FRANCE UNDER THE LATER CAPETS, 1270-1328
Progress of the French Monarchy—Its difficulties—Philip III.—The
inheritance to Toulouse, Champagne, and Navarre—Wars with Castile
and Aragon—Accession of Philip IV. and the importance of his
reign—His War with England and Flanders—His relations with the
Papacy—The suppression of the Templars—His policy of annexation—His
domestic government—The King’s Court and its departments: the
_conseil du roi_, the _chambre des comptes_, and the _Parlement_ of
Paris—The States-General—Financial maladministration—Death of Philip
IV.—Louis X.—His death and the succession question—The Salic Law—The
short reigns of Philip V. and Charles IV.
The history of the modern kingdom of France begins with the break-up of
the great Karoling Empire in the treaty of Verdun (843). Western
Francia, split off from the other dominions of Charles the Great,
continued for a century to be ruled by his degenerate descendants. But
the decentralising movement did not stop with the division of the
Frankish Empire into three fairly well-defined units. The dukes and
counts, who had been provincial governors under Charles the Great, took
advantage of the growing weakness of the central power to make their
position hereditary and practically independent. Superficial unity was
only maintained by the necessity of making head against the attacks of
the Northmen. The successful resistance of Paris to these invaders gave
to the dukes of Paris, the lords of the Isle de France, the royal title
which the Karolings at Laon were too feeble to defend. But the early
kings of the House of Capet were as powerless as their predecessors.
They themselves belonged to the feudal nobles, they owed the crown to
the support of their fellows, they were avowedly only _primi inter
pares_. Hugh Capet himself acknowledged this when he undertook to do
nothing of importance without consulting the tenants-in-chief. During
the eleventh century France was little more than a geographical
expression: its political unity was a mere shadow: its ecclesiastical
unity was independent of the crown. But in the twelfth century two
movements began [Sidenote: Progress of the French monarchy.] which were
destined to exert the most decisive influence on the fortunes of France:
the rise of the communes, and the growth of the royal power. There was
no formal alliance between the crown and the bourgeoisie, but they had
obvious common interests in opposition to the feudal nobles, and they
rendered the most vital assistance to each other. Feudalism, attacked
both from above and from below, seemed destined to perish. The three
kings who dealt the most fatal blows to aristocratic isolation were
Philip Augustus (1180-1223), Louis IX. (1226-1270), and Philip IV.
(1285-1314). The third estate rendered its greatest service to the
monarchy by giving birth to the class of lawyers. To their superior
training and their persistent advocacy of the principles of Roman Law
was due the gradual break-down of feudal jurisdiction. The _cour du
roy_, at first either the court of the royal domain or the court of
peers for the trial of cases concerning tenants-in-chief, became, as the
Parliament of Paris, the supreme judicial court for the whole of France.
Side by side with the advance of the central judicial power, another
great change was going on—the extension of the royal domain. In the
great fiefs female succession was admitted in default of male heirs, and
this proved fatal to the permanence of many of the old families. With
regard to the crown there was no acknowledged rule of succession,
because no occasion for dispute arose. From the accession of Hugh Capet
in 987, to the death of Louis X. in 1316, there was never wanting a son
to succeed to his father. This uninterrupted male succession for so many
generations, almost unparalleled among the reigning families of Europe,
was an invaluable element of strength to the crown in its struggle with
feudalism. One by one the great fiefs fell in, were conquered, or were
acquired by marriage with heiresses. The most notable successes were the
acquisition of Normandy by Philip Augustus, and of Languedoc after the
Albigensian crusade. By the time of Philip the Fair the only provinces
which retained their feudal independence were the county of Flanders in
the north, the duchy of Brittany in the west, the duchy of Burgundy in
the east, and the duchy of Aquitaine in the south. The royal power and
the territorial unity of France had advanced _pari passu_, and Philip
IV. found himself strong enough to attempt acquisitions beyond the
traditional frontiers of France.
So far—during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—the tendency towards
centralisation, in spite of temporary obstacles and checks, had achieved
that success which usually attends directness and persistence of aim,
and a politic, if sometimes unscrupulous, choice of means. But at the
death of Philip IV. this progress was suddenly arrested, and during the
next two centuries a struggle had to be carried [Sidenote: Difficulties
of the monarchy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.] on,
differing in many respects from that which had gone before, but still
involving many of the same problems and ultimately terminating in a
victory for the same side. One essential factor in this struggle was the
tenure of the duchy of Aquitaine by a foreign prince—the king of
England. Obvious interest impelled English kings, like Edward III. and
Henry V., to ally themselves with all the forces of disunion in France,
and their efforts were aided and stimulated by the chance which gave
them a colourable claim to the French crown. But the difficulties of the
French kings of the House of Valois were not due merely to English
intervention. There were two fatal flaws in their own policy and that of
their predecessors. (1) While taking every advantage of the movement of
the lower classes, the kings had done little or nothing to satisfy their
legitimate aspirations. They gave the lawyers a distinguished position
in the service of the crown, and that was all. Before long, the third
estate was sure to weary of an alliance in which all the substantial
advantages were on one side; and if the commons were able or willing to
form a coalition with the nobles against the crown, they might impose
checks upon the royal power similar to those which were enforced by the
English parliament. That this danger was a real one will be seen when we
come to consider the attitude adopted by the States-General at the time
of the battle of Poitiers.[3] (2) While destroying the old feudal
nobility, the French kings had created a new one. As the great fiefs
fell in, many of them were granted out again as appanages to members of
the royal family. Doubtless it was considered that blood-relationship
would be sufficient to unite their interests with those of the monarchy.
