CHAPTER III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY

Almost at the moment that the Crusades broke out, an

institution commenced its aggrandisement which has, perhaps,

contributed more than any other to the formation of modern

society, and to the fusion of all the social elements into two

powers, the government and the people,--the institution of

Royalty.--GUIZOT.[m]

[Sidenote: [1180-1270 A.D.]]

Philip Augustus, Louis’ son and successor, who was about fifteen years of

age when he began to reign, was already the nursling of court adulation

and homage. His predecessors had not attained dignity sufficient to

expose them to this bane of the royal nature. Congratulations, couched

in the language of oriental hyperbole, had greeted his birth. He was

styled the _Dieu-donné_, “the God-given”; and self-constituted laureates

began already to celebrate the majesty of the monarch of the French.

Formerly, the surrounding nobles had disdained to dispute court favour

or influence; but the first years of Philip’s reign were taken up with

the rivalry of the houses of Flanders and Champagne, which each sought

to be the masters and ministers of the young sovereign. Henry II of

England gave his support to the counts of Champagne, and the partisans

of Flanders were obliged to retire from Paris. They formed a league, and

menaced war; but Philip, with the English monarch’s aid, easily overcame

the malcontents. Henry showed generosity on this occasion. Instead of

profiting by the divisions of the French, and keeping them alive, he

frankly supported the young king against his refractory barons. He was

king himself, and sympathised with royalty. Philip ill repaid this

kindness: he imitated his father’s policy in seducing the sons of the

English monarch from their allegiance; and their frequent ingratitude at

length broke the heart of the sensitive and passionate monarch. Richard,

duke of Aquitaine, known as Cœur de Lion, and his father’s successor on

the throne, was the especial friend and ally of Philip in these quarrels;

and for a long time the princes shared the same tent and the same bed.

Meantime a third crusade began to be preached. This prevalent enthusiasm,

like the rebellions of an oppressed yet brave people, was sure to arouse

itself and reawaken as soon as time had elapsed sufficient to allow

the disasters of the past to be forgotten. Saladin had recently taken

Jerusalem. Fugitives instantly filled Europe with the dismal tidings. The

cry for a crusade became general: it was no longer, however, the church

that called a council to debate and decide upon the question; another

power had arisen to rob the clergy of their initiative. The king called

a parliament (_parlement_) of his barons at Gisors, and there a third

crusade was determined upon. Cœur de Lion was the first to assume the

cross; and king Philip, only hurt at being anticipated, followed his

example. Frederick Barbarossa also took the same resolution.

[Sidenote: [1190-1194 A.D.]]

In June of the year 1190, Philip Augustus received the pilgrim’s scrip

and staff from the hands of the abbot of St. Denis. Richard received his

at Tours; and it was remarked, as an omen, that, as he leaned on the

staff, it broke under his weight. In order to avoid the disasters of

former crusades, they were to proceed to Palestine by sea. The two kings

wintered in Sicily on their voyage thither, and there laid the foundation

of their future jealousy and hate. The crusaders found the barons of

Syria engaged in the siege of Acre. Their arrival hastened its surrender,

and at the same time marked it with crime. Richard caused upwards of two

thousand captives to be massacred in cold blood, and Philip was guilty of

a similar piece of cruelty. The monarchs, indeed, had some slight breach

of stipulations to allege, or might excuse their conduct as a reprisal

for that of Saladin, who put to death many of the prisoners whom he

made at the battle of Tiberias, more especially all those whose tonsure

marked them to belong to the order of the Templars. It was thus that the

ferocity of oriental manners came to alloy the more generous spirit of

chivalry. In Palestine the French learned to be merciless towards their

religious enemies, and hence it was that the fair page of their history

was soon afterwards stained by the massacre of those whom they called

heretics at home.

[Illustration: PHILIP AUGUSTUS]

[Sidenote: [1194-1200 A.D.]]

Philip Augustus could not long endure the superior renown and prowess

of Cœur de Lion. He seized the pretext of an illness to quit Palestine

and abandon the field of glory to his rival. Returning home, he besought

the pope to release him from the oath which bound him to respect the

rights and territories of a brother crusader. The pontiff refused; but

Philip felt himself sufficiently absolved by the Macchiavellian law of

monarchical policy: and fortune, in making Richard fall captive to the

duke of Austria, on his return from the Holy Land, seemed to favour the

envious designs of the French monarch. Philip no sooner was informed of

Richard’s captivity, than he leagued with his brother John, and invaded

Normandy. He took several towns and castles, but was repulsed from

before Rouen. At length Richard was released, or, as Philip wrote to his

confederate, “the devil broke loose.” We expect on this occasion to read

of a furious war betwixt the sovereigns. And yet no brilliant feat, no

general engagement, marked that which ensued. Petty treason and short

truce, varied by a skirmish or a marauding party, were all the effects

produced by the envy of Philip and the resentment of the lion-hearted

king. The death of the latter by an arrow-shot, as he besieged a castle

in the Limousin, left a less formidable rival to Philip in the person of

King John (1199). The writer of fiction never imagined a baser character

than that of John. His cowardice and meanness form a phenomenon and an

exception in the feudal ages. The nullity of such a rival converted

Philip Augustus from the powerless intriguer to the conqueror and the

hero.[b]

PRINCE ARTHUR OF BRITTANY

[Sidenote: [1200-1204 A.D.]]

Although Richard on his death-bed declared John to be his heir, the

crown of England descended by right of primogeniture to the young prince

Arthur, son of Geoffrey, duke of Brittany and the elder brother of John;

the latter seized it. But Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine, weary of English

domination, declared for Arthur, and invoked Philip’s protection. The

king of France took up Arthur’s cause and then abandoned it (1200),

after obtaining from John the advantage his political selfish policy was

seeking.[c]

But Arthur had been accepted by the Bretons at his birth as a liberator

and avenger. Old Eleanor, alone, held out against her grandson, for her

son John, and for the unity of the English realm, which the accession of

Arthur would have divided. Arthur, in fact, held that unity very cheap.

He offered the king of France to cede Normandy to him, provided he might

have Brittany, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou, and Aquitaine. John would

have been reduced to the possession of England alone. Philip willingly

assented to this, put his own garrisons in Arthur’s best fortresses, and

demolished them when he had no hope of maintaining his position in them.

John’s nephew, thus betrayed by his ally, turned once more to his uncle;

then he came back to the party of France, invaded Poitou, and besieged

his grandmother, Eleanor, in Mirebeau. It was nothing new in that family

to see the sons armed against their parents. Meanwhile, John came to the

rescue, delivered his mother, defeated Arthur, and took him prisoner with

most of the great lords of his party. What became of the captive? This

has never been clearly ascertained. Matthew Paris[j] alleges that John

treated him well at first, but was afterwards alarmed by the threats and

the obstinacy of the young Breton. “Arthur disappeared,” he says, “and

God grant that it may not have been as malicious rumour reports.” But

Arthur had excited too many hopes to allow of the popular imagination

resigning itself to this uncertainty. It was confidently affirmed that

John had caused him to be put to death, and it was soon added that he had

killed him with his own hand. The chaplain of Philip Augustus relates,

as if he had seen it with his own eyes, that John took Arthur in a boat,

stabbed him twice with a dagger, and threw him into the river three miles

from the castle of Rouen. The Bretons placed the scene of the tragedy

in their own country near Cherbourg, at the foot of those ill-omened

cliffs that present a line of precipices all along the ocean. Thus the

tradition went on enlarging in details, and in dramatic interest, and at

last Shakespeare makes Arthur a helpless young child, whose gentle and

innocent words disarmed the most brutal assassin.[d]

Philip was in the meantime checked in his projects by the court of Rome,

which had laid an interdict upon him, on account of his divorce from

Ingeborg (Ingeburge) of Denmark. And the preaching of a fifth crusade,[8]

which eventually led to the establishment of the Frankish empire of

Romania, about the same time took from him the interest and the aid of

many nobles and chevaliers. He was, during the same interval, engaged

in the conquest of Normandy, which the imbecility and cowardice of John

delivered to his arms without defence. Roger de Lascy held the fortress

of Les Andelys for several months against the French, and was the only

valiant servitor of an unworthy monarch. The barons and warriors of

England disdained to fight under his banner. There was as yet none of

that rivalry which afterwards sprang up betwixt the nations. The monarchs

of both were French princes, speaking the French tongue; and, although

subsequent historians have given a national colour to the combats and

conquests of Philip, the struggle was almost purely personal. Rouen, the

capital of Normandy, surrendered to him (1204), without John’s making a

single effort to preserve it. And thus a few years of the reign of one

weak prince more than counterbalanced the long-established superiority of

the monarchs of England.

[Sidenote: [1204-1208 A.D.]]

It has been seen what use the French monarchs made of their courts of

peers, and of the judicial supremacy allowed them, in extending their

authority over barons heretofore independent. Philip dared to apply

the same principle to the dukes of Normandy, which his father had

successfully done with regard to the counts of Bourbon and Auvergne.

