action in the extinction of rural servitude. Many of its features--some
relating to the person, but principally to the soil--survived even
to the present century in certain parts of the smaller German
states; and in Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, there is still room
for infinite improvement in the condition of the peasantry. But the
mortal disorder exists no more: the fundamental rights of man are
recognized. Governmental maladministration, injustice, oppressive
taxation, exactions by officials and landlords, are unhappily common;
but all these are in flagrant violation of established laws. And, bad
though they are, they cannot for a moment compare with the blighting
influences of chattel slavery.
For long centuries, and with persistent pertinacity, have slavery
and the oppression of man and his labor gnawed at the German
vitals; and centuries must elapse before the recovery of a normal
condition. But the Germans of the present day--moralists, statesmen,
savants and professional men, as well as artisans, mechanics and
agriculturists--are unanimous in condemning human bondage, whatever may
be the race enslaved. Few, indeed, are there of the great German race
whose minds are inaccessible to the nobler promptings of freedom and
humanity.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 17: See "America and Europe," by the present writer.]
XVII.
LONGOBARDS--ITALIANS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Leges Longobardorum, Cantu, Troya, Karl Hegel, etc._
The Western Roman empire was fatally permeated throughout with chattel
slavery. Domestic usage had made its German invaders also familiar with
the art and practice of enslaving: their conquest of Rome accordingly
but added strength and extension to the slave-edifice. For a longer or
shorter period, various German tribes ravaged Italy. The domination of
the Ostrogoths lasted for about sixty years, and the rule of Theodoric
the Great is recorded as among the best and wisest in that period
of devastation and oppression. Finally, the Longobards founded in
Italy a permanent establishment. At the first onset, the Longobards
reduced all, in city and country, to bondage: the magnate, the rich,
the slaveholder, as well as the workman, the poor, the serf and the
chattel, constituted their booty, and as such were divided among the
victors.
Some historians maintain that all free Romans,[18] rich and poor--a
few favored aristocratic families excepted--were deprived of the
rights of personal liberty and property by the Longobards; others,
however, assert that the free population was only made tributary, but
otherwise preserved their property, rights and laws. The conquerors
(as _hospites_, or quartered soldiers) generally took about a half
of the houses, lands and chattels of the conquered, and furthermore
compelled the primitive owner to pay them a tribute from what was left.
In Italy, the Longobards made the free Romans, rich and poor, tributary
to the extent of one-third of all which was left them from actual
confiscation; and Paul Diaconus--himself a Longobard--says: "_Romani
tributarii efficiuntur_." The artisans and traders, and indeed all
inhabitants of cities, likewise paid tribute. They could not move from
one place to another without the written permission of their Longobard
master; and in this way originated the system of passports for bondmen,
which is still maintained in our Slave States. Thus the Romans, once
proud and free, became but half free--a something between the positive
freeman, such as the Longobard alone was, and the still more reduced
tributaries, the _aldii_ or _aldions_, and the serfs. In brief, the
freemen, rich or poor, were made inferior in rights and in personal
liberty to the soldiers; the non-free, the ancient _colons_, etc., were
pressed a degree lower in servitude; and the condition of the domestic
chattels alone remained unchanged.
The Longobards, like all the other German warriors, disliked the
cities, and the chiefs and nobles erected their fastnesses outside
of them. The common soldiers receiving lands in different quantities,
formed the freeholders, yeomen, or _ahrimans_, and were bound to
perform military duty. Such was the origin of the feudal system, which
sprang up on the ruins of the Roman empire. The numerous cities of
Italy had no longer any political rights or signification, though they
still preserved some remains of former culture and civilization, and
even faint shadows of the former municipal regime. The imperial city
itself was not overrun by the Longobards, and from thence, as also from
the other cities of that part of Italy which belonged to the Eastern
emperors, some faint glimmerings reached the Longobard region and
tended to preserve ancient municipal traditions.
