We close this notice by strongly recommending Lord Mackenzie’s book to

the notice both of the student and the practising jurist, to each of

whom we think it indispensable.

THE PERIPATETIC POLITICIAN—IN FLORENCE.

There is a mysterious power in this nineteenth century before which we

all bow down and worship. Emperors have grown powerful by its support,

and kings that know not how to please it become the laughing-stock of

Europe. The highest are not beyond its reach, the lowest are not beneath

its notice. The Secretary of State spreads lengthy despatches as

peace-offerings at its shrine, and the parish beadle is careful not to

put his hat on awry lest he fall beneath its censure. The idol has

innumerable votaries; but its high priests, the exponents of its law,

are the great authors and statesmen of the day. And they have a hard

taskmaster to serve: they must do the pleasure of their lord before he

has signified his wishes—they must anticipate his thoughts and be

beforehand with his commands; obsequiousness and obedience alone will

not suffice them; they may sacrifice every friend and every principle

for his sake, and nevertheless disgrace and proscription await them,

unless they can know their master’s mind before it is known to himself.

Public Opinion is the unknown master to whom all submit; listening

anxiously but vainly for his commands, not knowing how or where to study

his humour. There are Houses of Parliament, newspapers, clubs,

mechanic’s institutes, pot-houses, prayer meetings—but which of all

these speak public opinion? A weekly gathering of articles from daily

papers is not public opinion. Opinion after dinner is not public. It is

evidently necessary to apply some means specially adapted to the place

and the time in order to discover the mood of public opinion. In

Syracuse, Dionysius constructed an ear for the purpose; unfortunately

this invention has been lost.

In London, it is popularly said that the only means to ascertain public

opinion is to take a seat in the omnibus for the day and drive

continually up and down.

In Florence, public opinion walks,—it cannot afford to drive. The people

must be studied on foot. The reader will therefore have already

understood that the title of this paper was chosen from necessity and

not for the sake of the alliteration; that in order to catch a glimpse

of Italian affairs as seen through Tuscan spectacles—in order to enter

for the moment into the jealousies, the grievances, and the vanities of

the provincial town of Florence—there is no resource but that of

treating the question peripatetically—that is, of walking the streets.

This course is the more natural because in Florence the streets

are—thanks to the high price of manure—remarkably clean. Accordingly the

people live in the street; there they are to be met at an early hour

lounging along talking or smoking, wrapped in cloaks that take an extra

twist with every degree of cold. The street is their assembly-room; it

is frequented by men of all sorts, as will be at once seen by a moment’s

scrutiny of the stream of people creeping slowly along over the

pavement.

There is the commercial dandy who affects a felt hat with mandarin

button on the crown, a knobby stick, and a would-be English

shooting-jacket. Behind him is the sober professional man, in a French

great-coat which has wandered from Paris, making room for newer

fashions. There, too, is the priest of portly figure and wasted

garments, which show at once his devotion to the inner man, and his

neglect of the outer world, walking along with a blessing on his lips

and a green cotton umbrella under his arm. By his side is the peasant

come to town for the day, cart-whip in hand, and a long coarse cloak

trailing from his shoulders, embroidered behind with flowers in green

silk. Every stitch will show character in one way or another. Italians

wear green flowers where Spaniards would have crosses in black braid.

And who is there among all this crowd who would trouble his thoughts

about Victor Emmanuel and his Ministers? Look at yonder corner-wall

where there is a sheet of paper prominently pasted on a black board: one

solitary passenger gives it a passing glance: that is the telegram just

received, announcing the formation of the new Ministry. But farther on

there are collected a little company of people, whose animated and

intent looks show something really interesting to be going on: it is

that two or three young men are practising in chorus a snatch out of the

last street-ballad. Farther on the respective merits of different

ballet-dancers are under discussion, and some of the company are

pronouncing the stage-manager unfit for his post. In the whole crowd

there is not one word, nor even a passing thought, bestowed on the

Government which is going on at Turin. So universal is the carelessness

with regard to the current affairs of the day, that, as a general rule,

if a man be heard to speak about politics, or in any way show himself

conversant with public affairs, it may at once be concluded, more

especially if he speak in a disagreeable voice, that that man is a

Piedmontese.[4]

In vain do loud-voiced criers hawk prints representing the murder of the

Gignoli family by the Austrians in 1859; they offer them at half-price,

at quarter-price, but find no purchasers. Even the photograph of the

bullet extracted from Garibaldi’s foot has ceased to draw people to the

shop-window.

Leaving the street for the moment, and turning the corner of the great

Piazza, we find under the colonnade, opposite the picture gallery, an

anxious crowd of people, eager and pushing. That is the entrance to the

‘Monte di Pieta,’ or municipal pawnbroking establishment (for private

pawnbroking is illicit in Florence). There is a long table before the

door, and on it are spread silver watches, coral bracelets, and other

trinkets. Articles that have lain unredeemed are being sold at auction.

The sale is well attended, but purchasers will not compete. There is

much examination and very little bidding. This same scene has occurred

regularly at stated intervals for the last several centuries.

In the time of the Medicis, public policy and private benevolence became

copartners in founding a self-supporting pawnbroking shop on a large

scale, to be kept under the supervision of Government. To a people who,

whenever they begin to be pinched in circumstances, try to economise but

never attempt to work, and exert themselves rather to save than to make

money, it is no small object to have a public pawnbroking establishment

where money is allowed at a fixed scale. If a Florentine have a bracelet

too much, and bread too little, he has but to give the bracelet in pawn

to the Government. In the same way, if he be troubled with a child too

many, he proceeds to the infant asylum, rings the bell, and in the

cradle which forthwith opens, he deposits the child for the Government

to feed. Under the Governments which have prevailed in Tuscany for the

last three hundred years, this is precisely the kind of political

institution which the Florentines have learnt to value and appreciate.

The proper supervision of the pawnbroking shop, the maintenance of the

foundling asylums and the hospitals (with which Florence is, in

proportion, better provided than London), the grant made to the

opera—these and other such questions are the matters of government in

which a Florentine takes interest. To politics, in an Englishman’s sense

of the word, they pay little or no attention. In the election of

representatives to the Chambers at Turin the people appear to take

little or no part. For instance: M. Peruzzi, the present Minister for

the Interior, is one of the representatives of Florence. On accepting

office he was of course obliged to appeal to his constituents. The seat

was contested. On the day appointed for the election I had occasion to

ask my way to the place where it was being held: several respectable

citizens did not know that any election was to take place whatever. At

last one man, better informed than the rest, had heard something about

an election that week, but did not know where the elections were held.

The election proved invalid for want of the legal complement of

voters—namely, one-half the whole number. This is the general result of

elections in Tuscany on the first trial. The second election is valid,

provided only the same number of voters are present as attended the

first. This is fortunate, otherwise it might occur that there would be a

lack of representatives from Tuscany in the Parliament at Turin.

The fact is, and it needs repetition, the Florentines do not care about

politics. They have accepted the revolution that was made for them, and

on the whole are well contented with the change; at least we ought in

justice to ascribe their general listlessness in political affairs to

contentment and not to indifference.

To inquire, however, more exactly into the thoughts of those amongst the

Florentines who do think about politics, it will be as well to obtain at

once rest and information by sitting down for a few moments in the

tobacconist’s shop, which may be called the centre of the political

world. To begin with, the tobacconist is always himself by profession a

finished politician, and he, moreover, enjoys the confidence of several

distinguished friends, who keep him accurately informed of every word

that passes in the Cabinets of Europe. The general burden of his

conversation, which is a fair type of the talk at shops and second-rate

cafés, is as follows:—The Pope-king is the father of all mischief; and

how should it be otherwise? are not priests and kings always the

promoters of every evil? and this man is a combination of both. Then

follows a complaint against the Emperor Napoleon and his creatures, the

Ministers at Turin, who, like true Piedmontese, are in secret jealous of

the greatness of Italy, and treacherously keep in pay reactionary

employés in lieu of filling the offices, as they should, with

enterprising liberals. This sentiment meets with loud and general

applause, and the company, waxing warm on this topic, forthwith launch

into various prophecies as to the immediate future. French wars, Polish

revolutions, Austrian bankruptcies, are all considered, and it is

weighed what each might do for Italy. What the Italians themselves might

do is a less frequent theme.

The Government, however, is blamed for its neglect of Garibaldi, which

is only of a piece with its conduct in leaving the active and patriotic

liberals of the country without employment while they are pensioning the

reactionists—an opinion which usually serves as alpha and omega in the

discussions of the Florentine liberals on the conduct of the Government.

Having exhausted this topic, our friend the politico-tobacconist resumes

his seat, taking his scaldino (an earthenware vessel shaped like a

basket, and filled with hot ashes) on his lap for the comfort of his

fingers, and proceeds to draw the attention of visitors to various piles

of newspapers, the sale of which is part of his trade. And as Florence

produces, for a country town, a very respectable number of papers (some

dozen daily papers, not to count two tri-weekly papers and other

periodicals), which, moreover, have something of a national, or rather

of a provincial character, it will be worth while to look over them

before leaving the tobacconist’s shop. It is not every paper that will

be found: for instance, the three retrograde papers will not be

forthcoming. These have so extremely small a circulation that it is very

difficult to hunt them up. It is only by favour, for instance, that a

copy of the ‘Contemporaneo’ can be got, for, there being no public

demand, there is no sale; a limited number of copies only are

distributed among subscribers.

