CHAPTER IV. PHILIP III TO THE HOUSE OF VALOIS

Of all epochs of French history, the second half of

the thirteenth century appears to be that in which the

subordination (of the people to the crown) was most

complete.--DARESTE.[k]

PHILIP (III) THE BOLD (1270-1285 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1270-1285 A.D.]]

Little is known of the reign of St. Louis’ eldest son in spite of its

length of fifteen years. It began under the walls of Tunis whence Philip

III brought home his father’s body, after forcing a treaty upon the

Mohammedans in which they recognised themselves tributary to the king of

Sicily and agreed to pay the costs of the war. One can, however, still

follow the ascending march of royalty under this prince, who, without any

new war, and by extinction of several feudal lineages, reunited to his

domain Valois, Poitou, and the counties of Toulouse and Venaissin. But

Philip gave up to the pope this last fief and half of Avignon. The count

of Foix, vanquished and a prisoner in his own capital, was compelled

to promise faithful obedience and cede a portion of his territory. The

dominion of the king of France thus approached the Pyrenees; and it

finally crossed them. Philip made a match between his eldest son and the

heiress of Navarre and if he did not succeed in placing on the throne of

Castile a prince subservient to his influence, or in setting the crown of

Aragon on the head of his second son Charles, at least he showed his arms

in Catalonia where he took the stronghold of Gerona. Thus the Capetian

dynasty, triumphant at home since the days of Louis VI, tried to become

so abroad. But the time for this was not ripe.

The expedition to Catalonia, which turned out badly, had no other motive

than that of family interest. Philip wished to punish Don Pedro, king of

Aragon, for his support of the rebellious Sicilians against Charles of

Anjou after the massacre of all the French citizens in the island, which

had taken place during vespers on Easter Monday. (“The Sicilian Vespers,”

1282.)

An ordinance of Philip III, drawn up in 1274, obliged the advocates in

the royal courts to take oath each year that they would defend none

but just cases. The first example of a commoner made noble by the king

will be found in the letters of ennoblement issued by Philip III to his

silversmith Raoul, in 1272, if the fact is absolutely certain.

PHILIP (IV) THE FAIR (1285-1314 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1285-1300 A.D.]]

Philip IV, surnamed the Fair, was but seventeen when he succeeded his

father in 1285. He ridded himself, as far as possible by treaties, of

futile wars, and occupied himself in place of conquest with increasing

his domains by acquisitions within his reach. His marriage with the

heiress of Navarre and Champagne had only been worth two great provinces

to him. A decree of parliament which despoiled the heirs of Hugh de

Lusignan secured him La Marche and Angoumois. Then his second son married

the heiress of Franche-Comté; thus through marriage, escheat, or conquest

all France came little by little into the royal domain. But powerful

vassals still remained--the duke of Brittany, the count of Flanders, and

especially the duke of Guienne. Philip began by attacking the last. He

was a formidable adversary since he was at the same time king of England.

Fortunately Edward I, who had just subdued the Welsh and was now

threatening the independence of Scotland, was too much occupied in his

own island to come over to the continent, and owing to this the royal

army was able to make rapid progress in Guienne. A French fleet went to

pillage Dover; and another army led by the king in person made its way

into Flanders, where the count had declared for the king of England, and

beat the Flemings at Furnes (Veurne) (1297). The intervention of Pope

Boniface VIII established a peace between the two kings which was sealed

by a marriage. A daughter of Philip the Fair wedded the son of Edward I

and gave the English house rights to the throne of France which Edward

III in due time asserted (1299). By this peace the two kings gave up

their allies, Philip the Scotch, and Edward the count of Flanders. The

latter in terror hastened to place himself under the protection of Philip

and Flanders was reunited to the domain (1300).

[Illustration: PHILIP III]

[Sidenote: [1300-1302 A.D.]]

The whole French court went to visit the new acquisition. It was

received with great pomp; the Flemings, to do honour to their noble

visitors, donned their best attire and displayed all their riches. The

entrance into Bruges was especially magnificent. The bourgeois wives

showed such gold and jewels in their toilets that the queen felt her

woman’s vanity wounded. “I thought,” she said, “there was but one queen

of France; now I see six hundred.” Flanders was in truth the richest

country in Europe because it was there that the people worked hardest.

In that fruitful land men had sprung up like crops, towns were numerous,

and the population active and industrious, devoted, like the Guienne

towns--especially Bordeaux, because the English bought their wines--to

England, whence came the wool necessary to their manufactures. Flemish

cloth sold throughout the whole of Christendom as far as Constantinople,

and the towns of the Low Countries formed the market where the

productions of the north from the Baltic were exchanged for those of the

south brought from Venice and the east of Italy down the Rhine.

On a soil which it had taken a thousand canals to rescue from the sea,

among the scores of stoutly walled cities, with a population accustomed

to hard work, but none the less proud of its numbers, strength, and

wealth, chivalry had had small chance to play its game, and there was

little feudalism in Flanders. Every town had its privileges and it was

not safe to tamper with them.

_New War with Flanders (1302-1304 A.D.)_

Philip had appointed James de Châtillon governor of Flanders--a man who

did not know how to treat a conquered people, especially such a rich one.

The people, rather intolerant and accustomed to more consideration from

their counts, rebelled. In Bruges alone three thousand French were put

to death. Philip sent Robert of Artois with a large army to avenge this

deed. Twenty thousand Flemings awaited it bravely behind a canal near

Courtrai. Before the fight the Flemings confessed their sins, the priest

said high mass, and all, bowing down, took some earth and put it in their

mouths, swearing thus to fight to the death for their country’s freedom.

This gathering of a whole army usually augurs badly for its assailants.

The latter advanced in bad order, sure of victory and not giving those

common people the credit of believing that they would dare look them

in the face. In vain the constable Raoul de Nesle cautioned prudence.

He was asked if he was afraid. “Sir,” he replied to Count Robert, “if

you come where I go, you will be well in the front,” and he spurred his

horse forward at all speed. They did not even take the precaution to

reconnoitre the Flemings’ position. The first ranks of the heavy columns

of knights, advancing at full speed, had no sooner fallen into the canal

that covered the enemy’s lines than those just behind pressed by the rear

were precipitated upon them, and then the Flemings had only to plunge

their long lances into the confused mass of men and horses to kill with

perfect safety to themselves. A sortie which they made from the two ends

of the canal completed the rout. Two hundred nobles of high degree and

six thousand soldiers perished. And what was most humiliating was that

the duke of Burgundy, the counts of Saint-Pol and Clermont, with two

thousand hauberts, fled, leaving the constable, count of Artois, and

so many noble warriors, beaten, maimed, and killed in the hands of the

common people (1302).

The battle of Mansurah had already shown the undisciplined impetuosity

and military incapacity of the knights, but this occurred in the Orient

and distance had helped to preserve the reputation of the vanquished;

but the battle of Courtrai, lost by the flower of French chivalry to

the common people, made a great sensation without, however, curing the

nobility of their mad presumption. The defeats of Crécy, Poitiers,

and Agincourt came from the same causes. Stripped by royalty of its

privileges, the feudal nobility lost on the battle-field the prestige

with which it had long been surrounded and saw, to complete its own ruin,

arise at its very side another army--that of the king and the people.

Philip the Fair took energetic measures to repair the disaster of

Courtrai. He forced nobles and bourgeois to bring to the royal mint their

gold and silver plate, for which he paid in debased coinage. He ordered

each property yielding 100 livres of rent to provide one horseman, every

one hundred villein families to provide six foot-sergeants, and every

commoner having 25 livres income to serve in person. He sold many serfs

their freedom and many commoners titles of nobility. By this means he

collected in two months ten thousand mounted and sixty thousand men on

foot. It was a royal effort and it was a great one, but that of the

people was greater still. From the Flemish towns there issued this time

eighty thousand fighters. With two such opposing armies the contest must

be terrible and decisive; they felt this and not wishing to take any

risks, the year 1302 was spent in trying to get thoroughly acquainted

with the situation. Philip was then at the height of his quarrel with

Boniface VIII and a new defeat would be fatal to him; he even let the

Flemings take the offensive the following year (1303). But the pope

died the same year and Philip attacked Flanders by land and sea. His

fleet defeated the Flemish at Zieriksee and he himself avenged at

Mons-en-Pévêlle, or Mons-en-Puelle, the defeat of Courtrai. He thought

the enemy exterminated, but in a few days they were back as numerous as

ever, asking a new battle. “But it rains Flemings,” cried the king. He

preferred to treat rather than fight again. They promised him money and

ceded Douai, Lille, Béthune, Orchies with all Walloon--that is to say

French-speaking Flanders between the Lys and the Schelde. To this the

king gave them back their count, who promised nothing more than feudal

homage.