But this proved a complete miscalculation. Relationship counts for very
little in politics as against the impulse given by selfish interests.
Edward III. tried a similar policy in England, and it led to the Wars of
the Roses. In France it led to the long contest of the Burgundians and
Armagnacs, to the _Praguerie_ of 1440, and to the League of the Public
Weal of 1465. The _féodalité apanagée_, as French writers call these
nobles of royal birth in contradistinction to the old _féodalité
territoriale_, did not long delay to assume the same attitude as their
predecessors, and became the opponents of the monarchy which had created
them. Their overthrow tasked the devotion of the capable servants of
Charles VII., and gave full employment to the mingled craft and
resolution of Louis XI.
The futile expedition to Tunis, the expiring effort of that crusading
impulse which had urged mediæval Europe to [Sidenote: Philip III.,
1270-1285.] heroic deeds, cost France the life of the noblest of her
long line of kings. Louis IX. was almost the only French ruler who
combined the highest moral virtues with eminent political capacity. His
son and successor, Philip III., could claim neither of his father’s
characteristics. He was illiterate, and the rashness which earned him
the name of _le Hardi_ was not redeemed by any clear insight or any
signs of ability. He was only in name the head of the House of Capet:
the real master of French policy was his uncle, Charles of Anjou. Paris
looked for guidance to Naples, rather than Naples to Paris. That the
French monarchy continued to advance, in spite of the incapacity of the
king, is a signal proof of its inherent strength and of the ability of
the trained lawyers who served it. The reign of Philip III., obscure as
it appears at first sight, was marked by the acquisition of three
important provinces, of which two remained permanently subject to the
crown.
Among the numerous victims who perished on the return journey from Tunis
were Alfonso of Poitiers (August 21, 1271), brother of St. Louis, and
his wife Jeanne [Sidenote: The Toulouse inheritance.] of Toulouse, the
last descendant of the famous House of St. Gilles. They left no
children, and their vast inheritance, including the counties of
Toulouse, Poitou, Auvergne, and the marquisate of Provence,[4] fell to
the French crown. The only exceptions were the district of Agenais,
which was claimed by the English king, and the Venaissin, near Avignon,
which was ceded to the Papacy in accordance with the treaty of Meaux in
1229. Thus France completed the absorption of Languedoc, which had been
begun in the crusade against the Albigenses. It is true that Philip
undertook to rule his new territories as count, and not as king, and
that he created a special parliament and law-court at Toulouse, but
these concessions to local independence were only temporary and
illusory.
In 1274 occurred another important death, that of Henry, King of Navarre
and Count of Champagne and Brie, leaving [Sidenote: Champagne and
Navarre.] an only daughter, Jeanne, aged three years. The widow, Blanche
of Artois, carried the infant heiress to France and threw herself on the
protection of the king. Philip at once occupied Champagne and Brie,
which were henceforth united to the crown. At the same time he procured
a dispensation from Pope Gregory X. for the future marriage of Jeanne to
his own second son Philip, who soon afterwards became heir to the throne
by the death of his elder brother. The people of Navarre revolted
against this high-handed settlement of their fate by a foreign prince,
but their resistance was crushed by a French army, and Philip assumed
the government of the kingdom as guardian for his future
daughter-in-law.
These territorial gains were the only notable successes of Philip III.’s
reign, and his remaining years were mainly occupied [Sidenote: Wars with
Castile and Aragon.] with two futile wars in Spain. Alfonso X., formerly
the claimant of the throne of the Cæsars, was still reigning in Castile,
but the actual conduct of affairs fell in his old age to his sons,
Ferdinand de la Cerda and Sancho. The elder, who had married Philip
III.’s sister Blanche, died in 1275, leaving two sons. The Castilian
Cortes, in regulating the succession, passed over these children, and
secured the crown on Alfonso’s death to Sancho, who had earned the name
of ‘the Brave’ for his exploits against the Moors. Philip was indignant
at the exclusion of his nephews, and took up arms to support their
claims. But his invasion of Castile was so reckless and ill-planned as
to gain him the name of _le Hardi_, and he was unable to force a passage
through the mountains. His intervention was naturally fruitless, and
Sancho succeeded to Castile on his father’s death.
The second war was more prolonged. The Sicilian Vespers in 1282 (_v._ p.