The newspapers to be found on the counter are all liberal, but of

various shades of “colour,” as the Italians name party opinions.

The ‘Gazzetta del Popolo,’ which is strictly constitutional, has still

the largest circulation of any (it prints about 3000 copies daily),

though not half what it had. Its decline has been owing partly to

general competition, partly to its having embraced the defence of the

late Ratazzi Ministry, which unpopular course is said to have cost it in

a few months nearly one-fourth of its circulation; partly, perhaps, to

its sustaining the Piedmontese, who have not of late been growing in the

favour of the Tuscans.

The other papers are all more “advanced,” that is, more opposed to

Government. Among these the ‘Censor’ ranks first. This is a thoroughly

Tuscan paper, and full of quaint, provincial expressions. In party

politics it is red—a colour which evidently finds most favour in the

eyes of the poorer citizens; for recently it lost no less than a fourth

of its circulation by raising its price from three to five cents, that

is, from about a farthing and a half to a halfpenny. In its columns,

though not there only, may be seen a catalogue of indictments against

the Piedmontese. The Tuscans voted annexation to Italy, it is said—not

to Piedmont. With Rome unity, without it none. Does the unity of Italy

mean the domination of Turin? Are we to accept from the most barbarous

portion of Italy laws which are sent down to us written in a jargon

which cannot even be called Italian? Tuscany is being fleeced by men so

greedy of every little gain, that they supply all the royal offices with

paper made only in Piedmont, in order that Piedmontese paper-mills may

reap the benefit.

It speaks well for the Piedmontese that, with so much desire to find

fault with them, these are the most serious charges brought forward.

In the Ratazzi Ministry the papers lost the most fruitful theme of

declamation. The caricatures against this Minister were endless,

representing him in every stage of official existence, from the time

when he climbs the high ministerial bench by the aid of a little finger

stretched out from Paris, to the moment when he is shown hiding his head

under the folds of the Emperor’s train.

What is said against the Italian Government, however, is not said in

praise of the Grand-duke’s rule. On the contrary, the Opposition

papers—those at least that have any circulation—all lean rather towards

the “party of action,” or the extreme Liberals. The most prominent paper

of this description in Florence is the ‘New Europe,’ which is

republican, and makes no mystery of its principles.

Indeed, the press is so outspoken, and is allowed such latitude, that it

is difficult to understand for what purpose the Government maintains a

censorship. Nevertheless, such is the case. It is not a very effective

one. Every paper is bound to be laid before the Reggio procurator

twenty-four hours before it is published; but that official is so little

able to peruse them all within the specified time, that it has

frequently happened that a paper has been sequestrated when it was a day

old, and had been already read and forgotten. The right of

sequestration, however, has been used pretty freely. The ‘Censor’ was

sequestrated more than sixty times in the course of last year, and the

‘New Europe’ has been treated even more severely: on one occasion it was

sequestrated for three days running.

It is, however, high time to turn from the ideal to the material world;

that is, to leave the tobacconist and his newspapers, and dive into the

recesses of some very dirty and narrow little lanes where the market is

being held, in order to see whether the prices given and the business

done prove any decline in the prosperity of Florence since the days of

the Grand-duke.

Passing by the mountains of vegetables piled up ornamentally against the

huge stones of the Strozzi Palace, the reader must pick his way

carefully amidst the accumulated masses of cabbage-stalks, children, and

other dirt beneath, avoiding at the same time the carcasses that hang

out from the butchers’ stalls on either side, from poles projecting far

into the passage, and stooping every now and then to avoid the festoons

of sausages which hang down from above, garland-fashion, just low enough

to come in contact with the nose of an average-sized mortal. If by

strictly observing the above precautions he can make his way despite all

these obstacles, he will on turning the next corner arrive safely in

front of an old woman and a boy presiding over sundry emblems of

purgatory in the shape of huge frying-pans fixed over charcoal fires.

The boy is ladling a mass of tiny dainties out of a seething black

liquid, which have an appearance as of whitebait being fished out of the

Thames. It is, however, only an appearance; for these are nothing more

than small cakes of chestnut-flour, by name “sommomoli,” fried in oil,

from which they emerge copper-coloured, sweet, nourishing, and

tasteless, costing half a centesimo, or the twentieth part of a penny,

a-piece. The old woman is in person superintending a still larger

frying-pan, in which are frizzling square cut cakes, resembling

Yorkshire pudding, sometimes interspersed with small slices of meat.

These, by name “ignochchi,” consist of nothing less than Indian corn

savoured with hogs-lard. A penny (ten centesimi) will purchase ten of

them—a larger quantity than most English, or any Italian stomach would

find it convenient to dispose of at one sitting. A step farther on

slices will be offered to the passer-by off a huge flat cake the colour

of gingerbread, also made of chestnut-flour, and so satisfying that it

would puzzle even an Eton lollypop-eater to consume a penny’s worth.

There are yet other delicacies, one especially tempting, a kind of

black-pudding or rather black wafer. It consists of a spoonful of hog’s

blood fried in oil, and then turned out of the pan on to a plate,

seasoned with scraped cheese, and devoured hot, at a halfpenny a-piece.

With street goodies at these rates, whatever rise there may have been in

prices, it is impossible to believe that they are of a nature to press

to any extent upon the people at large. But take the staples of the

market; look into the baker’s shop; weigh the loaves sold over the

counter, and the price of the best wheaten bread will prove to be

fifteen centesimi (a penny halfpenny a-pound)—not to mention the sacks

of maize-flour, of rice, and of millet on the threshold.

Nevertheless the Florentine market shows a general rise in prices,

probably attributable in part to the increased facility for sending the

products of Tuscany, this garden of Italy, into the adjacent provinces,

in part, although indirectly, to increased taxation, by which is meant

not merely Government taxation, but the municipal rates, which have

considerably increased in Florence; for the corporation of the town, in

common with many other municipalities and commonalties, are availing

themselves of their greater freedom of action under the new Government

to carry out numberless improvements, which it was difficult to execute

before on account of the lengthy representations which were required to

be laid before the Grand-ducal Government.

The increase of taxation consequently is very considerable. The “tassa

prediale,” or property-tax, for instance, has been increasing in

Florence since 1859 at the rate of about one per cent every year, and in

some commonalties it is even higher. There are men in Florence who are

now paying in taxes (local rates and all included) exactly four times

what they paid in the Grand-duke’s day. It is true that this increase is

not so oppressive as it would appear, because the taxation of Tuscany

used to be extremely light, being under fourteen shillings per head

compared with the population. Still the cheerfulness with which this

increase has been borne is a hopeful sign of the general willingness of

the people to support the Italian Government. No impatience even has

been shown at the rapidly augmenting taxes, and this single fact

deserves to be set against a multitude of complaints on smaller matters.

Taxation, however, probably enters for very little in the rise of market

prices. The reason of this increase is to be sought in local causes. For

instance, there have been several successive bad seasons for olives.

This year the yield is better, and the price is falling. Wine is still

very high, owing to the grape disease. Meat is nearly double what it was

some years since, owing, it is said, chiefly to a drought last summer.

The rise in prices, however, has been counterbalanced, so far as the

working population are concerned, by a rise in wages, which has been on

the average from a Tuscan lire to a Sardinian franc, or about 20 per

cent.

On the whole, comparing the rise in prices with that in wages, the real

pay of the labourer would seem to have slightly improved. So far,

therefore, as the people’s stomachs are concerned, the comparison is not

unfavourable to the new Government. To persons residing at Florence on

fixed incomes, however, the increase in both instances is unfavourable,

and they not unnaturally regard that which is inconvenient to themselves

as ruinous to the country.

The loss of the custom of the Court and its train, upon which so much

stress has been laid, so far from having affected Tuscany, has not even

really affected Florence. The amount taken on account of the “octroi” at

the gates of Florence shows the consumption to be on the increase.

We may therefore leave the market with the conviction that there is no

material pressure at work to cause discontent. Some tradesmen really

have suffered from the absence of the Court, as the jewellers and

milliners for instance; but trade generally has not felt the difference.

Continuing, however, our walk in search of public opinion, we come, in a

street not far distant, to a real cause of complaint; and in Tuscany,

where there is a cause, there will be no want of complaint. There are a

couple of soldiers standing sentry before a large door, and all around

knots of countrymen talking together in anxious expectation, or not

talking, but silently taking leave.

The conscription is a grievance. It is the only act of the new

Government which is generally felt to be a hardship, and sometimes

murmured against as an injustice. Rather more than one in every five of

the youths who this year attain the age of twenty-one are being drawn

for the army. This is the proportion of those taken from their homes and

sent to the depots of different regiments, for all are liable to

military service under one category or another. Being inscribed and left

at home, however, is no great hardship: it is the separation from home

which is dreaded, and therefore the numbers of the first category in the

conscription which have alone to be considered. This heavy conscription

is something new to the Tuscans. In the palmy days of Grand-ducal

Government, before 1848, exemption from military service could be

obtained for something less than £4 English; after the Austrian

occupation, the conscription having grown severer, the cost of exemption

was about doubled; but now it amounts to a sum which none but the

wealthy can possibly pay.

The young conscripts, however, become rapidly imbued with the

professional pride of their older comrades; and it often happens that

lads, who have parted from their home in tears, astonish their quiet

parents a few weeks after with letters full of enthusiasm for the

Italian army. Enthusiasm on any subject is a rare virtue in Tuscany; and

if a military life for six years could infuse into the rising generation

some energy and some habits of discipline, the army would prove a more

important means of education than all the new schools which are to be

introduced.

