THE FRANKS AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM
Now, since the Franks occupied, for a while, so large an Empire, and
were the principal people to establish the Pope's power, let us see
what they did over this extent of Empire, what they made of it, what
it became under them.
For the most part, we must realise they came into territory, as they
moved westward, which had been conquered by the Romans and which had
again been conquered, from the Romans, by barbarians of the Gothic
tribes. So the Franks found a population partly Roman and partly
Gothic there, when they came. They found Roman laws as the principal
laws of the country, slightly altered, no doubt, by the Gothic
customs, but much as the Romans had established them. They found
cities built in the Roman way--that is, within a square of walls,
with a gate in the centre of each wall and streets running straight
through from one gate to the other opposite to it. That was the
usual plan of the Roman cities, if the ground allowed of their
building in this way; and the roads went on through the surrounding
country, from one city to another, very straight, very well made,
turning as little as possible to right or left, and only turning this
little when a mountain over which, or a river through which, it was
impossible to carry the road came in the way.
The Frankish tribes which penetrated into Gaul {80} from time to
time--themselves, probably, pushed westward by the Huns who came from
further east again--were divided into two great groups, the Ripuarian
Franks and the Salian Franks. The name Ripuarian was given to the
tribes who settled along the "ripa," which is the Latin word for
"bank," of the Rhine. The name Salian, of the other great group, as
we have seen already, is of doubtful origin, perhaps from the
"saline" or "salt" sea; because this group came from the shores of
the Baltic.
For a long time Franks kept pushing in from the East through the
Empire's wall. There were Franks with the Gothic and Roman army that
defeated Attila at Chalons in the middle of the fifth century. The
Salians seem to have been the latest of the Franks to come in, but
they became so strong that they dominated all the rest.
I have spoken of those great kings of the Franks, Pepin and
Charlemagne, but the king under whom the big work was done of
bringing all the Frankish tribes, and indeed all Gaul, under one
authority, and giving them that union which means strength--that king
was earlier than either of these. His name was Clovis.
He became king of the Salian Franks in 481. The kings of his dynasty
were called Merovingian, from Merovig, an old chieftain. He made
himself master of the whole of Gaul, except of what was then called
Burgundy and Provence, in the south. But you should know that this
name Burgundy, derived from that of one of the Gothic tribes, was
made to cover very different territories, under rulers of different
races, at different times in our story.
[Sidenote: The "counts"]
So here was this King Clovis of the Franks ruling over this large
Empire. He found the Roman law and the Roman system of government in
use there; and the Franks adopted as much as they could of the Roman
customs into their own. But it was difficult. {81} The Roman
official who had represented the government of the Empire was called
the "comes," or "count," and the Merovingian kings of the Franks seem
to have tried to continue to govern through the "count." One of his
duties was to collect taxes, but the Franks do not seem to have
understood taxation as it was understood by the Romans. The Romans
made assessment, that is to say calculations, from time to time, to
find out how much money was needed for the government of a province,
and they exacted from the people of the province as much as was
required to meet that need. Under the Franks the tax came to be a
fixed amount on property.
The duty of the Count in levying the tax cannot have been easy, for
these Franks were one and all fighting men. In their own country the
practice had been to hold an assembly of the tribe for the making of
laws and judging cases. That was their idea of government. It was a
plan which might work well for a small tribe. It was not suitable
for a large empire.
The consequence is that we soon see the Count, and other men of rank
and of large possessions in land, becoming more and more independent
of the king, who really could not make his authority felt. One of
the difficulties that the king found, arose from the custom, which
was a Roman custom, of granting "immunities," as they were called, to
certain persons and institutions. They were granted especially to
institutions connected with the Church. They provided that the lands
to which they were given should be "immune from" visits by the king's
officials. The great man, or the great institution, to whom or to
which the immunity was granted thus became like a small king, within
his own kingdom. He could do almost as he pleased.
So there was always this trouble, and it grew greater as time went
on, that the king's authority {82} was more and more disputed, more
and more weakened; and in this weakening of authority the security
for life and for property grew weaker. The poorer people found that
their best hope for a secure life was to put themselves under the
protection of some rich and powerful man; that rich and powerful man
found that his best hope for safety was to take under his protection
as many as possible of these people, who, in return for the
protection, would fight for him on occasion.
And this, shortly put, was, in the main, what brought about the state
of society known as the feudal system.