Thus French royalty receded before Flemish democracy as did German

royalty almost at the same period before Swiss democracy. The communes of

France remained isolated, and succumbed; in Flanders and in Switzerland

they united and triumphed.[b]

_The Quarrel between Philip and Boniface VIII_

[Sidenote: [1296-1304 A.D.]]

The complaints made by a certain section of the French clergy to the holy

see in 1296, against what they designated as the exactions of Philip the

Fair, met with a far better reception than did similar complaints from

England, where Edward was employing much more vigorous methods than those

of his rival to obtain subsidies from the clergy.

It was a great opportunity for Pope Boniface VIII, and he did not let

it slip. The bull, _Clericis laïcos_ (1296), was familiar throughout

Christendom. This bull, forbidding the clergy to pay taxes to temporal

rulers, was too sweeping to be enforced. Boniface realised that, and

forestalled the objections that it could not fail to raise. All that was

too peremptory in the preceding bull was corrected in the one beginning

_Ineffabilis amor_. The king might raise subsidies among the clergy, with

the pope’s consent, who, if the kingdom were menaced, would order them to

contribute to its defence even unto the selling of the sacred vessels.

In the same bull Boniface demanded an explanation of the prohibition

recently made by the king against exporting gold, silver, and merchandise

out of the kingdom, a prohibition which threatened to dry up one of the

principal sources of revenue of Rome.

The edict which is universally regarded as Philip’s retort to the bull

_Clericis laïcos_, was not aimed at the pope, for it was issued in the

month of April, a few days after the drawing up of the bull and before

its contents could possibly have become known to the king of France. It

did not apply solely to money, but forbade also the exportation of arms,

horses, and other things, its object being to damage England and Flanders

with which Philip was at war. Similar edicts were issued on several

occasions during this reign. In this same bull Boniface threatened Philip

with excommunication. The king and his councillors were furious at this

liberty.

In 1297, came a fresh prohibition to export gold and silver, fresh

fears on the part of the pope, fresh explanations from Philip. In the

midst of all this the French bishops wrote to Boniface praying him to

grant the king a tithe on all the churches. The clergy began to realise

that they could not abstain from contributing to the defence of the

country. Abandoned by a portion of the French clergy, Boniface made

fresh concessions. In the bull beginning _Romana mater ecclesia_ he

even granted permission to raise, in cases of necessity, ecclesiastical

tithes, with the consent of the clergy but without consulting the holy

see. The bull _Noveritis nos_ went still farther: it handed over to the

king, if he had attained his majority, and to his council if he were

still a minor, the responsibility of deciding as to which were cases of

necessity, and the right of taxing the clergy even though the pope had

not first been consulted. It concluded by declaring that the holy see had

never had any intention of making an attempt upon the rights, liberties,

freedoms, and customs of the kingdom, the king, or the barons. This

compliance on the part of Boniface VIII, his sudden sweetness, must not

be attributed altogether to feelings of benevolence towards Philip the

Fair; they are explained principally by the difficult position in which

the pope found himself in his own states.

Harmonious relations continued between the king and the pope;

nevertheless certain incidents occurred to mar them. Boniface

had summoned the bishop of Laon to Rome to give account of his

administration; the king thereupon affected to consider his benefice as

vacant and proceeded to appropriate to himself the revenues according

to the royal prerogative. A fresh cause for reciprocal discontent was

found in the complaints made by the bishops against the collection of the

first-fruits granted to the king.

One event to which no one attached any importance took place about

that time, changing the already unsettled feelings of Boniface into

hostility. This was the alliance formed at Vaucouleurs in 1299 between

Philip and Albert, king of the Romans, who had been excommunicated for

having dethroned Adolphus of Nassau--a very threatening alliance for the

papacy. The news of the negotiations between Philip and Albert spread

consternation in Rome; a false rumour announcing a rupture between

them was received with joy. Boniface conceived the idea of holding

a conference with the kings of France and England and the count of

Flanders--the only means, in his eyes, by which to establish peace on a

solid basis. He did not dream of summoning them to Rome. He knew Philip

and Edward well enough to be aware that they would regard it simply as

officious interference on his part. So he determined to go himself to

some neutral territory. He had even got so far as to make overtures to

Philip the Fair under these conditions when a serious malady, which

caused him excessive pain, coupled with his great age, compelled him to

renounce the scheme.

The Flemish ambassadors judged this moment to be a favourable one for

making themselves heard, by flattering the pope’s notions of supremacy

and exciting his suspicions against Philip the Fair. They forwarded to

Boniface a memorial in which they prayed his support and intervention,

and sought to reassure him as to the mightiness of this sovereign power

which they attributed to him by appeals to the holy Scriptures. Boniface

was only too ready to listen to insinuations which fell in with his own

hopes and ambitions.

[Sidenote: [1301-1303 A.D.]]

However, causes of complaint against Philip continued to accumulate,

among others being his usurpation of the county of Melgueil, which

belonged to the bishop of Maguelonne, and the refusal of the viscount of

Narbonne to do homage to the archbishop who was his over-lord. The pope

let drop some severe remarks, and despatched Bernard de Saisset, bishop

of Pamiers, to invite the king to restore the consecrated land. Philip,

exasperated by the bishop of Pamiers, allowed him to return to his

diocese; but he instituted a secret inquiry about him to which evidence

was contributed by the bishops and barons of the south. He was accused of

having purloined Languedoc from the crown for the purpose of re-uniting

it to Aragon; his real offence was his hatred of the king. Bernard was

arrested at Pamiers by the vidame of Amiens, and arraigned before the

king and an assembly of barons at Senlis, October 14th, 1301. So haughty

was his defence that the whole assembly rose to its feet and clamoured

for his death. Within an ace of being massacred, he flung himself on

the compassion of the archbishop of Narbonne, his metropolitan, who was

present, as well as the bishops of Béziers and Maguelonne. The archbishop

took him under his protection and made himself answerable for him. This

proceeding of Philip was contrary to the laws of the church: a bishop

cannot be brought up for judgment before a lay court; in the same way,

the councils have not the right to judge him without the intervention of

the pope, who must authorise the proceedings.

[Illustration: ANCIENT CHURCH NEAR ROUEN, BUILT IN THE ROCK]

Philip despatched Peter de Flotte to Rome to demand the punishment of

Saisset. The ambassador declared that his master did not wish to avail

himself of his right to punish a man whose crimes rendered him unworthy

of the priesthood and of the protection accorded to the clergy; but that

he desired to show the pope a token of deference and respect by handing

over to him the charge of avenging the insult offered to God as the

author of all legitimate authority, to the king as a son of the church,

and to the kingdom as a very considerable portion of Christendom. He

further requested Boniface to declare Bernard stripped of his episcopal

dignity and of all clerical privileges. It was in vain that Flotte urged

and demanded a reply; he received none, and returned raging to France.

Boniface suspended the privileges accorded by himself and his

predecessors to the crown of France, and convoked, for November

1st, 1302, a general council at Rome, in order to put an end to the

oppressions endured by the French clergy. The king was invited either to

attend in person or to send someone to defend him. The bull _Ausculta

fili_ indicated the superiority claimed by Boniface over Philip. “God, in

laying upon us the yoke of apostolic servitude, has placed us above kings

and empires, to uproot, destroy, annihilate, disperse, build and plant

in his name; dearly beloved son, do not allow yourself to be persuaded

that you are not subject to the supreme head of the church, for such

an opinion would be folly.” He further accused the king of tyrannising

over his subjects, oppressing the church, and offending the nobles.

In conclusion he invites him to turn his attention to the deplorable

condition of the Holy Land and to prepare a crusade. Another bull,

_Secundum divina_, enjoined Philip to set Saisset at liberty and let him

return to Rome. The king drove him out of France, and prepared to obtain

a great demonstration in his own favour, in opposition to the pretensions

of Boniface, by summoning the first states-general. By acting in this

manner Philip was only defending his crown: his right was obvious, he

needed but to claim it and exercise it with dignity. His cause was good,

but he had the misfortune to sully it by falsehood and violence; in this,

doubtless, following the advice of the lawyers who surrounded him.

The Sunday after Candlemas (February, 1302) the king solemnly burned the

bull _Ausculta fili_. The defeat of the French army at Courtrai, in the

month of July, gave confidence to Boniface without disheartening Philip.

In the month of December Philip sent the bishop of Auxerre to Rome to

signify to Boniface that, in conjunction with the king of England, he had

renounced his arbitration. Outwardly Philip was most deferential towards

the pope. While all this was going on grave news came from Rome. The

council summoned by Boniface had met on All Saints’ Day, 1302, several

French bishops having responded to the pope’s summons, despite the king’s

prohibitions. Philip had seized all their worldly goods, and a decree

issued November 18th, doubtless at the instigation of the council,

ratified the doctrine of the papal superiority.

