1 \%1S CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Date Due D7.F85We U r. iV i r |^ Lfbr ^ llllK?iiii cal essa y s 3 1924 028 068 918 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028068918 HISTOEICAL ESSAYS. HISTOBICAL ESSAYS. EDWAED A. FEEEMAN, M.A., Hon. D.C.L. & LL.D., LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. " Gallorum levitas Germanos justificdbit ; Italise gravitas Gallos eonfusa necabit ; Succumbet Gallus, ajuilm victricia regno, Mundus adorabit, erit urbs vix prsemle digna. ******* Papa cito moritur, Osesar regndbit ubique, Sub quo tune vana cesmbit gloria cleri." Peter Langtoft, ii. 450. FIRST SERIES.-TH1RD EDITION. MAOMILLAN AND CO. 1875. \Tke Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved."] A.2ir j/tORNELL UNiVERSITYjj ^LIBRARY -" O LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAHFORD STREET AND CHARTNG CROSS. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. In preparing this second edition for the press, I have made a few verbal improvements and added two or three notes bearing on matters still more recent than the first appear- ance of the volume. Otherwise the book is unchanged. I trust in the course of the present year to bring out another collection of essays of the same kind, but bearing on other parts of history. Somerleaze, Wells, February 5th, 1872. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. The following essays have been chosen out of a much larger number which h aTe appeared in various periodical works. The principle on which they were chosen was that of selecting papers which referred to comparatively modern times, or, at least, to the existing states and nations of Europe. It is by a sort of accident that a large number of the pieces chosen have thrown themselves into something like a continuous series bearing on the historical causes of the great events of the last and the present year. In revising the essays, I have commonly let passages referring to the state of European politics ten or fifteen years back stand as they were written at first, merely adding a note whenever a note seemed to be called for. I have done the same whenever change of cir- cumstances or increase of knowledge on my own part has led me to change my views on any point. But whenever I could gain in accuracy of statement or in force or clearness of ex- VI PREFACE. pression, I have freely changed, added to, or left out, what I wrote in the first instance. To many of the essays I have added a short notice of the circumstances under which they were written. I have to thank Messrs. Longman for allowing me to re- print the essay which stands second in the series, the only one among several contributions of mine to the Edinburgh Review which seemed to come within the scope of the present volume. I have also to thank the publishers and editors of the Fortnightly, British Quarterly, North British, and National Reviews for leave to reprint the articles which appeared in their pages. It is much to be regretted that two of the Reviews which I have just mentioned have now to be reckoned among things of the past. If the present venture should prove successful, I hope that it may be followed by a further selection from among my smaller writings, whether from among essays of the same class as those now reprinted, but bearing on earlier periods of history, or from among smaller pieces on various subjects not always strictly historical. Somerleaze, Wells, August 9th, 1871. CONTENTS. The Mythical and Eomantio Elements in Eablt English History {Fortnightly Review, May 1866) . . . . . . 1 The Continuity of English Histoby (Edinburgh Review, July 1860) 40 The Eelations between the Crowns op England and Scotland (Fortnightly Review, June 1867) . . .. .. .. .. 53 Saint Thomas op Canterbury and his Biogbaphebs (National Review, April 1860) 79 The Eeign op Edwabd the Third (Fortnightly Review, May 1869) 114 The Holy Soman Empire (North British Review, March 1865) . . 12(3 The Pranks and the Gauls (National Review, October 1860) . . 161 The Eably Sieges of Paris (British Quarterly Review, January 1871) 207 Frederick the First, King op Italy (National Review, January 1861) 252 The Emperor Frederick the Second (North British Review, December 1866) 28S Charles the Bold (National Review, April 1864, and Fortnightly Review, October 1868) 314 Presidential Government (National Review, November 1864) . . 37S HISTOKICAL ESSAYS. i. THE MYTHICAL AND EOMANTIC ELEMENTS IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. I DO not intend in the present Essay to enter into any full examination of the nature of mythical narratives, or syste- matically to compare those which we meet with in early English history with those which we meet with in the early history of other nations. The origin of mythical narratives in general, and the relation of the myths of one nation to those of others, is an important and fascinating subject, and one which has lately been zealously taken up by a special school of inquirers. The doctrine of the comparative mythologists traces the myths of at least all Aryan nations to a certain common stock of sayings, expressive of the chief phsenomena of nature. These sayings, set forth in the simple poetical language of an early age, have gradually grown into narra- tives of the adventures of personal beings. Zeus, for in- stance, is the Sky, Apollo the Sun, and the legends of Zeus and Apollo resolve themselves into poetical descriptions of those processes of nature in which the sky and the sun are concerned. This view must not be confounded with that of an earlier school of mythologists, who saw in the Grecian legends a system of physical truths set forth under the veil of allegory. The comparative school admits of nothing like conscious alle- gory. In the view of its followers the physical truth grows into the mythical story by a process perfectly gradual and unconscious. The doctrine is new and fascinating, and, as {S b 2 THE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Essay put forth by Professor Max Miiller and by Mr. G. W. Cox, it is in the highest degree capable of poetical treatment. But I must confess that I can as yet accept it only in a modified form. I must make a distinction between legends of the Gods and legends of the Heroes— between myths which are gwsi-theological and myths which are quasi- historical. I can fully believe that Zeus is the Sky and that Demeter is the Earth, and that the legends of Zeus and Demeter arose from poetical statements of physical phse- nomena relating to the sky and the earth. But I confess that I have some difficulty in accepting the doctrine that the mythical histories of Herakles, of Meleagros, of Paris, of Achilleus, and of Odysseus, are all of them mythical ways of describing the daily course of the sun. The idea is most ingenious, and the way in which it is carried out is, in many of its details, not only ingenious, but highly beautiful. But I confess that I am as yet only half a believer. Perhaps I am under the influence of a dread that, if Achilleus and Odys- seus are ruled to be the sun, later heroes of mythology and romance, Arthur and Hengest and Cerdic and the Great Karl himself, may some day be found out to be the sun also. The fear is natural on the part of one who does not scruple to confess that he sees a certain historical element alike in Hellenic and in Teutonic legend. Yet I am told that the fear is an unreasonable one, inasmuch as the two views are really not inconsistent. I am given to understand that Achilleus may be the sun, and yet that I may see, if I please, in Achilleus' conquest of Lesbos a fragment, however exag- gerated and distorted, of the real primitive tradition of the Hellenic conquest of the land which that conquest turned into Aiolis. Nay, I believe it is allowed that, if the Charle- magne of romance should also turn out to be the sun, the position of the historical Emperor Karl will be in no way damaged by the discovery. I mention all this only to show why I do not feel called on to enter into any scientific explanation of such mythical stories as I have here to deal with. I leave them to in- L] IN EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 3 quirers of another class, and I shall be well pleased if I find that my line of inquiry, though wholly different, is held by them not to be necessarily inconsistent with their own. But' when I say that I recognize a certain historical element in the myths, I wish especially to guard against a probable misconception. I have as little sympathy with the old pragmatizing or Euhemeristic school of mythological inter- pretation as the comparative mythologists have with the old physical school. The pragmatizers take a mythical story ; they strip it by an arbitrary process of whatever seems im- possible ; they explain or allegorize miraculous details ; and having thus obtained something which possibly may have happened, they give it out as something which actually did happen. This system has been thoroughly rooted up by Mr. Grote. It will never do to take the tale of Troy, to leave out all intervention of the Gods, and to give out the remnant as a piece of real Grecian history. It will never do, as Thu- cydides did, to piece out whatever seems unlikely by possible, but perfectly arbitrary, conjectures of our own. And yet I cannot but think that Mr. Grote goes too far in censuring all attempts to extract a certain amount of historical truth from the Trojan legend, or from any other legend. I will explain my notions on this head a little more fully. But to do so, I must first explain the nature of what I understand by romantic as distinguished from mythical narratives. I divide then the statements contained in our early English history, or in any other history which may be chosen for our illustrations, into four classes — historical, romantic, traditional, and mythical. Of these I look on the mythical statements as standing to the traditional in the same relation in which the romantic statements stand to the historical. I shall therefore first inquire into the relation of these last two classes to one another, and then, arguing from the known to the unknown attempt topoint out more briefly the light which these rela- tions cast on the obscurer relation between traditional and mythical statements. By historical statements I mean those which we accept as b 2 4 TEE MYTHICAL AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS [Esbay undoubtedly true, as resting on contemporary or other suf- ficient evidence : say, that Eadward the Elder died in the year 925, and that iEthelstan his son was chosen King in his stead. Or perhaps the words " undoubtedly true " may be too strong ; for we often meet with statements which we must set down as historical, which ne nevertheless receive with a certain hesitation, as resting on a mere balance of evidence. Owing to the natural imperfection of all human testimony, owing to unavoidable errors, to men's different ways of looking at things, to the way in which statements are, sometimes wilfully, some- times unconsciously, coloured by party spirit or other interested feelings — owing to all these causes, we often find contradictory statements of facts, between which we have to judge as we best can, but where there is nothing mythical or romantic about either version. Thus, in the whole career of Godwine and Harold, we have to pick our way between the opposite statements of friends and enemies. Both versions cannot be true ; but the version which we reject is not myth or romance, but mistake or calumny, as may happen. The true statement is historical — the false one we may call pseudo-historical; it assumes the form of history, and it is put forth in the hope and belief that it will be accepted as true. Such misstate- ments are, in a later stage, often adorned with romantic details — such, for instance, as we shall presently find in the legend of the death of Godwine — but in their original state they are not romance, but history misconceived or misrepresented. I , By romantic statements I understand stories about historical persons, which we set aside, sometimes as merely doubtful, sometimes as positively untrue, by other tests than those by which we distinguish historical from j?se« only inasmuch as an independent branch of the Scottish royal family reigned in one part of it. All south-western Scotland, with much of what is now north- western England, formed the Kingdom of the Strathclyde Welsh. Over this kingdom, from an early date in the tenth century, Kings of the Scottish family reigned, but it formed a purely distinct state, independent equally of the King of Scots and of the King of the West-Saxons. The south- eastern part of modern Scotland, Lothian in the wide sense of the word, was simply part of Northumberland, that great region which, sometimes under one King, sometimes under two or more, stretched from the Humber to the Forth. Lothian was therefore, then as now, a strictly Teutonic country, inhabited by a population mainly Anglian, and speaking, then as now, the Northumbrian dialect of English. In the language of the Scots, the land was Saxony and its people Saxons. An inroad into Saxony was a favourite exploit of the Scottish Kings, and they had already begun to look with wistful eyes on the northern bulwark of Saxony, 62 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN TEE CROWNS [Essay service, the lord promises faithful protection. The holding of land by military or other service is not an essential or original part of the relation, but it gradually and easily came to be ingrafted upon it. Such land might be an ori- ginal grant from the lord, held by his man on such terms as they might agree upon ; or it might be the man's own allodial holding, which he surrendered to the lord, and received back to be held of him in fief. Out of these simple elements gradually grew up that elaborate feudal jurisprudence which had reached its perfection in the thirteenth century, but which was certainly not known in the tenth. But, even within the tenth century, the different relations of Scotland proper and Strathclyde mark the advance in the strictly feudal direction. The King of Scots, and all the people of Scots, chose Eadward the Elder to father and to lord. The motive was obvious : Eadward was powerful, and was clearly aiming at the conquest of the whole island. It was good policy to meet him half-way ; it was also good policy, and something more, for all the Christian states of the island to unite against their heathen invaders. Such an union could not be effectually made except under West-Saxon leadership. The position of Wessex in Britain then was really not unlike that of Prussia in Germany just now.* By a great national act the King and the people of the Scots commended thenv- selves to the West-Saxon King, exactly as numberless states on the Continent found it expedient to commend themselves to the Emperor, or as the Duke of the Normans commended himself to. the Duke of the French. There was nothing strange or degrading in the relation ; it was the relation in which, in theory, all other princes stood to the Emperor. But the commendation of the Scottish King and people certainly did not make Scotland a territorial fief; still less did it bring with it any of the feudal incidents which were invented long after. In the course of the controversy it was *■« ["IT'' ° f 187 °- 1871 > specially the assumption of the Imperial title by the Prussian King-the Bretwalda of Oermany-have made the likeness still closer.] III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 63 argued that the English King could have no superior rights over Scotland, because Scotland was confessedly not liable to certain feudal incidents. The true answer would have been that the superiority dated from a time older than the feudal jurisprudence, from a time when any incidents of the kind were as yet unknown. Scotland proper then — the Irish land north of the firths — was connected with the English King (or, in this relation we should rather say the English Emperor) by a tie of purely personal commendation. Strathclyde, on the other hand, was an early case of a real territorial fief. Eadmund con- quered Strathclyde ; he might of course have incorporated it with his own kingdom. Instead of so doing, he granted the land to Malcolm on condition of military service by sea and by land. Here we have a real fief, though of course all the niceties and intricacies of feudal law are not to be applied to the case. The vassalage of part of Strathclyde, namely of the modern county of Cumberland, is Dot denied by any Scottish writer. Indeed, Scottish writers seem rather inclined to exaggerate* the feudal position of Cumberland, as affording a means of escape from the fact of any superiority over Scotland itself. Every instance of homage is thus con- veniently represented as being done for lands within the modern limits of England. Strathclyde then was a territorial fief, but not a territorial fief within the Kingdom of England. But Lothian was an integral part of England. Jedburgh was as much a North- umbrian town as York. Unluckily the cession of Lothian is, as to its date and circumstances, a difficult and disputed point ; there is no contemporary account of this transaction, such as there is of the other two. But it is hardly possible to doubt that the King of Scots must have been intended to be, with regard to Lothian, strictly an English Earl, just as he" was in later times for other lands within the later English frontier. The three countries which make up modern Scotland were thus brought into a close political connexion with one 62 THE BULATIONS BETWEEN TBI! CBOWNS [Essay service, the lord promises faithful protection. The holding of land by military or other service is not an essential or original part of the relation, but it gradually and easily came to be ingrafted upon it. Such land might be an ori- ginal grant from the lord, held by his man on such terms as they might agree upon ; or it might be the man's own allodial holding, -which he surrendered to the lord, and received back to be held of him in fief. Out of these simple elements gradually grew up that elaborate feudal jurisprudence which had reached its perfection in the thirteenth century, but which was certainly not known in the tenth. But, even within the tenth century, the different relations of Scotland proper and Strathclyde mark the advance in the strictly feudal direction. The King of Scots, and all the people of Scots, chose Eadward the Elder to father and to lord. The motive was obvious : Eadward was powerful, and was clearly aiming at the conquest of the whole island. It was good policy to meet him half-way ; it was also good policy, and something more, for all the Christian states of the island to unite against their heathen invaders. Such an union could not be effectually made except under West-Saxon leadership. The position of Wessex in Britain then was really not unlike that of Prussia in Germany just now.* By a great national act the King and the people of the Scots commended them- selves to the West-Saxon King, exactly as numberless states on the Continent found it expedient to commend themselves to the Emperor, or as the Duke of the Normans commended himself to . the Duke of the French. There Was nothing strange or degrading in the relation ; it was the relation in which, in theory, all other princes stood to the Emperor. But the commendation of the Scottish King and people certainly did not make Scotland a territorial fief ; still less did it bring with it any of the feudal incidents which were invented long after. In the course of the controversy it was * [The events of 1870-1871, especially the assumption of the Imperial title by the Prussian King— the Bretwalda of Germany— have made the likeness still closer.] III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 63 argued that the English King could have no superior rights over Scotland, because Scotland was confessedly not liable to certain feudal incidents. The true answer would have been that the superiority dated from a time older than the feudal jurisprudence, from a time when any incidents of the kind were as yet unknown. Scotland proper then — the Irish land north of the firths — was connected with the English King (or, in this relation we should rather say the English Emperor) by a tie of purely personal commendation. Strathclyde, on the other hand, was an early case of a real territorial fief.' Eadmund con- quered Strathclyde ; he might of course have incorporated it with his own kingdom. Instead of so doing, he granted the land to Malcolm on condition of military service by sea and by land. Here we have a real fief, though of course all the niceties and intricacies of feudal law are not to be applied to the case. The vassalage of part of Strathclyde, namely of the modern county of Cumberland, is not denied by any Scottish writer. Indeed, Scottish writers seem rather inclined to exaggerate the feudal position of Cumberland, as affording a means of escape from the fact of any superiority over Scotland itself. Every instance of homage is thus con- veniently represented as being done for lands within the modern limits of England. . Strathclyde then was a territorial fief, but not a territorial fief within the Kingdom of England. But Lothian was an integral part of England. Jedburgh was as much a North- umbrian town as York. Unluckily the cession of Lothian is, as to its date and circumstances, a difficult and disputed point ; there is no contemporary account of this transaction, such as there is of the other two. But it is hardly possible to doubt that the King of Scots must have been intended to be, with regard to Lothian, strictly an English Earl, just as he" was in later times for other lands within the later English frontier. The three countries which make up modern Scotland were thus brought into a close political connexion with one 64 TfJE RELATIONS BETWEEN TEE CROWNS [Essay another, while at the same time they stood in three distinct relations to the Imperial Crown of England. It followed naturally that the three should draw closer together, and that the original difference in the three tenures should come to be forgotten on both sides. The Scottish Kings soon learned that English Lothian was by far the most valuable part of their dominions. They gradually identified them- selves with their English territories, and they endeavoured to spread English culture over the rest of their possessions; As early as the reign of Macbeth they welcomed settlers from England and exiles from England, of whatever kind ; native Englishmen dispossessed by the Conqueror, Norman settlers in England dissatisfied with him or his successors, all found a munificent welcome beyond the Tweed. The marriage of Malcom and Margaret was the great turning-point. The Kings of Scots, from that time, became essentially English princes, and that just at the very moment when French princes were beginning to reign in England itself. English Lothian, and so much of their other territories as they suc- ceeded in Anglicizing, became the real Kingdom of Scot- land. The true Scots were in a manner forsaken by their own princes ; they gradually came to be looked on simply as troublesome savages, whom the new English Kings of Scots had much ado to keep in any sort of submission. Thus the English subjects of the King of Scots gradually came to be called Scots, and their land Scotland. A part of England, in short, got detached from the rest under the name of Scot- land, and held the true Scotland beyond it in a somewhat unwilling connexion. And so long as the Kings of southern England were French, so long as the court language of England was French while that of Scotland was English, the King of Scotland's dominions were in very truth far more English than England itself. Thus the Scottish Kingdom gradually formed itself. Under such circumstances it was impossible that the different tenures by which the three parts of the dominions of the King of Scots were held should long be remembered. As the feudal HI.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 65 jurisprudence developed, all of them became obsolete and almost unintelligible. That Scotland was held by personal commendation — that Strathclyde was a territorial fief, but a fief too old to be burthened with aids or wardship or marriage — that Lothian was in strictness an English Earldom — were distinctions which naturally passed out of mind. Gradually there came to be no apparent alternatives except strict feudal tenure, as feudal tenure came to be understood, and the entire absence of subjection of any sort. The subjection of Scotland to the Imperial Crown of Britain was an historical fact ; there was therefore a temptation on the English side to argue that Scotland was an ordinary fief, differing only in extent and dignity from any English Earldom. On the other hand, it was equally an historical fact that Scotland had never been subject to the burthens incident to an ordinary fief; there was therefore a temptation on the Scottish side to deny that Scotland owed any kind of subjection whatever. In an age when the developed feudal jurisprudence was familiar to both sides, it was almost impossible that either side should cleave to the ancient precedents of the tenth century. It was in the nature of things that the lord should claim more that the " man " should offer less, than those ancient prece- dents dictated. More and less, that is, as regards Scotland and Strathclyde; as regards Lothian, an integral part of England, it is clear that the English Kings claimed less than their ancient right. Add to this that, except under some special circumstances, the fear of Danish invasions or the like, any sort of subjection would, from the days of the first commendation onwards, be galling to the Scottish King and his people. The homage due to the Emperor of Britain would never be very willingly paid. It would be paid when England was strong and Scotland weak ; when England was weak it would be refused, perhaps not demanded. Homage for Scotland proper was paid to Eadgar, to Cnut,.to Eadward, to William ; it does not appear that it was ever paid to the feeble iEthelred. Then, in later times, the homage due for the different parts of what had become the Kingdom of Scotland 66 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE OS OWNS [Essay got mixed up with various other questions. The Kings of Scots undoubtedly held territories within the later borders of England, both royalties and private estates, for which nobody doubted that homage was as fully due from them as from any English noble. Whenever a King of Scots did homage, it was always possible to raise the question whether the homage was done for the Kingdom of Scotland, or only for lands held in England. In many cases it might be convenient alike to lord and vassal to allow so delicate a question to remain unsettled either way. Then Henry the Second imposed con- ditions on his captive William the Lion which undoubtedly went far beyond all earlier precedent. Eichard the First released Scotland from these special and novel burthens ; did he or did he not, also release her from all subjection of every kind? Here then were abundant materials for a never- ending controversy, a controversy in which, if right consisted in adherence to precedents which were no longer understood, it is quite certain that neither side could ever be exactly in the right. Here were questions perpetually arising which did not admit of any satisfactory settlement, questions which at different times were sure to be answered in different ways and under different circumstances. When a weak King of England was troubled with every sort of domestic difficulties at home, while a national and popular dynasty filled the throne of Scotland, it was not likely that the English claim could be very effectually pressed. Things changed when England was ruled by the greatest King of his age, by well nigh the greatest English King of any age, and when a crowd of competitors for the Scottish Crown were eager to lay their contending claims at his feet. The claim which was then put forward by Edward the First was, as I before said, a claim which he had fair grounds for putting forward, but which the other side had fair grounds for contesting. It was easy to prove that Scotland owed some subjection to England; it was equally easy to prove that Scotland did not owe the subjection of an ordinary English fief. Vulgar and ill-informed Scottish writers always III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 67 seize the opportunity for hurling every sort of abuse at Edward, seemingly for bringing forward his claims at all. Better-informed and more candid writers on the same side, who know the facts and who make no attempt to disguise them, are satisfied with charging him with ungenerous and unchivalrous conduct. This lack of generosity and chivalry on Edward's part seems to have consisted in his being states- man enough to see an advantage and to make use of it. But I would ask whether Kings and Governments even now com- monly show much of chivalry or generosity to one another, or whether it is to be reasonably expected that they should show much of such feelings ? An angel on earth, like Saint Lewis, may act otherwise ; from ordinary human Kings, Pre- sidents, or Prime Ministers it is enough to expect that they do not, in any time or place, put forth claims which are pal- pably dishonest. If a claim have any fair ground to go upon, to put it forth in the form, the time, the place, in which it can be pressed with most effect, is generally held to be a mere question of policy. He who chooses the worst time for such a purpose, instead of the best, may possibly show chivalry or generosity ; but no statesman, whether of the thirteenth or of the nineteenth century, will speak highly of his wisdom. Edward then, I hold, had a fair case — such a case, I mean, as would justify an honest man in putting forth an ordinary claim in an ordinary court of law. He claimed an ancient right of his crown, which his predecessors had exercised whenever they could : he claimed it in the only shape which the claim was likely to take in his days. If in some points he claimed more, in other points he claimed less, than ancient precedents would have given him. In reading the lengthy pleadings in the great suit before the Lord Superior two things constantly strike us. As a rule, the whole matter had reduced itself to a question whether the land north of the Tweed, looked at as a whole, was or was not a fief of England. But ever and anon we are struck with various signs which show a vague feeling, a sort of lurking memory, that the real historical issue was not quite so simple as this. f 2 68 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN TEE CROWNS [Essay Here and there an expression is found implying some sort of distinction between Scotland, Lothian, and Galloway — the representative of ancient Strathclyde. More com- monly we find a very distinct feeling on all sides that a Kingdom, even if held in fief, differed in .some way or other from an ordinary feudal holding. More remarkable than all are two passages in which the Lord Superior receives the ancient and now well nigh forgotten title of Emperor. In one of the earliest documents belonging to the question, one earlier than the great conference at Norham, Kobert Bruce asks for the kingdom of Scotland of Edward as " his sove- reign Lord and Emperor."* So, when the question is raised whether the controversy between the candidates should be judged by the Imperial law or by any other, one of the pre- . lates consulted answers that the King of England must follow the law of his own realm, because he is himself Emperor in his own dominions.t And passages are rather numerous in which freedom from all subjection to the Empire and to the laws of the Empire is spoken of as a sort of privilege of the Crown of England, and of Scotland as a member thereof. This was of course the old notion. The King of the English was, within his own island, what the Emperor was in the rest of the world. He owed no submission to Caesar, and he him- self stood in the place of Cassar to all the other princes of Britain. The Imperial position of the Old-English Kings must be thoroughly grasped before the real nature of Scottish subjection can be understood. In the full Imperial theory, all kingdoms, Scotland of course included, owed submission to the Roman Emperor. But our West-Saxon Kings put in an exception for Britain, as being in some sort another world, and they claimed to be themselves Emperors within its borders. * Palgrave, Documents, p. 29. "Sire Robert de Bras . prie a nostra Seigneur le Eey come son Sovereign Seigneur e son Empreur " t Eishanger, ed. Eiley, p. 255. " Bpiscopus Bibliensis requisitus dixit quod Dommus Eex secundum leges per quas judicat subjectos suos debet procedere in casu isto, quia hie censetur Imperator." I confess that I do not know who « Episcopus Bibliensis » was. I can only guess that he was some ftishop in parhbus, perhaps of Byblos in Syria. III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 69 This ancient position, by that time well nigh forgotten, is invoked both by the elder Bruce and by the Bishop. But commonly the matter becomes a mere question of fief or no fief, allowing for any special privileges belonging to a fief which was also a kingdom. It must be borne in mind that Edward was invited to decide the disputed succession to the Scottish crown. He was invited to do so by Robert Bruce, by the Seven Earls,* and by the Scots generally. The Seven Earls appealed to him as their natural protector against the wrongs inflicted by the Regents ; Robert Bruce, as we have seen, appealed to him in the ancient character of Emperor of Britain. Now can any reasonable man blame Edward for demanding that those who thus invoked his interference should make a full acknow- ledgement of his claims ? In the judgement of any states- man, the moment was now come to make certain what was before uncertain. Edward put forth his claim, a good and honest claim, urged in good faith. No doubt an equally honest answer might on some points have been made to the claim ; but no answer was made. After a little hesitation, all the competitors for the crown admitted Edward's claims to the superiority in the fullest extent, and they gave him, as surely was reasonable, the temporary possession of the king- dom in dispute. And, if any man's conduct ever was marked by thorough justice and disinterestedness, that of King Edward was so marked throughout the whole business. Every claimant was fully and fairly heard ; judgment was given in favour of the claimant who clearly had the best right ; the new King was at once put into full possession of his kingdom and all its appurtenances. Most princes of that age, and of many other ages, would have devised some excuse for detaining the kingdom itself, or some castle in it, or some other material hold over it. That is to say, most princes would have acted in the matter of Scotland as Philip the Fair did act to Edward himself in the matter of Aquitaine. Edward's conduct was throughout honest and aboveboard. He required * See Talgrave, Documents, p. 14. 70 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CBOWNS [Essay the acknowledgement of his claims ; he received it ; he then acted justly and honourably according to the theory of his own position which he had put forth, and which all the com- petitors had acknowledged. And, more than all, he rejected the tempting proposal of Hastings and Bruce to divide the kingdom. Had Edward wished to take any unfair advantage, here was his chance. Two of the competitors, when their claim to the whole kingdom was rejected, demanded a share, according to the English usage in the case of female fiefs- No proposal could have been more tempting, had Edward sought anything but what he honestly held to be his due. It was clearly his interest to have three weak vassals rather than one powerful one. But Edward, as he did throughout the case, calmly inquired into law and precedent, and ruled, in conformity with at least later law and precedent, that the Kingdom of Scotland could not be divided. Edward may have taken a wrong view of his own rights ; but of any- thing like unfair or underhand dealing no man stands more thoroughly acquitted. The competitors then, the new King, the great men of the realm generally, accepted Edward's claims. But it may be, and it has been, doubted how far they really spoke the voice of the Scottish nation. We must never forget who these competitors and other great men really were. None of the competitors, and comparatively few of the great men of the realm, were genuine Scots in either the older or the later sense. Setting aside foreign princes like Eric of Norway and Florence of Holland, the competitors, Bruce, Balliol, Comyn,- Hastings, and the rest, were neither Dalriadic Scots, nor Welshmen of Strathclyde, nor Englishmen of Lothian. They were Norman nobles, holding lands both in England and in Scotland, who might throw in their lot with England or Scotland at pleasure, but who did much more commonly throw in their lot with England. Balliol and the elder Bruce were essentially Englishmen— Englishmen, that is, in the sense in which any other English noble of Norman descent was an Englishman. John Comyn of Buchan was throughout III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 71 a faithful adherent of Edward; John Comyn of Badenoch and the younger Bruce identified themselves more freely with Scotland. But none of them were Scots in the ethno- logical sense ; none of them were Scots even in the sense of being natives and inhabitants of Scotland, with no interests beyond its borders. John Balliol had lands alike in Scotland, England, and France. After being a King in Scotland and a prisoner in England, he retired to live as a private French noble on his French property. Such men did not, and could not, really represent the feelings of any part of the Scottish people. The event proved that in the heart of the nation there was a feeling against English dominion in any shape which the great nobles did not share. But the apparent consent was universal. Edward might boast, like his great namesake and ancestor, that the King of Scots, and all the people of Scots, chose him to father and to lord. And again we may ask, Who were the Scottish people ? It is plain that the whole affair was one in which the original Scots took no share, or a sjiare hostile to what is commonly looked on as the Scottish cause. The Scots who resisted Edward were the English of Lothian. The true Scots, out of hatred to the "Saxons" nearest to them, leagued with the "Saxons" further off. Candid Scottish writers allow that the true Scots of the Highlands were bitterly hostile to the younger Bruce, and strongly favourable to Edward., No doubt, had Edward kept possession, he would soon have become the object of their hostility. As it was, the true Scots were the faithful allies of Edward against the English of Lothian. We thus see Edward the acknowledged Lord Superior, and John of Balliol, undoubtedly the lawful heir, reigning as his vassal. Then comes the question of the appeals. It does not appear that any appeal had ever before been carried from the court of the King of Scots to the court of the King of England. We may be quite sure that no such subtleties were ever dreamed of in the tenth century. But the idea of an appeal to the court of the overlord naturally grew out of the principles of the new feudal jurisprudence. Edward himself, 72 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay as Duke of Aquitaine, was often summoned to the courts of the King of France, and he does not seem to have disputed the right of the King of France so to summon him. But we may be quite sure that Edward's predecessors in Aquitaine in the tenth century as little thought of paying any such sign of submission to their lord at Laon or Paris as his prede- cessors in Wessex at the same time thought of requiring any such sign of submission from their vassal beyond the Forth. The whole notion of an elaborate system of courts, such as could allow of such appeals, is later than the earliest homage paid either for Aquitaine or for Scotland. It could not be part of the original bargain in either case, but in both cases the claim grew up with the gradual development of feudal ideas. And, after all, it was the Scots themselves who, from the fact of Edward's superiority over the kingdom, drew the inference that they might appeal to his courts. Two Scottish subjects in very different positions, Eoger Bartholomew, bur- gess of Berwick, and Macduff, a near kinsman of the Earl of Fife— surely a genuine Scot, if there ever was one — dis- satisfied with the justice to be had in the courts of the King of Scots, appealed to the courts of his acknowledged feudal superior. The thing was a novelty; but it was an obvious consequence from a state of things which was now universally admitted, and it was not a novelty of Edward's devising. Ordinary human nature on Edward's part was not likely to refuse what would seem to be so fair and honourable a way of increasing his p«wer. But ordinary human nature on the Scottish part could hardly fail to be offended with what would seem to be a further humiliation of Scotland. Next came the Scottish alliance with France, then at war with England, an alliance which gradually led to a series of mutual hostilities, which I need not recount at length, as they do not immediately bear on the relations between the two Crowns. The important points are, that the first hostili- ties were the act of the Scots, and that the King of Scots, as soon as the war had actually begun, renounced his homage. Ihe assertion of national independence might be just and III.] OP ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 73 expedient; but the attempt to assert it by a process of feudal law was simply absurd. Then Edward, in 1296, conquered Scotland, and received the abdication of the King and the general submission of the country. The kingdom was his by conquest in a lawful war not of his seeking. I am not saying that the Scots inight not be fully justified in revolting against him. All I say is that Edward was fully justified in occupy- ing Scotland, and in putting down such revolts. With the conquest in 1296 the history of the old relations between the Crowns comes to an end. From 1296 to 1328 the question was, not whether Scotland should be held by its own King in feudal dependence on England, but whether Scotland should be- come, as Northumberland and Wales had in different ages be- come, an integral portion of the English kingdom. Meanwhile a new dynasty, that of Bruce, had arisen in Scotland. In 1328 the legitimacy of the new dynasty and the independence of the Scottish kingdom were fully acknowledged by England. From that day forth, wars between England and Scotland must be jucjged by the same principles as wars between any other two independent nations. The renunciation of 1328 wiped out the first commendation of 924 ; it wiped out what we may call the second commendation of 1292 ; it wiped out the conquest of 1296. The attempts made by the English Kings to fall back on the earlier state of things, to claim again a homage which they had expressly surrendered, to set up pretenders against a dynasty whose rights they had ex- pressly acknowledged, were all simply dishonest. The charges of craft, bad faith, and the like, which Scottish writers most unjustly bring against Edward the First, may all be brought with perfect justice against Edward the Third. The little space I have left I will give to point out one or two popular misconceptions. I fancy that people in general quite mistake the chronology of the case. They fancy that the whole of Edward's reign was taken up in an attempt to conquer Scotland. Instead of this, it was only the latter part of his reign which was occupied by Scottish matters at all. Edward began to reign in 1272. In the nineteenth 74 TEE RELATIONS BETWEEN TEE CROWNS [Essay year of his reign, 1291, the conference at Norham began. In 1296 came the first hostilities and the first conquest. In 1297 came the revolt of William Wallace and his victory at Stirling. In 1298 the battle of Falkirk crushed the revolt, but the war lingered till the surrender of Stirling in 1304. In that year Edward was again undisputed lord of all Scot- land. Scotland was annexed to England as an integral part of the kingdom, and was to be represented in the English Parliament. In 1306, the year before Edward's death, came the murder of.Comyn, the revolt and coronation of the younger Bruce. At Edward's death, in 1307, the new King was again a fugitive. I speak of the wars of Wallace and Bruce as revolts. Their revolts may, like many other revolts, have been justifiable, but they were revolts. Neither of them, Bruce far less than Wallace, was resisting an invader. As for William Wallace, we need not look upon him either as the faultless hero which he appears in Scottish romance, nor yet as the vulgar ruffian which he appears in English history. His tenure of power in Scotland was very short, but for a man who started, as he did, from nothing, to rise, even for a moment, to the com- mand of armies, and even to the government of the kingdom, shows that he must have possessed some very great qualities. That the great nobles mostly shrank from him, or supported him very faintly, is rather to his credit ; it sets him forth more distinctly as a national champion. On the other hand, it is impossible to deny the fiendish brutalities practised by him in England, brutalities which fully explain the intense hatred with which every English writer speaks of him, and which were certainly not retaliation for any cruelties on the part of Edward. Candid Scottish writers allow that no useless slaughter or ravages can be laid to Edward's charge. In the whole course of his warfare he stands chargeable with nothing which even our age would call cruelty, unless it be in the storming of Berwick, where the personal insults of the besieged seem to have stirred him up to fury. At other times we find nothing of the kind, but we do find him check- IN.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 75 ing and reproving the cruelties of others, including his own unworthy son. As for the execution of William Wallace, it should be remembered that his was the only Scottish blood shed by an English executioner before the murder of Comyn, and that he brought his fate upon himself. Every other man in Scotland had submitted. Wallace was invited to surrender to the King's mercy. That mercy had been ex- tended to every man who had sought it, including many who had broken their oaths to Edward over and over again. Wallace refused, and refused with insult. He was seized by Sir John Menteith, Edward's commander at Dunbarton, an act of official duty which has been strangely turned into a betrayal* He could now hardly look for the mercy which he had scorned. In the eyes of Edward and of every Englishman he was simply a traitor, robber, murderer, of the blackest dye. On such men the law took its course in 1305 just as it did in 1745. The revolt of Eobert Bruce was, in every way, far less justifiable than that of William Wallace. Wallace was cer- tainly a native Scotsman in the wider sense of the word. His name seems to imply that he was a Welshman of Strathclyde. By his own account he had never sworn fealty to Edward. The position of Bobert Bruce was very different. He has become so thoroughly mythical a being that it may be necessary to explain to many people who he was. One Scottish romance goes so far as to make him defeat Edward the First at Bannockburn ! Another, of older date, identifies him with his own grandfather, makes him the competitor for the crown, but makes him also proudly refuse to do homage for it. We have seen that Bobert Bruce -the grandfather was an Englishman, a faithful subject of Edward, eager to admit Edward's supremacy, ready to have the kingdom divided. His son was an utterly obscure person, who plays no part in the politics of the time. His grandson, the future King * Wallace was " betrayed," not by Menteith, but to Menteith, by his own servant Jack Short. From this the English chronicler Peter Lano-toft draws the moral that there is no honour among thieves. 76 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROWNS [Essay possessor of great Scottish estates through his mother, seems always to have inclined to Scotland rather than to England. Still he was Edward's subject ; he had sworn to him and served under him over and over again. At last, when the country- was at peace, when Edward's government was universally submitted to, Robert Bruce treacherously and sacrilegiously murdered John Comyn, the man, be it remembered, who, after the male line of Balliol, was undoubtedly the heir of the Scottish crown. After such a crime there could be no hope of pardon. Bruce then threw a desperate stake; he assumed kingship ; while the great Edward lived he lived the life of an outlaw and a vagabond ; over Edward's wretched son he won an easy triumph. Bobert Bruce undoubtedly proved himself in the end a great captain and a great King ; but that fact should blind no one to the infamous beginning of his career. That all who were concerned in the murder of Comyn met with their merited punishment, who can wonder ? Who can wonder that lesser degrees of punishment fell on the other ringleaders of the revolt ? The nature of punishments, the form of death, the degree of the severity of imprison- ment, are questions between the habits of one age and those of another ; but it is quite certain that Edward punished no man or woman who would not be held liable to punishment at the present moment. Indeed, when we look at the atrocities which living Englishmen have committed and justified in India and in Jamaica, King Edward need not blush for the comparison. The man who pardoned his enemies over and over again, who checked the cruelties of his own son, who, in the suppression of three rebellions', put no man to death who had not added murder to treason, who, save in one case of a stormed town, everywhere carried on war with unparal- leled clemency, would hardly have worshipped at the shrine of a Hodson or joined in the festive reception of an Eyre. One word more. I do not regret that Scotland won her independence. I cannot regret the formation of a nation, a nation essentially of English blood and speech, a nation which soon developed many noble qualities, and showed itself III.] OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 77 fully worthy of the independence which it won. On the field of Bannockburn I can almost bring myself to sympathize with the great and wise King of Scots against the foolish and cowardly heir of the greatest of later Englishmen. But these things do not touch the character of the great Edward. The real honour of Scotland in no way requires the per- version of historical truth, or the depreciation of a King whose object was to unite our island as we see it united now. The vassalage of Scotland to England ought by this time to be looked on as calmly as the vassalage of Northumberland and Mercia to Wessex. An Englishman born north of the Tweed should deem himself as little bound to malign Edward as an Englishman born north of the Thames deems himself bound to malign Ecgberht. Or, if a southern victim must be had, let Scottish indignation spend itself on brutal devas- tators of Scotland like Henry the Eighth and Protector Somerset, not on the noble prince of whom the contemporary poet so truly sang :— " Totus Christo traditur Bex noster Edwavdus ; Velox est ad veniam, ad vindictam tardus." I have now merely sketched out my line of argument both as to the general constitutional question, and as to the per- sonal character of the great Edward. I trust some day or other to work out the whole matter more fully, as fully as I have worked out the two or three points on which I have entered into direct controversy with Mr. Bobertson. In the meanwhile, I would recommend to all who are interested in the matter a careful study of the original chronicles and documents, and a comparison of these with the later romances which have supplanted them. As a guide in such a task, I will not venture to recommend a book for which I must nevertheless confess a certain liking, the anonymous volume called "The Greatest of the Plantagenets." The book has much in it that is good and useful ; but it is too much of a mere panegyric; the writer throughout holds what I certainly do not hold, that the honour of Edward 78 THE CROWNS OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. requires the sacrifice of every one who, either in England or Scotland, in any way withstood him. I will rather choose my expositor in the ranks of the enemy. I will send students of the original authorities to a really learned and candid Scottish historian as their harmonist. In Mr. Burton's lately published History of Scotland the matter is treated in a way which does honour to the writer. Mr. Burton has not wholly triumphed over national prejudices, though in many passages he does justice to Edward on particular points in a way in which I suspect that no Scottish writer has forestalled him. In many cases the inferences which I draw from the facts are very different from those which Mr. Burton draws. But his facts and my facts are the same throughout. Mr. Burton's learning hinders him from neglecting any fact ; his candour hinders him from concealing or misrepresenting any fact. How far such a book may be acceptable to the less informed and more deeply prejudiced classes of Mr. Burton's own countrymen, I do not profess to know. I hail it as a great step towards the fair examination of a great historical question, which should now be looked on purely as an his- torical question, not as involving the honour of either of two portions of one happily united realm. ( 79 ). IV. SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS.* Vita 8. Thomse Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi et Martyris. Epistolse Sancti Thomse Cantuariensis et aliorum. GiTberti Episcopi Londoniensis Epistolse. Merherti de Boseham Opera quse extant omnia. Edidit J. A. Giles, LL.D. 8 volumes. Oxford, 1845. Joannis Sarisburiensis Opera omnia. Collegit J. A. Giles, J.C.D. 5 volumes. Oxford, 1848. The History of Latin Christianity. By Henry Hart Mil- man, D.D.. Vol. III. -London, 1854. The Life and Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket, Arehbishop of Canterbury and Legate of the Holy See. By John Morris, Canon of Northampton. London, 1859. Becket, Arehhishop of Canterbury. A Biography. By James Craigie Robertson, M. A., Canon of Canterbury. London, 1859. A full catalogue of the materials for the history of the wonderful man whose name heads this Article, a complete list of all the books, old and new, of which he has been the subject, would take up a space rather suited for an article itself than for the mere heading of one. We have selected a few only of the most recent and important. We have original materials of every sort, — chronicles, biographies, private letters, state-papers; we have the panegyrics of friends, the invectives of enemies, the correspondence of the * [As this article gave rise to some controversy at the time, I reprint it exactly as it originally appeared.] 80 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay man himself. And as his own age was divided in its opinion of him, ours seems to be divided no less. He has still ene- mies who pursue him with the fierceness of a Gilbert Foliot, and idolaters who worship him with the devotion of a Herbert of Bosham. There is hardly any man of past times for esti- mating whose life and character we have such ample means. Every action of his own, every action of others with regard to^him, has been chronicled and commented on by men who were both eyewitnesses and actors. And there are few men about the main features of whose history there is so little doubt. Here and there, among the multitude of witnesses, we find unimportant contradictions ; here and there we may have our doubts as to the accuracy of a date or the genuine- ness of a letter ; but the main events of his life, from his birth in London to his murder at Canterbury, are known to us as clearly and vividly as the transactions of our own time. Our materials are not confined either to the land of his birth or to the land of his exile. The vast Thomaic correspondence speads over the whole Latin world. The terms of peace between a King of England and an Archbishop of Canter- bury fluctuated according to the triumphs and the failures of a German Emperor in Italy. Our materials, in short, are infinite ; indeed, until somebody shall kindly put them in order for us, they are overwhelming. We know, or by the help of a decent editor we might know, all about everybody and everything. As to mere matters of fact, the points of con- troversy, for so vast a field, are exceedingly few. The pecu- liarity of the history is, that, with the same facts before them, no two people seem to be content to draw the same inferences. The cause of all this diversity and controversy— a diversity and controversy most fatal to historic truth — is to be traced to the unhappy mistake of looking at the men of the twelfth century with the eyes of the nineteenth ; and still worse, of hoping to extract something from the events of the twelfth century to do service in the controversies of the nineteenth. Thomas of Canterbury has become surrounded by a mist of theological and quasi-theological disputation ; it is impossible IT.] AND HIS BIOGBAPHERS. 