introduced by the Franks, was scarcely felt in England. Already, long
before the Norman Conquest, under the Anglo-Saxon rule, many busy
towns, wealthy and populous, such as Canterbury, London, Oxford, and
York, took a share in public affairs, a limited share, it is true,
but one sufficient for their wellbeing and prosperity. The victorious
invasion of William of Normandy, so fatal to the whole country, was
still more so to the large towns, which were compelled to behold
their own material ruin, the sequestration and confiscation of their
property, the dispersion and infeudation of their inhabitants, their
agriculturists and their farmers. Unable any longer to invoke the
protection of an easy-natured sovereign, they were forced to bow
their heads beneath the sway of strangers, lucky adventurers, bold,
exacting, despotic, and cruel men, believing in no faith and obeying
no law, the very dregs of French feudalism. King Henry I., the third
son of William the Conqueror, after many sanguinary struggles, in
which his barons were not found wanting in fealty to him, granted
them the celebrated charter called Magna Charta--usually, though,
erroneously, considered the fundamental origin of English liberties,
which, however, really dated from a prior period; at the same time
(1132) he released the burgesses of London from the lamentable state
of degradation in which they had existed since the Conquest. In the
reign of Henry II.--an administrative and judicial reformer--not in
England alone, but in those parts of Scotland and Ireland which he
had conquered (1154–1182), the inhabitants of many towns acquired the
right to purchase the freehold of the soil they occupied, and to free
themselves from several special taxes by paying a fixed sum to the
feudal lord. Thenceforward arose that haughty bourgeoisie, with which
the barons had soon to reckon, a class which John Lackland favoured
proportionately as he dreaded the continual rebellions of the feudal
seigniors. Twice was Prince Louis, the son of Philip-Augustus, summoned
by the Anglo-Norman barons to cross the channel with an army to force
the English king to fulfil the clauses of the charters he had granted
to his great vassals (1215–1216); on the other hand, the towns and
communes, grown rich and powerful, thanks to the privileges which had
been granted to them as well as to the intelligent activity of their
manufactures, forced the nobles to respect them. The latter no longer
attempted to compel assistance, but solicited it, often even humbly,
so that the communes and the landed aristocracy held an equal position
in the feudal hierarchy. The title of _noble_ and _baron_,
bestowed on the leading citizens of London and the Cinque Ports, raised
the middle-class to a higher position. Indeed, to enable it, already
powerful by its wealth and by its alliances, to become a political
body, it only needed the privilege of sending representatives to
parliament, a privilege which was granted in 1264 to the principal
towns of the kingdom.
[Illustration: Fig. 24.--Philip III., called “the Bold,” in Royal
Costume.--From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Fourteenth
Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).]
In France, about the same period, the industrial and trading
bourgeoisie had seats in the privy council of St. Louis, and, advancing
in letters and science, it gradually obtained possession of all the
chairs at the university. As early as the reign of Philip the Bold
(Fig. 24), it occupied all the higher positions in the judicature, and
hence it assumed a place in the great bailiwicks and parliaments, from
which the feudal nobility did not condescend to oust it, and which,
after a time, enabled it to offer a successful resistance to the abuse
of power on the part of this same nobility, whose authority steadily
diminished. Admitted by Philippe-le-Bel to the general assemblies of
the nation and to the sessions of the states-general, the bourgeoisie
became one of the states, an order of the kingdom, that is, the
_tiers-état_. It absorbed the offices pertaining to the general
administration and to finance, it furnished the lower orders of the
clergy with most of their distinguished representatives, and the
municipalities with the most gifted of their magistrates; it acquired
the right of purchasing offices which carried nobility with them, of
possessing seignorial domains with high and petty justice, and thus
it forced its way like ivy into the crevices of the feudal edifice,
which stone by stone crumbled to pieces. Philippe-le-Bel, surnamed the
_King of the Lawyers_--who helped him in a material degree to
carry out his designs--showed himself, as a natural consequence, the
King of the Commons (_tiers-état_), and the secret enemy of the
Church and the nobility. The latter, valiant and chivalrous, but devoid
of forethought, rushing headlong into every kind of adventure, and
caring only for deeds of daring and warlike achievements, regardless of
their material interests, gradually allowed themselves to be divested
of a considerable part of their domains by the bourgeoisie, who lent
them money upon mortgage, and by the _voués_ or _procureurs_,
who ruined them. The decadence of their wealth dated from the First
Crusade, when they encumbered their estates to pay the expenses of
distant expeditions, which they undertook almost entirely at their own
cost; and when they wished to recover possession of the properties
which they had handed over to some third party, they found them loaded
with fresh debts, which had been contracted during their absence,
and producing but nominal revenues for want of hands to cultivate
the soil. They then were obliged to sell a portion of the property,
and that at a great loss. The only resource remaining was the
concession of their feudal privileges, and in this way the nobility
lost the right of coining money and of exercising justice, while the
sovereigns--Philippe-le-Bel in particular--seconded by the bourgeoisie,
increased their absolute power.