Boniface directed those French bishops who had not taken part in the

council to present themselves at Rome within three months’ time. Philip

forbade them to leave the kingdom, and set guards at all the passes into

Germany and Italy. By the king’s wish Cardinal de Saint-Marcellin (the

pope’s legate) summoned a council in France. Boniface recapitulated all

his grievances against Philip, and called upon him to clear himself. He

accused him among other things of coining false money and of burning the

bull _Ausculta fili_. Philip’s answer was moderate and conciliatory. He

expressed his wish to maintain, as his ancestors had done, the union

between France and the holy see, and concluded by entreating Boniface

not to meddle with him in the legitimate exercise of his rights; he

offered to refer the matter to the decision of the duke of Brittany or of

the duke of Burgundy, who were particularly agreeable to him. The pope

declared this answer to be insufficient, and complained bitterly of it to

the bishop of Auxerre and to the king’s brother, Charles of Valois, who

for nearly two years had lived in Italy with the title “champion of the

holy see,” and whom Philip had lately recalled.

On the 12th of March, 1303, an assembly of barons, prelates, and lawyers

was held at the Louvre in the presence of the king. William de Plasian

(or, according to Dareste[k] and Martin,[c] the chancellor, William

de Nogaret) read aloud a document in which were set forth accusations

against Boniface:

“He is a heretic; he does not believe in the immortality of the soul

or in the life everlasting: he has said that he would sooner be a dog

than a Frenchman; he does not believe in the real presence in the

Eucharist. He has approved of a book by Armand de Villeneuve, which

book has been condemned and burned; he has set up images of himself in

the churches to the end that he may be worshipped; he has a familiar

spirit who advises him; he consults sorcerers; he has openly preached

that the pope cannot be guilty of simony; he traffics in benefices; he

sows strifes everywhere; he has said that the French are of the Patarins

(Albigenses); he has ordered murders; he has forced priests to reveal

confessions; he has nourished a bitter hatred of the king of France.

Before his election he was heard to say that if he did become pope he

would destroy Christianity or lower the French pride; he has prevented

peace between England and France; he has urged the king of Sicily to

massacre all French; he strengthened the king of Germany on condition

of his humbling the arrogance of the French, who, he pretended, boasted

that they recognised no superior in temporal matters, in which they lied

in their throats; that if an angel from heaven were to tell him that

France was not subject to him, he would shriek curses against both him

and the emperor. He has brought about the ruin of the Holy Land, having

confiscated all the money intended for its aid, that he might give it to

his relatives, of whom he has made marquises, counts, and barons, and for

whom he has built castles; he has driven out the nobility of Rome; he has

broken up marriages; he has made a cardinal of one of his nephews who is

but an ignorant fellow and who was married, and has forced the wife to

take the veil in a convent; he has done Celestine, his predecessor, to

death in prison.”

On the 13th of April Boniface declared Philip to be excommunicate if he

persisted in not submitting himself to the holy see. He commissioned

Nicholas de Bienfaite, archdeacon of Coutances, to bear to Cardinal de

Saint-Marcellin the bull which cut off the king from communion with

the church. But the king, warned of the archdeacon’s mission, had him

arrested at Troyes and thrown into prison. His bull was taken from him;

in point of fact it was not to have been fulminated except in the case of

Philip’s remaining deaf to a final summons. In vain the legate protested;

no one listened to him; the goods of all prelates absent from the kingdom

were sequestrated. Realising that he compromised himself uselessly by

remaining any longer, he quitted France.

On the 31st of May Boniface, who had pardoned Albert of Austria and

had recognised him as king of the Romans, launched a bull in which

the nobles, churches, and _communes_ of the metropolises of Lyons,

Tarantaise, Embrun, Besançon, Aix, Arles, and Vienne, of Burgundy,

Barrois, Dauphiné, Provence, of the county of Forcalquier, the

principality of Orange, and the kingdom of Arles, provinces held of the

kingdom, were ordered to break such ties of vassalage and obedience as

they had been able to contract prejudicial to the emperor, and to release

themselves from such oaths of obedience as they had sworn.

It was almost equivalent to dismembering France. On the 13th of June a

great assembly took place at the Louvre at which the king was present.

The counts of Évreux, Saint-Pol, and Dreux, and William de Plasian,

demanded that the church should be governed by a legitimate pope.

Boniface was charged anew with all the old crimes and infamies. The king

was entreated, in his capacity as “defender of the faith,” to work for

the convoking of a general council. To this he consented. On the 24th of

June, St. John Baptist’s Day, an immense crowd of people gathered in the

palace gardens; there the king’s challenge to the future council was read.

At last, on September 8th, Boniface, in the bull _Petri solio excelso_,

pronounced against Philip the excommunication he had courted. All

the world knows how, in defiance of public liberties, Boniface was

arrested at Anagni, on the evening before the very day on which the

excommunication of the French king was to have been publicly posted.[d]

One of Philip’s agents, William (Guillaume) de Nogaret whose grandfather

had been burned as an Albigensian, had been sent to Italy. He came to an

understanding with Sciarra Colonna, a Roman noble and the pope’s mortal

enemy. Boniface was at that time in his native city of Anagni. By dint

of money Nogaret won over the chief of the military forces of Anagni,

and one morning entered the place with four hundred mounted armed men

and some hundreds of foot-soldiers. At the noise they made in the town

and the cries of “Death to the pope!” “Long live the king of France!”

Boniface believed his last hour had come. But showing in spite of his age

(he was eighty-six years old) an uncommon degree of agility, he got into

his pontifical robes, and seated himself on his throne, the tiara on his

head, the cross in one hand and the keys of St. Peter in the other. Thus

he awaited his assassins. The latter called upon him to abdicate. “Here

is my neck and here is my head,” he replied; “betrayed like Jesus Christ,

if I must die like him at least I shall die a pope.” A story ran that

Sciarra Colonna dragged him from his throne, struck him across the face

with his gauntlet, and would have killed him had not Nogaret interfered,

saying: “Oh thou wretched pope, witness and consider the goodness of my

lord, the king of France, who, far from thee as is his kingdom, guards

and defends thee through me.” [But the story of Colonna’s violence seems

quite unfounded.[13]]

[Sidenote: [1303-1308 A.D.]]

Nogaret hesitated, however, about dragging the old man out of Anagni. The

people had time to recover from their astonishment. The townspeople armed

themselves, the peasants rushed in, and the French were driven from the

town. The pope, fearing they had put poison in his food, remained three

days without eating. A short time after, he died of shame and anger, at

the humiliating insults he had received. His successor, Benedict XI,

tried to avenge him by excommunicating Nogaret, Colonna, and all those

who had helped them. The excommunication reached up to the king. A month

after the publication of the bull, Benedict died, perhaps poisoned. This

time Philip took measures to make himself master of the election of

the new pontiff. Bertrand d’Agoust (de Goth), archbishop of Bordeaux,

was elected after he had promised the king to comply with the royal

wishes. The new pope, who took the name of Clement V, caused himself to

be consecrated at Lyons, and abandoning Rome, fixed his residence in

1308 at Avignon, a possession of the holy see beyond the Alps, where

he soon found himself under the hand and will of the king of France.

His successors remained there until 1376. The sojourn of the popes at

Avignon, which so upset the church, has been called the Babylonish

Captivity. This sojourn was memorable in connection with the history of

Philip IV.

_Sentence of the Templars (1307 A.D.)_

[Sidenote: [1307 A.D.]]

Villani relates a mournful scene--the ominous interview between pope and

king in the forest of St. Jean d’Angély where one sold his tiara and

the other bought it. This meeting did not take place, but conditions

were certainly proposed and accepted. One of them was nothing less

than the destruction of the military order of the Templars. The wealth

of these warrior monks, now of no use to them since it was no longer

expended in armament against the infidel, had tempted the king’s greed,

always keen-scented for money, and their powers stood in the way of his

despotism. There were 15,500 knights with a great multitude of servant

knights, brothers and their dependents, so that if gathered together they

could defy all the royal armies of Europe; and their strong organisation,

under the hand of the grand-master, made them seem more formidable than

did their numbers and their wealth.

They possessed throughout Christendom more than ten thousand

establishments, and a number of fortresses, among them the temple at

Paris where Philip had once found a safe asylum from a riot which stormed

and raged in vain around its thick walls. In the treasury of the order

there were 150,000 gold florins not counting silver or precious vessels.

The world never knew what went on in their houses. Everything was secret,

but there were vague rumours of orgies, scandals, and impieties, and no

profane eye had ever penetrated the mysteries. Knights had disappeared,

because, it was said, they had threatened compromising revelations. The

pride of the order irritated the people, who charged it with the most

odious crimes; but they were guilty only of great laxity of morals, and

their religious ceremonies were perhaps mingled in the East with some

impure alloy and strange customs.