81 even to name him without raising a storm of controversy. For how is the man to be spoken of? " Thomas a Becket," on the one hand, and " Saint Thomas of Canterbury " both have their dangers, while every intermediate form expresses some intermediate shade of estimation. " Becket" is perhaps neutral ; " Archbishop Becket " carries with it a degree of reverence for the office, if not for the man. And again, it is doubtful whether his own age even called him Thomas Becket, much less Thomas a Becket, or Becket alone.* King Henry the Eighth's proclamation has converted his historical title of " Saint Thomas of Canterbury " into a badge of party. Otherwise we might probably have called him Saint Thomas with no more offence than is incurred by speaking historically of Saint Dominic or Saint Dunstan. By way of being safe, we mean to call him, as his contemporaries called him, Thomas, which we hope will not commit us to anything either way. Thomas of London, Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas the Archdeacon, the Chancellor, the Archbishop, and finally the Martyr, are the only descriptions by which he was commonly known in his own day. But when we have settled his name, we come to the more important question of his character. Was he a good or a bad man? Is he worthy of honour or of dishonour? To two classes of inquirers no question can be more easy to settle. It is a very simple business to rule either that an Archbishop must be right who opposes a King, or that a King must be right who opposes an Archbishop. But at the tribunal of * His father was undoubtedly called Gilbert Becket; but in the twelfth century surnames were Very fluctuating, and a son, especially if a church- roan, did not at all necessarily bear his father's name. The most natural way of calling him would be Thomas of London, just like John of Oxford and Herbert of Bosham, and we find him actually so called by Gervase (col. 1377). We find the Archbishop himself only once called " Thomas Becket," namely, by the knights at his death, according to Edward Grim (ap. Giles, i. 75), where it may be very likely an unusual expression of contempt. This remark, as far as we know, has been made by no English writer ; but we find from M. Buss's work (p, 150) that German industry has forestalled us : M. Buss has found one more instance of the use of the name " Becket," which (perhaps through Dr. Giles's fault) we cannot verify. G 82 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTEBBURY [Essay historical criticism no such sweeping general principles are admitted. Nor does it at all decide the question to say which side we should take if the same controyersy were to arise now. What would he very unreasonable and inexpedient now may have been exactly the opposite seven hundred years back. If we wish fairly to judge of the right and the wrong between Henry and Thomas, we must first of all shut our eyes to all modern controversies whatever. We must not carry into that region any modern theories about Church and State, about Catholicism and Protestantism. We must not think whether the events of those times can be made to help High Church, Low Church, or Broad Church. Even whether we are right or wrong in having no spiritual dealings with the Bishop of Rome, is a question which has just nothing to do with the matter. Yet it has been with at least a side-glance to questions of this sort that the history of Henry and Thomas has been for the most part recently written. If we want to read or write it as it should be read or written, we must forget everything of the kind. We have before us two of the foremost men of the twelfth century ; it is only by the customs, the principles, the light and knowledge, of the twelfth century that we can ever fairly judge them. Cautions of this kind are more necessary with regard to the dispute between Henry and Thomas than with regard to almost any other portion of history. With regard to many other controversies of past times, it is almost impossible to avoid looking at them with the eyes of our own day. In many cases, within proper limits, it is even right that we should do so. The controversies of remote ages and countries may be closely analogous to controversies of our own day. The controversies of our own country in past times may be but the beginning of controversies still going on among our- selves. In such cases the side taken in present politics will always decide the general estimate of past politics. We only ask for the men and measures of the past, what we should ask for the men and measures of the present, that opposition and criticism be fair and honest, that particular IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 83 men and particular actions be not misrepresented, and that it be never forgotten that, both then and now, wise and good men may be found on both sides. But the twelfth century stands in a peculiar position. It was a highly important period, fruitful in great men and great events ; but its work was a silent one, and its controversies have, less than those of most ages, either before or after, any direct bearing upon present affairs. The events of the age which came before, and those of the age which followed it, speak"at once to our hearts. The spectacle of a nation, and that the English nation, overcome by foreign enemies, made bondmen and strangers in their own land, is one which requires - no expla- nation. The struggle of Englishman and Norman is one which awakens sympathies common to all time and places : els o!a»/6? apurres, apivetrBai jrepi iraTprjs, is a sentiment which speaks equally to the heart, whether it be put into the mouth of Hector, of Here ward, or of Garibaldi. The thirteenth century, again, has for every Englishman an interest of another kind. We have now entered on the England of our own time; the great struggle has begun which still continues ; we have begun to walk among that goodly company of statesmen, heroes, and patriots which leads us from Langton and Grosseteste and Winehelsea, from Fitzwalter and De Montfort and Eoger Bigod, on to the Peel, the Russell, and the Gladstone of our own day. Com- pared with the eleventh century and with the thirteenth, the age of Henry and Thomas seems like something with which we have nothing to do, and which we can hardly understand. The political position of England was like nothing before it or after it. In the eleventh century and in the thirteenth, there was an English King and an English people ; but in the twelfth such objects are hardly discernible. There is, indeed, a King of England, the mightiest and richest prince of Europe ; but he is a mere foreigner, a Frenchman living in France, devoting his energies to French objects, and holding England almost as a province of Anjou. And as with the position of the Island, so with its internal controversies. G 2 84 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay We imagine that no Koman Catholic or High Churchman would claim for the clergy a freedom from secular jurisdiction in criminal cases, or would think the exclusive right of the Archbishop of Canterbury to crown the King of England a matter for which it was worth while to resist even unto death. In the twelfth century the case was much less clear. Thomas and Henry, in short, were two very remarkable men in a very remarkable age, who engaged in a controversy about which there could not be two opinions now, but about which opposite sides were then taken by the best and wisest men of the age. If a man will study the materials before him fully and fairly, he will probably rise up with very considerable respect for both disputants on the whole, mingled with strong con- demnation of particular actions of both. Thomas often dis- graced a good cause by violence and obstinacy; Henry disgraced a cause equally good by mean cruelty and petty personal persecution, and sometimes, which Thomas never did, he allowed momentary passion to hurry him into prac- tically giving up his cause altogether. On the modern writers on the subject we do not intend to enlarge at length. Though the history has been touched on incidentally by some very distinguished men, it has never been made the subject of any separate work of first-rate merit. We will therefore touch briefly on the most important modern writers on the subject, and then proceed to give our own esti- mate of Thomas himself and his contemporary biographers. Lord Lyttelton and Mr. Berington were probably the first, among the modern "amici" and "inimici Thomse,"* who could give any reason for their friendship or enmity. Their histories of Henry the Second were both of them highly creditable to their authors at a time when historical learning was at its lowest ebb. In an age of second-hand knowledge they had really read the contemporary writers. Each main- tains his own position well, and each may be still turned to with profit, even after the accumulation of so much recent ' Among the Letters is one (Giles, iv. 256) headed " Alexandra Pap* et omnibus Cardinalibus Inimici Thomce Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi." IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 85 literature on the subject. Mr. Berington, we may add, though an apologist of Thomas, is by no means a blind admirer ; he is not a Herbert of Bosham, but claims the higher character of a John of Salisbury. Among more general historians, in whose pages Thomas and Henry necessarily play a considerable part, Dr. Lingard at once occurs as a Koman Catholic writer of much the same school as Mr. Berington. Both of them hare the wisdom to write, not as Boman Catholics, but as ordinary men ; they at all events affect impartiality, and of course are much more likely to influence Protestant judgements than if they checked them at the beginning by any ostentatious display of their peculiar dogmas. On the other hand, Soiithey's agreeable, but very superficial, Book of the Church contains one of the very best of what we may call the incidental biographies of Thomas. It is fully vivid, and sympathizing. It is clear that the heroic grandeur of the Catholic saint appealed irre- sistibly to the heart of the poet, even while invested with the character of a 'Protestant controversialist. Thomas also figures very prominently in Thierry's well- known History of the Norman Conquest, where he is pressed into the service of that writer's peculiar theories. He is made to figure as an English patriot contending against Norman oppressors. Of this utterly untenable notion, and of the small nucleus of truth around which M. Thierry has gathered a mass of very attractive romance, we shall have again to speak. The more recent literature on the subject begins with the Kemains of the late Mr. B. H. Froude. Strangely enough, the first recent apologist of St. Thomas of Canterbury was brother of the apologist of King Henry the Eighth. The elder Froude, one of the original leaders of the Oxford Tract movement, was a man of ability and independent thought, but, as one might expect, he approached the subject from a wholly false point of view. His case was one of the most conspicuous of misconceiving history, in consequence of seeing it through an atmosphere of modern, controversy. The sub- ject attracted him from some fancied analogies between the 86 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay position of the Church in the twelfth century and the nine- teenth. The career of Thomas occupies the whole of the third volume of Mr. Froude's Eemains, but a large portion of the narrative part is from another hand, no less an one, we believe, than Dr. Newman's. Mr. Froude's own labours were chiefly given to translating and partially arranging the Epistles, a task before which any amount of energy might excusably have broken down. After Mr. Froude came Dr. Giles. We suppose we must allow the praises of zeal and research to a man who has edited, translated, and written more books than any other living English scholar. But really we can give him no other praise. The Epistles, as edited in .his Sanctus Thomas Qantuariensis, are, as most later writers have complained, a heap of confusion, made far worse confounded by Dr. Giles himself. The principle of arrangement is an elaborate puzzle which renders it almost hopeless to find any particular letter ; the indexes are very meagre, and the mere editing is exceed- ingly bad.* Dr. Giles has indeed also given us the Life and Letters in two volumes of English, in which there is an attempt to arrange some of the letters in the order of time. But scholars do not want a translation — and a very bad translation too — of some of the letters, but an intelligible edition of the ori- ginal text of all. Dr. Giles's attempt at original biography amounts to little more than a filling-up of interstices, and is moreover as poor and superficial as may be. Nearly every- thing that is good in it is copied from Mr. Froude. The life and death of Thomas have also been taken up by two writers of a widely different stamp from either Mr. Froude or Dr. Giles. Professor Stanley, in his Historical Memorials of Canterbury, has given us a harmonized narrative of the * We thoroughly agree with Mr. Robertson's wish, that a really good edition of the whole literature on the subject should form part of the series now publishing by authority of the Master of the Rolls. [Eleven years have passed, and we seem no nearer to getting this cruel want supplied.] •IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 87 martyrdom, written with such minuteness, life, and truth, that we deeply regret that it extends to the martyrdom alone, and does not take in the whole history. No less admirable is his treatment of what we may call the posthumous history of Thomas in the chapter on the Shrine of Becket. The Thomaic controversy, again, occupies a large portion of the third volume of Dean Milman's Latin Christianity. With some drawbacks, this is the best English life of Thomas we know, though the narrative perhaps suffers a little from over- compression ; and though we think that the dean passes on the whole too harsh a judgement on Thomas, it is only fair to add that he sometimes bears rather hard upon Henry also. Still his narrative, allowing for some of those little slips in names and details into which it is strange to find so really learned a man as Dr. Milman so constantly falling, is the very best history of Thomas we know, far better, considering its scale, than the more special ones which we have now to mention. The year 1859 produced two rival biographies of our hero ; the works of the Eoman Catholic Canon of Northampton, and of the Protestant Canon of Canterbury. On these we might be tempted to dilate at some length, as the contrast between them is very curious and amusing. Each of the rival canons has read his books well and accurately ; each brings local inspiration to the task ; each does his best, such as it is, to be fair ; but each is disqualified by invincible pre- judices, and the work of each alike labours under incurable objections in point of form. Canon Morris writes in a spirit of undiscriminating admiration ; Canon Eobertson writes in a spirit of carping and fault-finding, with which we have still less sympathy. Canon Morris might have written a purely devotional life of Saint Thomas of Canterbury for members of his own communion, and no fair person would have objected ; or he might have written a historical life in the same spirit of prudence as Mr. Berington and Dr. Lingard ; but he has confounded the two ideas together, and has produced some- thing far too historical for purely devotional use, while, as a 88 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay history, it is sure to offend every Protestant reader. Canon Eobertson has worked up into a book two old articles from the defunct English Eeview, written, it would seem, against Mr. Froude and Dr. Giles. The book retains far too palpable traces of its origin in its somewhat poor and heavy attempts at wit, in its constant sarcasms on the writers reviewed, and its occasional allusions to things quite unintelligible to those who have not all the numbers of the English Eeview by heart. Nothing for instance, can be truer, but nothing can be more out of place, than the elaborate criticism on Dr. Giles's editing which is thrust into the middle of the bio- graphy. For the matter of the book, it is what might be expected from a man who understands his subject without loving it, and whose chief object is to upset Mr. Froude. The narrative is accurate ; the references are highly valuable. The author does his best to be fair, and rejects all the more vulgar calumnies against his victim ; — -for, unlike most biogra- phies, this of Mr. Eobertson has no hero. But Mr. Eobertson sees everything through the coloured glass of the English Eeview. He is utterly incapable of entering into the posi- tion of either a King or an Archbishop of the twelfth cen- tury. Above all, Thomas of Canterbury, whether saint or not, was emphatically a hero, and a hero is just the sort of person whom Canon Eobertson oannot possibly understand. Of the foreign writers on the subject, we must confess with shame that we know less than we ought. Eeuter's History of Alexander the Third is frequently quoted by Dean Mil- man and Mr. Eobertson ; and, as it seems to be highly favour- able to that Pontiff, we suppose we ought in fairness to have mastered it, for certainly our own study of the Thomaic correspondence does not lead us to a conclusion at all like what we take M. Eeuter's to be. M. Ozanam's Deux Chance- liers d'Angleterre (Paris, 1836), and M. Buss's Der Heilige Thomas und sein Kampf fur die Freiheit der Kirche (Mainz, 1856), we only heard of through Mr. Eobertson 's references. M. Ozanam's book we have not seen ; M. Buss's has reached us since we began to write this article, and we have had !V.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 8d time only to glance at it. It is easy to see that M. Buss is a strong Catholic and partizan of Thomas, but we do not see any thing of the offensive ostentation of Catholicism of which we complain in Mr. Morris. His research and labour are unwearied, and, as far as we have seen, his work seems to be the best suited of all to serve as a guide to the original writers. But there are some tasks before which even German industry breaks down, or at least which it cannot go through without complaining. M. Buss complains, not indeed with the sarcastic rhetoric of Mr. Robertson, but with a simple pathos which is quite as effective, of the superhuman diffi- culty of finding any thing he wants in a book edited by Dr. Giles. We will now turn from modern writers on the subject to the original authorities for the Life of Thomas. These are of three kinds, — the biographers, the contemporary chro- niclers, and the correspondence of Thomas, Gilbert, and the rest. All our authorities are in Latin, except a single very important biography in French verse. English records we unluckily have none. The Saxon Chronicle breaks off at the accession of Henry the Second. What would one not have given to have seen this stirring period described, with the same life as the days of the Conqueror and of Stephen, by a real native Englishman, in the old Teutonic mother-tongue ? The French Life of Gamier of Pont Sainte Maxence must be the earliest of all, as the author tells us it was written between 1172 and 1174, being completed within four years after the martyrdom. The author had himself seen the saint in the flesh, but before he assumed his saintly character : " En Gascuingne fu-il lung tens pur gueri-eier. As Gascuns i kovint de lur chasteus lesser. En Norrnendie r'out sun seinur grant mester, Et jo Fvi sor Franceis plusurfeiz chevaucher."* He visited Canterbury, and also conversed with Thomas's sister, Mary, Abbess of Barking, so that he had good sources of knowledge ; and he tells us that, in the course of writing * Gamier, p. 14, ed. Hippeau. 90 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay his book, he often altered what he had written, as he obtained better information. Besides direct narrative, the book con- tains many digressions or versified sermons ; he has also taken the trouble to translate several of the more important letters into his French verse, and a very odd effect they have in their new shape. This biography is very important from its early date, and to the philologer it is highly valuable as a specimen of the French language in the twelfth century. Of the Latin Lives the most important are those of Edward Grim, Eoger of Pontigny, William Fitz-Stephen, Alan of Tewkesbury, and Herbert of Bosham, together with the short Life by John of Salisbury prefixed to that of Alan. All these writers were contemporary, and were intimate with the Archbishop at some portion or other of his career. Each therefore tells part at least of his story from his own personal knowledge. Each, to a great extent, fills up the deficiencies of the others. Thus Edward G-rim only entered the service of Thomas a few days before his death ; his earlier narrative is therfore written from hearsay ; but, in his new-born zeal for his master, he gives a full and vivid account of his martyr- dom : of that martyrdom indeed he was more than a spectator ; he was actually a fellow-sufferer, having his arm broken in a vain attempt to defend the Archbishop. Eoger was the attendant of Thomas during his sojourn at Pontigny. We might have expected him to be very full on that part of his history; but, writing doubtless mainly for the monks of Pontigny, he says that he will not enlarge upon what every one knows, and cuts that part very short. He therefore writes mainly from hearsay, but it is from the hearsay of Thomas himself ; so that we may look upon Roger's work as being more nearly an autobiography than any of the others. William Fitz-Stephen seems to have been attached to Thomas earlier than any of the rest. He was his clerk when Chan- cellor, and consequently gives us many details of that time of his life which are not to be found elsewhere. He did not follow the Archbishop into exile, though he had one interview with him in the course of a journey through France ; but he IV.] AND HIS BIOQBAPBERS. 91 was present at the martyrdom. Hence he can tell us little from his own knowledge of his master's doings in banish- ment, but he supplies many valuable particulars of what was going on in England meanwhile. Herbert of Bosham, on the other hand, followed Thomas through his whole career both in England and France, but he was not present at the martyr- dom, and he seems to have known very little of his early life. He is therefore the fullest of all in his biography of the Archbishop, but tells us very little of the Chancellor. Alan, and the fragmentary Life by William of Canterbury in Dr. Giles's second volume, also contain occasional particulars not to be found elsewhere. The comparison of these biographies with one another is exceedingly curious and interesting. We fully agree with Mr. Robertson that they need to be more closely analysed and compared than they have ever yet been, " with a view of ascertaining their correspondences and divergences, and the sources from which each writer derived his materials." Mr. Robertson goes on to say, rather darkly, " Perhaps the result of such an inquiry might be found to throw some light on questions connected with a Historia Quadripartita far more important than that which is devoted to the Life of Thomas of Canterbury." This we take to be Canon Robertson's roundabout way of describing the Four Gospels. The hint is an excellent one, especially as coming from so orthodox a source, though it is very likely that some inquirers might push it to results at which Mr. Robertson might be rather alarmed. The general character of the narratives is that of close agreement in the main story, combined with constant contradiction in minute particulars. This is just what might be expected from narratives written from memory some years after the event. Herbert, for instance, did not write till fourteen years after the martyrdom. He speaks rather pathetically of himself as the last survivor of the whole band of faithful disciples.* On the other hand, there is not un- commonly a minute, sometimes even a verbal, agreement * Giles, vii. 335. 92 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay between two or more narrators, as if they had copied from one another, or from some common source. Take, for instance, one grand scene in Thomas's life, his " fighting with beasts " at Northampton. Two at least of our autho- rities, Herbert and William Fitz-Stephen, were there. Yet if a man were to try to force even their narratives into exact conformity, as commentators do with Mr. Robertson's other Historic/, Quadriypartita, he would utterly break down in the attempt. Comparing all the narratives, there is a good deal of difference in the order of events, and even as to the mouth into which particular speeches are put. But in the whole history we only remember one contradiction of any real moment. William Fitz-Stephen says that Thomas did aflix his seal to the Constitutions of Clarendon, which is stated by no one else, and which the rest implicitly deny. Here we confess is a difficulty. William was something of a lawyer, and seems always careful about legal technicalities, so his testimony is especially valuable. But it has to be set against a consensus of the other writers and the general tenour of the story. Whether Thomas did or did not seal the Constitu- tions is of real importance to the history, and it is strange that any of his followers should be careless or misinformed about it ; but the slighter diversities which elsewhere lie thick upon the narrative are just what always happen to several unassisted human narrators telling the same story. No reader of the Life of Thomas is likely to be troubled at dis- crepancies of this sort; but exactly similar ones in the other Historia Quadripartita have given no_ small trouble to tender consciences. Each biographer of Thomas, like each of the Evangelists, has a character of his own. Edward Grim has the greatest tendency to the marvellous ; Boger, as a French- man, is far more bitter against Henry than any of the rest, and he makes just those little ^mistakes about English matters which a Frenchman would make in any age. William Fitz- Stephen is lively and amusing ; Herbert is given to sermoniz- ing and twaddling, and to putting long speeches, not only into his own mouth (which is his own affair), but into the IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHMES. 93 mouths of Thomas and others, which we trust and believe are Master Herbert's own composition. But even this is no more than every historian gave himself the license of doing till very recent times. Herbert is moreover the Boanerges of our story. He seems to have been the double of Thomas in mind and body, and probably did Thomas very little good by his constant company. As if the Primate were not of himself daring and unyielding enough in all conscience, Herbert was always stirring him up to the strongest measures. Like Thomas, he did not fear the face of man, and spoke as boldly to King Henry on his throne as to his own master in his chamber. Like Thomas too he was tall of stature and goodly of countenance ; and like Thomas in his unregenerate state, he did not object to set off his bodily perfections to the best advantage.* These two faithful followers appear in their several characters in that most striking scene at North- ampton.f Thomas sits with his cross in his hand, defying the King of earth in the name of the King of Heaven. Herbert, the true Boanerges, would fain have him excom- municate every man present on the spot. William counsels meekness and patience. Forbidden to speak to his master, he points in silence to the figure of the crucified Saviour. Even the cold heart of Mr. Robertson forbears to sneer at this most touching incident. Besides these biographieB by writers whose names and actions we know, there is a very remarkable one printed in Dr. Giles's second volume, from an anonymous manuscript in the Library at Lambeth Palace. The author affirms that he was present at the martyrdom ; still his contemporary character is doubted by some modern writers. If it were fully ascertained, the work would be most valuable ; for, though it does not contain many new facts, it is written in a tone of unusually independent criticism, and has fewer co- incidences with other Lives than any one in the series. It states the case for Henry and against Thomas with great fullness and fairness, and enters into arguments at some * William Fitz-Stephen, Giles, i. 265. f H>. i- 226. 94 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay length against those who denied the Archbishop's claims to the title of martyr. As for contemporary chroniclers, who wrote, not special Lives of Paint Thomas, but general annals of their own times, several of the best of the class have recorded the reign of Henry the Second. These of course are highly valuable, as giving us the view of affairs taken by those who were not Thomas's immediate followers, and also as helping us to the more exact chronology of the period. The biographers are commonly rather careless as to the order of time. Each, as we have seen, recorded what struck him most or what he best knew; one set down one event and another another; and none of them paid much regard to the order of details. The chroniclers step in to correct their errors and supply their deficiencies. Ealph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul's, a moderate partisan of .the King's, supplies in his Imagines Historiarum several important facts not in the biographies; together with the chronological arrangement of all. Gervase and Eoger of Hoveden were also contemporaries ; but they were younger men, who wrote after the biographers, whom they continually copy. But it is always curious to see which Life they follow for any particular fact, and they also often add touches and details of their own. Gervase especially, as a Canterbury monk admitted by Thomas himself, had good means of information. William of Newburgh is chiefly remarkable for the manly and independent tone with which he treats the whole controversy, doing full justice to the originally honest motives of both the King and the Primate, but not scrupling to deal severe censure on particular actions of both. The Letters of course are invaluable ; at least they will be when any one shall be found to edit them decently. For the whole of Thomas's sojourn in France, they, much more than the biographers, are really the history. Many of the letters are strictly public documents, and many others, though private in form, were meant at least for the eyes of all the writer's own party. Mr. Robertson thinks the corre- IV.] AND. HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 95 spondence does not give a favourable idea of the. time, and that it is on the whole discreditable to the mediaeval church. That the letters are full of strong language is no more than was to be expected ; but we do not know that Saint Thomas and his contemporaries use any stronger language than those worthies of the sixteenth century whom doubtless Mr. Bobertson, as a sound Protestant, duly reverences. If Thomas is rather fond of calling Geoffrey Eiddell Archidia- h&lus instead of Archidiaconus, was it not the established joke of the Reformation to call a Bishop a Bitesheep, and to turn Cardinal Poole into Carnal Fool? In short, in ages when decorum was not very stringent, all men who have been in earnest, from the Prophets and Apostles downwards, have used very strong language upon occasion. But Mr. Robertson's taste is so delicate that he is actually offended by Thomas's hearty, honest, and thoroughly English denun- ciations of the iniquities of the Eoman Court. These we suspect, in anybody but Saint Thomas of Canterbury, he would have hailed as an instance of Protestantism before its time. But he has weightier .accusations still against the unfortunate Letters. They are he thinks full of "cant," and of " strange tossing to and fro of Scripture, perverted by allegory and misapplication." * In a certain sense this is true ; but talk of this sort always reminds us very strongly of the doctrine taught us by Mr. Grote, that all religions seem absurd to those who do not believe them. Most un- doubtedly a calm and critical reader of those Hebrew and Greek writings which we call Scripture will find constant "misapplications" and strange " tossings to and fro" in the writings of Thomas, his friends, and his enemies. But he will find misapplications and tossings equally strange in any sermon, any religious tract, any religious biography, of our own times. In their belief, as in that of the Protestant enthusiasts of the seventeenth century, every word of the Old and New Testament was written for the direct example and instruction of every man of every age. Believing this, * P. 173. 96 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay they did not shrink from carrying it out in detail. If God spake unto Moses, why should He not speak also to Anselm or Bernard ? If He bade Joshua lead his people against the Canaanite, did He not also bid Peter the Hermit to preach the crusade against the Saracen ? If the destroying angel smote the host of Sennacherib before Jerusalem, was the arm of the Lord to be shortened when the schismatic Frederick threw up his banks and shot his arrows against the tomb and Temple of the Prince of the Apostles ? The faith of those times was at least a real, living, practical, faith ; professing to believe certain books as their rule of faith and their per- sonal guide of life, they did believe them as such. Con- sistently, at all events, they shrank from no " misapplication," no "strange tossing to and fro," of what they held to be real lively oracles, speaking direct comfort and counsel in every circumstance of the life of every man. We however fully agree with Mr. Robertson in placing the letters of John of Salisbury far higher than any others in the collection. John was a thoroughly good and pious man, and withal learned, thoughtful, moderate, and prudent. A firm friend and faithful follower of Thomas, he rebukes him, whenever he thinks him in the wrong, with apostolic bold- ness ; down to the very day of his death,* he withstands him to the face as often as he is to be blamed. We have no hesitation in setting down John as a wiser and better man than Thomas himself. But does not Mr. Bobertson see that it speaks very much in Thomas's favour to have attracted and retained the devoted attachment of such a man? A really candid writer would have pointed out that if John's bold and faithful rebukes tell greatly to his honour, they tell almost equally to the honour of Thomas, who invariably took them in good part. In a similar spirit elsewhere Mr. Bobertson exhibits an amount of delight and triumph altogether childish, in point- ing out the error of " certain writers " who had not put the events connected with the excommunication at Vezelay and * Bog. Pont. ap. Giles, i. 164 ; Ben. Petr., ibid. ii. 62. IV.] AND BIS BIOGRAPHERS. 97 the removal from Pontigny in their right order. The " certain writers " seem to be Dr. Lingard, and perhaps Dr. Giles and Mr. Fronde. We are not greatly concerned for them ; but when Mr. Kobertson ventures to say * that the original biographers " wished to falsify the history," that is quite another matter. The case is this. In 1166 Thomas went from Pontigny to Vezelay, and there, in discharge of legatine powers with which he had been lately invested by the Pope, he excommunicated, with especial solemnity, several of the King's friends, both clerical and lay, for various offences, and uttered a solemn warning against Henry himself. Him also he had intended to excommunicate, but forebore doing so on hearing that he was dangerously ill. On hearing of this proceeding, Henry, by violent threats against the whole Cistercian order, procured the removal of Thomas from the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, where he had hitherto been sheltered. The comment of an impartial historian would be, that the Archbishop's conduct was violent and imprudent* the King's revenge mean and cowardly. Unfortunately it happens that not one of the biographers, except the anonymous Lambeth writer, describes this scene in all its fullness. The complete account of the matter has to be made out from the chroniclers and the Letters. That most of the biographers do not mention it is really not very wonderful. Edward Grim was not there, and his whole narrative of this part of Thomas's life is utterly meagre. Roger of Pontigny cuts his almost as short, because his brethren knew all about it. William Fitz-Stephen was not there ; he tells us chiefly what happened in Henry's domi- nions. Herbert was there, and records the scene ; he does not indeed directly mention the excommunication ; but this is clearly because the warning against the King was the most striking point, that which he found most vividly im- pressed on his mind eighteen years after. For an Arch- bishop of Canterbury to suspend a disobedient Bishop, and excommunicate a schismatic Dean and a sacrilegious layman. * P. 193. 98 SAINT TBOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay was no very wonderful occurrence. The awful and unex- pected part of the proceedings was, when Thomas arose, with a voice broken with tears,* to warn the King of England that, if he did not repent, excommunication should fall upon him as well as upon inferior sinners. That Herbert had no intention of concealing the far less important fact of the excommunication and suspension appears from his speaking directly of them in the very next page.j So equally does William Fitz-Stephen,t though without strict regard to chronology, he being more intent on the reception of the excommunications in England than on their first denuncia- tion in Burgundy. In short, if Mr. Eobertson enjoys crowing over Dr. Lingard, we have not the least wish to interfere with his enjoyment ; but he has not the slightest right to repeat the note of triumph over any one of Thomas's original biographers. We must now turn from the ancient and modern bio- graphers of Thomas to the estimate which we have ourselves formed of Thomas himself. If we can trust ourselves, that estimate is not swayed by party considerations of any kind. We do not feel ourselves bound to indiscriminate worship because of a Papal canonization; but we do not look on such Papal canonization as at all taking away a claim to honour when honour is due. And be it remembered that it was not only the Eoman Chancery, but the spontaneous voice of the English nation which raised Thomas to the honours of saintship. Through his whole archiepiscopal career, alike in England and in France, Thomas was the darling of the people. One of his biographers is almost content to rest his claims to reverence on the adage, familiar then as now, that the voice of the people is the voice of God.§ When he "fought with beasts" at Northampton, * " Confestim, omnibus audientibns et stupentibus, miro motu com- punotus, voce quidem flebili et intentissimo compassionis affectu in ipsum Anglorum Regem Henricum nominative comminatorium emisit edictum." Herb., ap. Giles, vii. 230. t Giles, vii. 231. % lb. i. 258. - § Lamb., ap. Giles, ii. 136. IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHEBS. 99 when his King accused him, when Barons condemned him and Bishops deserted him, an admiring multitude followed him in triumph from the castle-gate to his lodging at Saint Andrew's. When he turned away from the conference at Montmirail, when every earthly power seemed to hare for- saken him, every eye as he passed was fixed in admiration on the Primate who " would not deny the honour of God for the face of two Kings." His return from banishment, his reception at Sandwich, at Canterbury, and at London, was a nobler triumph than ever awaited returning conqueror. The bells, the organs, the processions of monks and clergy, might have expressed a mere constrained or official homage ; but there could have been nothing of such compulsion in the voice with which in defiance of hostile nobles and officials, all Kent and all London poured forth to bless him who came back to them in the name of the Lord, the father of the orphans and the judge of the widows.* Such popular rever- ence does not prove that the cause which he defended was one which the sober voice of histoiy will permanently approve. It does not prove that his own character may not have been disfigured by many and grievous faults. But it is a homage which assuredly was never paid to a mere proud and ambitious hypocrite, or to the assertor of a cause which was at the time palpably that of unrighteousness or oppression. Nor must we suppose that the popularity of Thomas in his own day was at all the popularity of an assertor of the cause of the " Saxon " against the Norman. This is a mere dream, to which an unlucky currency has been given by the eloquent writing of Thierry. There is no trace in the history of the period of any such strongly marked antagonism as Thierry supposes still to have existed ; still less is there any trace of Thomas of London being its impersonation, if it did exist. Thomas, in reality, was himself of Norman descent. His family was settled in London at the time of his birth ; but his father was originally from Kouen, while his mother seems * " Pater orphanorum et judex viduarum." Herb., ap. Giles, vii. 315. H 2 v 100 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay actually to have been born at Caen.* It is evident, however, that at the time of his birth his family was thoroughly esta- blished in England, and that they had the feelings, not of strangers, but of Englishmen and Londoners. The truth is, that there is not a word about " Saxons and Normans," or any controversies between them, in any one contemporary biographer, chronicler, or letter-writer. The whole evidence seems to us to show that the wide distinction and hostility between the two races, supposed by Thierry and his school to have remained so late as the reign of Henry the Second, is a mere imagination. The probability is that, though the upper classes were mainly of Norman, the lower of Old- English descent, the distinction had then become one merely of class, and not of nation. In the middle class, Thomas's own class, the two races must have been much mixed up together. Indeed, the Conquest itself must have had the highly beneficial effects of at once forming a middle class out of the higher ranks of the conquered people. The Norman gentleman, born in England, often of an English mother, would soon feel himself much more English than Norman. The Norman citizen, Gilbert Becket or his father, would do so still sooner. In truth, mankind are every where far more sensible of birth than of descent, and they identify them- selves with the country where they were born, rather than with the country of their fathers. We are sometimes led to suppose that the feeling of race lasted longer than it did because the Kings remained foreign so long. Henry the Second was not an Englishman, he was not even a Norman ; he was a great French prince, who reigned in France, and treated England as a dependency. To his English subjects he was the Bex trcmsmarinusj the King beyond the sea, who sometimes visited them, but who commonly dwelt in more favoured parts of his dominions. Twice in his reign he seems to have wished to confine his own immediate government to his French territories, and to convert England * Lamk, ap. Giles, ii. 73. t William Fitz-Stephen, ap. Giles, i. 284, 289, 294. IV.] AND BIS BIOGRAPHERS. 101 into the formal state of a viceroyalty. Such, if we may believe the Lambeth biographer,* was actually his object in pressing the election of Thomas to the Archbishoprick. Henry was to reign in France and Thomas in England. And afterwards it was clearly with the same object that he procured the coronation of his son as a Bex cismarinus during his lifetime. Those whom he, and the Kings before and after him, advanced by preference to high office were neither " Anglo-Saxons " nor " Anglo-Normans," but absolute foreigners, natives of the Continent. This is especially to be seen in ecclesiastical promotions. Thomas is always said to have been the first Englishman who became Archbishop of Canterbury since the Conquest ; it might have been added that he was nearly the first Englishman who became Bishop of any see. This is perfectly true. He was the first native of England, of either race, who rose to the metropolitan throne ; while his predecessors, and the greater number of the contemporary Bishops, were natives of the Continent. It is probably this ambiguous expression of " Englishman " which led M. Thierry into the mistake of looking on Thomas as an " Anglo-Saxon " patriot. The real phsenomenon of the age is not the struggle between the two races in England, but the fusing together of the two races preparatory to the struggle with a royal line foreign to both. This silent, gradual fusing of " Saxons and Normans," is recorded by no chronicler, just because it was so silent and gradual. But we see it plainly enough in its results. It was the great work of the twelfth century. It is this work which gives that century that peculiar character of which we have already spoken. No process could be more important, more neces- sary to all that was to come after. But its silent, hidden nature is alone enough to give a sort of isolated and unin- telligible character to the outward aspect of the age. Of this fusion Thomas, the son of Gilbert Becket of London, may be taken as the type. Though of Norman blood, his whole feeling, his whole character, is English ; and it is clear * Ap. Giles, ii. 86 : cf. Gamier (et Preteval), 152. 102 SAINT THOMAS OF OANTERBUBT [Essay that no man in England looked upon him as a stranger. His general character in mind and in body, stands vividly forth in his own letters and in the descriptions of his bio- graphers. The man of majestic presence and of unyielding soul at once rises up before us. Saint Thomas of Canterbury was indeed a " muscular Christian " with a vengeance. Of strength and stature beyond the common lot of men ; with a quick ear, a keen eye, a fluent speech, cheerful in discourse and ready in debate ; foremost in the mimic warfare of the chase and on the actual field of battle, — such was Thomas the Chancellor. And scourge and fast and sackcloth did but little to change the essential character of Thomas the Archbishop. The weapons of his warfare alone are changed. Of old he stormed the strongest castles, and unhorsed the stoutest knights in single combat. He laughed at the scruples of his sovereign which kept him back from assailing his liege lord King Lewis within the walls of Toulouse. The saint clearly took exactly the same delight in wielding his spiritual arms. He writhed under the timid and time- serving counsels of Pope and Cardinals, who kept back the sword of Peter from the slaughter. And yet this man, so ardent and headstrong, must have been, at both times of his life, amongst the most amiable and delightful of companions. The intense love with which he inspired his immediate followers breathes in every page of their writings. It is alike in the neophyte Edward Grim, in the fellow-exile Herbert, and in his earlier follower William Fitz-Stephen, who seems hardly to know which most to admire, the mag- nificent Chancellor or the martyred Archbishop. Nor did he awaken less attachment among men of other ways and callings. All their disputes could never quite efface the old friendship from the heart either of Henry or of Thomas. At every personal meeting the unextinguished love breaks out again, if only for one brief moment. Henry, there can be little doubt, was kept up to his opposition by men who hated Thomas far more than he did. The Bishops, even the better ones, for the most part disliked him from their natural IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 103 repugnance to see a man of his early life and conversation so strangely exalted over their heads. Kuffians like the De Brocs were actuated by the motives common to men of their stamp in all ages. The higher and better class of the laity, men like the Earls of Arundel and Leicester, oppose Thomas with deep sorrow, and in every respect exhibit a favourable contrast to the Bishops on the King's side. The love and the hatred of Thomas were passions of intense depth, and he could call out both feelings in others in as great intensity as he felt them himself. The intellect of Thomas was clearly one ranking very high in the second order of genius. He was not a creator. We should look in vain to him for anything original or comprehen- sive. He could never have left any such impress upon his age as did Hildebrand among Popes, or Charles the Great among Kings. His great qualities were an ardent and impetuous spirit, a practical energy which carried everything before him, an admirable versatility which could adapt itself to all circumstances and all people, and a lofty sense of duty which could support him under any amount of adversity and dis- appointment. His faults were chiefly the exaggeration of his virtues. His impetuosity often grew into needless and injudi- cious violence ; his strong will continually degenerated into obstinacy. His biographers praise him for uniting the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove. We must confess that we can see in him very little of either dove or serpent ; their other favourite quotation of " the righteous man bold as a lion," is very much more to the purpose. His enemies have accused him of pride and of duplicity. Doubt- less he magnified his office to the extremest point ; his long brooding over his wrongs at Sens and Pontigny imbued him with a fanatical spirit, and an overdone, almost frantic, long- ing for martyrdom. Yet how far the personal exaltation of Thomas of London was still thought of in procuring the triumph of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Legate of the Holy See, it is not for mortals to presume to judge. The charge of duplicity, which we are sorry to see brought on one 104 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay occasion by so weighty a writer as Dean Milman, is, we think, without foundation. The faults of Thomas were the natural faults of his lofty and impetuous character, the faults of obstinacy and violence. But duplicity, conscious bad faith, was utterly alien to his nature. Once, possibly twice, in his life — certainly at Clarendon, perhaps also at Montmirail — he allowed himself to be talked oyer into conduct which he did not thoroughly approve. He repented ; he drew back ; in a certain sense he violated his promise ; but he was not guilty of any deliberate deception. His conduct may be called either vacillating or obstinate, two qualities quite con- sistent with one another ; it may be called over-scrupulous ; it certainly was provoking and offensive; but we do not think it fairly deserves the name of double-dealing. The whole character of Thomas strikes us as essentially secular. He was made for the court and the camp, not for cathedral or the cloister. His episcopacy and his saintship strike us as mistakes. There was not a particle of hypocrisy in him ; but the whole of his saintly career was artificial, unnaturah and overdone. His misfortune was to be born in an age, and in a class, to which the Church alone offered means of advancement. His first great advancement was indeed secular ; he was a statesman and a soldier, not a priest; but, strangely enough, it was only his ecclesiastical character which allowed him to become a statesman and a soldier. His parentage was respectable, but no more ; he was himself in no way ashamed of his descent, but it is clear that it was humble enough to be used as a means of disparage- ment by his enemies. The son of Gilbert Becket of London would, as a mere layman, have had little chance of presiding in the King's Chancery or of commanding the King's armies. Once tonsured, secular as well as ecclesiastical greatness was open to him. As Chancellor he nearly cast off his clerical character. Strict men condemned the secular pomp of the great courtier and captain who was also Archdeacon of Canter- bury and Provost of Beverley. But two things are to be remembered : first of all, he was not a priest. Loaded with IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 105 preferment which now no deacon could hold, the terror of King Lewis and counsellor of King Henry remained eccle- siastically in that lowly order. A fighting Archdeacon was a scandal, though Edward Grim seems to have thought other- wise ; but the conduct of Thomas did not present the far greater scandal of a priest, one invested with the mysterious powers of sacrifice and absolution, casting off his spiritual character like Csesar Borgia or Talleyrand. In modern esti- mation the difference between a priest and a deacon seems very slight; but, when once the full sacerdotal ideal is realized, it becomes something infinite. Secondly, though Thomas as Chancellor led a thoroughly secular life, he did not lead either an irreligious or an immoral one. Looked on as a layman, he might almost, even then, have passed for a saint. That he already bared his back to the discipline does not prove very much, as Henry himself now and then did the same. But it is no small credit that a man, whose order debarred him from marriage, should, in a profligate court, have strictly preserved his personal chastity. How far he rebuked the King's vices we know not, but he resisted many strong temptations to share in them, and he was a severe censor of inferior offenders in the same line. At last came the moment of the great change. Thomas the Chancellor- Archdeacon is converted into Thomas the Archbishop. We have every reason to. believe that the appointment was against his own wishes. He was as great as he could be in the line which best suited his powers, and he felt no desire to adventure him- self in a line for which he must then at least have felt himself less fitted. He warned his master that, once Archbishop, he should be sure to lose his favour* But Henry insisted on the appointment, and Thomas was ordained priest, and elected and consecrated Primate of all England. And now came that great change by which, in the language of his biographers, he became another man. Was the change miraculous ? Was it hypocritical ? Or shall we say with Mr. Froude that there was no sudden change at all ? * Herb. vii. 26 : cf. Rog. i. 108 ; Will. Fitz-Steph. i. 193 ; AlaD, i. 322. 106 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay To us it seems mterely the natural result of change of circum- stances in a man of Thomas's character. He was not a man to do any thing by halves ; whatever master he served he served to the uttermost. As the servant of the King he was the most faithful of Chancellors ; as the servant of the Church he would be the most faithful of Bishops. One at least of his biographers seems to have quite understood * what is really no very wonderful phsenomenon. Thomas was in all things a man of his own age ; we never find him rising above it or sinking below it. He accepted without hesitation the current notion of a saintly prelate, and endeavoured to carry it out in his own person. The ideal ecclesiastic of his times was one who united the loftiest hierarchical pretensions with the most unbounded liberality and the severest personal mortifications. Into this ideal Thomas threw himself with characteristic fervour. His perfect sincerity no man can doubt who has studied at once human nature and the records of the time. But the change, though perfectly sincere, was still artificial; his saintship never sat quite easily upon him ; with the zeal of a new convert he overdid matters. We at once see the difference between him and those holy personages whose sanctity has been the sanctity of a whole life, or those again who have been suddenly turned from notorious sinners into contrite-hearted penitents. Nor was he one of the class of great ecclesiastical statesmen, to whom the Church has been through life as a fatherland or a political party. Had Thomas belonged to any one of those classes, he would have been somewhat more chary of his spiri- tual thunders. But his artificial frame of mind allowed no scope either for the long-suffering of Anselm, or for the policy of Hildebrand. His fiery soul would have revolted against either as remissness in the cause of God. Thomas could be * " Siquideni quum ante pvomotionem suam tanquam unus excellentium enituisset seoulo, non minus etiam postmodum inter prsecipuos orthodox- orum eminere studuit militans Cbristo. Nesciebat enim nisi maximoruni unus esse quemcumque sortitus esset ordinem vitae." Will. Cant., ap. Giles, ii. 130. IV.] AND SIS BIOGRAPHERS. 