The massacre of more than six thousand chevaliers at Courtray (1302),
by the Flemish militia (Fig. 25), was a heavy blow to the pride of
the generous but reckless nobility of France. It was humiliating to
these lords to find that the villains knew how to wield the arms
which they had been in the habit of making for others; they saw that
they possessed the courage and skill needed to win battles, and that
henceforward they must be reckoned upon as a force able to take the
field as well as formidable when engaged in street riots.
[Illustration: Fig. 25.--Flemish Warrior in the Uniform of the
Van Artevelde Militia: Stone Statue formerly in one of the niches
in the Belfry at Ghent, now in the Ruins of St. Bavon of Ghent
(Fourteenth Century).]
In Germany, the fall of the Hohenstaufen family, formerly Dukes of
Swabia and Franconia, favoured the enfranchisement of towns; all the
cities in these two principalities, hitherto subject to the mediatised
lords, reverted to the emperor, who, without any real power over them,
left them free to establish the franchise and immunities of a republic.
In order to increase their populations, they followed the example of
the sovereigns and feudal lords of France and Lombardy in regard to
the formation of _new towns_, establishing around their walls,
as feudalism had done outside its donjons, fields of refuge. These
were occupied by a host of strangers, who received the designation
of _Pfahlbürger_--citizens of the palisades, or faubourgians,
originally sheltered and protected by a wooden barrier. These receded
in proportion as the number of inhabitants increased, and according
as their trade developed. Many serfs deserted the neighbouring fiefs
to seek in these free towns the independence, position, success, and
all the advantages which they could not enjoy under the feudal régime.
Their lords demanded their extradition by virtue of their feudal
rights, accompanying the demand with threats, which were sometimes
effectual; but the free towns, not less interested in keeping the
fugitive than the latter was in remaining with them, endeavoured to
gain time and to favour his retreat until after the expiration of three
hundred and sixty-five days, when the right of the lord to his liegeman
or vassal ceased.
The imperial towns--which, from the twelfth to the fourteenth century,
after having freed themselves from the fetters of feudalism, had risen
to such a height of independence that the emperor himself had but a
nominal supremacy over them--were Ratisbon, in Bavaria; Augsburg and
Ulm, in Swabia; Nuremberg, Spiers, Worms, and Frankfort-on-the-Main,
in Franconia; Magdeburg, in Saxony; Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck, in the
Hanseatic League; Aix-la-Chapelle, Bonn, Cologne, Coblentz, Mayence,
Strasburg, and Metz, in the Rhenish and Lotharingian provinces.