The influence of the Italian polity and culture at length began to
humanize the Longobards. Some of their laws concerning chattels and
slaves are more humane than were those under the emperors--more humane
than those now existing in our Slave States. For example, a master
committing adultery with the wife of his chattel lost the ownership of
both her and her husband, and had no further power over them. Various
regulations also protected the serf and chattel against a cruel master,
and punishment was not arbitrary, but was in many cases regulated by
law. Emancipations were encouraged and protected: King Astolf's edict
even proclaimed that it was meritorious to change a chattel into a
freeman. However, during the first period of their dominion, the
Longobards, like all the other German conquerors, in Spain, Gaul,
etc., and, above all, the feudal dukes and nobles, considered the blood
of the conquered as impure, and therefore far inferior to their own.
Industry and commerce gradually began to acquire vitality, and
the chattels began slowly to disappear from the cities, either by
emancipation, by purchasing their liberty, or by being established as
_aldii_ or serfs on their masters' lands.
The slave-trade was now confined principally to non-baptized
prisoners--whom the Christians of that epoch regarded as the progeny
of the evil one. Mahomedans, heathen, Germans, as the Anglo-Saxons and
others, from various nations and tribes, were more numerous in the
slave marts than were those born on the soil of Italy.
Under the Longobards, Italy again began to be more commonly cultivated
by numerous _colons_ with very limited rights, but still in better
condition than those of the preceding epoch; copyholders and
freeholders also began to increase, as has been already mentioned.
So that when the heavy clouds of the mediæval times began to break,
the condition of Italy was slightly improving; and when Karl, or
Charlemagne, put an end to the dominion of the Longobards, more land
was under culture, and the free though tributary population was
greater, both in the cities and the country, than on their first
invasion.
The rule of the Franks, which succeeded that of the Longobards, did
not impair the condition of the Italians. Peace was beneficial to
labor, labor stimulated emancipation. Thus the number of _chattels_ was
more and more reduced, while the serfs, _adscripti glebæ_, increased.
But the disorders which succeeded the dismembering of the empire of
Charlemagne again ruined many free yeomen, ahrimans, and others owning
small homesteads, and obliged them to submit to the oppression of the
mighty nobles. Many of the dispossessed and impoverished, however,
sought refuge in the cities, where industry flourished in proportion
with the freedom of the workmen and operatives. Finally, about the
eleventh century, the _cities_ began to strike for their independence.
This was the time of the revival of the communal franchises in other
parts of Europe also; but the first spark was struck in Italy. Around
the standard raised by the cities crowded the serfs, rural and domestic
chattels, and all other kinds of bondmen and oppressed. This was, in
fact, the insurrection of these against the landed barons, nobles, and
oligarchs. All runaways found refuge and protection in the cities; and
hence arose the energy, the strength, and the democratic rancor of the
cities against the nobility and their strongholds.
In the second part of the mediæval epoch, throughout Italy and Western
Europe, prisoners of war were no more sold as slaves, but were ransomed
or exchanged. The Moors and Arabs (Mahomedans) were the sole marketable
chattels.
All the Italian cities extended their dominion, acquired lands,
incorporated baronies, and regulated the relations between the owners
of the soil and the tenants. Domestic slavery was altogether extinct;
the cities were animated by free labor in their arts, industries and
handicrafts, and on the estates, the peasants, serfs and bondmen,
_adscripti glebæ_, became vassals obliged to follow the barons or the
cities into war; they became free tenants--first paying rent for their
land in kind, and then paying in money; and the number of freeholders,
and others holding homesteads, continually increased. Hunting for
absconded serfs now had an end. The cities and boroughs emancipated
all the villagers and serfs around them. In the course of the twelfth
century, personally degrading servitude of every kind almost wholly
disappeared; and the relations between the proprietor of land and
the farmer were established on the basis which, with more or less
modification, prevails to the present day.
In the ancient classical world, in Greece and Rome, domestic slavery
had its seat in the cities, and therefrom expanded over the land,
destroying the whole social structure. But now, the first shout for
liberty came from the Italian cities; the cities first emancipated
the laborers within their own walls, and then emancipated the rural
serf. Cities again became the centres of civilization; they nursed its
infancy, tended its first footsteps and gave it the free air of heaven:
they trained it not amid clanking chains and groaning chattels.