But how is it that throughout this perambulation of the town of Florence

we have not come across a single sign of that touching affection for the

late Grand-duke which has been so vividly and so often described in

England?

The truth is, that although there is a good deal of discontent with the

present Government, there is no regret for the last.

Of all the weak sentiments which exist in Tuscan breasts, loyalty

towards the late Grand-duke is certainly the very weakest.

In order, however, that the reader may catch a glimpse of the “Codini”

(or “party of the tail,” as the following of the late Grand-duke are

called) before they are all numbered among the antiquities of Italy, it

will be advisable to take one turn on the banks of the Arno in the

“Cascine,” the fashionable walk, or “the world,” of the Florentines.

It is sunset, and the evening chill is making itself felt—in fact, to

lay aside all romance about the Italian climate, it is very cold. The

upper five hundred come out at dew-fall, when everybody else goes in,

apparently for no better reason than because everybody else does go in.

There are Russians driving in handsome droschkes, and Americans in

livery-stable barouches of an unwieldy magnificence. But our business is

not with these; the native gentility of Florence is just arriving—ladies

in closely-shut broughams, and young gentlemen, some in open carriages,

half dog-carts half phaetons; others, less fortunate, in open fiacres.

They drive down to the end of the Cascine, where old beggar women attend

upon them with “scaldine” to warm their fingers over. There men and

women alight and promenade at a foot’s pace, despite the cold, after

which they all drive home again.

And what can they have been about all day before they came to the

Cascine? The masters and mistresses have been sitting in their

respective rooms, drawing such warmth as they might from a stove most

economically furnished with wood; the servants have been sitting in the

antechamber, holding their four extremities over the hot ashes in the

“brasero,” a metal vessel something like an English stewpan on a large

scale; for the Italian palaces are cold: the architect may have done

well, but the mason and the carpenter have been negligent. The walls are

joined at any angle except a right one; the windows do not close; the

floors are diversified by sundry undulations, so that a space is left

beneath the door, through which light zephyrs play over the ill-carpeted

floor. Perhaps the lady of the house has been sitting in state to

receive her friends; for every Florentine lady is solemnly announced as

“at home” to all her friends one day in the week, so as to keep them out

of the house all the other six.

This is the married life in the palace. The life of the young men, the

bachelor life of Florence, is not a bit more active. In a word, the life

of a Florentine in easy circumstances is a prolonged lounge. It is not

that they loiter away their time for a few weeks, or for a few

months—for “a season,” in short—that is done all the world over; but the

Florentines do nothing but loiter. The most active portion of their

lives is that now before us,—the life during the carnival. The carnival

over, the rest of the year is spent in recruiting finances and health

for the next winter.

Lest the reader should treat this description as exaggerated or unduly

severe, it will be best to let the Florentines themselves describe their

own manner of living, and give, word for word, the rules laid down in a

Florentine paper[5] for any young gentleman who wishes to live in

holiness, peace, and happiness (_sic_).

“On waking in the morning, take a cup of coffee in bed; and if you have

a servant to pour it out, mind that she be a young and pretty one.

“Then light a cigar (but not of native tobacco; it is too bad), or,

better still, take a whiff of a pipe.

“Clear your ideas by smoking, and, little by little, have yourself

dressed by the person who undressed you the night before.

“After writing a meaningless letter, or reading a chapter out of a

novel, go out, weather permitting.

“Should you meet a priest, a hunchback, or a white horse, return

straightway, or a misfortune may befall you.

“After a short turn, get back to breakfast, and, this over, bid the

driver put to and whip up for the Cascine.

“There go from one carriage to the other, and talk scandal to each lady

against all the rest: this to kill time till dinner.

“Eat enough, and drink more; and should some wretch come to trouble your

digestion by begging his bread, tell him a man should work.

“At night, go to the theatre, the club, or into society. At the theatre,

should there be a new piece, hiss it; this will give you the reputation

of a connoisseur; should there be an opera, try to learn an air that you

may sing at the next party; should there be a ballet, endeavour to play

Mæcenas to some dancer, according to the custom of the century.

“One day over, begin the next in the same way, and so on to the end.”

This, in sober earnest, is the life of a Florentine noble; except that,

if rich enough, he spends all his superfluous energy and wealth in

occasional visits to Paris. If unusually clever, he will become a good

singer, or a judge of art—not of pictures and statues, probably, but of

antique pots and pans. Otherwise he has no pursuit whatever, and his

sole occupation is to persuade himself that he is an Adonis, and his

friends that he is as fortunate as Endymion.

Such is the stuff which the Codini nobles are made of, and so let them

drive home in peace. These are not the manner of men to make counter

revolutions. Brought up as boys by a priest, within the four walls of a

palace, they have never had an opportunity of gaining any experience of

life beyond that afforded by the café, the theatre, and the Court, and

they feel alarmed and annoyed to find growing up around them a state of

things in which men will have to rank according as they can make

themselves honoured by the people, and not according to the smile they

may catch at Court. To this must be added, with some, a genuine personal

feeling towards the late Grand-duke, but these are very few; they are

limited for the most part to the courtiers, or “the antechamber” of the

Court that has passed away, and even with them it is no more than a

feeling of patronising friendship—nothing resembling the loyalty of an

Englishman towards his sovereign. But most of the regret expressed for

the late Grand-duke is nothing more than ill-disguised disappointment at

being no longer able to cut a figure at Court and rub shoulders with

royalty; and this is a form of politics not altogether unknown among our

good countrymen at Florence.

It is cruel of reactionary writers and orators in other countries to

draw down ridicule on the harmless and peaceful gentlemen who form the

small band of Codini at Florence, by endeavouring to magnify them into a

counter-revolutionary party.

The Codini at Florence would wish for the Austrians: they have a faint

and lingering hope of a Parisian Court at Florence, under Prince

Napoleon; but they do not even pretend that they would move a finger in

any cause.

There are men in Tuscany, and even gentlemen, who will work and form

themselves, let us hope, on the stamp of Baron Ricasoli; but these are

not to be found among the clique of the Codini at Florence.

The intelligence and energy of the country is for Italy, and nearly all

the great names of Florence—the names of republican celebrity, to their

honour be it said—are to be found in the ranks of the national party. It

is true their name is at present all that they can give to forward the

cause.

Let us hope, however, that the ideas of ambition, and the wider field

for competition which the new system offers, may awake in the children

now growing up in Florence an energy which has been unknown to their

fathers for many and many a generation. Then, perhaps, a walk in the

streets of Florence thirty years hence will no longer show us electors

who will not step a hundred yards out of the way in order to attend an

election. The Florentines may, at their own pleasure, by taking a part

in their own government and the government of Italy, virtually terminate

that Piedmontese tutelage against which they fret, and without which

they are not yet fit to carry out a constitutional system.

FLORENCE, _Feb. 2, 1863_.

THE FRANK IN SCOTLAND.[6]

For the benefit of the reader who may not have time and inclination to

work his way through two thick volumes of research—for the benefit also

of him who might be inclined to that adventurous task, but desires

beforehand to have some notion of the tenor and character of the work

before he invests in it his time and patience—we gave, in our November

Number, a sketch of what we thought the prominent features of the doings

of our countrymen in France, during the long period when Scotland was

alienated from England. We now propose to take up the other side of the

reciprocity. The two sketches will necessarily be distinct in character,

as the material facts to which they refer were distinct. France was, as

we have seen, the centre round which what remained of the civilisation

of the old world lingered; and, along with much wretchedness among the

common people, she was of all the states of Europe that which contained

the largest abundance of the raw material of wealth, and consequently of

the elements by which men of enterprise could raise themselves to

affluence and station. Scotland was on the outskirts of those lands in

which the new civilisation of the northern nations was slowly and coldly

ripening to a still distant maturity. These two countries, so unlike,

were knit into a close alliance, by a common danger inducing them to

adopt a common policy. But, being fundamentally unlike, their close

intercourse naturally tended, by close contact and comparison, to bring

out the specialties of their dissimilarity.

And in nothing is this dissimilarity more conspicuous than when we look

at the method and the object of the Scots’ sojourn in France, and

compare them with those which characterised the few Frenchmen who came

to us. The ruling feature in the former side of the reciprocity is, the

profuseness with which our countrymen domesticated themselves in the

land of their ancient allies, and infused new blood into theirs. There

was little to attract the Frenchman to pitch his tent with us. As soon

almost would he have thought of seeking his fortunes in Lapland or

Iceland. Here, therefore, we have less to do with the fortunes of

individual adventurers than with the national policy of the French

towards Scotland, and those who casually came among us for the purpose

of giving it effect. Our country had in fact been in a great measure

cleared of French names before our intercourse with France began, and

they never reappeared, except casually and in connection with some

special political movement. The Norman French who had migrated from

England over the border having, as we have seen, rendered themselves

offensive by helping their own Norman King to enslave Scotland, were

driven away in considerable numbers at the conclusion of the war of

independence; and afterwards the French, though they kept up the policy

of a close alliance with us, and gave a hearty reception to our own

adventurers, found nothing to tempt them to reciprocate hospitalities.

Hence the present sketch is not likely to afford any such genial history

of national hospitality and successful adventure as the paper devoted to

the conduct of our countrymen in France.