107 meek and gentle after a sort, yet always only by an effort ; himself personally he could humble, as he did to his censor John of Salisbury ; but the rights of his office, the cause of the Church, were never to be humbled by him. Throughout his life the garb of saintship never fitted him. Through his whole career the old Adam is perpetually peeping out : we see the spirit of former days when he tells his slanderer at Northampton that, were he a knight, his sword should assert his righteousness ; when he is detected on the Flemish coast by his eye fixed on the hawk on the young noble's wrist ; when, even in his last hour, after years of scourging and penance, the strong arm which had unhorsed Engelram de Trie threw Eeginald Fitz-TJrse prostrate upon the pavement of the cathedral. It peeps out in less excusable form in those words of reviling, rather than rebuke, from which he could not restrain himself even in the hour of confessorship and of martyrdom.* Had his early life been one of deeper sinful- ness, his conversion might have brought a more chastened and truly mortified spirit to the service of his Maker. But a saintship artificial, though thoroughly sincere, had always something awkward and incongruous about it. If the Church really needed a champion, the lion-heart of Thomas was certainly less fitted for the office than the true union of dove and serpent to be found in his friend and monitor John of Salisbury. Our estimate of Thomas's personal character ought not to be at all affected by modern notions, however well founded, as to the abstract justice of the cause which he maintained. The immunity of clerks from the jurisdiction of the civil power would now be justly considered monstrous in every well-governed country. All that is wanted is to show that it was a cause which might be honestly maintained in the twelfth century. And that it surely was. Thomas did not invent the ecclesiastical claims ; he merely defended them as he found them. Even if the "Customs" were, which * "Garcionem et spurium" (Will. Cant., ap. Giles, ii. 13) at North- ampton. " Lenonem appellans" at Canterbury (E. Grim, ap. Giles, i. 76). 108 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay seems very doubtful, the established laws of the land, they were laws which a churchman of those days could at most submit to in patience, and could not be expected to approve or subscribe to. None of his fellow-Bishops loved the Con- stitutions of Clarendon~any better than Thomas did ; they simply submitted through fear, some of them at least clearly against their own judgement. The most violent attack on Thomas ever penned, the famous letter of Gilbert Foliot,* does not blame the Archbishop for resisting the King, but for not resisting him more strenuously. And we must re- member that, if the so-called liberties of the Church were utterly repugnant to our notions of settled government, they did not appear equally so in those times. The modern idea of government is an equal system of law for every part of the territory and for every class of the nation. In the middle ages every class of men, every district, every city, .tried to isolate itself within a jurisprudence of its own. Nobles, burghers, knights of order, wherever either class was strong enough, refused the jurisdiction of any but their own peers. Every town tried to approach as nearly as it could to the condition of a separate republic. A province thought itself privileged if it could obtain a judicial system separate from the rest of the kingdom. Even within the ecclesiastical pale we find peculiar jurisdictions: orders, monasteries, chapters, colleges, shake off the authority of the regular ordinaries, and substitute some exceptional tri- bunal of their own. For the clergy to be amenable only to a clerical judicature was really nothing very monstrous in such a state of things. It was of course defended on totally different grounds from any other exemption ; but it could hardly have arisen except in a state of things when exemp- tions of all kinds were familiar. And we must also remember that ecclesiastical privileges were not so exclusively priestly privileges as we sometimes fancy. They sheltered not only ordained ministers, but all ecclesiastical officers of every kind; the Church courts also claimed jurisdiction in the * Ep. Gilb. Fol., ap. Giles, v. 272. IV.] AND HIS BIOGRAPHERS. 109 causes of widows and orphans.* In short, the privileges for which Thomas contended transferred a large part of the people, and that the most helpless part, from the bloody grasp of the King's courts to the milder jurisdiction of the Bishop. The ecclesiastical judicature was clearly inadequate to deal with the most serious class of offences ; but, on the other hand, it did not, like that of the royal courts, visit petty thefts or assaults with such monstrous penalties as blinding and castration, f One of the Constitutions of Cla- rendon, that which forbade the ordination of villains without the consent of their lords, was directly aimed at the only means by which the lowest class in the state could rise. And this constitution did not, as Dean Milman says,J pass unheeded ; on the contrary, it called forth an indignant burst of almost democratic sentiment from the French biographer of Thomas.§ But while we do justice to Thomas, we must also do justice to Henry. Foreigner as he was, careless of special English interest, and stained as his life was by vices and faults of various kinds, Henry had still many of the qualities of a great ruler, and we have no reason to doubt that he was sin- cerely desirous for the good government of his kingdom. The civil wars of Stephen's reign had left England in a state of utter anarchy. This state of things King Henry and Chancellor Thomas set themselves to work in good earnest to undo. Their government did much to restore order and peace ; but it is easy to see that, to restore perfect order and peace, no class of men must be allowed to break the law with the certainty of an inadequate punishment. Thomas's own admirers state Henry's case very fairly, and do full justice to * See the letter of John of Poitiers, Giles, Ep. Gilb. Fol. vi. 238. t See a most curious story in Benedict's Miracles of St. Thomas, pp. 184-193. On the cruelty of the royal jurisprudence, see Herb. vii. 105. % Lat. Christ, iii. 465. § " ' Pils a vilains ne fust en nul liu ordenez Sanz l'otrei sur seignur de cui terre il fu nez.' Et Deus a sun servise nus a tuz apelez ! Mielz valt flls a vilain qui est preuz et senez, Que ne feit gentilz hum failliz et debutez." Gamier, p. 89. 110 SAINT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay his motives.* Herbert himself goes so far as to say that King and Archbishop alike had a zeal for God, and leaves it to God Himself to judge which zeal was according to know- ledge^ No doubt both Henry and Thomas saw the evil, and each set himself vigorously to correct it in his own way. The number of clerical offenders was large, and some of their offences were very serious. Thomas, during the short time that he lived in England as Archbishop, certainly did his best to strike at the root of the evil by unusual care as to those whom he ordained ; and he also passed severe sen- tences, though of course not of life or limb, upon the offenders whom he sheltered from the royal vengeance. Still there can be no doubt that there were a good many churchmen in the kingdom for whom the gallows was the only appropriate remedy. Henry had a noble career before him, had he but adhered steadily to his own principles. The only danger was, that the full carrying out of those principles would have led to consequences which in the twelfth century would have been altogether premature. They involved not only the subjection of the clergy to the ordinary jurisdiction, but the throwing off of all dependence upon the see of Eome. This noble, but perhaps impracticable, cause Henry wilfully threw away. He let the contest degenerate from a strife of prin- ciples into a petty personal persecution of the Archbishop. In the scene at Clarendon we see the clashing of two causes, both of which contained elements of right. In the scene at Northampton we see only a series of mean and malignant attempts to crush a man who had become offensive and dangerous. Henry was now the tyrant and Thomas the hero. By allowing his Bishops to appeal to the Pope, by appealing to the Pope himself, Henry gave up his own cause. Nor did he mend it when he recognized the Pope as arbiter whenever he thought him favourable, but, whenever he turned against him, denounced savage penalties on all who should introduce any Papal letters into the kingdom. Henry, at the begin- * See Herb., ap. Giles, vii. 102, 122 ; Ann. Lamb. ii. 85, 86. t HerKvii. 108, 109. IV.] AND BIS BIOGRAPHERS. Ill ning at least, appears as the statesman of wider and clearer vision; but Thomas deserves the higher moral praise of sticking firmly and manfully to the principles which he conscientiously believed to be right. And now for a few words on the closing scene. As usual, we find a heroic firmness, a lofty sense of right, mixed up with circumstances detracting from the purely saintly ideal. We admire rather than approve. We hold Thomas to have been highly blameworthy in returning to England amidst a storm of censures and excommunications; so did many of his wisest contemporaries. An amnesty on such a triumphal return would have been naturally expected from a secular conqueror ; much more would it have become a minister of peace victorious in a bloodless struggle. But in the state of fanatic exaltation into which Thomas had now wrought him- self, lenity would have seemed a crime which would incur the curse of Meroz ; to have failed to smite the contumacious Prelates would have been failing to come to the help of the Lord against the mighty. The quarrel in itself was not so frivolous an one as it seems in these days. The ancient right of the Primate of Canterbury to crown the English King seems to us a mere honorary privilege ; it was a very dif- ferent matter when a King was no King till he was crowned and anointed. And in the actual choice put before him, no one can wish that Thomas had chosen otherwise than he did. " Absolve the prelates ; fly, or die." He would not fly ; he had fled once ; he would not again desert his church. As for the absolution, he was probably canonically right in saying that the Pope alone could pronounce it ; but a con- ditional absolution he did offer. Now, whether the sentence was just or unjust, wise or foolish, no public officer, Bishop, Judge, or any other, could be justified in withdrawing a solemn and regular judgement in answer to the bidding and threats of four ruffians armed with no sort of legal authority. To have absolved the Bishops through fear of the words of Tracy and Fitz-TJrse would have been un- worthy cowardice indeed. That Thomas showed a most 112 8A1NT THOMAS OF CANTERBURY [Essay unhealthy craving after martyrdom cannot be denied ; hut a martyr he clearly was, not merely to the privileges of the church or to the rights of the see of Canterbury, but to the general cause of law and order as opposed to violence and murder. We have thus tried to deal, by the clear light of impartial historical critieism, with a man whose history has been dis- figured by three centuries and a half of adoration, followed by three more centuries of obloquy. The almost deified Saint Thomas, the despised Thomas a Becket, appears by that light as a man of great gifts, of high and honest purpose, but whose virtues were disfigured by great defects, and who was placed in a position for which his character was un- suited. Indiscriminate adoration and indiscriminate reviling are alike out of place with so mixed a character; petty carping and sneers are yet more out of place than either. Thomas and his age are gone. He has perhaps no direct claims upon our gratitude* as Englishmen ; none certainly for those acts which most won him the admiration of his own day. He won the martyr's crown in contending for prin- ciples which we must all rejoice did not ultimately prevail. The Constitutions of Clarendon are now, with the good will of all, part and parcel of our law. We do not claim a place for Thomas of Canterbury beside Alfred and JEthelstan, beside Stephen Langton and Simon de Montfort ; yet, as a great and heroic Englishman, he is fully entitled to a respect more disinterested than that which we show to benefactors whose gifts we are still enjoying. Of no man of such wide- spread fame have we so few visible memorials ; Northampton Castle has vanished, Canterbury Cathedral is rebuilt ; a few fragments alone remain on which the eyes of Thomas can have rested. No great foundation, no splendid minster or * We speak doubtingly, because the account of one exaction of Henry's resisted by.Thomas (Edw. Grim, ap. Giles, i. 21 ; Bog. Pont. i. 113 ; Gamier, p. 30) reads very much as if it were resisted on general and not on purely ecclesiastical grounds. Even Mr. Robertson allows (p. 74), in his half- sneciing way, that " the primate appeared as a sort of Hampden." IV.] AND HIS BIOORAPEERS. 113 castle, survives to bear witness to his bounty or to bis skill in the arts. He lived in and for bis own age. To under- stand him thoroughly, one must first thoroughly know what that age was. And no fair-minded man who has at once mastered the history and literature of the twelfth century, and has attained the faculty of throwing himself with a lively interest into times so alien to our own, can rise from his studies without the conviction that Thomas of Canterbury, 'with all his faults, is fairly entitled to a place among the worthies of whom England is proud. 114 THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. [Essay V. TEE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD.* To lovers of chivalrous adventure I presume that no part of English history is more attractive than the reign of Edward the Third. Edward himself is to some exlent a popular hero, and his son the Black Prince is so to -a much greater extent. But in Edward himself, when we come fairly to examine him, there is not very much to admire ; and as to his son, the provoking thing is that people admire him for the wrong things. Throwing aside all the fopperies and fripperies of chivalry, we have to balance how we can the good and the evil points of the man who was at once the savage conqueror of Limoges and the patriotic statesman of the Good Parliament. To the political student the reign of Edward is rather repulsive at first sight, but a closer examination soon shows that there is a great deal of important matter below the surface. The primary and popular notion of Edward the Third and his son is that they were two great conquerors who won brilliant victories, which victories abundantly showed how few Englishmen could beat a vast number of French- men. And no one will deny that Crecy, Poitiers, even Navarete, were wonderful victories indeed, victories of which it is impossible even now to read the account without a thrill of national pride. The pity is that they were victories which served absolutely no purpose — Crecy and Navarete absolutely no purpose, Poitiers only a very tem- * This was a review of Mr. Longman's Life and Times of Edward the Third. I have dealt with it in the same way as I dealt with the article on Dr. Vaughan's Revolutions in English History. V.] THE REIGN OF EDWARD TEE THIRD. 115 porary purpose. England was successful in battles, but she was thoroughly beaten in war. Edward the Third succeeded by lawful inheritance to a large part of Southern Gaul. He left to his successor the mere shadow of that ancient inhe- ritance, together with a still more shadowy title to the Kingdom of France itself. His only conquest, in the strict sense of the word, was Calais. One may conceive a point of view in which the gain of Calais might counterbalance the loss of nearly all Aquitaine, but this is a very philosophical point of view, and one from which we may be quite sure that no one looked at things in the time of Edward the Third. The broad and plain fact of Edward's reign is that it was a time of great territorial losses. As far as glory consists in winning wonderful battles and leading foreign Kings captive, no other age in English history was equally glorious. But at no time, save that of Henry the Sixth, was England ever so thoroughly stripped of possessions which had once been hers. The comparison which I have just made suggests another. One can hardly help contrasting the two great periods of English warfare and English victory in France. Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth almost necessarily suggest one another ; but the difference between the two men is infinite. There is indeed a striking superficial likeness between those among the exploits of the two princes which have found for themselves the most abiding resting-place in popular memory. The story of Azincourt is almost a literal repetition of the story of Crecy, and the victory of Azincourt was hardly richer in immediate results than the victory of Crecy. But Edward was simply victor in a battle ; Henry was victor in war, in diplomacy, in all that he attempted. In reading the reign of Edward," the years seem to pass away we know not how. Every ten years there is a great battle, a glorious victory, but the intermediate periods slip by like a dream. They are full of purposeless unconnected events, which fall into no certain order, and which it is almost impossible to keep in the memory. The time is stirring enough ; there is I 2 116 THE RE-ION OF EDWARD 'THE THIRD. [Essay always something going on ; the difficulty is to understand or to remember what it is that is going on. We move back- wards and forwards from Britanny to Gascony, from Flanders to Germany, from Scotland to Castile, without any very clear notion why we are thus flitting backwards and forwards. In the reign of Henry, on the other hand, the wonder is how so many great events, pressing close upon the heels of one another, could be crowded into the few years of his warfare. Edward, in short, made war like a knight-errant ; war was a noble pastime for princes and nobles ; the whole thing, from beginning to end, reads like a long tournament, a tournament carried on for the amusement and glory of a few, at the expense of suffering millions. Henry cared as little for human suffering as Edward did, perhaps even less. The besieger of Eouen was at least as stern as the besieger of Calais. But the warfare of Henry was no purposeless tourna- ment ; not a blow was dealt by him, whether on the field or in the council chamber, which was not dealt in deep and deadly earnest. It was not as a knight-errant that he made war, but as a general and a statesman of the highest order, as a King worthy to wear the crown of the great William and the great Edward. No doubt Henry was favoured by fortune as few men ever have been favoured. France lay before Hm in a state which seemed almost to invite his invasion. The murder of John of Burgundy, and the position assumed by his son, served the purposes of Henry as directly as if he had himself planned them beforehand. Edward certainly had no such manifest advantages. But after all, what does statesmanship consist in except in making the most of such advantages as a man has ? The position of Henry was un- doubtedly far more favourable than the position of Edward; but then Henry made the most of his position, while the Edwards, father and son, failed to make the most of theirs. Henry knew his purposes, and he fulfilled them. Edward failed to fulfil his purposes, or rather it is hard to say whether he had any purposes to fulfil. Looking at the morality of the two great enterprises V.] THE REION OF EDWARD TEE THIRD. 117 against France, a modern writer is perhaps tempted to judge both Edward and Henry with undue harshness. Lord Brougham, for instance, brings Henry up before the tribunal of abstract right, and before the tribunal of ab- stract right it must be allowed that Henry cuts but a poor figure. But it is seldom fair to judge any historical character by so unswerving a standard ; we must make allowance for the circumstances, the habits, the beliefs, the prejudices, of each man's time. As a lesson in moral phi- losophy, as a comment on the doctrine that man is very far gone from original righteousness, Lord Brougham's estimate of Henry the Fifth is highly instructive ; but as a portrait of Henry the Fifth it is unfair. The biographer of Edward, Mr. Longman, cannot wield the trenchant weapons of Lord Brougham, but he is really fairer in his estimate of Edward than Lord Brougham is in his estimate of Henry. He is not dazzled with Edward's somewhat tinsel glories, but he equally avoids the other extreme of unreasonable harshness. He strongly brings out the fact that Edward was really forced into the war by Philip. Philip, in truth, had a policy, while Edward had none. Philip's policy was the obvious, the traditional, French policy, the policy of consolidating his Kingdom by convenient annexations. He clearly aimed at the annexation of Edward's Duchy of Aquitaine, and he sought for a war which would give him a chance of annex- ing it. A perfectly calm and passionless English statesman might have doubted whether Aquitaine was worth the keep- ing. Aquitaine, we must remember, was now strictly an English dependency. When England and Aquitaine first became possessions of the same sovereign, it was not so. Henry of Anjou, King of England, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Count and Lord of a crowd of smaller states, was no more a national prince in any of them than Charles of Ghent was a national prince in Castile or Ger- many or Sicily. But Henry's various continental dominions widely as they differed from one another in speech and feeling, might still be looked on as forming one whole, in 118 THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. [Essay opposition to his insular Kingdom. And in his eyes, and in those of his immediate successors, they certainly outweighed his insular Kingdom. Henry was primarily a great conti- nental sovereign, the rival of his less powerful lord at Paris. That he was also King of England was a very important accession to his power and position ; still it was an accession and little more. But things changed when John lost all his possessions in Northern Gaul, with the solitary exception of that insular Normandy which his successors have kept to this day. Aquitaine, or what was left of it, was now a mere accession to England, an outlying and distant possession of the English Crown. And as the relation of Aquitaine to England changed, its relation to France changed also. We must not forget that Aquitaine, though a fief of the French Crown, was in no sense a French province. Unless we except the short time during which Louis the Seventh ruled there in right of Eleanor, Aquitaine had never been a pos- session of the Parisian Kings, and its people had, in speech and origin, no kindred with the people of France beyond that general kindred which they shared equally with the people of Spain and Italy. When Henry was Lord of Rouen, of Tours, and of Bourdeaux, none of those cities seemed at all called upon to bow to Paris. But when Paris had swallowed up Rouen and Tours, the position of Bourdeaux was sensibly changed. It was changed both politically and geographi- cally. Aquitaine was now no longer a part of the great continental monarchy of Henry. It was a dependency of the island Kingdom, which the French conquest of Toulouse had caused to be surrounded by French territory on every side, except those occupied by the sea and the mountains. The Parisian King, instead of being a mere nominal suzerain, was now the immediate master of the larger part of Gaul. Aquitaine now looked like a natural portion of his Kingdom, unnaturally detained from him by a distant potentate. Within the Duchy itself the feelings of the inhabitants presented great differences and fluctuations. There was always an English and a French party ; of a Spanish party, V.j THE REIGN OF EDWARD TEE THIRD. 119 of which we see signs in the thirteenth century, we see none in the fourteenth. And men's minds might well be divided on the question whether it were better for their country to remain a dependency of England or to become an integral part of France. There can be no doubt that the English rule was the better of the two, as was soon found out when Aquitaine was finally conquered/ The nearer master was far more dangerous to local liberties and customs than the more distant one. Bourdeaux, while it was a distant dependency of England, came much nearer to the position of a free city than when it had sunk into a provincial town of France. But Englishmen failed then, as they fail now, to adapt themselves to subjects of another race and speech. Their rule was essentially better than that of France, but it was less attractive. France was already beginning to exercise that strange fascination which she goes on ex- ercising still, and which enables her to incorporate and assi- milate her conquests in a way in which no other conquering power has succeeded in rivalling her. And, marked as was the ethnical distinction between France and Aqui- taine, it was slight compared to the ethnical distinction between Aquitaine and England. All these causes con- tributed to produce a very divided state of feeling in the Duchy. The strength of England lay mainly in the cities ; that of France lay mainly among the nobles of the country. But it is easy to see throughout Edward's wars that the English party was decaying, and that the French party was growing. To annex then this great province, which lay so temptingly open to him, a corner which seemed so needful to round off his dominions, was the main object of the policy of Philip of Valois. We are commonly inclined to blame Edward for setting up a claim of his own on the French Crown, after he had done homage to Philip, and had thereby recognized him as lawful King of France. But Edward was fairly goaded into the war by Philip, and he seems to have assumed the title of Xing of France as much to satisfy the scruples of the Flemings as for any other 120 THE EE1GN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. [Essay reason. It was fairly a case of drifting into war — a war which, notwithstanding the two great battles and many other gallant exploits, was begun, continued, and ended in a way which is throughout purposeless and perplexing. ^ The first war, the war of Crecy and Poitiers, was ended by the Peace of Bretigny. People often fail to understand how important a bearing that peace had upon the wars of the next century. The French are perfectly right in speaking of the whole time from Edward the Third to Henry the Sixth as the Hundred Years' War. The Peace of Bretigny was the formal justification of Henry the Fifth. On no theory could Henry haye any hereditary right to the Crown of France. The principle on which Edward the Third had claimed that crown was the principle of female succession, and the prin- ciple of female succession would have given the rights of Edward the Third to the House of Mortimer. But Henry the Fifth succeeded to the crown of England at a time when England was at war with France. The Peace of Bretigny was undoubtedly broken on the French side. From Bretigny to Troyes no other peace was concluded; there were only truces, and at the "end of any truce the King of England had a perfect formal right to begin the war again. That the Peace of Bretigny did not last is a sign of the change of feeling which was gradually coming over Southern Gaul. Two hundred years earlier we may be sure that Aquitanian patriotism would have rejoiced in an ar- rangement which made the lands south of the Loire free from all superiority on the part of the Parisian Crown. But a large part of the former dominions of Henry the Second submitted with the utmost reluctance to those terms of the treaty which restored them to the rule of the descendant of their ancient Dukes. Even within the lands which had never been separated from England the rule of the Black Prince seems not to have thoroughly taken root. In fact an independent Principality of Aquitaine was fast becoming, in French phrase, an anachronism. And an independent Prin- cipality of Aquitaine in the hands of an English prince was V.] THE REIGN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. 121 somewhat of a pretence into the bargain. At an earlier time independent commonwealths of Bourdeaux and La Rochelle might have been something more than a dream. But in Aquitaine, as throughout the fiefs of the Parisian Crown, with the single half exception of Flanders, the princely power, royal or ducal, was always too strong to allow of the growth of a system of free cities, such as arose within the bounds of each of the three Imperial Kingdoms. The reign of Edward the Third is also of great importance in a constitutional point of view ; it is equally so in a social, a literary, and a religious point of view. But in these points also the reign of Edward has something of the same character that it has in military affairs. Changes take place in a sort of invisible, incidental way ; we cannot lay our hands on any marked revolutions, like those of the reign of Henry the Third, nor on many great and lasting enactments, like those of the reign of Edward the First. The fourteenth century is indeed more fertile than any other in one most important class of political precedents. It is the only century since the eleventh * which saw two Kings deposed by authority of Parliament. Yet even the depositions of Edward the Second and Richard the Second do not stand out in the same way as the events of the thirteenth century or of the seventeenth. The reign of Edward the Third was a reign of frequent Parliaments and of much legislation, but Edward could no more be compared to his grandfather as a legislator than he could as a statesman and a warrior. Even his commercial legislation was done, as it were, by haphazard. So indeed was everything that he did. He constantly wanted money, and his constant want of money was a great constitutional advantage. He was driven to summon Parliaments, com- monly yearly, sometimes oftener; and those Parliaments gradually learned their strength. How important these silent influences were is shown when we reach the last two * Charles the First was not deposed, but was executed being King. This leaves the seventeenth century with only one case of deposition strictly so called. 122 THE EEION OF EDWARD TEE THIRD. [Essay years of Edward's life. In the Good Parliament we see how the Commons had been gradually gaining more and more of power and enlightenment, till they were able to carry some of the most thorough measures of reform, and to make one of the most successful attacks on the executive government that any legislative body ever made. No doubt it was a great help for the popular party to have the Prince of Wales on their side, and, when he was gone, his loss was sadly felt in the reaction of the next year. But it was a great thing to see a Prince of Wales put himself at the head of a real popular movement of reform, a very different process from a Prince of Wales getting up a factious personal opposition against his father. It is his conduct in this Parliament, far more than any of his doings beyond the sea, which gives the Black Prince his real claim to rank among the worthies of England. The acts of the Good Parliament and their unhappy reversal in the next year, the good influence of Prince Edward and the evil influence of John of Gaunt, are points which stand out conspicuously in the legislative history of this reign. Oh the legislation of this time there is one dark blot, which even touches the Good Parliament itself: I mean the constant attempt to control matters which are beyond the proper province of legislation, and, worse still, the constant attempt to control them in a way contrary to the interests of the most numerous and the most helpless class of the people. The depopulation caused by the Black Death made labour scarce ; wages of course rose, and successive Parliaments, the Good Parliament among them, undertook the cruel and im- possible task of keeping wages down by law. At the same time, and very much by reason of the same causes, the emancipation of the villains was largely going on. Thus the class of free labourers was being enlarged and strengthened; the payment of wages for work done was constantly becoming more habitual, while the class of people who could be set to work without wages was constantly diminishing. One might almoBt have expected that the emancipation of villains would have been forbidden by law, just as in old Eome restrictions V.] THE REIGN OF EDWARD TEE THIRD. 123 were put on the emancipation of slaves. But happily the Church taught that to set a bondman free was a pious and charitable deed, and men could hardly be ordered by Act of Parliament to abstain from adding to the number of their good works. The mention of the religious and the literary condition of England during this reign at once suggests that we are dealing with the age of Wyclif and the age of Chaucer. I am not going to discuss either of them at the end of an article. But those names stamp the age of Edward the Third as the beginning of the theological reformation in England and as the beginning of modern English litera- ture. I confess that the purely theological aspect of the time interests me less than the part played by this age, as by other ages, in the long struggle between England and Home. The English spirit whiqh, three centuries before, had, through the mouth of Tostig, defied Pope Nicolas on his throne, came out in the Parliaments of Edward the Third as it came out in other Parliaments before and after him. And it was a sound and happy line of argument, a true English lore of precedent, which led the Good Parliament to appeal to the practice of the sainted Eadward himself as unanswerable evidence of the true and ancient supremacy of the Crown in matters ecclesiastical. Oddly enough, this was the very moment when the; old ground on which that supremacy was based was beginning to give way. Up to this time, ever since the last Englishman ceased to worship Thunder and Woden, Englishmen had been united in religion ; the Church and the nation had been two aspects of the same body. But the teaching of Wyclif gave birth in the next generation to our earliest Nonconformists ; when we ought to have had our first toleration, we did have our first persecution. With the appearance of the Lollards, the Church and the nation ceased to be fully one, and the puzzles and controversies of modern times had their beginning. - Another sign of the times in religious matters is the turn which the bounty of pious founders and benefactors was now 124 TEE BEIGN OF EDWABD THE THIRD. [Essay taking. The day of the monks was over. The great struggle which had been going on ever since the days of Dunstan was at last decided in favour of the seculars. Monasteries were still founded now and then, but there is nothing like the zeal for them which followed on the Benedictine movement in the tenth and eleventh centuries, on the Cistercian movement in the twelfth, on the Franciscan and Dominican movement in the thirteenth. Colleges in the Universities, chantries for the repose of their founders' souls, colleges for the more splendid performance of divine service in this or that parish church, hospitals for the poor, schools for the young, are now the objects of pious benefactions far more largely than the monastic orders. On the other hand, the constant wars with France led, on an obvious principle of policy, to temporary seizures of the property of the Alien Priories. These tem- porary seizures again suggested the complete suppression of those priories in the next century, and this formed a pre- cedent for the general suppression of all monasteries in the century after that. On the whole then the fourteenth century, the age of Edward the Third, is an age whose importance lies below the surface. It sets before us nothing like the great tragedy of the eleventh century or the mighty new birth of the thirteenth. It has more in common with the silent working of the twelfth. But the visible actors are on a smaller scale. '1 he tinsel frippery of chivalry hangs around the names of Edward and his son, but, when stripped of these factitious attrac- tions, they seem small indeed beside the two great Henries. Edward seems great between his father and iris grandson, but the real personal greatness of our Kings leaps from Edward the First to Henry the Fifth. But there is this difference between them. The work of Edward the First, like the . work of the Conqueror, still abides. Each of them has left his direct impress on English history for all time. Henry, hardly their inferior in natural gifts, has had only an indirect influence upon after events. The war which he waged, the war in which France was so nearly conquered, showed in the end V.] THE RE1QN OF EDWARD THE THIRD. 125 that France could hot really be conquered. His son, the only English King who was ever crowned King of France, was the King who lost the last relics of that continental dominion which England began to lose under the King who first took up the Tain title of French royalty. As long as Calais was kept, men ever and anon dreamed that those who still held the key of France might one day enter on the possession of France itself. But such thoughts were mere momentary dreams, and never continuously influenced our policy. The victories of Edward the Third began the chain of events which in the end made England a strictly insular power. As such we may be thankful for them. 126 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay VI. THE HOLY EOMAN EMPIRE. The Holy Roman Empire. By James Bryce, B.A.* Oxford, 1864. It may seem a hard saying, but it is one which the facts fully bear out, that hardly one student in ten of mediaeval history really grasps that one key to the whole subject without which mediaeval history is simply an unintelligible chaos. That key is no other than the continued existence of the Roman Empire. As long as people are taught to believe that the Empire came to an end in the year 476, a true ,' understanding of the next thousand years becomes utterly impossible. No man can understand either the politics or the literature of that whole period, unless he constantly bears in mind that, in the ideas of the men of those days, the Roman Empire, the Empire of Augustus, Constantine, and Justinian, was not a thing of the past but a thing of the present. Without grasping the mediaeval theory of the Empire, it is impossible fully to grasp the theory and to follow the career of the Papacy. Without understanding the posi- tion of the Empire, it is impossible rightly to understand the origin and development of the various European states. Without such an understanding, the history of the nations which clave to the Empire, and the history of the nations which fell away from it, are alike certain to be misconceived. Unless viewed in the light of the Imperial theory, the whole history of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy becomes an inex- * [Now D.C.L. and Regius Professor of Civil Law. The article was founded on the first edition. The third edition (1871), to which I have brought in several references, is greatly enlarged and improved.] Vr.] THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 127 plicable riddle. The struggle of Hildebrand and Henry loses half its meaning, the whole position of the Swabian Emperors becomes an insoluble puzzle, the most elaborate prose and the most impassioned verse of Dante sink into purposeless gibberish, if we do not fully grasp the fact that in the mind of all contemporary Europe, the Hohenstaufen were the direct and lawful successors of the Julii. How Germany, once the most united state of Western Europe, gradually changed from a compact and vigorous Kingdom into one of the laxest of Confederations, can never be understood unless we trace how the German Kingdom was crushed and broken to pieces beneath the weight of the loftier diadem which rested on the brow of its Kings. Those misrepresentations of all European history with which French historians and French politicians are apt to deceive the unwary can never be fully exposed, except by a thorough acquaintance with the true position and true nationality of those Teutonic Kings and Caesars whom the Gaul is so apt to look upon as his countrymen and not as his masters. The relations between Eastern and Western Europe can never be taken in, unless we fully under- stand the true nature of those rival Empires, each of which asserted and believed itself to be the one true and lawful possessor of the heritage of ancient Rome. We see our way but feebly through the long struggle between the East and the West, between Christendom and Islam, unless we fully grasp the position of the Caesar, the chief of Christendom, and the Caliph, the chief of Islam ; unless we see, in the complex interpenetration of the divided Empire and the divided Cali- phate, at once what the theory of Christian and of Moslem was, and how utterly either theories failed to be carried out in all its fulness. In a word, as we began by saying, the history of the Empire is the key to the whole history of mediaeval Europe, and it is a key which as yet is found in far fewer hands than it ought to be. The immediate cause of the failure of most historical students to grasp the paramount importance of the Imperial history is of course to be found in the fact that hardly any 128 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay of the books from which students draw their knowledge give its proper prominence to the history of the Empire. This is indeed little more than a truism. The question is, how it comes to pass that even able and well-informed writers have failed to bring forward this most important portion of history as it should be brought, forward. The causes, we think, are tolerably obvious. First. Our own national history has been less affected by the history of the Empire than that of any other European country. Britain, Spain, and Sweden, in their insular and peninsular positions^ were the parts of Europe over which the Imperial influence was slightest, and of the three, that influence was slighter over Britain than it was over Spain, and not much greater than it was over Sweden. Of direct connexion with the Empire, England had very little, and Scotland still less. The external history of England does indeed ever and anon touch the history of the Empire, in the way in which the history of each European state must ever and anon touch the history of every other European state. Once or twice in a century we come across an Emperor as a friend or as an enemy, in one case as a possible suzerain. As England supplied the spiritual Rome with a single Pope, so she supplied the temporal Rome with a single King, a King who never visited his capital or received the crown and title of Augustus. But the whole internal history of England, and the greater part of its external history, went on pretty much as if there had been no Holy Roman Empire at all. Our one moment of most intimate connexion with the Empire brings out most fully how slight, compared with that of other nations, our usual connexion with the Empire was. Every reader of English history knows the name of Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, and knows the part which he played in the internal politics of England. But very few readers, and we suspect by no means all writers, of English history seem to have any clear notion what a King of the Romans was. On Scotland indeed the Roman Empire has had, in one way, a most important internal influence, Vr.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 129 through the authority which Scottish lawyers, iu such marked contrast to those of England, have for so long a time attached to the Roman law. But this is simply because Scottish law- givers or lawyers chose that it should be so ; on the actual events of Scottish history, external and internal, the Empire and its rulers have had even less influence than they have had on those of England. As then our own national history can be written and understood with very little reference to the Holy Soman Empire, British readers lie under a strong temptation to undervalue the importance of the Holy Roman Empire in the general history of the world. Secondly. When British readers get beyond the limits of their own island, not only is their attention not commonly drawn to the history of the Empire, but it is commonly drawn to a history which is actually antagonistic to the history of the Empire. France, so long the rival of England, and for that cause so long the ally of Scotland, is the country with which, next to their own, most British readers are most familiar. Now it is certain that no one who learns French history at the hands of Frenchmen can ever rightly under- stand the history of the Empire. The whole history of France, strictly so called, the history of the Parisian Kings, has been for six hundred years one long tale of aggrandize- ment at the expense of the Empire. From the annexation of Lyons to the annexation of Savoy, all have been acts of one great drama, a drama of which the devastation of the Palatinate, the seizure of Strassburg in time of peace, the tyranny of the first Buonaparte over the whole German nation, are familiar and characteristic incidents. French history consists mainly of a record of wrongs inflicted on the later and feebler Empire, prefaced by a cool appropriation of the glories of the Empire in the days of its early greatness. In official and popular French belief, two great German dynasties, who held modern France as a subject province, are conveniently turned into national Frenchmen. The greatest of German Kings, the first of German Caesars, Charles, the Lord of Rome and Aachen, is strangely turned about into a K 130 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay French Emperor of the West, the precursor of either Buona- parte. The ancient landmarks of European geography are wiped out, the names of the most famous European cities are mutilated or barbarized, in order to throw some colour of right and antiquity over the results of six .hundred years of intrigue and violence. French history, as it is commonly pre- sented to Englishmen, exists only through a systematic mis- representation of Imperial history. Till all French influences are wholly cast aside and trampled under foot, the true his- tory of the Holy Eoman Empire can never be understood. Thirdly. It seems not unlikely that the righteous and generous sympathy which we all feel towards regenerate Italy has tended somewhat to obscure the true character of the Empire. So many Austrian Archdukes were elected Kings of Germany and Emperors of the Komans that people have gradually come to identify the House of Austria and the Eoman Empire. Nothing is more common than to see the title of " Emperor of Austria," the most monstrous invention of modern diplomacy, carried back into the last century, and even earlier. Even Sir Walter Scott, in some of his novels, Anne of Geierstein for instance, seems to have had great difficulty in triumphing over a notion that every Emperor must have been Duke of Austria, and that every Duke of Austria must have been Emperor. We have seen Frederick Barbarossa set down as an Austrian because he was an Em- peror : we have seen the Leopold of Morgarten and the Leopold of Sempach exalted into Emperors because they were Austrians. People thus learn to identify two things than which no two can be more unlike, and to look on the ancient reality with the eyes with which they rightly look on the modern counterfeit. The dislike which every generous mind feels towards the oppressors of modern Italy is thus transferred to that earlier Empire which, always in theory and often in practice, was as much Italian as German. As Charles the Great becomes the forerunner of Buonaparte, so Frederick the beloved of Lodi, and Frederick the native Bang of Palermo, and Otto, the dream of whose short life VI.] THE HOLY SOMAN EMPIRE. 131 was to reign as a true Eoman Caesar in the Eternal City, all are popularly looked upon as forerunners of Francis Joseph, perhaps of Philip the Second.* The Austrian delu- sion, no less than the French delusion, must be utterly cast aside by everyone who would understand what Charles and Otto and Henry and Frederick really were. Lastly. Even among those who better know the facts of the case, and who better understand the leading idea of the mediaeval Empire, there is a certain tendency to underrate the importance of the Imperial history, on the ground that the mediaeval Empire was throughout an unreality, if not an imposture. We fully admit the utter unreality of the posi- tion of Francis the Second, Emperor-elect of the Komans, King of Germany and Jerusalem; we fully admit that Charles the Great himself was not a Eoman Emperor in exactly the same sense as Vespasian or Trajan. We may freely grant that the Imperial idea was never fully carried out, and that it was by no means for the interest of the world that it should be carried out. We may wonder at the belief of the ages which held, as undoubted and eternal truths, first, that it Was a matter of right that there should be an universal monarch of the world ; secondly, that that universal monarchy belonged, no less of eternal right, to the Eoman Emperor, the successor of Augustus; and, thirdly, that the German King, the choice of the German Electors, was the undoubted Eoman Emperor, and therefore, of eternal right, Lord of the World. This belief seems to us very strange, but it was the belief of Dante. We rejoice that this scheme of universal dominion was never practically carried out ; we pride our- selves that our own island at least was always exempted from the sway of the universal sovereign. But all this should not lead us at all to underrate the paramount importance of the Imperial idea. A belief may be false, absurd, unreal, mis- chievous, as we please ; but this in no way touches the his- * We have seen in a popular work the words " The Emperor Philip the Second." The reasoning is irresistible : Philip's father was an Emperor, how could Philip himself fail to be an Emperor too ? K 2 132 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay torical importance of such belief. Christians believe that the leading idea of Mahometanism is a grievous error ; Protes- tants believe that the leading idea of the Papacy is a grievous error ; but no one argues that either Mahometanism or the Papacy has therefore been without influence on the fate of the world, or that any historical student can safely neglect the history of one or the other, merely because he looks on them as erroneous beliefs. In fact, the deadlier the error the more important are the results of an error which is accepted by large masses of men. It may be very wrong to believe that Mahomet was the prophet of God ; but the fact that millions of men have so believed has changed the des- tinies of a large portion of the world. It may be very wrong to believe that Saint Peter was the Prince of the Apostles and that the Bishop of Eome is Saint Peter's successor ; but the fact that millions of men have so believed and do so believe has affected the course of all European history and politics down to this day. In these cases no one attempts to deny the importance of the facts ; no one holds that either Mahometan or Papal history can safely be neglected. So it should be with the history of the mediaeval Empire. The Imperial idea may have been unreal, absurd, mischievous ; but it is not therefore the less important. Men did believe in it ; perhaps they were wrong to believe in it ; but the fact, that they did believe in it affected the whole history of the world for many ages. It may have been foolish to believe that the German King was necessarily Eoman Emperor, and that the Eoman Emperor was necessarily Lord of the World. But men did believe it ; and the fact of their believing it changed the whole face of Europe. It might have been much wiser if the German Kings had been content to be real German Kings, and had not striven after the shadowy majesty of Eoman Emperors. But, as a matter of fact, they did so strive ; it was not in human nature for men in their position to do otherwise ; and the fact that they did so strive entailed the most important consequences upon their own and upon every neighbouring realm. If the history of the. VI.] TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. . 133 Empire were to be set down purely as the history of error and folly, it should still be remembered that the history of error and folly forms by far the largest part of the history of mankind. But we are far from admitting that the history of the Empire is purely a part of the history of human folly, though we may be obliged to admit that it is a part of the history of human error. The idea of the Empire, the idea of an universal Christian monarchy, not interfering with the local independence of particular kingdoms and commonwealths, but placing Caesar Augustus, the chosen and anointed chief of Christendom, as the common guide and father of all — such an idea is as noble and captivating as it is impracticable. It is an idea which has commended itself to some of the noblest spirits that the world has seen. It was the idea for which the first Frederick struggled with a far from merely selfish aim. It was the idea to which \he early revivers of scientific jurisprudence clung as to the one foundation of order and legal government throughout the world. It was the great principle which acted as the guiding spirit of the prose, the verse, and the life of Dante. To men of that time, living amid the perpetual strife of small principalities and common- wealths, the vision of an universal Empire of law and right shone with an alluring brightness, which we, accustomed to a system of national governments and international relations, can hardly understand. But be the worth of the idea what it may, its practical influence on the history of Christendom can hardly be overrated. The empire may have been a shadow, but it was a shadow to which men were for ages ready to devote their thoughts, their pens, and their swords. The results were none the less practical because the object was unattainable. We repeat that, without a full under- standing of the mediaeval conception of the Empire, without a full grasp of the way in which that conception influenced men's minds and actions from the eighth century to the fourteenth, the greater and more important part of mediaaval history remains an insoluble riddle. 