25), which resulted in the transfer of Sicily to Peter III. of Aragon,
made a profound impression in France, and many nobles hurried to offer
their services to Charles of Anjou. The Pope excommunicated Peter III.,
and offered the crown of Aragon to Philip III.’s second surviving son,
Charles of Valois, on condition that it should never be united to
France. The offer was accepted in 1284, and in the next year Philip
himself headed a great expedition against Aragon, which was dignified by
the name of a crusade. The capture of the fortresses of Elna and Girona,
both after an obstinate resistance, were the only successes of the
campaign. Roger di Loria with his Catalan sailors destroyed the French
fleet, and cut off the possibility of receiving supplies by sea. At the
same time disease broke out in the French army. Philip found it
necessary to retreat, and died at Perpignan [Sidenote: Death of Philip
III., 1285.] on October 5, 1285. He left three sons: Philip, who in 1284
had married Jeanne, heiress of Navarre; Charles, Count of Valois and
Alençon, and titular King of Aragon; and Louis, Count of Evreux, whose
descendants afterwards ruled in Navarre.
Philip IV. was seventeen years old when he succeeded his father, and he
died at the age of forty-seven. In the course [Sidenote: Philip IV.,
1285-1314.] of these thirty years he set a mark upon French life and
government which has never been completely effaced, not even by the
floods of successive revolutions. Yet our knowledge of his reign, and
especially of his person and character, is singularly scanty. That he
was good-looking we know from his being called _le Bel_, but we are not
informed whether he was tall or short. His character we have to infer
from his actions, and we are forced to conclude that it was far less
attractive than his face. This dearth of contemporary records is the
more notable when it is contrasted with the striking picture which we
possess of his grandfather, and with the wealth of narrative on the
subject of the fourteenth century wars. Philip was not the man to be the
hero of a Joinville or a Froissart, and no Philippe de Commines had yet
arisen. There is little that is heroic or picturesque about his reign.
The most striking scene, the humiliation of Boniface VIII., is repulsive
in itself and is discreditable to Philip’s memory. It may even be said
that there was little result to show for his restless activity. The two
enterprises which he had most at heart—the annexation of Aquitaine and
Flanders—ended in failure. His only territorial acquisition of
importance was Lyons. The suppression of the Templars was not an
achievement to be proud of. A notable victory was gained over the
Papacy, but it was gained by discreditable methods; and, after all, the
residence at Avignon brought no permanent advantages to France. Philip’s
great work lay in the comparatively obscure details of domestic
government, in the improvement and completion of administrative
machinery, and in the removal of all obstacles in the way of an
efficient despotism. These are achievements which escape the notice of
historians who are attracted by the heroes of chivalry, but they produce
far more definite and deep-seated results than the most brilliant
exploits on the battlefield. It must be admitted that Philip IV. was
cruel and cold-blooded; that his regard for the letter of the law was a
mere disguise for unscrupulousness; that this unscrupulousness was the
more repulsive for the hypocrisy which could always find pretexts to
justify it; it may even be admitted that his failures in external
politics outweighed his successes,—yet he must be always memorable as
the real founder of that administrative centralisation which has ever
since been the dominant characteristic of the government of France, and
has been a prominent cause of the subsequent greatness, if also of the
subsequent disasters, of that country.
If this estimate of the reign be correct, it is obvious that we need not
linger long over Philip’s foreign relations, and that our attention will
be better devoted to his domestic measures. The war with Aragon, which
he inherited, never interested him, as the only possible gainers by it
were his brother and his cousin. After lasting for nearly twenty years,
it ended in the final loss of Sicily by the House of Anjou, and the
abandonment by Charles of Valois of his claims on Aragon on condition
that his cousin, Charles II. of Naples, should give up to him his
appanages of Anjou and Maine. Before this settlement had been arrived
at, Philip had turned his attention to a far more exciting
enterprise—the attempt to [Sidenote: Wars with England.] wrest Guienne
and Gascony from Edward I. of England. These provinces had been united
to the English crown since the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of
Aquitaine, and on the whole they were fairly satisfied to remain subject
to their distant ruler, whose island kingdom gave them a convenient
market for the produce of their vineyards. But Edward I. had his hands
full with the suppression of discontent in his recent conquests in
Wales, and with enforcing his lately acknowledged suzerainty over
Scotland. This gave Philip IV. an opportunity which he was not slow to
seize. Taking advantage of a naval quarrel between some Norman sailors
and the mariners of the Cinque Ports, and of the refusal of the Gascons
to acknowledge the judicial authority of the French courts, Philip
summoned Edward I. to appear before him to answer for the breach of his
obligations as a vassal (November, 1293). Edward was aware that a
contumacious attitude towards his suzerain would set a dangerous example
to John Balliol in Scotland, and did all in his power to avoid a
rupture. Unable to go to France in person he sent as a proxy his brother
Edmund, who had married Philip’s mother-in-law, Blanche of Artois. On
this docile envoy Philip played what can only be described as ‘the
confidence trick.’ He assured him of his perfect friendliness to
England, offered the hand of his sister Margaret to Edward, who was now
a widower, and in return he demanded that, as a mere sign of trust and
submission, Gascony should be ceded to him for a period of forty days.
