sometimes interfered in certain essential modifications necessary to
the fief--modifications that the vassal was incompetent to undertake.
These gave rise to new rights, and became a fresh source of revenue
to the seignior. For instance, the seignior was entitled--first, to
the right of _relief_, a sum of money payable by every person of
full age who succeeded to the possession of a fief, which sum became
larger as the line of succession became less direct; secondly, to the
right of _alienation_, payable by those who sold or alienated
the fief in any way; thirdly, to the rights of _escheat_ and of
_confiscation_, in accordance with which the fief reverted to the
suzerain when the vassal died without leaving an heir, or when, from
some act of his own, he had incurred the penalty of being deprived of
his feudatory rights; fourthly, to the right of _guardianship_, in
virtue of which the seignior, during the minority of his vassals, held
the ward and administration of the fief besides enjoying its revenues;
fifthly, to the right of _marriage_, which consisted in finding
a husband for the female inheritor of a fief; this right gave the
seignior the privilege of forcing her to select one of the suitors that
he chose to present to her.
As long as a vassal scrupulously fulfilled his numerous and delicate
obligations he might consider himself as the absolute master of his
fief, he might partially or entirely sub-feudalise it, and become
in his own turn the suzerain of vassals of an inferior order termed
_vavasseurs_, who were bound to render to him the same obligations
that he himself paid to his own seignior. On the other hand, the
suzerain was bound to respect his contract, not to dispossess his
vassal without a legitimate motive, but to protect him, and to render
him on all occasions substantial justice. It was, moreover, to his
interest to do this, for the prosperity of the fief depended upon the
security and welfare of the vassal.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Act of Faith and Homage, with
the Legend, _Secretum meum mici_ (“My Secret is to
myself”).--Seal of Gérard de Saint-Amand, 1199, National Archives
of France.]
Vassals of the same suzerain, residing in the same territory, and
possessing fiefs of a similar value, were termed _pairs_
(_pares_), or equals. Suzerains of every rank, the king included,
had their _pairs_, and all could claim the privilege of being
tried by these _pairs_ in the presence of his immediate seignior.
If the seignior refused to act justly, and the vassal considered
himself unrighteously condemned, he had the right of making an appeal
in _default of justice_ to the suzerain of his own seignior.
Another right of appeal, that of arms, prevailed also in feudal
society. The nobles, as a rule, preferred to carry out their own
justice rather than await from others a slow and uncertain decision.
This was the cause of there being so many little wars and so many
desperate and bloody struggles between different seigniorships. Might
made right; but custom, nevertheless, to some extent regulated the
formalities that preceded these internecine conflicts, so that the
seignior or the vassal who was to be attacked might be forearmed,
and might put himself upon his guard (Figs. 14 and 15). Further, to
remedy as much as possible the calamities ensuing from these perpetual
contentions, the Church had the power of suspending and preventing
them, under pain of excommunication, from sunset on Wednesday to
sunrise on Monday during the festivals of Lent and Advent, and at all
periods of high religious solemnity. This was the _Peace_ or the
_Truce_ of God.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.--Château de la Panouze (Aveyron), type
of a French Feudal Castle of the Fourteenth Century, of which
remains still exist.--From a Miniature in a Manuscript in the
National Library of Paris.]
The seigniors possessed no right of uniform justice. In France, a
superior, a middle, and an inferior judicial court were recognised.
The first alone possessed the power of life and death. The more
considerable fiefs had usually attached to them the right to exercise
the highest justice, but there were exceptions to this rule. A
_vavasseur_, for instance, might sometimes appeal against this
highest justice, while a seignior, who was only entitled to exercise
the inferior justiciary rights, might inflict death on all robbers
caught _in flagrante delicto_ on his lands.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.--View overlooking the Castle of
Pierrefonds (beginning of the Fifteenth Century), as restored by
M. Viollet-le-Duc, in his “Dictionnaire d’Architecture.”]
The privilege of coining money, always a sure index of sovereignty,
together with the exclusion of all foreign jurisdiction and of all
external authority from the area of each fief, also constituted two
important prerogatives. Finally, the fief, with its privileges, always
remained intact; it passed invariably to the eldest of the family, on
the sole condition of his paying homage to the suzerain.