134 THE HOLY BOM AN EMPIRE. [Essay Knowing then, as we do, the unspeakable importance of right views of the Empire to a true understanding of mediaeval history, and being unable, as we are, to lay our hand upon any other book in the English tongue which gives so clear and thorough an account of the whole matter, it is with no common delight that we welcome the appearance of the small but remarkable volume whose name we have placed at the head of this article. It is the first complete and connected view of the mediaeval Empire which has ever been given to British readers. Mr. Bryce's book is of course not a history, but an essay ; he has not attempted so hopeless a task as to narrate the fates of the Empire and its attendant Kingdoms within the space of a single thin volume. But no one must confound Mr. Bryce's Arnold Essay with the common run of prize compositions. Mr. Bryce's book, if it be not a bull to gay so, has been written since it gained the historical prize at Oxford. " It is right," he tells us, " to state that this Essay has been greatly changed and enlarged since it was composed for the Arnold Prize." Any one who knows anything of prize essays could have told as much by the light of nature. It is hardly possible that any mere academic exercise could have displayed the depth of thought, the thoroughness of research, the familiarity with a whole learning of a very recondite kind, which stand revealed in every page of this volume. The merits of the book are so palpably due in the main to this later revision, that we could almost wish that the words Arnold Prize Essay were removed from the titlepage. Of the Essay itself, in its present form, we can hardly trust ourselves to speak all our thoughts. Men naturally and rightly look with some suspicion on criticism which speaks of a novice in language which is seldom deserved even by a veteran. But it is only in such language that we can utter our honest conviction with regard to the merits of the volume before us. Mr. Bryce's Essay may seem ephemeral in form, but it is not ephemeral in substance. He has, in truth, by a single youthful effort, placed himself on a level with men who VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 135 have given their lives to historical study. Like the young Opuntian in Pindar — ■ oTov iv MapaSovt, ov- \a8e\s ayevciav fievev dyava irpeo'fivTepav. Mr. Bryce's Essay must be placed in the same rank, and must be judged by the same standard, as the most voluminous works of professed historians. He has done for historic literature a service as great as any of theirs. Mr. Bryce's great merit is the clear and thorough way in which he sets forth what the mediaeval conception of the Empire really was, and especially that religious sentiment which so strangely came to attach itself to the power which had once been the special representative of heathen pride and persecution. This is a part of the subject which we have never before seen set forth with the same power and fullness. For, of course, in combating the vulgar error that the Boman Empire came historically to an end in 476, though Mr. Bryce is doing excellent service to the cause of truth, he is not putting forth any new discovery. Thus much Sir Francis Palgrave has already established for the West, and Mr. Finlay for the East. The Eastern side of the subject is, we cannot but think, somewhat neglected by Mr. Bryce, as perhaps, on the other hand, the Western side is by Mr. Finlay. Sir Francis Palgrave and Mr. Bryce have to deal with the same side of the subject, but they look at it with somewhat different eyes. With Mr. Bryce indeed the Empire is his main, or rather sole, subject, while the contributions of Sir Francis to Imperial history, valuable as they are, have come out incidentally in dealing with matters not immediately connected with the Empire. Sir Francis again concerns himself mainly with those outward forms and institutions which show that the Empire did not formally die. Mr. Bryce has more to do with the theory of the Empire itself, and with the various shapes through which it passed from Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus to Francis the Second of Lorraine. This he has done in so complete and admirable a manner that we 136 TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay trust that the essay is only the precursor of a narrative. "We trust that Mr. Bryce may one day give us a history of the mediaeval Eoman Empire worthy to be placed by the side of Dean Milman's history of the mediaeval Eoman Church. The theory of the mediaeval Empire is that of an universal Christian monarchy. The Eoman Empire and the Catholic Church are two aspects of one society, a society ordained by the divine will to spread itself over the whole world. Of this society Eome is marked out by divine decree as the pre- destined capital, the chief seat alike of spiritual and of temporal rule. At the head of this society, in its temporal character as an Empire, stands the temporal chief of Christen- dom, the Eoman Caesar. At its head, in its spiritual character as a Church, stands the spiritual chief of Christendom, the Eoman Pontiff. Caesar and Pontiff alike rule by divine right, each as God's immediate Vicar within his own sphere. Each ruler is bound to the other by the closest ties. Caesar is the Advocate of the Eoman Church, bound to defend her by the temporal arm against all temporal enemies. The Pontiff, on the other hand, though the Caesar holds his rank, not of him, but by an independent divine commission, has the lofty privilege of personally admitting the Lord of the World to his high office, of hallowing the Lord's Anointed, and of making him in some sort a partaker in the mysterious privileges of the priesthood. The sway alike of Caesar and of Pontiff is absolutely universal; it is local, in so far as Eome is its chosen seat ; but it is in no way national : it is not confined to Italy, or Germany, or Europe ; to each alike, in his own sphere, God has given the heathen for his inheri- tance, and the utmost parts of the earth for his possession. And each of these lofty offices is open to every baptized man ; each alike is purely elective ; each may be the reward of merit in any rank of life or in any corner of Christendom. "While smaller offices were closely confined by local or aristocratic restrictions, the throne of Augustus and the chair of Peter were, in theory at least, open to the ambition of VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 137 every man of orthodox belief. Even in the darkest times of aristocratic exclusiveness, no one dared to lay down as a principle that the Eoman Emperor, any more than the Koman Bishop, need be of princely or noble ancestry. Free- dom of birth — Roman citizenship, in shorty to clothe mediaeval ideas in classical words — was all that was needed. Each power alike, as the power of a Vicar of God npon earth, rises far above all petty considerations of race or birthplace. The Lord of the World has all mankind alike for the objects of his paternal rule ; the successor of Saint Peter welcomes all alike, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, within the one universal fold over which he has the commission to' bind and to loose, to remit and to retain. Here is a conception as magnificent as it was impracticable. No wonder indeed that such a theory fascinated men's minds for ages, and that in such a cause they were willing to spend and to be spent. That it never was carried out history tells us at the first glance. It is evident that neither the Eoman Pontiff nor the Eoman Caesar ever extended their common sway over the whole of the world, or even over the whole of Christendom. And the two powers, which were in theory designed to work in harmony, appear, for the most part, in real history as the bitterest of rivals. Still no theory, as a theory, can be more magnificent. But how did such a theory arise ? What is the Eoman Empire and the Eoman Emperor ? At the two ends of their existence those words express ideas as unlike one another as either of them is unlike the theory which Otto the Third and Gregory the Fifth did for a moment carry out in practice. At the one end of the chain we see the heathen magistrate of a heathen commonwealth, carefully avoiding all royal titles and royal insignia, as- sociating on terms of equality with other distinguished citizens, but carefully grasping the reality of absolute power by the stealthy process of uniting in his own person a crowd of offices which had hitherto been deemed inconsistent with one another. Such was the first Eoman Emperor, and in his 138 TEE EOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay days the Koman Pontiff as yet was not. The last Roman Emperor was a German King, whose German Kingdom was almost as imaginary as his Koman Empire. He was a mighty potentate indeed, but mighty only through the possession of hereditary or conquered realms, which mostly lay beyond the limits.of either Roman or German dominion. He was adorned with all the titles, and surrounded with all the external homage, which could befit either German King or Roman Emperor. But as regards the local Rome he had no further connexion, no further authority or influence, than might belong to any other Catholic Prince of equal power. The Roman Emperor no longer claimed any shadow of juris- diction in his ancient capital; even in his German realm, his position had sunk to that of the president of one of the laxest of federal bodies. The Lord of the World, the temporal head of Christendom, retained nothing but a barren precedence over other princes, which other princes were not always ready to admit. His position, Roman, German, and oecumenical, was, as the event proved, utterly unreal and precarious, ready to fall in pieces at the first touch of a vigorous assailant Such were Caius Julius Csesar Octavianus, the first, and Francis the Second, the last, of the Roman Emperors. Each is equally unlike the Roman Emperor of the true mediaeval theory. How then did the same title, in theory denoting one unchanged office through the whole period, come to be attached at different times to personages so widely unlike each other ? We will, under Mr. Bryce's guidance, run briefly through the various stages through which the grand theory of the Christian Empire arose and fell. Mr. Bryce properly begins at the beginning. He starts with a sketch of the state of things under the old Roman Empire, the old dominion of the Roman Commonwealth under her nominal magistrates and practical sovereigns, the Emperors of the Julian, Claudian, and other Imperial houses, down to the changes introduced, first by Diocletian, and then by Constantine. The chief point here to be noticed is the absolute want of nationality in the Empire. But, in this lack VI.] THE HOLT SOMAN EMPIRE. 139 of nationality, the Eoman Empire does but continue the Eoman Eepublic. The Eoman Eepublic was intensely local ; every association gathered round the one centre, the city of Eome ; but it was less national than any other Commonwealth in all history. It grew, in fact, by gradually extending its franchise over Latium, Italy, and the whole Mediterranean world. The edict of Caracalla, whatever were its motives, did but put the finishing touch to the work begun by the mythical Eomulus in his league with the Sabine Tatius. From the Ocean to the Euphrates, the civilized world was now Eoman in name, and from the Ocean to Mount Taurus it was Eoman in feeling. Mr. Bryce, we think, overrates the distinct nationality of the Greeks of this age, and underrates that of Syria and Egypt, provinces which never really became either Eoman or Greek. Then came, under Diocletian and Constantine, the transformation of the Empire into something like an avowed royalty — we can hardly say an avowed monarchy, seeing that the system of Diocletian involved the simultaneous re^gn of more than one Emperor. Under this system too the Old Eome ceased to be the seat of govern- ment. Milan and Nikomedeia became Imperial cities, till Constantine made a better and more permanent choice than all in his New Eome by the Bosporos. With Constantine too comes in a new element more im- portant than all. Hitherto we have indeed had a Eoman Empire, but it has as yet had no claim whatever, in a Chris- tian sense, to the epithet of Holy. Hitherto Eome and her princes have been the enemies of the Faith, drunken with the blood of the saints. But from the conversion of Constantine onwards, the epithet, though not yet formally given, was in truth practically deserved. Eome and Chris- tianity formed so close an alliance that, in at least one portion of the Empire, the names Eoman and Christian became synonymous.* Emperors presided in the councils of * The Greek, mediaeval and modern, down to the late classical revival, was indifferently called 'PayiaTos and Xpumavos. "EXXiji/, as in the New Testament, expressed only the Paganism of a past age. 140 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay the Church; Christian ecclesiastics obtained the rank of high temporal dignitaries; orthodoxy and loyalty, heresy and treason, became almost convertible terms. Christianity, in fact, became the religion of the Koman Empire, universal within its limits, but making hardly any progress beyond them. And so it is to this day. Christianity still remains all but exclusively the religion of Europe and of European colonies, that is, of those nations which either formed part of the Eoman Empire, or came within the range of Eome's civilizing influence. Thus the Empire, which once had been the bitterest foe of the Gospel, now became inseparably con- nected with its profession. The heathen sanctity which had once hedged in the Emperor was now exchanged for a sanc- tity of another kind. The High Pontiff of Pagan Eome passed by easy steps into the Anointed of the Lord, the temporal chief of Christendom. The Empire then and the Emperor thus became Holy ; but yet the Empire, even in the East, was not a Caliphate. The successor of Mahomet inherited alike the temporal and the spiritual functions of the Prophet. In the Mahometan system, Church and State needed not to be united, because they had never been distinct. But closely as the Eoman Empire and the Christian Church became united, one might almost say identified, traces still remained of the days when they had been distinct and hostile bodies. The internal organization of the Church, the gradations of its hierarchy, the rights of Bishops and of Councils, had grown up nearly to perfection before the Empire became Christian. The con- stitution of the Church was a kind of theocratic democracy. The Bishop's commission was divine, proceeding neither from the prince nor from the people ; but it was the popular voice, and not the voice of the priesthood alone, which marked out the person on whom that divine commission should be bestowed. Of such an organization the Emperor might become the patron, the protector, the external ruler, but he could not strictly become the head. The spiritual power thus remained something in close alliance with the temporal, VI.] TEE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 141 but still something distinct. The two were never so com- pletely fused together in the Imperial idea as they were in the idea of the Caliphate. In the East the priesthood became subservient ; in the West it became independent, and at last hostile. But in either case it was distinct. Whether Emperors deposed Patriarchs or Popes excommunicated Emperors, the Pontiff and the Emperor were two distinct persons. In the Mahometan system the Caliph is Pontiff and Emperor in one. From the time of Constantine, Constantinople, the New Eome, became the chief seat of Empire ; towards the end of the fifth century it became the only seat. It should never be forgotten, and Mr. Bryce calls all due attention to the fact, that the event of the year 476, so often mistaken for a fall of the Roman Empire, was, in its form, a reunion of the Western Empire to the Eastern. Here again, nothing is easier than to say that this is an unreal, unpractical view. It is an obvious thing to argue that Italy was not reunited to the East, but that the Roman dominion was destroyed alto- gether; that the supremacy of the Eastern Emperors in Italy was merely nominal, and the pretended reunion of the Empire merely an excuse to save their foolish pride. Be it so ; but, as we, said before on the general subject, when words and forms, however unreal in themselves, exercise a practical influence on men's actions, they cease to be unreal. The majesty of Rome still lived in men's minds ; the Roman Emperor, the Roman Consuls, the Roman Senate and People, still went on. Odoacer and Theodoric might reign as national Kings over their own people ;* but the Roman- population of Italy cheated themselves into the belief that the Barbarian King was merely a lieutenant of the absent * Mr. Bryce, otherwise most accurate in his account of these events, repeats the 'common statement that Odoacer assumed the title of "King of Italy." We know of no ancient authority for this statement, and it is most unlikely in itself. Territorial titles were not in use till some ages later, and no one would he so unlikely to assume a style of this kind as one who professed himself to be an Imperial lieutenant. [This slip has been corrected by Mr. Bryce in his third edition, p. 26.] 142 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay Emperor. Such a belief might be a delusion, but it was a living belief, and it did not always remain a delusion. When Belisarius, in the year of his consulship, landed in Italy, he appeared to the Roman population, not as a foreign ■ conqueror, but as a deliverer come to restore them to their natural relation to their lawful sovereign. And as Mr. Bryce truly observes, unless we remember that the line of Emperors never ceased, that from 476 to 800 the Byzantine Oassar was always in theory, often in practice, recognized as the lawful Lord of Rome and Italy, it is impossible rightly to understand the true significance of the assumption of the Empire by Charles the Great.* Almost the only defect of any consequence in Mr. Bryce's work is that he seems hardly to realize the importance, in any theory of the Empire, alike of the Eastern Empire and of the Eastern Church. He shows neither ignorance, nor con- cealment, nor even misconception of the facts. But he hardly gives the facts their full prominence. The truth is that the existence of Eastern Christendom, as it is the great stum- bling-block of the Papal theory, is also the great stumbling- block of the Imperial theory. Ingenious men might theorize about the two lights and the two swords, and argue whether of the twain were the brighter and the stronger. They might debate whether the Pope held of the Emperor, or the Em- peror of the Pope; but it was agreed on both sides that there could be only one Pope and one Emperor. These mag- nificent theories of the Church and the Empire were in truth set aside by the fact that a large portion of Christendom, that portion too which could most truly claim to represent unchanged the earliest traditions both of the Church and of the Empire, acknowledged no Pope at all, and acknowledged a rival Emperor. It is impossible to deny that, as far as uninterrupted political succession went, it was the Eastern * Mr. Bryce remarks that, in the Middle Ages, the "Western Emperors of the fifth century seem to hare been quite forgotten. The lists of Emperors from Augustus to Maximilian or Rudolf or Ferdinand, always go on uninterruptedly in the Eastern line from Theodosius to Constantine the Sixth. VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 143 and not the Western Emperor who was the lineal heir of the old Caesars. The act which placed Charles the Great on the Imperial throne was strictly a revolt, a justifiable revolt, it might be, but still a revolt. It was in the East, and in the East alone, that the Imperial titles and Imperial traditions — in a word, the whole political heritage of Eome — continued absolutely unbroken down to the days of the Frank Conquest. The Greek prince whom the Crusaders hurled from the Theo- dosian Column, was, as Mr. Finlay says, a truer successor of Augustus than was Frederick Barbarossa. The Eastern Church too presented even a more practical answer to the claims of the Western Pontiff than the Eastern Empire did to the claims of the Western Caesar. The universal dominion of either was a theory, and only a theory, as long as their dominion reached, not to the world's end, not even to the Euphrates, but only to the Hadriatic. Alike in the days of Otto and in the days of Dante, the most unchanged portion of the Roman world still refused to acknowledge the sway of either the Western Caesar or the Western Pontiff. In truth, the elaborate theories of the mediaeval Empire were not pro- pounded, and could not with any decency have been pro- pounded, as long as the Eastern Church and Empire retained their old position. When Dante wrote, an Emperor of the Eomans still reigned at Constantinople, but he had sunk to be simply one amidst a crowd of Eastern princes, Greek and Frank.* By that time too there had begun to be some ground for bringing the charge of schism against the ancient Churches of the East. There was at least a pretext for saying that the Church of Constantinople had been reconciled to the Church of Borne, and had again fallen away. Such a theory could hardly have been put forth in the days of the great Macedonian Emperors,, when the New Borne, and not the Old, was still mistress of the Mediterranean, and when a large portion of the Italian peninsula still owed allegiance to the Eastern and not to the Western Caesar. Mr. Bryce * Dante, De Monarchic, iii. 10, Scindere imperium esset destruere ipsum, consistente imperio in unitate monarchic universalis. 144 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay does not forget these things ; but we cannot think that he gives them all the prominence which they certainly deserve.* From the accession of Charles the Great onwards, Mr. Bryce is thoroughly at home. During the whole of the eighth century, the Imperial power in Italy had been gra- dually waning. Lombard invasions had narrowed the boun- dary of the Imperial province, and the Iconoclast controversy had shaken the loyalty of the subjects of the Empire. The Bishop of Borne had stood forth as the champion alike of orthodoxy and of nationality, and the practical rule of the city had been transferred to the Frankish King. Still the tie was not formally severed ; the image and superscription of Ceesar still appeared on the coin of his Western capital, and Pippin and Charles ruled, like Odoacer, by no higher title than that of Patrician. At last the accession of Eirene filled up the measure of Western indignation. The throne of Augustus could not be lawfully filled by a woman, least of all by a woman who raised herself to power by the deposition and blinding of her own child. The throne was vacant ; the Christian world could not remain without an Emperor :| the Senate and People of the Old Borne had too long submitted to the dictation of the New ; they asserted their dormant rights, and chose their Patrician Charles, not as the founder of a new Empire, not as the re- storer of a fallen Empire, but as the lawful successor of their last lawful sovereign, the injured Constantine the Sixth. This belief in the absolute continuity of the Empire is the * [This omission is largely supplied in Mr. Bryce's third edition, p. 189.] t Ohron. Moissiac, a. 801 (Pertz, Mon. Hist. Germ. i. 505) : " Quum enim apud Eomam nunc prafatus Imperator moraretur, delati quidam sunt ad eum, dioentes quod apud Graecos nomen Imperatoris cessasset, et femina apud eos nomen Imperii teneret, Herena nomine, qua? filium suum Imperatorem fraude oaptum, oculos eruit, et sibi nomen Imperii usurpavit, ut Atalia in libro Regum legitur fecisse. Audito, Leo Papa et omnis con- ventus episcoporum et sacerdotum seu abbatum, et senatus Prancorum et omnes majores natu Romanorum, cum reliquo Christiano populo consilium habuerunt, ut ipsum Carolum, Regem Francorum, Imperatorem nominare deberent, qui Romam matrem Imperii tenebat, ubi semper Cassares et Im- peratores sedere soliti fuerunt ; et ne pagani insultarent Christianis, si Imperatoris nomen apud Christianos cesssSset." VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRtf. 145 key to the whole theory ; but it is just the point by which so many readers and writers break down, and fail to take in the true character of the election of Charles as it seemed to the men of his own time. Never was the true aspect of the case more thoroughly understood and more vigorously set forth than it has been by Mr. Bryce. And few descriptions in the English language surpass his brilliant picture of the election and coronation of the first Teutonio Caesar. Thus was accomplished that revolution of which, in the West at least, no man had hitherto dared to dream. As yet no man of avowed Barbarian blood had dared to assume the Imperial rank. Alaric, Ricimer, Chlodwig, Theodoric, Pippin himself, had never dared to call themselves Emperors of the Komaus. They might be Kings of their own people and Roman Consuls or Patricians, they might create or depose Emperors, but the Empire itself was beyond them. But now a man of Teutonic blood and speech was, by the election of the Old Borne, placed on her Imperial throne. The Frankish King became a Roman Csesar. And, what should never be forgotten, he claimed, after his Imperial coronation, to reign not only as King but as Csesar over the whole of his dominions. Those who had already sworn allegiance to the King were now called on afresh to swear allegiance to the Emperor. Thus was the dominion of Rome and her Emperor again formally extended, alike over large provinces which had been wrested from the Empire and over vast regions which the older Caesars had never held. The Roman eagle was planted again on the banks of the Ebro, and planted for the first time on the banks of the Eider. When Germany swore allegiance to the new Augustus, the defeat of Varus might be thought to be avenged at the hands of one who, in blood and speeoh and manners, was the true successor of Arminius. If Greece fed. captive her Roman conqueror, Rome now still more truly led captive the Barbarian who strove to hide, even from himself," the fact that he had conquered her. AU this, it is easy to say, was mere unreality and delusion. L 146 TEE HOLT ROMAN MMPISE. [Essay It is easy to argue that Charles was not a Eoman Emperor in the same sense as Augustus, or even as Augustulus. With ■what right could he be called the successor of Constantino the Sixth, when the dominions of the two princes had hardly a square mile of ground in common, while the succession of Byzantine Emperors continued undisturbed, and while they bore Bway even over some portions of Italy itself? Charles, it may be argued, was simply a Teutonic King, who satisfied a mere predjudice on the part of a portion of his subjects by assuming an empty title, a title which neither extended his rule over new dominions nor increased his prerogative within the old. All this, no doubt, is true ; it is obvious enough to us at the distance of a thousand years. But it was not obvious to men at the time. And, as men's actions in all ages have been governed, not by what, with further knowledge, they might have thought, but by what they actually did know and think, the assumption of the Imperial rank by Charles was neither unreal nor illusory, because it led to important practical results. In .the eyes of all Charles's Italian subjects, probably in the eyes of many of his Gaulish sub- jects, the assumption of the Eoman title made all the dif- ference between lawful and unlawful dominion. The King of the Franks was a Barbarian conqueror, or at best a Barbarian deliverer ; in the Emperor of the Eomans men beheld the restorer of lawful and orderly government, after a long and violent interruption. Even in the eyes of his own Germans, Charles Augustus became, in some vague way, greater and holier than Charles the mere Erankish King. And in their exaltation of its prince the nation felt itself exalted also. The form of words did not as yet exist, hut the West now saw again a Holy Eoman Empire, and it was now a " Holy Eoman Empire of the German Nation." This truth however was not as yet legally acknowledged ; indeed it did not as yet exist in all its practical fulness. Charles was indeed a German King ; but the possession of the Imperial crown by a German King did not identify the VI.] TEE EOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 147 Imperial crown with the German nation in the same way that it did from the time of Otto the Great onward. The difference between the position of Charles and that of Otto is this. Otto was indeed the most powerful King of the West, but he was not the only King. The Imperial crown was annexed to the distinct local Kingdom of the Eastern Franks, when it might conceivably have been annexed to the King- dom of the Burgundians, or even to the Kingdom of the Western Franks. There thus arose, from Otto onwards, a direct connexion between the Roman Empire and Germany as a distinct country and nation, one country and nation out of several possible competitors. But Charles had been far more than all this : he was not only the most powerful King, but he was in some sense the only King. He might claim to be Lord of the World in a truer sense than any Emperor after his son, in as true a sense as any Emperor since Theodosius. Setting aside our own island, which passed in some sort for another world, Charles was actually either the immediate sovereign or the suzerain lord of all Western Christendom. The East was indeed ruled by a second Caesar, who might, according to circumstances, be looked on either as an Imperial rival, a Tetricus or a Carausius, or as an Imperial colleague, a Valens or an Arcadius. But the West was all his own. He ruled, and, after his Imperial coronation, he ruled distinctly as Roman Augustus, over all the lands from the Ocean and the Ebro to the Elbe and the Theiss. His frontiers were surrounded, as the frontiers of Rome were in ancient times, by a string of allied and tributary rulers, the antitypes of the Massinissas and the Herods. In such a dominion as this the mere Frankish nationality might well seem to be lost : Frank, Gaul, Burgundian, Italian, might seem to be alike subjects of Csesar, or, if they better liked the title, citizens of Rome. Of course this appearance of uni- versal dominion was delusive ; but it was only in human nature that men should at the time be- deluded by it. But such an Empire as this needed the arm of Charles the Great himself to support it. One hardly knows whether it L 2 148 THE BOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay was in folly or in wisdom, because he saw not the consequences or because he saw that the consequences were unavoidable, that Charles laid down the principle of a division of his dominions among his sons. The Empire was still to be one and indivisible, but the Emperor was to reign only as the superior lord over several kings of his own house. Under Charles himself, his sons had reigned as Kings over Italy and Aquitaine, and he had ever found them his loyal vice- gerents. Perhaps he hardly foresaw that the submission which was willingly yielded to a father, and such a father, would not be so willingly yielded to a brother, an uncle, or perhaps a distant cousin. Perhaps he saw that no hand but his own could keep his dominions together ; that it was better to make the best of a sad necessity ; that it was something to secure a nominal and theoretical unity through the vassalage of all the Kings to the Imperial head of the family. Anyhow he had precedents enough, Roman and Frankish. He was only treading in the steps of Chlodwig and of Pippin, and he may well have thought that he was treading in the steps of Diocletian, Constantine, and Theodosius. At all events, from the death of Lewis the Pious, or rather from the death of Charles himself, a state of division begins ; Kings and Emperors rise and fall ; the Empire is sometimes nominally, always practically, in abeyance. For one moment, under Charles the Fat, nearly the whole Empire is reunited ; but, with his deposition in 888, the Eastern and the Western Franks, Francia Teutonica and Franeia Latina — in modern language, Germany and France — are parted asunder for ever. Germany, West-France, Burgundy, Italy, become distinct Kingdoms, ruled for the most part by Kings who are not of the blood of the Great Charles. Through the first half of the ninth century, whenever there was an Emperor at all, instead of being Lord of the world, he was at most a King of Italy, with a very feeble hold indeed even on his peninsular Kingdom. Then came the revival under Otto the Great, the founda- tion of the Roman Empire under its latest form. The VI.] TEE EOLT SOMAN EMPIRE. 149 Kingdoms of Germany and Italy were now united, and their common King, though he did not as yet assume the title, was, from the moment of his coronation at Aachen, Roman Emperor-elect, "Rex Romanorum in Caesarem promo- vendus." Once only, on the extinction of the direct line of the Ottos, did Italy again strive to establish a real national King. Though Kings of Italy were once or twice elected in later times in opposition to the reigning King or Emperor, they were discontented or rebellious princes of the Imperial house, who certainly had no mind to confine their rule to Italy, if they could extend it over Germany and Burgundy also. From the days of Otte the principle was gradually established that the chosen King of Germany acquired, as such, a right to the royal crowns of Italy and Burgundy* and to the Imperial crown of Rome. He was not Emperor till he had been crowned at Rome by the Roman Pontiff; but he, and no other, had a right to become Emperor. This was a state of things very different from the Empire of the first Caesars, very different from the Empire of Charles, but it was still more widely different from the " phantom Empire," to use Mr. Bryce's words, of Guy and Berenger. The union of three out of the four Kingdoms into which the dominions of Charles had split, made the Empire, if not an universal monarchy, yet a power which had as yet no rival in Western Europe. France— modern, Celtic, Capetian, Parisian, France — looked exceedingly like a revolted province, wrongfully a limb cut off from the body of the Empire and from the sway of the successor of Charles. States of which the old Caesars had never heard — Denmark, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary,, owed a homage, more or less practical, to the Saxon, Frankish, or Swabian Augustus. The Holy Roman Empire had now assumed essentially the same form which it retained down to 1806 ; another distinct step had been taken towards making it the special heritage of the German nation. * After the acquisition of the Kingdom of Burgundy in 1032. Mr. Bryce has an important note on the various uses of the word Burgunih-, the most fluctuating and perplexing name in history. 150 THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay It is at this point, the beginning of the Empire in its last shape, that Mr. Bryce stops to review the Imperial theory as it was understood in the Middle Ages. What that theory was we have already tried to set forth ; but it should be borne in mind that the theory grew in clearness and fulness, and more- over that the more clearly men saw that the existing Empire failed to answer their ideal conception, the more they went on to theorize about the ideal Empire. We may be sure that neither Otto the Great nor any man of his time could have set forth the Imperial creedinthe distinctand elaborate shape into which it was thrown by Dante. Still the essential elements of the theory existed from the beginning. It was held, from the days of Otto, that the eternal fitness of things required an universal temporal and an universal spiritual chief of Christendom ; it was held that those chiefs were to be looked for in the Eoman Emperor and the Eoman Pontiff; and lastly, it was held that the true Eoman Emperor was to be looked for in the German King. No Emperor was ever so thoroughly imbued with these notions as Otto the Third, who seems to have seriously intended to make Eome, in fact as well as in name, the seat of his Empire, and thence to rule the world by the help of a Pontiff like-minded with himself. Of the schemes, or rather the visions, of this wonderful young prince, so sadly cut off in the days of his brightest promise, Mr. Bryce gives us an eloquent picture, which forms one of the gems of his book. The union in one person of the incongruous functions of German King and Eoman Emperor is a fact which Mr. Bryce sets forth with much power and clearness. He contrasts the two offices, "the one centralized, the other local; the one resting on a sublime theory, the other the rude offspring of anarchy ; the one gathering all power into the hands of an irresponsible monarch, the other limiting his rights, and authorizing resistance to his commands ; the one demanding the equality of all citizens as creatures equal before heaven, the other bound up with an aristocracy the proudest, and in its gradations of rank the most exact, that Europe had ever VI.] THE BOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 151 seen." He then goes on to show how these two conceptions were fused into a third different from either ; how the Em- peror-King strove to merge his kingship in his Empire ; how the titles of German royalty were dropped for ages, so that_ Caesar was held to rule as Caesar no less in Germany than in Italy ; how again, by a natural interchange of thought, the idea of the Empire became mingled with feudal notions; how the Emperor became a Lord of the World, not as a direct ruler, like the old Caesars, but as an universal suzerain, of whom local Kings and Dukes and Commonwealths might hold as his vassals, while he himself held his Empire imme- diately of God alone. There can be no doubt that, in Ger- many itself, the effect of the union of the Kingdom with the Empire was the weakening and the final destruction of the royal power. The Germany of the Ottos and the Henries, divided and turbulent as it seems when compared with modern centralized states, was actually the most united power in Western Europe, incomparably more united than contemporary England or Prance. The whole later history of Germany is simply a history of the steps by which this once united realm fell to pieces. The King gradually lost all real power, and yet he remained to the last surrounded by a halo of outward reverence beyond all other Kings. The full examination of the causes of these phaenomena belongs to German history. But it cannot be doubted that the chief cause of all was the fact that the German King was also Eoman Emperor. It was not only that their Italian claims and titles led the German Kings into never-ending Italian wars, to the neglect of true German interests. This outward and palpable cause had doubtless a good deal to do with the matter ; but this was by no means all. The true causes lie deeper. The Emperor, Lord of the World, became like the supreme deities of some mythologies, too great to' act with effect as the local King of a national kingdom. His local kingship was forgotten. The Emperors strove to merge their kingship in the Empire, and they did merge it in the Empire, though in an opposite way from that which 215 TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIBE. [Essay they had intended. They would reign as Emperors and not as Kings, meaning to reign as Emperors with more absolute and undisputed power. They did reign as Emperors and not as Kings, because the Imperial power was found to be practically far less effective than the royal power. The Emperor, Lord of the World, exercised only a most vague and nominal supremacy beyond the limits of his own King- doms ; why, now that he reigned as Csesar rather than as King, should Csesar claim any more effective authority over Germany, Burgundy, and Italy, than he held over Gaul or Spain or Britain? He was Emperor alike in all lands ; why should his jurisdiction, nominal in one land, be any more practical in another ? Thus, because their suzerain was of greater dignity than all other suzerains, did the vassal princes of Germany obtain a more complete independence than the vassal princes of any other realm. Again, the Empire was in its own nature elective. Mere kingdoms or duchies, mere local sovereignties, might pass from father to son like private estates ; but the Empire, the chieftainship of Christendom, the temporal vicarship of God upon earth, could not be exposed to the chances of hereditary succession ; it must remain as the loftiest of prizes, the fitting object of ambition for the worthiest of Roman citizens, that is, now, for all baptized men above the rank of a serf. The practical effect of this splendid theory was that, while the crowns of England and France became hereditary, the crown of Ger- many, as inseparable from the Empire, became purely elective.* Then followed the consequences which, in any but a very early state of society, are sure to follow on the establishment of a purely elective kingship. Each Emperor, uncertain whether he would be able to transmit his dignity to his son, thought more of the aggrandizement of his family than of maintaining the dignity of his crown. Escheated or * Of course the old Teutonic law, in Germany and everywhere else, was election out of one royal family, but in England and France the hereditary element in this system grew at the expense of the elective, while in Germany the process was reversed. VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 153 forfeited fiefs, which in France would have gone to swell the royal domain, were employed in Germany to provide princi- palities for children whose succession to anything higher was uncertain. The election of each Emperor was commonly purchased by concessions to the Electors, and if an Emperor' was so lucky as to procure the election of his son as King of the Komans during his lifetime, that special favour was pur- chased by further concessions still. The Empire sank to such a degree of poverty that it became absolutely necessary to elect a prince whose hereditary dominions were large enough to enable him to maintain his Imperial rank. Such princes made their hereditary dominions their first object, and re- treated altogether to their hereditary capitals, sometimes beyond the limits of Eoman or German dominion. Italy fell away, Burgundy was gradually swallowed up by France. The Holy Eoman Empire was cut down to a German King- dom, whose very royalty was little more than a pageant. As if in some desperate hope of reviving the royal authority, Maximilian revived the royal title,* almost forgotten since the days of Otto. And by a strange but inevitable reaction, the crown which had become purely elective became from this time practically hereditary. The form of election was never dropped, but chief after chief of the Austrian house was chosen, because national feeling revolted from choosing a stranger, while no other German Prince could be found equal to bearing the burthen. Thus both the Eoman Empire and the German Kingdom came to be looked on as part of the heritage of the House of Austria.! From Charles the Fifth onwards, the Eoman Emperor was again a mighty prince, but his might was neither as Eoman Emperor nor as * The old titles, "Eex Orientalium Francorum," etc., were gradually- dropped under the Ottos. Henceforth the Emperor, though crowned at Aachen and sometimes at Aries, took no title hut "Jmperator" or "Eex Komanorum." Maximilian restored the ancient style under the form of " Eex Germanise," " Konig in Germanien." This description was common in the ninth century, though it was not used as a formal title. t The election of Charles the Seventh of Bavaria was no exception. He claimed the Austrian succession. 154 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay German King. The Emperor-King, with his Kingdom and his Empire, sank, as we have already said, to be the president of one of the laxest of federal bodies. Thus it was that the acquisition of the Imperial dignity crushed and broke up the ancient Kingdom of the Eastern Franks. Yet the influence of that splendid possession was not wholly destructive. It preserved in the very act of weak- ening. The Imperial idea was like the ivy which first makes a wall ruinous, and then keeps it from falling. The possession of Empire in every way lessened the real power and influence of the Kingdom, but it ensured its existence. We may be sure that any other Kingdom whose King retained so little real authority as the King of Germany would have fallen asunder far sooner than Germany did. But the King of Germany was also the Roman Emperor ; as such he was surrounded by an atmosphere of vague majesty beyond all other Kings ; he was the object of a mysterious reverence, which did not hinder his vassals from robbing him of all effectual prerogatives, but which kept them back from the very thought of formally abolishing his office." The Roman Empire, as far as any real power or dignity was concerned, was buried in the grave of Frederick the Wonder of the World. But its ghost lingered on for five hundred and fifty years. Cassar survived the Interregnum ; he survived the Golden Bull ; he survived the Beformation ; he survived the Peace of Westphalia. The Eoman Emperors, powerful as heads of the Austrian House, became, as Kings and Caesars, almost as vain a pageant as a Merowingian King or an Abbas- side Caliph of Egypt. The temporal head of Christendom saw half of his own kingdom fall away into heresy. He saw his vassals, great and small, assume all the rights of inde- pendent sovereigns. He saw cities and provinces fall away one by one, some assuming perfect republican independence,* some swallowed up by royal or revolutionary France. But * The Confederations of Switzerland and the United Provinces, whose independence of the Empire, practically established long before, was not formally recognised till 1648. VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. , 155 the frail bark which, carried Osesar and his fortunes still kept on its course amid so many contending blasts. It was only when the magic spell of the name of Empire was dissolved by the rise of upstart and rival Emperors, that the fabric at last gave way. The assumption of the Imperial title by the Muscovite was the first step, but this alone did but little. The Russian Empire might be looked upon as in some vague way representing the Empire of Byzantium, or its sovereign might be spoken of as Emperor according to that rough analogy which confers the Imperial title on the. barbaric princes of China and Morocco. It was not till a rival appeared close on its own ground that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation fell utterly asunder. Side by side with the Emperor of the Romans suddenly arose an " Emperor of the French," giving himself out, with consummate but plausible, impudence, as the true successor of the Great Charles. The Kingdom of Italy, almost forgotten since the days of the Hohenstaufen, arose again to place a new diadem on the same presumptuous brow. A King of Rome, a title unheard of since the days of Tarquin, next appeared, as if to mock the long line of German "Reges Romanorum." The as- sumption of the Imperial title by Buonaparte was met by Francis the Second in a way which showed that he must almost have forgotten his own existence. He, the. King of Germany and Roman Emperor-elect, could find no better means to put himself on a level with the Corsican usurper than to add to his style the monstrous, ludicrous, and mean- ingless addition of " Hereditary Emperor of Austria." * An * " jEV&kaiser von Oesterreicb," as distinguished from ," erwaklter romi-;. scher Kaiser." This, as Mr. Bryce remarks, besides its absurdity in other ways, implies a complete forgetfulness of the meaning of the word " erwahlter." The title of " erwahlter romischer Kaiser," "Komanorum Imperator electus," was introduced by Maximilian, under Papal sanction, to express what hitherto had been expressed by " Rex Bomanorum in Csesarem promovendus," that is, a prince elected at Frankfurt and crowned at Aachen (latterly crowned at Frankfurt also), but not yet Emperor, because not yet crowned at Borne by the Pope. This was the condition of all the Emperors since Charles the Fifth, none of whom were crowned by the Pope. They were therefore only " Emperors-elect," just like a Bishop-elect, one, that 156 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. [Essay hereditary Emperor of Lichtenstein ■would have seemed no greater absurdity in the eyes of Charles or Otto or Frederick. When it had come to this, it was time that the old titles of Rome and Germany should pass away. As the elective King had made himself an hereditary Emperor, Dukes and Elec- tors thought they had an equal right to make themselves hereditary Kings. Their new-fangled Majesties and High- nesses revolted against their renegade overlord, and found a willing protector west of the Ehine. The Roman Empire and the German Kingdom were now no more ; the foreign Emperor declared that he did not recognise their existence,* and its own Imperial chief proclaimed the final dissolution of the creation of Augustus, Charles, and Otto, in a document in which, after the formal enumeration of his own now degraded titles, the name of Rome does not occur.f We have thus hurried through a period of more than eight hundred years, the revolutions of which are set forth by Mr. Bryce with singular clearness and power. He brings forth in its due prominence the great reign of Henry the Third, the moment when the Empire reached its highest pitch of real power. This was followed by the struggles between the spiritual and temporal powers under his son and grand- is, chosen, but not yet consecrated. But when " ErbkeAser " could be opposed to " erwahlter Kaiser," it was clear that people fancied that erwahlter meant, not " elect," but elective as opposed to hereditary. In short, Francis the Second seems to have altogether forgotten who and what he was. In the Peace of Presburg, in 1805, the Emperor is called throughout " Empereur d'Allemagne et d'Autriche ;" in the heading he is " Kaiser von Oesterreich " only. * See the addition made by Buonaparte to the Act of Confederation of the Ehine : " Sa Majesty . . . ne reconnoit plus l'existence de la con- stitution germanique." t The form used throughout is "deutsches Eeich." But the titles ran as of old, " erwahlter romischer Kaiser," " Konig in Germanien," etc. ; only the new-fashioned " Erbkaiser von Oesterreich " is thrust in between them. Even the " zu alien Zeiten Mehrer des Beichs," the old ludicrous mistranslation of " semper Augustus," is not left out in the document which proclaims the Empire to have come to an end. VI.] THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. 157 son, which showed how vain was the theory which expected the Roman Csesar and the Eoman Pontiff to pull together in harmony. But Mr. Bryce's highest enthusiasm centres round the great House of Swabia. He gives us a brilliant picture of the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, into whose real cha- racter and position we need hardly say that he fully enters. On the reign of his grandson, " Fridericus stupor mundi et innovator mirabilis," Mr. Bryce is less full and less eloquent than we should have expected ; but he clearly points out the importance of his reign as an epoch in Imperial history, and marks out boldly the fact that " with Frederick fell the Empire." The Empire, in short, from Kudolf onwards, is a revival, something analogous to the Empire of the Palaiologoi at Constantinople. Internal disorganization had done in the Western Empire what foreign conquest had done in the Eastern. Budolf, Adolf, Albert, were mere German Kings ; they never crossed the Alps to assume either the golden crown of Kome or the iron crown of Monza. With Henry the Seventh we reach a new period, or rather his reign seems like a few years transported onwards from an earlier time. The revival of classical learning had given a revived impulse to the Imperial idea, just as the revival of the Civil Law had done at an earlier time. Of the ideas with which men then looked upon the Empire, Dante, in his work De Monarchia, is the great exponent. It must not be thought for a moment that Dante's subject is monarchy, in the common sense of the word, royal government as opposed to aristocracy or demo- cracy. With him Monarchia is synonymous with Imperium. There may be many Kings and princes, but there is only one Monarch, one universal chief, the Roman Emperor. He proves elaborately, in the peculiar syle of reasoning current in that age, that an universal Monarch is necessary, that the Roman Emperor is of right the universal monarch, that the Emperor does not hold his crown of the Pope, but imme- diately of God alone. But he has not a word of argument to show that the German King is really the Roman Emperor ; that is assumed as a matter of course ; there was no need to 158 THE HOLY SOMAN EMPIRE. [Essay prove, because nobody doubted, that whatever belonged of right to Augustus Csesar belonged of right to his lawful successor, Henry of Liitzelburg. On this branch of the argu- ment — one which, to our notions, stood quite as much in need of proof as any of the others — Dante does not vouchsafe a single line. The illusion survived untouched. We have not room to follow Mr. Bryce through all the stages of the later German history, when the Empire had lost all Eoman and Imperial character, when the Emperor was again a mere German King, or rather a mere President of a German Confederation. The steps by which Germany sank from a Kingdom into a Confederation have an interest of their own, but it is one which more closely touches Federal than Imperial history. Germany is, as far as we know, the only example of a. Confederation which arose, not out of the union of elements before distinct, but out of the dissolution of a formerly existing kingdom.* From the Peace of Westphalia — we might almost say from the Interregnum onwards — the Imperial historian has little more to do than to watch the strange and blind affection with which men clave to the mere name of what had once been great and glorious. And yet we have seen that even that name was not without its prac- tical effect. If, in Mr. Bryce's emphatic words, " the German Kingdom broke down beneath the weight of the Boman Em- pire," it was certainly the name of the Boman Empire which hindered the severed pieces from altogether flying asunder. And the recollection of the Empire works still in modern politics, though we fear more for evil than for good. Patriotic Germans indeed look back with a sigh to the days when Germany was great and united under her Ottos and her Henries, but these are remembrances of the Kingdom rather than of the Empire. The memory of the Empire is mainly used in modern times to prop up the position of the two up- start powers which now venture to profane the Imperial title. * [There socms now (May, 1871), a faint chance — shall I say hope or fear? — of something of the same kind happening in the Western Kingdom as well as in the Easteru.] VL] THE HOLT ROMAN EMPIRE. 159 Because Gaul was once a German province, the Lord of Paris would have us believe that the successor of Charles is to be found among a people who in the days of the great Emperor had no national being. Because certain Austrian Dukes were chosen Roman Emperors, we are called upon, sometimes to condemn the great Frederick as a forerunner of Francis Joseph, sometimes to justify Francis Joseph as a successor of the great Frederick. We will wind up with the fervid and eloquent comments of Mr. Bryce on this latter head. A more vigorous denunciation of the great Austrian imposture we have seldom come across : — " Austria has indeed, in some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy of the Saxon and Swahian Caesars. Like her, they oppressed and insulted the Italian people ; but it was in the defence of rights which the Italians themselves admitted. Like her, they lusted after a dominion over the races on their borders, but that dominion was to them a means of spreading civilization and religion in savage countries, not of pampering upon their revenues a hated court and aristqcracy. Like her, they strove to maintain a strong government at home, but they did it when a strong government was the first of political blessings. Like her, they gathered and maintained vast armies ; but those armies were composed of knights and barons who lived for war alone, not of peasants torn away from useful labour, and condemned to the cruel task of perpetuating their own bondage by crushing the aspirations of another nationality. They sinned grievously, no doubt, but they sinned in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous age, not in thenoonday blaze of modern civilization. The enthusiasm for mediasval faith and simplicity which was so fervid some years ago, has run its course, and is not likely soon to revive. He who reads the history of the Middle Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them, were in some respects little better than savages. But when he approaches more recent times, and sees how, during the last three hundred years, kings have dealt with their subjects, and with each other, he will forget the ferocity of the Middle Ages, in horror at the heartlessness, the treachery, the injustice all the more odious because it sometimes wears the mask of legality, which disgraces the annals of the military monarchies of Europe. With regard, however, to the pretensions of modern Austria, the truth is that this dispute about the worth of the old system has no bearing upon them at all. The day of Imperial greatness was already past when Eudolf the first Hapsburg reached the throne ; while during what may be called the Austrian period, from Maximilian to Francis II., the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog and encumbrance, which the unhappy nation bore because she knew not how to rid herself of it. The Germans are welcome 160 TEE HOLY ROMAN EMPIBE. [Essay VI. to appeal to the old Empire to prove that they were once a united people. Nor is there any harm in their comparing the politics of the twelfth century with those of the nineteenth, although to argue from the one to the other seems to betray a want of historical judgment. But the one thing which is wholly absurd is to make Francis Joseph of Austria the successor "of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, and justify the most sordid and ungenial of modern despotisms by the example of the mirror of medieval chivalry, the noblest creation of mediseval thought."