The policy of our alliance against England as the common enemy had

become a thing of pretty old standing; many a Scot had sought his

fortune in France; and names familiar to us now on shop-signs and in

street-directories had been found among the dead at Poictiers, before we

have authentic account of any Frenchmen having ventured across the sea

to visit the sterile territory of their allies. Froissart makes a story

out of the failure of the first attempt to send a French ambassador

here. The person selected for the duty was the Lord of Bournazel or

Bournaseau, whose genealogy is disentangled by M. Michel in a learned

note. He was accredited by Charles V. in the year 1379, and was

commanded to keep such state as might become the representative of his

august master. Bournazel set off to embark at Sluys, and then had to

wait fifteen days for a favourable wind. The ambassador thought there

was no better way of beguiling the time than a recitation among the Plat

Dutch of the splendours which he was bound in the way of public duty to

exhibit in the sphere of his mission. Accordingly, “during this time he

lived magnificently; and gold and silver plate were in such profusion in

his apartments as if he had been a prince. He had also music to announce

his dinner, and caused to be carried before him a sword in a scabbard

richly blazoned with his arms in gold and silver. His servants paid well

for everything. Many of the townspeople were much astonished at the

great state this knight lived in at home, which he also maintained when

he went abroad.” This premature display of his diplomatic glories

brought him into a difficulty highly characteristic of one of the

political specialties of France at that period. It was the time when the

nobles of the blood-royal were arrogating to themselves alone certain

prerogatives and ceremonials distinguishing them from the rest of the

territorial aristocracy, however high these might be. The Duke of

Bretagne and the Count of Flanders, who were near at hand, took umbrage

at the grand doings of Bournazel, and sent for him through the bailiff

of Sluys. That officer, after the manner of executive functionaries who

find themselves sufficiently backed, made his mission as offensive as

possible, and, tapping Bournazel on the shoulder, intimated that he was

wanted. The great men had intended only to rebuke him for playing a part

above his commission, but the indiscretion of their messenger gave

Bournazel a hold which he kept and used sagaciously. When he found the

princes who had sent for him lounging at a window looking into the

gardens, he fell on his knees and acknowledged himself the prisoner of

the Count of Flanders. To take prisoner an ambassador, and the

ambassador of a crowned king, the feudal lord of the captor, was one of

the heaviest of offences, both against the law of nations and the spirit

of chivalry. The Earl was not the less enraged that he felt himself

caught; and after retorting with, “How, rascal, do you dare to call

yourself my prisoner when I have only sent to speak with you?” he

composed himself to the delivery of the rebuke he had been preparing in

this fashion: “It is by such talkers and jesters of the Parliament of

Paris and of the king’s chamber as you, that the kingdom is governed;

and you manage the king as you please, to do good or evil according to

your wills: there is not a prince of the blood, however great he may be,

if he incur your hatred, who will be listened to; but such fellows shall

yet be hanged until the gibbets be full of them.” Bournazel carried this

pleasant announcement and the whole transaction to the throne, and the

king took his part, saying to those around, “He has kept his ground

well: I would not for twenty thousand francs it had not so happened.”

The embassy to Scotland was thus for the time frustrated. It was said

that there were English cruisers at hand to intercept the ambassador,

and that he himself had no great heart for a sojourn in the wild unknown

northern land. Possibly the fifteen days’ lording it at Sluys may have

broken in rather inconveniently on his outfit; but the most likely cause

of the defeat of the first French embassy to our shores was, the

necessity felt by Bournazel to right himself at once at court, and turn

the flank of his formidable enemies; and Froissart says, the Earl of

Flanders lay under the royal displeasure for having, in his vain

vaunting, defeated so important a project as the mission to the Scots.

A few years afterwards our country received a visit, less august, it is

true, than the intended embassy, but far more interesting. In 1384,

negotiations were exchanged near the town of Boulogne for a permanent

peace between England and France. The French demanded concessions of

territory which could not be yielded, and a permanent peace, founded on

a final settlement of pending claims, was impossible. A truce even was

at that time, however, a very important conclusion to conflict; it

sometimes lasted for years, being in reality a peace under protest that

each party reserved certain claims to be kept in view when war should

again break out. Such a truce was adjusted between England on the one

side and France on the other—conditional on the accession of her allies

Spain and Scotland. France kept faith magnanimously, in ever refusing to

negotiate a separate peace or truce for herself; but, as the way is with

the more powerful of two partners, she was apt to take for granted that

Scotland would go with her, and that the affair was virtually finished

by her own accession to terms.

It happened that in this instance the Duke of Burgundy took in hand to

deal with Scotland. He had, however, just at that moment, a rather

important piece of business, deeply interesting to himself, on hand. By

the death of the Earl of Flanders he succeeded to that fair domain—an

event which vastly influenced the subsequent fate of Europe. So busy was

he in adjusting the affairs of his succession, that it was said he

entirely overlooked the small matter of the notification of the truce to

Scotland. Meanwhile, there was a body of men-at-arms in the French

service at Sluys thrown out of employment by the truce with England,

and, like other workmen in a like position, desirous of a job. They knew

that the truce had not yet penetrated to Scotland, and thought a journey

thither, long and dangerous as it was, might be a promising speculation.

There were about thirty of them, and Froissart gives a head-roll of

those whose names he remembered, beginning with Sir Geoffry de Charny,

Sir John de Plaissy, Sir Hugh de Boulon, and so on. They dared not

attempt, in face of the English warships, to land at a southern harbour,

but reached the small seaport called by Froissart Monstres, and not

unaptly supposed by certain sage commentators to be Montrose, since they

rode on to Dundee and thence to Perth. They were received with a deal of

rough hospitality, and much commended for the knightly spirit that

induced them to cross the wide ocean to try their lances against the

common enemy of England. Two of them were selected to pass onto

Edinburgh, and explain their purpose at the court of Holyrood. Here they

met two of their countrymen on a mission which boded no good to their

enterprise. These were ambassadors from France, come at last to notify

the truce. It was at once accepted by the peaceable King Robert, but the

Scots lords around him were grieved in heart at the prospect that these

fine fellows should come so far and return without having any sport of

that highly flavoured kind which the border wars afforded. The truce

they held had been adjusted not by Scotland but by France; and here, as

if to contradict its sanction, were Frenchmen themselves offering to

treat it as naught. There was, however, a far stronger reason for

overlooking it. Just before it was completed, but when it was known to

be inevitable, the Earls of Northumberland and Nottingham suddenly and

secretly drew together two thousand men-at-arms and six thousand bowmen,

with which they broke into Scotland, and swept the country as far as

Edinburgh with more than the usual ferocity of a border raid; for they

made it to the Scots as if the devil had come among them, having great

wrath, for he knew that his time was short. It was said, even, that the

French ambassadors sent to Scotland to announce the truce had been

detained in London to allow time for this raid coming off effectively.

“To say the truth,” says Froissart, mildly censorious, “the lords of

England who had been at the conference at Bolinghen, had not acted very

honourably when they had consented to order their men to march to

Scotland and burn the country, knowing that a truce would speedily be

concluded: and the best excuse they could make was, that it was the

French and not they who were to signify such truce to the Scots.”

Smarting from this inroad, the Scots lords, and especially the Douglases

and others on the border, were in no humour to coincide with their

peaceful King. They desired to talk the matter over with the

representatives of the adventurers in some quiet place; and, for reasons

which were doubtless sufficient to themselves, they selected for this

purpose the church of St Giles in Edinburgh. The conference was highly

satisfactory to the adventurers, who spurred back to Perth to impart the

secret intelligence that though the king had accepted the truce, the

lords were no party to it, but would immediately prepare an expedition

to avenge Nottingham and Northumberland’s raid. This was joyful

intelligence, though in its character rather surprising to followers of

the French court. A force was rapidly collected, and in a very few days

the adventurers were called to join it in the Douglases’ lands.

So far Froissart. This affair is not, at least to our knowledge,

mentioned in detail by any of our own annalists writing before the

publication of his Chronicles. Everything, however, is there set forth

so minutely, and with so distinct and accurate a reference to actual

conditions in all the details, that few things in history can be less

open to doubt. Here, however, we come to a statement inviting question,

when he says that the force collected so suddenly by the Scots lords

contained fifteen thousand mounted men; nor can we be quite reconciled

to the statement though their steeds were the small mountain horses

called hackneys. The force, however, was sufficient for its work. It

found the English border trusting to the truce, and as little prepared

for invasion as Nottingham and Northumberland had found Scotland. The

first object was the land of the Percies, which the Scots, in the

laconic language of the chronicler, “pillaged and burnt.” And so they

went onwards; and where peasants had been peacefully tilling the land or

tending their cattle amid the comforts of rude industry, there the

desolating host passed, the crops were trampled down—their owners left

dead in the ashes of their smoking huts—and a few widows and children,

fleeing for safety and food, was all of animal life left upon the scene.

The part, indeed, taken in it by his countrymen was exactly after

Froissart’s own heart, since they were not carrying out any of the

political movements of the day, nor were they even actuated by an

ambition of conquest, but were led by the sheer fun of the thing and the

knightly spirit of adventure to partake in this wild raid. To the Scots

it was a substantial affair, for they came back heavy-handed, with

droves and flocks driven before them—possibly some of them recovered

their own.