Edmund consented; but on the expiration of the time, Philip declared the
English king to be contumacious for not having appeared in person, and
his troops remained in occupation of the Gascon fortresses. After this
there was no alternative but war. Edward was at an immense disadvantage.
He had a war with Scotland and Wales on his hands; his subjects,
especially the clergy, were discontented at his exactions, and the enemy
was already in possession of a large part of his territories. His only
ally of importance, Adolf of Nassau, was too impotent in Germany to
effect any diversion. On the other hand, Philip offered aid to John
Balliol, and thus laid the foundation of that permanent alliance between
France and Scotland which lasted till the reign of Mary Stuart. The
actual hostilities were unimportant, but the balance of success was
decidedly against the English. It was at this time that Boniface VIII.’s
attempt to interfere led to his first quarrel with Philip IV., and to
the issue of the bull _Clericis laicos_ (_v._ p. 29). In 1297 the war
assumed a new phase. Edward I. had succeeded in deposing John Balliol
and in conquering Scotland, so that he was now free to take part in the
continental war. At the same time he found an ally in Count Guy of
Flanders, who had hitherto been kept passive by Philip’s detention of
his daughter as a hostage. But Edward was again hampered by quarrels
with the clergy and the barons, and the latter refused to serve in
Gascony if the king persisted in going in person to Flanders. The result
was that Guienne and Gascony were left defenceless, while Edward and his
Flemish ally were unable to make head against the French. This check and
the outbreak of a Scotch rebellion under Wallace forced Edward to make
overtures for peace, and Philip determined to postpone the annexation of
Aquitaine until he had completed the reduction of Flanders. Boniface
VIII. had been compelled by difficulties in Italy to draw closer to the
French king, and he had published a modified interpretation of his bull
against clerical contributions to secular rulers. He was now allowed to
act as mediator, though Philip protested that he accepted his mediation
as a private person and not as Pope. It was arranged that both parties
should retain their possessions as they stood until the conclusion of a
final settlement. As a security for future peace, Edward I. was to marry
Philip’s sister, Margaret, and the young Edward of Wales was betrothed
to Philip’s daughter, Isabella. Both kings abandoned their allies (June
30, 1298).
While Edward I. returned to defeat Wallace at the battle of Falkirk,
Flanders was left at Philip’s mercy. The Flemish citizens had no love
for their count, and would render him no assistance. In this hopeless
position, Guy [Sidenote: War in Flanders.] was induced by the
treacherous promises of Charles of Valois to trust to the clemency of
his suzerain. He was at once thrown into prison, and his fief was
declared forfeited to the crown (1300). On his first visit to his new
province, Philip’s cupidity was excited by the wealth which he found
there. His wife, Jeanne of Navarre, exclaimed, when she saw the
jewellery of the ladies of Bruges: ‘I thought I was the only queen in
France, but I find that here there are six hundred.’ The attempt to
gratify the greed thus aroused was certain to lead to discontent. The
Flemings were as fond of their wealth as they were jealous of their
independence. They soon discovered that it was better to be oppressed by
their count than to be both oppressed and pillaged by their French
governor, Jacques de Chatillon. The signal for a general rebellion was
given in Bruges, as twenty years before in Palermo, by a massacre of the
French. Philip despatched a large feudal army under Robert of Artois to
crush the insurgents. The French nobles reckoned on an easy victory over
unwarlike and ill-armed citizens, but they were undone by their own
confidence and recklessness, and were utterly routed in the famous
battle of Courtrai (July 11, 1302). This was the first of a great series
of battles which taught Europe that an infantry force, if properly led
and handled, could more than hold their own against mounted and heavily
accoutred men-at-arms. It was some time before the lesson was thoroughly
learned; but when it was mastered, the military system of the Middle
Ages collapsed, and with it perished the social organisation which
rested on the invincibility of the knightly force. Philip IV. advanced
in person to recover the lost honour and power of France, but the
approach of winter compelled him to retire without having done anything
towards the suppression of the rebellion. The great disaster of 1302,
the first which Philip had yet experienced, came at the crisis of his
quarrel with the Papacy, and forced him to moderate his ambition. In
1303 he concluded a final peace with Edward I. and resigned his
acquisitions in Aquitaine. In 1304, Boniface VIII. being dead, a great
effort was made for the reduction of Flanders. At Mons-en-Puelle (August
18), by carefully avoiding the ruinous mistakes at Courtrai, Philip
succeeded in defeating the Flemings; but his victory was hardly won, and
was by no means so decisive as that of his opponents had been. Within
three weeks the rebels had re-formed their army and were as formidable
and undaunted as ever. Philip found himself compelled to recognise that
he had undertaken a task beyond his strength, and he hastened to escape
from it by concluding a treaty (June, 1305). Robert of Béthune, the
eldest son of Count Guy, who had died in prison in 1303, was invested
with the fiefs of Flanders, Nevers, and Rethel; the Flemings undertook
to pay 200,000 livres to the French king, and to hand over as security
for the payment Douai, Lille, and other towns on the southern frontier.