He summoned John before his suzerain court, to answer for the murder

of Arthur and other crimes. Henry II, or Richard, would have given fit

answer to such a summons. The Norman princes always held their homage to

be that by parade or courtesy, not _homage-liège_. But John had neither

the sense of his dignity, nor the spirit to maintain it. He allowed the

jurisdiction of Philip’s court, though he feared to obey his summons; and

he thus seemed to allow a legal right to the usurpations of Philip. The

latter, indeed, appeared to feel the want of dignity in the assessors

of his court. All nobles holding their lands directly of the king were

peers in his parliament; and thus the petty lords of the counties of

Paris and Orleans ranked equally with the dukes of Burgundy or the counts

of Flanders. Philip remedied this, by appointing twelve great peers, or

rather by pretending that such a number had always existed since the

twelve paladins of Charlemagne. Of these, six were clerics, six laics;

the latter being the dukes of Normandy, of Aquitaine, of Burgundy, the

counts of Toulouse, of Flanders, and of Champagne. This division of

the aristocracy in the high and low nobility, was, however, as yet but

nominal; the lesser barons still continued to consider themselves as the

peers of the greater, and to have an equal voice in the royal courts. It

is important for the reader to mark the rise of this feudal institution,

and equally so to mark the difference of its fate and progress in France

and in England. In the former country, the parliament became amalgamated

with lawyers, and preserved to the last its judicial functions,

whilst its legislative authority became but a shadow. In England, on

the contrary, it guarded the more precious privilege of legislation,

abandoning a considerable portion of its judicial rights.

By the discomfiture of John, Philip Augustus united to the monarchy of

France not only Normandy, but the provinces of Maine, Anjou, Touraine,

and Poitou. Artois he had acquired as the dowry of his wife, Isabella

of Hainault. The counties of the south remained still independent of

his sway. They looked to the king of Aragon as their suzerain; and

there existed far more congeniality of feelings and habits betwixt the

Spaniards and Provençals, than betwixt the Provençals and French. Certain

events of the reign of Philip, which we are about to relate, destroyed

the independence of the people of the south, as well as their connection

with the Aragonese, and extended the authority of the French monarch to

the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees.

THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE

While Philip Augustus adroitly wrested Normandy and its dependencies

from the hands of John, a series of events took place in Languedoc which

had the effect of destroying its independence, and of bringing that fine

region not only nominally, as it had hitherto been, but really under the

dominion of the kings of France.[b]

At this period the southern part of France held but distant relations

with the north. Two powerful houses, that of Barcelona and that of

Toulouse, shared dominion over it, with the exception of Aquitaine,

which extended to the Pyrenees. This isolation naturally gave the south

a separate existence, character, and interest. The tongue, that of the

Limousin or of Provence, resembling more the Aragonese than the French

of Paris, had become, thanks to the troubadours, a literary language.

The cities contained a large bourgeois element, which had become wealthy

through commerce.

It was in the midst of this people, active, ardent, isolated from most

of their neighbours by political as well as natural barriers, corrupted

moreover by the refinements of an equivocal civilisation and by the

enervating literature of the troubadours, that there broke forth, at the

end of the twelfth century, the Albigensian heresy, a powerful one, that

having long undermined the ground, ended by being a menace to Catholic

beliefs, the church, and society itself.

Several heretical sects dating from the early Christian time had

not ceased to have their obscure upholders in France. Such were the

Manichæans or Paulicians who believed in the co-existence of a principle

of good and a principle of evil. It was the Paulicians who were condemned

to be burned at Orleans by King Robert (1022). During the time of the

crusaders, the sect, revived by frequent intercourse with the Orient

where it had originated, spread all over the centre of France. It is

thought that this extension was the work of the emigrants who arrived

from Bulgaria; at last the heretics received the name of Bulgarians or

Boulgres, and it was rumoured that they had a mysterious chief, or, as

they said, a resident pope in that country. They were called Albigenses

because they were especially numerous in the vicinity of Albi, and by

this last name they have been preserved in history.

Some of their doctrines are known: they regarded the devil, or principle

of evil, as the first author of the creation; they rejected the

sacraments; they interpreted the Scriptures in a different way from the

Catholic tradition. Also they possessed a kind of sacerdotal college

whose members, called “the perfect ones,” performed special rites. It is

very difficult to form any idea of their dogmas as a whole, for they had

no theologian, no teacher, and they have left no writings. One can judge

the basis of this heresy, and the sects belonging to it, only indirectly

by the writings of the authors and teachers who fought them. These

writers have attacked above all the strangeness of their practices and

the vulgarity of their superstitions.

[Sidenote: [1208-1209 A.D.]]

But the dominant character of all these sects was their hatred of the

church. They pretended to re-establish the primitive simplicity of the

religion, which the church had corrupted, and among themselves they were

known as _cathares_, or “the pure ones.”[e]

For a long time the holy see seemed not alive to the importance of

this sect. It was Pope Innocent III who first perceived its dangerous

tendency, and who took certain steps for its destruction. He issued

interdicts against such princes as should favour them, and offered the

spoil of the heretic to whoever should subdue and slay him. The principal

lord of the south of France was at that time Raymond VI, count of

Toulouse; and he at least tolerated the Albigenses, as those primitive

reformers were called, aware of their moral purity and sincere devotion.

Peter of Castelnau, the pope’s legate, reproached the count of Toulouse

with his want of zeal, and was indignant at his forbearance to extirpate

the new opinions by fire and sword. The legate used no measured language;

he not only excommunicated Raymond, but insulted him in his court, and

then took his departure. The count of Toulouse expressed his indignant

feelings before his followers as Henry II did after the insolence of

Thomas à Becket, and with the same fatal effect. On the day after, Peter

of Castelnau fell under the dagger of a gentleman of the count, in a

hostelry on the Rhone, where he had stopped.

[Illustration: AN OFFICER OF THE KING’S HOUSEHOLD, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

Pope Innocent was driven to transports of rage on learning the

assassination of his legate. He not only excommunicated the count of

Toulouse, but promulgated a crusade against him. He called on all the

nobles of France, on its princes, and its prelates, to join in the “holy”

war, to assume the cross, as being engaged against infidels. And the same

privileges and indulgences were granted to the crusader of this civil

war, that previously were bestowed on those who embarked fortune and

life in the perilous attempt to rescue the Holy Land from the Saracen.

Spoil, wealth, and honour in this world, together with certain salvation

in the next, were now offered at too cheap a rate to be refused.

Crowds of adventurers flocked to the standard; and a formidable army

was assembled at Lyons in the spring of 1209, under the command of the

legate commander, Amalric, abbot of Cîteaux. The pope at the same time

created a new ecclesiastical militia for the destruction of heresy. The

order of St. Dominic, or of the friars inquisitors, was instituted; and

these infernal missionaries were let loose in couples upon the hapless

Languedoc, like bloodhounds, to scent their prey and then devour it.

[Sidenote: [1209-1217 A.D.]]

Raymond, count of Toulouse, had neither the force nor the courage to

oppose so formidable an invasion. He repaired to the crusaders’ army,

delivered up his fortresses and cities, and suffered the humiliating

penance of a public flogging in the church of St. Giles. The count’s

relative and feudatory, Raymond Roger, viscount of Béziers and

Carcassonne, regions infected with the heresy of the Albigenses, came

also to make submission. The abbot of Cîteaux, who was prudent enough to

accept that of the count of Toulouse, feared to lose all his prey. He

refused to admit the exculpation of the viscount of Béziers, and plainly

told him that his only chance was to defend himself to the utmost. The

young viscount courageously accepted the advice. He summoned the most

faithful of his vassals, abandoned the open country as well as towns

of lesser consequence to the enemy, and restricted his efforts to the

defence of Béziers and of Carcassonne. He shut himself up in the latter.

The fury of the crusaders fell first upon Béziers: they had scarcely

sat down before the unfortunate town, when a sally of the garrison was

repulsed with such vigour that the besiegers entered the town together

with the routed host of the citizens. Word of this unexpected success

was instantly brought to the abbot of Cîteaux, and his orders were

demanded as to how the innocent were to be distinguished from the guilty.

“Slay them all,” exclaimed the legate of the vicar of Christ; “the Lord

will know his own.” The entire population was in consequence put to

the sword; nor woman nor infant was spared. Upwards of twenty thousand

human beings perished in the massacre--the sanguinary first-fruits of

modern persecution. Carcassonne was next invested, bravely attacked,

and as valiantly defended; the young viscount distinguishing himself in

defence of his rights, while Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, was

the most prominent warrior of the crusaders. At length the legate grew

weary of the viscount’s obstinacy, and offered him terms. He gave him

a safe-conduct, sanctioned by his own oath and that of the barons of

his army. Raymond Roger came with three hundred of his followers to the

tent of the legate. “Faith,” said the latter, “is not to be kept with

those who have no faith”; and he ordered the viscount and his friends

to be put in chains. The inhabitants of Carcassonne found means to fly.

In a general assembly of the crusaders, the lordships of Béziers and

Carcassonne were given to Simon de Montfort, in reward of his zeal and

valour; and to make the gift sure, it was accompanied with the person of

his rival. The unfortunate viscount, the victim of the legate’s perfidy,

soon after perished in prison.

The victory of the crusaders was of course followed by executions at

the stake and on the scaffold. The friars inquisitors of the order

of St. Dominic did not relax their zeal. A general revolt against De

Montfort was the consequence, in which the people of Toulouse joined.

The Provençal army was headed by Pedro king of Aragon, the uncle of the

late viscount of Béziers. It was he who had persuaded the unfortunate

viscount to trust himself to the legate, and to him in consequence

fell the duty of taking vengeance. The cross, however--the profaned

cross--was still successful. The Provençals were routed by Simon de

Montfort at the battle of Muret, and the king of Aragon was slain. This

victory seemed to establish the power of De Montfort in Languedoc. He

took possession of all the provinces of his rival, even of the town of

Toulouse; and an assembly of prelates sanctioned the usurpation. But

the cruel spirit of De Montfort would not allow him to rest quiet in

his new empire. Violence and persecution marked his rule; he sought to

destroy the Provençal population by the sword or the stake, nor could he

bring himself to tolerate the liberties of the citizens of Toulouse. In

1217 the Toulousans again revolted, and war once more broke out betwixt

Count Raymond and Simon de Montfort. The latter formed the siege of the

capital, and was engaged in repelling a sally, when a stone from one of

the walls struck him and put an end to his existence. The death of De

Montfort was of course considered a martyrdom by the clergy, and his

fame in their chronicles far outshines that of Godfrey de Bouillon or of

Richard the Lion-hearted.