Thus does history annihilate the ignorant fallacy about Saxons and
Germans being the godfathers of social or political freedom.
Many evils and disorders undoubtedly remained and even yet remain;
but the sum of all evils--property in man and in his toil--was
utterly destroyed. Then came the brilliant epoch of the Italian
Lombard cities--the culminating glory of Italian civilization--whose
coruscating warmth set free the whole of Western Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 18: Romans as citizens of the empire and not of the city of
Rome.]
XVIII.
FRANKS--FRENCH.
AUTHORITIES:
_Augustin Thierry, Henry Martin, Bonnemère, etc._
Domestic slavery, aggravated by the oppression of the poor, the
devastations of war, the insatiable necessities of the imperial
treasury, the confiscations of property during the reigns of bad
emperors, and other causes, ate into the very vitals of Roman Gaul.
It has been already shown how the ancient relations of clansman and
client merged successively into tributary _colons_, into _adscripti
glebæ_, and into chattels. At the period of the final assault of the
northern races on the Roman empire, in Gaul, as everywhere else, there
was no people behind the imperial legions except rich slaveholders and
poor degraded freemen, serfs and chattels; and the legions, too, were
mostly recruited from among vagabonds and barbarians. Long before this
time, Stilicon, in order to raise soldiers for his army, proclaimed
freedom to the chattels who should join his standard; and by this means
collected over thirty thousand men!
During the integrity of the empire, branches of the tribe of Franks
dwelt in parts of northern Gaul, either as colonists, or as allies who
recognized in the Roman emperor their lord paramount. From here they
dealt their conquering blows; they subdued to their rule the other
German races already established in Gaul, and laid the foundation of
the future Carlovingian empire, and finally of France.
The Franks permitted the conquered peoples to retain their own law,
which was the Roman, for all civil suits between Roman and Roman.
This benefited only the freemen--of whom there were but few--and the
rich, so that they could oppress the poor and treat them as they did
under the empire; for the Franks did not interfere in any of their
internal relations, legal or illegal. The rich and cunning Roman
magnates ingratiated themselves with their conquerors: they became
_antrustiones_ or commensals of the kings, thus acquiring a high
social and political status and influence; and there were many of them
among the powerful and influential aristocracy which sprang up under
the Merovingians. All the conquered paid oppressive tribute; and the
rich, as of old, used every means to increase their estates, serfs and
chattels from the booty and exactions made by the Franks.
But although the rights of the free Romans were thus recognized in
principle, their persons and property were by no means regarded as
sacred. The Franks divided the conquered lands among them in lots, and
often seized, along with the estate, the whole of the personal property
of a rich Roman magnate.
The Merovingians were almost continually at war among themselves, and
these wars were most ruinous to the cities and the rich free Romans.
When a peace was concluded, these Romans constituted the hostages for
both belligerent parties; and when a peace was broken, the hostages on
both sides were treated as prisoners of war; they became chattels, and
their property was confiscated.
The Roman cities became the property of the kings and chiefs, the lands
the property of the Frankish soldiery. The Franks also were perpetually
at war either among themselves or with their neighbors. Military duty
was a condition of the possession of land, so that Roman and other
slaves and bondmen cultivated the soil and worked for their conquerors.
During the imperial epoch, the opulent Gallic magnates and senators
lived in magnificent villas, like the Roman nabobs and oligarchs in
Italy, Spain, Africa, etc. During the early period of the invasions,
an owner would often fortify his villa and defend it with his armed
household and chattels. Such villas, changing masters, afterward, in
many instances, became feudal strongholds, around each of which grew
a village, which in the course of time became a borough, then a town,
and finally a city. In this way the Gallo-Roman villas gave rise to the
French name _village_ and _ville_.
