FEUDAL FRANCE--ITS PEOPLE AND ITS CHÂTEAUX
It was not the Revolution alone that brought about a division of landed
property in France. The Crusades, particularly that of Saint Bernard,
accomplished the same thing, though perhaps to a lesser extent. The
seigneurs were impoverished already by excesses of all kinds, and they
sold parts of their lands to any who would buy, and on almost any terms.
Sometimes it was to a neighbouring, less powerful, seigneur; sometimes
to a rich bourgeois--literally a town-dweller, not simply one vulgarly
rich--or even to an ecclesiastic; and sometimes to that vague entity
known as "_le peuple_." The peasant proprietor was a factor in land
control before the Revolution; the mere recollection of the fact that
Louis-le-Hutin enfranchised the serfs demonstrates this.
The serfdom of the middle ages, in some respects, did not differ from
ancient slavery, and in the most stringent of feudal times there were
numerous serfs, servants and labourers attached to the seigneur's
service. These he sold, gave away, exchanged, or bequeathed, and in
these sales, children were often separated from their parents. The
principal cause of enfranchisement was the necessity for help which
sprang from the increase in the value of land. A sort of chivalric
swindle under the name of "the right of taking" was carried on among the
lords, who endeavoured to get men away from one another and thus flight
became the great resort of the dissatisfied peasant.
In order to get those belonging to others, and to keep his own, the
proprietor, when enfranchising the serfs, benevolently gave them land.
Thus grew up the peasant landowner, the seigneur keeping only more or
less limited rights, but those onerous enough when he chose to put on
the screw.
In this way much of the land belonging to the nobles and clergy became
the patrimony of the plebeians, and remained so, for they were at first
forbidden to sell their lands to noblemen or clergy. Then came other
kinds of intermediary leases, something between the distribution of the
land under the feudal system and its temporary occupancy of to-day
through the payment of rent. Such were the "domains" in Brittany, Anjou
and elsewhere, held under the emphyteusis (long lease), which was really
the right of sale, where the land, let out for an indefinite time and at
a fixed rent, could be taken back by the landlord only on certain
expensive terms. This was practically the death knell of feudal land
tenure. Afterward came leases of fifty years, for life, or for "three
lifetimes," by which time the rights of the original noble owners had
practically expired.
Finally, all landowners found these systems disadvantageous. The
landlord's share in the product of the soil (as a form of rent)
continually increased, while the condition of the farmer grew worse and
worse.
Since the Revolution, the modern method of cultivation of land on a
large scale constitutes an advance over anything previously conceived,
just as the distribution of the land under the feudal régime constituted
an advance over the system in vogue in earlier times.
Times have changed in France since the days when the education of the
masses was unthought of. Then the curé or a monkish brother would get a
few children together at indeterminate periods and teach them the
catechism, a paternoster or a credo, and that was about all. Writing,
arithmetic--much less the teaching of grammar--were deemed entirely
unnecessary to the growing youth. Then (and the writer has seen the same
thing during his last dozen years of French travel) it was a common
sight to see the sign "Ecrivain Publique" hanging over, or beside, many
a doorway in a large town.
The Renaissance overflow from Italy left a great impress on the art and
literature of France, and all its bright array of independent
principalities. The troubadours and minstrels of still earlier days had
given way to the efforts and industry of royalty itself. François
Premier, and, for aught we know, all his followers, penned verses,
painted pictures, and patronized authors and artists, until the very
soil itself breathed an art atmosphere.
Marguerite de Valois (1492-1549), the sister of François Premier, was
called the tenth muse even before she became Queen of Navarre, and when
she produced her Boccoccio-like stories, afterwards known as the
"Heptameron of the Queen of Navarre," enthusiasm for letters among the
noblesse knew no bounds.
The spirit of romance which went out from the soft southland was tinged
with a certain license and liberty which was wanting in the "Romaunt of
the Rose" of Guillaume de Lorris, and like works, but it served to
strike a passionate fire in the hearts of men which at least was bred of
a noble sentiment.
What the Renaissance actually did for a French national architecture is
a matter of doubt. But for its coming, France might have achieved a
national scheme of building as an outgrowth of the Greek, Roman, and
Saracen structures which had already been planted between the Alps and
the Pyrenees. The Gothic architecture of France comes nearer to being a
national achievement than any other, but its application in its first
form to a great extent was to ecclesiastical building. In domestic and
civil architecture, and in walls and ramparts, there exists very good
Gothic indeed in France, but of a heavier, less flowery style than that
of its highest development in churchly edifices.