These towns, essentially industrial and commercial, in which the
middle-classes were for the most part supreme, formed vast emporiums,
teeming with the products of the north, the south, and the east. They
were looked upon as the store-houses and arsenals of Europe. Feudalism,
unable to produce anything for itself, was always replenishing from
these depôts the resources necessary for equipping and revictualling
its armies. From them came the arms and the engines of warfare, as
well as the special workmen, the cross-bowmen, the carpenters, the
founders, and the artillerymen, who composed the _personnel_
of the artillery at this period. If the free towns had arrived at a
common understanding, and formed a pacific league between themselves,
they would have presented a serious obstacle to the struggles of
the suzerain lords; but their distance from each other, especially
those in the centre of Germany, prevented them from coming to such
an arrangement. Nor could they, as in England, form an alliance with
the feudal nobility, nor, as in France, make common cause with the
suzerain. As the emperor left them to act independently, they were
obliged to organize their own defence, to contract alliances with some
powerful neighbour, and weaken, by dividing them, those enemies whom
they deemed stronger than themselves. Thus these free towns never
constituted a homogeneous body; they were isolated and spread over
a vast extent of territory, being only brought together by feelings
of interest and sympathy, but without any mutual tie or political
cohesion. The lord with whom they were at war to-day, would enter
their service and pay the next, with the title of _soldarien_;
and at times a single town would have as many as two or three hundred
of these allies, who were always followed by a swarm of marauders, and
who spread desolation throughout the land. The lords who were without
fortune, who represented the petty feudalism of the country districts,
finding in the service of these towns a means for keeping up their
state and paying their followers, passed from one to the other, and
only enlisted under the standard of a sovereign prince for want of
better employment, for the latter did not as a rule pay so well as
these free towns.
From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the position of the
bishop, in point of political influence, did not improve in these free
or republican towns, either in England, France, or Germany. Suzerain
lord by moral authority, he was only so to a very limited degree
(Fig. 26) in respect to his temporal power. He only exercised justice
over his vassals, or at most over the members of the secular and
inferior clergy, for the canons, the incumbents, and even the deacons,
enjoying as they did special immunities, would have appealed, in the
event of a dispute or of censure, to their metropolitan archbishop,
or even to Rome. It is true that the lay depositaries of municipal
authority did not, on their side, take any judicial steps against
the ecclesiastics, except in case of conspiracy against the State,
which alone rendered them answerable to secular justice. Outside the
subordinates of the bishop and the chapter, the episcopal court or
tribunal took cognizance of the crimes, the offences, and misdemeanours
against religion of which any citizen might be guilty, and also of
the heresies, blasphemies, breaking of images, glaring infractions of
the commandments of God and of the Church, insults and assaults of
the priests, &c. And even in these cases, where the delinquent could
plead nobility, and especially when he belonged to the higher classes
of feudalism, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical tribunals could
not reach him. As the nobility could always claim to be judged by
their peers, there was rarely any infraction of this feudal principle,
and then only where some diocesan bishop or metropolitan was powerful
enough to substitute his own will for the customary right.
[Illustration: Fig. 26.--Seal of John, Bishop of Puy and Count of
Velay (1305), holding in his right hand a naked sword as a token
of secular jurisdiction.]
[Illustration: Fig. 27.--The Tree of Battles: Allegorical Figures
representing the discord which exists between the various classes
of society.--Reproduced from a Miniature of “The Tree of Battles”
of Honoré Bouet, Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian
Library, Brussels).]
In nearly all the episcopal towns, the judgment of the prelate or
of his delegates was delivered from the square in front of the
cathedral, or from the doorway of some exterior and adjacent chapel.
This practice, maintained during the first centuries of the Church’s
existence, ceased when another form of justice, namely, civil justice,
took its place. In order to avoid the conflicts which must have ensued,
and to furnish no pretext for popular disturbance, the ecclesiastical
justice took refuge in some special place, generally called the
_Cour l’éresque_, till at last the diocesan power, deprived of
its temporal prerogatives within the boundary of the free towns, found
itself obliged to transfer somewhere else the seat of its jurisdiction
and of those feudal rights which it still retained. The mint of the
prelate was established there; but so wide was the disagreement between
the ecclesiastical and the civil authorities, and so sustained the
struggle between the feudal and the middle-class interests, that it
often happened that the episcopal money was not accepted as current
coin, even in the town where the bishop was spiritually supreme, nor in
the territory annexed to the free town and enjoying equal prerogatives.
