revival that we are unconsciously led to imagine an identical progress
in all fields. Unfortunately, what is true of literary culture, of the
religious State, of customs, institutions and statecraft is not true of
communications and commerce. Every great thing that Charlemagne
accomplished was accomplished either by his military strength or by his
alliance with the Church. For that matter, neither the Church nor arms
could overcome the circumstances in virtue of which the Frankish Empire
found itself deprived of foreign markets. It was forced, in fact, to
accommodate itself to a situation which was inevitably prescribed.
History is obliged to recognize that, however brilliant it seems in
other respects, the cycle of Charlemagne, considered from an economic
viewpoint, is a cycle of regression.
The financial organization of the Frankish Empire makes this plain. It
was, indeed, as rudimentary as could be. The poll tax, which the
Merovingians had preserved in imitation of Rome, no longer existed.[38]
The resources of the sovereign consisted only in the revenue from his
demesnes, in the tributes levied on conquered tribes and in the booty
got by war. The market-tolls no longer contributed to the replenishment
of the treasury, thus attesting to the commercial decline of the period.
They were nothing more than a simple extortion brutally levied in kind
on the infrequent merchandise transported by the rivers or along the
roads.[39] The sorry proceeds, which should have served to keep up the
bridges, the docks and the highways, were swallowed up by the
functionaries who collected them. The _missi dominici_, created to
supervise their administration, were impotent in abolishing the abuses
which they proved to exist because the State, unable to pay its agents,
was likewise unable to impose its authority on them. It was obliged to
call on the aristocracy which, thanks to their social status, alone
could give free services. But in so doing it was constrained, for lack
of money, to chose the instruments of power from among the midst of a
group of men whose most evident interest was to diminish that power. The
recruiting of the functionaries from among the aristocracy was the
fundamental vice of the Frankish Empire and the essential cause of its
dissolution, which became so rapid after the death of Charlemagne.
Surely, nothing is more fragile than that State the sovereign of which,
all-powerful in theory, is dependent in fact upon the fidelity of his
independent agents.
The feudal system was in embryo in this contradictory situation. The
Carolingian Empire would have been able to keep going only if it had
possessed, like the Byzantine Empire or the Empire of the Caliphs, a tax
system, a financial control, a fiscal centralization and a treasury
providing for the salary of functionaries, for public works, and for
the maintenance of the army and the navy. The financial impotence which
caused its downfall was a clear demonstration of the impossibility it
encountered of maintaining a political structure on an economic base
which was no longer able to support the load.
That economic base of the State, as of society, was from this time on
the landed proprietor. Just as the Carolingian Empire was an inland
State without foreign markets, so also was it an essentially
agricultural State. The traces of commerce which were still to be found
there were negligible. There was no other property than landed property,
and no other work than rural work. As has already been stated above,
this predominance of agriculture was no new fact. It existed in a very
distinct form in the Roman era and it continued with increasing strength
in the Merovingian era. As early as the close of antiquity, all the West
of Europe was covered with great demesnes belonging to an aristocracy
the members of which bore the title of senators (_senatores_). More and
more, property was disappearing in a transformation into hereditary
tenures, while the old free farmers were themselves undergoing a
transformation into “cultivators” (_coloni_) attached to the soil from
father to son. The Germanic invasions did not noticeably alter this
state of things. We have definitely given up the notion of imagining the
Germanic tribes in the light of a democracy of peasants, all on an equal
footing. Social distinctions were very great among them when they
invaded the Empire. They comprised a minority of the wealthy and a
majority of the poor. The number of slaves and half-free (_liti_) was
considerable.[40]
The arrival of the invaders in the Roman provinces brought with it,
then, no overthrow of the existing order. The newcomers preserved, in
adapting themselves thereto, the status which they found to exist. Many
of the invaders received from the King or acquired by violence or by
marriage, or otherwise, great demesnes which made them the equals of the
“senators.” The landed aristocracy, far from disappearing, was on the
contrary invigorated by new elements.
The disappearance of the small free proprietors continued. It seems, in
fact, that as early as the start of the Carolingian period only a very
small number of them still existed in Gaul. Charlemagne in vain took
measures to safeguard those who were left.[41] The need of protection
inevitably made them turn to the more powerful individuals to whose
patronage they subordinated their persons and their possessions.
Large estates, then, kept on being more and more generally in evidence
after the period of the invasions. The favor which the kings showed the
Church was an additional factor in this development, and the religious
fervor of the aristocracy had the same effect. Monasteries, whose number
multiplied with such remarkable rapidity after the seventh century, were
receiving bountiful gifts of land. Everywhere ecclesiastical demesnes
and lay demesnes were mixed up together, uniting not only cultivated
ground, but woods, heaths and waste-lands.