The Romanesque, and even the pointed-arch architecture (which, be it
remembered, need not necessarily be Gothic) of southern and mid-France,
with the Moorish and Saracenic interpolations found in the Pyrenees, was
the typical civic, military and domestic manner of building before the
era of the imitation of the debased Lombardic which came in the days of
Charles VIII and François Premier. This variety spread swiftly all over
France--and down the Rhine, and into England for that matter--and
crowded out the sloping roof, the dainty colonnette and ribbed vaulting
in favour of a heavier, but still ornate, barrel-vaulted and pillared,
low-set edifice with most of the faults of the earlier Romanesque, and
none of its excellences.
The parts that architects and architecture played in the development of
France were tremendous. Voltaire first promulgated this view, and his
aphorisms are many; "My fancy is to be an architect." "Mansard was one
of the greatest architects known to France." "Architects were the ruin
of Louis XIV." "The Cathedral builders were sublime barbarians."
Montesquieu was more sentimental when he said: "Love is an architect who
builds palaces on ruins if he pleases."
The greatest architectural expression of a people has ever been in its
Christian monuments, but references to the cathedrals, churches and
chapels of the Pyrenean states have for the most part been regretfully
omitted from these pages, giving place to fortresses, châteaux, great
bridges, towers, donjons, and such public monuments as have a special
purport in keeping with the preconceived limits of a volume which deals
largely with the romance of feudal times.
Generally speaking, the architectural monuments of these parts are
little known by the mass of travellers, except perhaps Henri Quatre's
ancestral château at Pau, the famous walls of Carcassonne, and perhaps
Bayonne's bridges or the Eglise St. Saturnin and the bizarre cathedral
of St. Etienne at Toulouse. All of these are excellent of their kind;
indeed perhaps they are superlative in their class; but when one
mentions Perpignan's Castillet, the Château de Puylaurens, the arcaded
Gothic houses of Agde, Béziers' fortress-cathedral, the fortress-church
of St. Bertrand de Comminges or a score of other tributary monumental
relics, something hitherto unthought of is generally disclosed.
Almost the whole range of architectural display is seen here between the
Mediterranean and the Gulf of Gascony, and any rambling itinerary laid
out between the two seas will discover as many structural and decorative
novelties as will be found in any similar length of roadway in France.
[Illustration: _Watch-tower in the Val d'Andorre_]
Leaving the purely ecclesiastical edifices--cathedrals and great
churches--out of the question, the entire Midi of France, and the French
slopes and valleys of the Pyrenees in particular, abounds in
architectural curiosities which are marvels to the student and lover of
art.
There are _châteaux_, _chastels_ and _chastillons_, one differing from
another by subtle distinctions which only the expert can note. Then
there are such feudal accessories as watch-towers, donjons and
_clochers_, and great fortifying walls and gates and barbicans, and even
entire fortified towns like Carcassonne and La Bastide. Surely the
feudality, or rather its relics, cannot be better studied than
here,--"where the people held the longest aloof from the Crown."
The watch-towers which flank many of the valleys of the Pyrenees are a
great curiosity and quandary to archæologists and historians. Formerly
they flashed the news of wars or invasions from one outpost to another,
much as does wireless telegraphy of to-day. Of these watch-towers, or
_tours télégraphiques_, as the modern French historians call them, that
of Castel-Biel, near Luchon, is the most famous. It rises on the peak of
a tiny mountain in the valley of the Pique and is a square structure of
perhaps a dozen or fifteen feet on each side. Sixteen feet or so from
the ground, on the northwest façade, is an opening leading to the first
floor. This tower is typical of its class, and is the most accessible to
the hurried traveller.
The feudal history of France is most interesting to recall in this late
day when every man is for himself. Not all was oppression by any means,
and the peasant landowner--as distinct from the _vilain_ and _serf_--was
a real person, and not a supposition, even before the Revolution; though
Thomas Carlyle on his furzy Scotch moor didn't know it.
Feudal France consisted of seventy thousand fiefs or rere-fiefs, of
which three thousand gave their names to their seigneurs. All seigneurs
who possessed three _châtellenies_ and a walled hamlet (_ville close_)
had the right of administering justice without reference to a higher
court. There were something more than seven thousand of these _villes
closes_, within which, or on the lands belonging to the seigneurs
thereof, were one million eight hundred and seventy-two thousand
monuments,--churches, monasteries, abbeys, châteaux, castles, and royal
or episcopal palaces. It was thus that religious, civic and military
architecture grew side by side and, when new styles and modifications
came in, certain interpolations were forthwith incorporated in the more
ancient fabrics, giving that mélange of picturesque walls and roofs
which makes France the best of all lands in which to study the
architecture of mediævalism. Among these mediæval relics were
interspersed others more ancient,--Roman and Greek basilicas, temples,
baths, arenas, amphitheatres and aqueducts in great profusion, whose
remains to-day are considerably more than mere fragments.