In Germany and in Italy the emperor, in France and England the king,
as the highest representatives of feudalism, possessed in every large
city--notably in the cities termed imperial or royal--an official
delegate, called burgrave, count, or viscount, who, originally at the
head of the army, the magistracy, and the finances, gradually lost his
prerogatives till, in the thirteenth century, he was scarcely more
than a mere dignitary, without either power or credit. Many bishops,
authorised by the lay sovereign, took the title of _count_,
without, however, adding in any material degree to their influence.
Besides, whatever may have been the nature and extent of the functions
of a count, it does not appear that the free towns paid any more heed
to them than to the pre-eminence of the bishop in all that appertained
to the administration and government of the commune. In many places,
especially in Italy and upon the banks of the Moselle and the Rhine,
the bourgeoisie possessed councils invested both with the judicial and
executive power, also a senate and a parliament, which was summoned by
the ringing of a bell, and to which the lords inhabiting the adjacent
castles were admitted, but only as ordinary citizens; without, however,
losing any of their domainial privileges.
Though feudalism possessed nearly the same generic type in all European
countries, it presented here and there varying shades of nationality,
due to the dissimilarity of race, to the habits of the people, to the
different modes in which it had been introduced, and to the diverse
phases of its struggle and growth.
[Illustration: Fig. 28.--Seal of John, Duke of Burgundy, Count
of Nevers and Baron of Donzy, surnamed _Jean sans Peur_
(1371–1419).--National Archives of Paris.]
The illustrious house of Franconia, alarmed at the incessant progress
of high German feudalism, and anxious to check it, created, in
the midst of the duchies by which it was threatened, a number of
_immediate_ lordships, owing fealty only to the emperor, and
having an hereditary right over the _fiefs of chivalry_. This step
met with an obstinate resistance from the great vassals who possessed
this hereditary right, which the elected monarch did not enjoy of
himself. On the other hand, the palatine lords, agents of the emperor,
and empowered to represent him in the great fiefs or in his domains,
and the burgraves of the towns, impatient to free themselves from the
imperial suzerainty, displayed at the same time the insubordination
which the leudes had practised in the Carlovingian epoch, and
endeavoured to establish for themselves an independence transmissible
to their heirs. While this movement was going on, the Pope was lowering
the status of the empire; Innocent II. compelled the Emperor Lothair
II. to receive in fee from him Tuscany, the Duchy of Spoleta, the
Marches of Ancona, Bologna, Parma, Placenza, &c., forming part of the
legacy bequeathed to the Holy See by the Countess Matilda. From this
flagrant humiliation, submitted to by Conrad of Hohenstaufen, the
successor of Lothair, and haughtily rejected by Henry the Haughty when
he refused to render feudal homage to the Pope, arose the celebrated
quarrel of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, which, from the banks of
the Rhine, spread beyond the Alps, and implanted itself in the very
heart of Italy. Henry the Haughty, chief of the Guelphs, independent
and royal, was proscribed and stripped of his duchies, while Conrad,
chief of the Ghibellines, inaugurated the brilliant dynasty of the
Hohenstaufens. Thirty years of bitter warfare, during which the
alliance of the papacy with the national party was cemented, seconded
by the efforts of petty feudalism, led up to the treaty of Constance,
which brought to a definite close the struggle of the feudal empire
against the popular independence of the cities of Italy. The Pope had
recovered the freeholds left him by the Countess Matilda; the towns
preserved their regal prerogatives, entire liberty to raise armies,
to surround themselves with walls (Fig. 29), to exercise criminal and
civil jurisdiction, and to form confederations with other towns, &c.
