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XI.

CHAP. ravages and the exigences of war. All the population naturally and justly desired to be French-not the subjects of England; and, however the valiant efforts of English monarchs and men, together with the dissension between classes and princes of the French, obstructed and adjourned the accomplishment of these desires, they were too strong ever to be definitively overcome. The tendency of these provinces to rebecome French, resembled a tide that had ebbed, but which flowed back with irresistible force. The attempts to oppose it were like the orders of Canute to the ocean, bidding it recede ; and even the glorious Edward experienced, before the laurels of Poitiers had faded, or the ink of the treaty of Bretigny was dry, that France, within its natural boundaries, had become a body national and a body politic, of which it was impossible to sever limb from limb without first crushing the life from out France and the French altogether, a catastrophe not even to be conceived or contemplated, much less accomplished.

493

CHAP. XII.

CHARLES THE FIFTH, OR THE SAGE.

XII.

THE humble attitude and distracted condition of France CHAP. before, and still more after, the treaty of Bretigny, are generally attributed to the victories of the English, and these again to the incapacity of the French monarch and noblesse. Yet John, unlike his English namesake, was a brave soldier and a resolute prince, nor could the noblesse be accused of wanting manly virtue. The truth is, it was the system that broke down. Absolutism and centralisation, or rather the premature attempts at both, were alone to blame for the anarchy, the helplessness and the disgrace, into which the country fell, and for the misery and the peril it endured and incurred.

The effort, at first partially successful, to attract all power to the capital, and vest it in the hands of the King and of his parlement, or court of functionaries, had destroyed all local authority, and abrogated military organisation and strength. It delivered the townsmen and even the rustic classes from the jurisdiction in many cases, perhaps, from the tyranny and oppression of the feudal noblesse. But the royal seneschals and officers, like the prefects of the declining Roman empire, from whom they were derived, however enlightened in the judgment-seat, and vigilant as financiers, were powerless to organise, to discipline, or to command the military manhood of the country.

CHAP.
XII.

Efforts were made to institute a financial system, on a basis different from the feudal, and to raise money upon town-population, and landed-proprietors indiscriminately, wherewith the military as well as the civil exigences of the state might be met. The Statesgeneral were in consequence summoned to sanction and to facilitate the levy. But the abuse made of the royal authority in altering the coin, wasting the revenue, and not providing for the defence of the state, prompted the burgess politicians to imitate their brethren of England, and endeavour to control the royal power. The attempt to achieve such a revolution, not in accordance with the noblesse, but in defiance of the other classes of society, and moreover by the instrumentality of crime, disgusted the nation, and restored the uncontrolled supremacy of the crown, at least in Paris. The noblesse also recovered or retained a large share of power. The hostility of the townsfolk, and the still more inveterate hatred of the peasant displayed in the Jacquerie, alarmed them. The gentry began universally to arm and to fortify, to retain followers, and to exercise once more a feudal or semi-feudal authority over the rustic population, and even over smaller towns.

The collection of the royal ordinances for these years contains a multitude of charters or grants made by local lords, seen and approved of by the king. In previous years, such documents would have run exclusively in the sovereign's name. The first act or clause of these charters is to emancipate the people from serfage, and from corvée. Their labour and their persons are declared free, on the condition of their paying a certain cens, or rent. The male inhabitants. are bound to follow the lord to war, and to perform this duty within the district or for the existence of one day's march without remuneration, being entitled to pay for service more distant or more lengthened.

Here takes place once more that opening for the

produced by a demand
This had been stopped

lower classes to rise, which is
for the peasant's arm in war.
and prevented, when the noble families closed their
ranks against the ignoble, monopolised to themselves
the practice of arms and the defence of the state, and
when they ordained that even wealth should not en-
noble the roturier. The middle class refused to serve
in an inferior rank, and the consequence was, the enlist-
ment of the rabble to form the infantry of the army.
Under such circumstances France was conquered and
trodden down. The kings abandoned raising what
were called armies, but empowered the gentry and
noblesse to raise each what force they could. Hence the
charters of the nobles emancipating their serfs, in order
to form bands of partisans, so at once to repel an
enemy, yet dispense with the costly and destructive
service of the companies of mercenary soldiers.
was it the casualties and requirements of war alone,
which rendered the military service of the peasant so
indispensable and valuable. The mortality of the
population, great during the war, and continued by
ravages and famine, was after the peace undiminished
in consequence of the reappearance of the plague. And
almost all the towns and districts of the kingdom, taxed
in proportion to their number of hearths, represented
these emblems of family existence to be less, often by
one half, than they had been during the reigns of the
Valois.*

The ravages of the English armies and of the mercenary bands must have greatly contributed to make the French peasantry congregate in villages, and to drive them from isolated dwellings or cottages on estates. This forced association of the lower and rustic classes in villages, where their dwellings could not be so contiguous to the field of labour, must have led to the desire

Nor

to be rid of corvée, and at the same
time to the facilities for getting rid
of it by a cens tribute or rent paid
by the little community. At the
same time, what the lords and the
state were anxious to obtain from
the villages was military service.
They had long dispensed with the
arms of the peasant contributors
to the national defence, but now
they were again obliged to have re-

CHAP.

XII.

CHAP.
XIL

The townspeople at the same time profited by the demand for middle and lower class aid. They had already begun to organise their defence, and no longer in hatred, but in alliance with the noblesse. Whilst the king or his lieutenant maintained the executive authority in the larger towns, lesser ones submitted to that of lords, in both cases the sheriffs retaining judicial power, and only applying to the lord for the execution of the sentence. The townsfolk waived political power and even military command, whilst they retained judicial and fiscal freedom. And these liberties being connected with the institution of Provincial Estates, threatened to bring back France from an absolute monarchy to one based upon federalism. These tendencies, retrograde as French writers are apt to call them, were necessitated by the defence of the country. No doubt, they yielded again to the influence of absolutism, as soon as that defence was permanently achieved and secured. But the noblesse at least recovered a vast amount of privileges, which they retained for centuries; and for the moment, that is, in the fourteenth century, they recovered much of that local authority, of which they had been deprived in the thirteenth.

This resumption of influence by the gentry in each

course to it. But this implies the
abolition of serfage, and the raising
of the rustic peasants to all the attri-
butes of freemen. This took place
largely at the time, as the ordon-
nances attest. It has been remarked
how futile were the edicts of previous
kings to emancipate serfs, when there
was no opening for their service in
war, and no capital to enable them
to become tenants in peace. There
were many causes, too, that led the
labourer both to desire to pay rent
instead of service, and be able to pay
it, whilst other simultaneous causes
rendered the lords more anxious to

be paid in money than in labour. The ravages of war and its expenditure, soldiers being paid in coin, rendered provisions and agricultural products dear, and money more plentiful with the peasantry. The gentry at the same time, who all took military service, abandoned many of the residences of their family, and lived in the camp or the suite of princes. Cens, or rent, to them was more desirable than service.

* See, in the Recueil des Ordonnances, the charters given to Busency, to Commines and to Chaigny.

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