* * [I let Mr. Bryce's words and my own stand as they were first written. Since then we have seen the "sordid and ungenial despotism" scourged by a wholesome defeat into an honourable place in Europe. We have seen the Tyrant of Hungary changed into her lawful King. We have seen Italy enlarged and strengthened by the deliverance of Venice and of Borne. We have seen the rod of the oppressor broken ; the power which has been so long the disturbing element in Europe has at last been crushed, and instead of the frontier of France being extended to the Rhine, the frontier of Ger- many has been again extended to the Mosel. The unity of the greater part of Germany has been secured, and, by a pardonable confusion of ideas, the Imperial title has been assumed by the chief of the united nation. I need not show that such a title is in strictness inaccurate, but it would he hard to find a title more appropriate than that of Emperor for the head of a Confederation of Kings and other princes. The new German Empire is a fair revival of the old German Kingdom, but it must be borne in mind that it is in no sense a revival of the Holy Roman Empire. That has passed away for ever.] ( 161 ) VII. THE FBANKS AND THE GAULS. We think it right, at the beginning of this Article, to tell our readers exactly what we are going to talk about, and what we are not. We are not going to plunge into any antiquarian minutiae about the settlement of the Franks in Gaul, or to perplex ourselves and our readers with any questions as to Eeudes, Antrustions, and Scabini. Still less are we about to enter on the disputed ground of Gaulish or British ethnology, to trace out the exact line of demarcation between the Gael, and the Cymry, or to decide the exact relations of the Belgae either to them or to their Teutonic neighbours. What we wish to do is to pass rapidly through the whole history of Gaul and France, from the earliest times down to our own day. We wish to take a general survey of Gaulish and Frankish history from a point of view which is not commonly understood, but which is well suited to throw an important light alike upon the history of re- mote ages and upon the latest events of our own day. The past and the present are for ever connected ; but the kind of connexion which exists between them differs widely in different cases. Past history and modern politics are always influencing one another ; but the forms which their mutual influence takes are infinitely varied. Sometimes the busi- ness of the historian is to point out real connexions and real analogies which the world at large does not perceive. This is most conspicuously his duty in dealing with what is called the " ancient " history of Greece and Italy, and, to a large extent also, in dealing with the early and mediaeval history M 162 TSE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay of our own island. Sometimes, on the other hand, it is his duty to upset false connexions and false analogies, which have not only misled historical students, but have often exercised a most baneful influence upon public affairs. This is his primary duty when dealing with the history of Gaul and France. It is something to show that the old history of Athens and Rome is no assemblage of lifeless chronicles, but the truest textbook for the real statesman of every age. It is something to show that the England of our own times is in every important respect one and the same with the England of our earliest being. But it is something no less valuable to break down false assumptions which pervert the truth of his- tory, and which enable designing men to throw a false colour over unprincipled aggressions. If it is worth our while to show that Queen Victoria is in every sense the true successor of Cerdic and JElfred and Edward the First, it is no less worth our while to show that Louis Napoleon Buonaparte is in no conceivable sense the successor of Clovis* and of Charles the Great. There is perhaps nothing which people in general find more difficult to master than the science of historical geo- graphy. Few men indeed there are who fully take in the way in which nations have changed their places, and countries have changed their boundaries. We say "fully take in" because the facts are continually known in a kind of way, when there is no sort of living grasp of them. People know things and, so to speak, do not act upon their know- ledge. Almost everybody has heard, for instance, of the succession of " the Britons " and " the Saxons " in this island. A man knows in a kind of way that " the Saxons " are his own forefathers, and that they drove "the Britons" into a corner ; but he does Dot fully take in the fact that these " Britons " and " Saxons " are simply Welshmen and English- men. When Dr. Guest, like a good and accurate scholar, talks * [I seem, eleven years back, to have kept this absurd form of the name. The two names being exactly the same, if we do not write Hlodwig or something like it, it would be better to write Lewis from the very beginning.] VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 163 of " the English " in the fifth and sixth centuries, to most ears it sounds like a paradox* In the meanwhile, the most unmistakeable Teutons will talk glibly about " our British ancestors," and see no absurdity in the title of Haydon's picture of " Alfred and the first British Jury." In the same way men have a sort of notion that Gaul is the " ancient name " of France, and France the " modern name " of Gaul. A man sees " Charlemagne " called " King of France," and he thinks that the France of Charlemagne is the same as "the France of Lewis the Fourteenth or of either Buonaparte. One cause of the evil is doubtless the want of proper historical maps. Every household does not boast a copy of Spruner's Hand- Atlas. People are set to read the history of the world with two sets of maps. One is to serve from Adam to Theod-' oric or to Charles the Fifth — we are not quite sure which ; the other, from Theodoric or Charles the Fifth to the year 1860. They sit down to read about John and Philip Augustus either with a map of Eoman Gaul or with a map of Napoleonic France. Now, if you want to find the homes of the Twelve Peers of France, it is no light matter to do so when you have to choose between a map showing you only Lugdunensis and Germania Prima and a map showing you only the departments of Gironde and of Ille and Vilaine. People read of the return of Richard Coeur-de-Lion from the East, how he falls into the hands of the Duke of Austria, and is presently passed over into those of the " Emperor of Germany." This Duke and this Emperor are persons not a little mysterious to those whose only idea of " Austria " is something which takes in Venetia at the one end and Transsilvania at the other. If a man in this state of mind came across a copy of Eginhard, and found Mainz, Koln, and, Trier spoken of as cities of Franeia, he would think that he had hit upon an irrefragable argument in favour of the claims of Paris to the frontier of the Ehine. A " King of France " once reigned upon the Elbe, the Danube, the Tiber, and the Ebro ! A patriotic Frenchman would trumpet the * [I trust that it is not so great a paradox in 1871 as it was in I860.] M 2 164 THE FBANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay discovery abroad as the greatest of triumphs; a patriotic Englishman might perhaps be inclined to hide so dangerous a light under the nearest bushel. Our business just now is to show that the fact tells quite the other way, so far as it tells any way at all. If any inference in modern politics is to be drawn from the phenomena of mediaeval geography, they would certainly rather prove the right of Maximilian of Bavaria to the frontier of the Atlantic than the right of Napoleon of Paris to the frontier of the Ehine. We will begin by admitting, if it is needful for anybody either to assert or to deny the fact, that modern France is, beyond all doubt, connected with ancient Gaul in a way in which modern England is not connected with ancient Britain. There can be no question that the predominant blood in modern France is not that of the invading Franks, but that of the conquered Gallo-Bomans ; while in England the pre- dominant blood is not that of the conquered Britons, but that of the invading Angles and Saxons. The truth is that the Frankish conquest of Gaul must, of the two, have been more analogous to the Norman than to the English conquest of our own country. The Frank in Gaul and the Norman in England were predominant for a season ; but in the end the smaller and foreign element died out, and left Gaul once more Gaul and England once more England. In fact, England still retains more traces of the Norman than France does of the Frank. The Bomance infusion into our Teutonic speech is far more extensive than the Teutonic infusion into the Bomance speech of Gaul. The main difference is that Gaul or part of it has changed its name to France, while England has not changed its name to Normandy. This was doubtless, among other causes, owing to the more settled condition of states and nations in the eleventh century as compared with the sixth, and to the fact that William of Normandy claimed to be, not the unprovoked invader of England, but the lawful inheritor of her crown. But, on the other hand, Gaul has never, even in name, so thoroughly become France as Britain has become England. This may VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 165 sound strange at first hearing, because " Briton " and " British " are now such household words to express ourselves ; but their use in that sense is extremely modern; it has simply come in from the necessity, constant in political language and frequent elsewhere, of having some name to take in alike England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. So lately as James the Second's time, a Briton still meant a Welshman ; * and we believe that exactly a century back, the famous declaration" of George the Third that he " gloried in the name," not of Englishman, but "of Briton," was looked upon by many of his subjects as a wicked device of the Scotchman Bute. To this day " England " and " Englishman " are the words which always first occur to us in the language either of every-day discourse or of the rhetoric of the heart. The word " Britain," in the mouth of an Englishman, is reserved either for artificial poetry, for the dialect of foreign politics, or for the conciliation of Scottish hearers. Before England and Scotland were united, the name " Briton," as including Englishmen, was altogether unheard of; but the name " Gaul " has never fully died out as the designation of France. How does the case stand in the tongue which was so long the common speech of Europe ? The most pedantic Ciceronian never scrupled to talk familiarly about Anglus and Anglia ; but Francus and Franeia are hardly known except in language more or less formal. Gallus, Gallia, Gattia- rum Bex, are constantly used by writers who would never think of an analogous use of Britannus and Britannia. In ecclesiastical matters, Gaul has always remained even the formal designation. The Gallican Church answers to the Anglican, the Primate of the. Gauls to the Primate of all England. And if it be said that the reason is that Eng- * As in the ballad quoted by Lord Macaulay : " Both our Britons are fooled, Who the laws overruled, And next Parliament both shall be plaguily schooled." The ", Britons " are the Welshmen Jeffreys and Williams. 166 THE FRANKS AND TEE GAULS. [Essay land is not coextensive with Britain, neither, we are happy to say, is France even yet coextensive with Gaul. If Britain includes Scotland as well as England, Gaul includes Belgium and Switzerland as well as France. The difference of ex- pression merely sets forth the truth of the case. France is still really Gaulish ; England is in no sense British, except in a sense lately introduced for political convenience. If we turn to a map of the Boman Empire, we shall find in the West of Europe the great province of Gaul, whose extent, as we have hinted in the last paragraph, was far larger than that of modern France. Its boundaries are the Ocean, the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Rhine. It 'includes the modern states of France, Switzerland, and Belgium, the lately plundered Duchy of Savoy, and portions of the King- dom of the Netherlands and of the German states of Prussia, Bavaria, and Hessen. And then, as now, the division was geographioal, and not national. As France now forms the greatest part, but far from the whole, of the ancient province, so in those days men of Celtic blood occupied the greater part, but not the whole, of geographical Gaul. The German dwelled then, as now, on both sides of the Rhine. The Basque dwelled then, as now, in Aquitaine, though his tongue has now shrunk up into a much narrower corner of the land than it then occupied. Now the only claim of modern France to the Rhine frontier is that the Rhine was the frontier of ancient Gaul. But why should one of the states into which ancient Gaul is divided thus claim to be the representative of the whole ? There is no reason save that of their relative strength, why France should, on geo- graphical principles, annex Belgium or Switzerland, rather than Belgium or Switzerland annex France. If the Parish claim to reach to the Rhine as the eastern frontier of Gaul, the Helvetii may just as well claim to reach to the Atlantic, as being no less undoubtedly its western frontier. And, on this sort of reasoning, why stop at the Alps ? why be satisfied with Savoy and Nizza ? What are Lombardy and Romagna but fragments feloniously cut off from the great Gallic whole ? VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 167 They came as much within the limits of the Gaul of Csesar as Paris itself. Caesar spent his winters at Lucca without leaving his province. He had got some way into the present Papal territory before he violated the sacred limits of Eoman Italy* Geographical necessities and natural boundaries may, in the mouth of a despot, mean whatever he pleases ; but we really do not see why every argument in favour of the French claim to the frontier of the Ehine would not tell just as strongly in favour of a French claim to the frontier of the Rubicon. The truth is, that, though modern France does represent ancient Gaul, so far as that the old Gaulish blood is pre- dominant in the veins of the modern Frenchman, still the connexion is purely geographical and ethnological ; modern France is in no political or historical sense the representative of ancient Gaul. France, in short, in the modern sense of the word, the monarchy of Paris, has no continuous exist- ence earlier than the tenth century ; it has no existence at all earlier than the ninth. Parisian France has been in Gaul what Wessex has been in England, what England has been in Britain, what Castile has been in Spain, what Sweden has been in Scandinavia, what Prussia has been in Germany and Sardinia in Italy ; that is, it is one state among several, which has risen to greater importance than any of its fellows, and which has gradually swallowed up many of them into its own substance. The Kings of Paris gradually united to their domain nearly all the territories of their nominal vassals, and a vast territory besides which never owed them so much as a formal homage. So have the Kings of Castile done in the Spanish peninsula; so is the Sardinian monarchy doing before our own eyes in Italy. There is of course one wide difference between the cases : Italy is being annexed to Sar- * [It is half a privilege, half a penalty, to live in an age when states and nations are mating themselves new boundaries. When I wrote this article, the Bishop of Rome was a temporal Prince reigning on both coasts of the now liberated peninsula. Piedmont was just beginning to grow intc Italy. I leave every word relating to Italy as it was first written.] 168 THE FRANKS AND THE OAULS. [Essay dinia by its own free will, while, in the Spanish peninsula, Portugal has not .the least wish to be again incorporated with Castile and Aragon, and, in Gaul, the free states of Belgium and Switzerland have Btill less longing to be swallowed up by the despotism of Paris. Otherwise, for Sardinia to annex any Italian state by fraud or conquest or the mere award of foreign powers would be as much opposed to justice as the annexation of Portugal by Spain, or of Belgium by France. The thing which men have so much difficulty in understand- ing is that modern France is a power which really has risen in this way. The existence of France in its modern extent, or nearly so, is assumed as something almost existing in the eternal fitness of things. The name of France, a mere fluc- tuating political expression for a territory which has grown and which may again diminish,* is used as if it had a perma- nent physical meaning, like the names Spain or Italy. To speak of a time when Lyons and Marseilles were no parts of France would seem to many people as great a paradox as to speak of a time when Borne was no part of the Italian peninsula. People know in a way, but they do not fully take in, that Bouen, Poitiers, and Toulouse were once the seats of sovereigns whose allegiance to the Parisian King was at least as loose as that of Frederick of Prussia to the Austrian Emperor ; still less do they take in that Provence, Daiiphiny, Franche Comte, Lorraine, and Elsass were all — some of them till very lately — as absolutely independent of the crown of France as they were of the crown of Eussia. There was no reason in the nature of things why, not France, but Aqui- taine, or Toulouse, or Burgundy, might not have risen to the supremacy in Gaul, any more than there was why Saxony or Bavaria might not have risen to the place in Germany now held by Prussia. This sort of geographical and historical confusion is very much aided by one or two peculiarities in modern diplomatic language. When Louis Napoleon Buonaparte first expressed * [I had but faint hopes then of seeing Elsass and Lothringen won back again.J V1L] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 169 his wish to become master of Savoy, the word selected for the occasion was the verb " revendiquer," and the actual pro- cess of annexation was expressed by the noun " reunion," and the verb " reunir." At first sight this seems very much as if a burglar who asked for your money or your life should be said to " revendiquer " the contents of your purse, and after- wards to effect a " reunion " between them and the contents of his own. According to all etymology, "revendiquer" must mean to claim back again something which you have lost, and " reunion " must mean the joining together of things which have been separated after being originally one. Now undoubtedly, in modern French usage, the particle " re " has lost its natural force, and " reunion " has come simply to mean "union." But, first of all, foreigners may indeed get to know, but they can hardly get to realize this ; you may know the construing in the dictionary, but you cannot get rid of the instinctive impression that "revendiquer" and " reunion " imply the recovery of something lost, most pro- bably of something unjustly lost. " La reunion de Savoie " will always seem to an Englishman to mean that Savoy was a natural part of France unjustly dissevered from it. If Savoy remains annexed to France for the next hundred years, people will begin to look on it as they have already learned to look upon the " reunion " of Lorraine in the last century and upon the earlier " reunions " of Provence and Lyons. And one can hardly doubt that the twofold meaning of the word, its etymological sense and its modern Parisian sense, has been purposely made use of as a blind by French diplomatists. They tell us that they use the word merely in its modern Parisian sense ; but they know very well that many people now, and still more hereafter, will instinctively interpret it in its natural meaning. And secondly, it is a most speaking fact, that in any language " reunion " should have come to mean the same as " union." It could only have come to do so in the language of a country where a long series of fraudulent or violent " unions " had been ingeniously passed off as lawful " reunions." 170 TEE FRANKS AND THE QATJLS. [Essay" The truth is that, while all nations have a tendency to annexation, France stands alone in the art of veiling the ugly features of annexation hy various ingenious devices. France is not more guilty in this matter than Eussia, Prussia, Austria, Turkey, or Spain ; indeed we cannot venture to pro- fess that our own English hands are altogether clean. But France stands distinguished from them all by her power of putting a good name on a bad business. A Kussian or Austrian aggression is simply an aggression of brute force ; it is defended by the aggressor, if he condescends to defend it at all, simply on grounds of political expediency. Austria does not retain Venetia for the good of the Venetians, or because the hand of nature has marked out Venetia as a necessary portion of her dominions. She has simply got it, and means, if she can, to keep what she has got. But a French aggression is quite another business. There is always some elaborate reason for it. French ingenuity never lacks a theory for anything. A country is annexed in the interests of French versions of physical geography, of French notions of what has been, or French notions of what ought to be. France "wars for an idea;" an idea, it may be, either of past history or of anticipated futurity. Treaties are broken, legal rights are trampled under foot, natural justice is cast to the winds ; but there is a good reason for every step. French cleverness is alike apt at proving the doctrine that the annexed people ought to desire annexa- tion, and the fact that they actually do desire it. In short, while Austria acts as a mere vulgar and brutal highwayman, France better likes the character of an elegant, plausible, and ingenious swindler. The tendency is not new. Lewis the Eleventh had much to say for himself when he seized on Provence and the Duchy of Burgundy, and Philip Augustus extemporized a tribunal and a jurisprudence in order to put himself into lawful possession of Normandy and Anjou. Another means by which a false light is thrown upon the successive aggressions of France arises out of the familiar VII.] TEE FRANKS AND TEE GAULS. 171 and almost universal use of the French language. We are so much more familiar with French than with any other tongue, French has become to so great an extent our medium of communication with other nations, that we have got into a way of speaking of half the cities of Europe, not by their own names, but by French corruptions. The custom is quite recent; in the sixteenth century Englishmen spoke of a German, Flemish, or Italian town either by its real German, Flemish, or Italian name, or else by some corruption of their own making. Now our habit of calling all places by French names greatly softens the ugliness of French aggression. Alsace sounds as if it had been a French province from all eternity ; the Teutonic Elsass suggests ideas altogether dif- ferent. The " reunion " of Nice may a generation or two hence sound quite natural, but that of Nizza Would retain its native ugliness to all time. Cologne, Mayence, and Treves sound as if they positively invited annexation ; so do Liege, Malines, and Louvain ; and it is no wonder that people think that Charles the Great was a Frenchman when they find his tomb at such a French-sounding place as Aix-la-Chapelle. But Koln, Mainz, Trier, Liittich, Mecheln, Lowen, and Aachen * would, by their very names, stand up as so many bulwarks against Parisian aggression. For at least eight hundred years past Frenchmen have been incapable of spell- ing rightly any single name in any foreign language ; but it is not at all unlikely that the incapacity may now and then have not been without a sound political motive. We will now return to our geographical survey, which we have perhaps somewhat irregularly interrupted. Some time back we drew a map of ancient Gaul as a province of the Eoman Empire. In the days of the great Teutonic migration, when East-Goths poured into Italy, West-Goths into Spain, Vandals into Africa, Angles and Saxons into Britain, the kindred nation of the Franks appeared in Gaul. Everybody knows that France is so called from the Franks ; but people * [The Low-Dutch, forms of names like Liittich and even Aachen would be better still, if one could be sure of getting them in their right shape.] 172 TEE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. IEssay are apt to forget that France is not the only country which is called from them. 'France and Franeonia are etymologically the same word ; the difference in their modern forms simply comes from a wish to avoid confusion, a confusion which was avoided in early mediaeval Latin by speaking of Francia oceidentalis and Francia orientalis, Francia Latina and Francia Teutoniea. The difference between the two is that the Frank of France was a settler in a strange land, while the Frank of Franeonia remained in the land of his fathers ; that the Frank of France ere long degenerated into something half Roman, half Celtic, while the Frank of Fran- eonia has ever remained an uncontaminated Teuton. In short, the Franks conquered Gaul, but without forsaking Germany; and they conquered different parts of Gaul in widely different senses and degrees. In Northern Gaul, to a certain extent, they settled. Orleans, Paris, Soissons, and Metz became the seats of Frankish kingdoms ; but in the southern provinces of Aquitaine and Burgundy they hardly settled at all. There other Teutonic conquerors had been before them. The Goth reigned at Toulouse, and the Bur- gundian had given his name to the land between the Bhone and the Alps. Both were in a certain sense conquered. The orthodox zeal of the newly-converted Merwing formed a good pretext for driving the Arian out of Gaul. The Gothic monarchy had to retire beyond the Pyrenees, and the Bur- gundian kingdom for a while " ceased to exist." But the conquest was at most a political one. Southern Gaul was brought into a more or less complete subjection to the Frankish Kings, but it never really became part of the true Frankish territory. There was no permanent Frankish popu- lation south of the Loire, and, as the Merowingian dynasty declined, Aquitaine again became to all intents and purposes an independent state. Under Pippin we find a Duke of Aquitaine who has to be conquered just as much as any prince of Lombardy or Saxony. In truth, to this day Aquitaine and France proper have absolutely nothing in common, except the old Roman element and the results of their political VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 173 union during the last four hundred years. The Tuetonic element is different in the two lands, and, in a large district at least, the aboriginal element is different also. The Frenchman is formed by the infusion of the Frankupon the Celt, the Gascon is formed by the infusion of the Goth upon the Basque. Both speak tongues derived from that of Borne, but the difference passes the limits of mere difference of dialect. The arrogance of modern Paris talks indeed of the " bad French " of Aquitaine and Provence. In its ignorant pride, it can see only a patois of itself in a tongue which is as distinct as that of Spain or Italy, and which was a formed and polished speech, the speech of the refined courts of Poitiers and Toulouse, while northern France had still only an unformed and unwritten jargon. We thus see that the dominions of the Kings of the Franks of the house of Clovis in no way answered either to ancient Gaul or to the modern French Empire. TheMerowingian realm consisted of central Germany and Northern Gaul. Southern Gaul was overrun rather than really conquered, and northern Italy was overrun also. For a short time, during the wars of the sixth century, Frankish conquerors appeared south of the Alps on an errand which, for aught we know, may afford a full precedent for the Italian campaigns of Francis the First, or for those of either Buonaparte. But the real Frankish territory of this period does not reach southward of the Loire. North of that river we find the Frank of Neustria, per- haps by this time in some degree Romanized, and to the east of him comes the true German Frank of Austrasia. How far the Franks of Gaul had yielded to Boman influences during the Merowingian period it is impossible to say ; but everything leads us to believe that before the time of Pippin they must have begun to differ widely from their uncorrupted Australian brethren. We shall see presently that, by the middle of the ninth century, a Bomance speech, no longer Latin, but as yet hardly to be called French, had grown up in Frankish Gaul. Now the influences of the previous century and a half were altogether in a Teutonic direction : a Bomance dialect could 174 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [EssAr hardly have lived on through the domination of the Austrasian Mayors and Kings, unless it had been pretty firmly established before the end of the Merowingian rule.* The Carolingian dynasty dates its formal beginning from the election of Pippin as King of the Franks in 752. But practically it may be carried back to the beginning of the series of Austrasian Mayors in 681. The first Pippin and the first Charles were really sovereigns of the Franks, no less than the Pippin and the Charles who were invested with the royal title. And this transfer of power to the house of Pippin was nearly equivalent to a second Teutonic conquest. Whatever the Merwings and their Gaulish subjects may have been, there is no doubt as to the true Teutonic character of the whole dynasty of the Karlings. They were raised to power by the swords of the Teutonic Austrasians ; the cradle of their race was the Teutonic Heerstall ; their favourite seats of royalty were the Teutonic Engelheim and Aachen; as Mayors of the Palace, as Kings of the Franks, as Eoman Caesars, nay even when they had shrunk up into the petty Kings of the rock of Laon, they clave firmly, down to their latest days, to the dress, the manners, and the tongue of their Teutonic fathers. Under the " Kings of the second race," Aquitaine and even Neustria were little more than subject provinces of a German monarch. The zenith of the Frankish power was attained in the reign of Charles the Great. Charles, King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, Patrician of the Romans, was some- thing far more than a King either of Gaul or of Germany; he was the Lord of Western Christendom. All Gaul, all that was then Germany, were his; Aquitaine, Saxony, Bavaria, Lombardy, were gathered in as conquered provinces; the Slave, the Avar, the Northman, became subjects or tribu- taries ; the Commander of the Faithful himself corresponded * [This depends on the extent to which the Pranks and the Gauls inter- mingled. A Eoman speech must have gone on uninterruptedly among the mass of the people, but men of Prankish descent most likely spoke only German.] VII.] TEE FBANES AND THE GAULS. 175 on equal and friendly terms with the mightiest of the followers of the Cross. At last a dignity fell to the lot of the trium- phant Frank to which no barbarian of the West had as yet ventured to aspire. Goths and Herulans had long before made and unmade the Western Caesars : Gothic chiefs had reigned in Italy with the royal title ; but the diadem and the sceptre of Augustus had as yet been worn by no Teutonic brow and grasped by no Teutonic hand. The Old Borne had stooped to become a provincial dependency of the New ; but it had never submitted to the permanent sway of a barbarian. Theodoric had reigned, a Gothic king indeed in fact, but an Imperial lieutenant in theory; Alboin and Liudprand had appeared as open enemies, but they had never .passed the gates of the Eternal City ; Charles himself, his father, and his grandfather, had exercised the full Imperial power under humbler names ; but the Patrician was only the republican magistrate of the Roman commonwealth or the vicegerent of the Eastern Caesar. By that Caesar's regnal years charters still were dated, and his image and superscription were still impressed on a coinage from which no tax or tribute ever . reached him. At last, the moment came when the Old Eome was again to assert her coequality with her younger sister, and to affirm that she had never forfeited her right to nomi- nate one at least of the masters of the world. Eome once more chose her own Caesar, but that Caesar was not of Eoman or Italian blood ; the golden crown at last rested on the open brow of the lordly German, and the Pontiff and People of Rome proclaimed the Imperial style of " Charles Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific Emperor of the Eomans." Not that the Roman Augustus gained thereby an inch or par- ticle of territory or power which had not already belonged to the simple Frankish King. But in the eyes of a large portion of his subjects his rule was thereby at once changed from a dominion of force into a dominion of law ; the elected and consecrated Emperor became, in the eyes of all southern Europe, a different being from the mere barbaric conqueror ; we might almost say that the world recognized the Teuton as .176 THE FRANKS AND TEE QAULS. [Essay its chosen and natural ruler, when for the first time a man of Teutonic blood was raised to the highest pinnacle of earthly- greatness. It shows the true greatness of Charles's mind that his head was not in the least turned by a splendour which might have dazzled the imagination of any mortal. Crowned in the Eternal City by the common father of Christendom, he still remained, Imperator and Augustus as he was, the same simple hearty German as of old. Even Alexander, on . the throne of the Great King, could not wholly endure the trial'; he went far to exchange the spirit of the chosen King of Macedon and chief of Greece for the arbitrary rule of a Persian despot. But Charles was in no way spoiled or changed by the almost superhuman glory from which he seems him- self to have shrunk. He still retained his German dress, his German speech, his German habits ; nor did he ever transfer the pomp, the slavery, the almost idolatrous incense of the court of his Byzantine colleague into the free Teutonic air of Aachen and of Engelheim. Those were indeed days of glory for the ancient Frank ; but it is a glory in which the modern Frenchman can claim no share. Celtic, Parisian, France had as yet no being. Its language was as yet the unformed patois of a conquered pro- vince. Paris was a provincial town which the lord of Eome and Aachen once visited in the course of a long progress amongst a string of its lowly fellows. Gaul, at least its Celtic portions, was seldom honoured by the presence of its Ger- man master, and it added but little to the strength of his German armies. The native speech of Charles was the old Teutonic ; Latin, the literary tongue of the whole West, and still the native speech of many provinces, he spoke fluently as an acquired language; Greek, the other universal and Imperial tongue, he understood when spoken, but could not himself speak it with ease. French he could neither speak nor understand ; for, alas, as yet no French language could be said to exist ; a King of the Franks was about as likely to express himself in the dialect of a Neustrian Celt as an Em- peror of the French is now to indite his pamphlets in Basque, VII.] THE FBANKS AND TEE GAULS. 177 Walloon, or Bas-Breton. The valley of the Loire, the chosen home of the Valois, the valley of the Seine, the chosen home of the Bourbon, had little charms for the Austrasian Frank, whose heart, amid Eoman pomps and Aquitanian and Hn finish victories, ever yearned for the banks of his own Teutonic Rhine. Under Charles that elder Francia which was the native land of the Frank was at the summit of its greatness ; but there was no period, before or after, at which that younger Francia of which Paris is the centre was so utterly insig- nificant in the eyes of men. Another of the many mistakes with which this period of history is overshadowed is the common belief that the long reign of Charles, his wars, his treaties, his legislation, left hardly any lasting fruit behind them. We are too apt to suppose that his great work was almost immediately undone amidst the dissensions of his grandsons. This again arises from looking at him and his Empire from a French instead of a German point of view. Looked at from Aquitaine or Neustria, the work of Charles the Great was altogether ephemeral ; but it bears quite another hue if we once step on the other side of the Rhine. Charles found a large part of Germany a mere wilderness of heathendom ; the Christian Frank found the bitterest and most stubborn enemy of his creed and empire in the kindred Saxon. Charles converted Saxony by the sword ; but, however the work was done, it was done effectually. He welded Saxony and the Teutonic Francia together into that great German Kingdom which so long held the first rank in Europe, and which, strange as it seems to us, was really, when we compare it with Gaul, Italy, or Spain, the most united of Western realms. He opened a path in which along line of illustrious German Kings and Em- perors, from Arnulf to Frederick the Second, worked with no small success after him. That he bequeathed to them a claim to his Imperial style, and a vague pretension "to his Imperial power, was an inheritance of but doubtful advantage. The Kingdom of Germany was in truth crushed and broken to pieces beneath the weight of the Holy Roman Empire ; but 178 TEE FRANKS AND TEE GATJL8. [Essay of the united and glorious Germany of Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great, of Henry the Frank and of Frederick the Swabian, Charles the Great was the father and the founder. If Gaul and Italy fell away, the Regnum Tew- tomcvm survived for four hundred years, and it still survives in the hearts of a people longing to be one as they were beneath his sceptre.* Only remember what the; Fhrdneia ■ and the Franoi of Charles really were, and the dismemberment of the Carolingian Empire amounts to little more than the lopping- off of some outlying foreign provinces from the body of the great Teutonic realm. We have now reached the ninth century. Charles was crowned at Rome in the last year of the eighth century, and fourteen years later he was borne to his Imperial tomb at Aachen. He had founded the German Kingdom and won the Roman diadem for its Kings. But before the new century had passed, another nation, another language, was beginning to appear. During the century which followed the death of Charles, we get our first glimpses of the existence of modern, Celtic, Parisian, France. Before the close of the second cen- tury from his coronation, modern, Celtic, Parisian, France, the Kingdom of Odo and Hugh Capet, is fully established, high in rank, but as yet small in power, among the recognized divisions of Western Christendom. The Western or Frankish Empire, as it stood under Charles the Great, was undoubtedly far too vast, and included nations far too incongruous, to remain permanently united under a single head. Charles himself, it is evident, perceived this. The division of a kingdom among the sons of a deceased King was indeed nothing new ; it was a device which had been constantly tried in Merowingian Gaul. But we can- not believe that Charles would have given the sanction of his master genius to such a plan had it not been really * [The Regnum Teutonicum has now come to life again, but its chief bears the Imperial title. Still the inaccuracy may be forgiven. Now that Dukes and Electors have grown into Kings, it is hard to see what a Bas&eus, a King of Kings, could be called except Emperor.] VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE 0AV1S. 179 adapted to the circumstances of the time. His schemes were veiy elaborate. The mode of succession chalked out by him included a mixture of popular election and hereditary right, and all the minor kings were to be united in a sort of federal bond by the recognition of a common superior in the Em- peror. Whether such a system could have worked may be doubted. It had worked under himself; he had made his sons Kings, in Italy and Aquitaine without any prejudice to his own rights as supreme Emperor. But submission to a father, and that father Charles the Great, was quite another thing from submission to a brother, an uncle, or, as it might soon be, a distant cousin. Charles's own scheme of division came to nothing, because of the death of two out of his three sons. Lewis the Pious succeeded him in the possession of the whole Empire, with only one subordinate King in the person of the unfortunate Bernard of Italy. But it is well worth while to mark the geographical limits of the several king- doms as traced out by the hand of Charles himself. Most likely he had no thought of forming national kingdoms at all* There was still to be one Kingdom of the Franks, though it was divided among several Kings ; just as in the early days of the division of the Koman Empire, the Empire was still held to be one, though its administration was portioned out be- tween two or more Imperial colleagues. Certainly the three kingdoms traced out for Charles, Pippin, and Lewis coincide with no national divisions either of earlier or of later times- Boughly speaking, Charles seems to have meant to keep the old Frankish Kingdom for his eldest son Charles, and to divide his conquests between Pippin and Lewis. But, besides that the frontier is not very accurately followed, one most im- portant exception is to be made. The wholly new acqui- sitions of Italy and the Spanish March, together with Aqui- taine and Bavaria, which had been reduced from nominal vassalage to real obedience, were divided between the two * This seems to be shown by the titles which Bginhard gives to the subordinate Kings. Lewis, for instance, is not " Rex Aquitanise," or " Rex Aquitanorum," but merely " Rex super Aquitaniam." N 2 180 THE FRANKS AND TEE GAULS. [Essay younger sons. Charles took the old Francia ; but he also, by the necessity of the case, took the great conquest of Saxony. Of the three divisions, Aquitaine, the kingdom of Lewis, came nearest to being a national kingdom. Southern Gaul and the Spanish March answer pretty nearly to what were afterwards the countries of the Lingua d'Oe. But the Italian kingdom, cut short at one end by the Byzantine province, was lengthened at the other by the addition of all Germany south of the Danube. Did the theory of " natural bound- aries " flash across the mind of the great Charles when he made that great river a political limit ? Certainly no such idea presented itself to him with regard to the Bhine. Not the slightest regard was paid either to the past boundaries of Boman Gaul or to the future boundaries of modern France. Aquitaine was to have something like a national sovereign ; but no such boon was conferred on Neustria. The German King was to reign, as of old, on both sides of the German river. The kingdom of the younger Charles was to consist of what is now Northern France and Northern Germany ; while what is now Southern France formed the great bulk of the kingdom of Lewis. Modern, Parisian, France was so far from answering to the Francia of Charles the Great, that it did not even occur to him as a convenient division when he was portioning out the vast monarchy of whi ch it formed a part. The division made by Charles had, as we said, no lasting effect. It is valuable only as showing what were the ideas of a convenient partition entertained in the year 806 by the greatest of living men. Charles was succeeded by Lewis. His reign was a mere series of ever-fluctuating partitions of the Empire among his sons. Sir Francis Palgrave, in the first volume of his History of England and Normandy, has taken the trouble to reckon up no less than ten successive schemes of division. In the last of these we begin to discern, for the first time, something like the modern Kingdom of France. Then, in 839, Northern and Southern Gaul, Neustria and Aquitaine, were for the first time united as the kingdom of Charles the Bald. The kingdom thus formed was far VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 181 smaller than modern France, but it lay almost wholly with- in it. It took in Flanders at the one end and the Spanish March at the other ; but both of these provinces remained French, in a vague sense, far down into the middle ages. The suzerainty over the County of Barcelona was only given up by Saint Lewis, and that over the County of Flanders lingered on to be one of the main subjects of dispute between Francis the First and Charles the Fifth. The kingdom of Charles the Bald was undoubtedly the first germ of modern France. It was, if we except the Flemings, the Bretons, and the Basques at its several corners, a kingdom wholly of the Roman speech. This fact comes prominently forth in the famous oath of Strassburg, preserved by Nithard.* That precious document has been commented upon over and over again as a matter of philology ; it is no less valuable as a matter of history. It shows that in 841 the distinctions of race and language were beginning to make themselves felt. The Austrasian soldiers of King Lewis swear in the Old-German tongue, of which the oath is an early monument; but of the language in which the oath is taken by the Neustrian soldiers of- King Chariest the oath itself is, as far as our knowledge goes, absolutely the oldest monument. In the lingua Bomcma, as Mthard calls it, we see for the first time a tongue essentially of Roman origin, and yet a tongue which has departed too far from the Roman model to be any longer called Latin. It has ceased to be Latin, but we cannot yet call it French, even Old-French. How far it is the mother of French, and how far rather the mother of Provencal, we must leave those to decide whose special business lies with the history of language. For our * Nithard, iii. 6, ap. Pertz, ii. 666. t [It is worth notice that Charles the Bald, as well as his soldiers, could speak the "lingua Eomana" or Romance tongue. See the Capitularies put forth by the Kings Lewis, Charles, and Lothar at Coblenz in 860. Lewis speaks "lingua Theothisca," and Charles " lingua Eomana " (Pertz Leges, i. 472). Yet Charles, in his own Capitularies, speaks of " lingua Theodisca " as the language of the country, exactly as Lewis does (i 482 497).] 182 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay purpose it is enough that it reveals to us the existence of a Gaul speaking neither Celtic, nor Teutonic, nor Latin, but Romance; that is, it shows that one most important step had been taken towards the creation of modern France. As yet the new speech was known only as lingua Bomana; in the course of the next century it became nationalized as lingua Gattiea* One might be curious to know how far men had begun really to feel that a new language had been formed ; whether it was in any case the tongue of men of rank or of men who could read and write ; whether there were any to whom the lingua Bomana was already their mother-tongue, but who still committed their thoughts to writing in the more classical lingua Latina. Of all this we can tell nothing, ex- cept what we may infer from the fact that Count Nithard, a man of high rank and high ability, and, by an illegitimate female descent, the actual grandson of the great Charles, was struck by the phaBnomenon of the diversity of speech, and thought the formula worth preserving in the very words of the vulgar tongue. This is in itself remarkable enough, and at all events it proves the observant and inquiring spirit of Nithard himself. We wish that he had had more followers. There is nothing which we more commonly lack in the Latin chroniclers of the middle age than notices of the tongue of the people, and even of the tongue of the actors in the story. The wars between the sons of the Emperor Lewis, and the final settlement at Verdun in 843, did but confirm the exist- ence of the new kingdom. The connexion between the two parts of ancient Franeia was now severed for ever ; Neustria and Austrasia were never, except during the ephemeral Empire of Charles the Fat, again united under a single ruler. On the other hand, a connexion was formed between Neustria and Aquitaine, a connexion which was of little moment, but which was destined to bear at the time no small fruit in future ages. By the treaty of Verdun the Empire was divided into three parts. Charles took, as we have seen, the purely Romance lands of Neustria and Aquitaine ; Lewis * See Richer, i. 20, iii. 85, iv. 100, ap. Pertz, vol. v. VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 183 took the purely German lands far to the east. Lothar, their eldest brother, the Koman Ctesar, of course took Frankish Italy ; but he took also that long strip of debateable land from the Mediterranean to the Ocean, which took his name, and part of which still keeps it. Lotliaringia, Lothringen, Lorraine, lay between the Germanic realm of Lewis and the Eomance realm of Charles, taking in doubtless then, as now, lands both of Romance and of Germanic speech. But it was a kingdom which had no principle of unity of any kind ; no kind of tie of language, of history, or of " natural boundaries," united Provence and Holland and the intermediate countries. The kingdom, therefore, had no lasting being. Sometimes we find it cut up into several separate kingdoms ; sometimes, as in our own day, it was divided between the two more compact realms on each side of it. Those two realms re- mained, grew, and flourished, while Lotharingia fell to pieces. Those realms need names from the beginning, and it is hard to avoid giving them, though it is still too soon to do so, the familiar names of Germany and France. Thus we get our first glimpse of France in the modern sense, a creation of the ninth century, not of the fifth. As Sir Francis Palgrave says, * " this division created territorial France." Modern France was thus created, but it was created purely by accident. Charles was King over Neustria ; and the Emperor Lewis, wishing to enlarge the appanage of his favourite son, added the kingdom of Aquitaine, which fell vacant by the death of his brother Pippin. Neustria and Aquitaine together made France, such a France as lasted till the fourteenth century ; a France without Alpine slopes or frontiers of the Rhine ; a France which, instead of the Rhine, barely reached to the Rhone, and which still had to " reunite," not only Savoy and Nizza, but Provence, Dauphiny, the County of Burgundy, Lyons, Bresse, Bugey, Elsass, and Lothringen. And even within the limits of the new king- dom, the position of Aquitaine shows how utterly accidental and artificial the creation was. Aquitaine, the kingdom of * History of England and Normandy, i. 345. 184 THE FMANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay Pippin, had no love for the sway of Charles of Neustria ; it was constantly revolting on behalf of Pippin's heirs, as the representatives of its national independence. Aquitaine was joined to Neustria by the command of Lewis the Pious ; hut no effectual union took place for ages ; all that the command of the pious Emperor brought about was to invest the Neustrian King with vague and nearly nominal rights, which did not fully become realities for six hundred years. Aqui- taine was to the Kings of the French pretty much what Eomagna was to the Popes. Constantine or Pippin or Charles or Matilda or Rudolf gave Eomagna to the Holy See ; but the sovereignty of the Holy See was of the most unpractical kind till its rights were at last enforced by the sword of Caesar Borgia. So it was with Aquitaine : nominally part of the kingdom of Charles the Bald, it soon split into two great principalities, differing in nothing but name from sovereign kingdoms. The Duke of Aquitaine and the Count of Tou- louse came to rank among the princes of Europe. They might be vassals of the King of France, but their vassalage went no further than placing the royal name in the dates of their charters. During the busy French and Norman history of the tenth century, the French chroniclers tell us much about Germany and something about England, but about Southern Gaul we only hear just enough to assure us that it had not vanished from the face of creation. The Loire seems in those days to have been the truest natural boundary; between Northern and Southern Gaul we find few relations either of peace or war, but something very like utter mutual oblivion. As time rolled on, the Aquitanian duchy was, in the twelfth century, united to the crown of England ; while the eastern portion of Old Aquitaine, Lauguedoc, or the County of Toulouse, became, in the next age, one of the first and greatest acquisitions of the Kings of Paris. Few portions of history are less understood than that of the noble duchy which so long formed one of the fairest possessions of our own kings. Few Englishmen understand the diffe- rence between the English tenure of Bourdeaux and the VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 185 English tenure of Calais. When the Black Prince kept his court at Bourdeaux as Prince of Aquitaine, most readers look upon him as an English conqueror, just like Henry the Fifth at Paris. Bourdeaux is marked in the modern map as part of France; therefore people do not understand that, till its loss in the fifteenth century, the Kings of France had never held it at all, except during the momentary and fraudulent occupation of Aquitaine by Philip the Fair. When Talbot fell before Chastillon, he fell in the cause, not of the bondage, but of the independence of the Pyrensean duchy, in the same cause which Hunholt and Lupus fought for against Charles the Great, and Pippin and Sancho against Charles the Bald. In short, Louis the Pious might grant Aquitaine in the ninth century to Charles the Bald, but it was only Charles the Seventh, in the fifteenth century, who first really obtained possession of the gift. The Frankish Empire, as we have seen, was divided by the treaty of Verdun into three kingdoms : the Eastern and Western, which grew severally into modern Germany and France, and the central realm of Italy and Lotharingia, which soon fell asunder. The next forty years- form little but a history of unions and partitions. Each father tried to divide his dominions amongst his sons ; each brother or uncle did his best to seize to himself the inheritance of his brothers and nephews. Of all the princes of that age, the Emperor Lewis the Second, reigning in Italy as a real Eoman Caesar, and righting in the cause of Christendom against the Saracen, is the only one who can, claim any portion of our esteem. Even he was not altogether free from the general vice ; but he has at least merits to set against it which we do not find in the case of his fellows. The whole period is one of utter confusion and division. At last, in 885, nearly the whole of the Carolingian Empire was reunited in the person of Charles the Fat. He had gradually gathered on his brow the Imperial crown of Eome and the royal crowns of Ger- many, Italy, and the Western Kingdom. Still to this re- union one important exception must be made. One state, 186 TEE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay part of the Lotharingia of forty years earlier, had set the example of entire revolt from the blood of the great Charles. In 879 Count Boso was elected and crowned King over a kingdom which, as Sir Francis Palgrave says, has almost vanished from history, bnt whose memory it is just now highly desirable to recall. Boso made the beginnings of the short-lived Kingdom of ^Burgundy or Aries, a kingdom lying between France and Italy, and which may be roughly described as the country between the Bhone and the Alps. In modern geographical language, it includes Provence, Orange, the Venaissin, Dauphiny, Lyons, Bresse, Bugey, the County of Burgundy (or Franehe Comte), with Savoy, Nizza, and a large part of Switzerland. On the theory of natural boundaries, the Kingdom of Burgundy seems quite as well marked out as the Kingdom of France. The Bhone and the Saone to the west, the Alps to the east, the Mediterranean to the south, make as good lines of demarcation as one com- monly meets with in the political map. Nearly all its in- habitants were of the Komance speech — all except a small German territory in what long afterwards became Switzerland. As far as we can see, Burgundy had much more right to ask to extend itself to the Ocean by swallowing up the kindred province of Aquitaine than Parisian France had to ask to extend itself to the Alps by swallowing up the far more foreign Kingdom of Burgundy. In 887 Charles the Fat was deposed by common consent of his various realms, which were from henceforth separated with a far more thorough and lasting separation than before. The Carolingian Empire vanishes ; even the rank of Emperor sinks into a kind of abeyance. Emperors indeed were crowned during the first half of the nrnth century ; but there was no dynasty which permanently united Imperial power to Imperial pretensions till, in 962, Otto the Great finally annexed the Roman Empire and the Italian kingdom to his own Teutonic crown. The division of 888 was really the beginning of the modern states and the modern divisions of Europe. The Carolingian Empire was broken up into four VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 187 separate kingdoms : the Western Kingdom, answering roughly to France, the Eastern Kingdom or Germany, Italy, and Burgundy. Of these, the three first remain as the greatest nations of the Continent: Burgundy, by that name, has vanished ; but its place as an European power is filled, far more worthily than by any King or Csesar, by the noble Confederation of Switzerland. Of the four kingdoms thus formed, three at once cast away their allegiance to the Carolingian blood. Germany elected Arnulf, a bastard of the Imperial house ; but, after the death of his son Lewis, the Teutonic sceptre passed altogether away from the male line of Pippin and Charles. Boso of Burgundy was connected with that race only by marriage. Italy chose shifting Kings and Emperors of her own. The Western Kingdom chose the patriarch of that long line which was, with two periods of intermission, to rule her down to our own day, which still reigns over Castile and Aragon,* and which we have seen happily expelled from the minor thrones of Parma and of both the Sicilies. The division of 843 first introduced us to a Bomance — that is, really a Celtic — Francia, as distinguished from the elder Teutonic Francia of the old Frankish Kings. The division of 888 first introduces us to a Capetian and a Parisian Francia. Since the death of the great Charles, the city on the Seine, the old home of Julian, had been gradually rising in consequence. It plays an important part during the reign of his son Lewis the Pious. Characteristically enough, Paris first appears in our history as the scene of a conspiracy against her Teutonic master. There it was that, in 830, the rebels gathered who seized and imprisoned, and at last deposed, the pious Emperor. Later in the ninth century Paris won a more honourable renown ; she became the bul- wark of Gaul against the inroads of the Northmen. The pirates soon found out the importance of the position of the city in any attack or defence of Gaul from her northern side. * [In 1860 I did not foresee an Italian — in 860 he would have been a Burgundian — King of Spain.] 