In general, with the new Frankish conquest, oppression became
increasedly grievous, while the slave traffic, especially in prisoners
of war, received a new impulse. In the first storm the Roman fiscality
for a moment disappeared; but it was soon restored, and with it almost
the whole of the Roman administration. The Franks revolted against
taxation when one of the kings tried to apply it to them, but the Roman
populations bore its whole brunt. Tribute, taxes and other exactions
finally became so oppressive that the poor and impoverished sold their
children and sometimes even themselves into slavery. The Jews were
the common mediators and factors in this traffic, as well as the most
extensive slave-traders all over Europe, both then and in subsequent
times; and a considerable part of the hereditary hatred of the European
masses toward the Jews is to be ascribed to this historic fact.
The Frankish kings and their Frankish subjects had large estates,
_métairies_, worked by serfs and chattels. The conquerors hated the
cities, preferring the favorite old German life in the country, where
they spent their time surrounded by their followers. The lordly
mansions, the _sala_ of the kings and the powerful, were erected amidst
great forests in the style of encampments; and to this day the German
word _hoflager_, "court-camp," is the name for the residence or court
of a sovereign. Political power and prestige were no longer derived
from municipal citizenship, but from the possession of land; and thus
originated the feudal importance of the country and the barons, in
contradistinction to the now powerless _municipium_. In the Greek
and Roman world, the country was wholly sacrificed, politically and
socially, to the city, which, in turn, acquired more and more political
power and importance in proportion as domestic slavery destroyed the
primitive yeomanry. In the early stages of feudalism scarcely any
attention was paid to the cities; they are principally mentioned as
sources whence taxes and tributes may be largely squeezed.
In the Free States of the American Union, also, in the townships and
villages, the significance of the country has reached its highest and
noblest development. Here the free townships and villages are the
fountains of healthy political life, and the genuine source of all
civilizing agencies.
Under the Merovingians and Carlovingians, the frequent wars and
oppressions proved destructive not only to the natives but also to the
conquerors themselves. The Franks and other German landholders, by
their violent and disorderly mode of life, were soon impoverished and
became the prey of powerful neighbors of their own kindred. The savage
rigor of the law regulating composition for crimes quickly drained and
utterly destroyed the patrimonies of the reckless soldiery, and thus
rapidly increased the number of landless vagabonds, who were neither
tenants nor serfs, but became chattels to men of their own race, once
their companions and perhaps even their followers. At the end of the
second Salic dynasty very few free laborers existed, and kidnapping,
especially on the sea-coasts, became common.
Charlemagne, as previously mentioned, tried to regulate and alleviate
the condition of the bondmen and chattels. His capitularies forbade
the selling of chattels beyond the kingdom; and whoever violated this
law became a slave himself. Slaves were to be sold in the presence
of the count or the bishop, or their lieutenants, or notables, but
not surreptitiously, or from one person to another, without being
controlled by the authorities; and heavy fines also followed all
violations of this law. Notwithstanding all this, however, Norman
and Saracen wars and invasions, together with Frankish taxations and
exactions, kept the country in the same state of desolation as during
the centuries of the agonizing empire. Scarcely any towns existed, and
the few large cities were scattered at enormous distances one from the
other. Fastnesses, castles, burghs and fortified monasteries dotted
the land; even they, however, being separated from each other by great
forests and marshes. The poor and oppressed serfs and chattels were
hunted and kidnapped, and no place of refuge existed for them.
Under Charlemagne, public order and protection to the free tenants,
serfs and chattels, existed to as high a degree as was possible at that
epoch; but with his death all this disappeared. The crisis which then
occurred and which ended in consolidating the feudal social structure,
was even more terrible than the epoch of invasions. The poor classes
and the serfs and chattels, as we might suppose, suffered most. The
tenth century marks the triumph of the feudal _régime_, and with this
triumph chattelhood (_mancipium_) disappears from the laws and the
usage of the oppressive masters. The chattels now became hereditary
bondmen or serfs, and were no longer objects of sale or of traffic.
They could not be separated from their families, but were established
in villages; and the slave traffic was carried on solely in Saracens
and other heathen.