It was long since a French king had suffered such a humiliating check.
In 1300, Philip seemed to have secured the whole of Flanders and the
greater part of Aquitaine. Four years later he had lost both provinces.
Philip’s relations with the Papacy have been already alluded to (_v._ p.
29). In his quarrel with Boniface VIII. he had substantial justice on
his side, and the national development of France necessitated an
energetic resistance to the exorbitant pretensions of the mediæval
Papacy. But these considerations do not justify the brutality of the
French soldiery at Anagni, nor the vindictiveness with which Philip
persisted in blackening the character of Boniface after the latter’s
death. Equally inexcusable was his treatment of the ill-fated Benedict
XI., though there is no reasonable ground for believing the charge that
Philip’s agents poisoned the Pope in consequence of his excommunication
of Boniface’s assailants. In Clement V. the king was face to face with a
Pope upon whose subservience he had reasonable claims, and who was fully
his match in diplomatic subtlety and in the want of scruples. The hold
which Philip obtained upon the Papacy at this time enabled him to effect
the blackest action of his reign, the destruction of the Templars. The
crusades in the East had come to an [Sidenote: Suppression of the
Templars.] end with the fall of Acre in 1291, and the Orders which had
been formed for the defence or conquest of Palestine must inevitably
fall victims to the jealousy which their wealth and independence excited
in Europe, or they must undertake some new task which would justify
their existence and give them a renewed hold on the public opinion of
Europe. The Knights of St. John and of the German Order of St. Mary
chose the latter course, and secured a prolongation of their corporate
existence—the one in Prussia, and the other in the island of Rhodes. The
Templars, who had been the most prominent in the wars of Palestine, were
the least prepared to find a new occupation, and their inaction impaled
them on the other horn of the dilemma. It is needless to go through the
long catalogue of charges, some horrible and some absurd, which were
brought by the king’s agents against the Order. It was inevitable that a
celibate society of warriors should give occasion for the belief that
the vow of chastity was not always observed. It is credible that in
their intercourse with the Saracens many of the knights may have been
led into unbelief, or even to adopt a contemptuous and irreverent
attitude towards Christianity. But it is not credible that the whole
Order was guilty of the obscenity, blasphemy, and irreligion that were
charged against its members. Confessions extorted under horrible
tortures and recanted when health and sanity were restored, do not
constitute evidence from which any reasonable conclusions can be drawn.
But Philip IV. was deaf to all considerations of justice or of clemency,
and his iron will extorted a condemnation from judicial tribunals and
from the Pope. In 1310, after the trial had lasted for two years,
fifty-four knights were burned in Paris, and many other executions
followed. In 1312 the Order was formally suppressed, and its possessions
transferred to the Knights of St. John. This last provision was only
imperfectly fulfilled, and much of the Templars’ hoarded wealth never
passed from the hands of the king. In 1314 the last grand master,
Jacques de Molai, after a solemn retractation of all extorted
confessions, and a denial of the truth of all charges against the Order,
perished at the stake on an island in the Seine.
Philip’s last success was an encroachment on those border territories
between France and Germany which constituted [Sidenote: Encroachments in
Arles.] the obsolete kingdom of Arles. The first step towards their
annexation to France had been taken when Philip III. inherited the
marquisate of Provence (see above, p. 47). In 1291 Philip IV. had
arranged a marriage between his second son, Philip, and Jeanne, daughter
and heiress of Otto IV., Count of Burgundy. This marriage brought
Franche-Comté under French influence, but did not result in the final
annexation of the province, which was not accomplished till the treaty
of Nymegen in 1678. For a long time the city of Lyons and the adjacent
territory had been objects of French covetousness, and constant quarrels
between the archbishop and the citizens offered frequent pretexts for
intervention. At last, in 1312, taking advantage of the Emperor Henry
VII.’s absence in Italy, Philip IV. ventured to take the final step, and
Lyons was incorporated with France.
We must now turn to Philip IV.’s domestic government, [Sidenote:
Domestic Government.] which constitutes his sole claim to a place
among the great kings of history. His aims were those of his
predecessors—those, in fact, of all kings in the later Middle Ages who
wished to extend their power. He had to destroy feudalism as a basis
of government, or, in the words of a great historian, to ‘eliminate
the doctrine of tenure from political life.’ The essential vice of the
feudal system was that every man was directly bound only to the
immediate lord of whom he held his land; the connection with that
lord’s suzerain was purely indirect. Hence came an inevitable tendency
to disruption; the tie between vassal and lord was stronger than the
indirect tie between the sub-tenant and the king; if a great noble
rebelled he could compel his tenants to follow him even against his
suzerain. For this system, which had many merits, but was inconsistent
with either national unity or a strong government, Philip desired to
substitute an organisation in which all Frenchmen, whether
tenants-in-chief or sub-tenants, should stand in equal subjection to
the law and to the king as the source and guardian of the law.