188 THE FRANKS AND THE QAUL8. [Essay Through her great deeds and sufferings in this warfare, Paris grew into a centre, a capital, first a ducal and then a royal city. The great siege of Paris in 885 and 886, and its gallant defence by Count Eudes or Odo, fixed the destiny of the city as the future capital of the land. On the deposition of Charles the Fat, Count Odo was, after some ineffectual attempts on behalf of other candidates, elected and conse- crated to what we are now strongly tempted to speak of as the Kingdom of France. Yet the notion of a great Frankish realm, held in a sort of co-parcenary, long survived the day when the descendants of Charles ceased to be its masters. Germany, the old Frankish land, long clave to the Frankish name. One of her greatest Imperial dynasties was of Frankish blood. Nor did their Saxon predecessors and their Swabian successors reject the title. As late as the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, the name of Frank was still used, and used too with an air of triumph, as equivalent to the name of German* The Kings and kingdoms of this age had indeed no fixed titles, because all were still looked on as mere portions of the great Frankish realm. Another step has now been taken towards the crea- tion of modern France ; but the older state of things has not yet wholly passed away. Germany has no definite name ; for a long time it is Francia Orientalis, Fraheia Teutoniea ; then it becomes Regnum Teutonicum, Regnum, Tewtonkorum,.] But it is equally clear that, within the limits of that Western or Latin France, Francia and Francus were fast getting their modern meanings of France and Frenchman, as distin- guished from Frank or German ; J they were, in fact, names * Otto of Freisingen, passim. See especially the speech of Frederick, ii. 22 (Muratori, vi. 722). t In the bull of deposition of Henry IV., Hildebrand uses the curious form "totius regni Theutonicorum et Italia gubernacula contradico" (Bruno de Bel. Sax. cap. 70, ap. Pertz, vii. 354). Italy had a local name; Germany had none. So Henry just before talks of " regnum Italise," but we do not remember " regnum Germaniaj " or " Alemanise " in that age. % [The use of the word Francia in writers of the ninth century is very vague. Sometimes it seems to be used of the whole Regnum Occidentals. VII.] TEE FRANKS AND TEE GAULS. 189 of honour to which each of the divided nations clave as specially its own. Even so early as the reign of Lewis the Pious, one writer distinguished Franci and Germani,* meaning by the former the people of the Western Kingdom. Gradually the name was, in the usage of Gaul and of Europe, thoroughly fixed in this sense. The Merwings, the Karlings, the Capets, all alike called themselves Beges Francorum; Francus having of course totally changed its meaning in the meanwhile. In the Eastern Kingdom, on the other hand, the German sovereign, when he had grown into a Eoman Emperor, gradually dropped his style as Frankish King. It is this continuity of name and title which gives to modern, " Western," " Latin," France a false appearance of being a continuation or representative of the old Frankish kingdom. But no one who really understands the history of the time can doubt for a moment that, among the four kingdoms which arose out of the ruins of the Carolingian Empire, it was " Eastern Francia," the " Teutonic Kingdom," which might most truly claim, in extent of territory, in retention of language, in possession of the old seats of royalty, to be the true representative of the Francia of Charles the Great. Odo of Paris then, in 888, became Bex Frameorwm in a sense which, modern as the words sound, cannot be so well translated as by the familiar title of " King of the French." We have at last France before us, with Paris for her capital and the lord of Paris for her king. But neither the Carol- ingian race nor the Carolingian interest was as yet extinct in the Western Francia. The next century is a history of a continued struggle in various forms between the German and what we may now call the French blood, between the Carol- ingian and the Capetian House, between Paris and Laon, This is an intermediate sense between its widest and its narrowest meaning and a sense roughly answering to that to which it has come back in modern times. But within the Western Kingdom it soon became fixed to the Parisian Duchy with its Dukes and Kings, and in the East to Franvia Orientalis or Teutonica."] * Vita Hludowici Imp. cap. 45, ap. Pertz, ii. 633. 190 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay between the Duke of the French, the lord of Paris, and the lord of Laon, still the West-Frankish King. Odo was elected as the hero of the siege of Paris, the true champion of Gaul and of Christendom. But he soon found a riyal in the in- capable Charles the Simple, whose only claim was the doubt- ful belief that the blood of his great namesake flowed in his veins. Charles was again overthrown by Duke Kobert, the brother of King Odo, who himself afterwards reigned as the second of the Parisian Kings. Charles in his turn overthrew Robert, who died in battle at Soissons in 923. The heir of the Capetian house was Hugh, surnamed the Great. His career was a strange one : he refused the offered crown, and preferred the character of a King-maker to that of a King. One can hardly help thinking that he had some superstitious dread of a title which had brought little but sorrow to his father and uncle ; for he certainly bore himself as a King in everything but name. He bore what to us sounds the strange title of Dux Frcmcorum ; and, as Duke of the French, he was a far more powerful potentate than the King of the French who was his nominal sovereign. On the death of Kobert, he declined the royal dignity for himself, and passed it on to his brother-in-law, Kudolph or Eaoul, Duke of French Bur- gundy. He next, like our own King-maker of a later day, passed it on to Lewis the son of Charles. The Carolingian King once more reigned on the rock of Laon, but he found anything but a peaceful subject in the mighty Duke of Paris. The Duke of the French allowed himself full power of revolt, of disobeying, attacking, expelling, imprisoning the King of the French, — anything, in short, but avowedly reigning in his stead. King Lewis was succeeded by his son Lothar, and Duke Hugh the Great by his son Hugh Capet. The younger Hugh however, though in no imprudent hurry to obtain a crown, had not his father's rooted objection to receive one. He remained Duke of the Frenoh during the long reign of Lothar and the short reign of his son Lewis ; at last, in 987, on the death of Lewis, Hugh brought about his own election. The struggle went on for a while in the person of VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 191 Charles of Lotharingia, the Carolingian pretender; but Hugh kept his crown and handed it on to his descendants. He founded, in short, the most enduring of all dynasties. No other royal patriarch has been succeeded by more than eight centuries of direct male descendants, by three centuries and a half of unbroken succession from father to son. Since 987 no King of France of any other line has felt the touch of the consecrating oil of Rheims. Hugh's own city has indeed beheld the coronation of one English King and of one Cor- sican Tyrant. Both alike yielded to the claims of the return- ing Capetian. Who can tell whether a race endowed with such an unparalleled gift of permanency may not again return to the city which their forefathers first raised to greatness ? The immediate results of Hugh's elevation were not very marked. The Duke of the French became the King of the French, and the same prince reigned at Paris and at Laon. But in the greater part of Gaul the change from the Carol- ingian to the Capetian line was hardly felt. To Hugh's own subjects it made little practical difference whether their prince were called Duke or King. Beyond the Loire men were utterly heedless who might reign either at Paris or at Laon. But slight as may have been the immediate change, the event of 987 was a real revolution: it was the completion of a change which had been preparing for a century and a half, and it was the true beginning of a new period. The modern Kingdom of France dates its definite existence from the election of Hugh ; the partitions of 843 and 888 showed in what way the stream of events was running, but the change of 987 was the full establishment of the thing itself. There was now at last, what till quite lately there has been ever since, a French King reigning at Paris. When we remember all that Paris has been since, how completely it has become, not merely the centre of France, but France itself, it is clear that the mere change of the royal city was alone an event of the highest importance. The rock of Laon could never have won the same position as the island-city of the Seine. It might have remained a royal fortress ; it could never have 192 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay become a national "capital. The Karlings remained German to the last ; the Kings of Laon were Franks in the old sense, the Kings of Paris were Frenchmen in the new. The native tongue of King Lewis was Teutonic ; the native tongue of King Hugh was .Romance. France now breaks off all traces of her old connexion with Germany. Hitherto the " King beyond the Rhine " has been, in friendship or in enmity, an important personage in the politics of Latin Frcmeia ; even in the middle of the tenth century we find Otto of Saxony and Lewis of Laon still acting like royal colleagues in the administration of one Frankish realm. From the election of Hugh the German Caesar becomes an utter stranger to the Capetian realm. Lotharingia too becomes definitely German. As long as Kings of the Carolingian house still reigned in Western Frcmeia, Lotharingia was a border land of France and Germany, the seat of loyalty to the Carolingian house, but preferring a German to a mere Frenchman. But after the Capetian revolution it becomes an undoubted fief of the Teutonic Kingdom. Its Carolingian loyalty remained un- touched ; it still might boast of having a descendant of Charles and Pippin for its immediate ruler ; but that ruler was no longer a King of the Western Franda or a pretender to its crown, but a Duke holding his states in fee of the Saxon Emperor. Thus the change of dynasty in 987 marks the final estab- lishment of France in the modern sense. The geographical name was still, for the most part, confined to the Parisian Duchy, but the Regnum Francorum, in its modern sense, had now come into being. Its boundaries, as they stood under the early Parisian Kings, differed hardly at all from the West-Frankish boundaries as settled in 843. But we should bear carefully in mind how utterly nominal the royal authority was over the greater part of the territory com- prised within those limits. It should be thoroughly under- stood, first, that the kingdom as it then stood was very much smaller than modern France ; secondly, that, even within the kingdom, the King was merely the head of a body of VII.] THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 193 sovereign princes, some of whom were at least as powerful as himself. The subsequent history of France is the history of two processes : first, the conversion of a nominal feudal supe- riority into a direct sovereignty over the whole kingdom ; secondly, the annexation of divers states which formed no part of the kingdom at all. The two processes are not accurately distinguished in popular imagination, and the Parisian phrase of " reunion " greatly tends to confound them. To talk of the " reunion " of Normandy or French Burgundy is not absolute nonsense, because Normandy and French Burgundy were, at all events by a fiction of feudal law, grants proceeding from the crown of France, which were afterwards reincorporated with the royal domain from which they had been severed. But a " reunion " of Provence, Lor- raine, or Savoy, is absolute nonsense, because those provinces never formed any part of the Capetian monarchy. These two processes, of internal consolidation and of external aggression, have now been going on side by side for six hundred years. It will best suit our purpose to give a brief sketch of the results of each separately. The Kingdom of France, as it stood in 987, contained six great principalities besides the royal domain, namely, those afterwards called the six Lay Peerages — Flanders, Normandy, Aquitaine, Toulouse, Burgundy, and Champagne. The titles of Toulouse and Champagne may be a little later, but the states themselves already existed. Besides these, there were a crowd of smaller potentates, holding either of the crown or of these great vassals. With the exception of the Spanish March and of part of Flanders, all these states have long been fully incorporated with the French monarchy. But we must remember that, under the earlier French Kings, the connexion of most of these provinces with their nominal suzerain was even looser than the connexion of the German princes after the peace of Westphalia with the Viennese Emperors. A great French Duke was as independent within his own dominions as an Elector of Saxony or Bavaria, and there were no common institutions, no Diet or assembly of 194 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay any kind, to bring him into fellowship either with his liege lord or with his fellow-vassals. Aquitaine and Toulouse, as we have already said, seem almost to have forgotten that there was any King of the French at all, or at all events that they had anything to do with him. They did not often even pay him the compliment of waging war upon him, a mode of recognition of his existence which was constantly indulged in by their brethren of Normandy and Flanders. Normandy was the possession of Scandinavian invaders, whom a resi- dence in G-aul was fast transforming into Frenchmen of a grander type. Charles the Simple granted the province to Hrolf Ganger, the Eou or Rollo of French and Latin writers, and along with it he granted a feudal superiority over the turbulent Celts of Britanny. The Norman Dukes speedily changed into French princes, and played a most important part in French history. At last one of their number won the crown of England, and nearly a century later a count of Anjou inherited England and Normandy from his mother, and received Aquitaine and Poitou as the dowry of his wife. A perfectly novel power was thus formed in France. We must not transfer to the twelfth century the ideas of two or three centuries later, and look upon Henry the Second as an English King reigning in France. Henry was a French- man, a French feudatory, who had contrived to unite in his own hands an accumulation of French fiefs, which rendered him, even on French ground, far stronger than his nominal suzerain. The possession of England gave him a higher title than that of Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine ; its valiant inhabitants of both races added to his military strength. But England was not his home ; it was not the Englishman who reigned over Anjou, but the Angevin who reigned over England. Henry and Bichard held greater territories in France than those of the King and the other feudatories put together. They held the mouths of all the great rivers, and possessed the great cities of Rouen, Tours, Poitiers, and Bourdeaux. The King meanwhile, the lord of Paris and Orleans, was cooped up in the centre of his nominal VII.] THE FBANKS AND THE GAULS. 195 dominions. Thus matters stood at the beginning of the thirteenth century ; but they were not a little altered before its close. When Philip Augustus came to the throne, the King of the French did not own a single seaport ; but Philip the Fair could boast of a seaboard on the English Channel, the Ocean and the Mediterranean. The crimes of John lost him all the northern part of his French possessions. Nor- mandy, Maine, Anjou, and Touraine were incorporated with the royal domain, Britanny, the arriere-fief of Normandy, became an immediate fief of the crown till the time when it was united with France through the marriage of Lewis the Twelfth and Anne of Britanny. The loss of Normandy and the other lands wrested by Philip from John had the twofold effect of making both the King of the French and the King of the English what their formal titles imported. When the crown of France had entered by forfeiture on Normandy, Anjou, and Touraine, it had become far stronger than any single feudatory. Again, the English Kings of the Angevin House, now cut off from their old home, began to be really English rulers. Hitherto England had been a dependency of Normandy or Anjou ; now Aquitaine became a dependency of England. The wars of Henry the Second and Bichard the First were French wars, the struggles of a French feudatory striving to get the better of his suzerain. The wars of Edward the Third, and still more the wars of Henry the Fifth, were English wars. They began indeed in French dynastic claims, but it soon appeared that their real object was the subjection of France to England. As such, they do not immediately concern our subject. The aspect in which they do bear upon it is this. By the Peace of Bretigny Edward the Third gave up his claims on the crown of France ; but he was acknowledged in return as independent Prince of Aquitaine, without any homage or superiority being reserved to the French monarch. When Aquitaine therefore was conquered by France, partly in the fourteenth, fully in the fifteenth century, it was not the " reunion " of a forfeited fief but the absorption of a distinct and sovereign state. The o 2 196 TEE FBANE8 AND TEE GAULS. [Essay feelings of Aquitaine itself seem to have been divided. The nobles to a great extent, though far from universally, pre- ferred the French connexion. It better fell in with their notions of chivalry, feudal dependency, and the like ; the privileges too which French law conferred on noble birth would make their real interests lie that way. But the great cities and, we have reason to believe, the mass of the people also, clave faithfully to their ancient Dukes ; and they had good reason to do so. The English Kings, both by habit and by interest, naturally protected the municipal liberties of BoUrdeaux and Bayonne, and they exposed no part of their subjects to the horrors of French taxation and general oppression. When, in 1451, the first conquest was achieved, and the Bourdelese for the first time felt what the hand of a French master really was, they speedily revolted in favour of the more distant and more indulgent lord. The French con- quest of Aquitaine was very much like what a French con- quest of the Channel Islands would be now. The theory of natural boundaries claims them equally, and the theory of identity of language claims them with better right. But in the teeth of all theories, the people of Bourdeaux knew then, and the people of Jersey know now, that practical liberty and good government does not lie on the side of the power to which abstract theories would assign them. We have somewhat overshot our mark in order to complete the history of the English dominion in France. We now come back to the thirteenth century. Besides Normandy and Anjou, the forfeited goods of the felon John, the crown of France, during that century, obtained the County of Cham- pagne by marriage, and that of Toulouse as the ultimate re- sult of the Albigensian wars. Of the six lay peerages, Flanders and Burgundy alone remained. French Burgundy was granted out by Hugh Capet to a younger branch of his own family, and; when that race of Dukes became extinct, the same policy was carried on by Charles the Fifth in 1363, when he invested his son Philip with the duchy. Philip obtained by marriage the remaining peerage, the County of VII.] THE FEANKS AND THE GAULS. 197 Flanders. Under Philip the Good and Charles the Bold there seemed every prospect of Burgundy, in the later sense, becoming a greater kingdom than ever Burgundy had been in the old. The fiefs which the Dukes of Burgundy of the House of Valois held of the Empire and of the crown of France raised them to a place among the greatest powers of Europe. At last the might and the hopes of Charles were shivered beneath the halbert of the free Switzer. Ducal Burgundy itself fell into the grasp of Lewis the Eleventh, and a fifth great fief was "reunited" to the Parisian crown. But Flanders remained, together with those Imperial fiefs which nature seems to have connected with it, to become not the least valuable possession of the universal monarchy of Charles the Fifth. For Flanders and for Artois Charles the Fifth was the nominal liegeman of his rival Francis. The Treaty of Madrid abolished this antiquated claim of suzerainty ; and in vain did the Parliament of Paris, some years later, strive to win back the right, and to carry out against Charles the same process which, three hundred years sooner, had been so successfully carried out against John Lackland. The Count of Flanders and Artois was summoned to the court of his liege lord, and, as he did not appear, he was deprived of his lands for contumacy. But the sentence was more easily pronounced than executed against a Count of Flanders and Artois who was also Emperor of the Romans and King of Spain and the Indies. Flanders and Artois remained to the House of Austria till the wars of Lewis the Four- teenth incorporated all Artois and part of Flanders with the French monarchy. The rest of Flanders was reserved, by a happier lot, to form part of the free monarchy of Belgium.* Thus, at various periods spread over more than four hun- dred years, all the great feudal states of France were gradually incorporated with the crown. On the other hand, the nominal boundaries of Capetian France have gone back in three places. * The extreme northern part of the old county belongs to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but much the greater part is Belgian. 198 TEE FMANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay The feudal superiority of the French crown extended over three districts which now form part of other states. As we have implied in our last paragraph, King Leopold owes no homage to the Parisian despot for the County of Flanders ; nor is any paid by the Catholic Queen for the County of Barce- lona, the royal rights over which, even more nominal than elsewhere, were finally surrendered by Saint Lewis. Our own sovereign also retains, with the most perfect good will of the inhabitants, those insular portions of the Duchy of Normandy against which Philip's sentence of forfeiture was pronounced in vain. With these three exceptions, the France of 1860 takes in the whole of the France of 987 ; it also takes in a great deal besides. We have thus traced the steps by which the Kings of Paris gradually gathered under their immediate dominion the whole, or nearly so, of those states which were at least nominally dependent upon them. We have now to follow the course of annexation in those countries which had never, even nominally, formed part of the Capetian monarchy. In so doing we may pass lightly over mere temporary con- quests, and confine ourselves to those annexations which have really become part and parcel of the French monarchy. Thus the Valois Kings were always conquering and always losing Naples and Milan, as well as Piedmont and Savoy ; but Piedmont, Naples, and Milan have never permanently become parts of France. Thus again, under Napoleon the First, the French "empire" threatened to become the empire of all Europe ; but happily this extended dominion did not descend to Napoleon the "Third." But we suspect that people in general are not aware how much territory, ori- ginally French in no sense, has been gradually and perma- nently swallowed up by the Parisian monarchy since the reign of Philip the Fair. France, as it stood under the early Capets, was bounded to the south by the various kingdoms of Spain, to the east by the states holding of the Holy Eoman Empire. With Spain France has had comparatively little to do. The existence of VII.] THE FBANKS AND THE GAULS. 199 a real " natural boundary " may have had something to do with this ; still the line of the Pyrenees has not always been held perfectly sacred on either side. More than one of the French Kings held the Kingdom of Navarre by a personal hereditary right. The Bourbon dynasty permanently bore the title ; but their Navarre consisted only of that small por- tion of the kingdom which lies north of the Pyrenees. At the eastern end of the mountain range the frontier was long unsettled, and Eoussillon did not finally become French till the Peace of 1659. In the space between Navarre and Bous- sillon, the sovereigns of France, in the character, however, not of Kings but of Counts of Foix, have appeared in the more honourable aspect of Protectors of the Eepublic of Andorra. But the relations of France towards Spain are of far less importance than her relations towards the Empire. We left the German kingdom at the moment of its. definitive separation from that of Western France in 888. In the next century Otto the Great permanently united to it the crown of Italy or the Lombard kingdom, and also the Im- perial crown of Borne. In the next century the Kingdom of Burgundy was acquired by virtue of the bequest of its last separate sovereign. Thus were the kingdoms of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy united under a single ruler. The King of the Eastern Franks inherited the Imperial style of Charles the Great, and he possessed three out of the four divisions of his Empire. He held alike the Teutonic and the Italian capital of the great Emperor. Western France might look like a single province torn away from the main body of the Frankish realm. During the first three centuries of the Capetian dynasty, France was weak and Germany strong. The great Saxon, Frankish, and Swabian Emperors wielded a far more practical authority over the whole of their vast dominions than the King of Paris wielded over his nominal realm of Latin France. But while the Capets were gradually consolidating their power over France, the Emperors began to lose theirs over Germany and Italy, and in the greater part of their Burgundian dominions the Imperial authority 200 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay became more nominal still. Frederick Barbarossa was crowned at Aries as King of Burgundy ; but a century after- wards the allegiance of Provence to King Rudolf of Hapsburg was very precarious indeed. As France grew stronger and more united, she found her whole eastern frontier, from Hainault to Provence, formed by a succession of petty states, duchies, counties, bishopricks,and free cities, disunited among themselves, and owning a very nominal subjection to their Imperial suzerain. The King of the French was to most of them at once a nearer and a more powerful neighbour than the Emperor of the Bomans : he was a more dangerous foe and a more desirable friend. Some provinces had a greater likeness in language and manners to France than to Germany. To the nobles, and even to the princes them- selves, the splendours of the French court offered a constant attraction. To take a familiar instance, the great House of Guise, in the sixteenth century, forsook their position as princes of the sovereign blood of Lorraine to assume that of French nobles and French party-leaders. The whole of these small states lay admirably open alike to French intrigue and to French violence ; by one means or the other nearly all have been won. The five centuries and a half since Philip the Fair are one long record of French aggrandizement at the expense of the territories of the Empire. Of the three kingdoms attached to the Empire, Italy has been constantly overrun by French armies, and portions, like Milan, Piedmont, and Genoa, have been held by France, by conquest or by some pretended hereditary right, for consider- able periods. But no portion of the Italian mainland has been permanently retained by France. But in the last cen- tury, by one of the most disreputable of juggles, France ob- tained the Italian island of Corsica without a shadow of right, and has been repaid by obtaining from thence the line of her own Tyrants. The Kingdom of Germany has suffered large dismem- berments. In the sixteenth century the three Lotharingian bishopricks of Metz, Toul, and Verdun were won by a mix- VII.] TEE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. 201 ture of force and fraud; but it was only late in the last century that the duchy in which those bishopricks were enclaves was finally incorporated with France. The Peace of Westphalia gave France, not, as many people think, the whole of Elsass, but the possessions and rights of the House of Austria within it. Such a cession left large portions of the province legally as much parts of the Empire as they were before. But such a cession opened a most taking field for the process of " reunion," and the " reunion " went on bit-by-bit till the last robbery was done at the Great Eevolution. One act of this long drama stands out above all others, the seizing of Strassburg by Lewis the Fourteenth in a time of perfect peace. The same monarch, too, at the time when he recovered a portion of the old French fief of Flanders, - seized also a portion of the Imperial fief of Hennegau — Gallice Hainault. But it has been against the old Kingdom of Burgundy that the aggressions of the Parisian monarchy have been most constant and most successful. For that very reason they are much less familiarly known : there are more people who know that Lorraine has not always been French than there are people who know that the same is true af Pro- vence. It is therefore specially desirable to trace them in order. We have seen that the old frontier, the " natural boundary," of France to the east, was the Khone, the line above Lyons being continued along the Saone. The land between the Bhone and the Alps was the Kingdom of Boso, afterwards, as we have seen, united to the Imperial crown. At the expense of that kingdom France has, in the space of five centuries, gained fifteen departments, counting those which she has made out of her last stealings of Savoy and Nizza. The Burgundian kingdom, lying further away from the Imperial power than either Germany or Italy, fell away earlier and more completely than either, and split up into a host of small principalities and commonwealths. All of these, except those which still retain their independence as portions of the Swiss League, have been gradually swallowed up by the vultures 202 TEH FBANKS AND TEE QAUL8. [Essay of Paris. The Ehone frontier was first permanently violated by Philip the Fair in 1310. In the free Imperial city of Lyons, as in so many others, violent disputes raged between the citizens and the Prince-Archbishops. Philip seized the favourable opportunity treacherously to occupy the city, and to reduce prince and people alike to bondage. Later in the century, the Dauphiny or County of Vienne was bequeathed by its last prince to the eldest son of the King of France for the time being, to be held as a separate sovereignty with the title of Dauphin. This of course soon sank into actual an- nexation. Lewis the Eleventh, in the next century, seized upon the County of Provence by a pretended hereditary right. The way to this acquisition was doubtless not a little smoothed by the fact that the sovereign Counts had for some generations been princes of the blood-royal of France. Bresse and Bugey, part of the dominions of Savoy, were acquired by Henry the Fourth in exchange for the French claims on the Marquisate of Saluzzo, a change which first made France an immediate neighbour of Switzerland. The little state of Orange was obtained in 1732 by exchange with Prussia. The County of Burgundy was first acquired in the fourteenth century, like Navarre, by a hereditary claim ; but like Navarre, or like Hanover in the case of our own Kings, it was separated again before it had been really incorporated with the French monarchy. It was not till the days of Lewis the Fourteenth that, after many vicissitudes, the once sovereign County-palatine of Burgundy, and the once free Imperial city of Besancon, were finally engulfed in the Charybdis of French domination. At the breaking-out of the French Eevolution all that had escaped of the Burgun- dian kingdom was the Duchy of Savoy, the western part of Switzerland and the neighbouring allies of the Swiss Leagues, and the Papal possessions of Avignon and Venaissin* long surrounded by earlier annexations. All these were swallowed up by the revolutionary torrent ;* but all save the * [No part of any of the old Swiss Cantons was formally incorporated with France ; indeed Vaud owed to France its independence of Bern. But VII.] THE FBANKS AND THE GAULS. 203 Papal territory recovered their independence by the settlement o'f 1814-15. The last act as yet of the drama, one surpassed in perfidious baseness by none of those which have gone before it, has been just performed beneath our own eyes. It is, we think, not only curious as a piece of past history, but really important as a matter of present politics, to trace the gradual stages of French aggression in this quarter. A steady course of aggrandizement has been carried out for five hundred years, and the policy of the Capet has been con- tinued by the Buonaparte. The first step was taken by Philip the Fair, the father of the old royal tyranny ; the last step as yet has fallen to the lot of the kindred genius of Louis Napoleon ; — we say the last step as yet, because it is impossible to believe that a voluntary check will be put on a settled scheme which is now all but accomplished. There is no difference in principle between the absorption of Savoy and Nizza and the absorption of Vaud and Neufchatel. Whatever arguments justify the one would with an equally "irresistible logic" justify the other. We are told that Nizza and Savoy are provinces " essentially French ;" they can be so only in a sense in which Geneva and Lausanne, and yet more Brussels and Saint Heliers, are essentially French also. Those obligations of treaties which guarantee the in- dependence and neutrality of Switzerland are not more sacred than those which guarantee that neutrality of Northern Savoy without which the independence of Switzerland is a name. That this scheme of aggrandizement, that all schemes of aggrandizement, are solemnly denied, proves about as much as was proved some months ago by the no less solemn denial of all designs upon Savoy. We have long learned how to trust the man whose lips uttered the words " Je le jure," and who kept the oath by a December massacre. In short, among a crowd of ancient and independent states which have been gradually swallowed up, one alone remains. Switzerland became practically dependent on France, and the allied states of Geneva, Wallis, Neufchatel, and the Bishoprick of Basel, were actually seized.] 204 TEE FBANES AND TEE GAULS. [Essat Switzerland, the very home and cradle of freedom, is the last remnant of the many centres of political life which once existed between the Bhone and the Alps. Marseilles, Lyons, Besancon, were once as free as Bern and Geneva. The Im- perial Babshakeh may stand before the still unattacked citadel of freedom, and point to the lands which he has destroyed utterly, and ask in his pride if the remnant which is left shall venture to hope for deliverance. French cannon bristling on the shores of the Lake of Geneva can be pointed in one direction only, that direction which French aggression has been constantly taking since the banner of the fiewr-de- lys first showed itself east of the Ehone. It remains for Europe to determine whether it will sit by and see the per- petration of a wrong before which the annexations of Pro- vence and Lorraine, and of Savoy itself, would sink into insignificance.* We have thus traced out the long history of Parisian aggression; but, in common justice, we must make one remark on the other side. We said at the outset that, except for the monstrous deceptions by which they have always been defended, the aggressions of France are in no way more guilty than the aggressions of other powers ; in one important respect France has much less to answer for than other conquering states. To be conquered by France has been at all times a less immediate evil than to be conquered by Spain, Austria, or Turkey. A province conquered by France has always been really incorporated with France : no French conquests have ever been kept in the condition of subject dependencies ; their inhabitants have at once been admitted to the rights and the wrongs, the good and the evil fortune of French- men, and they have had every career offered by the French monarchy at once opened to them. No French conquest has * [I let all this stand as it was written in 1860. It is well to tear in mind that France has ever been the same under all forms of government, and that Switzerland and Europe will have to keep on their guard against any Kingdom or Commonwealth which may arise out of the chaos of the moment, just as much as they had to keep on 4heir guard against the fallen Tyranny.] VII.] THE FBANKS AND THE GAULS. 205 ever been kept in the state in which Spain kept Milan, Naples, and the Netherlands, in which Austria has kept Hungary and Lombardy, in which the whole Ottoman Empire is kept to this day. Savoy will lose much by its transfer from the rule of constitutional Sardinia to that of despotic France, but there is no fear of its being brought down to the condition of Venetia. The geographical position of all the French con- quests, except Corsica, has of course tended to this complete incorporation, as well as that inherent spirit of French cen- tralization which tends to wipe out all local distinctions. One must allow that, if conquests are to be made, this is a generous and liberal as well as a prudent way of conquering. But it has its bad side also. The inhabitants of a country conquered by France become Frenchmen, and swell the ranks of the aggressors. The subtle process of denationalization cuts off that hope of undoing the evil work which always exists when a country is kept down under an avowed foreign tyranny. One cannot doubt that, when a part of the Spanish Netherlands was seized by Lewis the Fourteenth, the inhabi- tants found an immediate gain in becoming an integral portion of France, instead of a distant dependency of Spain. But the immediate gain has been an ultimate loss; had those provinces then remained to the House of Austria, they would now swell the strength of independent Belgium. So Elsass has not suffered at the hands of France as Hungary has suffered at the hands of Austria ; but the hope of seeing an independent Hungary is a hope far less wild than that of seeing Elsass once more a member of a German Confederation or Empire. The very best side of French aggression makes us feel the more sadly that there are vestigia nulla retrorsum* We have thus done our best to show that Parisian France in no way represents ancient Gaul or Carolingian Francia. France and the French are a modern power and a modern nation, of which we see the first glimmerings in the ninth * [I rejoice to have teen here a false prophet. The eleven years since this was written has given the world both a free Hungary and a German Elsass.] 206 THE FRANKS AND THE GAULS. [Essay VII.] century, and which attain something like a definite and last- ing position in the tenth. France is essentially an artificial^ advancing state, just like Sardinia and Prussia in more recent times. When Mayors and Bishops hail Louis Napoleon as the " successor of Pepin and Charlemagne," they are asserting a palpable untruth. Modern Europe contains no real suc- cessor of either ; but least of all is the successor of the elected King of Aachen, the crowned Caesar of Rome, to be looked for in the upstart usurper of Paris. The work of Charles was to make Italy and Gaul alike subject to a German monarch. No work could less call forth our sympathies at the present . moment ; but no work could be more unlike the process of extending the frontiers of the Celt of Paris over Italian, Burgundian, and Teutonic lands. Italy, in the eighth cen- tury and in the tenth, invoked a German King as her deliverer from her intestine troubles. No such remedy now is needed. She can now work her deliverance for herself, and she no more needs the hypocritical friendship of the Gaul than the open enmity of the Austrian. Before our eyes is growing up an Italian kingdom truer and freer than that of Charles and Otto, than that of Berengar and Hugh of Provence ; and, with a slight change of name and style, we may apply to its first and chosen sovereign the words of the Papal benediction to Charles himself. Not altogether for his own sake, not forgetting the tortuous and faithless policy which bartered away the old cradle of his house, still, as to the representative of Italian unity, we may say with heart and voice : " Victori Emmanueli, a Deo coronato, magno et pacifico Italorum Kegi, Eomanorum Imperatori futuro, vita et victoria !" * * [Here, unlike the last note, I can rejoicein having been a true prophet. Eome is again the head of Italy. Whether its sovereign would do well to take up the title to which he, alone among Christian princes, has a real right, is another matter. A purely Italian Emperor would simply represent Majorian and Lewis the Second.] ( 207 ) VIII. THE EAELY SIEGES OF PARIS.* The events of the last few months have in a special way drawn the thoughts of men towards two cities which stand out among European capitals as witnesses of the way in which the history of remote times still has its direct bearing on things which are passing before our own eyes. Rome and Paris now stand out, as they have stood out in so many earlier ages, as the historic centres of a period which, there can be no doubt, will live to all time as one of the marked periods of the world's history. And it is not the least won- derful phenomenon of this autumn of wonders that, while our eyes have been drawn at once to Rome and to Paris, they have been drawn far more steadily and with far keener interest towards Paris than they have been drawn towards Rome. We can hardly doubt, whether we look baek to the past or onwards to the future, that the fall of the Pope's * [This essay was headed by the names of two books : Les Oomtes de Paris ; Eistoire de I'Avenement de la Troisie'me Race, par Ernest Mourin (Paris, Didier & Cie.) and Robert der Tap/ere, Marhgraf von Anjou, der Stammvater des Kapetingischen Hauses. Von Dr. Phil. Karl von Kalckstein (Berlin, Lowenstein). M. Mourin's book, dated at Angers in 1869, is a careful and pleasantly-written account of the origin of the Parisian Kingdom, and it contains one or two good hits at the state of things in 1869. But it is amazing to see a man who has really read the authorities for the ninth and tenth centuries carried away by dreams about a French frontier of the Rhine. Dr. v. Kalckstein's is a most thoroughgoing monograph, working up all that is known about its hero from every quarter, but perhaps sometimes losing him a little in the general events of his age. A more careful study of his book, which I had barely time to glance at before the Article first appeared, has enabled me to add and modify some sentences, and to add some further references.] 208 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Ebsay temporal power is really a greater event than any possible result of the war between Germany and France. Yet such is the greater immediate interest of the present struggle, such perhaps is the instinctive attraction of mankind towards the more noisy and brilliant triumphs of the siege and the battle- field, that the really greater event, simply because of the ease with which it has happened, has passed almost unnoticed in the presence of the lesser. The world has seen the Papacy in several shapes ; but the shape of a Pontiff spiritually in- fallible but politically -a subject, and the subject not of an universal Emperor but of a mere local King, is something which the world has not seen before. What may come of it no man can say ; but we may be pretty sure that greater things will come of it, in one way or another, than can come out of any settlement, in whatever direction, of conflicting French and German interests. Still, at this moment, the present fate of Paris unavoidably draws to itself more of our-thoughts than the future fate of Eome. But it is well to keep the two cities together before our eyes, and all the more so be- cause the past history and the present position of those two cities have points in common which no other city in Europe shares with them in their fulness, which only one other city in Europe can claim to share with them in any degree. The history of Rome, as all the world knows, is the history of a city which grew into an Empire. It grew in truth into a twofold, perhaps a more than twofold, Empire. Out of the village on the Palatine sprang the Eome of the Caesars and the Eome of the Pontiffs. From Eome came the language, the theology, the code of law, which have had such an un- dying effect on the whole European world. Amidst all changes, the city itself has always been clothed with a kind . of mysterious and superstitious charm, and its possession has carried with it an influence which common military and political considerations cannot always explain. And from the Old Eome on the Tiber many of these attributes passed — some were even heightened in passing — to the New Eome on the Bosporos. From the days of Constantino till now, no VIII] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 209 man has ever doubted that, -in the very nature of things, Constantinople, in whatever hands, must be the seat of empire- To Western eyes this seems mainly the result of her un- rivalled geographical situation ; over large regions of the East the New Rome wields the same magic influence which in the West has been wielded by the Old. The City,* the City of the Caesars, is in Christian eyes the one great object to be won ; in Mahometan eyes it is the one great object to be kept. By the Bosporos, as by the Tiber, it is the city which has grown into the Empire, which has founded it, and which has sustained it. Now of the other capitals of Europe — the capitals of the more modern states — one alone can claim to have been, in this way, the creator of the state of which it is now the head. Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Saint Petersburg, are simply places chosen in later times, for reasons of caprice or convenience, as administrative centres of states which already existed. Vienna has grown from the capital of a Duchy into the capital of something which calls itself an Empire ; but Vienna, as a city, has had nothing to do with the growth of that so-called Empire. London may fairly claim a higher place than any of the cities of which we have spoken. It was only by degrees, and after some fluctuations, that London, rather than Winchester, came to be permanently acknowledged as the capital of England. London won its rank, partly by virtue of an unrivalled military and com- mercial position, partly as the reward of the unflinching patriotism of its citizens in the Danish wars. But London in no way formed England, or guided her destinies. The history of London is simply that the city was found to be the most fitting and worthy head of an already existing king- dom. But Paris has been what London has been, and some- thing more. Paris, like London, earned her pre-eminence in Gaul by a gallant and successful resistance to the Scandina- vian enemy. It was the great siege of Paris in the ninth century which made Paris the chief among the cities of Gaul, and its Count the chief among the princes of Gaul. Its * 'Er tox irSKiv= Stamboul. 210 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay position first marked it out for the rank of a local capital, and, through the way in which it used its position, it grew into the capital of a kingdom. But it did not, like London, simply grow into the capital of a kingdom already existing. The city created first the county, and then the kingdom, of which it was successively the head. Modern France, as dis- tinguished both from Eoman Gaul and from the Western Kingdom of the Karlings, grew out of the County of Paris ; and of the County of Paris the city was not merely the centre> but the life and soul. The position of Paris in the earliest times is best marked, as in the case of all Gaulish cities, by its place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It was a city, not of the first, but of the second rank ; the seat of a Bishop, but not the seat of a Metropolitan* Lutetia Parisiorum held the usual rank of one of those head-towns of Gaulish tribes which grew into Eoman cities. But it neyer became the centre of one of the great ecclesiastical and mil divisions ; it never reached the rank of Lyons, Narbonne, Vienne, or Trier. Twice before the ninth century, the discerning eye, first of a Eoman and then of a Prankish master, seemed to mark out the city of the Seine for greater things. It was the beloved home of Julian ; it was the city which Hlodwig at once fixed upon for the seat of his new dominion. But the greatness of Paris, as the earliest settled seat of the Frankish power, was not doomed to be lasting. Under the descendants of Hlodwig Paris remained a seat of royalty ; but, among the fluctua- tions of the Merowingian kingdoms, it was only one seat of royalty among several. It was the peer of Soissons, Orleans, and Metz — all of them places which, in the new state of things, assumed a higher importance than had belonged to them in Eoman times. But, as the Austrasian house of the Karlings grew, first as Mayors, and then as Kings, to the lordship of the whole Frankish realm, the importance of the cities of Western Gaul necessarily lessened. Paris reached * We need hardly say that the Archbishoprick of Paris dates only from the seventeeth century. Up to that time the Bishop of Paris had teen a suffragan of the Metropolitan of Sens. VIII.] TEE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 211 its utmost point of insignificance in the days of Charles the Great, whom French legends have pictured as a French King, reigning in Paris as his royal city. Whatever importance it had, it seems to have derived from its neighbourhood to the revered sanctuary of Saint Denis. By a strange accident, the first King of the new house — the house with which Paris was to wage a war of races and languages — died either in the city itself, or in the precinct of the great monastery beyond its walls. Pippin, returning from a successful campaign in Aquaitaine, fell sick at Saintes ; from thence he was carried to Tours to implore the help of Saint Martin, and thence to Paris to implore the help of Saint Denis. He died at Paris, and was buried in the great minster which became the burial- place of the next and rival line of Kings.* But Paris was neither the crowning-place nor the dwelling-place of his son, nor was it the object of any special attention during his long reign. Of the two sons of Pippin, between whom his king- dom was immediately divided, Paris fell to the lot of Karl- mann. But he chose Soissons for his crowning-place — the place where his father had been crowned before him.f Charles, crowned at Noyon, made Aachen his capital, and, in the course of his whole reign, he visited Paris only on a single progress, when it is incidentally mentioned among a long string of other cities.t * Eginh. Ann. 768 : " In ipsa 1 tamen valetudine Turonos delatus, apud Sanoti Martini memoriam oravit. Inde quum ad Parisios venisset, viii. Kal. Octobris diem obiit, cujus corpus in basilica beati Dionysii martyris humatum est." So Vita Karoli, 3: "Apud Parisius morbo aquae inter- cutis diem obiit." Mark the singular, but frequent, use of Parisius as an indeclinable noun. t Eginh. Ann. 753, 768. % Ibid. 800. The passage is worth quoting, as a specimen of the constant locomotion of the Grerman Kings : — " Eedeunte vernS temperie, medio fere Martio Bex Aquisgrani digressus, litus Oceani Gallici perlustravit, et in ipso mari, quod tunc piratis Nordmannicis infestum erat, classem instituit, prasidia disposuit, pascha in Centulo apud sanctum Eicharium celebravit. Inde iterum per litus maris iter agens, Eatumagum civitatem venit, ibique SequanS amne transmisso, Turonos ad sanctum Martinum orationis causa profectus est, moratus ibi dies aliquot propter adversam p 2 212 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay But this time of utter neglect was, in the history of Paris, only the darkness before the coming of the dawn. In the course of the next reign Paris begins to play an important part, and from that time the importance of the city steadily grew till it became what we have seen it in our own day. The occasional visits of Lewis the Pious to the city are dwelled on by his poetical biographer with evident delight, and with even more than his usual pomp of words.* And the city was now about to appear in its most characteristic light In the words of Sir Francis Palgrave, who has sketched the early history of Paris with great power and insight,t " the City of Eevolutions begins her real history by the first French Revolution."t In this particular case we do not even grudge Liutgardse conjugis valetudinem, quas ibidem et defuncta et humata est; obiit autem diem ii. Non. Jun. Inde per Aurelianos ac Parisios Aquasgrani reversus est, et mense Augusto inchoante Mogontiacum veniens, generalem conventum ibidem habuit, et iter in Italiam condixit, atque inde profectus cum exercitu Kavennam venit, ibique septem nom amplius dies moratus, Pippinum filium suum cum eodem exercitu in ten-am Beneventanonim ire jussit, movensque de Ravenna simul cum filio, Anconam usque pervenit, quo ibi dimisso Homam proficiscitur." This same visit to Paris seems to be alluded to by the monk of Saint Gallen, Gesta Karoli, i. 10 (Pertz, ii. 735): " Quum vero ingeniosissimus Karolus quodem anno festivitates nativitatis et apparitionis Domini apud Treverense vel Metense oppidum celebrasset sequenti vero anno easdem sollemnitates Parisii vel Turonisageret." * Ermoldus Nigellus, ii. 143 (Pertz, ii. 481): " Inde Parisiacas properant cito visere sedes, Quo Stephanus martyr culmina summa tenet, Quo, Germane, tuum colitur, sanctissime, corpus, Quo Genuveffa micat, virgo dicata Deo. ***** Nee tua praeteriit Dionysi culmina martyr, Quin adiens tibimet posceret auxilium." And again, iii. 269 : " Caesar iter tiitum per propria regna gerebat, Usque Parisiaca quo loca celsus adit. Jam tua martyr ovans Dionysi tecta revisit, Hilthuin abba potens quo sibi dona paras ; Hinc, Germane, tui transivit culmina tecti Martyris et Stephani, seu, Genuvefa, tui." t History of Normandy and England, i. 279-281. | Ibid. i. 282. VIII.] THE EABL7 SIEGES OF PARIS. 