingians and the house of Odo.]
As we have seen, the aristocracy of the northern part of the
West-Frankish kingdom chose (in 888) as their king, in place of the
incompetent Charles the Fat, the valiant Odo, Count of Paris, Blois,
and Orleans. He was a powerful lord and held extensive domains besides
the regions he ruled as count. But, in spite of his advantageous
position, he found it impossible to exert any real power in the southern
part of his kingdom. Even in the north he met with constant opposition,
for the nobles who elected him had no idea of permitting him to
interfere much with their independence. Charles the Simple, the only
surviving grandson of Charles the Bald,[75] was eventually elected king
by a faction opposed to Odo.
[Sidenote: Election of Hugh Capet, the first of the Capetians, 987-996.]
For a hundred years the crown passed back and forth between the family
of Odo and that of Charlemagne. The counts of Paris were rich and
capable, while the later Carolingians were poor and unfortunate. The
latter finally succumbed to their powerful rivals, who definitely took
possession of the throne in 987, when Hugh Capet was elected king of the
Gauls, Bretons, Normans, Aquitanians, Goths, Spaniards, and Gascons,--in
short, of all those peoples who were to be welded, under Hugh's
successors, into the great French nation.
[Sidenote: The West-Frankish kingdom comes to be called France.]
Hugh inherited from his ancestors the title of Duke of France, which
they had enjoyed as the military representatives of the later
Carolingian kings in "France," which was originally a district north of
the Seine. Gradually the name France came to be applied to all the
dominions which the dukes of France ruled as kings. We shall hereafter
speak of the West-Frankish kingdom as France.
[Sidenote: Difficulty of establishing the royal power.]
It must not be forgotten, however, that it required more than two
centuries after Hugh's accession for the French kings to create a real
kingdom which should include even half the territory embraced in the
France of to-day. For almost two hundred years the Capetians made little
or no progress toward real kingly power. In fact, matters went from bad
to worse. Even the region which they were supposed to control as
counts--their so-called _domain_--melted away in their hands.
Everywhere hereditary lines of usurping rulers sprang up whom it was
impossible to exterminate after they had once taken root. The Capetian
territory bristled with hostile castles, permanent obstacles to commerce
between the larger towns and intolerable plagues to the country people.
In short, the king of France, in spite of the dignity of his title, no
longer dared to move about his own narrow domain. He to whom the most
powerful lords owed homage could not venture out of Paris without
encountering fortresses constructed by noble brigands, who were the
terror alike of priest, merchant, and laborer. Without money or
soldiers, royalty vegetated within its diminished patrimony. It retained
a certain prestige in distant fiefs situated on the confines of the
realm and in foreign lands, but at home it was neither obeyed nor
respected. The enemy's lands began just outside the capital.[76]
[Sidenote: Formation of small independent states in France.]
47. The tenth century was the period when the great fiefs of Normandy,
Brittany, Flanders, and Burgundy took form. These, and the fiefs into
which the older duchy of Aquitaine fell, developed into little nations,
each under its line of able rulers. Each had its own particular customs
and culture, some traces of which may still be noted by the traveler in
France. These little feudal states were created by certain families of
nobles who possessed exceptional energy or statesmanship. By conquest,
purchase, or marriage, they increased the number of their fiefs. By
promptly destroying the castles of those who refused to meet their
obligations, they secured their control over their vassals. By granting
fiefs of land or money to subvassals, they gained new dependents.
[Sidenote: Normandy.]
Of these subnations none was more important or interesting than
Normandy. The Northmen had been the scourge of those who lived near the
North Sea for many years before one of their leaders, Rollo (or Hrolf),
agreed to accept from Charles the Simple (in 911) a district on the
coast, north of Brittany, where he and his followers might peacefully
settle. Rollo assumed the title of Duke of the Normans and introduced
the Christian religion among his people. For a considerable time the
newcomers kept up their Scandinavian traditions and language. Gradually,
however, they appropriated such culture as their neighbors possessed,
and by the twelfth century their capital, Rouen, was one of the most
enlightened cities of Europe. Normandy became a source of infinite
perplexity to the French kings when, in 1066, Duke William the Conqueror
added England to his possessions; for he thereby became so powerful that
his suzerain could hardly hope to control the Norman dukes any longer.
[Sidenote: Brittany.]