The organization of these demesnes remained in conformity, in Frankish
Gaul, with what it had been in Roman Gaul. It is clear that this could
not have been otherwise. The Germanic tribes had no motive for, and
were, furthermore, incapable of, substituting a different organization.
It consisted, in its essentials, of classifying all the land in two
groups, subject to two distinct forms of government. The first, the less
extensive, was directly exploited by the proprietor; the second was
divided, under deeds of tenure, among the peasants. Each of the _villae_
of which a demesne was composed comprised both seignorial land (_terra
dominicata_) and censal land, divided in units of cultivation (_mansus_)
held by hereditary right by manants or villeins (_manentes_, _villani_)
in return for the prestation of rents, in money or in kind, and
statute-labor.[42]
As long as urban life and commerce flourished, the great demesnes had a
market for the disposal of their produce. There is no room for doubt
that during all the Merovingian era it was through them that the city
groups were provisioned and that the merchants were supplied. But it
could not help be otherwise when trade disappeared and therewith the
merchant class and the municipal population. The great estates suffered
the same fate as the Frankish Empire. Like it, they lost their markets.
The possibility of selling abroad existed no longer because of the lack
of buyers, and it became useless to continue to produce more than the
indispensable minimum for the subsistence of the men, proprietors or
tenants, living on the estate.
For an economy of exchange was substituted an economy of consumption.
Each demesne, in place of continuing to deal with the outside,
constituted from this time on a little world of its own. It lived by
itself and for itself, in the traditional immobility of a patriarchal
form of government. The ninth century is the golden age of what we have
called the closed domestic economy and which we might call, with more
exactitude, the economy of no markets.[43]
This economy, in which production had no other aim than the sustenance
of the demesnial group and which in consequence was absolutely foreign
to the idea of profit, can not be considered as a natural and
spontaneous phenomenon. It was, on the contrary, merely the result of an
evolution which forced it to take this characteristic form. The great
proprietors did not give up selling the products of their lands of
their own free will; they stopped because they could not do otherwise.
Certainly if commerce had continued to supply them regularly with the
means of disposing of these products abroad, they would not have
neglected to profit thereby. They did not sell because they could not
sell, and they could not sell because markets were wanting. The closed
demesnial organization, which made its appearance at the beginning of
the ninth century, was a phenomenon due to compulsion. That is merely to
say that it was an abnormal phenomenon.
This can be most effectively shown by comparing the picture, which
Carolingian Europe presents, with that of Southern Russia at the same
era.[44]
We know that bands of sea-faring Norsemen, that is to say of
Scandinavians originally from Sweden, established their domination over
the Slavs of the watershed of the Dnieper during the course of the ninth
century. These conquerors, whom the conquered designated by the name of
Russians, naturally had to congregate in groups in order to insure
their safety in the midst of the populations they had subjected.
For this purpose they built fortified inclosures, called _gorods_ in the
Slavic tongue, where they settled with their princes and the images of
their gods. The most ancient Russian cities owe their origin to these
entrenched camps. There were such camps at Smolensk, Suzdal and
Novgorod; the most important and the most civilized was at Kiev, the
prince of which ranked above all the other princes. The subsistence of
the invaders was assured by tributes levied on the native population.
It was therefore possible for the Russians to live off the land, without
seeking abroad to supplement the resources which the country gave them
in abundance. They would have done so, without doubt, and been content
to use the prestations of their subjects if they had found it
impossible, like their contemporaries in Western Europe, to communicate
with the exterior. But the position which they occupied must have early
led them to practise an economy of exchange.
Southern Russia was placed, as a matter of fact, between two regions of
a superior civilization. To the east, beyond the Caspian Sea, extended
the Caliphate of Bagdad; to the south, the Black Sea bathed the coasts
of the Byzantine Empire and pointed the way towards Constantinople. The
barbarians felt at once the effect of these two strong centers of
attraction. To be sure they were in the highest degree energetic,
enterprising and adventurous, but their native qualities only served to
turn circumstances to the best account. Arab merchants, Jews, and
Byzantines were already frequenting the Slavic regions when they took
possession, and showed them the route to follow. They themselves did not
hesitate to plunge along it under the spur of the love of gain, quite as
natural to primitive man as to civilized.
The country they occupied placed at their disposal products particularly
well suited for trade with rich empires accustomed to the refinements of
life. Its immense forests furnished them with a quantity of honey,
precious in those days when sugar was still unknown, and furs,
sumptuousness in which was a requisite, even in southern climes, of
luxurious dress and equipment.
Slaves were easier still to procure and, thanks to the Moslem harems and
the great houses or Byzantine workshops, had a sale as sure as it was
remunerative. Thus as early as the ninth century, while the Empire of
Charlemagne was kept in isolation after the closing of the
Mediterranean, Southern Russia on the contrary was induced to sell her
products in the two great markets which exercised their attraction on
her. The paganism of the Scandinavians of the Dnieper left them free of
the religious scruples which prevented the Christians of the West from
having dealings with the Moslems. Belonging neither to the faith of
Christ nor to that of Mahomet, they only asked to get rich, in dealing
impartially with the adepts of the one or the other.