[Illustration: A TEMPLAR]

The 14th of September, 1307, the seneschals and bailiffs were given

notice to hold themselves in arms for the 12th of October, and they

received at the same time sealed letters not to be opened until the

night of the 12th and 13th of October. The surprised knights had no time

to resist or gather together. Torture drew from them such statements

as torture always draws. It was Philip’s desire to associate the

whole nation with this great trial, as he had associated it with his

dispute with Boniface VIII. The states-general assembled at Tours; the

accusations and statements were put before it and the deputies pronounced

the knights deserving of death. Provincial councils likewise condemned

them. That of Paris consigned to the flames in one day, in the faubourg

St. Antoine, fifty-four Templars, who retracted what they had avowed

under torture. Nine were burned at Senlis and there certainly were other

executions. The pope pronounced at the Council of Vienne the dissolution

of the order throughout all Christendom, and ordered their great wealth

turned over to the Hospitallers (knights of Rhodes). But the royal fist

did not readily release what it held. All the money found in the temples,

two-thirds of the personal property, credits, and a considerable amount

of lands remained in the hands of the king. In Italy, England, Spain,

and Germany, the order of the Temple was abolished and its wealth in

part confiscated by the princes. But there were no executions except

in France. The memory of Philip IV must alone bear the burden of these

atrocities.

[Sidenote: [1307-1312 A.D.]]

This same Council of Vienne condemned several errors, born within the

Franciscan order--the heresy of the “Spirituels” who regarded St.

Francis almost as a new reincarnation of Jesus; that of the “Beguins” or

“Beghards,” who exempted mankind, perfect according to their ideas, from

any judgment by human standards. And finally that of the Fraticelli who

[inquisitors tell us] abolished property and declared that everything

should be in common, family as well as property. We see these wild

doctrines are very old.[b]

_Philip’s Fiscal Policy_

Nothing satiated the royal exchequer, neither the spoils of the Templars,

nor the tithes collected under pretext of the “holy war,” nor the taxes

levied for the knighting of the king’s sons and the marriage of his

daughter--that fatal marriage, from which sprang Edward III. Even the

_maltôtes_ did not suffice.

The maltôte, an illegal exaction, which, to a certain extent placed all

subjects in the position of serfs taxable at their owner’s will and

pleasure, was at least openly arbitrary and illegal; but the “mutable

currencies” were treacherously sprung upon the citizens in the midst of

their transactions and money exchanges, and brought dismay upon society

at every turn, doing his subjects a wrong out of all proportion to the

benefit gained by their ruler. In all of this there was as much ignorance

as perversity, and one has difficulty in conceiving the ineptitude

shown in the government financial business by legal men, ordinarily so

clever. Philip the Fair’s statutes regarding the currency are a genuine

chaos: sometimes the king takes the paternal tone, and pretends to so

contrive the rate of exchange that his subjects shall suffer as little

as possible; sometimes he throws off the mask, and prohibits the testing

and weighing of the royal moneys issued, on pain of forfeiting the coins

submitted to the test and of “being both body and goods at the king’s

disposal.” No one could obtain either silver or copper but at the royal

mints. The importation of the Florentine golden florin and other foreign

coins was forbidden under the same penalty (for fear of comparison).

Next Philip withdrew from circulation half of his own current coins,

under the pretext of their having been counterfeited and tampered with

by others--coiners, Lombards, etc. The Jews and the Lombards were always

convenient scapegoats for the royal iniquities. They were again expelled

in 1311-1312, with the usual confiscations. In 1310 there was a grand

re-coining of all the moneys; everyone was forced to give in all he

possessed to the directors of the royal mints, who gave out in exchange

new money, much inferior in weight and purchasing power to the value

attributed to it. The king was anxious to gain popularity at the expense

of the money-lenders, and issued orders that all liabilities should be

discharged in the new money, in spite of every previous stipulation to

the contrary. To the same end, after having fixed a maximum (15 to 20 per

cent. per annum!) for the exorbitant interest charged on silver, he ended

by prohibiting all usury, which is to say all interest. If the rates of

usury were scandalous, one must lay the blame of them on the king’s

persecution of capitalists, Jews, and Italian bankers: naturally the

rate of interest increased in proportion to the chances of loss incurred

by the lender. By these means Philip raised fresh barriers to trade and

swelled the public discontent.

[Sidenote: [1312-1314 A.D.]]

A statute enacted in June, 1313, surpassed in audacity all others that

had preceded it. The king was no longer satisfied with managing his

own money as he would; he wished to handle that of the barons also,

and asserted himself to be the only coiner of the realm. By friendly

transactions, by usurpations, by every possible means, he had already

reduced by more than half their number the nobles who minted money. In

the preamble to his statute he now announced his intention of restoring

all French moneys “to their ancient currency and status” (of the time

of St. Louis, apparently), and forbade all prelates and barons to mint

fresh money until further orders. He was acting, he said, under the

advice of “the whole caboodle of decent people in every decent town in

his kingdom,” and he looked to the _bourgeoisie_ to uphold him against

the resentment of the nobles. As a matter of fact, at another time the

bourgeoisie would have been only too pleased to see the nobles deprived

of the right of coining money, a right which they grossly abused; but

under Philip the Fair, would they gain much by it? This very statute of

June, 1313, introduced mutations more disastrous than any heretofore.

It hit all classes of society, and all were equally irritated, with the

exception of the lawyers and certain large tradesmen who constituted

themselves overseers, farmers, or coiners on the king’s account.

_Execution of Jacques de Molay (1314 A.D.)_

Philip defied public discontent by redoubling his brutalities. The

smallest murmur was reported to the king’s spies, and punished by his

tyrants. One saw everywhere people flogged and pilloried; every lay and

ecclesiastical court robed itself in pitiless severity. In the Place de

Grève they burned, in 1313, a nun of Hainault, Marguerite de la Porette,

the Mystic. Shortly after a more celebrated execution startled Paris

and the whole of France. For more than six years the foremost members

of the order of the Temple, the grand-master, the “visitor” of France,

and the masters of Aquitaine and Normandy, had languished in the king’s

dungeons; they could not be left to die unjudged in darksome cells. At

last the pope, who had reserved the decision of their fate to himself,

appointed a commission consisting of the cardinal D’Albano and two other

cardinals. The archbishop of Sens and various doctors of divinity and of

canonical law joined them. Brought before their judges, the four captives

reiterated, it is said, the confessions made by themselves and their

comrades. It was wished to mark their arrest with great solemnity and

to “read a lesson” to the public, as the saying is. The court therefore

held its sitting in the open space before Notre Dame de Paris, upon a

scaffold draped in scarlet. The four accused were led to the foot of the

scaffold, where they repeated their confession before all the people.

Their sentence was then pronounced--they were to be immured for life.

“But just when,” says the continuator of Nangis,[g] “the cardinals

believed they had ended the affair, the grand-master, Jacques de Molay,

and the master from Normandy, Guy, brother of the dauphin of Auvergne,

suddenly retracted their confession, denying it in toto, and stubbornly

defended themselves against the cardinal who had ‘pointed the moral’ and

the archbishop of Sens, to the immense surprise of everybody.”

The commission, struck dumb with astonishment and a sort of fear by

this unlooked-for incident, did not know how to decide. They adjourned

till the morrow to deliberate at their leisure, and handed over the

grand-master and his companions to the guardianship of the royal warder

of Paris till the next day. The news of what had taken place outside

Notre Dame was promptly carried to the king, who was at that time at

the Palais de la Cité. Philip, seized with a dread only equalled by his

anger, sent in haste for his most trusty advisers, “without summoning

the scholars” (_i.e._, the commission). The determination he had

arrived at was the boldest and most atrocious that can be imagined. At

night-fall he had the two Templars conveyed to a small island in the

Seine, “between the garden of the Palais de la Cité and the church of the

Frères-Hermites,” and there had them burned together. “They helped,” says

the continuator of Nangis,[g] “to prepare the fagots with so stout and

resolute a heart, persisting to the end in their denials with so great

steadfastness, that they left those who witnessed their torment filled

with admiration and stupefaction.” (March 11th, 1314.)

The ecclesiastical powers swallowed this outrage as many another,

demanding from the king no account for the double murder of two offenders

who did not come within his jurisdiction, and whose backsliding he had

dealt with on his own authority alone. Indeed Clement V was already

failing, and did not long survive the unfortunates whom he had sold to

their persecutor. He died on April 20th. An Italian historian, Ferretus

or Fereti of Vicenza, asserts that Jacques de Molay, from the midst of

his fagots, cited the king and the pope to appear before the tribunal of

God, Clement within forty days and Philip within a year.