The hereditary aristocracy of France, the rulers and the noblesse of the
smaller kingdoms, dukedoms and countships, were great builders, as
befitted their state, and, being mostly great travellers and persons of
wealth, they really surrounded themselves with many exotic forms of
luxury which a more isolated or exclusive race would never have
acquired. There is no possible doubt whatever but that it is the very
mixture of styles and types that make the architecture of France so
profoundly interesting even though one decries the fact that it is not
_national_.
One well recognized fact concerning France can hardly fail to be
reiterated by any who write of the manners and customs and the arts of
mediæval times, and that is that the figures of population of those days
bear quite similar resemblances to those of to-day. Historians of a
hundred years back, even, estimated the total population of France in
the fifteenth century as being very nearly the same as at the
Revolution,--perhaps thirty millions. To-day eight or perhaps ten
millions more may be counted, but the increase is invariably in the
great cities, Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Rouen, etc. Oloron and
Orthez in Béarn, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in Navarre, or Agde or Elne in
Roussillon, remain at the same figure at which they have stood for
centuries, unless, as is more often the case, they have actually fallen
off in numbers. And still France is abnormally prosperous, collectively
and individually, so far as old-world nations go.
Originally the nobility in France was of four degrees: the _noblesse_ of
the blood royal, the _haute-noblesse_, the _noblesse ordinaire_ and the
_noblesse_ who were made noble by patent of the ruling prince. All of
these distinctions were hereditary, save, in some instances, the
_noblesse ordinaire_.
In the height of feudal glory there were accredited over four thousand
families belonging to the _ancienne noblesse_, and ninety thousand
_familles nobles_ (descendant branches of the above houses) who could
furnish a hundred thousand knightly combatants for any "little war" that
might be promulgated.
Sometimes the family name was noble and could be handed down, and
sometimes not. Sometimes, too, inheritance was through the mother, not
the father; this was known as the _noblesse du ventre_. A foreign noble
naturalized in France remained noble, and retained his highest title of
right.
The French nobles most often took their titles from their fiefs, and
these, with the exception of baronies and _marquisats_, were usually of
Roman origin. The chief titles below the _noblesse du sang royal_ were
_ducs_, _barons_, _marquis_, _comtes_, _vicomtes_, _vidames_, and
_chevaliers_ and each had their special armorial distinctions, some
exceedingly simple, and some so elaborate with quarterings and
blazonings as to be indefinable by any but a heraldic expert.
The coats of arms of feudal France, or _armoiries_, as the French call
them (a much better form of expression by the way), are a most
interesting subject of study. Some of these _armoiries_ are really
beautiful, some quaint and some enigmatic, as for instance those of the
King of Navarre.
The Revolutionary Assembly abolished such things in France, but Napoleon
restored them all again, and created a new noblesse as well:
"Aussitôt maint esprit fécond en reveries,
Inventa le blason avec les armoiries."
sang the poet Boileau.
Primarily _armoiries_ were royal bequests, but in these days a
pork-packer, an iron-founder or a cheese-maker concocts a trade-mark on
heraldic lines and the thing has fallen flat. Fancy a pig sitting on a
barrel top and flanked by two ears of corn, or a pyramid of cheeses
overtopped by the motto "A full stomach maketh good health." Why it's
almost as ridiculous as a crossed pick-axe, a shovel and a crow-bar
would be for a navvy on a railway line! In the old days it was not often
thus, though a similar ridiculous thing, which no one seemed to take the
trouble to suppress, was found in the "_Armoiries des gueux_." One of
these showed two twists of tobacco _en croix_, with the following motto:
"_Dieu vous bénisse_!"
At the head of the list of French _armoiries_ were those of _domain_ or
_souveraineté_.
Then followed several other distinct classes. "_Armoiries de
Pretention_," where the patronal rights over a city or a province were
given the holders, even though the province was under the chief
domination of a more powerful noble.
"_Armoiries de Concession_," given for services by a sovereign
prince--such as the _armoiries_ belonging to Jeanne d'Arc.