Most of the churches and abbeys, such as those of Saint-Denis, of
Saint-Martin des Champs, and of Saint-Germain des Prés (Fig. 16), which
proudly reared their towers and spires opposite the Louvre of the kings
of France, exercised on their own account all the feudal rights which
they had acquired by reason of the territorial possessions as well as
by the concessions lavishly ceded to them by their sovereigns. The
archbishops, the bishops, and the abbots thus became temporal lords,
and were consequently forced to have vassals for military service, to
keep up a court of justice, and to support a mint, thus uniting--in the
case of bishops who enjoyed the temporal rank of count--spiritual with
political authority.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.--View of the Abbey of Saint-Germain des
Prés, from the East, as it stood in 1361.--Fac-simile of an
Engraving in the “Histoire de Saint-Germain des Prés,” by Dom
Bouillard: in folio.
A, Road leading to the River Seine; B, St. Peter’s Chapel; C, the
Close; D, Road leading to the Pré-aux Clercs; E, Place of the
Breach; F, Ditch; G, the Pope’s Gate; H, Cloister; I, Refectory;
K, Dormitory; L, the Church; M, Chapel of the Virgin; N, Road
between the Ditch and the Pré-aux-Clercs; O, space between the
Barrier to the Rue des Ciseaux; P, Great Gate of the Monastery;
Q, Road to the River; R, Barrier close to the Ditch; S, the Inn
called the Chapeau Rouge; T, the Pillory.]
This twofold power made the prelate the suzerain of all the seigniors
in his diocese. Towards the end of the tenth century the feudal
ecclesiastics, by reason of the permission granted to laymen to
bequeath their property to the Church, as well as of the strictness
of the laws which forbade the alienation of ecclesiastical property,
possessed a fifth part of all French and English soil, and nearly a
third of Germany; whilst the last surviving Carlovingian could only
claim the town of Laon, where he resided, to such an extent had his
predecessors despoiled themselves of their lands in favour of their
great vassals, who still, however, recognised him as their suzerain.
In the eleventh century Europe was divided into a multitude of fiefs,
each having its own mode of life, its own laws, its own customs, and
its ecclesiastical or lay head, who was as independent as he well
could be. Around these, but under certain conditions of dependence
and of subordination, was developed the much more numerous class
of freedmen. Gradually manual labour and the efforts of a growing
intelligence led to the political existence of the bourgeois, those
worthy representatives of the labouring portion of society. The part
which was taken by the latter was not always of a passive character.
As early as the year 987 the villains of Normandy rebelled and leagued
themselves against their feudal lords, claiming the right of fishing
and of the chase, and the privilege of having an administration and
a magistracy of their own; it was thus that the innate power of the
people revealed itself: the towns and the boroughs were peopled with
inhabitants who held their homes in tenure from the seigniors--who
were the proprietors of the soil--under certain servile obligations as
to the payment of taxes. As soon as the establishment of the hierarchy
of fiefs had put an end to discord and anarchy, the germs of the Great
Revolution--destined to restore civil liberty to the heirs of the
countless inhabitants whom the misfortunes of Gaul and the tyranny of
the emperors had reduced to servitude--began to show themselves. It
was in this wise that the communal movement originated, and the town
of Mans is generally credited with having been the first to set the
example of having, through the agency of the working classes, conspired
against the seignior. We find in the annals of Metz, about the year
1098, record of the election for life of a _maître-échevin_
(high-sheriff), named Millon, in place of one, by name Hennolu-Bertin,
who had been elected for one year, but who, doubtless, was not the
first in his office. And we find an echevinal council, termed the
council of the twelve, enjoying functions at once magisterial,
administrative, and military. Metz possessed at the same time, by the
side of their communal organization, a count of the name of Gerald,
who was succeeded in 1063 by another count named Folmar. It had also
a bishop, rich, powerful, firm, full of learning, named Adalbéron, a
favourite both with the Pope and with the Emperor, influential enough
to obtain anything, but never asking anything but what was just. It
was, therefore, under the protection of the sword of the count and of
the crozier of the bishop that the municipal liberties of Metz began
to grow--liberties that became within a single century so developed
and powerful that Bertram, another bishop of Saxon origin, undertook
the task of restricting them, and endeavoured to regulate them by
a charter which restored to the Church its electoral but not its
governmental influence. This first communal organization, a type of
many other municipalities in France and in Germany, was inaugurated
without bloodshed. But this was not everywhere the case; at Cambrai,
for instance, the commune was only established after a century of open
warfare between the inhabitants and the bishop, their suzerain. At
Laon--that ancient feudal city where the nobility and the burgesses
engaged in all kinds of brigandage, where the bishop, who was a famous
warrior and huntsman, was in the habit of sharing with the dignitaries
of his cathedral and with the aristocracy of the town the fruit of
his exactions--the commune inaugurated itself with the blood of their
bishop, who was assassinated in the midst of a terrible insurrection.