It was the more easy for the lesser men, the vassals, and the great
man, the lord, to make these terms with each other, because something
of the kind was already in existence, both in the Germany from which
the Franks came and in the Roman and Gothic society into which they
had come as conquerors.
The name given to the assembling of men of less power and wealth
around the greater men had been "comitatus," in Germany. In Rome it
had been the custom for a prominent citizen to have a troop of
"clientes," or clients, men of the people who came to him to ask him
for advice about any legal claims that they were making, or any
injustice under which they were suffering. They would receive his
advice, and perhaps he would speak for them when their case came
before the court. In return, these clients would support their
patron, as the great man was called, with their votes whenever they
could be of use to him, and they would even accompany him about the
city, in times of disturbance, as a kind of bodyguard.
The Frankish kings, we may note, had a bodyguard for their special
protection, and this bodyguard was held in very high estimation, so
much so that if one of them were killed the killer, or his relations,
had {83} to pay a penalty three times as heavy as they would have had
to pay for the killing of any other free man. So the service of the
vassal to his feudal lord was only an extension of the kind of
service that the client did for the patron; and so too the service of
protection that the lord gave to the vassal might easily grow out of
the protection and help given by the patron, to the client.
[Sidenote: The "precarium"]
And then there was another custom common in the Roman and Gothic
society which helped to form the relationship between the vassal and
the feudal lord. If a free man were landless he was in a very poor
position. It was beneath his dignity to serve as a slave, or even as
a "villein," which was a position in society between that of a slave
and a free man. But if he were without land, he had no means of
livelihood; and as his life was of no value to anyone he had no one
to defend him. Therefore it had become usual for these landless free
men to come to some large land-owner and offer him to do him certain
service if he would grant, or lend, them a piece of land, or possibly
the use of a mill--a water-mill for grinding corn--or some other
grant out of which they might get a livelihood. If this were granted
them, they would give their service and help to the lord. The Latin
word for "to pray" is "precari," and so this relationship between the
lord and the tenant was called "precarium," because the tenant had
"prayed" the lord for it. I have called it a "grant, or loan." It
was not a gift, because the lord might take it back at any time, and
so end the tenancy, nor could the tenant pass on his right in the
land, or whatever it might be, to his heirs. If the lord did allow
it to go on to these heirs, they would probably have to pay him some
"fine," before they succeeded to it, as well as undertaking to
continue the service which the first tenant, when the grant was made,
had promised.
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So herein, that it could be taken back by the lord, it was like a
loan; and yet it differed from a loan in this--that there was no idea
in the mind of either the lord or the tenant that it was likely to be
taken back. It was intended to be a permanent loan, if we may use
that expression, but still it was recognised on both sides that the
lord or the lord's successors had the power at any moment of taking
it back, if he or they pleased, from the tenant and the tenant's
successors. You must have heard the expression "a precarious
possession," or something of the kind. You may now know how that
expression arose. The word "precarious" is, of course, from this
"precarium," which is derived from the Latin word for "to pray."
You will find that these two ideas, that of the relation between the
patron and client, and that between the landlord and the "precarious"
tenant, helped to form the foundations, the roots, from which the
feudal system grew up. The land or the mill was the fee, or fief
(fief was the French form of the word) in return for holding which
the holder owed service to the lord.
Just what he should do for the lord, by way of service, differed in
different places at first, and was determined by the different
customs of each place; but as time went on the duties began to be
defined, or laid down, more exactly, and grew to be very much the
same wherever the system prevailed. The vassal had to follow his
lord to war when called on, he had to serve as a defender when the
lord was attacked, he was liable to have to contribute to the dowry
of the lord's daughter when she was married and to his lord's ransom
if he should be taken prisoner by the enemy. He had to follow the
lord to battle armed at his own cost, perhaps mounted, perhaps with
some of his villeins following him.
You can realise that when the country was in a {85} very disturbed
state, so that the king's authority could not easily and quickly be
enforced, the lord who had many of these tenants or vassals could do
very much as he pleased on his own territories. You will also
realise that when men could no longer get justice from the central
authority, which the king represented, they were only too grateful to
get it from their feudal lord.
[Sidenote: Divisions in Gaul]
And the condition of Gaul under the Franks began to be a condition of
general disturbance after the death of the great King Clovis. He
died in 511 and he left his kingdom divided between his four sons.