"_Armoiries de Patronage_," in reality quarterings added to an
_armoirie_ already existing. These were frequently additions to the
blazonings of families or cities. Paris took on the arms of the King of
France, the insistent Louis, by this right.
"_Armoiries de Dignité_," showing the distinction or dignities with
which a person was endowed, and which were added to existing family
arms.
"_Armoiries de Famille_," as their name indicates, distinguishing one
noble family from another. This class was further divided into three
others, "_Substituées_," "_Succession_," or "_Alliance_," terms which
explain themselves.
"_Armoiries de Communauté_," distinctions given to noble chapters of
military bodies, corporations, societies and the like.
Finally there was a class which belonged to warriors alone.
At all times illustrious soldiers adopted a _devise_, or symbol, which
they caused to be painted on their shields. These were only considered
as _armoiries_ when they were inherited by one who had followed in the
footsteps of his ancestors. This usage dates from the end of the ninth
century, and it is from this period that _armoiries_, properly called,
came into being.
[Illustration: Feudal Flags and Banners]
The banners of the feudal sovereigns were, many of them, very splendid
affairs, often bearing all their arms and quarterings. They were borne
wherever their owners went,--in war, to the capital, and at their
country houses. At all ceremonious functions the banners were ever near
the persons of their sovereigns as a sign of suzerainty. The owner of a
banner would often have it cut out of metal and placed on the gables of
his house as a weather-vane, a custom which, in its adapted form, has
endured through the ages to this day. In tournaments, the nobles had
their banners attached to their lances, and made therewith always the
sign of the cross before commencing their passes. Also their banners or
_banderoles_ were hung from the trumpets of the heralds of their house.
Another variety of feudal standard, differing from either the _bannière_
or the _pennon_, was the _gonfanon_. This was borne only by
_bacheliers_, vassals of an overlord.
"_N'i a riche hom ni baron_
_Qui n'ait lès lui son gonfanon._"
The feudal banner, the house flag of the feudal seigneurs, and borne by
them in battle, was less splendid than the _bannière royale_, which was
hung from a window balcony to mark a kingly lodging-place. It was in
fact only a small square of stuff hanging from a transversal baton. This
distinguished, in France, a certain grade of knights known as
_chevaliers-bannerets_. These chevaliers had the privilege of exercising
certain rights that other knights did not possess.
To be created _chevalier-banneret_ one had to be twenty-one years of
age. If a chevalier was already a _bachelier_, a grade inferior to that
of a _banneret_, to become a full blown _chevalier_ he had only to cut
the points from his standard--a _pennon_--when it and he became a
_banneret_; that is to say, he had the right to carry a banner, or to
possess a _fief de bannière_.
There were three classes of fiefs in feudal France. First; the _fief de
bannière_, which could furnish twenty-five combatants under a banner or
flag of their own. Second; the _fief de haubert_, which could furnish a
well-mounted horseman fully armed, accompanied by two or three _varlets_
or _valets_. Third; the _fief de simple écuyer_, whose sole offering was
a single vassal, lightly armed.
There was, too, a class of nobles without estates. They were known as
seigneurs of a _fief en l'air_, or a _fief volant_, much like many
courtesy titles so freely handed around to-day in some monarchies.
A vassal was a dweller in a fief under the control of the seigneur. The
word comes from the ancient Frankish _gessell_.
The chevaliers, not the highest of noble ranks, but a fine title of
distinction nevertheless, bore one of four prefixes, _don_, _sire_,
_messire_, or _monseigneur_. They could eat at the same table with the
monarch, and they alone had the right to bear a banner-lance in warfare,
or wear a double coat of mail.
In 1481, Louis XI began to abolish the bow and the lance in France, in
so far as they applied to effective warfare. The first fire-arms had
already appeared a century before, and though the _coulevrines_ and
_canons à main_ were hardly efficient weapons, when compared with those
of to-day, they were far more effective than the bow and arrow at a
distance, or the javelin, the pike and the lance near at hand. Then
developed the _arquebuse_, literally a hand-cannon, clumsy and none too
sure of aim, but a fearful death-dealer if it happened to hit.
The feudal lords, the seigneurs and other nobles, had the right of
levying taxes upon their followers. These taxes, or _impôts_, took
varying forms; such as the obligation to grind their corn at the mills
of the seigneur, paying a heavy proportion of the product therefor; to
press their grapes at his wine-press, and bake their bread in his ovens.
At Montauban, in the Garonne, one of these old seigneurial flour mills
may still be seen. The seigneurs were not ostensibly "in trade," but
their control of the little affairs of the butcher, the baker, and the
candlestick-maker virtually made them so.