The importance of the trade which they kept up as much with the Moslem
Empire as with the Greek, is made clear by the extraordinary number of
Arab and Byzantine coins discovered in Russia and which mark, like a
golden compass needle, the direction of the commercial routes.
In the region of Kiev they followed to the south the course of the
Dnieper, to the east the Volga, and to the north the direction marked by
the Western Dvina or the lakes which abut the Gulf of Bothnia.
Information from Jewish or Arab travellers and from Byzantine writers
fortunately supplements the data from archaeological records. It will
suffice here to give a brief résumé of what Constantine Porphyrogenetus
reports in the ninth century.[45] He shows the Russians assembling
their boats at Kiev each year after the ice melts. Their flotilla slowly
descends the Dnieper, whose numerous cataracts present obstacles that
have to be avoided by dragging the barks along the banks. The sea once
reached, they sail before the wind along the coasts towards
Constantinople, the supreme goal of their long and perilous voyage.
There the Russian merchants had a special quarter and made commercial
treaties, the oldest of which dates back to the ninth century,
regulating their relations with the population. Many of them, seduced by
its attractions, settled down there and took service in the Imperial
Guard, as had done, before that time, the Germans in the legions of
Rome.
The City of the Emperors (_Czarograd_) had for the Russians a
fascination the influence of which has lasted across the centuries. It
was from her that they received Christianity (957-1015); it was from her
that they borrowed their art, their writing, the use of money and a good
part of their administrative organization. Nothing more is needed to
demonstrate the rôle played by Byzantine commerce in their social life.
It occupied so essential a place therein that without it their
civilization would remain inexplicable. To be sure, the forms in which
it is found are very primitive, but the important thing is not the forms
of this traffic; it is the effect it had.
Among the Russians of the late Middle Ages it actually determined the
constitution of society. By striking contrast with what has been shown
to be the case with their contemporaries of Carolingian Europe, not only
the importance but the very idea of real estate was unknown to them.
Their notion of wealth comprised only personal property, of which slaves
were the most valuable. They were not interested in land except in so
far as, by their control of it, they were able to appropriate its
products. And if this conception was that of a class of
warrior-conquerors, there is but little doubt that it was held for so
long because these warriors were, at the same time, merchants. We might,
incidentally, add that the concentration of the Russians in the
_gorods_, motivated in the beginning by military necessity, is itself
found to fit in admirably with commercial needs. An organization created
by barbarians for the purpose of keeping conquered populations under the
yoke was well adapted to the sort of life which theirs became after they
gave heed to the economic attraction of Byzantium and Bagdad. Their
example shows that a society does not necessarily have to pass through
an agricultural stage before giving itself over to commerce. Here
commerce appears as an original phenomenon. And if this is so, it is
because the Russians instead of finding themselves isolated from the
outside world like Western Europe were on the contrary pushed or, to use
a better word, _drawn_ into contact with it from the beginning. Out of
this derive the violent contrasts which are disclosed in comparing their
social state with that of the Carolingian Empire: in place of a
demesnial aristocracy, a commercial aristocracy; in place of serfs
attached to the soil, slaves considered as instruments of work; in place
of a population living in the country, a population gathered together in
towns; in place, finally, of a simple economy of consumption, an economy
of exchange and a regular and permanent commercial activity.
That these outstanding contrasts were the result of circumstances which
gave Russia markets while depriving the Carolingian Empire of them,
history clearly demonstrates. The activity of Russian trade was
maintained, indeed, only as long as the routes to Constantinople and
Bagdad remained open before it. It was not fated to withstand the
crisis which the Petchenegs brought about in the eleventh century. The
invasion of these barbarians along the shores of the Caspian and the
Black Seas brought in their train consequences identical to those which
the invasion of Islam in the Mediterranean had had for Western Europe in
the eighth century.
Just as the latter cut the communications between Gaul and the East, the
former cut the communications between Russia and her foreign markets.
And in both quarters, the results of this interruption coincide with a
singular exactitude. In Russia as in Gaul, when means of communication
disappeared and towns were depopulated and the populace forced to find
on the ground the means of their subsistence, a period of agricultural
economy was substituted for a period of commercial economy. Despite the
differences in details, it was the same picture in both cases. The
regions of the South, ruined and troubled by the barbarians, gave way in
importance to the regions of the North. Kiev fell into a decline as
Marseilles had fallen, and the center of the Russian State was removed
to Moscow just as the center of the Frankish State, with the Carolingian
dynasty, had been removed to the watershed of the Rhine. And to end by
making the parallel still more conclusive, there arose, in Russia as in
Gaul, a landed aristocracy, and a demesnial system was organized in
which the impossibility of exporting or of selling forced production to
be limited to the needs of the proprietor and his peasants.