LEAGUE AGAINST PHILIP AUGUSTUS

King Philip was in the meantime pursuing his darling object, the humbling

the power of the princes of England. He had already driven John from the

west of France. That monarch, at variance with his barons, and at the

same time excommunicated by the church, seemed an easy prey to Philip.

The French king meditated the conquest of England. He leagued with the

malcontents of that country, and formed a powerful army for the purposes

of invasion. John, to ward off the blow, not only became reconciled to

the Roman see, but made himself and his kingdom feudatory to the pope. A

papal legate immediately took John under his protection; and the French

monarch, rather than risk a quarrel with the church, turned his armies

towards Flanders, which he wasted and plundered impitiably, from hatred

to its count.

The emperor Otto, then in alliance with King John against France, came

to the relief of the Flemings; and thus, for the first time since the

accession of the new dynasty, the armies of France and Germany found

themselves arrayed against each other in national hostility, each

commanded by its respective monarch. The rival hosts met at Bouvines, in

the month of August, 1214. Twenty thousand combatants on either side,

together with the presence of two monarchs, gave gravity and importance

to the meeting.[b]

_The Battle of Bouvines (1214 A.D.)_

[Sidenote: [1214 A.D.]]

The two armies remained for a time a short distance apart, not daring

to begin operations; and the French were retreating over the bridge of

Bouvines to march upon Hainault, when the enemy, attacking the rearguard,

obliged them to turn about.

The chaplain, William le Breton,[k] who during the action remained beside

the king singing psalms, says: “Philip was resting under a tree near a

chapel, his armour laid aside. At the first sound of combat he entered

the church for a short prayer, armed hastily, and mounted his steed with

as great enthusiasm as though on his way to a wedding or a feast. Loud

shouts resounded from the field: ‘To arms, men of war, to arms!’ together

with the blare of trumpets. The king rode to the front, not waiting for

his banner--the oriflamme of St. Denis, a flag of scarlet silk, that day

carried by Gallon de Montigny, a brave man. The bishop-elect of Senlis,

Guérin, ordered the battle so that the French had the sun behind them,

while the enemy fought with the sun in their eyes. Three hundred mounted

peasants of Soissons, vassals of the abbot of St. Médard, opened action

on the right wing, boldly charging the Flemish cavalry. The latter

hesitated to engage with their inferiors, but the cry, ‘Death to the

French!’ raised by one among them proved decisive; and the Burgundians,

led by their duke, arriving to reinforce those of Soissons, there was a

furious combat. On this side Count Ferrand of Flanders fought.”

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF BOUVINES]

When the battle began the militia had already crossed the bridge; they

recrossed in haste, rallied under the royal standard, and took position

in the centre in front of the king and his guard. The German cavalry,

among whom rode the emperor Otto, charged and penetrated their ranks,

and had almost reached the king when they were checked by the prompt

action of his officers. In the midst of this encounter arrived the German

infantry. These dragged Philip from his horse, and before he could

recover his feet attempted to thrust at him through the visor of his

helmet or a flaw in his armour. Montigny, who carried the colours, waved

his banner frantically for assistance; some horse- and foot-soldiers

hastened up. These rescued the king, set him on his horse, and he again

plunged into the mêlée.

Otto in his turn was near to being captured. William des Barres, the

bravest and ablest of the French cavaliers, the fortunate adversary of

Richard the Lion-hearted, whom he had twice overcome, had the emperor

by the helmet, and was thrusting at him furiously when overwhelmed by

a torrent of the enemy. Unable to make him loose his hold or to close

with him, they killed his horse under him; but disentangling himself he

succeeded, alone and on foot, in clearing with his sword and his poniard

an ample space around him. Otto escaped.

On the right Ferrand, count of Flanders, had fallen wounded into the

hands of the French; in the centre the emperor and his German princes

had taken to flight: but on the left Renaud de Boulogne and the English

held firm. They had overcome the men of Dreux, of Perche, of Ponthieu,

and of Vimeu. “Whereupon,” says the poet-chronicler, “Philip de Dreux,

bishop of Beauvais, happening to have in his hand a club, and forgetting

in his rage and grief the dignity of his office, struck down the English

commander and with him many others, spilling no blood but breaking many

bones. He enjoined upon those about him the necessity of taking upon

themselves the credit of this deed, that he might not fall under reproach

for violating the traditions of his office.”

The English were soon completely routed with the exception of Renaud de

Boulogne, who had drawn up a double circle of infantry bristling with

spears. He charged therefrom as from a fort, and there returned for

refuge and to recover breath. At last his horse was wounded; he fell and

was captured. Five other counts and twenty-five knights-banneret had been

taken.

The return of the king to Paris was a march of triumph. All along the

route the churches dispersed indulgences, and the hymns of the choirs

mingled with the clash of war implements. The houses were hung with

draperies; the roads strewn with branches and fresh flowers. Men and

women, children and old people ran to the crossroads to see the count of

Flanders who, wounded and in chains, was carried in a litter; some among

them crying: “Ferrand, bound and in irons (_ferré_), no longer shalt thou

kick against the pricks and hurl defiance at thy masters.”

At Paris the townspeople, with a multitude of clerks and students, burst

into songs and hymns on the arrival of the king. The day not sufficing

for the jubilation, they festooned the dark with innumerable lanterns, so

that the night was brilliant as the day. The students kept holiday for a

week. In the midst of these rejoicings the troops, which had comported

themselves so creditably in the strife, delivered to the provost of Paris

the prisoners in their charge. The king left them a certain number to be

ransomed and imprisoned the rest. Ferrand was lodged in the new tower of

the Louvre, where he remained for thirteen years. Near Senlis was built

Victory Abbey, whose ruins are still to be seen.[c]

LAST YEARS AND INFLUENCE OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS

[Sidenote: [1214-1224 A.D.]]

The brilliant success of Bouvines seems to have contented and allayed

the hitherto restless ambition of Philip. In a year or two after, the

barons of England, discontented with John, offered their crown to Louis,

the son of Philip Augustus. The old monarch hesitated; he dreaded the

anathema with which the pope threatened him, if he attacked his vassal,

John of England. Prince Louis was obliged to undertake the expedition

with but scanty aid from his parent. He was at first successful. Almost

all England owned his sovereignty. The castle of Dover alone held out.

But the death of John, and the proclaiming of his son, Henry III, soon

obliged the French prince to abandon his claim and his conquests in

England.

In the south, Philip Augustus showed himself equally dead to enterprise

and lost in spirit. Amaury de Montfort, son of Simon, offered to cede

to the king all his rights in Languedoc, which he was unable to defend

against the old house of Toulouse. Philip hesitated to accept the

important cession, and left the rival houses to the continuance of a

struggle carried feebly on by either side. He at length expired, in 1223,

after a reign of forty-three years. This period of half a century was one

of uninterrupted progress to the French monarchy, and to its sovereign

power. Though much of this was due to the age, to circumstances, and to

the natural development of the country’s political system, still much

remains due to the personal character of Philip--to his activity, his

prudence, foresight, and courage. The mere list of the provinces which

he subdued and united to the monarchy forms the fittest monument to his

fame. These were Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou, wrested

from John; Picardy and Auvergne, won in the commencement of his reign;

Artois, acquired by his marriage with Isabella of Hainault; and, finally,

the influence over Languedoc which the crusaders brought him, and which

nothing but Philip’s age and declining strength prevented him from

converting into sovereignty. In minor matters the active spirit of Philip

Augustus equally displayed itself. He put the police on an efficient

footing; he walled and paved Paris and the principal towns under his

sway; he built and fortified; he encouraged literature by the foundation

of professorships; improved the discipline of the army; and, with all

his enterprises and expenses, so ordered his finances as to leave a

considerable treasure at his death.

LOUIS VIII (1223-1226 A.D.)

When Louis VIII succeeded his father Philip on the throne, it was

remarked with joy by the lovers of legitimacy that he was descended by

his mother, Isabella of Hainault, from Charles of Lorraine, the last

prince of Charlemagne’s blood, and that he thus united the rights of

Carlovingian and Capetian. He was feeble in person, and is said not to

have been endowed with much capacity; but the sage policy of Philip

Augustus, together with the impulse he had given to affairs, continued

to direct them, and to render France triumphant over her enemies. Henry

III lost the towns of Niort and La Rochelle, and was driven by Louis from

Poitou; yet so little did the English feel the loss of this province,

that it is scarcely noticed by the historians of the island. The barons

were so much occupied with jealousy of their sovereign and of his power,

that Henry could procure or send no aid to his French provinces. A feeble

expedition was at length fitted out, which preserved Gascony to England,

but recovered nothing.

A singular cause of contention arose about this time in Flanders.