The towns of Amiens, of Beauvais, of Noyon, of Saint-Quentin, of
Sens, of Soissons (Fig. 17), and of Vézelay, underwent nearly the
same vicissitudes that Cambrai and Laon had experienced, and finally
attained, after similar trials, a similar position. Perhaps Cambrai,
of all the French communes, was the most exacting towards the feudal
power that it was trampling under foot. “Ni l’évêque, ni l’Empereur, ne
peuvent mia asseoir ne taxe, ne tribut, et n’en peult issir la malice,
fors que pour la bonne garde et défense de la ville, et ce depuis coq
chantant jusques à la nuit.”[1] No vassal had ever claimed or obtained
more in the exercise of his feudal rights (Fig. 18).
[Illustration: Fig. 17.--Seal of the Commune of Soissons,
representing the Mayor of Soissons, armed at all points, in the
midst of the Sheriffs of the Town (1228).--National Archives of
France.]
The inauguration of the communal system had taken place without a
struggle, and almost without opposition, as a useful and necessary
reform at Metz, at Rheims, in a few midland towns, such as Bourges,
Moulins, Lyons, Périgeux, and in most of the southern cities, such
as Arles, Aigues-Mortes (Fig. 19), Marseilles, Narbonne, Cahors (Fig.
20), Carcassonne (Fig. 21), Nîmes, and Bordeaux. This was explained by
the fact that this independent action of the people had been prepared
by the system adopted by the Franks, who allowed no difference to
exist between the condition of the conquered and of the conquerors.
The rights they might enjoy and the duties they were to perform had
been equally shared amongst all the freedmen of the monarchy without
any distinction as to nationality; the Franks would have feared, had
they acted differently, that they were reserving for the sovereign the
possibility of using the oppressed nations as a weapon to overcome the
conquerors themselves, and that in this way they might be leaving a
loophole through which the monarchy might degenerate into despotism.
[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Thomas of Savoy, Count of Flanders, and
Joan his Wife, grant to the Town of Cambrai the Charter of Peace
made between the Counts of Hainaut and the Chapter of Cambrai in
1240.--Miniature from the “Chroniques de Hainaut,” Manuscript of
the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).]
Beyond the Alps, particularly in Lombardy, under the fostering
action of liberal institutions, commerce and manufactures developed
themselves, particularly at Milan, Pavia, Verona, and Florence; and in
a still higher degree, owing to their position on the sea-board, at
Venice and Genoa. In these rich and prosperous cities the seignorial
nobility and the Church reigned side by side, enjoying a nearly equal
and parallel influence, and when feudalism attempted to absorb them by
its inflexible despotism, the manufacturing and the commercial classes,
selecting as their leaders a few more prominent of the artisans and
some of the most respected of the clergy, allied themselves with the
lesser rural nobles, and, with the assistance of the latter’s vassals,
succeeded in repulsing its crushing yoke. This, however, was not
accomplished without tremendous struggles, nor without painful trials
and heavy sacrifices.
[Illustration: Fig. 19.--Fortified Gate of the Town of
Aigues-Mortes, which Town obtained in 1246 a Communal Charter
(Military Architecture of the Thirteenth Century).]