More definite taxes--demanded in cash when the peasants could pay,
otherwise in kind--were the seigneurial taxes on fires; on the right of
trade (the sale of wine, bread or meat); the _vingtaine_, whereby the
peasant gave up a twentieth of his produce to the seigneur; and such
oddities as a tax on the first kiss of the newly married; bardage, a
sort of turnpike road duty for the privilege of singing certain songs;
and on all manner of foolish fancies.
After the taxation by the seigneurs there came that by the clerics, who
claimed their "ecclesiastical tenth," a tax which was levied in France
just previous to the Revolution with more severity, even, than in Italy.
Finally the people rose, and the French peasants delivered themselves
all over the land to a riot of evil, as much an unlicensed tyranny as
was the oppression of their feudal lords. One may thus realize the means
which planted feudal France with great fortresses, châteaux and country
houses, and the motives which caused their destruction to so large an
extent.
It was the tyranny of the master and the cruelty of the servant that
finally culminated in the Revolution. Not only the petty seigneurs had
been the oppressors, but the Crown, represented by the figurehead of the
Bourbon king in his capital, put the pressure on the peasant folk still
harder by releasing it on the nobles. The tax on the people, that great,
vague, non-moving mass of the population, has ever produced the greatest
revenue in France, as, presumably, it has elsewhere. In the days before
the Revolution it was _le peuple_ who paid, and it was the people who
paid the enormous Franco-German war indemnity in 1871.
The feudality in France, in its oppressive sense, died long years before
the Revolution, but the aristocracy still lives in spite of the efforts
of the Assembly to crush it--the Assembly and the mob who sang:
_"Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,_
_Les aristocrates à la lanterne!_
_Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,_
_Les aristocrates on les pendra!"_
And the French noblesse of to-day, the proud old French aristocracy, is
not, on the whole, as bad as it has frequently been painted. They may,
in the majority, be royalists, may be even Bonapartists, or Orléanists,
instead of republicans, but surely there's no harm in that in these days
when certain political parties look upon socialists as anarchists and
free-traders as communists.
The honour, power and profit derived by the noblesse in France all
stopped with the Revolution. The National Assembly, however, refused to
abolish titles. To do that body justice they saw full well that they
could not take away that which did not exist as a tangible entity, and
it is to their credit that they did not establish the new order of
Knights of the Plough as they were petitioned to do. This would have
been as fatal a step as can possibly be conceived, though for that
matter a plough might just as well be a symbol of knighthood as a
thistle, a _jaratelle_, a gold stick or a black rod.
In France a whole _seigneurie_ was slave to the seigneur. Under feudal
rule the clergy (not the humble _abbés_ and _curés_, but the bishops and
archbishops) were frequently themselves overlords. They, at any rate,
enjoyed as high privileges as any in the land, and if the Revolution
benefited the lower clergy it robbed the higher churchmen.
Just previous to the Revolution, the clergy had a revenue of one hundred
and thirty million _livres_ of which only forty-two million five hundred
thousand _livres_ accrued to the _curés_. The difference represents the
loss to the "Seigneurs of the Church."
With the Revolution the whole kingdom was in a blaze; famished mobs
clamoured, if not always for bread, at least for an anticipated
vengeance, and when they didn't actually kill they robbed and burned.
This accounts for the comparative infrequency of the feudal châteaux in
France in anything but a ruined state. Sometimes it is but a square of
wall that remains, sometimes a mere gateway, sometimes a donjon, and
sometimes only a solitary tower. All these evidences are frequent enough
in the provinces of the Pyrenees, from the more or less complete
Châteaux of Foix and of Pau, to the ruins of Lourdes and Lourdat, and
the more fragmentary remains of Ultrera, Ruscino and Coarraze.
The mediæval country house was a château; when it was protected by walls
and moats it became a castle or château-fort; a distinction to be
remarked.
The château of the middle ages was not only the successor of the Roman
stronghold, but it was a villa or place of residence as well; when it
was fortified it was a _chastel_.
A castle might be habitable, and a château might be a species of
stronghold, and thus the mediæval country house might be either one
thing or the other, but still the distinction will always be apparent if
one will only go deeply enough into the history of any particular
structure.