Baldwin, its last count, had been one of the leaders of the Fifth

Crusade, which, in the commencement of the century, took Constantinople

from the Greeks. He had been elected emperor of Romania, and had been

the first of the Latin dynasty which reigned over it. Soon after, in

the year 1205, he had been taken prisoner by the Bulgarians, and had

not since been heard of. His daughter Joan succeeded to the county of

Flanders, and had married Ferdinand (Ferrand), prince of Portugal, who

had opposed Philip Augustus, and who was taken prisoner by that monarch

at the battle of Bouvines. Joan took no steps to liberate her husband, or

to pay his ransom, when an aged man appeared in Flanders, calling himself

Count Baldwin, and giving an account of his long captivity and recent

escape from the Bulgarians. Joan denied the identity of this person with

her father; Louis VIII was of her opinion; while Henry III treated and

allied himself with him as the veritable Baldwin. The self-entitled count

appeared before King Louis at Péronne, offering proofs of his identity;

but unfortunately he could not recall the place where he had done homage

to Philip Augustus, nor the place where he had been knighted, nor yet the

place and day of his marriage. Whether he really could not make answer

to these questions, or whether age had troubled his memory, the old man

was condemned as a pretender, and the countess Joan soon after caused him

to be hanged. The common people still persisted in giving credit to his

identity with Count Baldwin, and looked on Joan as the murderer of her

father. Henry III in no way supported this his unfortunate ally.

[Illustration: LOUIS VIII

(From an old French print)]

[Sidenote: [1204-1226 A.D.]]

The sovereignty over Languedoc was still undecided. King Louis was

anxious to undertake a crusade in that country, with all the indulgences

and advantages of a warlike pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The hostilities

with England and the fickleness of the pope delayed the execution of this

purpose. Both obstacles were removed at length. Amaury de Montfort being

driven from the conquests of his father by the sons of Count Raymond,

reanimated the zeal of the pope and the old crusaders. Amaury retired

to Paris, and made cession of his claims to King Louis, who, in return,

promised him the office of constable. A new crusade was preached against

the Albigenses; and Louis marched towards Languedoc at the head of a

formidable army in the spring of the year 1226. The town of Avignon had

proffered to the crusaders the facilities of crossing the Rhone under

her walls, but refused entry within them to such an host. Louis, having

arrived at Avignon, insisted on passing through the town: the Avignonais

shut their gates and defied the monarch, who instantly formed the siege.

One of the rich municipalities of the south was almost a match for the

king of France. He was kept three months under its walls, his army a

prey to famine, to disease, and to the assaults of a brave garrison.

The crusaders lost twenty thousand men. The people of Avignon at length

submitted, but on no dishonourable terms. This was the only resistance

that Louis experienced in Languedoc. Raymond VII dared not meet the

crusaders in the field, nor durst one of his towns or châteaux remain

faithful to him. All submitted. Louis retired from his facile conquest;

he himself, and the chiefs of his army, stricken by an epidemy which had

prevailed in the conquered regions. The monarch’s feeble frame could not

resist it: he expired at Montpensier in Auvergne, in November, 1226.[b]

LOUIS IX, CALLED ST. LOUIS (1226-1270 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1226-1236 A.D.]]

Now we come to the true hero of the Middle Ages, a prince pious as he

was brave; who was devoted to feudalism and yet struck it the most

telling blows; who venerated the church yet knew how to resist its head;

who respected law yet placed justice above it; a frank and gentle soul

and loving heart filled with Christian charity, yet one that condemned

to torture the body of the sinner for the salvation of his soul; who

on earth looked only towards heaven and made of his kingly office a

magistracy of order and equity. Rome has canonised him, and the people

still see him seated under the oak of Vincennes dispensing justice to all

comers. This saint, this man of peace, did more in the simplicity of his

heart for the advancement of royalty than the most subtle counsellors or

ten fighting monarchs, because the king, in after time, appeared to the

people as the incarnation of Justice.[9]

For more than a century the sword of royalty, so far as it pertained to

France, had been valiantly carried. But the son of Louis VIII was a child

of eleven years. A coalition of the most powerful vassals was formed

at once to profit by his minority. The regent, his mother, Blanche of

Castile, won to her side one of the confederates, Thibaut, the powerful

count of Champagne, sent the royal army to save him from the attack of

his former allies and obtained from him, when he inherited the kingdom

of Navarre, the important counties of Blois, Chartres, and Sancerre.

A treaty, signed in 1229, assured to one of the king’s brothers the

succession of the county of Toulouse and a marriage arranged between a

second brother of St. Louis and the heiress of Provence prepared the way,

at a future date, for the union of that country with France. Already

the royal seneschals were established at Beaucaire and Carcassonne, by

which the king found himself master, through himself or his brothers, of

a large part of southern France. The king’s majority was proclaimed in

1236, but the wise regent still held the greatest influence over her son

and the direction of affairs.

The great pontificate of Innocent III had given new energy to the church

and to religious sentiment. The spirit of the Crusades which had been

extinguished during the rivalry of Philip Augustus with Richard Cœur

de Lion and John Lackland was rekindled. In 1235 preaching the “holy

war” was recommenced in France, and, as on too many other occasions, the

movement was begun by the massacre of those whose ancestors had nailed

the sainted victim to the cross of Golgotha. Everywhere the Jews were

slaughtered, until the Council of Tours was obliged to take these unhappy

people under their protection. Heretics found even less mercy. Thibaut of

Champagne burned 183 of them on Mount Aimé near Vertus. This crusade, in

which Thibaut himself, the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany took part, was

not successful. The crusaders were beaten at Gaza in Palestine, and those

who returned brought back with them nothing but the honour of having

broken a few lances in the Holy Land.

[Sidenote: [1236-1259 A.D.]]

Up to his war with England St. Louis gave little sign of activity; but in

1241 the emperor Frederick II detained the French prelates who had gone

to Rome to attend a council, and Louis demanded with great firmness that

they be set at liberty.

“Since the prelates of our realm have for no reason deserved their

detention,” he writes the emperor, “may it please your grace to set them

at liberty. You will thus appease us, for we regard their detention as an

insult, and our royal majesty would lose respect if we could keep quiet

under such circumstances. May your imperial prudence not go so far as

to allege your power or your will, since the kingdom of France is not

so weak that it will resign itself to be trampled under your feet.” The

emperor released his prisoners. Some time before Louis, on behalf of

himself and one of his brothers, refused the imperial crown of Frederick

II which the pope had offered him, and he had also refused the pontiff’s

request to modify a royal ordinance of 1234 restraining the jurisdiction

of ecclesiastical tribunals--a necessary measure, since these courts had

come to judge many more civil cases than the lay tribunals.

This man who spoke so firmly acted in the same manner when forced to take

up arms. Attacked in 1242 by the English, who sustained several of his

rebellious barons, St. Louis beat them at Taillebourg and at Saintes.

Perhaps he would have been able to drive them out of France, but he

refused to push his victory. Acquisitions made in the last half century

had tripled the extent of the royal domain, but they seemed to him

tainted with violence because they were the gain of two confiscations.

Through conscientious scruples he left the king of England, in a treaty

which he did not sign until his return from the crusade in 1259 [The

Treaty of Abbeville], the duchy of Guienne, that is to say Bordeaux,

Limoges, Périgueux, Cahors, Agen, Saintonge to the south of the Charente,

and Gascony, on condition of homage to the crown. And to prevent perjury

he obliged the lords who held fiefs from both crowns to choose between

the two sovereigns. The limits of the kingdom were equally uncertain on

the south; he fixed them at a convention with the king of Aragon, and the

county of Barcelona ceased to be dependent on the French crown.

In 1245, Pope Innocent IV, driven out of Italy by the emperor Frederick

II, took refuge at Lyons and there held in the cathedral church of

St. John of that city the thirteenth ecumenical council at which 140

bishops assisted. The pope solemnly deposed the emperor and exhorted all

Christian princes to march to the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre.

The spirit of the Crusades, which had been extinguished during the

rivalry of Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion, was rekindled.

The Spaniards had their crusade against the Moors, the Germans against

the Slavs, and the knights of Italy fought against the cities; but

in France, in spite of the great satiety of war from the Albigensian

troubles, there remained sufficient martial spirit to undertake new

crusades. In 1239 many had gone; we know with what success. Jerusalem,

which Frederick II had bought back from the hands of the infidels (1229)

had now come again under the power of Khwarismian barbarians (1239).

_First Crusade of St. Louis (1248-1254 A.D.)_

St. Louis had not listened to the appeal of the Fathers of the Council

of Lyons to assume the cross, but during an illness which, in 1244,

brought him to the edge of the grave, he made a vow to go to the Holy

Land. His mother and counsellors struggled in vain against this imprudent

resolution. Louis left his power again in the hands of Queen Blanche and

embarked at Aigues-Mortes, a little city which at that time was joined

to the Mediterranean by a canal across the swamps and salt marshes. The

king bought it from the monks of Psalmodi Abbey in order to have a port

of his own upon that sea, for Marseilles belonged to his brother the

count of Provence. Many crusaders embarked at the latter city, among them

the king’s friend the seneschal of Champagne and the sire de Joinville,

who, with Villehardouin, is the first in point of date, as in merit,

of the old French prose writers. It was not without many misgivings

that he determined to follow his master. In setting out to join him he

passed near his own castle, “but,” he said, “I dare not turn my face

towards Joinville, for fear that my heart would fail me in leaving my two

children and my fine castle which are so dear to me.” On the banks of

the Rhone he saw the ruins of a castle which the king had had destroyed

because its lord had a bad name for stripping and robbing all the

merchants and pilgrims who passed by.

[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

[Sidenote: [1249-1270 A.D.]]

St. Louis had been collecting for two years a large store of provisions

on the island of Cyprus. The army left there in eighteen hundred ships,

large and small, for Egypt. Damietta, at one of the mouths of the Nile,

was captured (June 7th, 1249), but precious time was lost before marching

upon Cairo. Five months and a half of delay stoutened the hearts of the

mamelukes. The crusaders took a month to cover the five leagues which

separated them from the town of Mansurah. A badly directed fight at

the same place cost the lives of a large number of knights and of St.