The king had nothing to say in his vindication touching this little

affair, save that it had occurred without his permission, or even

knowledge. The Scots lords were not the only persons who broke that

truce. It included the Duke of Burgundy and his enemies, the Low Country

towns; yet his feudatory, the Lord Destournay, taking advantage of the

defenceless condition of Oudenarde during peace, took it by a clever

stratagem. The Duke of Burgundy, when appealed to, advised Destournay to

abandon his capture; but Destournay was wilful: he had conquered the

city, and the city was his—so there was no help for it, since the

communities were not strong enough to enforce their rights, and Burgundy

would only demand them on paper. What occasioned the raid of the Scots

and French to be passed over was, however, that the Duke of Lancaster,

John of Gaunt, who had the chief authority over the English councils, as

well as the command over the available force, was taken up with his own

schemes on the crown of Castile, and not inclined to find work for the

military force of the country elsewhere. The truce, therefore, was

cordially ratified; bygones were counted bygones; and the French

adventurers bade a kindly farewell to their brethren-in-arms, and

crossed the seas homewards.

Driven from their course, and landing at the Brille, they narrowly

escaped hanging at the hands of the boorish cultivators of the swamp;

and after adventures which would make good raw materials for several

novels, they reached Paris.

There they explained to their own court how they found that the great

enemy of France had, at the opposite extremity of his dominions, a nest

of fighting fiends, who wanted only their help in munitions of war to

enable them to rush on the vital parts of his dominions with all the

fell ferocity of men falling on their bitterest feudal enemy. Thus could

France, having under consideration the cost and peril of gallying an

invading army across the Straits, by money and management, do far more

damage to the enemy than any French invading expedition was likely to

accomplish.

In an hour which did not prove propitious to France, a resolution was

adopted to invade England at both ends. Even before the truce was at an

end, the forges of Henault and Picardy were hard at work making

battle-axes; and all along the coast, from Harfleur to Sluys, there was

busy baking of biscuits and purveyance of provender. Early in spring an

expedition of a thousand men-at-arms, with their followers, put to sea

under John of Vienne, the Admiral of France, and arrived at Leith,

making a voyage which must have been signally prosperous, if we may

judge by the insignificance of the chief casualty on record concerning

it. In those days, as in the present, it appears that adventurous young

gentlemen on shipboard were apt to attempt feats for which their land

training did not adapt them—in nautical phrase, “to swing on all top

ropes.” A hopeful youth chose to perform such a feat in his armour, and

with the most natural of all results. “The knight was young and active,

and, to show his agility, he mounted aloft by the ropes of his ship,

completely armed; but his feet slipping he fell into the sea, and the

weight of his armour, which sank him instantly, deprived him of any

assistance, for the ship was soon at a distance from the place where he

had fallen.”

The expedition soon found itself to be a mistake. In fact, to send

fighting men to Scotland was just to supply the country with that

commodity in which it superabounded. The great problem was how to find

food for the stalwart sons of the soil, and arms to put in their hands

when fighting was necessary. A percentage of the cost and labour of the

expedition, spent in sending money or munitions of war, would have done

better service. The scene before the adventurers was in lamentable

contrast to all that custom had made familiar to them. There were none

of the comfortable chateaux, the abundant markets, the carpets, down

beds, and rich hangings which gladdened their expeditions to the Low

Countries, whether they went as friends or foes. Nor was the same place

for _them_ in Scotland, which the Scots so readily found in France,

where a docile submissive peasantry only wanted vigorous and adventurous

masters. “The lords and their men,” says Froissart, “lodged themselves

as well as they could in Edinburgh, and those who could not lodge there

were quartered in the different villages thereabout. Edinburgh,

notwithstanding that it is the residence of the king, and is the Paris

of Scotland, is not such a town as Tournay and Valenciennes, for there

are not in the whole town four thousand houses. Several of the French

lords were therefore obliged to take up their lodgings in the

neighbouring villages, and at Dunfermline, Kelso, Dunbar, Dalkeith, and

in other towns.” When they had exhausted the provender brought with

them, these children of luxury had to endure the miseries of sordid

living, and even the pinch of hunger. They tried to console themselves

with the reflection that they had, at all events, an opportunity of

experiencing a phase of life which their parents had endeavoured

theoretically to impress upon them, in precepts to be thankful to the

Deity for the good things which they enjoyed, but which might not always

be theirs in a transitory world. They had been warned by the first

little band of adventurers that Scotland was not rich; yet the intense

poverty of the country whence so many daring adventurers had gone over

to ruffle it with the flower of European chivalry, astonished and

appalled them. Of the extreme and special nature of the poverty of

Scotland, the great war against the English invaders was the cause. It

has been estimated, indeed, by those devoted to such questions, that

Scotland did not recover fully from the ruin caused by that conflict

until the Union made her secure against her ambitious neighbour. It was

the crisis referred to in that pathetic ditty, the earliest specimen of

our lyrical poetry, when

“Away was sonse of ale and bread,

Of wine and wax, of gaming and glee;

Our gold was changed into lead;

Cryst borne into virginity.

Succour poor Scotland and remede,

That stad is in perplexity.”

It is not sufficiently known how much wealth and prosperity existed in

Scotland before King Edward trod its soil. Berwick, the chief commercial

port, had commerce with half the world, and bade fair to rival Ghent,

Rotterdam, and the other great mercantile cities of the Low Country.

Antiquarians have lately pointed to a sad and significant testimony to

the change of times. Of the ecclesiastical remains of Scotland, the

finest are either in the Norman, or the early English which preceded the

Edwards. These are the buildings of a noted and munificent people; they

rival the corresponding establishments in England, and are in the same

style as the work of nations having common interests and

sympathies—indeed the same architects seem to have worked in both

countries. At the time when the Gothic architecture of England merged

into the type called the Second Pointed, there ceased to be

corresponding specimens in Scotland. A long period, indeed, elapses

which has handed down to us no vestiges of church architecture in

Scotland, or only a few too trifling to possess any distinctive

character. When works of Gothic art begin again to arise with the

reviving wealth of the people, they are no longer of the English type,

but follow that flamboyant style which had been adopted by the

ecclesiastical builders of the country with which Scotland had most

concern—her steady patron and protector, France.[7]

The poverty of the Scots proceeded from a cause of which they need not

have been ashamed; yet, with the reserve and pride ever peculiar to

them, they hated that it should be seen by their allies, and when these

showed any indications of contempt or derision, the natives were stung

to madness. Froissart renders very picturesquely the common talk about

the strangers, thus:—“What devil has brought them here? or, who has sent

for them? Cannot we carry on our wars with England without their

assistance? We shall never do any good as long as they are with us. Let

them be told to go back again, for we are sufficient in Scotland to

fight our own battles, and need not their aid. We neither understand

their language nor they ours, so that we cannot converse together. They

will very soon cut up and destroy all we have in this country, and will

do more harm if we allow them to remain among us than the English could

in battle. If the English do burn our houses, what great matter is it to

us? We can rebuild them at little cost, for we require only three days

to do so, so that we but have five or six poles, with boughs to cover

them.”

The French knights, accustomed to abject submission among their own

peasantry, were loth to comprehend the fierce independence of the Scots

common people, and were ever irritating them into bloody reprisals. A

short sentence of Froissart’s conveys a world of meaning on this

specialty: “Besides, whenever their servants went out to forage, they

were indeed permitted to load their horses with as much as they could

pack up and carry, but they were waylaid on their return, and

villanously beaten, robbed, and sometimes slain, insomuch that no varlet

dare go out foraging for fear of death. In one month the French lost

upwards of a hundred varlets; for when three or four went out foraging,

not one returned, in such a hideous manner were they treated.” As we

have seen, a not unusual incident of purveying in France was, that the

husbandman was hung up by the heels and roasted before his own fire

until he disgorged his property. The Scots peasantry had a decided

prejudice against such a process, and, being accustomed to defend

themselves from all oppression, resisted even that of their allies, to

the extreme astonishment and wrath of those magnificent gentlemen. There

is a sweet unconsciousness in Froissart’s indignant denunciation of the

robbing of the purveyors, which meant the pillaged peasantry recovering

their own goods. But the chronicler was of a thorough knightly nature,

and deemed the peasantry of a country good for nothing but to be used

up. Hence, in his wrath, he says: “In Scotland you will never find a man

of worth; they are like savages, who wish not to be acquainted with any

one, and are too envious of the good fortune of others, and suspicious

of losing anything themselves, for their country is very poor. When the

English make inroads thither, as they have very frequently done, they

order their provisions, if they wish to live, to follow close at their

backs; for nothing is to be had in that country without great

difficulty. There is neither iron to shoe horses, nor leather to make

harness, saddles, or bridles; all these things come ready made from

Flanders by sea; and should these fail, there is none to be had in the

country.” What a magnificent contrast to such a picture is the present

relative condition of Scotland and the Low Countries! and yet these have

not suffered any awful reverse of fortune—they have merely abided in

stagnant respectability.

It must be remembered, in estimating the chronicler’s pungent remarks

upon our poor ancestors, that he was not only a worshipper of rank and

wealth, but thoroughly English in his partialities, magnifying the feats

in arms of the great enemies of his own country. The records of the

Scots Parliament of 1395 curiously confirm the inference from his

narrative, that the French were oppressive purveyors, and otherwise

unobservant of the people’s rights. An indenture, as it is termed—the

terms of a sort of compact with the strangers—appears among the records,

conspicuous among their other Latin and vernacular contents as being set

forth in French, in courtesy, of course, to the strangers. It expressly

lays down that no goods of any kind shall be taken by force, under pain

of death, and none shall be received without being duly paid for—the

dealers having free access to come and go. There are regulations, too,

for suppressing broils by competent authority, and especially for

settling questions between persons of unequal degrees; a remedy for the

French practice, which left the settlement entirely with the superior.