The emperor was left with no other privileges than those of confirming,
through his ambassadors, the consular elections, and of appointing
in each town a judge of appeal in his name. It was in vain that the
Emperor Henry VI. endeavoured to re-establish high feudalism; he died
in the attempt (1199), and Innocent III., who considered himself to be
the natural defender of all the rights and the supreme judge in all the
monarchies in Europe, resisted every effort made by Henry VI. Several
Crusades, moreover, which occurred at about this period, created a
modification in the warlike sentiments of the feudal nobility, until,
thanks to the policy of the illustrious pontiffs who had occupied the
chair of St. Peter, and to the efforts of the Italian free towns,
backed up by the petty feudal nobility, the independence of Italy rose
triumphant from the tomb which opened for the Emperor Frederick II. on
December 13th, 1250.
In England, John Lackland had, by the Magna Charta of 1215–1216,
promised the clergy to respect the liberties of the Church, and notably
the freedom of election; to the feudal lords he had promised to observe
the feudal conditions of release, of ward, and of marriage; to the
bourgeois, that no new tax should be levied without the consent of the
common council; and to all his subjects he accorded the _habeas
corpus_--that is to say, the liberty of the person, with trial by
jury, by constituting the court of common pleas at a certain fixed
place. A second charter, called the _Forest Charter_, mitigated
the extreme severity of the penalties for infraction of the laws
appertaining to the chase, and guaranteed the whole of the liberties
which had been extracted from him by creating a tribunal of twenty-five
barons, entrusted with the function of seeing that this charter
was carried out, and, further, of keeping watch over the action of
the crown. This was submitting the Government to a regular course
of discipline. Just as the feudal nobility had been kept under and
oppressed by the sovereign power, so was the latter now hedged in,
thwarted, and hampered in its despotic tendencies.
[Illustration: Fig. 29.--The fortified Bridge of Lamentano,
near Rome, theatre of the wars between the Guelphs and the
Ghibellines, in the Twelfth Century.]
St. Louis, following in the footsteps of Philip Augustus, laboured
to suppress the abuses of the feudal régime; he compelled his barons
to choose between the fiefs which they held from him and those which
they had received from the kings of England; he rooted out the old
feudal stocks, created a new feudalism, not less valiant but more moral
than the old, and never lost sight of the formidable opposition which
the old nobility had ventured to set up against the Queen-Regent,
Blanche of Castile, when it declared that the young King Louis should
not be consecrated until the suzerain aristocracy was restored to
the plenitude of its privileges. After Louis IX., French feudalism,
transformed by the saint-king, was neither less haughty, less trivial,
nor less insolent than before, but it was more favourable to the
crown and less hostile to the Church. It formed a brilliant array of
chivalry, full of enthusiasm and impetuosity, commencing a battle
well, always winning it at the very beginning of the action, but
losing it afterwards for want of being supported by a national body
of infantry, whose help it despised; it made up a body of cavalry
admirably adapted for tournaments and feats of arms, but incapable
of carrying on a regular warfare, or even of ensuring success in a
great battle. The victories of Mons-en-Puelle, under Philip IV., and
of Cassel, under Philip of Valois (1328), increased to the utmost
the blind confidence of the French nobility, and brought about, by
absolutely identical means, the disasters of Crecy, Poitiers, and
Agincourt (1346, 1356, 1415).
From the events which took place during the space of a century, from
the accession to the imperial throne of the Emperor Louis V. (1313) to
the Peace of Brétigny (1360), it was made manifest that the destinies
of the feudal world rested henceforth upon France and England, those
two rival powers, both of which were acquisitive and inflexible; that
the Emperor and the Pope occupied but the second place in this latest
evolution of feudalism; that Rome, compelled to bend towards France,
gave the latter a considerable preponderance, and that the force of
equilibrium must inevitably bring together the King of England and the
Emperor of Germany. The French royalty, despite the vicissitudes caused
by an incessant struggle against the English, despite the ravages of
the plague, which had depopulated two-thirds of the kingdom, despite
its financial burdens and the precarious position of the monarchy,
continued its work of assimilation and feudal incorporation; the
suzerainty attaching to the great fiefs gradually fell under the
jurisdiction of the sovereign, while, upon the right bank of the Rhine,
the great barons remained almost as omnipotent as ever they had been.