Philip was in truth nearing the end of his sinister career. The last year

of his reign will be seen to be the most bloody. France was horrified by

more hideous scenes than any she had hitherto witnessed, more hideous

even than the murder of the Templars, and this time the tragedy was

enacted at the foot of the throne among the royal family. Philip’s

three sons, Louis Hutin, king of Navarre, and count of Champagne and of

Brie, Philip, count of Poitiers, and Charles, count of La Marche, had

married--the first Marguerite, sister of Hugh V, duke of Burgundy; and

the other two Joan and Blanche, daughters of Otto or Othelin, count of

Burgundy or of Franche-Comté. In the spring of 1314 the young wives of

the king’s three sons were suddenly arrested on a charge of scandalous

conduct. Marguerite, queen of Navarre, and Blanche, countess of La

Marche, were accused of frequent acts of adultery, “even on the most holy

days,” with Philip and Walter d’Aulnai, young Norman knights in their

service. The Aulnai brothers were not allowed to challenge to a duel in

defence of their innocence and that of their mistresses; confession of

guilt was wrung from them by torture, and the princesses, “stripped,”

says the continuator of Nangis,[g] “of all temporal honours, after

receiving the tonsure, were imprisoned, Marguerite in Château Gaillard

d’Andely, and Blanche in the abbey of Maubuisson, where, after strict

seclusion, and deprived of all human consolation, they ended their days

in despair.”

The fate of their lovers was even more terrible. They were conducted

to the place du Martroi St. Jean, in Paris, and there flayed alive and

mutilated; they were not beheaded until every means had been exhausted

that an infernal science could devise to prolong the victim’s sufferings

without actually killing him.

Joan of Burgundy, countess of Poitiers, more fortunate than her sisters

Blanche and Marguerite of Navarre, was declared chaste and not guilty

by a parliament in which sat the king’s brothers and the great nobles:

she was “reconciled to her husband.” Joan of Burgundy was heiress to

Franche-Comté: it was not possible to condemn her as an adulteress

and annul her marriage without renouncing the wealth she had brought

to the royal house; perhaps her riches had something to say as to her

innocence.[c]

The general oppression nearly caused an insurrection when Philip ordered

a new tax on the sale of all merchandise. There was, from the first, a

union between the nobles and the bourgeoisie similar to the league which

in England laid the foundations of the people’s liberty and imposed

the Magna Charta on John Lackland. Philip, this time, withdrew, and

cancelling the obnoxious tax he summoned representatives of forty of

the largest towns to a conference at Paris at which he promised to coin

henceforth nothing but honest money.

But this ill-starred man, this king, the harshest France had had up to

this time, although but forty-six years of age, had already reached the

end of his days. He expired November 29th, 1314.[b] The exact cause of

Philip’s early demise has never been perfectly understood. The commonly

accepted account is that it resulted from an accident that occurred

during a stag hunt. “He saw the stag coming and drew his sword, and

clapped spurs to his horse and thought to strike the stag; but his horse

carried him so violently against a tree that the good king fell to the

ground, and was very severely hurt in the heart, and was carried to

Corbeil. There his malady grew very sore.”[f] But this narrative bears

the date 1572. “The contemporary French historian” [the continuator of

William de Nangis[g]] says Michelet[e] “does not speak of this accident.

He says that Philip sank without fever or visible malady, to the great

astonishment of the physicians.” Nevertheless there was a contemporary

rumour of an accident during a hunt of the wild boar, for Dante[h]

writing exactly at the time of Philip’s death speaks contemptuously of

him as “The false coiner who died of a blow from a pig’s skin” (_i.e._, a

boar).[a]

_Political Progress in Philip’s Reign_

[Sidenote: [1285-1314 A.D.]]

Whether or not Philip the Fair was a wicked man or a bad king, there

is no denying that his reign is the grand era from which we date civil

order in France and the foundation of the modern monarchy.[e] Under

this reign the royal domain made important acquisitions, some of which,

unfortunately, were not lasting; the counties of La Marche, Angoumois,

Champagne, Franche-Comté, Lectoure, a portion of Flanders (Lille, Douai,

and Orchies), Quercy, the great city of Lyons and a part of Montpellier.

The count of Bar had been compelled to do homage to the French crown for

all his land situated west of the Maas.

Vassals were bound to serve their sovereign, in his court, by their

advice and justice. The king’s feudal court had a double character, for

in it the king called upon his barons for advice and sentences. With the

further evolution of royalty the functions of the king’s court developed,

and a division became necessary; there was the political court or grand

council, and the judiciary court or parliament. Under St. Louis the

functions of the parliament were not yet clearly defined. Philip the Fair

perfected its organisation. He caused this court to be held at Paris

twice a year for two months in the Palais de la Cité, which later bore

the name of the Palais de Justice (1303). This sovereign court of justice

which claimed to exercise its jurisdiction over the entire kingdom was

destined to be the great instrument employed by future kings to bring the

whole of France under their absolute authority. Philip also established

two _échiquiers_[14] at Rouen and two _grands jours_ at Troyes and placed

these provincial courts under the control of the parliament. The office

of public prosecutor (_ministère public_) charged with defending in all

causes the rights of the king and society, seems to date from the time of

Philip the Fair.

As the king had formed the parliament from the grand council, so

he formed the chamber of accounts (_chambre des comptes_) from the

parliament of which it first was a part but later became a separate

institution. Thus there were three great divisions in the high

administrative department of the country--the judiciary parliament; the

financial, chamber of accounts; and the political, the grand council.

The many ordinances of Philip which have been preserved prove his

activity in organising the new administration, which was the debt of

royalty to the country, since it had substituted its own powers for those

of the feudal lords. If these laws often bear the stamp of a despotic and

taxing spirit, they sometimes show a knowledge of the true principles of

government. One of them prohibited private war and judicial duels during

wars of the crown. This was done to disarm feudalism.

A most important event of Philip’s administration was the convocation in

1302 of the first states-general. Brought by his violences face to face

with a great peril, and ruined by his constant disastrous undertakings,

the most despotic of the French kings was compelled [as we have seen]

to call around him the deputies of the nation, in order to obtain the

assistance of which he stood in need and to fortify himself in his

quarrel with the pope, with the assent of France. But in discussing

before them the prerogatives of his crown and of the tiara, he recognised

by implication the ancient right of national sovereignty so deeply

obscured for centuries. Philip doubtless asked nothing but what he was

sure of obtaining, but the men who, in 1302, fought for the king against

the pope and in 1326 disposed of the crown, would later on be emboldened

to the attempt to lay hands on the crown itself.[b]

The states-general consisted of a strictly national assembly which the

barons, bishops, abbeys, provosts, and deans of chapters were invited

to attend in person, and to which each city of the realm was invited to

send two or three deputies or representatives. This was not the first

time that the crown had consulted the nobles and the prelates; but it

does not appear that until now the deputies of the third estate had taken

part in such a council. If they had been previously consulted on rare

occasions, it was in regard to special matters such as the regulation of

the currency, and even then certain determinate cities were represented.

The states-general thus called together by Philip the Fair, and which

assembled the 12th of April, 1302, in the church of Notre Dame at Paris,

was convoked, to be sure, with a specific aim and under extraordinary

circumstances. Its unique object was to show the pope that the country

upheld the king (see p. 80). But none the less does this meeting stamp

the year 1302 as an important date in French history.[15] Through this

representative assembly France, as such, takes part for the first time

in its own government; an intervention already necessary, and which is

destined soon to become consistent and regular.[k]

LOUIS (X) THE QUARRELSOME (1314-1316 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1314-1316 A.D.]]

Philip the Fair had mingled little with the chivalry of his time. He

forbade tournaments, and, after the fashion of oriental despots, kept

his sons secluded. The eldest, known as Louis X, called Hutin or the

Quarrelsome, was fond of rude pastimes. In 1305 he had been crowned king

of Navarre at Pamplona, and succeeded at the same time to the county of

Champagne. His uncle Charles, count of Valois, had much influence over

him, a prince who had shown eagerness, but not perseverance, to tread in

the adventurous and ambitious path of Charles of Anjou.

[Illustration: LOUIS X

(From an old French print)]

Charles entertained an aversion for all his brother’s councillors. He

accused his chancellor Latilly, bishop of Châlons, with having caused the

death of the king by means of sorcery. Latilly’s obvious interest had

been to keep Philip alive; but Charles caused him, nevertheless, to be

imprisoned and tortured under the accusation. Raoul de Presle, another of

Philip’s legists, was implicated in the same crime, and underwent similar

persecution.