Louis’ brother the count of Artois. When the prior of the Hospital, says

Joinville,[i] came to ask of St. Louis if he had any news of his brother,

the king replied that he had, that he knew his brother was in heaven. The

prior tried to comfort him in praising the valour the prince had always

shown and the glory he had gained that day, and the good king replied

that God was adored in all that he had done. And then he began to shed

great tears, at which many people who were looking on were oppressed by

grief and compassion (February, 1250).

Soon the army was surrounded by enemies and decimated by pest. Joinville

was stricken down, and equally so his poor chaplain. One day it happened

that he was chanting mass before the seneschal’s bedside; when the priest

was at the sacrament Joinville perceived him to be so ill that with his

own eyes he saw him faint. The seneschal got up and ran to raise him

and then he managed to finish the mass, but never said it again, and

died. The retreat was disastrous and finally they had to surrender.

“The good, saintly man, the king,” did honour to his captivity by his

courage and inspired even his enemies with respect for his virtues. They

released him for a large ransom. Once free he made his way to Palestine

and stayed there three years, employing his influence and zeal in

maintaining harmony among the Christians and his resources in repairing

the fortifications of the places they still occupied.

The news of these disasters only served to increase the king’s popularity

in France. The people would not see his faults and thought only of the

virtues he had shown. The prelates and lords had deserted and betrayed

him, they said; it would take the humble people to rescue him, and an

immense crowd of serfs and peasants gathered together to cross the sea

and go to the king’s help. This was the Shepherds’ Crusade. These people

lived, on the way, by pillage--even murders were committed. It was

necessary to deal harshly with them, and they were scattered like wild

beasts.

The news of the regent’s death (December, 1252) recalled Louis at last to

France. In passing Cyprus the king’s galley grazed a rock, which carried

away fully eighteen feet of her keel. Louis was advised to change ships,

and according to Joinville[i] said, “If I leave the ship, five or six

hundred people who are on it and who value their life as I do mine will

be afraid to stay behind and will land at Cyprus with no hope or means of

ever returning to their own country. I prefer to place myself, my wife,

and children in danger under the protection of God, than to bring such

misfortune on so many people.”

_Last Years and Death of St. Louis_

It was after his return to France that St. Louis made treaties with

England and Aragon to determine definitely the boundaries of the three

kingdoms. He hoped in making substantial sacrifices to strengthen

his hold on the provinces he kept for himself and to prevent the war

so frequently provoked by uncertainty with regard to frontiers. This

solicitude to do justice to all caused him to be chosen as arbitrator

between the king of England and his barons in the controversy over the

provisions of Oxford (1264). Louis pronounced in favour of the king,

and this time was not successful, for the barons did not hold to his

decision, and deposed Henry III. More fortunate elsewhere, he settled a

dispute of succession which delivered Flanders from civil war. In the

year 1270 St. Louis undertook another crusade in which his faithful

Joinville this time refused to engage.[f]

[Sidenote: [1270 A.D.]]

A pacific expedition which should merely intimidate the king of Tunis and

induce him to become a convert was not what suited the Genoese in whose

vessels St. Louis was making his passage. Most of the crusaders preferred

violence; it was said that Tunis was a rich town, the pillage of which

might indemnify them for their dangerous expedition. The Genoese,

regardless of the voice of St. Louis, began hostilities by seizing the

vessels they found before Carthage. The landing took place without

obstacle. The Moors only showed themselves to provoke the Christians,

and make them waste their strength in fruitless pursuits. After spending

some weary days on the burning shore, the Christians advanced towards the

castle of Carthage. All that remained of the great rival of Rome was a

fort guarded by two hundred soldiers, and the Saracens who had retreated

into the vaults or subterranean chambers were butchered or suffocated by

smoke and flames. The king found the ruins full of corpses, which he had

removed, that he might take up his quarters there with his followers.

He had to wait at Carthage for his brother, Charles of Anjou, before

marching on Tunis.

The greater part of the army remained under the African sun, tormented by

the thick dust swept from the desert by the winds, and surrounded by the

festering remains of the dead. The Moors prowled all around, continually

cutting off some stragglers. There were no trees, no vegetable food; for

water there was nothing but fetid marshes and cisterns full of disgusting

insects. In eight days the plague had broken out. The counts of Vendôme,

de la Marche and Viane, Walter de Nemours, marshal of France, the sires

de Montmorency, Piennes, Brissac, St. Briçon, and d’Apremont were already

dead.

The legate soon followed them. The survivors being no longer able to

bury them, they were thrown into the canal, till they covered the whole

surface of the water. Meanwhile, the king and his sons were attacked by

the malady; the youngest died in his vessel, and it was not till eight

days afterwards that the confessor of St. Louis took on himself to

acquaint him with the mournful event. The deceased was the most beloved

of his children, and his death announced to a dying father was, to the

latter, one tie less to earth, a call from God, a temptation to die.

Accordingly, without perturbation or regret, he accomplished that last

work of a Christian life, making the responses to the litanies and the

psalms, dictating a noble and affecting instruction for his son, and

receiving even the ambassadors of the Greeks, who came to entreat his

intervention in their favour with his brother Charles of Anjou, whose

ambition menaced them. He spoke to them with kindness, and promised to

exert himself with zeal, if he lived, to keep them in peace; but the next

day he himself entered into the peace of God.

That last night of his life he desired them to raise him from his bed and

lay him on ashes; and so he died, with his arms constantly folded in the

form of a cross. “And on Monday the blessed king stretched his folded

hands towards heaven, and said, ‘Good Lord God, have mercy on this people

that here remaineth, and lead it into its country, that it fall not into

the hand of its enemies, and that it be not constrained to renounce thy

holy name!’ In the night before he deceased, whilst he was reposing, he

sighed, and said in a low voice, ‘O Jerusalem! O Jerusalem!’”[d]

In his lifetime the contemporaries of St. Louis suspected in their

simplicity that he was already a saint, and more saintly than the

priests. Says the king’s confessor, Geoffrey de Beaulieu:[l] “Whilst he

lived a word might be said of him which is said of St. Hilary, ‘O most

perfect layman whose life priests even desire to imitate.’ For many

priests and laymen desired to be like the blessed king in his virtues

and his morals; for it is even thought that he was a saint in his

lifetime.”[d]

The French during this reign accomplished a great achievement without the

help of royalty. Charles of Anjou, count of Provence, summoned by the

pope against King Manfred, son of the emperor Frederick II, conquered

the kingdom of Naples in 1266. But the Latins had five years before lost

Constantinople which the Greeks had taken possession of. It was to the

interested advice of Charles of Anjou that was due the direction taken by

the last crusade, since the submission of the king of Tunis would free

Sicily from the constant attempts of the Saracens upon that island.[f]

_Hallam’s Estimate of St. Louis_

[Sidenote: [1226-1270 A.D.]]

Louis IX had methods of preserving his ascendency very different from

military prowess. That excellent prince was perhaps the most eminent

pattern of unswerving probity and Christian strictness of conscience

that ever held the sceptre in any country. There is a peculiar beauty

in the reign of St. Louis, because it shows the inestimable benefit

which a virtuous king may confer on his people, without possessing any

distinguished genius. For nearly half a century that he governed France,

there is not the smallest want of moderation or disinterestedness in his

actions; and yet he raised the influence of the monarchy to a much higher

point than the most ambitious of his predecessors.

To the surprise of his own and later times, he restored great part

of his conquests to Henry III, whom he might naturally hope to have

expelled from France. It would indeed have been a tedious work to conquer

Guienne, which was full of strong places, and the subjugation of such a

province might have alarmed the other vassals of his crown. But it is

the privilege only of virtuous minds to perceive that wisdom resides

in moderate counsels; no sagacity ever taught a selfish and ambitious

sovereign to forego the sweetness of immediate power. An ordinary king,

in the circumstances of the French monarchy, would have fomented, or

at least have rejoiced in the dissensions which broke out among the

principal vassals; Louis constantly employed himself to reconcile them.

In this, too, his benevolence had all the effects of far-sighted policy.

It had been the practice of his last three predecessors to interpose

their mediation in behalf of the less powerful classes--the clergy, the

inferior nobility, and the inhabitants of chartered towns. Thus the

supremacy of the crown became a familiar idea; but the perfect integrity

of St. Louis wore away all distrust, and accustomed even the most jealous

feudatories to look upon him as their judge and legislator. And as the

royal authority was hitherto shown only in its most amiable prerogatives,

the dispensation of favour, and the redress of wrong, few were watchful

enough to remark the transition of the French constitution from a feudal

league to an absolute monarchy.

It was perhaps fortunate for the display of St. Louis’ virtues that the

throne had already been strengthened by the less innocent exertions

of Philip Augustus and Louis VIII. A century earlier, his mild and

scrupulous character, unsustained by great actual power, might not have

inspired sufficient awe. But the crown was now grown so formidable, and

Louis was so eminent for his firmness and bravery, qualities without

which every other virtue would have been ineffectual, that no one

thought it safe to run wantonly into rebellion, while his disinterested

administration gave no one a pretext for it. Not satisfied with the

justice of his own conduct, Louis aimed at that act of virtue which

is rarely practised by private men, and had perhaps no example among

kings--restitution. Commissaries were appointed to inquire what

possessions had been unjustly annexed to the royal domain during the last

two reigns. These were restored to the proprietors, or, where length of

time had made it difficult to ascertain the claimant, their value was

distributed among the poor.

[Illustration: A FRENCH PAGE, TIME OF LOUIS IX]

It has been hinted already that all this excellence of heart in Louis IX

was not attended with that strength of understanding which is necessary,

we must allow, to complete the usefulness of a sovereign. During his

minority, Blanche of Castile, his mother, had filled the office of regent

with great courage and firmness. But after he grew up to manhood, her

influence seems to have passed the limit which gratitude and piety would

have assigned to it; and, as her temper was not very meek or popular,

it exposed the king to some degree of contempt. He submitted even to be

restrained from the society of his wife Marguerite, daughter of Raymond,

count of Provence, a princess of great virtue and conjugal affection.