Light and air, which implies frequent windows, have always been
desirable in all habitations of man, and only when the château bore the
aspects of a fortification were window openings omitted. If it was an
island castle, a moat-surrounded château,--as it frequently was in later
Renaissance times,--windows and doors existed in profusion; but if it
were a feudal fortress, such as one most frequently sees in the
Pyrenees, openings at, or near, the ground-level were few and far
between. Such windows as existed were mere narrow slits, like
loop-holes, and the entrance doorway was really a fortified gate or
port, frequently with a portcullis and sometimes with a _pont-levis_.
The origin of the word château (_castrum_, _castellum_, castle) often
served arbitrarily to designate a fortified habitation of a seigneur, or
a citadel which protected a town. One must know something of their
individual histories in order to place them correctly. In the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, châteaux in France multiplied almost to
infinity, and became habitations in fact.
In reality the middle ages saw two classes of great châteaux go up
almost side by side, the feudal château of the tenth to the fifteenth
centuries, and the frankly residential country houses of the Renaissance
period which came after.
For the real, true history of the feudal châteaux of France, one cannot
do better than follow the hundred and fifty odd pages which
Viollet-le-Duc devoted to the subject in his monumental "_Dictionnaire
Raisonée d'Architecture_."
In the Midi, all the way from the Italian to the Spanish frontiers, are
found the best examples of the feudal châteaux, mere ruins though they
be in many cases. In the extreme north of Normandy, at Les Andelys,
Arques and Falaise, at Pierrefonds and Coucy, these military châteaux
stand prominent too, but mid-France, in the valley of the Loire, in
Touraine especially, is the home of the great Renaissance country house.
The royal châteaux, the city dwellings and the country houses of the
kings have perhaps the most interest for the traveller. Of this class
are Chenonceaux and Amboise, Fontainebleau and St. Germain, and, within
the scope of this book, the paternal château of Henri Quatre at Pau.
It is not alone, however, these royal residences that have the power to
hold one's attention. There are others as great, as beautiful and as
replete with historic events. In this class are the châteaux at Foix, at
Carcassonne, at Lourdes, at Coarraze and a dozen other points in the
Pyrenees, whose architectural splendours are often neglected for the
routine sightseeing sanctioned and demanded by the conventional
tourists.
There are no vestiges of rural habitations in France erected by the
kings of either of the first two races, though it is known that
Chilperic and Clotaire II had residences at Chelles, Compiègne, Nogent,
Villers-Cotterets, and Creil, north of Paris.
The pre-eminent builder of the great fortress châteaux of other days was
Foulques Nerra, and his influence went wide and far. These
establishments were useful and necessary, but they were hardly more than
prison-like strongholds, quite bare of the luxuries which a later
generation came to regard as necessities.
The refinements came in with Louis IX. The artisans and craftsmen became
more and more ingenious and artistic, and the fine tastes and instincts
of the French with respect to architecture soon came to find their equal
expression in furnishings and fitments. Hard, high seats and beds, which
looked as though they had been brought from Rome in Cæsar's time, gave
way to more comfortable chairs and canopied beds, carpets were laid down
where rushes were strewn before, and walls were hung with cloths and
draperies where grim stone and plaster had previously sent a chill down
the backs of lords and ladies. Thus developed the life in French
châteaux from one of simple security and defence, to one of luxurious
ease and appointments.
The sole medium of communication between many of the French provinces,
at least so far as the masses were concerned, was the local _patois_.
All who did not speak it were foreigners, just as are English, Americans
or Germans of to-day. The peoples of the Romance tongue stood in closer
relation, perhaps, than other of the provincials of old, and the men of
the Midi, whether they were Gascons from the valley of the Garonne, or
Provençaux from the Bouches-du-Rhône were against the king and
government as a common enemy.
The feudal lords were a gallant race on the whole; they didn't spend all
their time making war; they played _boules_ and the _jeu-de-paume_, and
held court at their château, where minstrels sang, and knights made
verses for their lady loves, and men and women amused themselves much as
country-house folk do to-day.
The following, extracted from the book of accounts of one of the minor
noblesse of Béarn in the sixteenth century, is intimate and interesting.
The master of this feudal household had a system of bookkeeping which
modern chatelains might adopt with advantage. The items are curiously
disposed.
Francs Sous Deniers
Pot de vinaigre 5 0
Livre de l'huile d'olive 6 0
Sac du sel 30 0
Aux pauvre 30 0
{Pour deux laquais et la mulette 18 0
{Au valet pour boire 1 0
En {À Tarbes pour la couchée de lundi 4 10 0
Voyage {Un relevé pour la mulette 8 2 6
{Un fer pour la mulette 5 0
{Aux nomads 1 10 0
Evidently "la mulette" was a very necessary adjunct and required quite
as much as its master.