But Enguerrand de Marigny, Philip’s prime minister, was the chief

object of hatred to the king’s uncle. Charles blamed Marigny for the

depreciation of the coin; but for this crime, even if considered guilty,

Louis Hutin thought him not worthy of punishment more severe than

banishment to the isle of Cyprus. Charles seemed unable to bring against

Marigny himself the accusation of sorcery; he however accused his wife of

employing others to make the terrible images of wax. All of those thus

implicated were brought, not before parliament, but in the presence of

the king, of Charles, and of some barons at Vincennes. The councillors

of Philip had set the example of creating courts of justice in whatever

way suited their convenience. It was now the turn of the barons, and

they condemned Marigny to be hanged on a gibbet; the king, on hearing of

sorcery, abandoning his previous efforts to save him (1315).

Another murder was that of Marguerite, wife of Louis, who had been sent

to seclusion in the château Gaillard.

The young king was beset with difficulties which required a wise head

and an established authority to deal with them. A war threatened him

already. Count Robert of Flanders hesitated and refused to render the

homage due to the king of France on his accession. Philip would have

avenged such frowardness by sequestrating the county of Nevers, held by

the eldest son of the count of Flanders. But the prince appeared at the

French court, and was well received. The war could only be carried on by

feudal levies; when these were summoned, the noblesse of the different

provinces sent in their grievances in lieu of their contingents. His

legists would have counselled Philip the Fair to resist such demands; but

his son had surrounded his person, not with legists, but with barons,

and these remained acquiescent with the demands of their brother nobles.

Of course what was granted to one could not be refused to another.

But under the date of this one year, 1315, the French statute book is

filled with ordinances regranting their old privileges to the noblesse,

and rescinding a large portion of the voluminous legislation [such as

abandoning the ancient courts of justice, abolishing the judiciary duel,

the right of private war, and procedure by written deposition which had

made lawyers necessary] of the French monarchs during the preceding

century.[i] The general demand was that the king should hold no relations

with the barons’ men. But at the same time Louis, in order to get money,

made a solemn statement that “according to the law of nature every man

should be born free”; from which he concluded that all Frenchmen being by

nature free, the serfs of the royal domain could ransom themselves.

Serfdom began to decline from this moment, in contrast with the state

of affairs in preceding centuries; freedom now became the prevailing

condition amongst rural populations, as it had long been among the

inhabitants of the towns--while serfdom was the exception.[b]

Whilst the monarch made these large concessions to his noblesse, he seems

to have derived from them no efficient aid in the prosecution of the

war with Flanders. To raise money for this purpose, he was obliged to

compound with the Lombard merchants of Paris; they consented to pay so

much a pound on their importations. The Jews, too, were again permitted

to reside in certain cities on the payment of a tax. Louis Hutin was the

first king who formally borrowed money on the credit of the state, his

successors being obliged to devote to the purpose of repayment all the

sums that might accrue from forfeiture and confiscation.

With an army raised at these pains and costs, Louis marched into

Flanders. The Flemings were in the neighbourhood of Lille, and the French

king encamped opposite to them, with a river running between the armies.

The monarch had not an opportunity of putting his own valour and that of

his soldiers to the proof. For the elements put a stop to hostilities,

the rain pouring down in unusual torrents, flooding the camps, and

destroying provisions and crops. This unsuccessful campaign flung the

country into anarchy, the barons levying war wherever they could foresee

profit from it; and those who had right of coinage, Charles of Valois

included, making exorbitant use of it to enrich themselves at the expense

of the country. The king suspended this right, but his order was set at

naught; and he then strove to regulate the nature and fineness of the

coin which each grandee might issue.

Whilst Charles of Valois was thus employed, the king despatched his

brother, Philip, count of Poitiers, to Avignon, to hasten the election

of the pope. He was there when tidings reached him that Louis Hutin had

expired at Vincennes on the 5th of July, 1316. After heating himself at

ball-playing, the king had descended to the cellar to quench his thirst,

an imprudence that proved fatal.

PHILIP (V) THE TALL (1316-1322 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1316-1322 A.D.]]

Philip immediately hastened to Paris, and took possession of the royal

palace. Charles of Valois thought at first of disputing the regency; but

the armed citizens of Paris, whom Louis had enrolled for the Flemish

war, with the constable at their head, drove Charles’ followers out of

the Louvre. Clemence, the young widow of Louis Hutin, now announced

her pregnancy. In addition to this posthumous child, Louis had left a

daughter, Joan, by Marguerite of Burgundy. The duke of Burgundy, although

he had been unable or unwilling to protect Marguerite, maintained the

rights of her daughter, and pleaded that Philip the Fair had acknowledged

her legitimacy.

Soon afterwards the queen gave birth to a son, who was christened John;

but the child lived only a few days. Philip lost no time in at once

claiming the rank of king, and appointing no distant day in January,

1317, for his coronation at Rheims. Charles of Valois, who was at the

head of the noblesse, already began to entertain well-founded hopes of

the royal succession accruing to his own family. The duke of Burgundy

was pacified by obtaining one of Philip’s daughters in marriage, with

a considerable sum of money in dowry, as well as Franche-Comté. Joan,

daughter of Louis Hutin, whose claims the duke thus abandoned, was

affianced to the only son of the count of Évreux.

The grounds for this exclusion of females from the throne of France are

not to be found in any law, but in the circumstance of Joan’s mother

having been stricken with infamy, with no staunch friend to defend her,

whilst Philip was in possession of the royal authority, of which it

would have required a civil war to dispossess him. With respect to the

old Salic law afterwards invoked, it related but to fiefs and military

service, and yet in fiefs it had been so generally set aside, that women

succeeded to lands and to noble property in all the provinces of France.

It must have been evident to the noblesse, as to others, that the descent

of a fief, much more of the crown, to females weakened it for a time,

and eventually rendered it liable to become the prey of personages,

perhaps foreigners, who had not the interest of the kingdom at heart.

The accession of Philip the Tall, therefore, and the exclusion of the

daughters of Louis Hutin, were popular with the citizens, not displeasing

to the noblesse, and not against the interest of the princes of the

blood. And thus was it decided that the kingdom of France, instead of

being considered as a patrimony that descended to direct heirs, even if

female, was a high function which it required a prince to fill.

The reign of Philip the Tall was marked by no chivalrous enterprise or

military feat. French and Flemings were disposed more to negotiate than

fight. The chief object of Philip the Tall’s efforts and edicts was to

organise a regular administration. He ordered, first, that a certain

number of the members of the great council should be always with the

king, a provision afterwards repeated in the order that the small or

privy council (_l’estroit conseil_) should meet every month. [In this

council cruel persecutions of the Jews and lepers were organised.] He

established the chamber of accounts, and regulated the issues of the

treasury, no payment to be made without the king’s own signature. The

abuses of Philip’s predecessors are chiefly known by his efforts to amend

them. Philip regulated parliaments, their number and their sitting. No

prelate was to sit in that of Paris unless he belonged also to the king’s

council. Parliament should always be attended by a baron or two. It was

empowered to send commissioners into the provinces to judge causes

instead of bringing the parties to Paris and thereby creating expenses.

The king forbade (1316) nobles to sell fiefs or feudal property to

non-nobles.[i]

Like his grandfather Philip III, Philip the Tall gave titles of

nobility to people of common origin, an innovation which, by renewing

the aristocratic body, assured its longevity, but at the same time

altered its character. In the beginning, nobility was a personal matter;

feudalism had made it an attribute of the military fief; here were the

kings separating it. It is a serious change; for one day these letters of

nobility will be bought, and there will be no real nobility when all the

world may be noble with the power of money.

Thus threatened from above by the kings, feudalism was also threatened

from below by the people. The development of the towns continued: that

of the country began; the bourgeois obtained from Philip V permission to

have their own military organisations; each town had a captain for its

citizen companies, each bailiwick a captain-general; and it was in this

century, if not in this reign, that the ecclesiastical parishes became

civil communities. The country people, formerly completely isolated, were

being brought more and more together, at first around the church and the

castle under the surveillance of the seigniorial intendant, later under a

syndic or mayor always appointed by the lord and who brought the people

together to discuss their common interests.

This was the beginning of municipal organisation in country places.[b]

One of the latest schemes of Philip, much too advanced for his time,

was to establish but one measure and one money throughout the kingdom.

He calculated that this could not be done without great expense, and he

proposed taking the fifth part of the goods of all his subjects for the

purpose. But the townsfolk objected to the tax, whilst the nobles who had

the right of coinage persisted in retaining so profitable a privilege.

Philip was seized in the same year with dysentery and intermittent fever,

which terminated in languor and confined him for months to his couch. The

people did not fail to attribute his disease to the unheard-of exactions

and extortions that he meditated. Philip the Tall did not live to

accomplish them; he expired in January, 1322.

CHARLES (IV) THE FAIR (1322-1328 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1322-1328 A.D.]]