But the principal weakness of this king, which almost effaced all the

good effects of his virtues, was superstition. It would be idle to sneer

at those habits of abstemiousness and mortification which were part to

the religion of his age, and, at the worst, were only injurious to his

own comfort. But he had other prejudices, which, though they may be

forgiven, must never be defended. No man was ever more impressed than

St. Louis with a belief in the duty of exterminating all enemies to

his own faith. With these he thought no layman ought to risk himself

in the perilous ways of reasoning, but to make answer with his sword

as stoutly as a strong arm and a fiery zeal could carry that argument.

Though, fortunately for his fame, the persecution against the Albigenses,

which had been the disgrace of his father’s short reign, was at an end

before he reached manhood, he suffered a hypocritical monk to establish

a tribunal at Paris for the suppression of heresy, where many innocent

persons suffered death.[g]

_Piety and Christianity of St. Louis_

The natural piety of St. Louis but strengthened with his growth. His

Christian life, or to reduce the statement to its simplest terms, his

daily Christianity, which edified his own century, might very easily

fill ours with a sense of shock. But whatever it may leave of such an

impression, the history would be incomplete which passed over in silence,

or only vaguely indicated, that which filled so large a part in his

life. Let us not, therefore, endeavour to build up for ourselves a St.

Louis in accordance with our present-day tastes. Nothing is beautiful but

the true, and that truth which the saintly king sought in all things is

alone worthy to retrace the likeness of him which should endure.

According to those of his historians who were most intimate with him--the

chaplain who accompanied him on one and another of the Crusades, the

confessor whom he kept beside him for twenty years, the confessor of his

wife Marguerite--he seemed to live for God alone. The offices were read

in the king’s chapel; almost it might have been the chapel of a monastery

or the choir of a cathedral. There he had the Hours sung to him, the

Office for the Dead being added by his command. He heard two masses,

sometimes three or four; and when the grandees grumbled at his wasting

so much time on masses and sermons, he retorted that if he were to lose

twice as much time over gaming and hunting no one would complain: a

remark which scarcely silenced the murmurs; the barons made no complaint

against thus wasting their time with him.

The holy Scriptures and the Fathers were his study. Marguerite’s

confessor tells us that he caused a candle three feet or thereabouts

in height to be lighted, and so long as it lasted read the Bible. He

remained for so long a time upon his knees that sometimes his sight and

his wits became confused, and, rising up quite dazed, he would ask:

“Where am I?” Led back to his room, he would go to bed, but at midnight

he was up again and had matins sung by his chaplains (it was no sinecure

being king’s chaplain in those days!). He would, however, grant to his

attendants the repose he refused for himself. So softly did he rise that

on several occasions they did not hear him, or, awakened too late, ran

after him barefoot.

Every Friday he made his confession, after which he made his confessor

administer “the discipline” to him. This discipline was composed of five

small iron chains, which he enclosed in an ivory box and carried about

with him. He had similar boxes made, with similar contents, and presented

them to his children and his friends, counselling them to make use of

them. When his confessor struck him too lightly, he urged him to use

more force. This advice was not always needed. He had one confessor so

full of zeal (_solicitus sibi_) who struck the king in such a manner as

to terribly lacerate his flesh, which was extremely delicate. St. Louis,

however, held his peace; he never mentioned the matter so long as the

confessor lived, but afterwards he spoke of it laughingly to another.

His confessors, one should add, were not commonly so zealous, and they

reprimanded him for austerities which threatened his delicate health, and

urged him to substitute for them alms, which, as a fact, the king did not

stint; and they ended by forcing him to renounce the hair-shirt which

he wore during Advent and Lent and on the vigils of certain feasts. He

renounced it only to wear occasionally a girdle of horse-hair next his

skin.

On Good Friday he would visit all the churches barefoot; to keep up

appearances he wore shoes from which the soles had been removed. For the

adoration of the cross he removed his upper garments, retaining only his

vest and coat. With bare feet and uncovered head he advanced a short

distance on his knees, bowed himself in prayer, then advanced a little

further, and the third time arrived at the cross, prostrated himself as

though he too were crucified, and kissed it, bathed in tears. Fervently

did he desire the gift of tears. When in singing the litanies the verse

was reached: “Grant us a fountain of tears” (_Ut fontem lacrymarum nobis

dones_), he used to say: “Lord, I dare not ask of thee a fount of tears,

but only a few drops to refresh my parched and sterile heart.”

Are all these details, which have perhaps provoked the pitying smiles

of more than one reader, the marks of a feeble intelligence, or do they

rather bear witness to a powerful mind that has perfected self-control

by keeping the senses in sternest bondage? One can only truly judge of

things by their results. His singleness of speech and his aversion to

coarse or equivocal language bore eloquent witness to the purity of his

heart. Not only did he detest the licentiousness of contemporary poetry,

he was also filled with loathing for the popular songs, and innocently

recommended one of his equerries who sang them to learn instead the

_Ave Maris Stella_. His modesty was excessive. The purity of his youth

had never been shadowed by the slightest hint of license, and marriage

only served to throw his chastity into higher relief. He demanded moral

uprightness from all in his household, and banished without mercy whoso

offended against a virtue so dear to his heart.

[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

On feast days he would bid to his palace two hundred beggars, and himself

serve them at table. On the Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of Advent

and Lent, and every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year, he would

send for thirteen of them into his own or a neighbouring room and give

them food with his own hand, without disgust at their dirtiness. If one

among the number was blind the king would give the piece of bread into

one of his hands, and guide the other to the bowl containing his portion.

If this consisted of fish, he would remove the bones, dip it in the

sauce and place the morsel in the blind man’s mouth. Before the meal he

gave to each person twelve deniers or more according to his need; and

if a mother was there with her child, he added more for the little one.

On Saturdays he would choose three of the most decrepit, most miserable

among the poor, and leading them into his dressing-room, where towels

and three basins of water were in readiness, he washed their feet. With

reverence he would dry and kiss those feet, whatever their deformity,

however hardened by daily contact with the ground; then, kneeling, he

would offer them water to wash their hands, give to each forty deniers,

and kiss their hands. Nor was this all. Every day, in all weathers, he

sent for thirteen other beggars and from among them chose out the three

most repulsive, whom he seated at a table drawn up close beside his own.

On many of these points he would not to-day have won the same universal

approbation. It is, however, difficult for us to reinvest his figure with

the atmosphere by which it must be surrounded before we can form a just

judgment; it is far more difficult to place ourselves at the necessary

point of view from which we can see him clearly. The modern historian is

ofttimes reduced to pleading extenuating circumstances for the saints;

for the saints, and St. Louis among them, have this much in common

with the Saviour, that in more than one case they could say with him:

“Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.”[h]

St. Louis built the asylum of the Quinze Vingts for the blind, several

hospitals, and the church of Vincennes. To provide a place for the

crown of thorns which the Venetians had turned over to his keeping, he

had built by Pierre de Montereau within the precinct of his palace,

now the Palais de Justice, the Sainte Chapelle, a shrine of open-work

stone. His confessor Robert de Sorbon founded a community under the

title of _Congrégation des pauvres maîtres étudiants en théologie_.

This congregation became the Sorbonne, the theological faculty so

famous throughout the entire Christian world that Mézeray calls it “the

permanent council of the Gauls.”

_Progress of the Monarchy under St. Louis_

The house of Capet had made such progress that no lord now dared say to

his vassal, “Come fight under my banner against the lord, our king,”

much as this anarchial privilege was still recognised in the so-called

“Establishments” of St. Louis, a compilation of customs in vogue in

Orleans. The counts of Flanders and of Brittany and the duke of Guienne,

were about the only ones who had not degenerated to the condition of

docile vassals; yet feudalism still preserved some immense prerogatives

and St. Louis attacked these in the name of justice and religion.

In holding to a strict execution of the ordinances of

_quarantaine-le-roi_[10] and _asseurement_ (inviolability) he suppressed

nearly all private wars. As a Christian he did not approve of these

wars which sent to God so many souls ill-prepared to appear before him.

As a prince he wished to stop the devastation throughout the country,

“the fires and the obstacles placed in the ways of tilling the fields.”

He forbade in his domains the _duel judiciare_ which gave over the

settlement and right to the chances of skill and strength. The king’s

justice usurped the place of individual violence, and proof by witnesses

and procedure by writ replaced justice by battle, for “battle is not the

path of right.”

The lords still dispensed justice throughout their domains. The villein

could not escape this judgment, but the vassal had the rights of

appeal to the sovereign from the judgment of his lord “in default of

right,” when the lord refused to render justice; for “false judgments”

when the condemned believed himself to have been injured by an unjust

sentence. Now the king favoured the custom of direct appeal to his

court, which subordinated the lord’s justice to that of his own which

was final; “for,” says Beaumanoir,[j] “since he is sovereign, his court

is sovereign”; and the “Establishments” explain why there could be no

appeal from the royal decision: “There is no one who can have this right,

since the king gets his power from no one but God and himself.” The duke

of Brittany also retained the final appeal. When a case brought to the

justice of the lords interested the king, in whatever way it may be, the

bailiff raised the “conflict” as we would say nowadays and laid claim to

the judgment, the king not being under the jurisdiction of a lord. These

cases were the “royal cases.” Legists were most careful to define them so

as not to deprive the king’s officials of any pretexts for interfering in

trials before the feudal courts. It was easy to multiply these at that

time and the officials did not fail to do so--taking as much as possible

from the province of the lord’s justice and adding it to the king’s.