The isolated peninsula of Brittany, inhabited by a Celtic people of the
same race as the early inhabitants of Britain, had been particularly
subject to the attacks of the Scandinavian pirates. It seemed at one
time as if the district would become an appendage of Normandy. But in
938 a certain valiant Alain of the Twisted Beard arose to deliver it
from the oppression of the strangers. The Normans were driven out, and
feudalism replaced the older tribal organization in what was hereafter
to be called the duchy of Brittany. It was not until the opening of the
sixteenth century that this became a part of the French monarchy.
[Sidenote: Origin of the Flemish towns.]
The pressure of the Northmen had an important result in the low
countries between the Somme and the Scheldt. The inhabitants were driven
to repair and seek shelter in the old Roman fortifications. They thus
became accustomed to living in close community, and it was in this way
that the Flemish towns--Ghent, Bruges, etc.--originated, which became in
time famous centers of industry and trade. The founders of the great
families of the district first gained their influence in defending the
country against the Scandinavian pirates. The counts of Flanders aspired
to rule the region, but the lesser counts within their territory were
pretty independent of them; so private wars were frequent and bloody.
[Sidenote: Burgundy.]
Burgundy is a puzzling name because it is applied to several different
parts of the territory once included in the kingdom founded by the
Burgundians, which Clovis made tributary to his expanding Frankish
kingdom. Toward the end of the ninth century we first hear of a _duke_
of Burgundy as being appointed military representative of the king (as
all dukes originally were) in a large district west of the Saône. The
dukes of Burgundy never succeeded in establishing sufficient control
over their vassals to render themselves independent, and consequently
they always freely recognized the sovereignty of the French kings. We
shall meet the name Burgundy later.
[Sidenote: Possessions of the duke of Aquitaine and of the counts of
Toulouse and Champagne.]
The ancient duchy of Aquitaine (later Guienne), including a large part
of what is now central and southern France, was abolished in 877, but
the title of Duke of Aquitaine was conferred by the king upon a certain
family of feudal lords, who gradually extended their power over Gascony
and northward. To the southeast, the counts of Toulouse had begun to
consolidate a little state which was to be the seat of the extraordinary
literature of the troubadours. The county of Champagne has already been
considered in the discussion of feudalism.
This completes the survey of the countries over which Hugh Capet and his
immediate successors strove to rule. All those districts to the east of
the Saône and the Rhone which now form a part of France were amalgamated
(in 933) into the kingdom of Arles, or Burgundy,[77] which in 1032 fell
into the hands of the German king.
[Sidenote: Complicated position of the Capetian kings.]
48. The position of the Capetian rulers was a complicated one. As counts
of Paris, Orleans, etc., they enjoyed the ordinary rights of a feudal
lord; as dukes of France, they might exercise a vague control over the
district north of the Seine; as suzerains of the great feudal
princes,--the duke of Normandy, the counts of Flanders, Champagne, and
the rest,--they might require homage and certain feudal services from
these great personages. But besides all these rights as feudal lords
they had other rights as kings. They were crowned and consecrated by the
Church, as Pippin and Charlemagne had been. They thus became, by God's
appointment, the protectors of the Church and the true fountain of
justice for all who were oppressed or in distress throughout their
realms. Therefore they were on a higher plane in the eyes of the people
than any of the great vassals. Besides the homage of their vassals, they
exacted an oath of fidelity from all whom they could reach.
The great vassals, on the other hand, acted on the theory that the king
was simply their feudal lord. As for the king himself, he accepted both
views of his position and made use both of the older theory of kingship
and of his feudal suzerainty to secure more and more control over his
realms. For over three hundred years the direct male line of the
Capetians never once failed. It rarely happened, moreover, that the
crown was left in the weak hands of a child. By the opening of the
fourteenth century there was no doubt that the king, and not the feudal
lords, was destined to prevail.
[Sidenote: Louis the Fat, 1108-1137.]
[Sidenote: Philip Augustus, 1180-1223.]
The first of the kings of France to undertake with success the serious
task of conquering his own duchy was Louis the Fat (1108-1137). He was
an active soldier and strove to keep free the means of communication
between the different centers of his somewhat scattered feudal domains
and to destroy the power of the usurping castellans in his fortresses.
But he made only a beginning; it was reserved for his famous grandson,
Philip Augustus (1180-1223), to make the duchy of France into a real
kingdom.
[Sidenote: The Plantagenets in France.]
[Sidenote: Henry II.]
49. Philip had a far more difficult problem to face than any of the
preceding kings of his house. Before his accession a series of those
royal marriages which until recently exercised so great an influence
upon political history, had brought most of the great fiefs of central,
western, and southern France into the hands of the king of England,
Henry II, who now ruled over the most extensive realm in western Europe.