No one put forward any claim on the part of the daughters of Philip the

Tall to the regal succession. Charles, the youngest son of Philip the

Fair, was at once hailed as king; and so incontestably, that he seems

to have dispensed with the ceremony of coronation. The first object

with Charles, called, like his father, the Handsome or the Fair, was to

leave an heir to the throne. Less cruel than Louis Hutin, he obtained

a papal dispensation or divorce from his wife Blanche, not on account

of the adultery of which she had been convicted, but on the plea of

consanguinity. Charles immediately married Mary of Luxemburg, daughter

of the late emperor Henry VII. This queen produced no heir, dying in

premature childbirth within two years, when Charles married his cousin

Joan, daughter of the count d’Évreux.

The first years of the reign of Charles the Fair were chiefly marked

by a trial in which severity was at least warranted by justice, and in

which the king and court were above sparing culprits even of the highest

connection. Jourdan de Lille, lord of Casaubon, in Gascony, having

married the niece of Pope John XXII, considered himself above restraint.

Accused of eighteen crimes each worthy of death, the king had spared

him, out of consideration for the pope; but Casaubon resumed his old

habits. No traveller or merchant was safe from his rapine, nor damsel

nor even man from his violence. Summoned to appear before the court of

parliament to answer some of these acts, the Gascon lord beat with his

own mace the royal sergeant who bore the summons. He came to Paris,

nevertheless, with a noble suite, bravely reckoning on impunity. He was,

however, committed to prison, tried, condemned to death, and hanged.[i]

Contemporary writers tell us little of the life of Charles IV, or of his

government. We know that he paid visits to various parts of his realm,

and that while so doing he confirmed the charters of certain cities of

the south of France. We know, too, that in his earlier years Charles

aspired to the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, and that for a time

circumstances seemed to favour his ambition. He had the support of the

pope and of the two most powerful German houses, those of Austria and

of Luxemburg. But the Germans as a nation were opposed to the idea of a

French emperor, and the negotiations to this end were abandoned on the

death of Leopold of Austria in 1326.[k]

It would appear from the ordinances and other acts of Charles the Fair

that the party of the noblesse, dominant under Louis Hutin, but repressed

under Philip the Tall, recovered full authority under Charles. The

Valois, who put themselves forward as the representatives of the chivalry

of the age and as the enemy of the legists, appear dominant. They led an

expedition against Guienne, threatened Flanders, and aided Mortimer and

Isabella in the struggle which terminated in the murder of Edward II.

The ordinances of Charles the Fair do not interfere with the noblesse,

except to shield them from the encroachments of the king’s _baillis_: the

lords of Auvergne and Brittany obtained especial immunities of this kind.

Although armies were raised from Flemish and for Gascon war, the nobles

were apparently not called upon to contribute to them except by feudal

service; whilst the Parisians were called upon to keep up a body of two

hundred men-at-arms, and to levy a tax on sales to meet this expenditure.

Towns which had not the privileges of _communes_, and were without mayors

or sheriffs, were ordered not to pay _taille_, but, instead of it, the

tax on sales, of one denier in the livre, which tax was not to be levied

on the produce sent to market by either nobles or clergy. Money continued

to be the great trouble and principal anxiety of government, the middle

and civic classes being singled out as the only ones which could

regularly furnish it, except when some rich and privileged body offered

itself to the greed of the spoiler.

The same fate which had carried off his brother at so young an age

awaited Charles. Taken ill at Christmas, he expired at the end of

January, 1328. “Thus was the entire progeny of Philip the Fair, and finer

was not to be found in the kingdom of France, completely exterminated in

the space of fourteen years.”[i]

ASPECTS OF CIVILISATION

The Middle Ages themselves at this moment, at least in France, were near

their end, for the things they were attached to--the Crusades, chivalry,

feudalism--were gone, or fast passing away; the papacy, scoffed at in

the days of Boniface VIII, was captive at Avignon; the successor of

Hugh Capet was a despot, and the sons of villeins were sitting in the

states-general of the realm, opposite the nobles and the clergy.[b]

Two or three centuries before, France had seen a great movement

accomplished in her midst, called the communal revolution. The greater

part of the cities had acquired--be it pacifically, be it at the cost

of struggles against the land-owners, or by dissensions and intestine

wars--municipal rights combined with independent jurisdiction. Some of

them had acquired a veritable sovereignty. At present, under King John,

this sovereignty existed no longer. The cities had gradually returned to

the royal administration, although each retained its charter; it may be

said, in a general way, that they had again become dependent, since St.

Louis in regard to finance, since Philip the Fair in regard to tribunals,

and for the levying of militia since Philip the Tall. But, in spite of

this change which took from them the character of independent republics,

to make them members of a great state, they had retained considerable

liberty and power of action. Their citizens formed a third order, having

like the clergy or the nobility their own peculiar privileges and

correlative obligations. They possessed a great and fruitful initiative

for their commercial interests and their industries. They aspired to

exercise a rightful influence over the government, and the states-general

offered them an obvious means.

The bourgeoisie was not hostile to seigneurial aristocracy as several

historians have represented, but it had different interests and different

aims, since it owed its wealth and power to industry and commerce. As

for industry, it is well known that the corporations of crafts assured a

monopoly more or less extensive to their members, of more or less regular

revenues, and the perpetuity of hereditary influence. Nevertheless, it

is necessary to recall how the development of these corporations was

hampered by their own laws, and if there were already some of great

wealth, like those of the butchers of Paris, they were the exception.

Industries were restricted in their nature in proportion as they were

reduced to the usual crafts, and this was generally the case. They

employed only the raw materials produced in the country, like flax, wool,

or hides. They worked in iron and other metals, but having no knowledge

of large machinery they had little use for coal, the principal agent of

metallic production. In general, also, they produced only enough for

home consumption. Exportations were confined principally to the textiles

manufactured in the south which had a market in the Levant, to the

woollen stuffs, serges, and tapestries of Arras, to the linens of Rheims

and Picardy. Thanks to this circumstance the towns of the latter province

began to rival the large industrial cities of the Netherlands.

The progress of industry was genuine, but would only follow that

of commerce. Now it was principally the progress of commerce which

amazed the fourteenth century. The use of the compass, of which no

traces can be found before St. Louis, in permitting longer voyages,

established connections, used more than formerly, between the coasts of

the Mediterranean and those of the ocean and the English Channel. The

commerce of the two seas, by the straits of Gibraltar, rare enough before

the year 1300, took, at the beginning of that epoch, a rapid stride

forward. On the other hand the triumph of Christianity and civilisation

in the northern districts along the tributaries of the Baltic,

accompanied by the establishment of German settlements along the coasts

of that sea in Prussia and Livonia, opened to the merchants northern

Europe, long infested by pirates and long difficult of access. Now began

a regular exchange of the products of the north and those of the south.

Amiens, whose ordinary commerce had long been restricted to Flanders,

England, Scotland, and Ireland, now extended the circumference of her

commerce to the Hanseatic countries and their towns, to the Scandinavian

kingdoms and those of the Spanish peninsula. All these towns prospered,

and following more or less the movement of the Flemish cities became

store-houses for the products of northern or southern Europe and even of

the merchandise of the Orient.

Bruges and Antwerp were at that period markets of great importance.

The whole world seemed to gather there; the influx of strangers was

unceasing. The Hanseatics, the Venetians, the Genoese elbowed the English

and the merchants of all the states of the continent. This favoured

that commercial movement begun in the thirteenth century, and largely

increased during the first years of the fourteenth, when the cloth

industry of Flanders took such a rapid stride and became powerful enough

to lay down the law to the governments, a thing which has hardly been

seen before. In effect it gained thereby numerous markets for the sale of

its products, and abundant capital to increase its operations.

The commercial movement which had its centre in Flanders extended to a

certain distance, and made itself felt in the towns of northern France.

All these towns had treaties with the Flemish cities. Paris was even

affiliated with the Hanseatic League, of which Bruges was the principal

warehouse. The safety of navigation and maritime commerce preoccupied

the French government in the fourteenth century. In order that the

ownership of cargoes might be guaranteed to the ship-owners, Philip the

Fair created special tribunals of _commissionaires examinateurs_, charged

with judging the questions of flotsam and jetsam on the coasts; these

tribunals were the originals of the admiralties. The government also

undertook to fight piracy and restrain the usage of letters of marque.

It was customary for the proprietors of a vessel robbed by pirates, if

they could not obtain satisfaction from the town to which the pirates

belonged, to indemnify themselves by selling for their own profit the

property of foreigners of the same nation established in the realm.

International conventions alone could destroy this barbarous custom.

The maritime wars against England were far from being favourable to its

suppression; but they helped to restrain and submit its exercise to

regulations. Treaties to that effect were signed with several foreign

rulers. One council, assembled in Paris in 1314, proscribed letters of

marque, as contrary to religion and morals.