At the same time the king’s _bourgeoisie_ was established. An inhabitant

of a piece of seigniorial land might under certain conditions of

establishment and residence in a royal city acquire the condition of

“king’s bourgeois.” “I am a king’s bourgeois” was equivalent to “I am

a Roman citizen.” The Roman citizen could only be judged at Rome. The

king’s bourgeois could not be tried except by the king’s officials.

The king’s court was on this account much more occupied than formerly.

It continued to accumulate every possible prerogative. It was a court

of exchequer, and, if it pleased the king, a political council; but it

was above all things, in the days of St. Louis, a court of justice. The

royal finances were always of a very simple nature; in case of crusades,

captivity of the king, knighthood conferred upon the king’s eldest son

or his marriage, feudal aid was demanded. The revenues of the domain, if

well administered, were quite sufficient for royalty to live upon. When

it had greater needs and it was necessary to increase revenues of all

sorts, the financial prerogatives of the court became more important.

The office of the exchequer was detached from it; but in the time of St.

Louis justice was the court’s business.

But even in this court considerable changes were taking place. The rôle

of the great vassals and the crown officials was diminishing, that

of the legists was beginning. Now, since judgment was pronounced on

written procedures, it was not the knights who had sufficient knowledge

and application of mind to deal with the stability of proof and the

obscurities of the black-book. The lawyer was necessary to them. At first

the barons disdainfully made these plebeian personages sit at their feet,

on stools. But in the meeting of ignorance and knowledge the latter

quickly asserted its sovereignty. The baron, who had nothing but nonsense

to talk, kept quiet before the learned counsellors, and upon these latter

soon devolved the direction of judgment; and the fate of the guilty, even

of the noblest station, lay in their hands. The king’s court, which was

always held at Paris, had regular sessions, usually four times a year;

and it kept a record of its deliberations which under the name of “Olim”

was the beginning of royal jurisprudence.

In the administration of the provinces, St. Louis protected his own power

and that of his subjects against any abuses his officials might practice.

He forbade bailiffs and seneschals to make presents to the members of

the council or receive money from those dependent on them or to loan

such any, or to take part in sales, markets, or leases held in the

king’s name. They were forbidden to purchase any property within their

jurisdiction or to marry their sons and daughters without the king’s

permission. If they disobeyed they were punished both in their property

and their persons. When going out of office they were obliged to live

forty days within their territory, in order to reply to their successors

or to royal inquiries in any charge of misconduct that might be brought

against them.

St. Louis sent into the provinces commissioners or royal inquirers, a

custom adopted from Charlemagne. These inquirers defended the king’s

rights and those of his subjects as well. The care which they took to

protect the latter against exaction, won them the name of _enquesteurs

aux restitutions_. In all these measures can be recognised the influence

of the legists and echoes of Roman administration.

We have noted the organisation of provostships. That of Paris demanded

large funds. Therefore several officials joined together to farm it out,

and these provosts, according to Joinville, trampled upon the people,

sustained their families by the “outrages” they committed, let themselves

be corrupted by the rich, and took no notice whatever of the robbers and

malefactors who infested Paris and its vicinity.

The king resolved to give in the future “great and high wages to those

who should look after his provostship,” and sought for someone “who would

give good and stiff justice.” He chose Étienne Boileau who maintained so

well the provostship that no malefactor, robber, or cut-throat dared come

to Paris but he was at once hanged and exterminated; and neither lineage,

gold, nor silver could save him. Justice and policing were the principal

functions of the provost of Paris, who commanded the watch and presided

at the tribunal of the Châtelet.

St. Louis struck hard blows at feudalism by the suppression of judiciary

duels, the interdiction of private wars, and the establishment of appeal;

but he was not for all this a revolutionary king in the sense of Philip

the Fair. He repeated constantly that none must “take away any one’s

rights; but it is,” so he said at the head of an ordinance, “the duty of

royal power to assure peace and happiness to our subjects.” Besides he

had that same spirit of justice that is found in Roman law, and which

united so well with the principles of Christianity. When he condemns, for

example, the duel, he does it because “battle is not the way to determine

right”--here is the Roman spirit; and because it “criminally tempts

God”--here is the spirit of Christ.

He expected that all would submit to what it seemed to him he was charged

by God to establish. His brother the count of Anjou, had, on trial,

condemned a knight; and the latter, on appealing to the king’s court, was

imprisoned by the count. The king let his brother know that there was but

one king in France and although Charles was his brother, he would not be

treated in any different ways as regarded justice. The count of Anjou had

to release his prisoner and came in person to oppose the appeal at the

king’s court, which, however, was decided in favour of the knight.

One of the most powerful lords of the realm, the lord of Coucy, caused

three young men to be hanged for offence against the hunting laws, and

although all the barons pleaded for him he was ordered a heavy fine.

A lord cried with irony, “If I were king I would hang all the barons;

for the first step taken, the second costs nothing.” The king heard and

called him back. “How, Jean, you say that I should hang all my barons.

Certainly I shall not do it, but I will punish them if they do wrong.”

We have seen how the reputation for equity of the good king was so

well established that the English barons in revolt against their king

chose Louis as arbitrator, an example followed by the counts of Bar and

Luxemburg.

The right of coinage belonged to more than eighty lords who sometimes

made bad money. St. Louis decided that his own should have circulation

throughout the entire kingdom and alone should be legal tender in the

royal domain and those whose lords had not the right of coinage; that the

seigniorial coinage should only be legal in the province of the lord who

issued it and that this lord could only strike off the _tournois_, and

_parisis_,[11] and other coins whose legal value was fixed by relation

to the _tournois_ in the ordinance. Thus the king ruled, in absolute

power, in his own domain. He recognised elsewhere seigniorial rights, but

limited them in the interest of the subjects whose protector he was. His

money circulated everywhere.

It only remained for the king to coin better _parisis_ and better

_tournois_ than those of the lords; which he did. His money, like his

justice, was worth more than his vassal’s. Another measure was extremely

useful to commerce. It made the lords responsible for the policing of

the roads through their domains. In Paris he established the royal watch

and had drawn up by the provost, Étienne Boileau, the ancient rules

concerning the hundred trades which existed in the town, in order to

infuse peace and order into industry as he had done in the country. These

trades grouped themselves into great corporations; in the fifteenth

century all the Parisian merchants formed six bodies of “arts and trades.”

St. Louis showed a respectful firmness towards papal authority; we

have seen that he did not recognise the pope’s right to dispose of

crowns. There has even been attributed to him a pragmatic sanction, the

foundation of the liberties of the Gallican church, which would have

confirmed the liberty of canonical elections, restrained to the most

urgent necessities the impositions which the court of Rome could levy

upon the French churches and contained the king’s vow that they should

be established. This ordinance is not authentic, but its principles are

those of the government. When the bishops demanded that the king force

the excommunicated to submit, he declared that he could not do so without

knowing the reasons for excommunication, which made him a judge of the

bishops.

St. Louis’ lively faith assured him against all fear of the church’s

wrath; and led him besides to severe practices which seem to us of to-day

barbaric. “No one,” he said, “unless he be learned clerk or perfect

theologian, should dispute with the Jews, but may do so with the layman

who is heard to slander the Christian faith, and defend it not only with

words but with his good drawn sword, striking the miscreant across the

body or even letting it cut him.” He punished blasphemers by running

red-hot irons through their tongues.

He loved to recall that on one occasion during his minority, when pursued

up to the very walls of Paris by rebel vassals, he had been saved by the

city soldiers who came to his rescue. He always took great interest in

the welfare of the large towns, but without sacrificing to them the new

needs of society. He conferred a number of charters, and amended others.

Communal independence never seemed to him better than feudal liberties,

and he favoured the transformation of the communes into royal cities

which were dependent on and watched over by the supreme power, while

their internal affairs were attended to by officials chosen in free

election. An ordinance of 1256 prescribes that the communes name four

candidates among themselves from whom the king shall choose a mayor who

shall come to Paris once a year to give account of his stewardship.

Thus little by little was established the principle that it was the

king’s prerogative to deal with the communes and that all owed him

allegiance above everyone else. Thus the communes gradually disappeared

and with them the proud sentiments, the strong ideas of right and liberty

which sustained the men who had founded and defended them. The “third

estate” was beginning.

Through his undermining of feudal and communal independence, and through

his strong ruling with regard to the church, St. Louis pointed the

way of absolute power to French royalty. He rendered it still another

service. The remembrance of his virtues did not perish with him.

Venerated in his lifetime as a saint, he was canonised after death. He

put the seal of sanctification, so to speak, upon French royalty, and his

descendants were fond of invoking at the head of their decrees the name

and example of “Monsieur St. Louis.”[f]

ASPECTS OF THIRTEENTH CENTURY CIVILISATION

[Sidenote: [1100-1270 A.D.]]

In proportion as the Middle Ages advanced, national individuality took

more definite shape. Intellectual life had been during a protracted

period confined almost exclusively to religious circles, and had been

given expression in the universal language--Latin. Accordingly the

beginning of the thirteenth century saw only three active established

literatures--in Germany, in the north and in the south of France; the

last having preceded the others and served them as models. This was the

literature of the _langue d’oc_, also called Provençal, which overflowed

the Pyrenean borders into Christian Europe, passed over the Alps into

the whole of Italy, and awakened the muse that lay sleeping on the banks

of the Ebro, as on those of the Po and the Arno. Brilliant, sonorous,

harmonious, full of imagery and movement, it was unexcelled as the

language of love and battle songs. Bernard de Ventadour, Bertram de

Born, and Richard Cœur de Lion moulded it with a skill and ardour worthy

of Tyrtæus. The songs of Bertram de Born, above all, were like swords,

dazzling and penetrating; the passion of war flamed in them like fire.