In the Low Countries, which had always so highly exalted the sentiment
of local patriotism, the struggle of the villains against the nobles,
whether lay or ecclesiastic, differed but little from the struggle
of the towns in the north of France against the seigniors, but it
assumed larger proportions in accordance with the immense resources
of every kind which they had at their disposal. The feudal lord
had his drawbridge, his battlements, and his men-at-arms cased in
iron; but his rebellious vassal could boast on his side, besides the
narrow and winding streets of his stronghold and the number of his
fellow-combatants, many warlike engines and well-made weapons which he
himself had manufactured. When feudalism, in order to crush what it
then termed the populace, summoned to its banner hordes of adventurers
recruited from all parts of the world, it was encountered by
undisciplined levies of armed mechanics and artisans, who issued forth
from Ghent, from Bruges, and from Liége, and not unfrequently returned
victorious.
[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Fortified Bridge, from Valentré to
Cahors (1308).]
[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Plan of the Fortified City of
Carcassonne (Thirteenth Century).]
Beyond the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine, feudalism flourished.
Lofty fortresses, surrounded with a triple moat, everywhere cast
their shadows athwart the land, though the towns enjoyed a full share
of municipal liberty, and were not unfrequently the disinterested
spectators of the terrible struggles that the feudal nobility carried
on between themselves. Nowhere did feudalism display more arrogance or
more barbarity than in Germany, which resembled some vast camp to which
the nobles flocked to meet face to face in desperate combat.
When it came to pass that the industrial and populous towns of Germany
cried out for municipal liberties similar to those enjoyed by the
towns of France, Italy, and the Low Countries, the emperor hastened to
grant and confirm their desires. He did more, he gave them the right
of _immediate appeal_ against the princes of the empire--that
is to say, any towns situated in the territory of any prince were
responsible, not to the latter, but directly and immediately to the
emperor himself, who thus laid for himself the foundations of strong
natural supports in the very heart of the larger fiefs. The towns of
Germany, already rich and flourishing, increased their commerce and
their wealth, thanks to the new position they thus acquired.
The Emperor Henry V. greatly assisted this pacific revolution by
granting privileges to the lower class of citizens and to the artisans,
who up to that time had, according to the spirit of the Roman law,
lived apart from the freedmen and remained at the lowest degree of the
social scale. He relieved them, in particular, from the bondage of a
custom by virtue of which the seignior at their deaths became entitled
to all their personal property, or, at least, enjoyed the power of
claiming everything worth having which they had left behind them.
In many towns Henry V. deprived the bishop of his temporal authority,
and formed the burgesses into companies or guilds according to the
nature of their manual occupation, a custom that was immediately
imitated and adopted in other commercial countries. The bourgeoisie,
organized in this manner into distinct groups, soon elected councils
among themselves, the members of which, under the rule of _senators_,
_prud’hommes_, _bonshommes_, _echevins_, and _jurymen_, began by
assisting the representative of the imperial authority, whether
duke, count, judge, or bishop, and ended by exercising a special and
independent authority of their own, not over the vassals, but over
citizens and commoners.
It will be asked, what then was the commune which had established
itself with more or less effort and sacrifice in the principal parts of
Europe? and further, as the commune had succeeded in one way or another
in establishing itself, what privileges or immunities remained to the
feudal lord, whether clerical or lay? Guilbert de Nogent, the open
adversary of communal institutions, will perhaps give the best answer
to these inquiries: “Those who pay taxes now pay only once a year the
rent they owe to their seignior. If they commit some misdemeanour they
have at the most to pay a fine, the amount of which is legally fixed;
as for the moneys that were wont to be levied from the serfs, they are
now quite exempt from them.” Guilbert de Nogent might have indicated
other victories obtained by the bourgeois, victories that were still
more important in their moral influence, and which sooner or later were
destined to change the face of society. As for the more intelligent
seigniors who better understood their own personal interest, as well
as the logical results of a paternal administration, they attempted
to favour the instinctive movement of the rural populations, who,
to shield themselves from the tyranny, the exactions, and the bad
treatment of their feudal masters, were in the habit of seeking shelter
and protection from some lord more humane or more politic than the
rest, and who used, on the faith of a communal charter, to settle
beside the ramparts of some seignorial manor (Fig. 22), around some
loopholed church, or in the shade of some fortified monastery.