Henry II was the son of William the Conqueror's granddaughter
Matilda,[78] who had married one of the great vassals of the French
kings, the count of Anjou and Maine.[79] Henry, therefore, inherited
through his mother all the possessions of the Norman kings of
England,--namely, England, the duchy of Normandy, and the suzerainty
over Brittany,--and through his father the counties of Maine and Anjou.
Lastly, through his own marriage with Eleanor, the heiress of the dukes
of Guienne (as Aquitaine was now called), he possessed himself of pretty
much all of southern France, including Poitou and Gascony. Henry II, in
spite of his great importance in English history, was as much French as
English, both by birth and sympathies, and gave more than half his time
and attention to his French possessions.
[Sidenote: Philip and the Plantagenets.]
It thus came about that the king of France suddenly found a new and
hostile state, under an able and energetic ruler, erected upon his
western borders. It included more than half the territory in which he
was recognized as king. The chief business of Philip's life was an
incessant war upon the Plantagenets, in which he was constantly aided by
the strife among his enemies themselves. Henry II divided his French
possessions among his three sons, Geoffrey, Richard, and John,
delegating to them such government as existed. Philip took advantage of
the constant quarrels of the brothers among themselves and with their
father. He espoused, in turn, the cause of Richard the Lion-Hearted
against his father, of John Lackland, the youngest brother, against
Richard, and so on. Without these family discords the powerful monarchy
of the Plantagenets might have annihilated the royal house of France,
whose narrow dominions it closed in and threatened on all sides.
[Sidenote: Richard the Lion-Hearted.]
So long as Henry II lived there was little chance of expelling the
Plantagenets or of greatly curtailing their power, but with the
accession of his reckless son, Richard I, called the Lion-Hearted,[80]
the prospects of the French king brightened wonderfully. Richard left
his kingdom to take care of itself, while he went upon a crusade to the
Holy Land. He persuaded Philip to join him, but Richard was too
overbearing and masterful, and Philip too ambitious, to make it possible
for them to agree for long. The king of France, who was physically
delicate, was taken ill and was glad of the excuse to return home and
brew trouble for his powerful vassal. When Richard himself returned,
after several years of romantic but fruitless adventure, he found
himself involved in a war with Philip, in the midst of which he died.
[Sidenote: John loses the French possessions of his house.]
Richard's younger brother, John, who enjoys the reputation of being the
most despicable of English kings, speedily gave Philip a good excuse for
seizing a great part of the Plantagenet lands. John was suspected of
conniving at the brutal murder of his nephew Arthur (the son of
Geoffrey), to whom the nobles of Maine, Anjou, and Touraine had done
homage. He was also guilty of the less serious offense of carrying off
and marrying a lady betrothed to one of his own vassals. Philip, as
John's suzerain, summoned him to appear at the French court to answer
the latter charge. Upon John's refusal to appear or to do homage for his
continental possessions, Philip caused his court to issue a decree
confiscating almost all of the Plantagenet lands, leaving to the English
king only the southwest corner of France.
Philip found little difficulty in possessing himself, not only of the
valley of the Loire, but of Normandy itself, which showed no
disinclination to accept him in place of the Plantagenets, whom the
Normans associated with continual exactions. Six years after Richard's
death the English kings had lost all their continental fiefs except
Guienne. The Capetian domain was, for the first time, the chief among
the great feudal states of France, both in wealth and extent. It should
be observed that Philip, unlike his ancestors, was no longer merely
_suzerain_ of the new conquests, but was himself duke of Normandy, and
count of Anjou, of Maine, etc. The boundaries of his domain, that is,
the lands which he himself controlled directly as feudal lord, now
extended to the sea.
[Sidenote: Philip strengthens the royal power as well as increases the
royal domain.]
50. Philip not only greatly increased the extent of the royal domain,
but strengthened his control over all classes of his subjects as well.
He appears, also, to have fully realized the importance of the towns
which had begun to develop a century earlier. There were several
important ones in the districts he annexed, and these he took especial
pains to treat with consideration. He extended his protection, and at
the same time his authority, over them and in this way lessened the
influence and resources of the feudal lords within whose territories the
towns lay.
[Sidenote: Appanages.]
The chief innovation of Philip's son, Louis VIII, was the creation of
_appanages_. These were fiefs assigned to his younger sons, one of whom
was made count of Artois; another, count of Anjou and Maine; a third,
count of Auvergne. This has generally been regarded by historians as a
most unfortunate reënforcement of the feudal idea. It not only retarded
the consolidation of the kingdom but opened the way to new strife
between the members of the royal family itself.