So, in both cases, the same causes produced the same effects. But they
did not produce them at the same date. Russia was living by trade at an
era when the Carolingian Empire knew only the demesnial régime, and she
in turn inaugurated this form of government at the very moment when
Western Europe, having found new markets, broke away from it. We shall
examine further how this break was accomplished. It will suffice for the
moment to have proved, by the example of Russia, the theory that the
economy of the Carolingian era was not the result of an internal
evolution but must be attributed to the closing of the Mediterranean by
Islam.
_Chapter III_
City Origins
An interesting question is whether or not cities existed in the midst of
that essentially agricultural civilization into which Western Europe had
developed in the course of the ninth century. The answer depends on the
meaning given to the word “city.” If by it is meant a locality the
population of which, instead of living by working the soil, devotes
itself to commercial activity, the answer will have to be “No.” The
answer will also be in the negative if we understand by “city” a
community endowed with legal personality and possessing laws and
institutions peculiar to itself. On the other hand, if we think of a
city as a center of administration and as a fortress, it is clear that
the Carolingian period knew nearly as many cities as the centuries which
followed it must have known. That is merely another way of saying that
the cities which were then to be found were without two of the
fundamental attributes of the cities of the Middle Ages and of modern
times--a middle-class population and a communal organization.
Primitive though it may be, every stable society feels the need of
providing its members with centers of assembly, or meeting places.
Observance of religious rites, maintenance of markets, and political and
judicial gatherings necessarily bring about the designation of
localities intended for the assembly of those who wish to or who must
participate therein.
Military needs have a still more positive effect. Populations have to
prepare refuges where will be found momentary protection from the enemy
in case of invasion. War is as old as humanity, and the construction of
fortresses almost as old as war. The first buildings erected by man
seem, indeed, to have been protecting walls. Even today, there is hardly
a barbaric race among whom this tendency is not found and, as far back
as we may go in the past, the situation remains the same. The
_acropoles_ of the Greeks, the _oppida_ of the Etruscans, the Latins,
and the Gauls, the _burgen_ of the Germans, the _gorods_ of the Slavs,
like the _kraals_ of the Negroes of South Africa, were in the beginning
no more than places of assembly and, especially, shelters. Their plan
and their construction depended naturally upon the conformation of the
terrain and upon the building materials at hand. But the general
arrangement of them was everywhere the same. It consisted of a space,
square or circular in shape, surrounded by ramparts made of trunks of
trees, or mud or blocks of stone, protected by a moat and entered by
gates. In short, it was an enclosure. And it is an interesting fact that
the words which in modern English and in modern Russian (_town_ and
_gorod_) designate a city, originally designated an enclosure.
In ordinary times, these enclosures remained empty. The people resorted
to them only on the occasion of religious or civic ceremonies, or when
war constrained them to seek refuge there with their herds. But, little
by little with the march of civilization, their intermittent animation
became a continuous animation. Temples arose; magistrates or chieftains
established their residence; merchants and artisans came to settle. What
first had been only an occasional center of assembly became a city, the
administrative, religious, political and economic center of all the
territory of the tribe whose name it customarily took.
This explains why, in many societies and particularly in classic
antiquity, the political life of the cities was not restricted to the
circumference of their walls. The city, indeed, had been built for the
tribe, and every man in it, whether dwelling within or without the
walls, was equally a citizen thereof. Neither Greece nor Rome knew
anything analogous to the strictly local and particularist bourgeoisie
of the Middle Ages. The life of the city was blended with the national
life. The law of the city was, like the religion itself of the city,
common to all the people whose capital it was and who constituted with
it a single autonomous republic.
The municipal system, then, was identified in antiquity with the
constitutional system. And when Rome extended her dominion over all the
Mediterranean world, she made it the basis of the administrative system
of her Empire. This system withstood, in Western Europe, the Germanic
invasions.[46] Vestigial but thoroughly definite relics of it were still
to be found in Gaul, in Spain, in Africa, and in Italy, long after the
fifth century. Little by little, however, the increasing weakness of
social organization did away with most of its characteristic features.
By the eighth century, neither the _decuriones_, nor the _gesta
municipalia_ nor the _defensor civitatis_ were longer in existence. At
the same time the thrust of Islam in the Mediterranean, in making
impossible the commerce which up to now had still sustained a certain
activity in the cities, condemned them to an inevitable decline. But it
did not condemn them to death. Curtailed and weakened though they were,
they survived. Their social function did not altogether disappear. In
the agricultural social order of the time, they retained in spite of
everything a fundamental importance. It is necessary to take full count
of the rôle they played, in order to understand what was to befall them
later.