In all other respects serfdom preserved almost all the most revolting
features of ancient domestic slavery. The feudal lord employed the
serfs as tillers of his soil, and the harvests they raised were the
chief sources of his income; while they likewise formed his followers
in his feuds with feudal neighbors or with his lords paramount--the
counts, dukes, and kings. The feudal lord did not sell his serfs--as
the churches, synods, and councils all united in condemning the traffic
in Christians.
The present serf, tiller, and laborer, all over Western Europe, was
the younger, outlawed member of the human family, and so now are our
Southern chattels.
For a long time the difference between serfdom and ancient chattelhood
was discernible only with great difficulty. The collar worn by chattels
since the time of Augustus remained on the necks of the serfs (and
these, too, not _adscripti glebæ_), with the expression--"I BELONG," or
with the name of the master cut thereon. This was the custom in England
with the Anglo-Saxon serfs of the Athelstanes and the Cedrics, so that
the ancestry of the haughty Anglo-Saxon slaveholding American barons of
the present day wore collars!
The feudal order was firmly established. Below the social hierarchy,
composed of free fiefs, and estates belonging to nobles, churches,
and monasteries (all of them free from taxation and public servitude),
descend another social grade, whose only badges were humiliations,
sufferings, toils, and martyrdom. Servitude and serfdom had similar
gradations among the peasantry and workmen bound to the soil of their
feudal master as existed among the barons, nobles, abbots, etc., in
_their_ various relations and duties of vassalage.
A few towns and boroughs began to spring up from the same social soil
whence arose those of Germany. But the immense majority of the nobles
and owners of cities considered their inhabitants, at the best, as but
half free, as tributaries or _censitaires_, and continually attempted
to plunge them deeper into servitude and villeinage. The remnants of
the independent yeomanry, free tenantry, copyholders, etc., rapidly
disappeared. These descendants of the conquerors--of kindred race,
too, with the barons--accepted servitude in order to find patronage
and alleviation from further oppression, or else sought refuge in the
cities and towns, abandoning their homesteads, which were seized by the
feudal baron and annexed to his estate.
All along the twelve or fifteen centuries which extend from the decline
of the Greek and Roman republics and the first days of the empire down
to the consolidation of feudalism, it is evident that similar causes
were ever in operation, depriving the poor of their property, their
labor, and finally of their liberty--a result, too, brought about in
every case in an identical manner. In this, as in many other things,
the history of the human race and its disorders and woes is a record of
almost continuous analogies.
The smaller feudal masters, afterward called _hoberaux_, were generally
the most cruel and inhuman then, as well as afterward, during the long
protracted centuries of serfdom of the French peasantry. Tyranny always
becomes fiercer and more maddened in proportion as the circle of its
power and action is diminished. Is it not so also on American slave
plantations?
It has been already mentioned, that the kings and the more powerful
feudal vassals began to erect towns, and that these towns served as
refuges for the homeless, and also for the serfs. The lesser nobles and
the feudalized clergy often upbraided the kings for thus depopulating
their estates; while the barons who owned the cities soon exasperated
their inhabitants by their exactions and cruelties.
Such were the prominent domestic and economic features of the times of
feudalism and chivalry in France, as over the whole of Europe. It is
for other reasons that, in the minds of some, a halo still surrounds
their memory and their name. But, penetrating behind that halo, what
a horrid spectacle of tyranny, oppression, and cruelty meets the
eye! The sham chivalry of our Slave States has not even the shadow
of such an aureola to hide its hideousness. The cruel and reckless
barons sprang from a reckless race, in an age of darkness: they had no
other traditions from the past, no other example before them. But the
American chivalry and knight-errants of slavery spit on all the noble
traditions transmitted by their sires. They have before their eyes the
spectacle of freedom generating prosperity in all ages. And yet with
all this do they deliberately turn their backs upon the light, and rush
heedlessly toward dark barbarity.
The feudal rights of the barons in the products and earnings of the
tradesmen and workmen, as well as in the person and labor of the serfs,
together with their right of civil and criminal jurisdiction, were all
the result of successive usurpations.