The youngest of these sons, by name Clotaire, lived longer than any
of his brothers, but on his death, in 561, he in turn left four sons,
and again there was division of the kingdom, claims were made by one
and were resisted by another. There was continual civil war. Yet
again, a few years later, there were new divisions amongst the
children of one or other of these, and so it went until the kingdom
was once more united, after 613, by the death or defeat of his
rivals, under Clotaire II. Clotaire was nominally sovereign, yet
still there were the subordinate kingdoms, each claiming some
independence.
But during this century, when the Frankish conquerors were fighting
with each other, the general condition of society had been altered.
We have seen how the large landowners began drawing to themselves a
body of vassals, and how they gradually became more independent of
the king's authority. We have to notice at the same time that the
power of the Church, in the hands of its bishops, was continually
growing greater. The Church was constantly being enriched by
donations of land given it by pious persons who deemed that they
might find salvation by these gifts; and what made the Church the
more powerful was the above-mentioned custom of granting "immunities."
The "immunities" were granted by the Crown, in {86} return for some
service done, or by way of payment of a debt, or as an act of mere
friendliness; and the meaning of the "immunity" was that the land in
respect of which it was granted was "immune" from the king's tax
collectors or law officers. The Crown officials could not enter on
it. The taxes were collected and the law administered by persons
acting for the landowner. You see how this again would work towards
making the great landowners independent of the Crown. And these
"immunities" were largely given to the bishops in respect of the
Church lands. The bishops thus grew to great independence and power,
and they worked continually to have their own people, the subordinate
clergy, subject to their own laws, the laws of the Church, and not to
the laws of the Crown.
Now at the court of the Merovingian kings and also of the lesser
kings, the chief officer and chief executor of the king's will was an
official called "the Mayor of the Palace." He was everywhere a man
of great influence and of high family. He acted not so much like an
English Prime Minister as like the vizier, the chief officer, of an
Oriental king.
As time passed, in the constant distractions of the kingdom and the
weakening power of the central authority, the power of these high
officials grew continually.
The distractions and the struggles between the lesser kingdoms in
Gaul, and also between the nobles and the king, went on for another
century. The contest which really settled the matter, for a while,
was a battle at Tertry in 687, in which Pepin, Pepin II., as he was
called, defeated the king's forces, and took the king prisoner. It
was not, however, till the middle of the next century that the line
of the Merovingian kings died out. All that while, however, they
were practically dominated by Pepin, the victor at Tertry, {87} and
when their dynasty came to an end he became king of the Franks, and
therewith founded a new dynasty, the Carolingian.
[Sidenote: Charles Martel]
Pepin came to the throne with powers derived from two sources. His
family had held the great office of Mayor of the Palace in one of the
subordinate kingdoms for nearly half a century, and he was also
descended from a great bishop, Arnulf. Thus he had all the power of
the Church on his side. Charles Martel, who succeeded him, gained an
important victory over the Saracens at Tours in 732. That is a very
notable event in our story, for it pushed back the Moors south of the
Pyrenees again, and freed Christian Gaul from their danger. Further,
this same Charles (Martel, or the Hammer, as he was called) served
the Church of Rome faithfully in Germany, supporting a mission which
Bishop Boniface was carrying on for the conversion of some of the
still pagan German tribes to Christianity.
The Pope, Gregory III., on his accession to the Papal throne, was
menaced by the Lombards in the North of Italy and by independent
Dukes in the south. He appealed to Charles Martel for assistance.
The Lombards, however, had fought with Charles at Tours, to save
Christendom from the Saracens, and Charles did not care to take arms
against them. But the son of Charles, who succeeded him as Pepin
III., seems to have understood how greatly his power would be
strengthened if he could claim to be supported by the Church. The
authority of the Pope at Rome was becoming every year more powerful;
Boniface had now the title of Papal Legate, the Pope's
representative, and as such he anointed Pepin III. king of the
Franks, in the presence of the great nobles, at the capital city of
Soissons. Within two years Pepin had defeated the Lombards and rid
the Pope of their menace. He did not take their kingdom, {88} but
the territory that he conquered from them he gave to the Papal See.
Thus he made the Papacy--that is to say, the successive Popes of
Rome--a territorial sovereignty, owning extensive land and much
wealth. At the same time he accepted a title, that of "patrician,"
from the Pope. It was a title which had meant much in the days of
ancient Rome. It meant nothing now, except that it was a sign of the
close links that bound together the Frankish kingdom and the Papacy.