This document is one of many showing that, in Scotland, there were

arrangements for protecting the personal freedom of the humbler classes,

and their rights of property, the fulness of which is little known,

because the like did not exist in other countries, and those who have

written philosophical treatises on the feudal system, or on the progress

of Europe from barbarism to civilisation, have generally lumped all the

countries of Europe together. The sense of personal freedom seems to

have been rather stronger in Scotland than in England; it was such as

evidently to astound the French knights. At the end of the affair,

Froissart expresses this surprise in his usual simple and expressive

way. After a second or third complaint of the unreasonable condition

that his countrymen should pay for the victuals they consumed, he goes

on, “The Scots said the French had done them more mischief than the

English;” and when asked in what manner, they replied, “By riding

through the corn, oats, and barley on their march, which they trod under

foot, not condescending to follow the roads, for which damage they would

have a recompense before they left Scotland, and they should neither

find vessel nor mariner who would dare to put to sea without their

permission.”

Of the military events in the short war following the arrival of the

French, an outline will be found in the ordinary histories; but it was

attended by some conditions which curiously bring out the specialties of

the two nations so oddly allied. One propitiatory gift the strangers had

brought with them, which was far more highly appreciated than their own

presence; this was a thousand stand of accoutrements for men-at-arms.

They were of the highest excellence, being selected out of the store

kept in the Castle of Beauté for the use of the Parisians. When these

were distributed among the Scots knights, who were but poorly equipped,

the chronicler, as if he had been speaking of the prizes at a

Christmas-tree, tells how those who were successful and got them were

greatly delighted. The Scots did their part in their own way: they

brought together thirty thousand men, a force that drained the country

of its available manhood. But England had at that time nothing to divert

her arms elsewhere, and the policy adopted was to send northwards a

force sufficient to crush Scotland for ever. It consisted of seven

thousand mounted men-at-arms, and sixty thousand bow and bill men—a

force from three to four times as large as the armies that gained the

memorable English victories in France. Of these, Agincourt was still to

come off, but Crecy and Poictiers were over, along with many other

affairs that might have taught the French a lesson. The Scots, too, had

suffered two great defeats—Neville’s Cross and Halidon Hill—since their

great national triumph. The impression made on each country by their

experiences brought out their distinct national characteristics. The

French knights were all ardour and impatience; they clamoured to be at

the enemy without ascertaining the amount or character of his force. The

wretched internal wars of their own country had taught them to look on

the battle-field as the arena of reason in personal conflict, rather

than the great tribunal in which the fate of nations was to be decided,

and communities come forth freed or enslaved.

To the Scots, on the other hand, the affair was one of national life or

death, and they would run no risks for distinction’s sake. Picturesque

accounts have often been repeated of a scene where Douglas, or some

other Scots leader, brought the Admiral to an elevated spot whence he

could see and estimate the mighty host of England; but the most

picturesque of all the accounts is the original by Froissart, of which

the others are parodies. The point in national tactics brought out by

this incident is the singular recklessness with which the French must

have been accustomed to do battle. In total ignorance of the force he

was to oppose, and not seeking to know aught concerning it, the

Frenchman’s voice was still for war. When made to see with his own eyes

what he had to encounter, he was as reluctant as his companions to risk

the issue of a battle, but not so fertile in expedients for carrying on

the war effectively without one. The policy adopted was to clear the

country before the English army as it advanced, and carry everything

portable and valuable within the recesses of the mountain-ranges,

whither the inhabitants not fit for military service went with their

effects. A desert being thus opened for the progress of the invaders,

they were left to wander in it unmolested while the Scots army went in

the opposite direction, and crossed the Border southwards. Thus the

English army found Scotland empty—the Scots army found England full. The

one wore itself out in a fruitless march, part of it straggling, it was

said, as far as Aberdeen, and returned thinned and starving, while the

other was only embarrassed by the burden of its plunder. Much

destruction there was, doubtless, on both sides, but it fell heaviest

where there was most to destroy, and gratified at last in some measure

the French, who “said among themselves they had burned in the bishoprics

of Durham and Carlisle more than the value of all the towns in the

kingdom of Scotland.” But havoc does not make wealth, and whether or not

the Scots knew better from experience how to profit by such

opportunities, the French, when they returned northward, were starving.

Their object now was to get out of the country as fast as they could.

Froissart, with a touch of dry humour, explains that their allies had no

objection to speed the exit of the poorer knights, but resolved to hold

the richer and more respectable in a sort of pawn for the damage which

the expedition had inflicted on the common people. The Admiral asked his

good friends the Lords Douglas and Moray to put a stop to these demands;

but these good knights were unable to accommodate their brethren in this

little matter, and the Admiral was obliged to give effectual pledges

from his Government for the payment of the creditors. There is something

in all this that seems utterly unchivalrous and even ungenerous; but it

had been well for France had Froissart been able to tell a like story of

her peasantry. It merely shows us that our countrymen of that day were

of those who “knew their rights, and, knowing, dared maintain them;” and

was but a demonstration on a humbler, and, if you will, more sordid

shape, of the same spirit that had swept away the Anglo-Norman invaders.

The very first act which their chronicler records concerning his

knightly friends, after he has exhausted his wrath against the hard and

mercenary Scot, is thoroughly suggestive. Some of the knights tried

other fields of adventure, “but the greater number returned to France,

and were so poor they knew not how to remount themselves, especially

those from Burgundy, Champagne, Bar, and Lorraine, _who seized the

labouring horses wherever they found them in the fields_,” so impatient

were they to regain their freedom of action.

So ended this affair, with the aspect of evil auspices for the alliance.

The adventurers returned “cursing Scotland, and the hour they had set

foot there. They said they had never suffered so much in any expedition,

and wished the King of France would make a truce with the English for

two or three years, and then march to Scotland and utterly destroy it;

for never had they seen such wicked people, nor such ignorant hypocrites

and traitors.” But the impulsive denunciation of the disappointed

adventurers was signally obliterated in the history of the next

half-century. Ere many more years had passed over them, that day of

awful trial was coming when France had to lean on the strong arm of her

early ally; and, in fact, some of the denouncers lived to see

adventurers from the sordid land of their contempt and hatred commanding

the armies of France, and owning her broad lordships. It was, in fact,

just after the return of Vienne’s expedition, that the remarkable

absorption of Scotsmen into the aristocracy of France, referred to in

our preceding paper, began to set in.

This episode of the French expedition to Scotland, small though its

place is in the annals of Europe, yet merits the consideration of the

thoughtful historian, in affording a significant example of the real

causes of the misery and degradation of France at that time, and the

wonderful victories of the English kings. Chivalry, courage, the love of

enterprise, high spirit in all forms, abounded to superfluity among the

knightly orders, but received no solid support from below. The mounted

steel-clad knights of the period, in the highest physical condition,

afraid of nothing on the earth or beyond it, and burning for triumph and

fame, could perform miraculous feats of strength and daring; but all

passed off in wasted effort and vain rivalry, when there was wanting the

bold peasantry, who, with their buff jerkins, and their bills and bows,

or short Scottish spears, were the real force by which realms were held

or gained.

The next affair in which M. Michel notes his countrymen as present among

us, was a very peculiar and exceptional one, with features only too like

those which were such a scandal to the social condition of France. It

was that great battle or tournament on the North Inch of Perth, where

opposite Highland factions, called the clan Quhele and clan Chattan,

were pitted against each other, thirty to thirty—an affair, the darker

colours of which are lighted up by the eccentric movements of the Gow

Chrom, or bandy-legged smith of Perth, who took the place of a defaulter

in one of the ranks, to prevent the spectacle of the day from being

spoilt. That such a contest should have been organised to take place in

the presence of the king and court, under solemnities and regulations

like some important ordeal, has driven historical speculators to

discover what deep policy for the pacification or subjugation of the

Highlands lay behind it. The feature that gives it a place in M.

Michel’s book, is the briefest possible notification by one of the

chroniclers, that a large number of Frenchmen and other strangers were

present at the spectacle. This draws us back from the mysterious arcana

of political intrigue to find a mere showy pageant, got up to enliven

the hours of idle mirth—an act, in short, of royal hospitality—a show

cunningly adapted to the tastes of the age, yet having withal the

freshness of originality, being a renaissance kind of combination of the

gladiatorial conflict of the Roman circus with the tournament of

chivalry. The Highlanders were, in fact, the human raw material which a

king of Scots could in that day employ, so far as their nature suited,

for the use or the amusement of his guests. Them, and them only among

his subjects, could he use as the Empire used the Transalpine

barbarian—“butchered to make a Roman holiday.” The treatment of the Celt

is the blot in that period of our history. Never in later times has the

Red Indian or Australian native been more the hunted wild beast to the

emigrant settler, than the Highlander was to his neighbour the

Lowlander. True, he was not easily got at, and, when reached, he was

found to have tusks. They were a people never permitted to be at rest

from external assault; yet such was their nature that, instead of being

pressed by a common cause into compact union, they were divided into

communities that hated each other almost more bitterly than the common

enemy. This internal animosity has suggested that the king wanted two

factions to exterminate each other as it were symbolically, and accept

the result of a combat between two bodies of chosen champions, as if

there had been an actual stricken field, with all the able-bodied men on

both sides engaged in it. It was quite safe to calculate that when the

representatives of the two contending factions were set face to face on

the green sward, they would fly at each other’s throats, and afford in

an abundant manner to the audience whatever delectation might arise from

an intensely bloody struggle. But, on the other hand, to expect the

Highlanders to be fools enough to accept this sort of symbolical

extinction of their quarrel was too preposterous a deduction for any

practical statesman. They had no notion of leaving important issues to

the event of single combat, or any of the other preposterous rules of

chivalry, but slew their enemies where they could, and preferred doing

so secretly, and without risk to themselves, when that was practicable.