This language of the south, into which something of the Arabian accent

has passed, lent itself gracefully to the requirements of the courts of

love presided over by ingenious tribunals of noble dames.

But the continued development of the north of France gave the

preponderance to its idiom. The Normans carried it into Italy, where it

failed to establish itself; and to England, where it prevailed during

three centuries. By the crusaders it was everywhere disseminated. While

the intellectual fame of Paris attracted there the eminent minds of the

whole Catholic world, the vulgar tongue which the doctors disdained

extended its empire well beyond the frontiers. We must add also that

French genius, so often accused of epic sterility, poured over into the

adjacent countries a flood of great poetry. The troubadours had been mute

since the Albigensian crusade had drowned in blood the civilisation of

the _langue d’oc_; and no more were heard the virile accents of Bernard

de Ventadour or of Bertram de Born, nor the melodious lyrics of the _jeux

partis_.[12] But north of the Loire the _trouvères_ still composed heroic

songs--veritable epics, which were translated or imitated in Italy,

England, and Germany.

But these epic cycles were exhausted: the heroic ode disappeared.

Robert Wace, “clerk of Caen,” composed about 1155 the _Roman de Brut_,

a legendary history of Britain. Christian de Troyes, who wrote after

1160, spun out a diluted version of the Arthurian legend in a long poem

in lines of eight syllables, while the same tale was given a religious

twist by another school of poets by adding the history of the Holy

Grail. The aspect of the times was mirrored in the poem with its double

face--chivalry and piety. The naïve inspiration of the song of Roland was

lost; the new school subtilised, ran after novelties, or rummaged among

the classics. The story of Ulysses and that of the Argonauts, borrowed

from _The Thebaid_ of Statius, furnished tales which could not fail to

please those Christian Ulysseses whom the Crusades had sent wandering in

Asia. The Trojan War, the sorceress Medea, and Alexander, attracted the

_trouvères_ of this period. They had already begun to imitate the style

of the ancients. Thus the nature of the epic was altered and a transition

took place from primitive composition to the diverse styles of advanced

civilisation. The epic was divided: the elements dealing with the

passions were blended into allegorical romance; the narrative elements,

into prose history. Analysis and realism took the place of spontaneous

and poetic inspiration.

Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, began the famous _Roman de la

Rose_, whose personages were abstract qualities--Reason, Good-will,

Danger, Treason, Baseness, Avarice. Jean de Meun continued it later,

after another transformation had given birth to satire. The fable

flourished already, having derived its origin from that very romance:

animals played the rôles of passions, of social conditions; and the tale

of _Renard_, developed in its turn from the others, made its appearance,

in 1236, as the comedy of the period. Rutebœuf offers the first example

of the professional poet, ill remunerated, perishing with cold, agape

with hunger; yet, in the depths of this misery, gay, daring, caustic, he

wrote upon all sorts of subjects in the frank, open style which heralded

Villon. Language acquires in his hands skill and power; it is more mellow

and more tender than that of Guillaume de Lorris or from the lips of the

famous count of Champagne or of Marie of France.

The most noteworthy event in French literature in the thirteenth century

was the appearance of prose. The first prose writers were not, be it

understood, professional historians, but two noblemen, both involved

in the events they depicted. Geoffroy de Villehardouin, marshal of

Champagne, has left us the history of the Fourth Crusade in the _Conquête

de Constantinople_, in which he himself figured. He writes as a soldier,

his style being firm and brief, not without a touch of military

stiffness; he invents little, goes straight ahead, from one attack to

the next, with a brief exclamation when encountering some object which

astonishes him. The lord of Joinville, also seneschal of Champagne,

exhibits in his _Mémoires_ a greater suppleness of style, a more marked

refinement of mind; he observes, reflects, and talks upon all subjects,

discussing his personal sentiments as freely as the events of war. He

was the foreshadowing of Froissart, as only the councillor and friend of

the pious and excellent Louis IX could be.[c] “In point of time,” says

Villemain, “the narrative of Joinville is perhaps the first monument of

genius in the French language,--a work of genius being, as I understand

it, one having a high degree of originality of diction; a characteristic

and expressive physiognomy; in short, a work that has been done by one

man and that could not have been done by another. Such is the book of

Joinville.”[o]

France was indebted to St. Louis for the multiplication of manuscripts.

It is remarkable that he should first, while in the East, have resolved

to establish a library at Paris. Hearing that the soldan of Egypt was

indefatigably collecting from all parts, and causing to be transcribed or

translated, the works of the ancient philosophers, “he was afflicted,”

says a chronicler of the times, “to perceive more wisdom in the sons of

darkness than in the children of light.” He began to collect manuscripts

of the Old and New Testaments, and of the fathers, which he caused to

be multiplied by transcription; all these he placed in the royal chapel

at Paris, making them accessible to professors and students. The same

liberality was shown by the Dominicans of Toulouse, by the bishops of

Beauvais and Paris, by the archbishop of Narbonne, by many chapters, and

by more monasteries. The professors of the University of Paris, too,

were eminent enough to draw students from all parts of Europe: in fact,

such names as Alexander de Hales, Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas,

St. Buonaventura, would have conferred splendour on any establishment.

With inferior fame, but probably with equal utility, the universities

of Bourges, Toulouse, Orleans, and Angers--foundations of this

century--imitated the example of the capital.[n]

The thirteenth century marks the triumph of the style of architecture

so improperly called Gothic. Its characteristic is the arch. This form,

at no other time and in no other country employed with such profusion

and prominence as in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, has been

attributed primarily to the Goths, whence its name; afterwards, with

as little justification, to the Arabs. Undoubtedly pilgrims to the

Orient, among them many ecclesiastics, brought back from their travels

impressions and souvenirs which left their traces upon Christian

edifices; numerous churches were built after the pattern of the Holy

Sepulchre. Mosaic and colour alternation appear also to be importations

from the East. As to the arch, if it is much in evidence in the Arabian

style, it is also prominent in that of the Byzantines; it is of all times

and all countries, from the tomb of Atreus and the gates of the Pelasgian

cities in Italy to the constructions of the savages of Nubia and America.

It is simply an elementary form and easy to construct in building vaulted

roofs, which require more precision than science.

Vulgar and irregular at first, the arch became monumental little by

little--by natural progression, by a gradual refinement of line, by

a greater diversity of ornament, by the ribs and columns which began

to adorn it. It lent itself marvellously, moreover, as a delineation

of the celestial vault, to the mysticism of the Christians and to the

passionate soaring of their souls toward heaven: thus soared the mass of

Gothic columns, straight, bold, fearfully light, and appearing higher in

proportion as the vaulted roof was less open. It was not in the formal

Roman _Midi_, it was in the mystic North that the Gothic spread and

attained perfection.

The new style, born north of the Loire, crossed the Channel, the

Rhine, and the Alps; and the colonies of French artists transplanted

it to Canterbury, to Utrecht, to Milan, to Cologne, to Strasburg, to

Ratisbon--even into Sweden. A crude but ingenuous statuary adorned

portals, galleries, and cloisters; and the art of glass-painting

possessed, for the production of magic effects on glazed windows, secrets

which we are only just beginning to recover. Miniature paintings adorned

the missals, and the books of Hours have preserved to us some exquisite

masterpieces.

Astrology was one of the fads of this period; it reached its highest

development in the sixteenth century, and was not wholly extinguished

till the seventeenth. The astrologers pretended to read in the stars the

destiny of human lives. Another folly was the search of the alchemists

for the philosopher’s stone--that is to say, the method of creating gold

by the transmutation of metals. These dreams, however, led to happy

results: the astrologers from much star-gazing discovered the laws that

governed the movements of those bodies; the alchemists found in their

crucibles--not gold, indeed, but new substances, or new properties of

those already known. So were discovered the process of forming salts by

distillation, powerful acids, enamels, and convex glasses leading to the

making of spectacles.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[8] [This is called by many historians the Fourth Crusade.]

[9] [“St. Louis,” says Guizot,[m] “was above all a conscientious man, a

man who before acting weighed the question to himself of the moral good

or evil, the question as to whether what he was about to do was good

or evil in itself, independently of all utility, of all consequences.

Such men are rarely seen and still more rarely remain upon the throne.

Truly speaking, there are hardly more than two examples in history, one

in antiquity, the other in modern times: Marcus Aurelius and St. Louis.

These are, perhaps, the only two princes who, on every occasion, have

formed the first rule of their conduct from their moral creeds--Marcus

Aurelius, a stoic, St. Louis, a Christian.”]

[10] [Custom had permitted that when anyone had murdered, wounded, or

beaten another the victim or his relatives might immediately avenge

themselves by killing, wounding, or beating the offender or any of his

relatives, even if the latter were ignorant of what had occurred. The

ordinance of _quarantaine-le-roi_, forbade the injured to attack any

of the offender’s family until after the lapse of forty days (_une

quarantaine_). During the interval the offender himself was alone held

answerable for his action. Furthermore, if either victim or offender

chose to submit his cause to his suzerain he could secure inviolability

(_asseurement_), for his goods and person, until a judicial decision had

been given. When this inviolability had been demanded its breach was

punishable by death.]

[11] [The livres of Tours and of Paris; their values being 20 and 25 sous

respectively.]

[12] The disquisitions of the _troubadours_ or the _trouvères_ on

questions of gallantry were called _jeux partis_; whence grew those

“courts of love” in which were tried, before tribunals of noble ladies,

complicated cases and subtle questions. These “courts of love” were of

course but a poetical fiction, never a serious or permanent institution.

[Illustration]