To accomplish this end, an efficient administrative machinery was
necessary, and of this the foundations had been laid by Philip’s
predecessors. The country was divided into _bailliages_ in the north and
_sénéchaussées_ in the south. Philip IV. regulated and extended the
functions of the bailiffs and seneschals, and employed them not only to
carry out his edicts in the provinces, but also to supply him with that
accurate local information without which centralisation is useless and
incompetent. Besides these local officials, he [Sidenote: The King’s
Court.] had the _cour du roi_ which attended his person. This body, the
earliest institution of Capetian France, was originally merely the court
of the king’s domain, and consisted of the household officers and the
immediate domain tenants. From time to time, however, the king must have
had to decide questions concerning the great tenants-in-chief, and by
the essential principle of feudalism such questions must be referred to
their equals. Hence arose the court of peers, the creation of which is
assigned by tradition to Philip Augustus when he summoned John of
England to answer for the murder of Arthur of Brittany. Whether this
court ever had a separate existence from the domain court is difficult
to decide, but if it had, it soon lost it. In the reign of Louis IX. the
domain court was transformed, when necessary, into a court of peers by
the addition to it of some of the great vassals. At the same time, the
court was made more efficient by the introduction of trained lawyers.
Under Philip IV. these lawyers became the real managers of the work of
justice and administration; and the nobles, though retaining the right
of attendance, preferred as a rule to absent themselves from business in
which their want of legal training placed them at a conspicuous
disadvantage. The work of the court included all departments of
government: the advising of the king, the management of finance, and the
administration of justice. And the judicial work was enormously
increased, partly by the compulsion of the nobles to allow appeals from
their local courts to that of the suzerain, and partly by the
reservation of an increasing number of _cas royaux_—_i.e._ cases which
had to be brought in the first instance before the king. It was
impossible for one body of men to discharge such a vast mass of
business, and the court was gradually split up into three great
departments, which continued, with modifications in detail, to conduct
the routine administration of France till the Revolution.
(1) The first of these divisions was the _conseil du roi_, which
corresponds roughly to the Privy Council in England. It consisted of the
great officers of the household with fifteen councillors of state and
two or more secretaries. Its chief business was to advise the king in
all affairs of government. Ordinary jurisdiction was delegated to the
Parliament, but the council continued to exercise judicial power.
Appeals could in the last instance be made to the king in council, and
he could evoke cases to it from other courts.
(2) The _chambre des comptes_ was the financial division of the royal
court, and resembles the English Exchequer. It received and audited the
accounts of the bailiffs and seneschals; it had jurisdiction in all
financial suits, and it registered all edicts and deeds which concerned
the domain.
(3) The most famous of the three bodies was the great law-court of
France, the Parliament of Paris. Its functions correspond to those of
the courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas in England, but its peculiar
history arises from the maintenance of a corporate unity and authority
which the English judges never possessed. Philip IV. not only gave to
the Parliament a separate existence, he also fixed its sessions in
Paris, and organised its three earliest sub-divisions. The _chambre des
requêtes_ decided the lesser cases of first instance brought directly
before the Parliament. The _chambre des enquêtes_ received and prepared
for further consideration all appeals from lower courts. The _grande
chambre_ was the largest and most important of the sub-divisions, and is
often called the Parliament by itself. In it the peers retained the
right of sitting down to the Revolution, but they only appeared on
formal occasions. The _grande chambre_ decided all important appeals,
and cases of first instance concerning the peers, the royal officers,
and the members of the sovereign courts. At first the Parliament only
met twice a year, at Easter and All Saints. But the two sessions proved
insufficient to discharge the growing business of the court, and, later
in the century, it was made a permanent court, and its members were
appointed for life or during the royal pleasure. In addition to its
judicial work, the Parliament had to register all royal edicts, treaties
of peace, and other formal documents. This was originally a duty rather
than a right; and it was not till much later that the Parliament based
upon this practice a claim to remonstrate against, or even to veto, the
edicts of the king.
The organisation of this administrative machinery is the greatest
achievement of Philip IV.’s domestic government. [Sidenote: The
States-General.] But his reign is also noteworthy for the origin of the
States-General, which at one time promised to become the basis of a
constitutional system of government such as was our Parliament
established in England, but was ultimately crushed into insignificance
by the crown which had created it as a mere instrument to serve its own
ends. The first meeting was held in 1302, when Philip wished to parade
the unanimity of his subjects in opposing the pretensions of Boniface
VIII. They were summoned again in 1308 to condemn the Templars, and in
1314 to support the king in a renewed war with Flanders. Philip may have
found a model for these assemblies either in the provincial estates of
Languedoc and Brittany, or in the Cortes of Castile and Aragon, but it
is more than probable that he was inspired by the example of his great
contemporary, Edward I. of England, who in 1295 had summoned the famous
‘model parliament,’ and had himself in 1301 obtained a protest against
the papal claims from a parliament at Lincoln.