But that in itself meant much, for these were the two most powerful
forces in the Western world of that time, and both were growing
stronger every year.
By the time of Pepin's death, in 768, he was king of all Gaul.
He left two sons, and to the younger, before an assembly of his
nobles, he bequeathed certain provinces; but, fortunately perhaps for
the peace of France, the younger son died and all came into the hand
of the elder, who was Charles the Great.
And by this time that custom which we have seen growing common, of
vassals leaguing themselves together around a lord, had established
itself over a great part of the Empire. The feudal system had really
become a fact, although it was a fact which was concealed by the
power and the splendour of this great emperor, who was so constantly
victorious.
The big territorial landowners became "Counts" and the lands over
which they exercised authority were called "counties." We noted the
origin of the title a few pages back. Sometimes counties, two or
more, had been drawn together into a single larger domain, which
might then be called a "duchy," with a "duke," or, in French, "duc,"
over it. But Charlemagne's policy was to break up the duchies and
collect their revenues and taxes by his own officers as the
originally appointed "Counts" had collected them. {89} Even when the
feudal system was fully established, the powers of the lords were not
unlimited, by any means, and they governed within the bounds of their
lands largely through the "curia," or assembly, summoned from time to
time, of the vassals. The king, as well as the lords beneath him,
would summon a "curia," and this was called the "curia regis," the
king's curia, when it was the assembly of the king's vassals and was
summoned by him. There seems to have been no limit to the points
that might be discussed in these assemblies; but the lord's assent to
any vote passed by them appears to have been required before the
measures voted on could be put into operation.
[Sidenote: Pope and Emperor]
Now the help that Charlemagne gave to the Pope was valuable to him
not only against the Lombard foreigners, but against the Roman nobles
themselves. It was the Pope, the Bishop, and not the Duke, of Rome
who appealed to Charlemagne; and that very fact shows how far the
position of the Pope had altered from that of the early bishops of
the Church. He had become ruler of a territory, of a great city,
even of a State. And yet he had little force of arms with which to
defend this possession, which had come to him by the donations of
pious Christians. Pepin, we have noted, had given him lands
recovered from the Lombards. But the great men in Rome, the great
families, constantly disputed the Pope's authority over the city and
the State. To have the Emperor as his ally gave the Pope a power
against which they could do little.
Under Charlemagne the Frankish Empire grew to its greatest extent and
splendour, but it had no rest.
One of the reasons of the Emperor's success in keeping his nobles in
tolerable obedience was, doubtless, that he kept them so busy,
fighting his battles. He subjected the Northmen (later, Normans) who
had come down from Scandinavia in their ships and settled {90}
themselves along the northern shores of France, facing Britain.
Afterwards this land of the Northmen had the name of Normandy.
The Saxons, occupying what later were called the Netherlands, put up
a surprisingly strong opposition to the great Emperor, but in the end
he conquered their independence. Elsewhere, around his
ever-extending boundaries, the smaller nations gave him less trouble.
In the end it is not too much to say that his Empire included all of
what we know as France and Germany with Belgium, Holland, Denmark,
and parts of Scandinavia. Southward he held the northern parts of
Italy, nearly as far down as Rome. He crossed the Pyrenees, but
gained no lasting hold on any of Spain. Indeed, it was on return
from a Spanish expedition that he suffered the greatest disaster that
ever befel his arms. This was the defeat of a large body of his
forces at Roncesvalles, in which fight were killed the great hero
Roland and a number of the most illustrious of the Frankish leaders
and nobles.
In later years both Charlemagne himself and his great men, such as
Roland and others, his paladins, and "the twelve peers," were made
the subjects of the most extravagant stories. They were related to
have performed superhuman exploits, to have been eight feet in height
and to have conducted themselves generally in a manner which
Cervantes, the Spanish novel writer, caricatured in his famous story
of Don Quixote. The twelve peers may remind us of the twelve knights
of King Arthur's Round Table, and it is likely that there was some
original connection between the stories.
But Charlemagne was truly Charles the Great without these fabulous
additions to his greatness. He died at Aix la Chapelle in 814 and
was succeeded by his only surviving son, whom he had crowned with his
own hand the year before his death.
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