[Sidenote: Louis IX, 1226-1270.]
[Sidenote: Settlement of question of the English king's possessions in
France, 1258.]
The long reign of Philip's grandson, Louis IX, or St. Louis (1226-1270),
is extremely interesting from many standpoints. St. Louis himself is
perhaps the most heroic and popular figure in the whole procession of
French monarchs, and his virtues and exploits have been far more amply
recorded than those of any of his predecessors. But it is only his part
in the consolidation of the French monarchy that immediately concerns
us. After a revolt of the barons of central France in alliance with the
king of England, which Louis easily put down, he proceeded, in a most
fair-minded and Christian spirit, to arrange a definite settlement with
the Plantagenets. The king of England was to do him homage for the duchy
of Guienne, Gascony, and Poitou and surrender every claim upon the rest
of the former possessions of the Plantagenets on the continent.
[Illustration: Map of France at the Close of the Reign of Philip
Augustus]
[Sidenote: The _baillis_ serve to increase the king's power.]
Besides these important territorial adjustments, Louis IX did much to
better the system of government and strengthen the king's power. Philip
Augustus had established a new kind of officer, the _baillis_, who
resembled the _missi_ of Charlemagne. They were supported by a salary
and frequently shifted from place to place so that there should be no
danger of their taking root and establishing powerful feudal families,
as had happened in the case of the counts, who were originally royal
officers. Louis adopted and extended the institution of the _baillis_.
In this way he kept his domains under his control and saw that justice
was done and his revenue properly collected.
[Sidenote: Government of Louis IX.]
Before the thirteenth century there was little government in France in
the modern sense of the word. The king relied for advice and aid, in the
performance of his simple duties as ruler, upon a council of the great
vassals, prelates, and others about his person. This council was
scarcely organized into a regular assembly, and it transacted all the
various kinds of governmental business without clearly distinguishing
one kind from another. In the reign of Louis IX this assembly began to
be divided into three bodies with different functions. There was: first,
the king's council to aid him in conducting the general affairs of the
kingdom; secondly, a chamber of accounts, a financial body which
attended to the revenue; and lastly, the _parlement_, a supreme court
made up of those trained in the law, which was becoming ever more
complicated as time went on. Instead, as hitherto, of wandering about
with the king, the parlement took up its quarters upon the little island
in the Seine at Paris, where the great court-house (_Palais de Justice_)
still stands. A regular system of appeals from the feudal courts to the
royal courts was established. This served greatly to increase the king's
power in distant parts of his realms. It was decreed further that the
royal coins should alone be used in the domains of the king, and that
his money should be accepted everywhere else within the kingdom
concurrently with that of those of his vassals who had the privilege of
coinage.
[Sidenote: Philip the Fair (1285-1314) the first absolute ruler of
France.]
The grandson of St. Louis, Philip the Fair, is the first example of a
French king who had both the will and the means to play the rôle of an
absolute monarch. He had inherited a remarkably well organized
government compared with anything that had existed since the time of
Charlemagne. He was surrounded by a body of lawyers who had derived
their ideas of the powers and rights of a prince from the Roman law.
They naturally looked with suspicion upon everything that interfered
with the supreme power of the monarch, and encouraged the king to bring
the whole government into his own hands regardless of the privileges of
his vassals and of the clergy.
[Sidenote: The commons, or third estate, summoned to the Estates
General, 1302.]
Philip's attempt to force the clergy to contribute from their wealth to
the support of the government led to a remarkable struggle with the
pope, of which an account will be given in a later chapter. With the
hope of gaining the support of the whole nation in his conflict with the
head of the Church, the king summoned a great council of his realm in
1302. He included for the first time the representatives of the towns in
addition to the nobles and prelates, whom the king had long been
accustomed to consult. At the same period that the French Estates
General,[81] or national assembly, was taking form through the addition
of representatives of the commons, England was creating its Parliament.
The two bodies were, however, to have a very different history, as will
become clear later.
By the sagacious measures that have been mentioned, the French monarchs
rescued their realms from feudal disruption and laid the foundation for
the most powerful monarchy of western Europe. However, the question of
how far the neighboring king across the Channel should extend his power
on the continent remained unanswered. The boundary between France and
England was not yet definitely determined and became, during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the cause of long and disastrous
wars, from which France finally emerged victorious. We must now turn
back to trace the development of her English rival.[82]