[Illustration: Fig. 22.--Seal of the Lord of Corbeil
(1196).--National Archives of France.]
The seignior in these cases was the gainer of so many able-bodied men,
either artisans or agriculturists, but soldiers in case of need; and he
was the gainer, moreover, in matters of revenue and influence.
It can easily be understood that in those times many charters were
drawn up similar to the following, which is worth quoting as a type:
“I, Henry, Count of Troyes, make known to all present and to come,
that I have established the undermentioned rules for the inhabitants
of my new town (in the neighbourhood of Pont-sur-Seine) between the
bridges of Pugny. Every man inhabiting the said town shall pay every
year twelve deniers and a measure of oats as the price of his dwelling,
and if he desires to hold a portion of land or meadow, he must pay
four deniers yearly for every acre. The houses, vines, and fields
may be sold or alienated at the pleasure of the holder. The men who
reside in the said town shall go neither to the _ost_ (an army
in the field), nor shall they join any expedition unless I myself am
at their head. I hereby allow them, moreover, to have six aldermen to
administer the ordinary business of the town and to assist my provost
in his duties. I have decreed that no seignior, be he knight or other,
shall be allowed to withdraw from the town any of the men inhabitants
for any reason whatsoever, unless such be his own men, or unless he
owe the seignior any arrears of taxes.--Given at Provins, in the year
of the Incarnation, 1175.” This name of _Ville-neuve_, which
is so often found repeated in the charters and deeds of the Middle
Ages, as, for example, Ville-neuve-l’Etang, Ville-neuve-Saint-George,
Ville-neuve-le-Roi, Ville-neuve-lez-Avignon, &c., is evidence of what
was an ordinary event in the twelfth century, namely, the creation of
a free town, enfranchised from its birth, and subject to some small
and insignificant payments to the seignior, and whose inhabitants,
but yesterday serfs or villains, were now proprietors of portions of
the soil, which they might dispose of or bequeath, either by gift or
by testamentary disposition, under the immediate protection of their
nominal seignior.
[Illustration: Fig. 23.--Ferrand of Portugal, Count of Flanders,
made Prisoner at the Battle of Bouvines, and taken to Paris:
“The Clergy and Laity singing Hymns and Songs.”--Fac-simile of
a Miniature in the “Chroniques de Hainaut,” Manuscript of the
Fifteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).]
Some ancient towns of the royal domains of France, such as Paris,
Orleans, Meaux, Senlis, and others, which do not seem to have preserved
the least trace of Roman institutions, always excepting the company
of the _Nautes Parisiennes_, who were the true founders of the
ancient municipality of Paris, were each governed by a provost, who
was the officer and lieutenant of the king, their seignior, and they
further enjoyed certain special liberties and privileges. In 1137,
Louis VII., at the suggestion of his minister, Suger, forbade his
provost and officers to annoy the burgesses in any manner whatsoever,
and fixed the amount of their taxation himself. Ten years later,
the same sovereign abolished the right of mortmain, repressed the
abuses of the fiscal taxes, instituted a judicial system, and greatly
encouraged commerce. It was not as king, but as seignior suzerain,
that Louis VII. acted in this manner. The French, bourgeoisie was
at this time of but recent origin; it had sprung from a triumphant
villanage, and was beginning to form a new branch, from which was to
issue, a few centuries later, the third estate. Legal jurisdiction and
the right of coinage, feudal privileges of which the royal suzerain
had always been very jealous, were favours it then but seldom enjoyed.
Philip-Augustus understood better than his predecessors the interests
of the royal power, for he graciously granted seventy-eight communal
charters; he was rewarded by the effectual assistance the communal
levies afforded him at the battle of Bouvines (1214), when he was
fortunate enough to overthrow the coalition that foreign feudalism
had formed with his rebellious great vassals. He forced the latter to
return to their duty, and one of them, the Count of Flanders, remained
twelve years a prisoner in the principal tower of the Louvre (Fig. 23).
Philip-Augustus had not shrunk from granting a legal constitution to
the bourgeoisie of Paris and the principal towns, in opposition to the
feudal nobility.