As we read on the history of the two countries, France and Scotland, we

shall find the national friendship which had arisen in their common

adversity gradually and almost insensibly changing its character. The

strong current of migration from Scotland which had set in during the

latter period of the hundred years’ war stopped almost abruptly.

Scotsmen were still hired as soldiers—sometimes got other

appointments—and, generally speaking, were received with hospitality;

but in Louis XI.’s reign, the time had passed when they were accepted in

the mass as a valuable contribution to the aristocracy of France, and

forthwith invested with titles and domains. The families that had thus

settled down remembered the traditions of their origin, but had no

concern with Scotland, and were thoroughly French, nationally and

socially. France, too, was aggregating into a compact nationality, to

which her sons could attach themselves with some thrill of patriotic

pride. She made a great stride onward both in nationality and prosperity

during the reign of that hard, greedy, penurious, crafty, superstitious

hypocrite, Louis XI. By a sort of slow corroding process he ate out, bit

by bit, the powers and tyrannies that lay between his own and the

people. Blood, even the nearest, was to him nowise thicker than water,

so he did not, like his predecessors, let royal relations pick up what

territorial feudatories dropped; he took all to himself, and, taking it

to himself, it became that French empire which was to be inherited by

Francis I., Louis XIV., and even the Napoleons; for he seems to have had

the principal hand in jointing and fitting in the subordinate machinery

of that centralisation which proved compact enough in its details to be

put together again after the smash of the Revolution, and which has

proved itself as yet the only system under which France can flourish.

Scotland was, at the same time, rising under a faint sunshine of

prosperity—a sort of reflection of that enjoyed by France. The

connection of the poor with the rich country was becoming ever more

close, but at the same time it was acquiring an unwholesome character.

The two could not fuse into each other as England and Scotland did; and,

for all the pride of the Scots, and their strong hold over France, as

the advanced-guard mounted upon England, the connection could not but

lapse into a sort of clientage—the great nation being the patron, the

small nation the dependant. Whether for good or evil, France infused

into Scotland her own institutions, which, being those of the Roman

Empire, as practised throughout the Christian nations of the Continent,

made Scotsmen free of those elements of social communion, that _amitas

gentium_, from which England excluded herself in sulky pride. This is

visible, or rather audible, at the present day, in the Greek and Latin

of the Scotsmen of the old school, who can make themselves understood

all over the world; while the English pronunciation, differing from that

of the nations which have preserved the chief deposits of the classic

languages in their own, must as assuredly differ from the way in which

these were originally spoken. The Englishman disdained the universal

Justinian jurisprudence, and would be a law unto himself, which he

called, with an affectation of humility, “The Common Law.” It is full,

no doubt, of patches taken out of the ‘Corpus Juris,’ but, far from

their source being acknowledged, the civilians are never spoken of by

the common lawyers but to be railed at and denounced; and when great

draughts on the Roman system were found absolutely necessary to keep the

machine of justice in motion, these were entirely elbowed out of the way

by common law, and had to form themselves into a separate machinery of

their own, called Equity. Scotland, on the other hand, received

implicitly from her leader in civilisation the great body of the civil

law, as collected and arranged by the most laborious of all labouring

editors, Denis Godefroi. We brought over also an exact facsimile of the

French system of public prosecution for crime, from the great state

officer at the head of the system to the Procureurs du Roi. It is still

in full practice and eminently useful; but it is an arrangement that, to

be entirely beneficial, needs to be surrounded by constitutional

safeguards; and though there has been much pressure of late to establish

it in England, one cannot be surprised that it was looked askance at

while the great struggles for fixing the constitution were in progress.

The practice of the long-forgotten States-General of France was an

object of rather anxious inquiry at the reassembling of that body in

1789, after they had been some four centuries and a half in a state of

adjournment or dissolution. The investigations thus occasioned brought

out many peculiarities which were in practical observance in Scotland

down to the Union. All the world has read of that awful crisis arising

out of the question whether the Estates should vote collectively or

separately. Had the question remained within the bounds of reason and

regulation, instead of being virtually at the issue of the sword, much

instructive precedent would have been obtained for its settlement by an

examination of the proceedings of that Parliament of Scotland which

adjusted the Union—an exciting matter also, yet, to the credit of our

country, discussed with perfect order, and obedience to rules of

practice which, derived from the custom of the old States-General of

France, were rendered pliant and adaptable by such a long series of

practical adaptations as the country of their nativity was not permitted

to witness.

There was a very distinct adaptation of another French institution of

later origin, when the Court of Session was established in 1533. Before

that, the king’s justices administered the law somewhat as in England,

but there was an appeal to Parliament; and as that body did its judicial

work by committees, these became virtually the supreme courts of the

realm. If the reader wants to have assurance that there is something

really sound in this information, by receiving it in the current coin of

its appropriate technicalities, let him commit to memory that the chief

standing committee was named that of the _Domini auditorii ad querelas_.

When he uses that term, nobody will question the accuracy of what he

says. The Court of Session, established to supersede this kind of

tribunal, was exactly a French parliament—a body exercising appellate

judicial functions, along with a few others of a legislative

character—few in this country, but in France sufficiently extensive to

render the assembling of the proper Parliament of the land and the

States-General unnecessary for all regal purposes.

In other institutions—the universities, for instance—we find not merely

the influence of French example, but an absolute importation of the

whole French structure and discipline. The University of King’s College

in Aberdeen was constructed on the model of the great University of

Paris. Its founder, Bishop Elphinston, had taught there for many years;

so had its first principal, Hector Boece, the most garrulous and

credulous of historians. The transition from the Paris to the Aberdeen

of that day, must have been a descent not to be estimated by the present

relative condition of the two places; and one cannot be surprised to

find Hector saying that he was seduced northwards by gifts and promises.

It is probable that we would find fewer actual living remnants of the

old institution in Paris itself than in the northern imitation. There

may be yet found the offices of regent and censor, for the qualities of

which one must search in the mighty folios of _Bullæus_. There survives

the division into nations—the type of the unlimited hospitality of the

university as a place where people of all nations assembled to drink at

the fountain of knowledge. There also the youth who flashes forth, for

the first time, in his scarlet plumage, is called a _bejeant_, not

conscious, perhaps, that the term was used to the first-session students

of the French universities hundreds of years ago, and that it is derived

by the learned from _bec jaune_, or yellow nib. If the reader is of a

sentimentally domestic turn, he may find in the term the conception of

an _alma mater_, shielding the innocent brood from surrounding dangers;

and if he be knowing and sarcastic, he may suppose it to refer to a

rawness and amenability to be trotted out, expressed in the present day

by the synonymous _freshman_ and _greenhorn_.

There is a still more distinct stamp of a French type, in the

architecture of our country, so entirely separate from the English

style, in the flamboyant Gothic of the churches, and the rocket-topped

turrets of the castles; but on this specialty we shall not here enlarge,

having, in some measure, examined it several years ago.[8] It was not

likely that all these, with many other practices, should be imported

into the nation, however gradually, without the people having a

consciousness that they were foreign. They were not established without

the aid of men, showing, by their air and ways, that they and their

practices were alike alien. He, however, who gave the first flagrant

offence, in that way, to the national feeling, was a descendant of one

of the emigrant Scots of the fifteenth century, and by blood and rank

closely allied to the Scottish throne, although every inch a Frenchman.

To watch in history the action and counteraction of opposing forces

which have developed some grand result, yet by a slight and not

improbable impulse the other way might have borne towards an opposite

conclusion equally momentous, is an interesting task, with something in

it of the excitement of the chase. In pursuing the traces which bring

Scotland back to her English kindred, and saved her from a permanent

annexation to France, the arrival of John Duke of Albany in Scotland, in

1515, is a critical turning-point. Already had the seed of the union

with England been planted when James IV. got for a wife the daughter of

Henry VII. Under the portrait of this sagacious king, Bacon wrote the

mysterious motto—_Cor regis inscrutabile_. It would serve pleasantly to

lighten up and relieve a hard and selfish reputation, if one could

figure him, in the depths of his own heart, assuring himself of having

entered in the books of fate a stroke of policy that at some date,

however distant, was destined to appease the long bloody contest of two

rival nations, and unite them into a compact and mighty empire. The

prospects of such a consummation were at first anything but encouraging.