213 the premature use of the word " French," for the movement of which he speaks was plainly a movement of the Eomanized lands of the West against their Teutonic master. It is not likely that any such feeling was knowingly present to the mind of any man ; but nations and parties learn to shape them- selves unknowingly, and cities and regions learn to play their fitting parts, before they can give any intelligible account of what they are doing. The Emperor was leading an expedition against the revolted Bretons ; suddenly all the disaffected spirits of the Empire, his own sons among the foremost, gathered themselves together at Paris* They then seized Lewis himself at Compiegne, and their hated stepmother Judith on the rock of Laon. But one part of his dominions was still faithful to the imprisoned Caesar; the German lands had no share in the rebellion, and they eagerly sought for the restoration of their sovereign. In marking out the geographical divisions of feeling, the writer of the ninth century, like those of the nineteenth, is driven, as it were, to forestall the language of a somewhat later time. The Emperor had no confidence in the French, but he put his trust in the Germans.f Such was the part — a characteristic part — played by Paris * The fact that Paris was the gathering-place comes out most strongly in the Annales Bertiniani, 830 (Pertz, i. 423) : " Nam aliqui ex primoribus mumurationem populi cognoscen'tes, convocaverunt ilium, ut eum a fide, quam domno Imperatori promissam habebant, averterent ; ideoque omnis populus qivLin Britanniam ire debebat ad Parisium se conjunxit, nee non Hlotharium de Italia et Pippinum de Aquitania hostiliter adversum patrem venire, ut ilium de regno ejicerent et novercam suam perderent ac Bernardum interficerent, compulerunt." t Vita Hludowici, 45 (Pertz, ii. 633) : " Quum autem instaret auctum- nalis temperies, ei qui Imperatori contraria sentiebant alicubi in Francia' conventum fieri generalem volebant. Imperator autem clanculo obnite- batur, diffidens quidem Francis magisque se credens Germanis." (See above, p. 189.) One cannot help talking here about France and French, though such is not the established use of the words till long after. It should, however, be noticed that the Francia of this writer, while it excludes Germany, equally excludes Burgundy and Aquitaine. (See c. 49.) The assembly was held at Neomaga (Nimwegen), and we read that " omnis Germania eo confluxit Imperatori auxilio futura." 214 TEE EABL7 SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay in the Bevolution of 830. Four years later Paris appears playing an opposite yet a no less characteristic part. The Emperor Lewis, already restored and again deposed, is held as a prisoner by his eldest son Lothar, and is led in bonds to Paris.* Again the men of the Bast, the faithful Germans, are in arms for their sovereign under Lewis, at that moment his only loyal son. But by this time the city has changed sides. Lothar, for fear of the German host, flees to the South, leaving his father at liberty ; the late captive is led by his rejoicing people to the minster of Saint Denis, and there is girt once more with the arms of the warrior and with the Imperial robes of the Csesar.f Once then in the course of its long history did Paris behold the inauguration of a lawful Emperor. But it was the re-inauguration of an Emperor whom one Parisian revolution had overthrown, and whom another Parisian revolution had set up again ; and in the moment alike of his fall and of his restoration the force of loyal Germany forms at one time a threatening, at another time an approving, background. We thus see Paris, well-nigh unheard of during the reign of Charles the Great, suddenly rise into importance under his son. Under Charles the Bald its importance becomes greater still, and it begins to assume the peculiar function which raised it to the head place in Gaul. The special wretched- ness of the time was fast showing the great military import- ance of the site. Under the rule of the Austrasian Mayors and Kings there had been endless wars, but they had been wars waged far away from Paris. Above all, no hostile fleet * Annalus Bertiniani, 834 : " Quum hoc Lotharius cognovisset, de Aquis abscessit,et patrem suum usque ad Parisius sab memorat&custodi&deduxit." So in the Vita Hludowici, 50 : " Hlotharius patre assumpto per pagum Hasbaniensem iter arripuit, et Parisius urbem petivit, ubi obviam fore cunctos sibi fldeles prsscepit." t Armales Bertiniani, 834 : " Hlo absoedente, venerunt episcopi qui prasentes aderant, et in ecclesifi. sancti Dionysii domnum Imperatorem reconciliaverunt, et regalibus vestibus armisque induerunt. Deinde filii ejus Pippinus et Ludoicus cum ceteris fldelibus ad eum venientes paterno animo gaudenter suscepti sunt, et plurimas illis ac cuncto populo gratias egit, quod jam alacriter illi auxilium pnebcre studuissent." VIII.] TEE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 215 had for ages sailed up the Seine. Lutetia on her island must, under the Frankish power, have enjoyed for some generations a repose almost as unbroken as she had enjoyed in the days of the Boman Peace. Now all was changed, The Empire was torn in pieces by endless civil wars, wars of brother against brother ; and the fleets of the Northmen, barely heard of in the days of Charles the Great, were making their way up the mouths of all its rivers. Men now began to learn that the island city, encompassed by the broad Seine, with its bridges and its minsters and the Roman palace on the left bank, was at once among the most precious possessions and among the surest bulwarks of the realm. It is not with- out significance that, when the Great Charles himself for once visited Paris, he visited it in the course of a progress in which he had been surveying the shores of the Northern Ocean.* He came to Paris as a mourner and as a pilgrim, yet we may believe that neither his grief nor his devotion hindered him from marking the importance of the post. His eye surely marked the site as one fated to be the main defence, if not of his whole Empire, at least of its western portion, against the pirate barks by which the Ocean was beginning to be covered. And probably it was not by mere accident that it was in the course of an expedition against Britanny that Paris became the centre of the conspiracy of 830. In a Breton War, a war by land, Paris would not be of the same pre-eminent im- portance as it was in the invasion of the Northmen. Still the island stronghold would be of no small moment in case of a Breton inroad, and in the days of Lewis the Pious a Breton inroad was again a thing to be dreaded. Among the troubles of the next reign the pre-eminent importance of Paris begins to stand out more and more strongly. Of the newly-formed Western Kingdom, the kingdom of Charles the Bald, the kingdom to which it was a mere chance that he did not ■ for ever bequeath his name,t it seemed at first that * See p. 211. f The Western Kingdom is " Begmim Karoli," its people Karoli, Karl- enses," just like " Pegnum Lotharii, Lotharii, Lotharienses. (See History of the Norman Conquest, i. 600, ed. 2.) It is a mere chance that Karolingia, 216 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay Paris was at once to become the capital; no other city filled so prominent a place in the early history of his reign. In the very beginning of his reign we find Charles making use of the position of the city and its bridges to bar the progress of his brother, the Emperor Lothar. We find him dwelling for a long time in the city, and giving the citizens the delight of a spectacle by appearing among them in royal pomp at the Easter festival.* Four years later, the city began to appear in its other character as the great mark for Scandinavian attack. The Northern pirates were now swarming on every sea, and the coasts of Britain, Gaul, and Germany were all alike wasted by their harryings. But they instinctively felt that, while no shore lay more tempt- ingly for their objects than the shores of Northern Gaul, there was no point either of the insular or of the continental realm where their approach was better guarded against. The island city, with its two bridges and its strongly fortified Boman suburb on the mainland, blocked their path as perhaps no other stronghold in Gaul or Britain could block it.t In the very year of the fight of Fontenay, as if they had scented the mutual slaughter from afar, the Northmen had sailed up the stream, and had harried Bouen and the surrounding lands with the sternest horrors of fire and sword.J Four years Charlame, did not survive as the name of the Western Kingdom, as Lotharingia, Lorraine survived as the name of the Middle Kingdom. It would have saved many confusions if it had. * See the Annals of Prudentius of Troyes, 841 (Pertz, i. 437), and the story in Nithard, ii. 6-8 ; Palgrave, England and Normandy, i. 313, 314, Hildwin, Abbot of Saint Denis, and Gerard, Count of Paris — the first we remember bearing that title — had been among the first to break their oaths to Charles. t See the vivid description of Carolingian Paris and its first capture in Palgrave, i. 433-439; but Sir Francis has not wholly withstood the temptation to exaggerate the antiquity of some of the existing buildings. % Ann. Prud. Tree. 841 (Pertz, i. 437): "Interea pirate Danorum ab Oceano Euripo de vecti Eotumam irruentes, rapinis, ferro, ignique bacchantes, urbem, monachos, reliquumque vulgum et csedibus et captivitate pessum- dederunt, et omnia monasteria seu quascumque loca flumini Sequanaj adhasrentia aut depopulati sunt aut, multis acceptis pecuniis, territa relinquunt." VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 217 later they pressed on yet further into the heart of the de- fenceless realm; Paris was attacked; in strange contrast with the valour of its citizens forty years later, no one had the heart to resist ; the city was stormed and sacked ; and King Charles, finding his forces unequal to defend or to avenge, was driven to forestall the wretched policy of iEthelred, and to buy a momentary respite from the invaders* Other attacks, other harryings, followed. One devastation more terrible than all, in the year 857, was specially remembered on account of the frightful havoc wrought among the churches of the city. The Church of Saint Genoveva, on the left bank of the river — whose successor is better known to modern ears as the Pantheon — was burned ; Saint Stephens, afterwards known as Notre Dame, Saint Germans, and St. Denis, bought their deliverance only by large ransoms, f In the minds of the preachers of the time, the woes of Paris suggested the woes of Jerusalem, and a wail of sorrow went up from the * Ann. Prud. Tree. 855 : " Nordmannorum naves centum viginti mense Martio per Sequanahi hino et abinde cuncta vastantes, Loticiam Parisiorum nullo penitus obsistente pervadunt. Quibus qnum Carolus oceurrere moliretur, sed prsevalere suos nullatenus posse prospiceret, quibusdam paetionibus, et munere septem milium libravum eis exhibito, a progrediendo compesouit, ac redire persuasit." So in the Annals of Fulda, 845 (Pertz, i. 364): "Nordmanni regnum Karoli vastantes, per Sequanam usque Parisios navigio venerunt, et tarn ab ipso quam incolis terras accepts pecuniS copiosa, cum pace discesserunt." t Ann. Prud. Tree. 857 : " Dani Sequanas insistentes cuncta libere vastant, Lutetiamque Parisiorum adgressi, basilicam beati Petri et sanctae Genovefse incendunt et ceteras omnes, prseter domum sancti Stepbani et ecclesiam sancti Vincentii atque Germani praaterque ecclesiam sancti Dionysii, pro quibus tantummodo, ne incenderentur, multa solidorum summa soluta est." Sir Francis Palgrave (i. 459, 464) gives a vivid picture of tbis sack of Paris. Of Saint Denis be adds : " Saint Denis .made a bad bargain. The Northmen did not hold to their contract, or another company of pirates did not consider it as binding : the Monastery was burnt to a shell, and a most heavy ransom paid for the liberation of Abbot Louis, Charlemagne's grandson by his daughter Eothaida." Sir Francis, as usual, gives no reference : but we may be sure that he could, if he had pleased, have given one for the burning of the Monastery as well as for the capture of the Abbot, which the Annals mention under the next year, though not in connexion with the sack of Paris. 218 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay Jeremiah of the age for the havoc of the city and its holy places* When we remember the importance to which Paris was plainly beginning to rise under Lewis the Pious, we may perhaps be led to think that it was the constant attacks to which the city was exposed which hindered it from becoming the permanent dwelling-place of royalty under Charles the Bald. That the city held a place in his affections through- out his life is shown by his choosing Saint Denis as the place of his burial. But it never became the royal city of the Kings of his house. We need hardly look on it as a mark of personal cowardice in Charles that he preferred to fix his ordinary seat of government in some other plaee than the most exposed fortress of his kingdom. Compiegne now often appears as a royal dwelling-place ;t but the home and centre of Carolingian Royalty in the Western Kingdom gradually fixed itself on a spot the most opposite to Paris in position and feeling which the Western Kingdom could afford. Paris and Laon were in every sense rivals ; their rivalry is stamped * Sir Francis Palgrave (i. 462) says: "Amongst the calamities of the times, the destruction of the Parisian monasteries seems to have worked peculiarly on the imagination. Paschasius Eadbertus, the biographer of Wala, expatiates upon this misery when writing his Commentary on Jeremiah." Some extracts are given in Pertz, i. 450 : " Quis umquam crederet, vel quis umquam cogitare potuisset ut pirate, diversis admodum collecti ex familiis, Parisiorum attingerent fines, ecclesiasque Christi hinc inde cremarent circa litus ? . . . . Fateor enim quod nullns ex Regibus terras ista cogitaret, neque ullus habitator orbis nostri audire potuisset quod Parisium nostrum hostis intraret." t Compiegne comes out with amusing grandeur in the Fragmenta HistoricB Fossatensis, Pertz, ix. 372. There Charles the Bald figures as a very great prince indeed : " Hie post multas Imperii divisiones, post innumeras bellorum angustias, Pipino et Lothario decedentibus Rex et Imperator constituitur. Ludovicus autem Germaniam obtinebat. Qmimque universo pene orbi Karolus imperaret, placuit pras ceteris nationibus Gallias bonorare reliquiasque quas patruus snus Karolus Magnus Constantinopoli advectas Aquisgrani posuerat, clavum scilicet et coronam apud Sanctum Dyonisium ; Compendium vero, quod instar Constantinopoleos suis diebus decreverat fabricari, ut de nomine suo Karnopolim, sicut Constantimis Constantinopolim, appellaret, sindonem delegavit." VIII.] , THE EABLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 219 upon their very outward appearance. Each is a representative city. Paris, like Chalons and Bristol, is essentially an island city ; the river was its defence against ordinary enemies, how- ever easily that defence might be changed into a highway for its attack in the hands of the amphibious Northmen. But Laon is the very pride of that class of towns which, out of Gaulish hill-forts, grew into Roman and mediaeval cities. None stands more proudly on its height ; none has kept its ancient cha- racter so little changed to our own day. The town still keeps itself within the walls which fence in the hill top, and what- ever there is of suburb has grown up at the foot, apart from the ancient city. Paris again was the home of the new-born nationality of the Eomance speech, the home of the new French nation. Laon stood near the actual German border, in a land where German was still spoken ; it was fitted in every way to be, as it proved, the last home of a German Dynasty in the West. There can be little doubt that, by thus moving east- ward, by placing "themselves in this outlying Teutonic corner of their realm, the, Carolingian Kings of the West threw away the chance of putting themselves at the head of the new national movement, the chance of reigning as national Kings, if not over the whole Romance-speaking population of Gaul, at least over its strictly French portion north of the Loire. Of such a mission we may be sure Charles the Bald and his successors never dreamed. The chances are that those to whom that mission really fell dreamed of it just as little. We must never forget that the national movements of those days were for the more part instinctive and unconscious ; but they were all the more powerful and lasting for being instinctive and unconscious. An act of Charles the Bald, one of the ordinary grants by a King to one of his vassals, created the French nation. The post from which the King himself shrank was entrusted to a valiant subject, and Robert the Strong, the mightiest champion of the land against the heathen invader, received the government of the whole border land threatened by the Breton and the North- 220 . TEE EARLY BIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay man.* We may be sure that the thoughts of the King him- self did not at the most reach beyond satisfaction at haying provided the most important post in his realm with a worthy defender. To shield himself from the enemy by such a barrier as was furnished .by Eobert's county in Eobert's hands was an object for which it was wise to sacrifice the direct possession even of the fair lands between the Loire and the Seine. The dominion of Eobert was a mark ; his truest title was Marquess. And this frontier district, like so many other frontier districts, was destined to great things. Eome itself was most likely, in its beginning, a mark of the Latin League against the Etruscan. Castile, a line of border-castles against the Saracen, grew into the ruling kingdom of all Spain. The Eastern Mark, the mark of Germany against the Hun- garian, and the Mark of Brandenburg, her mark against the Wend, grew, under the names of Austria and Prussia, to become the leading powers of Germany, while one of them in a manner has become Germany itself. So the mark granted to Eobert grew into the Duchy of France and the Kingdom of France. Eobert no doubt, like the other governors and military chiefs who were fast growing from magistrates into princes, rejoiced in the prospect of becoming the source of a dynasty, a dynasty which could not fail to take a high place among the princes of Gaul. But he hardly dreamed of founding a line of Kings, and a line of Kings the most lasting that the world ever saw. Still less did he dream of founding a nation. But he himself founded a line of Kings, and his son founded a nation for those Kings to rule over. It may be doubted whether Eobert's mark between the Loire and Seine took in the city on the Seine. Once indeed he went to its help,t but, if it was part of his * Eegino861: " Carolus Rex plaoitum habuit in Compendio, ibique cum optimatum consilio Roberto Comiti Ducatum inter Ligerim et Sequanam adversuni Brittones commendavit, quern cum ingenti industria per aliquod terapus rexit." In the same writer, under 867, he appears as "Ruotbertus qui marcam tenebat." So Hincmar (ann. 865) calls him " Marchio in Andegavo." He held also the County of Autun. Hincmar, 866. t Hincmar, 866. VIII.] TEE EARLY SIEGES OF BARIS. 221 dominions, it was at least not their capital or centre. Kobert was in a special manner Count or Marquess of Anjou. It was his son, the Count of Paris, the defender of Paris, who was the real founder of the nation of which he became the first King. In saying Paris Odo created France. The Counts who held the first place of danger and honour soon eclipsed in men's eyes the Kings who had retired to the safer obscurity of their eastern frontier. The city of the river became a national centre in a way in which the city of the rock could never be. The people of the struggling Bomance speech of Northern Gaul found a centre and a head in the rising city and its gallant princes. That Kobert was himself of German descent, the son of a stranger from some of the Teutonic provinces of the Empire, mattered not a whit.* From the beginning of their historic life the Parisian Dukes and Kings have been the leaders and representatives of the new French nationality. No royal dynasty has ever been so thoroughly identified with the nation over which it ruled, because no royal dynasty could be so truly said to have created the nation. Paris, France, and the Dukes and Kings of the French, are three ideas which can never be kept asunder. A true instinct soon gave the ruler of the new state a higher and a more significant title. The Count of Paris was merged in the Duke of the French, and the Duke of the French was soon to be merged in the King. The name of Franeia, a name whose shiftings and whose changes of meaning have perplexed both history and politics — a name which Eastern and Western writers seem to have made it a kind of point of honour to use in different meanings t — now * The origin of Robert the Strong has been discussed by M. Mourin, p. 19, and more fully by Dr. Kalckstein in his first ' Exkurs.' The best-known passage is that in Richer, i. 5 : " Odo patrem habuit ex equestri ordine Rotbertum, avum vero paternum Witichinum, advenam Germanum." In Aimon of Fleury, de Regibus Francorum (Petz, is. 374), he appears as " Rotbertus Andegavensis Comes, Saxonici generis vir." In the Annales Xantenses, 867 (Pertz, ii. 232), he is " Ruodbertus, vir valde strenuus, ortus de Frantia, dux Karoli." By this German writer Frantia is of course opposed to Gallia. t The monk of Saint Gallen (Gesta Karoli, i. 10) gives us a definition of 222 TEE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay gradually settles down, as far as the Western Kingdom is concerned, into the name of a territory which answers roughly to the Celtic Gaul of the elder geography.* It has still to be distinguished by epithets like OcMentalis and Latino, from the Eastern Francia of Teutonic speech, but, in the language of Gaul, Francia and Frond for the future mean the dominion and the subjects of the lord of Paris. France was still but one among the principalities of Gaul; but it was the principality destined, by one means or another, to swallow up the rest. From the foundation of the Parisian Duchy we may date the birth of the French state and nation. From that day onwards France is whatever can, by fair means or foul, be brought into obedience to Paris and her ruler. Count Robert the Strong, the Maccabseus of the West- Frankish realm, the patriarch of the old Capets, of the Valois, and of the Bourbons, died as he had lived, fighting for Gaul and Christendom against the heathen Dane.f But his do- minion and his mission passed to a son worthy of him — to Odo, or Eudes, the second Count of his house, presently to be the first of the Kings of Paris. At his father's death Odo was deemed too young to take the place of his father. The Duchy Francia in the widest sense : " Franciam vero interdum quum nominvero, omnes Cisalpinas provincias significo .... in illo tempore propter excellentiam gloriosissimi Karoli et Galli et Aquitani, iEdui et Hispani, Alamanni et Baioarii, non parum se insignitos gloriabantur, si vel nomine Francornm servorum censeri mererentur." * Richer (i. 14) twice speaks of the Duchy of France as " Celtica " and " Gallia Celtica." " Rex [Karolus] Oelticse [Rotbertum] Ducem prseficit." These are Charles the Simple and the second Robert, afterwards King. t Ann. Fuld., 867 (Pertz, ii. 380) : " Ruodbertus Karoli Regis Comes apud Ligerim fluvium contra Nordmannos fortiter dimicans occiditur, alter quodammodo nostris temporibus Machabseus, cujus proelia quae cum Brittonibus et Nordmannis gessit, si per omnia scripta fuissent, Machabai gestis aaquiparari potuissent." See the details in Regino, 867 ; Hincmar, Ann. 866. The meagre annals of Fleury (Pertz, ii. 254) kindle into life at the exploits of Robert : " Rhothbertus atque Ramnulfus, viri mira potentias armisque strenui et inter primos ipsi priores, Northmannorum gladio necantur." VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 223 between the Seine and the Loire was granted to Abbot Hugh ;* some fiefs alone of unknown extent were first given to Odo and then taken from him.f But somewhat later we find him holding the post of Count of Paris, without any notice as to the extent of territory which formed his county. But when at a later time, on the death of Hugh, he received a grant of his father's Duchy, the great step was taken ; France, with Paris as its capital, was created.^ The grant was fittingly made in the very midst of his great deeds, in the midst of that great struggle, that mighty and fiery trial, which was to make the name of Paris and her lord famous throughout the world. On the great siege of Paris by the Northmen, the turning-point in the history of the city, of the Duchy, and in truth of all Western Europe, we may fairly dwell at somewhat greater detail than we have done on the smaller events which paved the way for it. We must bear in mind the wretched state of all the countries which made up the Carolingian Empire. The Northmen were sailing up every river, and were spread- ing their ravages to every accessible point. Every year in the various contemporary annals is marked by the harrying of some fresh district, by the sack of some city, by the desecra- tion of some revered monastery.§ Eesistance, when there was any, was almost wholly local ; the invaders were so far from encountering the whole force of the Empire that they never encountered the whole force of any one of its component king- * Regino, 867 : " Hugo Abba in locum Euotberti substitutus est ... siquidem Odo et Ruotbertus filii Euotberti adlmo parvuli erant; quando pater exstinctus est, et idcirco non est illis ducatus commissus.'' t Hincmar, 868 : " Ablatis a Rotberti filio bis quae post mortem patris de honoribus ipsius ei ooncesserat [Oarolus] et per alios divisis." t Regino, 887: "Ducatus quern [Hugo] tenuerat et strenue rexerat Odoni filio Rodberti ab Imperatore traditur, qui ea tempestate Parisiorum Comes erat." § See especially the entries in the Annales Vedastini (Pertz, ii. 200)' under 874 and several following years. Take, above all, the general picture under 884: " .N ortmanni vero non cessant captivari atque internet populum Christianum, atque ecclesias subrui, destructis mceniis et villis crematis.' Per omnes enim plateas jacebant cadavera clericorum, laicorum, nobilium atque .aliorum, mulierum, juvenum, et lactentium : non enim erat Via vel locus quo non jacerent mortui ; et erat tribulatio omnibus et dolor, videntes populum Christianum usque ad internecionem devastari." 224 TEE EARLY SIEGES OP PARIS. [Essay doms. The day of Saulcourt, renowned in that effort of old Teutonic minstrelsy which may rank alongside of our own songs of Brunahburh and Maldon,* the day when the young King Lewis led the West-Frankish host to victory over the heathen,t stands out well-nigh alone in the records of that unhappy time. While neither realm was spared, while one set of . invaders ravaged the hanks of the Seine and the Loire, while another more daring band sacked Aachen, Koln, and Trier,$ the rival Kings of the Franks were mainly intent on extending their borders at the expense of one another. Charles the Bald was far more eager to extend his nominal frontier to the Bhine,§ or to come back from Italy adorned with the Imperial titles,! than he was to take any active step to drive out the common enemy of all the kindred realms. At last the whole Empire, save the Burgundian Kingdom of Boso, was once more joined together under Charles the Fat. * The Ludwigslied is printed in Max Miiller's German Classics, also in tKe second volume of Sehilter's Thesaurus. t A full account of the battle is given in the Annales Vedastini, 881. % Annales Vedastini, 882 : "Australes Franci (that is, Eastern, Austrasian, not Southern) congregant exercitum contra Nortmannos, sed statim terga vertunt, ibique Walo, Mettensis episcopus, corruit, Dani vero famosissimum Aquisgrani palatium igne cremant, et monasteria atque civitates, Treveris nobilissimam et Coloniam Agrippinam, palatia quoque regum et villas, cum habitatoribus terras interfectis, igne cremaverunt." § Annales Fuldenses (Pertz, i. 390), 876: "Karolus vero, Hludowici morte compertS, regnum illius, cupiditate ductus,' invasit et suse ditioni subjugare studuit; existimans se, ut fama vulgahat, non solum partem regni Hlotharii, quam Hludowicus tenuit et filiis suis utendam dereliquit, per tyrannidem posse obtinere, verum etiam cunctas civitates regni Hludowici in occidentali litore Rheni fluminis positas suo regno addere, id est Mogontiam, Wormatiam, et Nemetum, filiosque fratris per potentiam opprimere, ita ut nullus ei resistere vel contradicere auderet." The first entry under the next year is : " Hludowicus Rex mense Januario, generali conventu hahito apud Pranconofurt, quos de regno Karoli tenuit captivos remisit in Galliam." || Ann. Puld. 876. The way in which Charles' Imperial dignity is re- corded is remarkable. After a satirical description of the Imperial costume, the annalist goes on: "Omnem enim consuetudinem Regum Francorum contemnens, Griaecas glorias optimas arbitrabatur, et ut majorem suas mentis elationem ostenderet* ahlato Regis nomine, se Imperatorem et Augustum omnium Regum cis mare consistentium appellare prsecepit." The phrase VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 225 Paris was again under the nominal sovereignty of an Emperor whose authority, equally nominal everywhere, extended also over Eome and Aachen. Precarious and tottering as such an Empire was, the even nominal union of so many crowns on a single head, however unfit that head was to bear their weight, does seem to have given for the moment something like a feeling of greater unity, and thereby of greater strength. Paris, defended by its own Count, and its own Bishop, was defended by them in the name of the Emperor, Lord of the World.* The sovereign alike of East and West was ap- pealed to for help, and at least a show of help was sent in the name of both parts of the Frankish realm.f The defence of Paris was essentially a local defence, waged hyjts own citizens under the command of their local chiefs. Stillrne great check which the invaders then received came nearer to a national act on the part of the whole Frankish Empire than anything which had happened since the death of Charles the Great. Our materials for the great siege are fairly abundant. Several of the contemporary chronicles, in describing this gallant struggle, throw off somewhat of their accustomed meagreness, and give an account conceived with an unusual degree of spirit and carried out with an unusual amount of detail. J And we have a yet more minute account, which, even " cis mare " is remarkable, when we think of the English claims to Empire, and of the constant use of the word " transmarimis " to express England and English things. The common name for Charles in these Annals is " Galliaj Tyrannus." * Abho, i. 48 (Pertz, ii. 780) :— " Urbs mandata fuit Karolo nobis basileo, Imperio cujus regitur totas prope kosmus Post Dominum, Begem dominatorenique potentmn, Excidium per earn regnum non quod patiatur, Sed quod salvetur per earn sedeatque serenum." f Eegino, 887 (Pertz, i. 596) : " Heinricus cum exercitibus utriusque regni Parisius venit." " Utrumque regnum " means of course the Eastand the West Franks. The same Annals, in the next year, speak of Charles as reigning over " omnia regna Pranoorum." t See especially the Annates Vedastini, 885-890 ; other details coma from the Chronicle of Regino, 887-890. Q 226 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Ebsat as it is, is of no small value, and which, had it been a few degrees less wearisome and unintelligible, would hare been of the highest interest. Abbo, a distinguished churchman of those times, a monk of the house of Saint German, and not only a contemporary, but a spectator and sharer in the defence,* conceived the happy idea of writing a minute nar- rative of the stirring scenes which he had witnessed, But unhappily he threw his tale into the shape of hexameters which have few rivals for affectation and obscurity. The poetical biographer of Lewis the Pious at least writes Latin ; Abbo writes in a Babylonish dialect of his own composing, stuffed full of Greek and other out-of-the-way words, and to parts of which he himself found it needful to attach a glossary. Still, with all this needless darkness, he gives us many details, and he especially preserves many individual names which we should not find out from the annalists. A fervent votary of Saint German, a loyal citizen of Paris, a no less loyal subject of the valiant Count who, when he wrote, had grown into a King, Abbo had every advantage which per- sonal knowledge and local interest could give to a narrator of the struggle. Only we cannot help wishing that he had stooped to tell his tale, if not in his native tongue, whether Bomance or Teutonic, yet at least in the intelligible Latin of Nithard in a past generation and of Bicher in a future one.f * Let us take one out of several passages where he describes bis own exploits (ii. 300-302) :— " Nemo stetit supra speculam, solus nisi ssepe Jam sancti famulus dicti, lignum crucis alms In flammas retinens, oculis nEec vidit et inquit." t The book is printed in the second volume of Pertz, 776-805. The Third Book has a sort of Interpretatio throughout. We give a few lines (15-18) as a specimen : — " laicorum Tapete undique villose populorum lectus in itinere, Amphytappa laon extat, badanola necnon ; Ornamentum decorum valde amant vestem putam vel gum/an claram polioncm per Unteum. '" Effipiam diamant, stragulam pariterque propomam. lenocinatio fugat pah am VIIL] TEE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 227 The poet begins with a panegyric on his city, in which he may, while dealing with such a theme, be forgiven for some- what unduly exalting its rank among the cities of the world* Its position, the strength of the island-fortress, connected with the mainland by its castles on either side, is plainly set forth.f The defenders of the city are clearly set before us : Odo the Count, the future King, as we are often reminded,}: and Gozlin the Bishop, stand forth in the front rank. Around the two great local chiefs are gathered a secondary band of their kinsfolk and supporters, clerical and lay. There is Odo's. brother Robert, himself one day to wear a crown in the city which he defended, but in times to which the foresight of the poet did not extend ; there is the valiant Count Ragnar ; there is the warlike Abbot Bbles of Saint Germans, whose exploits are recorded with special delight by the loyal monk of his house.§ A crowd of lesser names are also handed down to us, names of men who had their honourable share in the work, but with whose bare names it is hardly needful to burthen the memo- Agagula celebs aginat peoudes nee ablvmdam." But the narrative portions of the poem, though often obscure enough, are not altogether in this style. * Abbo, i. 10 :— " Nam medio Sequanse recubans, culti quoque regni Francigenum, temet statuis per celsa canendo : Sum polis, ut regina micans omnes super urbes ! Quae statione nites cunctis venerabiliori, Quisque cupiscit opes Pianoorum, te veneratur." t Ibid. i. 15 :— " Insula te gaudet, fluvius sua fert tibi giro Brachia, complexo muros mulcentia circum Dextra tui pontes habitant tentorialimfae LaBvaque claudentes ; horum hinc inde tutrices Ois urbem speculare falas, citra quoque Airmen." % Ibid. i. 45 :— " Hie Consul venerabatur, Bex atque futurus, Urbis erat tutor, regni venturus et altor." § Ibid. i. 66 :— " Hie Comites Odo fraterque suus radiabant Botbertus, pariterque Comes Bagenarius ; illic Pontificisque nepos Ebolus, fortissimus Abba." Q 2 228- THE EARLY SIEQES'OF PARIS. [Essay fies of modern readers. A great object of attack on the part of the Northmen was the castle which guarded the bridge on the right bank of the river, represented in after-times by the Grand Chdtelet. The watchful care of the Bishop had been diligent in strengthening this and the other defences of the city ; but the last works which were to guard this important point were not yet fully finished.* The Danish fleet now drew near, a fleet manned, so it was said, by more than thirty thousand warriors.! As in the tale of our own Brihtnoth,t the invaders began with a peaceful message. The leader of the pirates, Sigefrith, the sea-king — a king, as the poet tells us, without a kingdom § — sought an interview with Count Odo, and demanded a peaceful passage through the city* Odo sternly answers that the city is entrusted to his care by his lord the Emperor, and that he will never forsake the duty which has been laid upon him. || The siege now began ; the Northmen strove to storm the unfinished tower. After two days of incessant fighting, and an intervening night spent in repairing the defences, the valour of the defenders prevailed. The Count and the Bishop, and the Abbot who could pierce seven Danes with a single shot of his arrow,1T finally drove back the heathen to their ships ; and instead of the easy storm and sack, which they doubtless looked for on this as on earlier occasions, the Northmen were driven to undertake the siege of the city in form.** * Ann. Ved. 885 : " Nortmanni, patratS victoria valde elati, Parisius adeunt turrinique statim aggressi, valide oppugnant; et quia necdum perfecte firmata fuerat, earn se capi sine morft existimant." t Regino, 887 : " Brant, ut ferunt, triginta et eo amplius adversariorum millia, omnes pene robusti bellatores." % See History of the Norman Conquest, i. 270, ed. ii. § Abbo, i. 38 : " Solo Bex verbo, sociis tamen imperitabat." || See above, p. 225. f i. 107 :— " Fortis Odo innumeros tutudit. Sed quis fuit alter ? Alter Ebolus huic socius fuit sequiperansque ; Septenos una potuit terebrare sagitta, Quos ludens alios jussit prjebere quoquinaj." ** Ann. Ved. 885: "Dani, multis suorum araissis, rediere ad naves; VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 229 One is a little surprised at the progress in the higher branches of the art of war which had clearly been made by the enemy who now assaulted Paris. The description of their means of attack, if not intelligible in every detail, at least shows that the freebooters, merciless heathens as they were, were thorough masters of the engineering science of their age* But, through the whole winter of 885, all their attempts were unavailing. The skill and valour of the de- fenders were equal to those of the besiegers, and their hearts were strung by every motive which could lead men to defend themselves to the last. But early in the next year, in the Feb- ruary of 886, accident threw a great advantage into the hands of the besiegers. A great flood in the Seine swept away, or greatly damaged the lesser bridge, the painted bridge, that which joined the island to the fortress on the left bank of the river.f That fortress and the suburb which it defended, the suburb which contained the Boman palace and the minsters of Saint Genoveva and Saint German, were thus cut off from the general defences of the city. The watchful care of the Bishop strove to repair the bridge by night. But the attempt was forestalled by the invaders; the tower was isolated and surrounded by the enemy. The Bishop and the other de- indeque sibi castrum statuunt ad versus civitatem, eamque obsidione valiant machinas construunt, ignem supponunt, et omne ingenium suum apponunt ad captionem civitatis ; sed Christiani adversus eos fortiter diruicando in omnibus exstitere superiores." * Let us take Abbo's description (i. 205) of an engine which may have been only a sow or a tortoise, but which certainly suggests the Trojan horse : " Ergo bis octonis faciunt mirabile visa, ' ' Monstra rotis ignara; modi compacta triadi, Eoboris ingentis, super argete qnodque cubante Domate sublimi cooperto. Nam capiebant Claustra sinus arcana uteri penetralia ventris Sexaginta viros, ut adest rumor, galeatos.'' t Ann. Ved. 886: "Octavo Idns Februarii contigit grave discrimen infra civitatem habitantibus, nam ex gravissima innndatione fluminis minor pons disruptus est." It is called " pictus pons " by Abbo i 250 It was perhaps something like the bridges at Luzern, with their series of paintings of scriptural and other subjects. 230 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay fenders of the city were left to behold, to weep, and to pray from the walls, at the fate of their brethren whom they could no longer help.* The tower was fiercely attacked ; the gate did not give way till fire was brought to help the blows of the Northmen; the defenders of the tower all perished either by the flames or by the sword, and their bodies were hurled into the river before the eyes of their comrades.t The con- querors now destroyed the tower, and from their new vantage- ground they pressed the siege of the island city with increased vigour. The chances of war seemed now to be turning against the besieged. The stout heart of Bishop Gozlin at last began to fail ; he saw that Paris could no longer be defended by the arms of its citizens only. He sent a message to Henry, the Duke of the Eastern Franks, praying him to come to the defence of the Christian people. The Duke came ; we are told that his presence did little or nothing for the besieged city ;J yet in the obscure verses of the poet we seem to dis- cern something like a night attack on the Danish camp on * Ibid. : " Illis vevo qui intra turrim erant acriter resistentibus, fit clamor mnltitudinis usque in coelum ; Bpisoopus desuper muro civitatis cum omnibus qui in civitate erant nimis flentibus, eo quod suis subvenire non possent, et quia nil aliud agere poterat, Christo eos commendabat." t Ann. Ved. 886 : " Nortmanni cum impetu portam ipsius turis adeunt ignernque subponunt. Et hi qui intra erant, fracti vulDeribus et incendio, capiuntur atque ad opprobrium Christianorum diversis interficiuntur modis, atque in flumine praecipitantur." % Ibid. : " Herkengerus [the messenger sent by the Bishop, described as Comes] . . . Henricum cum exercitu Parisius venire fecit; sed nil ibi profecit . . . atque in suam rediit regionem." Eegino (887) makes the same confession : "Imperator Heinricum ducem cum exercitu vernali tempore dirigit, sed minime pravaluit." The Fnlda Annals alone (886) seem to make out something of a case for Henry. His army " in itinere propter imbrium inundationem et frigus imminens non modicum equorum suorum perpessi sunt damnum." The annalist then adds : " Quum illuc pervenissent, Nordmanni rerum omnium abundantiam in munitionibus suis habentes, manum cum eis conserere nee voluerunt, nee ausi sunt." He goes on to say that they spent the whole of Lent and up to the Rogation-days in vain labours (" inani labore consumptis "). They then went home, having done nothing except kill some Danes whom they fourid outside their camp, and carry off a large number of horses and oxen VIIL] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PABIS. 231 the part of the Saxon Duke and his followers.* But in any case the coming of the German allies did nothing for the permanent relief of the city. They went back to their own land ; Paris was again left to its own resources ; and at last the Bishop, worn out with sorrow and illness, began to seek the usual delusive remedy. He began to enter into negotia- tions with Sigefrith, which were cut short by the prelate's death. The news was known in the Danish camp before it was commonly known within the walls of Paris, and the mass of the citizens first learnt from the insulting. shouts of the besiegers that their valiant Bishop was no more.f The Bishop, as long as he lived, had been the centre and soul of the whole defence, yet it would, seem that, at the actual moment of his death, his removal was a gain. We hear no more, at least not on the part of the men of Paris, of any attempts at treating .with the enemy. One bitter wail of despair from the besieged city reaches our ears, and the hero of the second act of the siege now stands forth. The spiritual chief was gone ; the temporal chief steps into his place, and more than into his place. Count Odo appears as cheering the hearts of the people by his eloquence, and as leading them on to repeated combats with the besiegers. J At last hunger * Abbo, ii. 3 : " Saxonia vir Ainrions fortisque potensque Venit in auxilium Grozlini prasulis urbis, At tribuit victus illi letumque oruentis Heu paucis auxit vitam nostris, tulit amplam His prtedam. Sub nocte igitur quaclam penetravit Castra Danum, multos et equos illio sibi cepit." After some farther desoription.be adds : " Sic et Ainrious postremum castra reliquit, Culpa tamen, fugiente mora, defertur ad arcem." t Ann. Ved. 886 : " Gauzlinus vera, dum omnibus modis populo Chris- tiano juvare vellet, cum Sigfrido, Eege ■Danomm, amicitiam fecit, ut per hoc civitas ab obsidione liberaretur. Dum hsec aguntur, Episcopus gravi corruit in infirmilate, diem clausit extremum, et in loculo positus est in ipsa civitate. Cujus obitus Nortmannis non latuit ; et antequam civibus ejus obitus nuntiaretur, a Nortmannis de foris prsedicatur Episcopnm esse mortuum." % Ibid. : " Dehinc vulgus pertassi una cum morte patris obsidione irre- 232 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay began to tell on the strength of the defenders ; help from without was plainly needed, and this time it was to be sought, not from any inferior chief, but from the common sovereign, the Emperor and King of so many realms. Count Odo went forth in person on the perilous errand; he called on the princes of the Empire for help in the time of need, and warned the sluggish Augustus himself that, unless help came speedily, the city would be lost for ever* Long before any troops were set in motion in any quarter for the deliverance of Paris, the valiant Count was again within its walls, bring- ing again a gleam of joy to the sad hearts of the citizens, both by the mere fact of his presence and by the gallant ex- ploit by which he was enabled to appear among them. The Northmen knew of his approach, and made ready to bar his way to the city. Before the gate of the tower on the right bank, the tower which still guarded the northern bridge, the lines of the heathen stood ready to receive the returning champion. Odo's horse was killed under him, but, sword in hand, he hewed himself a path through the thick ranks of the enemy ; he made good his way to the gate, and was once more within the walls of his own city, ready to share every danger of his faithful people, t Such a city, we may well say, deserved to become the seat of Kings, and such a leader deserved to wear a royal crown within its walls. Eight months of constant fighting passed away after the return of Odo before the Lord alike of Kome, inediabiliter contristantur ; quos Odo, illustris Comes, snis adhortationibus roborabat. Nortmanni tamen quotidie non cessant oppugnare civitatem ; et ex utrftque parte multi interficiuntur, pluresque vulneribus debilitantur, ese» etiam coeperunt minui in civitate." * Ann. Ved. 886 : "Odo videns affligi populum, clam exiit de civitate, a principibus regni requirens auxilium, et ut Imperatori innotesceret 'velocius perituram civitatem, nisi ei auxilium detur." f Ibid. : " Dehinc regressus, ipsam civitatem de ejus absentia nimis repperit mcerentem ; non tamen in earn sine admiratione introiit. Nortmanni ejus reditum praescientes, accurrerunt ei ante portam turris j sed ille, omisso equo, a dextris et sinistria adversarios csedens, civitatem ingressus, tristem •populum reddidit lsetum." VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARTS. 233 of Aachen, and of Paris appeared before the city where just now his presence was most needed. Towards the last days of summer Duke Henry again appeared, but it was fully autumn before the Emperor himself found his way to the banks of the Seine.* Duke Henry came with an army drawn from both the Frankish realms, Eastern and Western.t With more show of prudence than he had shown at his former coming, Henry began by reconnoitring both the city and the camp of the enemy, to judge at what point an attack might be made with least risk.f But the Northmen were too wary for him. They had surrounded their whole camp with a net- work of trenches, three feet deep and one foot wide, filled up with straw and brushwood, and made to present the appear- ance of a level surface.§ A small party only were left in ambush. As the Duke drew near, they sprang up, hurled their javelins, and provoked him with shouts. Henry pressed on in wrath, but he was soon caught in the simple trap which had been laid for him ; his horse fell and he himself was hurled to the ground. The enemy rushed upon him, slew him, and stripped him in the sight of his army. || One of the defenders of the city, the brave Count Kagnar, of whom we * " .iEstivo tempore, antequam segetes in mauipulos redigerentur," says Kegino (887) of the coming of Henry, and adds, " Post base Imperator . . . venit." This does not practically contradict the Annales Vedastini (88(5) : " Circa auctumni tempora Imperator Carisiacum veniens cum in- getiti exercitu, prsemisit Heinricum, dictum Ducem Austrasiorum, Parisius." t Eegino, 887: "Idem Heinricus cum exercitibus utriusque regni Parisius venit." % Ann. Ved. 886 : " Qui quum advenisset illnc cum exercitu prope civi- tatem, cum paucis inconsulte coepit equitare circa castra Danorum, voiens invisere qualiter exercitus castra eorum posset attingere, vel quo ipsi castra figere deberent." To which Regino (887) adds : " Situm loci contemplatur aditumque perquirit, quo exercitui cum hostibus minus periculosus jpateret congressus." § This is told most fully by Eegino (887) : " Porro Nordmanni audientes appropinquare exercitum, foderant foveas, latitudinis unius pedis et profun- ditatis trium, in circuitu castrorum, easque quisquiliis et stipula operuerant semitas tantum discursui necessarias intactas reservantes." || Ibid. : " Aspiciente universe exercitu, absque mora- trucidant, arma auferunt, et spona ex parte diripiufit." 234 THE EARLY SIEGEo OF PARIS. [Ebsay have already heard, came in time only to bear off the body, at the expense of severe wounds received in his own person* The corpse of the Duke was carried to Soissons and was buried in the Church of Saint Medard. The army of Henry, disheartened by the loss of their chief, presently returned to their own homes. Paris was again left to its own resources, cheered only by such small rays of hope as might spring from the drowning of one of the besieging leaders in the river.f The news of the death of Henry was brought to the Em- peror. Notwithstanding his grief — perhaps an euphemism for his fear — he pressed on towards Paris with his army ; but even the chronicler most favourable to him is obliged to confess that the lord of so many nations, at the head of the host gathered from all his realms, did nothing worthy of the Imperial majesty .% All in truth that the Emperor Charles * The exploit of Count Ragnar comes only from the Annales Vedastini :' "Quum nuii assent ilium armis snis, supervenit quidam e Francis, Bag- nerus nomine Comes, ejusque corpus non absque vulneribus illis tulit ; quod statim Imperatori nuntiatum est." Eegino says only, "Agminibus impetum facientibus, vix cadaver exanime eruitur. He adds, " Exercitus, amisso duce, ad propria revertitur." t Abbo, ii. 217: " En et Ainricus, superis crebro vocitatus, Obsidione volens illos vallare, necatur. Inque suos, nitens Sequanam transire, Danorum Hex Sinric, geminis ratibus spretis, penetravit Cum sociis ter nam quinquagenis, patiturque Naufragium medio fluvii, fundum pel.iturus, Quo fixit, comitesque simul, tentoria movti, Hie sua castia pvius Sequanae contingere fundum Quo surgens oirtur, dixit, quam linquere rrgnum Prancorum, fecit Domino tribuente quod inquit." % Regiuo, 887: "Post hajc Imperator, Galliarum populos perlustrans, Parisius cum immenso exercitu venit, ibique adversos hostes castva posuit, sed nil dignum Imperatoria majestate in eodem loco gessit." So Ann. Vid. 886: Ille vero audito multum doluit; accepto tamen consilio, Parisius venit cum manu validS : sed quia Dux periit, ipse nil utile gessit." So the Annals of Pulda, 886 : " Imperator per Burgundiam obviam Nortmannos in Galliam, qui tunc Parisios erant, usque pervenit. Occiso ibi Heinrico, Marchensi Prancorum, qui in id tempus Niustriam tenuit, Bex, parum prospere actis rebus, revertitur in sua." VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 285 did was to patch up a treaty with the barbarians, by virtue of which, on condition of their raising the siege of Paris, they received a large sum as the ransom of the city, and were allowed to ravage Burgundy without let or hindrance* We are told indeed that this step was taken because the land to be ravaged — are we to understand the Kingdom of Boso ? — was in rebellion.t At all events, the Christian Emperor, the last who reigned over the whole Empire, handed over a Christian land as a prey to pagan teeth, and left Paris without striking a blow. Charles went straight back into Germany, and there spent the small remnant of his reign and life in a disgraceful domestic quarrel.J One act however he did which concerns our story. Hugh the Abbot, the successor of Eobert the Strong in the greater part of his Duchy, had died during the siege. The valiant Count of Paris was now, by imperial grant, put in possession of all the domains which had been held by his father.§ But the Count was not long to remain a mere Count ; the city and its chief were alike to receive the reward of their services in the cause of Christendom. Presently came that strange and unexampled event by which the last Emperor of the legitimate male stock of the great Charles was deposed by the common consent of all his dominions. The Empire again split up into separate Kingdoms, ruled over by Kings of their own choice. The choice of the Western realm fell, as it well deserved to fall, upon the illustrious Count of Paris. Later writers, full of hereditary ideas, seem hardly to have * .Ann. Ved. 866 : " Factum est vere consilium miseriini ; nam utrum- que, et civitatis redemplio illis promissa est, et data est via sine im- pedimenta, ut Burgundiam hieme deprsedarent." So Ann, Fuld. 886 : " Imperator perterritus, quibusdam per Burgundiam vagandi licentiam dedit, quibusdam plurimam promisit pecuniam, si a regno ejus statute inter eos tempore discederent." t Begino, 887 : " Ad extremum, concessis terris et regionibus quse ultra Sequanam erant Nordmannis ad depraedandum, eo quod iacolse ilkrum sibi obtemperare nollent, recessit." t The details follow immediately after in Begino. § See above, p. 222. So Ann. Ved. 886 : " Terra - patris sui Eothberti Odoni Comiti concessS, Imperator cas>tra movit." 236 THE EABLT SIEQES OF PARIS.' [Essay understood the first election of a national King, and to have looked upon Odo as simply chosen as a guardian for the young heir of the Karlings, the future King Charles the Simple.* But Charles, instead of Odo's ward, appeared as bis most dangerous rival. For the reign of Odo was not un- disturbed, nor was his title undisputed. He had to struggle in the beginning of his reign with a rival in the Italian Guy, and in later years he had to withstand the more formidable opposition of Charles himself. And, chosen as he was by the voice of what we may now almost venture to call the French people, hallowed as King in the old royal seat of Compiegne by the hands of the Primate of Sens, the Metropolitan of his own Paris,! Odo had still to acknowledge the greater power and higher dignity of the Eastern King. He had to acknow- ledge himself the man of Arnulf, to receive his crown again at Arnulf's hands, while Arnulf was not as yet a Roman Emperor, but still only a simple King of the East Franks.}: * Aimon of Feury, de Regibus Francorum (Pertz, is. 374) : " Karolus, qui Simplex postea est dictus, in cunis asvum agens, patre orbatus remansir. Cujus setatem Francise primores incongruam, ut erat, exercenda? domina- tionis arbitrati, maxime quum jam recidivi Nortmannorum nuntiarentur motus, concilium de summis ineunt rebus. Supererant duo filii Rotberti ; senior Odo dicebatur, Eotbertus alter, patrem nomine referens. Ex his majorem uatu Odonem Franci, licet reluctantem, tutorem pueri regnique elegere gubernatorem, qui mente beriignus et reipublica? hostes arcendo strenue prsefuit, et parvulum optime fovit, atque adolescenti et suarepetenti patienter regna refudit, a quo parte regni redonatus quo advixit tempore hostibus terribilis eique semper exstitit fidelis." This account leaves out all mention of Charles the Fat, as is done also in the Historia Francorum Senonensis (Pertz, ix. 365) : " Post haec defunctus est Hludovicus Bex Francorum, Alius Karoli Calvi, relinquens filium suum parvulum, Karolum nomine, qui Simplex appellator, cum regno in custodil Odonis principis. Bo tempore gens incredula Normannorum per Gallias sese diffudit, credibus, incendiis, atque omni crudelitatis genere debacchata. Deinde Franci, Bur- gundiones, et Aquitanenses proceres, congregati in unum, Odonem principera elegerunt sibi in Begem." Alberic of Trois Fontaines, on the other hand, speaks of Charles the Simple as intrusted to the care of Odo by Charles the Fat. t Ann. Ved. 888. % Ibid. : " Odo Rex Remis civitatem contra niissos Amulfi perrexit, qui ei coronam, ut ferunt, misit, quam in ecclesiii Dei genitricis in natali VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PAttlS. 