The States-General under Philip IV. are especially remarkable for their
numbers. All tenants-in-chief, whether clerical or lay, were invited to
attend in person, and those who were prevented by any unavoidable cause
might send proxies. The cathedral chapters and monasteries sent
representatives; and so did all the towns of any size in the kingdom.
There was no attempt to determine the condition which entitled a man
either to vote or to be elected. The only class which was unrepresented
was the peasantry. When the States met, they were divided into three
estates: clergy, nobles, and citizens. The meeting only lasted a day,
and there was no general discussion. The royal spokesman explained the
object for which they were summoned, and then each estate separately
drew up a document in accordance with the wishes of the king.
It is obvious that the summons of the States-General was not in any way
forced upon the king by external pressure, but was a mere expedient to
strengthen his hands. The assembly never got rid of this taint on their
origin. If a French king thought his end could be best attained by
summoning the States-General, he summoned them: but if, on the contrary,
he thought it advisable to treat separately with the various provinces,
he did so. Later in the century an attempt was made to secure regular
assemblies with definite authority, but the attempt was a failure, and
parliamentary government was never established in France until the
nineteenth century.
The whole of Philip’s rule is marked by the steady encroachments upon
feudal independence and privilege of an unscrupulous but efficient
despotism. He claimed for the crown the right of creating peers, which
he exercised in favour of Charles II. of Naples and of Robert of Artois.
He raised to the rank of nobles men who had no qualification either by
descent or by tenure, and was thus enabled to reward those ministers who
borrowed from Roman Law the phrase, _quod principi placuit legis habet
vigorem_, and coined from it a French legal adage, which the monarchy
might have taken for its motto: _que veut le roi, si veut la loi_. But
there was one glaring defect in Philip IV.’s government, which he also
bequeathed to his successors. His financial [Sidenote: Financial
maladministration.] administration was as incompetent as it was
tyrannical and oppressive. He strained to the utmost the normal sources
of revenue, the income from the domain and the feudal incidents. When
these were exhausted, he imposed _gabelles_ or taxes on the sale of
commodities. But these taxes he was foolish enough to farm out to his
creditors in order to obtain large sums of ready money. Such an
expedient, especially in early times, always results in loss to the
state and oppression to the taxpayer. More ruinous, because more
dishonest, was the constant debasement of the coinage, which Philip
carried to such lengths that contemporaries called him the ‘false
coiner.’ Thus the founder of the French monarchy was also responsible
for the defect which ultimately ruined his creation. It is an
extraordinary thing that France, one of the richest countries in Europe,
and in some ways one of the most efficiently governed, never had a sound
financial system under the old monarchy. Philip’s successors imitated
the defects as well as the merits of his rule. To his devices of farming
the taxes and of debasing the currency they added the disastrous
practice of selling offices, and of increasing their value by granting
their holders exemption from taxation. Many Frenchmen saw and deplored
the evil results of this system, but no one was strong enough to apply a
drastic remedy. The deficit which resulted was the immediate occasion,
though not the cause, of the great revolution. It may be fanciful, but
it is not preposterous, to contend that, if Philip IV. had been a
capable and honest financier, the Bourbons might still be seated on the
throne of France.
Such a harsh government as that of Philip IV. could not possibly be
popular. His direct attack upon their [Sidenote: Death of Philip IV.]
interests exasperated the _noblesse_, and his financial extortions
alienated the _bourgeoisie_. In 1314 a new war broke out with Flanders,
and Philip attempted to defray its expense by a heavy tax upon all
commodities, to be levied on their sale, from both seller and purchaser.
This caused an explosion, and for the first and only time nobles and
third estate were leagued together against the king. Such an alliance
threatened to ruin the monarchy, and Philip was forced to yield. He
abolished the tax, and promised to redress the grievances of his
subjects as regards the coinage. Soon after this humiliation he died
(November 29, 1314).
During the next fourteen years Philip’s three sons ruled in rapid
succession, and their reigns are chiefly notable for [Sidenote: Louis
X., 1314-16.] the establishment of the all-important rule of succession
which excluded females from the succession to the French throne. The
eldest, Louis X., was only twenty-four years old at his father’s death,
and took no interest in the work of government. The conduct of affairs
was allowed to fall into the hands of his uncle, Charles of Valois, who
had always sympathised with the feudal opposition to Philip IV. The
triumph of the reactionary party was seen in the trial and execution of
Enguerrand de Marigny, one of the chief advisers of the late king. But
the nobles, freed for the moment from royal domination, were
short-sighted enough to throw over their recent alliance with the
bourgeoisie, and thus lost an excellent chance of imposing permanent
restrictions upon the power of the crown. The concessions which they
obtained were solely in the interests of their own class, and even they
were not national concessions but were embodied in a series of
provincial charters. The absence of national unity, to which these
events testified, was a cause of the ultimate victory of the monarchy,
which had never again to face such a hostile union of classes as had
been formed for the moment in 1314.