Certain ports were opened to foreigners. Harfleur to the merchants of

Aragon, of Majorca, Castile, and Portugal who had also free entrance

into the Seine; Le Crotoy and Abbeville were opened to those of Castile

who had the entrée to the Somme. Philip of Valois made the agreement to

maintain these ports, to suppress the taxes which hindered commerce, and

to accord various privileges to foreigners, among others that of having

consuls and judges of their own nationality. At Harfleur the Spaniards

were included among the inhabitants, and participated in the rights

of the bourgeoisie. At Rouen they occupied a particular quarter. The

Italians received, in 1315, definite privileges from Louis X, in four

cities--Paris, St. Omer, La Rochelle, and Nîmes. The Venetian fleet,

which came annually to the port of Bruges, stopped generally at Dieppe.

_The Great Fairs_

The fourteenth century is the epoch of the prosperity of the great fairs.

The fairs were then to the towns of considerable importance and for

certain parts of France what they still are to the villages. At these

fairs were bought and sold all such articles as were not common; these

purchases and sales could be made only there and at certain times of the

year. Since individual commerce offered a great deal of difficulty, and

lacked the most indispensable elements of security, it became necessary

for the merchants to agree upon the transportation of their merchandise,

and to unite in order to insure the fairness, often even the simple

possibility, of transactions.

The most important fairs in the fourteenth century were those of St.

Denis, and the Lendit, of which the origin was in Merovingian times;

those of Champagne, held at Troyes, Provins, Lagny, Rheims, and

Bar-sur-Aube, protected by the regulations of Philip the Fair and Philip

of Valois, those of Beaucaire in the south. They served as marts for the

principal foreign productions, the linens of Holland, which were still

an object of luxury; the woollens of England; the silks of Italy; the

hides and leathers of Spain; the cloths of Flanders, whose superiority

was recognised everywhere; the Italian stuffs, ornamented with embroidery

and woven with gold; the wines of Spain, Portugal, and Greece. At Troyes

were to be met the merchants of Germany and the countries of the north.

To Beaucaire came those of the southern countries, Italians, Spaniards,

Portuguese, Greeks, Berbers, Egyptians; the Genoese came to Beaucaire to

buy the cloths woven at Narbonne, Perpignan, and Toulouse, and destined

for exportation. Ordinarily the merchants of the same nation, sometimes

those of the same town, formed a syndicate. At the fair of the Lendit

every town had for its negotiations its particular place, as is the

custom to-day in our great expositions.

All the kings, from Philip the Bold, strove to attract foreign merchants

by giving them new privileges, that is to say, in multiplying the

guarantees which they needed. They were exempted from certain tolls.

International treaties were made to assure the free land passage of

merchandise transported from one realm to another. We have a remarkable

example of this sort of treaty. It was a stipulation, signed in 1327 by

the kings of France, England, Spain, Aragon, Sicily, and Majorca.

The fairs of Champagne were the objects of regulations which it was aimed

to make as definite and at the same time as favourable as possible.

The tariff was fixed for the taxes which were collected there. Royal

commissioners were chosen for the police, for brokers, and notaries, in

order to assume the sincerity of transactions and of guards to certify

to the quality of the merchandise sold. To the merchants of each nation

was conceded the right to elect their national judges, and to submit to

these judges the regulation of their disputes, except in case of appeal,

which could be carried to the tribunal of fairs as a first resort,

and as a second resort to the chamber of accounts. Guarantees were

also accorded to foreign merchants against deterioration of money and

arbitrary confiscations. In order to define the point where usury began,

which the laws continued to fight, interest on commercial matter was

fixed at fifteen per cent., and the stipulations of private persons were

tolerated up to this figure. The importance of the fairs, and the pains

taken by the government to make them popular, could not but be favourable

to public wealth. A rich and enlightened bourgeoisie was founded in

the large cities, at Rouen, Amiens, Rheims, Troyes, Orleans. All these

towns and others enlarged their areas, raised façades of cut stone in

their principal streets, constructed arcades, galleries, porticoes, and

municipal buildings; but Paris already dominated them all. Her population

rose to two or three hundred thousand souls. She already possessed some

sort of a monopoly for the fabrication of articles of luxury.

Paris had grown with the monarchy. To the advantage of a very

considerable commerce, of extended and special industries, were joined

others not less important. It was an ecclesiastical and literary centre.

A whole quarter was occupied by the population of the schools. Her

universities, at the same time French and European, could not fail to

play an important rôle in the revolutions of the country and in the

discussion of the great interests of the church. Finally, Paris was

the seat of parliament, that of the highest administration, the centre

of government, and the residence of the court. The greater part of the

provinces possessed in the quarter of the Louvre or the quarter of

St. Paul, hôtels, where they lived surrounded by guards and numerous

servitors, which very often occupied vast spaces with their gardens and

out-houses. Ever since then the merchants from the interior or from

foreign countries, able workmen, clerks, writers, the nobility, have

thronged into the great capital. The bourgeoisie of Paris had more

learning, more wealth, and also more pretensions than those of other

towns. Their chief and natural representative, the provost of merchants,

was one of the powers of the state.

The idea of a national representation, with fixed conditions and

attributes, is a modern one, and was almost unknown in the Middle Ages.

There were no written constitutions in existence, except civic charters,

which had a purely local character. The government on its part, without

being absolute, admitted of no binding control. In the meantime, public

opinion was being consulted, as it became necessary to reckon with it,

and the independence which asserted itself everywhere. In the thirteenth

century deputies from the cities were convoked and consulted separately;

in the fourteenth they were combined with those of the clergy or the

nobility of the provincial estates or the states-general. But no fixed

rule was followed. It was the king and his officers who determined each

time the conditions and the forms of the election.[k]

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES

[13] [Boutaric,[d] who has made a special study of the reign of Philip

the Fair, bases his account of the remarkable events at Anagni on the

narratives of Rinaldo de Supino and of Nogaret[l] himself rather than

on those of Giovanni Villani[m] and Walsingham,[n] the source of most

modern historians. Nogaret’s alleged speech is from the chronicle of St.

Denis.[o]

Nogaret says that Philip had sent him to Rome to demand the summoning of

a council, but Boniface in fear of the hostile population had retired to

his native Anagni. Nogaret learned of the impending excommunication of

his master and determined to prevent it at all costs. The Ghibellines of

Romagna listened to his plan, and Rinaldo de Supino, their leader and his

friend, agreed to accompany Nogaret to Anagni and bring Boniface to terms.

But Nogaret was compelled to take full leadership and promise the

protection of France, from all consequences, temporal or spiritual,

to his allies. Sciarra Colonna, the pope’s mortal enemy, now joined

the scheme. All of this would indicate that Nogaret acted on his own

responsibility in the matter of the descent on Anagni, wishing only to

protect the king of France from the curse of excommunication, and that

the latter was in no way connected with the conception of the affair. As

to the events at Anagni, Boutaric says:

“There are fables that Colonna struck the pope in the face with his

gauntlet; that he was tied to a donkey with his face toward its tail and

paraded through Anagni in the midst of insults; but all these stories

should be rejected. It seems certain that the person of Boniface was

respected. Nogaret contented himself with holding him captive and

pestering him to consent to the convoking of the council. Boniface was

immovable; Nogaret was at his wits’ end. After a lapse of three days the

people, ashamed of their treachery, came to demand Boniface. Nogaret was

obliged to flee.” Dareste[k] holds Colonna guiltless of violence but

thinks that others might have injured the pope but for Nogaret.]

[14] The _échiquier_ of Rouen was the ancient feudal court of the dukes

of Normandy; it was held alternately at Rouen, Falaise, and Caen. Philip

the Fair put royal magistrates at its head and fixed it at Rouen, where

it met twice a year at Easter and Michaelmas, whence the expression _les

deux échiquiers_. The _grands jours_ were presided over by a judicial

commission appointed by the king, but like the _échiquier_ of Rouen it

was a local institution that had already long existed.

[15] [Perhaps Guizot’s[p] slightly dissenting view is worth quoting. He

says: “It has often been asserted that Philip the Fair was the first who

called the third estate to the states-general of the kingdom. The phrase

is too grand, and the fact was not new. Under St. Louis deputies of towns

were called around the king to deliberate upon certain legislative acts.

There are other examples of this. Philip the Fair, then, had not the

honour of the first call; and, with regard to assemblies of this kind

which occur under his reign, far too great an idea of them is formed.

These meetings were very brief, almost accidental, without influence upon

the general government of the kingdom, and deputies of towns held but

a very inferior place in them. Nevertheless under Philip the Fair they

became more frequent than before.”]

[Illustration]