The old love broke in counteracting the prudential policy; and, indeed,

never did besotted lover abandon himself to wilder folly than James IV.,

when, at the bidding of Anne of France as the lady of his chivalrous

worship, he resolved to be her true knight, and take three steps into

English ground. When a chivalrous freak, backed by a few political

irritations scarce less important, strewed the moor of Flodden with the

flower of the land, it was time for Scotland to think over the

rationality of this distant alliance, which deepened and perpetuated her

feud with her close neighbour of kindred blood. Well for him, the good,

easy, frank, chivalrous monarch, that he was buried in the ruin he had

made, and saw not the misery of a desolated nation. Of the totally alien

object for which all the mischief had been done, there was immediate

evidence in various shapes. One curious little item of it is brought out

by certain researches of M. Michel, which have also a significant

bearing on the conflict between the secular and the papal power in the

disposal of benefices. The Pope, Julius II., was anxious to gain over to

his interest Mathew Lang, bishop of Gorz, and secretary to the Emperor

Maximilian, who was called to Rome and blessed by the vision of a

cardinal’s hat, and the papal influence in the first high promotion that

might open. The archbishopric of Bourges became vacant. The chapter

elected one of our old friends of the Scots emigrant families, Guillaume

de Monypeny, brother of the Lord of Concressault; but the King, Louis

XII., at first stood out for Brillac, bishop of Orleans, resisted by the

chapter. The bishop of Gorz then came forward with a force sufficient to

sweep away both candidates. He was favoured of the Pope: his own master,

Maximilian, desired for his secretary this foreign benefice, which would

cost himself nothing; and Louis found somehow that the bishop was as

much his own humble servant as the Emperor’s. No effect of causes

sufficient seemed in this world more assured than that Mathew Lang,

bishop of Gorz, should also be archbishop of Bourges; but the fortune of

war rendered it before his collation less important to have the bishop

of Gorz in the archiepiscopate than another person. The King laid his

hand again on the chapter, and required them to postulate one whose name

and condition must have seemed somewhat strange to them—Andrew Forman,

bishop of Moray, in the north of Scotland. There are reasons for all

things. Forman was ambassador from Scotland to France, and thus had

opportunities of private communication with James IV. and Louis XII.

This latter, in a letter to the Chapter of Bourges, explains his signal

obligations to Forman for having seconded the allurements of the Queen,

and instigated the King of Scots to make war against England, explaining

how _icelui, Roy d’Escosse s’est ouvertement declaré vouloir tenir

nostre party et faire la guerre actuellement contre le Roy

d’Angleterre_. Lest the chapter should doubt the accuracy of this

statement of the services performed to France by Forman, the King sent

them _le double des lectres que le dict Roy d’Escosse nous a escriptes

et aussi de la defiance q’il a fait au dict Roy d’Angleterre_. The King

pleaded hard with the chapter to postulate Forman, representing that

they could not find a better means of securing his own countenance and

protection. The Scotsman backed this royal appeal by a persuasive

letter, which he signed Andrè, _Arcevesque de Bourges et Evesque de

Morray_. Influence was brought to bear on the Pope himself, and he

declared his leaning in favour of Forman. The members of the chapter,

who had been knocked about past endurance in the affair of the

archbishopric from first to last, threatened resistance and martyrdom;

but the pressure of the powers combined against them brought them to

reason, and Forman entered Bourges in archiepiscopal triumph. But the

ups and downs of the affair were as yet by no means at an end. That

great pontiff, who never forgot that the head of the Church was a

temporal prince, Leo X., had just ascended the throne, and found that it

would be convenient to have this archbishopric of Bourges for his

nephew, Cardinal Abo. By good luck the see of St Andrews, the primacy of

Scotland, was then vacant, and was given as an equivalent for the French

dignity. Such a promotion was a symbolically appropriate reward for the

services of Forman; his predecessor fell at Flodden, and thus, in his

services to the King of France, he had made a vacancy for himself. He

had for some time in his pocket, afraid to show it, the Pope’s bull

appointing him Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of Scotland. This

was a direct act of interference contrary to law and custom, since the

function of the Pope was only to collate or confirm, as ecclesiastical

superior, the choice made by the local authorities. These had their

favourite for the appointment, Prior Hepburn, who showed his earnestness

in his own cause by taking and holding the Castle of St Andrews. A

contest of mingled ecclesiastical and civil elements, too complex to be

disentangled, followed; but in the end Forman triumphed, having on his

side the efforts of the King of France and his servant Albany, with the

Pope’s sense of justice. The rewards of this highly endowed divine were

the measure alike of his services to France and of his injuries to

Scotland. He held, by the way, _in commendam_, a benefice in England;

and as he had a good deal of diplomatic business with Henry VIII., it

may not uncharitably be supposed that he sought to feather his hat with

English as well as French plumage. It was in the midst of these affairs,

which were bringing out the dangerous and disastrous elements in the

French alliance, that Albany arrived.

Albany’s father, the younger brother of James III., had lived long in

France, got great lordships there, and thoroughly assimilated himself to

the Continental system. He married Anne de la Tour, daughter of the

Count of Auvergne and Boulogne, of a half princely family, which became

afterwards conspicuous by producing Marshal Turenne, and at a later

period the eccentric grenadier, Latour d’Auvergne, who, in homage to

republican principles, would not leave the subaltern ranks in Napoleon’s

army, and became more conspicuous by remaining there than many who

escaped from that level to acquire wealth and power. The sister of Anne

de la Tour married Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino. From this

connection Albany was the uncle of Catherine de Medici, the renowned

Queen of France, and, in fact, was the nearest relative, who, as folks

used to say in this country, “gave her away” to Henry II. On this

occasion he got a cardinal’s hat for Philip de la Chambre, his mother’s

son by a second marriage. He lived thoroughly in the midst of the

Continental royalties of the day, and had the sort of repute among them

that may be acquired by a man of great influence and connection, whose

capacity has never been tried by any piece of critical business—a repute

that comes to persons in a certain position by a sort of process of

gravitation. Brave he seems to have been, like all his race, and he

sometimes held even important commands. He accompanied his friend,

Francis I., in his unfortunate raid into Italy in 1525, and was

fortunately and honourably clear of that bad business, the battle of

Pavia, by being then in command of a detachment sent against Naples.

There are men who, when they shift their place and function, can

assimilate themselves to the changed conditions around them—who can find

themselves surrounded by unwonted customs and ways, and yet accept the

condition that the men who follow these are pursuing the normal

condition of their being, and must be left to do so in peace, otherwise

harm will come of it; and in this faculty consists the instinct which

enables men to govern races alien to their own. Albany did not possess

it. He appears to have been ignorant of the language of Scotland, and to

have thought or rather felt that, wherever he was, all should be the

same as in the midst of Italian and French courtiers; and if it were not

so, something was wrong, and should be put right. It was then the

commencement of a very luxurious age in France—an age of rich and showy

costumes, of curls, perfumes, cosmetics, and pet spaniels—and Albany was

the leader of fashion in all such things. It is needless to say how

powerfully all this contrasted with rough Scotland—what a shocking set

of barbarians he found himself thrown among—how contemptible to the

rugged Scots nobles was the effeminate Oriental luxury of the little

court he imported from Paris, shifted northwards as some wealthy

luxurious sportsman takes a detachment from his stable, kennel, and

servants’ hall, to a bothy in the Highlands.

He arrived, however, in a sort of sunshine. At that calamitous moment

the nearest relation of the infant king, a practised statesman, was

heartily welcome. He brought a small rather brilliant fleet with him,

which was dignified by his high office as Admiral of France; he brought

also some money and valuable trifles, which were not inacceptable. Wood,

in his ‘Peerage,’ tells us that “The peers and chiefs crowded to his

presence: his exotic elegance of manners, his condescension, affability,

and courtesy of demeanour, won all hearts.” If so, these were not long

retained. He came, indeed, just before some tangible object was wanted

against which to direct the first sulky feelings of the country towards

France; and he served the purpose exactly, for his own handiwork was the

cause of that feeling. In a new treaty between France and England, in

which he bore a great if not the chief part, Scotland was for the first

time treated as a needy and troublesome hanger-on of France. Instead of

the old courtesy, which made Scotland, nominally at least, an

independent party to the treaty, it was made directly by France, but

Scotland was comprehended in it, with a warning that if there were any

of the old raids across the Border, giving trouble as they had so often

done, the Scots should forfeit their part in the treaty. This patronage

during good behaviour roused the old pride, and was one of many symptoms

that Albany had come to them less as the representative of their own

independent line of kings, than as the administrator of a distant

province of the French empire. The humiliation was all the more bitter

from the deep resentments that burned in the people’s hearts after the

defeat of Flodden, and it was with difficulty that the Estates brought

themselves to say that, though Scotland believed herself able

single-handed to avenge her losses, yet, out of respect for the old

friendship of France, the country would consent to peace with England.

Setting to work after the manner of one possessed of the same supreme

authority as the King of France, Albany began his government with an air

of rigour, insomuch that the common historians speak of him as having

resolved to suppress the turbulent spirit of the age, and assert the

supremacy of law and order. He thus incurred the reputation of a

grasping tyrant. The infant brother of the king died suddenly; his

mother said Albany had poisoned the child, and people shuddered for his

brother, now standing alone between the Regent and the throne, and

talked ominously of the manner in which Richard III. of England was

popularly believed to have achieved the crown by murdering his nephews.

It is from this period that we may date the rise of a really English

party in Scotland—a party who feared the designs of the French, and who

thought that, after having for two hundred years maintained her

independence, Scotland might with fair honour be combined with the

country nearest to her and likest in blood, should the succession to

both fall to one prince, and that it would be judicious to adjust the

royal alliances in such a manner as to bring that to pass. Such thoughts

were in the mean time somewhat counteracted by the lightheaded doings of

her who was the nation’s present tie to England—the Queen-Dowager—whose

grotesque and flagrant love-affairs are an amusing episode, especially

to those who love the flavour of ancient scandal; while all gracious

thoughts that turned themselves towards England were met in the teeth by

the insults and injuries which her savage brother, Henry VIII.,

continued to pile upon the country.