Apart from this momentary victory of the feudal nobles, the reign of
Louis X. is absolutely uneventful. He got rid of his first wife,
Margaret of Burgundy, in order that he might marry Clementia, sister of
Carobert of Hungary. He also undertook an expedition to Flanders in
order to force the Count to observe his treaty obligations; but the
campaign was wholly unsuccessful, and soon afterwards the young king
died, on June 5, 1316. His death was more [Sidenote: Succession question
in 1316.] important than his life, as it gave rise to the first doubtful
succession since the reign of Hugh Capet. For the first time for more
than three centuries there was no male heir to the crown, as Louis only
left a daughter, Jeanne, the offspring of his first marriage. As the
question of female succession had never arisen before, there was no rule
to decide either way. But the problem in this case was further
complicated by the fact that Clementia, Louis’s second wife, was
expecting a child to be born five months after her husband’s death.
Until this event took place nothing could be settled, and during the
necessary interregnum the regency was naturally intrusted to Philip, the
elder brother of the late king. Meanwhile the interests of Jeanne were
maintained by her maternal uncle, Eudes IV. of Burgundy, with whom
Philip concluded a treaty. This provided that if Clementia gave birth to
a son he should succeed to the whole inheritance, but if the posthumous
child were a daughter, then Jeanne was to have Navarre, Champagne, and
Brie until she was of marriageable age, when she was to choose whether
to renounce the crown of France or to demand a formal consideration of
her claims.
In November, 1316, Louis X.’s widow gave birth to a son, who is reckoned
in the list of French kings as John I. The child was born on a Sunday,
and died on the following Friday. Thus the claims of Jeanne were left in
full force, but they were seriously prejudiced by the fact that during
the previous five months her uncle had obtained a firm hold of the reins
of government, which he was by no means prepared to resign. The Duke of
Burgundy was bribed to abandon the cause of Jeanne by a marriage with
Philip’s daughter, and by the gift of Franche-Comté and 500,000 crowns
as his bride’s dowry. The French lawyers, sharing the general prejudice
against female rule, which resulted from so long a period of male
succession, hunted out a clause in the laws of the Salian Franks which
forbade [Sidenote: The so-called Salic Law.] the inheritance by women of
_terra Salica_. This clause they arbitrarily applied to the crown, and
thus coined the famous expression, the Salic Law. But it must never be
forgotten that the exclusion of women from the throne of France rests,
not upon any ancient rule, but upon the precedent of Jeanne’s exclusion
in 1316, followed and confirmed by further exclusions in 1322 and 1328.
Once securely established on the throne, Philip V. showed [Sidenote:
Philip V., 1316-22.] himself a resolute and able ruler. The reaction in
favour of feudal independence was checked; the lawyers recovered their
ascendency in the royal counsels; and the administrative machinery of
Philip IV. was once more set in working order. Numerous assemblies were
held, in which the third estate was fully represented; and a vigorous
attempt was made to improve trade, and to check provincial isolation by
establishing uniformity in coinage, weights, and measures. But Philip
did not live long enough to carry out designs which, if successful,
might have given him a place among the great administrators of France.
He died in 1322 leaving only daughters, and his brother Charles IV. had
little difficulty in seizing, not only the throne, [Sidenote: Charles
IV., 1322-28.] but also Navarre, Champagne, and Brie, which ought to
have been left in the hands of Jeanne. The reign of Charles is of little
importance except in connection with England, where Edward II. was
deposed and murdered by a conspiracy headed by his faithless wife and
Charles’s sister, Isabella of France. To his nephew, the young Edward
III., Charles handed over Guienne, but retained the district of Agen, to
be the source of future disputes. With Charles IV.’s death (January 31,
1328) the main line of the House of Capet came to an end. There was
still one doubt as to the rule or custom of succession. That women could
not themselves hold the crown had been settled by three successive
precedents within twelve years. But could they transmit a claim to their
male descendants? There were in 1328 two possible claimants on this
ground—Philip, the son of Eudes IV. of Burgundy by a daughter of Philip
V., and Edward III. of England, whose mother was a sister of the three
last kings. But France was not likely to adopt a rule of succession
which might at any moment give the crown to a foreign prince. And so the
crown passed to the nearest male heir, Philip of Valois.
Footnote 3:
See below, chap. iv., pp. 81-88.
Footnote 4:
Since 1125 Provence had been divided into two parts: (1) the county,
south of the Durance, which was given to the family of Bérenger, and
passed, with the hand of their heiress Beatrice, to Charles I. of
Anjou and Naples; (2) the marquisate, between the Durance, the Isère,
the Alps, and the Rhône, which was held by the counts of Toulouse, and
was brought by Jeanne to her husband, Alfonso of Poitiers.