237 Still the Count had become a King ; the city which his stout heart and arm had so well defended had become a royal city. The rank indeed both of the city and its King was far from being firmly fixed. A hundred years of shiftings and changings of dynasties, of rivalry between Laon and Paris, between the Frank and the Frenchman, had still to follow. But the great step had been taken ; there was at last a King of the French reigning in Paris. The city which by its own great deeds had become the cradle of a nation, the centre of a kingdom, had now won its fitting place as their head. The longest and most unbroken of the royal dynasties of Europe had now begun to reign. And it had begun to reign, because the first man of that house who wore a crown was called to that crown as the worthiest man in the realm over which he ruled. But we must go back to the enemy before Paris. By the treaty concluded with the Emperor, they were to raise the siege, but they were left at liberty to harry Burgundy and Other lands. The citizens of Paris, however, steadfastly re- fused to allow them to pass up the Seine ; so the Northmen ventured on a feat which in that age was looked on as un- paralleled.* They saw, we are told, that the city could not be taken ; so they carried their ships for two miles by land, and set sail at a point on the river above the city.f While sancti Bricoii capiti impositam, ab omni populo Rex adclaniatur," Cf. Ann. Fuld. 888-895; Regino, 895. Amulf was not crowned Emperor till 896. An amusing perversion of this confirmation by Arrnilf will be- found in Alberic des Trois Fontaines (888), who turns it into a confirmation by Charles the Fat : " Normanni, fugati a civitate Parisius, Senonas vene- runt, quorum timore Waltherus Senonensis Archiepiscopus unxit Odonem in Regem, ut exiret contra eos. Fuit enim iste Odo frater ex matre supra dicti Hugonis Abbatis, filii Karoli magni ex Regino ; xinde aliqua, erat ratio quod ei in tutela regni successit. Potuit igitur fieri, ut primo tmgerelur ab Archiepiscopo, postea confinnaretur, quod factum erat a memorato Imperatore Karolo." * Regino, 888 : " Nordmanni, qui Parisiorum urbem obsidebant, miram et inauditam rem, non solum nostra^ sed etiam superiore -state fecerunt." t Ibid. : " Quurn civitatem inexpugnabilem esse persensissent, omni virtute omnique ingrnio laborare coeperunt, quatenus urbe post tergum 238 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Ebsay the Empire was falling in pieces, while new kingdoms were arising and were being struggled for by rival Kings, the Northmen were harrying at pleasure. Soissons was sacked ;* after a long and vain attack on the mighty walls of Sens, the enemy found it convenient to retire on a payment of money .f Meaux also, under the valiant Count Theodberht, stood a siege ; but, after the death of their defender, the citizens capitulated. The capitulation was broken by the Northmen ; the city was burned, and the inhabitants were massacred.}: By this time Odo was King. Meanwhile the Northmen,, after their retreat from Sens, had made another. attempt on Paris, and had been again beaten off by the valiant citizens.§ The King now came to what was now his royal city, and established a fortified camp in the neighbourhood to secure. it from future attacks. || Yet, when the Northmen once more besieged Paris in the autumn of 889, even Odo himself had to stoop to the common means of deliverance. The new King, the first Parisian King, bought off the threatened attack by the payment of a Danegeld, and the pirates went away by land and sea to ravage the Gonstantine peninsula, the land which, a generation or two later, was to become the special land of the converted Northmen.1T relict^, classem cum omnibus copiis per Sequanam sursum possent evehere, et sic Hionnam fluvium ingredientes, Burgundiae fines absque obstaculo penetrarent." * Ann. Ved. 886. t Ibid. j Ann. Ved. 886. § Eegino, 889 : "Nordmanni a Senonica urbe recedentes, denuo Parisius cum omnibus copiis devenerunt. Et quum illis descensus fluminis a civibus omnino inhiberetur, rursus castra ponunt, civitatem totis viribus oppugnant, sed, Deo opem ferente, nihil prsevalent." || Ann. Ved. 888 : " Circa autumni vero tempora Odo Bex, adunato exercitu, Parisius venit ; ibique castra metatus est prope civitatem, ne iterum ipsa obsideretur." If Eegino, 890 : " Civibus qui continuis operum ac vigiliarum laboribus induruerant, et assiduis bellorum conflictibus exercitati eiant, audaciter reluctantibus, Nordmanni, desperatis rebus, naves per terrain cum magno sudors trahunt, et sic alveum repetentes, Britannia finibus classem traji- VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 239 Paris was at last secured against Scandinavian attack by the establishment of the Duchy of Normandy. By the Treaty of Clair-on-Epte in 913, Hrolf Ganger (changed in French and Latin mouths into Eou and Eollo) became the man of the King of Laon for lands which were taken away from the dominion of the Duke of Paris. Charles the Simple, the restored Karling, was now King; Eobert, the brother of Odo, was Duke of the French ; and there can be no doubt that the tottering monarchy of Laon gained much by the dismemberment of the Parisian Duchy and by the establish- ment at the mouth of the Seine of a vassal bound by special ties to the King himself. The foundation of the Eouen Duchy at once secured Paris against all assaults of mere heathen pirates. France had now a neighbour to the im- mediate north of her — a neighbour who shut her off from the sea and from the mouth of her own great river — a neighbour with whom she might have her wars as with other neighbours ; but a neighbour who had embraced her creed, who was speedily adopting her language and manners, and who formed part of the same general political system as herself. The shifting relations between France and Normandy during the tenth and eleventh centuries form no part of our sub- ject, but it will be well to bear in mind that Paris was at once sheltered and imprisoned through the Norman posses- sion of the lower course of the Seine. It follows then that the next besiegers of Paris came from a different quarter ; and these next besiegers came from the quarter from which its last foreign besiegers have come. In the course of the tenth century, the century of so many shift- ing relations between Eouen, Laon, and Paris, while the ciunt. Quoddam castellum in Constantiensi territorio, quod ad sanctum Loth dicebatur, obsident." The action of Odo comes from Ann. Ved. 889 : " Contra quos [Danos] Odo Bex venit ; et nuntiis intercurrentibus, mune- rati ab eo regressi a Parisius, relictaque Sequanit, per mare navale iter atque per terram pedestre et equestre agentes in territorio Constantise civitatis circa castrurn sancti Laudi sedem sibi -faciunt, ipsumque castrum oppugnare non cessant." 240 THE EAULY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay rivalry between King and Duke sometimes broke forth and sometimes slumbered, Paris was twice attacked or threatened by German armies. Both the first and the second Otto at least appeared in the near neighbourhood of the city. In 946, the first and greatest of the name, not yet Emperor in formal rank, but already exercising an Imperial pre-eminence over the kingdoms into which the Frankish Empire had split up, entered the French Duchy with two royal allies or vassals in his train. One was the Burgundian King Conrad, Lord of the realm between the Rhone and the Alps ; the other was the nominal King of Paris and its Duke, Lewis, alike the heir of all the Karlings and the descendant of our own iElfred, whose nominal reign over the Western Kingdom was in truth well nigh confided to the single fortress of Compiegne. Among the shifting relations of the Princes of the Western Kingdom, Hugh Duke of the French and Eichard Duke of the Normans were now allied against their Carolingian overlord. He had lately been their pri- soner, and he had been restored to freedom and kingship only by the surrender of the cherished possession of his race, the hill and tower of Laon. Otto, the mighty Lord of the Eastern realm, felt himself called on to step in when Teutonic interests in the Western lands seemed to be at their last gasp. The three Kings united their forces against the two Dukes, and marched against the capitals both of France and Normandy. But never were the details of a campaign told in a more contradictory way. There can be little doubt that Bouen was besieged, and besieged unsuccessfully. Thus much at least the German historian allows;* in Norman hands the tale swells into a magnificent legend.f What happened at Paris is still less clear. Laon, for the moment a French possession, was besieged unsuccessfully, and Rheims * Widukind, iii. 4 : " Exinde, collect^ ex omni exercitu electorum ■militum manu, Rothun Danorum urbem adiit, sed difflcultate locorum, •asperiorique hieme ingruente, plaga eos quidem magnfi percussit ; incolumi exercitu, infecto negotio, post tres metises Saxoniam regressus est." ,f See Dudo's account in Duchesne, Eer. Norm. Scriptt., 130-134; or Palgrave, ii. 562-578. VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 211 successfully.* Then, after a vain attempt on Senlis, the combined armies of the Kings of Aachen, Aries, and Oom- piegne drew near to the banks of the Seine. Flodoard, the canon of Rheims, the discreetest writer of his age, leaves out all mention of Paris and its Duke; he tells us only that the Kings crossed the river and harried the whole land ex- cept the cities, t The Saxon Widukind tells us how his King, at the head of thirty-two legions, every man of whom wore a straw hat,J besieged Duke Hugh in Paris, and duly per- formed his devotions at the shrine of Saint Denis.§ From these two entries we are safe in inferring that, if Paris was now in any strict sense besieged, it was at least not besieged successfully. But Eicher, the monk of Saint Eemigius, one of the liveliest tale-tellers of any age, is ready with one of those minute stories which, far more than the entries of more solemn annalists, help to bring us face to face with the men of distant times. The Kings were drawing near to the Seine. In order that the enemy might be cut off from all means of crossing, the Duke of the French, Hugh the Great, had bid- * Richer, ii. 54 : " Tres itaque Eeges, in unum collecti, primi certaminis laborem Lauduno inferendum decernunt. Et sine mora, illo exercitum ducunt. Quum ergo ex adverso montis eminentiam viderent, et omni parte urMs situm explorarent, cognito incassum sese ibi oertaturos, ab ea urbe discedunt et Bomos adoriuntur." He then goes on to describe the taking of Kheims. This is confirmed by Widukind, iii. 3 : " Eex cum exercitu Lugdunum adiit, eamque armis tentavit." He places the taking of Rheims after the attack on Paris, and afterwards, perhaps inadvertently, speaks of Laon as if it had been taken. Lugdunum is of course a mistake for Laudunum. t Elodoard, 946 (Pertz, iii. 393) : " Sicque trans Sequanam contendentes, loca queeque prater civitates gravibus atterunt depraedationibus." % Widukind (iii. 2) records Otto's answer to a boastful message of Hugh : " Ad quod Eex famosum satis reddit responsum ; sibi vero fore tantam multitudinem pileorum ex culmis contextorum, quos ei prsesentari oporteret, quantam nee ipse nee pater suus umquam videret. Et revera, quum essetmagnus valde exercitus, triginta scilicet duarum legionnm, non est inventus qui hujusmodi non uteretur tegumento, nisi rarissimus quisque." On these straw hats see Pertz's note. § Widukind (iii. 3), immediately after the attempt on Eouen, adds i " Inde Parisius perrexit, Hugonemque ibi . obsedit, memoriam quoque Pionysii martyris digne honorans veneratus est." E 242 THE EABLY SIEGES OF PABIS. [Essay den all Vessels, great and small, to be taken away from the right bank of the river for the space of twenty miles. But his design was hindered by a cunning stratagem of the in- vaders. Ten young men, who had made up their mind to brave every risk,* went in advance of the army of the Kings, having laid aside their warlike garb and provided themselves with the staves and wallets of pilgrims. Protected by this spiritual armour, they passed unhurt and unchallenged through the whole city of Paris, and crossed over both bridges to the left bank of the river. There, not far from the suburb of Saint German, dwelled a miller, who kept the mills which were turned by the waters of the Seine.f He willingly received the comely youths who professed to haye crossed from the other side of the river to visit the holy places. They repaid his hospitality with money, and more- over laid in a stock of wine, over which they spent a jovial day. The genial drink opened the heart and the lips of the host, and he freely answered the various questions of his guests. He was not only a miller ; he was also the Duke's head fisherman, and he moreover turned an occasional penny by letting out vessels for hire. The Germans praised the kindness which he had already shown them, which made them go on to ask for further favours. They had still other holy places to pray at, but they were wearied with their journey. They promised him a reward of ten shillings — no small sum in the tenth century — if he would carry them across to the other side. He answered that, by the Duke's orders, all vessels were kept on the left bank to cut off the means of crossing from the Germans. They told him * Richer, ii. 57 : " Decern numero juvenes quibus constant! mente fixum erat omne periculum subire." He then describes their pilgrim's garb. t Richer, ii. 57 : " Jlle farinarium sese memorat, at illi prosecuti, siquid amplius possit interrogant. Ille etiam piscatorum Ducis magistrum se asserit, et ex navium accommodatione questum aliquem sibi adesse." This miller of the Seine appears also in a story of Geoffrey Grisegonelle in the Gesta Consulum Andegavensium (D'Achery, Spicilegium, iii. 247) : " In crastino Consul furtivus viator, egreditur, non longe a ParisiacS urbe burgum sancti Germani devitans, a molendinario qui molendinos Secana; custodiebat, dato ei suo habitu, navigium sibi parari impetravit." VIII.] TEE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 243 that it might be done in the night without discovery. Eager for his reward, he agreed. He received the money, and, accompanied by a boy, his stepson, he guided them to the spot where seventy-two ships lay moored to the river-side. The boy was presently thrown into the river ; the miller was seized by the throat', and compelled by threats of instant death to loose the ships. He obeyed, and was presently bound and put on board one of the vessels. Each of the Germans now entered a ship and steered it to the right bank. The whole body then returned in one of the vessels, and each again brought across another. By going through this pro- cess eight times, the whole seventy-two ships were brought safely to the right bank. By daybreak the army of the Kings had reached the river. They crossed in safety, for all the men of the country had fled, and the Duke himself had sought shelter at Orleans. The land was harried as far as the Loire, but of the details of the siege of Kouen and of the siege of Paris, if any siege there was, we hear not a word.* The military results of the first German invasion of France and Normandy were certainly not specially glorious. Laon, Senlis, Paris, and Bouen were, to say the least, not taken. All that was done was to take Bheims and to ravage a large extent of open country. But in a political point of view the expedition was neither unsuccessful nor unimportant. From that time the influence of the Eastern King in the affairs of the Western Kingdom becomes of paramount weight, and under his protection, the King of the West-Franks, King of Compiegne and soon again to be King of Laon, holds a far higher place than before in the face of his mighty vassals at Paris and Kouen. The next German invasion, forty years later, found quite another state of things in the Western Kingdom. The relations between King Lothar and Duke Hugh Capet were wholly different from the relations which * All that Kicher (ii. 58) tells us is that Otto's troops, after crossing the river, "terrS recepti inceBdiis prasdisque vehementibus- totam regionem usque Ligerim depopulati sunt. Post hasc feruntur in terram piratarum ao solo tenus devastant. Sicque Eegis injuriam atrociter ulti, iter ad sua retorquent." The " terra piratarum " is of course Normandy. K 2 244 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay had existed between their fathers, King Lewis and Duke Hugh the Great. No less different were the relations between Lothar and Otto the Second from those which had existed between their fathers Lewis and Otto the Great. The elder Otto had been a protector, first to his brother-in-law and then to his nephew ; the younger Otto was only a rival in the eyes of his cousin.* On the other hand, it was the policy of Hugh Capet to keep up the dignity of the crown which he meant one day to wear, and not to appear as an open enemy of the dynasty which he trusted quietly to supplant. For a while then the rivalry between Laon and Paris was hushed, and the friendship of Paris carried with it the friendship of Eouen and Angers. Thus, while Lewis, a prince than whom none ever showed a loftier or more gallant spirit, was hunted from one fortress or one prison to another, his son, a man in every way his inferior, was really able to command the forces of the whole land north of the Loire. Again the King of Gaul looked Bhine-wards; the border land of Lotharingia kindled the ambition of a prince who might deem himself King both of Laon and Paris. That border land, after many changes to and fro, had now become an acknowledged portion of the Eastern Kingdom. But a sudden raid might win it for the King of the West, and the Duke of Paris would be nothing loth to help to make so great an addition to the Kingdom which he meant one day to make his own. The raid was made ; the hosts of the King and the Duke crossed the frontier, and burst suddenly on the Imperial dwelling-place of Aachen. The Emperor, with his pregnant wife, the Greek princess Theophano, had to flee before the approach of his cousin, and- Lothar had the glory of turning the brazen eagle which his great forefather had placed on the roof of his palace in such a direction as no longer to be a standing menace to the Western realm, f As in a more recent war- * Lothar was the son of Lewis and of Gerberga the sister of Otto the Great j Lothar and the younger Otto were therefore cousins. f Richer, iii. 71 : " ^Eream aquilam qu» in vertice palatii a Karolo Magno acsi volans fixa erat, in Vulturnum converterunt. Nam Germani VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PABIS. 245 fare, the Gaul began with child's play, and the German made answer in terrible earnest. The dishonour done to their prince and his realm stirred the heart of all Germany, and thirty thousand horsemen — implying no doubt a far larger number of warriors of lower degree — gathered round their Emperor to defend and avenge the violated Teutonic soil. Lothar made no attempt to defend his immediate dominions; he fled to crave the help of his mighty vassal at Paris.* The German hosts marched, seemingly without meeting any resistance, from their own frontier to the banks of the Seine. Everywhere the land was harried ; cities were taken or sur- rendered; but the pious Emperor, the Advocate of the Universal Church, everywhere showed all due honour to the saints and their holy places.t In primatial Kheims, in our own days to be the temporary home of another German King, the German Caesar paid his devotions at the shrine of Saint Eemigius, the saint who had received an earlier German conqueror still into the fold of Christ.J At Soissons Saint Medard received equal worship, and when the church of Saint Bathild at" Chelles was burned without the Emperor's knowledge, a large sum was devoted to its restoration. But if the shrines of the saints were reverenced, the palaces of the rival King were especially marked out for destruction. Attigny was burned, and nearly equal ruin fell upon Com- eam in Favonium converterant, subtiliter significantes Gallos suo equitatu quandoque posse devinci." So Thietmar of Merseburg, iii. 6 (Pertz, iii. 761), records the turning of the eagle and adds : " Hseo stat in orientali parte domus, morisque fuit omnium hunc locum possidentium, ad sua earn vertere regna." The raid on Aachen is also described by Baldric in the Gesta Episcopormn Cameracensium, i. 96 (Pertz, vii. 440). He always speaks of Lothar as " Eex Karlensium," and of his kingdom as " partes Karlensium." In Thietmar he is " Eex Karolingorum." See above, p. 215. * Richer, iii. 74 : " Sic etiam versa vice, Lotharium adurgens, eo quod militum copiam non haberet, fluvium Sequanara transire compulit, et geniebundum ad Ducem ire coegit." t Gest. Ep. Cam. i. 97 : " Paternis moribus instructus, ecclesias obser- vavit, immo etiam opulentis muneribus ditare potius asstimavit." % Richer, iii. 74 : " Per fines urbis Remorum transiens sancto Eemigio multum honorem exhibuit." 246 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay piegne itself. Meanwhile the King had fled to Etampes, in the immediate territory of the Duke, while Hugh himself was gathering his forces at Paris. At last the German host came within sight of the ducal city. Otto now deemed that he had done enough for vengeance. He had shown that the Frontiers of Germany were not to be invaded with im- punity ; he had come to Paris not to storm or blockade the city, but to celebrate his victorious march with the final triumph of a pious bravado. He sent a message to the Duke to say that on the Mount of Martyrs he would sing such a Hallelujah to the martyrs as the Duke and people of Paris had never heard. He performed his vow ; a band of clergy were gathered together on the sacred hill, and the German host sang their Hallelujah in the astonished ears of the men of Paris. This done the mission of Otto was over, and after three days spent within sight of Paris, the Emperor turned him to depart into his own land.* Such, at least, is the tale as told by the admirers of the Imperial devotee. In the hands of the monk of Eheims the story assumes quite another shape, and in the hands of the panegyrist of the House of Anjou it inevitably grows into a legend, f Eicher tells us how the Emperor stood for three days on the right bank of the river, while the Duke was gathering his forces on the left ;' how a German Goliath chal- * This story comes from Baldric, Gest. Ep. Cam. i. 97 : " Deinde vevo ad pompandam victoriae suae gloriam Hugoni, qui Parisius residebat, per legationem denuntians, quod in tantern sublimitatem Alleluia faceret et decantari in quanta non audierit, accitis quam plurilms clericis Allduia te Martyrum in loco qui dicitur Mons Martyrum, in tantum elatis vocibus decantari prascepit, ut attonitis auribus ipse Hugo et omnis Parisiorum plebs miraretur." The " % Mons Martyrum " is, we need scarcely say, Montmartre. t Gest. Cons. Andeg. vi. 2. Very little can be made of a story in which the invasion of Otto is placed in the reign of Robert, the son of Hugh Capet, who is represented as King, his father being still only Duke. The ex- pedition of Otto is thus described : " Otto siquidem Bex Aleroannovuin cum universis copiis suis Saxonum et Danorum Montem Morentiaci obsederat et urbi Parisius multos assultus ignominiose faciebat." Geoffrey Grisegonelle comes to the rescue with three thousand men. VIH.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. 247 lenged any man of France to single combat, and presently fell by the dart of a French or perhaps Breton, David ;* how Otto, seeing the hosts which were gathering against him, while his own forces were daily lessening, deemed that it was his wisest course to retreat.t As for the details of the retreat, our stories are still more utterly contradictory. One loyal French writer makes Lothar, at the head of the whole force of France and Burgundy, chase the flying Emperor to the banks of the Maes, whose waters swallowed up many of the fugitives.^ The monk of Bheims transfers the scene of the German mishap to the nearer banks of the Aisne,§ while the Maes is with him the scene of a friendly conference between the two Kings, in which Lothar, distrusting his vassal at Paris, deems it wiser to purchase the good will of the Emperor by the cession of all his claims upon Lotharingia.|| The most striking details come from the same quarter from which we get the picture of the Hallelujah on Montmartre. The Em- peror, deeming that he had had enough of vengeance, went away on the approach of winter :f he reached the Aisne and * Richer, iii. 76. The name of the French champion is Ivo. t Ibid. iii. 77 : " Otto, Gallorum exercitum sensim colligi non ignorans, suum etiam tarn longo itinere quam hostium incursu posse minui sciens, redire disponit, et datis signis castra amoverunt." t Rudolf Glaber, i. 3. His way of telling the whole story should be noticed: "Lotharius . . . - ut erat agilis corpore, et validus, sensuque integer, tentavit redintegrare regnum, ut olim fuerat." This is explained in the next sentence : " Nam partem ipsius regni superiorem, quse etiam Lotharii Regnum cognominatur, Otto Rex Saxonum, immo Imperator Romanorum [this means Otto the Great, ' primus ac maximus Otto'], ad suum, id est Saxonum, inclinaverat reguum." The retreat is thus described : " Lotharius ex omni Francia atque Burgundid militari manu in unum coacta, persecutus est Ottonis exercitum usque in fluvium Mosam multosque ex ipsis fugientibus in eodem flumine contigit interire." § Richer, iii. 77.: "Axonas fluviivada festinantes alii transmiserant, alii vero ingrediebantuquum exercitus' a Rege missus a tergo festinantibus affuit. Qui reperti fuere mox gladiis hostium fusi sunt, plures quidem at nullo nomine clari." || Ibid. iii. 80, 81 : " Belgicae pars quas in lite fuerat in jus Ottonis transiit." Rudolf Glaber clearly means the same thing when he says " Dehinc vero uterque cessavit, Lothario minus explente quod cupiit " ' 1 Gest. Bp. Cam. i. 98 : " Qui [Otto] quum satis exhausta ultione 248 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay proposed to encamp on its banks. But by tbe advice of Count Godfrey of Hennegau, who warned him of the dangers of a stream specially liable to floods, he crossed with the greater part of his army, leaving on the dangerous side only a small party with the baggage.* It was on this party that Lothar, hastening on with a small force, fell suddenly, while a sudden rise of the stream hindered either attack or defence on the part of the main armies.t Otto then sends a boat across with a challenge, proposing that one or the other should allow his enemy to cross without hindrance, and that the possession of the disputed lands should be decided by the result of the battle which should follow.^ " Nay, rather," cried Count Geoffrey, probably the famous Grisegonelle of Anjou, "let the two Kings fight out their differences in their own persons, and let them spare the blood of their followers."§ " Small then, it seems," retorted Count Godfrey in wrath, " is the value that you put upon your King. At least, it shall never be said that German warriors stood tamely by while their Emperor was putting his life in jeopardy." || At this congruam vicissitudinem se rependisse putaret, ad hiberna oportere se con- cedere ratus, inde simul revocato equitatu, circa festivitatem sancti Andrese, jam hieme subeunte, reditu.ni disposuit ; remensoque itinere, bono successu gestarum rerum gaudens super Axonam fluvium castra metari prsecepit." * Ibid.: " Paucis tamen famuloruni remanentibus, qui retrogradientes — nam sarcinas bellicse supellectilis convectabant — praa fatigatione oneris, tenebris siquidem jam noctis incumbentibus, transitum in crastino differe arbitrati sunt." t Grest. Ep. Cam. i. 98 : " Ipsa etenim nocte in tantum excrevit alveolus, ut difficultate importuosi littoris neuter alteri manum conferre potuerit j hoc ita sane, credo, Dei voluntate disposito, ne strages innumerabilis ederetur utrimque." % Ibid. Tbe prize was to be, "Commissi invicem pugna, cui Deus anmieret laureatus regni imperio potiretur." This challenge again reminds us of Brihtnoth. Compare the references in History of the Norman Conquest, i. 271, note 1. § Ibid. : " Quid tot ab utraque parte csedentur? Veniant ambo Eegesin unum tantummodo, nobisque procul spectantibus, summi periculi soli subeuntes una conferantur, unoque fuso castcri reservati victori subjiciantur.'' II Ibid.: "Semper vestrum Hegemvobis vilem baberi audivimus noncre- dentes ; nunc autem vobismetipsis fatentibus, credere fas est. Numquam VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. ^ moment, when we are looking for some scene of exciting personal interest, the curtain suddenly falls, and this our most detailed narrator, turns away from the fortunes of Emperors and Kings to occupy himself with his immediate suhject, the acts of the bishops of Cambray.* Putting all our accounts together, it is hard to say whether, in a military point of view, the expedition of Otto the Second was a success or a failure. If his design was to take Paris, he certainly failed. If he simply wished to avenge his own wrongs and to show that Germany could not be insulted with impunity, he undoubtedly succeeded. In either case the political gain was wholly on the German side. King and Duke acted together during the campaign ; but each, in its course, learned to distrust the other, and each found it ex- pedient to seek the friendship of the Emperor as a check against his rival, t And more than all, the Imperial rights over Lotharingia were formerly acknowledged by Lothar, and were not again disputed for some ages.J This campaign of 976 has a special interest just now, as its earlier stages read, almost word for word, like a forestalling of the events of the last and the present year of wonders. But it is a campaign which marks a stage in the history of Europe. nobis quiescentibus noster Imperator pugnabit, numquam nobis sospitibus in proelio periclitabitur." Compare the proposal of the Argeians for a judicial combat to decide the right to the disputed land of Thyrea ; Thuc. V. 41, tois 8e AajceSaif«)Kioif to fiev trparrov i&omi fimpia eivm ravra, much as it seemed to Count Godfrey. * His comment (Grest. Bp. Cam. i. 99) is : " Hoc igitur modo Regibus inter se discordantibus, jam dictu difficile est quot procellis factionum intonantibus ab ipsis suis vassallis afficitur Tethdo episcopus." t Eicher, iii. 78. Lothar debates whether he shall oppose Otto or make friends with him : " Si staret contra, cogitabat possibile esse Ducem opibus corrumpi, et in amicitiam Ottonis relabi. Si reconciliaretur hosti, id esse accelerandum, ne Dux prsesentiret, et ne ipse quoque vellet reconciliari. Talibus in dies afficiebatur, et exinde his duobus Ducem suspeotum habuit." 'See also the story of Hugh's dealings with Otto (82-85). % So Thietmar of Merseburg, iii. 6: " Eeversus Inde Imperator trium- phali gloria, tantnm hostibus incussit terrorem ut numquam post talia incipere auderent ; recompensatumque est iis quicquid dedecoris prius intulere nostris." 250 THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARIS. [Essay It is the first war that we can speak of as a war waged between Germany and anything which has even the feeblest claim to be called an united France. When Otto the Great marched against Paris and Eonen, he was fighting in the cause of the King of the West-Franks, the lawful overlord of the Dukes, against whom he was fighting. When Otto the Second marched against Paris, he was fighting against King and Dukes alike, and King and Dukes between them had at their call all the lands of the strictly French speech, the tongue of oil. Aquitaine, and the other lands of the tongue of oc, had of course, no part or lot in the matter ; then, as in later times, there were no Frenchmen south of the Loire. But if the expedition of Otto was in this sense the first German invasion of France, it was also for a long time the last. It is not often that Imperial armies have since that day entered French territory at all. The armies of Otto the Fourth appeared in the thirteenth century at Eouvines, and the armies of Charles the Fifth appeared in the sixteenth century in Provence. But Bouvines, lying in the dominions of a powerful and re- bellious vassal, was French only by the most distant external allegiance ; and Provence, in the days of Charles the Fifth, was still a land newly won for France, and the Imperial claims over it were not yet wholly forgotten. Both invasions touched only remote parts of the kingdom, and in no way threatened the capital. Since the election of Hugh Capet made Paris for ever the head of France and of all the vassals of the French kingdom, the city has been besieged and taken by pretenders, native and foreign, to the Capetian crown, but it has never, till our own century, been assailed by the armies of the old Teutonic realm. The fall of the first Buonaparte was followed by a surrender of Paris to a host which called up the memories alike of Otto of Germany and of Henry of England. The fall of the second Buonaparte was followed before our own eyes by the siege of Paris, the crowning-point of a war whose first stages suggest the campaign of the second Otto, but which, for the mighty interests at stake, for the long endurance of besieger and besieged, rather suggests the great VIII.] THE EARLY SIEGES OF PARTS. 251 siege at the hands of Sigefrith. But all alike are witnesses to the position which the great city of the Seine has held ever since the days of Odo. Paris is to France, not merely its greatest city, the seat of its government, the centre of its society and literature. It is France itself; it is, as it has been so long, its living heart and its surest bulwark. It is the city which has created the kingdom, and on the life of the city the life of the kingdom seems to hang. What is to be its fate ?* Is some wholly different position in the face of France and of Europe to be the future doom of that memo- rable city ? Men will look on its possible humiliation with very different eyes. Some may be disposed to take up the strain of the Hebrew prophet, and to say, " How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden city ceased !" Others will lament the home of elegance and pleasure, and what calls itself civili- zation. We will, in taking leave of Paris, old and new, wind up with the warning, this time intelligible enough to be striking, of her own poet : — " Francia cur latitas vires, narra, peto, priscas, Te majora triumphasti quibus atque jugasti Eegna tibi ? Propter vitium triplexque piaolum. Quippe supercilium, Veneris quoque feda venustas, Ac vestis preciosas elatio te tibi tollunt ! Afrodite adeo, saltern quo avcere parentesf Haud valeas lecto, monachas Domino neque sacras ; Vel quid naturam, siquidem tibi sat mulieres, Despicis, occurant? Agitamus fasque nefasque. Aurea sublimem mordet tibi fibula vestem, Efficis et calidam Tyria carnem preciosa. Non prater chlaraydem auratam cupis indusiari Tegmine, decusata tuos gemmis nisi zona Nulla fovet lumbos, aurique pedes nisi virga?, Non habitus humilis, non te valet abdere vestis. Efec faois ; hsec alias faciunt gentes ita nulke ; Ha?c tria ni linquas, vires regnumque paternum Omne soelus super his Christi, cujus quoque vates, Nasci testantur bibli ; fuge, Francia, ab istis ! " * [In January 1871 1 did not foresee— who did ?— a second siege of Paris —still less a burning of Paris— at the hands of Frenchmen.] t That is, simply kinswomen ; parentes in the French sense. 252 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KINO OF ITALY. [Essat IX. FEEDEEICK THE FIEST, KING OF ITALY.* Of all the many odd freaks of diplomacy which we have seen of late, perhaps the very oddest was when an Austrian states- man last year defended the possession of Lombardy by his master on the ground that that province was " a fief of the German Empire." Considering that there never was such a thing as "the German Empire;" considering also that, if there was, Lombardy never was a fief of it jt considering again that Francis Joseph of Lorraine is in no sense the heir or successor of the old German Kings ; considering also that, if he were, it would by no means prove his right to any particular fief of their kingdom : — considering all this, the statement, whether as a historical assertion or a political argument, is certainly remarkable in all its parts. We do not undertake to decide whether the diplomatist who made it was really so strangely ignorant himself, or whether he was, after the manner of diplomatists, merely practising upon the presumed ignorance of others. In either case it shows the reckless way in which people allow themselves to turn the facts of past times into political arguments about present affairs. If it is true in any sense that " Lombardy is a fief of the German Empire," it is equally true of all Germany, of * [This Essay appeared in January 1861, and I keep the political allu- sions as they were then written. It is curious and pleasant to see all that ten years have done. The peculiar title was chosen, because the Essay dealt mainly with the Italian side of Frederick, and also to show people that there had been Kings of Italy.] t [That is to say, Lombardy was a fief of the Roman Empire and of the Kingdom of Italy, not of the Kingdom of Germany.] IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 253 the greater part of Italy and Belgium, of nearly all Holland, all Switzerland, and about a third of France. If Francis Joseph is lawful master of Lomhardy, because Lombardy was " a fief of the German Empire," his claim must be equally good to be absolute lord of all the countries which we have reckoned up, to say nothing of vaguer claims to superiority oyer Poland, Denmark, England, and the world in general. We have mentioned this diplomatic freak as an instance oi the way in which the ancient relations of Germany and Italy may be misrepresented or misconceived from the German side. Not long ago we fell in with an Italian novel, fairly interesting, but not very remarkable, which shows how they may be misrepresented or misconceived from the Italian side. This novel, Folehetto Malespina by name, dealt with the days and the deeds of — since the great Charles himself — the greatest German who ever set foot upon Italian soil. Now most certainly any one who drew his idea of Frederick .Barbarossa from that story alone would set him down as having as little business in Italy as Francis Joseph has at Yenice and Cracow, or Louis Napoleon at Eome and Cham- bery. It would never occur to a reader of Folehetto Mdkspina that Frederick, German as he was, was the elected, crowned, and anointed King of Italy and Emperor of the Bomans, a King whose sovereignty was acknowledged in theory by all Italy, and was zealously asserted in act by a large portion of the Italian nation. It is most desirable, for the sake both of the present and the past, that misconceptions of this sort should not be allowed to confuse the right understanding of either. We undertook in a former Essay to show that Louis Napoleon- Buonaparte was not the successor of Charles the Great. We now assert, with equal confidence, that Francis Joseph of Lorraine is just as little the successor of the Saxon Ottos or the Swabian Fredericks. The legal and traditional rights of the old Teutonic Kings have absolutely nothing in common with the brute force of the modern Austrian tyranny. Let this be well understood on both sides, and it will be impos- 254 FREDERICK TEE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay sible to dress up an imposture of yesterday in the borrowed plumes of a fallen but still venerable power, and it will be needless to pervert and depreciate a great cause and a great man, because, at a superficial glance, his career seems to run counter to the cause which has the sympathy of every generous heart of our own day. Our immediate business is to give a picture, both personal and political, of Frederick Barbarossa as the greatest and most typical of the German Kings of Italy, and therein to show that there is absolutely nothing in common between the position of the old Swabian and that of the modern Austrian. We have chosen Frederick, both as being the most famous name among the Teutonic Kings, and because he is really the best suited for our purpose. Charles the Great stands by himself, alone and without competitor. He was the founder ; those who came after him were at most his successors. And again, the four centuries which elapsed between Charles and Frederick had greatly altered the position of the world. Charles belongs to the debateable ground between ancient and mediaeval history ; Frederick belongs to a century which is the most typical of all the middle ages. In the days of Charles much was still living and practical which in the days of Frederick had become matter of learning and tradition. Charles was really a Koman Augustus; he stepped, as naturally as a barbarian Frank could step, into the place of which the female usurper at Byzantium was declared un- worthy. Frederick was a real King of Germany, and a King almost equally real of Italy ; but the Imperial title was now little more than a magnificent pageant, to be disputed about by priests and lawyers. In the days of Charles, the Bishop of Rome was as clearly the subject of the Emperor as his rival at Constantinople. In the days of Frederick the Popes had reached that ambiguous condition, neither subject nor sovereign, which was in truth the source of their most efficient power. In short, it would require the ingenuity of a French Bishop to see any likeness between Charles the Great and anything now on the face of the earth. But IX J FBEDEBICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 255 Frederick comes near enough to us to be easily misunder- stood. In his days the old Francia had vanished. Ger- many, France, and Italy, in the modern sense of those words, already existed. A King of Germany warring in Italy, now conquering,, now conquered, building up with one hand, and pulling down with another, has enough of superficial likeness to phenomena of our own times to make it worth while to stop to show the points of real unlikeness. And again, Frederick is the best suited for our purpose of the post- Carolingian Emperors, if only because he is far the best known. Like Charles the Great, he has become a hero of romance : he has become, as it were, the patriarch of a nation, and his memory still lives in the German heart as the impersonation of German unity. Frederick was certainly not personally superior to his predecessors Otto the Great and Henry the Third; but he has contrived to attract to himself a greater portion of the world's lasting fame. Again, in the reign of Henry the Fourth the chief interest, as far as Italy is concerned, is of an ecclesiastical kind; in the reign of Frederick the ecclesiastical interest is subordinate to the political. Hildebrand himself is the arch-antagonist of Henry, but one cannot help looking at Alexander the Third chiefly as the ally of Milan. Again, Frederick Barbarossa, like all other German Kings, and in- deed like almost all other men, cannot be compared, in extent and variety of natural gifts, to his wonderful grandson and namesake. But the very genius of Frederick the Second, and the whole circumstances of his life, put him out of all competition. Frederick Barbarossa is essentially a man of a particular age and country ; he is in everything, for good and for evil, a German of the twelfth century. But his grandson can hardly be said to belong to any particular nation. The child of a German father and a Norman mother born and brought up in his half-Greek, half-Saracen realm of Sicily, the first patron of the newborn speech and civilization of modern Italy, it is hard to say what blood or what culture predominated in him; but it is clear that the Teutonic 256 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay element was the weakest of all. In the largeness of his views, in the yersatility of his powers, he rises intellectually as far above his grandfather as he sinks beneath him morally. It is never desirable for history to descend, either with prudish or with prurient curiosity, into the secrets of private life ; still it is impossible to avoid comparing the almost acknowledged harem of the second Frederick, his concubines and bastards openly thrust upon the world, with the seemingly decent and regular household of his grandfather. Perhaps, indeed, we may be more inclined to forgive the license which pro- duced Manfred and Hensius, than the lawful matrimony which gave birth to Henry the Sixth ; still, as concerns the men themselves, it is clear that the elder Frederick lived the life of a Christian King, and the younger that of a Saracen Sultan. In matters coming more properly within the sphere of history, we cannot fancy Frederick Barbarossa wandering into the regions of forbidden religious speculation ; but still less can we imagine him acting the part of a cruel persecutor of heretics,* without a particle of religious bigotry, simply to ward off the suspicion of heterodoxy from himself. Frederick the Second, in the higher parts of his character, was beyond his age, almost beyond all ages ; but for that very reason he had but little real influence upon his own generation, and is least of all men to be taken as typical of it. But the elder Frederick was one whose every idea was cast in the mould of his own age and nation. He devoted himself, with a stead- fast and honourable devotion which won the respect of his enemies, to those objects to which it was natural that a German King of the twelfth century should devote himself. Most of those objects are utterly alien to the sympathies of our own time ; many of them were opposed by those men of his own day with whom we are naturally most inclined to side. Still, a candid mind will ever honour the zealous * How far Frederick Barbarossa was responsible for the death of Arnold of Brescia does not seem quite clear j but to have spared a man whom every Catholic looked on as a heretic, and every Ghibelin as a traitor, would have required as keen a vision as that of Frederick the Second combined with a clemency beyond that of his grandfather. IX.] FREDEBIOK THE FIRST, KINO OF ITALY. 257 devotion of a life to any cause not palpably unrighteous, and unstained by means which, are palpably dishonourable. A prince whose life was mainly given up to crush the growing liberties of Italy appears at first sight as an object of some- thing almost like abhorrence. But only look at him with the eyes of a contemporary German, or of an Italian of his own side, and we shall soon see that the enemy of Italy in the twelfth century was at least one of a far nobler mould than the Bourbon, the Corsican, and the Lorrainer, with whom she has had to struggle before our own eyes. Our present object is chiefly to consider the character and position of Frederick with regard to the kingdom of Italy ; his relations with powers like Poland and Denmark, his two crusades, even his internal policy in his German realm, hardly concern us. Now, fully to understand that position, we must, for a short space, take up that general thread of early me- dieval history which we'dropped in our Seventh Essay. We there saw that the great Prankish Empire of Charles the Great was, at least from the year 888, cut up into the four Kingdoms of Eastern Franeia or Germany, Western Francia, Burgundy, and Italy; and that of these it was Eastern Francia, the Regmum Teutonictm, which had by far the fairest claim to be looked upon as the true continuation of the kingdom of Charles and Pippin. The Eastern Frank clave to the tongue and manners of his forefathers, and kept possession of the city whjch was the great Emperor's chosen dwelling during life and his resting-place after death. For nearly four hun- dred years the crown of Germany passed through a succession of dynasties, which produced at least their fair share of able and valiant Kings. We have been so used for some ages past to look upon Germany as a country utterly divided, or united only by the loosest of federal ties, that we have some difficulty in realizing the Regnwm Teutonimm of the early middle age as a single kingdom, and, for those times, far from a disunited kingdom. Of course it would not answer modern ideas of English good government, still less Parisian ideas of centrali- zation. A Duke of Saxony or Bavaria was a very formidable 258 FREDERICK TEE FIRST, KINO OF ITALY. [Essay subject, and he had very little scruple about rebelling against his liege lord. But he was not more formidable or less scru- pulous than an Earl of Mercia or Northumberland, long after England acknowledged a single King. He was, at all events, far more orderly and obedient than a Duke of Normandy or a Count of Flanders. In short, the Germany of Henry the Third was quite as united as the England of Eadward the Confessor, and incomparably more united than the France of Philip the First. A re-volt in Germany, like a revolt in England, was a rebellion, and was felt and spoken of as such ; but hostilities between Eouen and Paris have rather the character of foreign war. The object of the great Saxon war against Henry the Fourth was to dethrone the reigning King and to set up another, a tribute to his importance which the King of Paris never received from his refractory feudatories. While the King of the French never got farther from his capital than Orleans or Compiegne, the Kings of the Teutonic Kingdom were constantly moving from province to province and from city to city throughout the whole of their vast realm. Above all, while no Diet or Assembly of any kind brought the French feudatory into peaceful contact either with his lord or with his fellow-vassals, all Germany was constantly flocking together to those GoUoqwia which occupy as important a place in the pages of Lambert of Herzfeld as our own Witenagemots, , Great Councils, and Parliaments do in those of our own early historians. In a word, the Saxon, Frankish, and Swabian Emperors were, in a true and practical sense, Kings of Ger- many ; the early Capetians were only in the vaguest and most nominal way Kings of France. But the Kingdom of Germany was not the only realm which obeyed the sceptre of Frederick. For nearly two hundred years before his time it had been acknowledged that the prince who was elected to the sovereignty of the Begnim Teutonieum acquired thereby at least an inchoate right to the iron crown of the Italian Kingdom and to the golden crown of the Koman Empire. Otto the Great had appeared in Italy, at the call of the Italians themselves, as the most powerful IX.] FREDERICK TEE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 259 among the successors of the Great Charles ; he was crowned and anointed Emperor of the Eomans, and, as Emperor of the Eomans, he exercised the fullest sway over the Pontiff and the people of the Eternal City. From his time onward the rank of King of Germany was but a step to the higher rank of Eoman Emperor ; till at last the very name of the German Kingdom was lost, and the prince who was crowned at Aachen, but not yet crowned at Eome, bore the title of King, instead of Emperor, of the Eomans. It is easy to see that this increase of dignity proved the real ruin of the German Kingdom. It involved at least one Italian campaign in every reign ; each successive King had to fight his way to his Italian capital. It called off the sovereign from the affairs of his native kingdom to struggle with Popes and common- wealths in a land which it was vain to hope really to hold in any constant and regular obedience. And again, the very rank of Eoman Emperor, with all the halo of superhuman grandeur which surrounded it, must have tended to diminish the real power of the German King. Csesar Augustus might well be looked upon as almost too exalted to act as the local King of a particular kingdom. His power gradually diminished ; the Imperator Urbis et Orbis at last owned hardly a foot of ground in his Imperial capacity, and another prince was formally acknowledged as sovereign of the city from which he drew his highest title. Had therefore the German Kings Otto, Henry the Third, and Frederick himself, sternly abstained from all intermed- dling in Italian affairs, we can hardly doubt that the German Kingdom would have greatly gained thereby. Perhaps their once compact and powerful realm might have remained com- pact and powerful to this day. But it would have required foresight more than human to refuse the Imperial Crown for themselves and for their nation. National distinctions had not then made themselves so distinctly felt as they have since. The universal sway of the old Caesars, its more recent reno- vation by Charles, were not yet forgotten among men. That there should be a Eoman Caesar was something in the eternal s 2 260 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay fitness of things ; and to whom could that highest place on earth be so worthily decreed as to the best and most powerful of the successors of Charles ? Again, a large part of the higher ranks in Northern Italy were of German descent, and they probably had not yet wholly forgotten their German origin. And, though the speech of daily life was different in Germany and in Italy, yet the use of one language for every public purpose throughout Western Europe greatly tended to make national distinctions less strongly felt. Their practical effect was just as strong, but men did not then, as they do now, openly assert and act upon the principle that difference of race or language is a ground for difference of political government. We do not remember during the whole of Frederick's Italian warfare, any distinct and openly-avowed case of Italians as Italians acting against the German as a German. No man denied Frederick's right either to the Kingdom of Italy or to the Eoman Empire. The only doubt was as to the nature and extent of his royal rights ; and no doubt the growing republican spirit of the cities would quite as readily have disputed the rights of a native sovereign. And Frederick was throughout the chief of a large Italian party, who supported him with even greater zeal than his German countrymen. Possibly their loyalty was misplaced, but it was loyalty to an acknowledged legitimate King, not traitorous adhesion to a foreign invader. Frederick was in Italy the King of a party ; if he was cursed as a destroyer at Milan, he was worshipped as a founder at Lodi. The truth is that, in the twelfth century, Italian patriotism did not exist. Each man had the warmest local affection for his own city, but of Italy as a country he had no idea whatever. Indeed, as the cities more and more assumed the character of indepen- dent republics, as the notion of a separate Italian Kingdom grew fainter and fainter, national as distinguished from local patriotism grew fainter and fainter also. A variety of circum- stances in each particular case made the Emperor the friend of one city and the enemy of another. But the Milanese who resisted Frederick resisted the enemy, not of Italy, but of IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 261 Milan ; the men of Cremona and Pavia who followed his banner never dreamed that in supporting their own friend, they were supporting the enemy of their country. Difference of blood, speech, and manners may have silently aggravated the bitterness of the conflict ; yet the German historian * holds up his hands in horror at the cruelty of the Italians to one another, compared with which the mutual hate of German and Italian was love and gentleness. Nowhere, in .short, do we find any signs of that really national feeling which awoke in after-times the feeling with which stout Pope Julius longed for the expulsion of the Barbarians, or that which now unites all Italy from the Alps to the Pharos in loathing at the sway of Austria. The union of Germany and Italy under a single King, was in truth, something utterly hope- less; the attempt to bring about such an union brought much of lasting evil on both countries ; but openly to ac- knowledge that it was hopeless would have required a more long-sighted statesman than the twelfth century was likely to produce. We sympathize with the Italian opponents of Frederick, but" we sympathize with them rather as the as- sertors of civic freedom against Imperial power than as the defenders of Italy against a foreign invader. Italy, in short, in the twelfth century was not an " oppressed nationality." It was therefore in support of claims consecrated by long and venerable traditions, of claims admitted in name by the whole nation and zealously supported by a powerful party, that Frederick waged his long warfare in Italy. We have en- deavoured to give some notion of the cause which he repre- sented ; we will now attempt to draw a picture of the man himself, and to give a slight sketch of his policy and actions as far as concerns Italy. In so doing we shall endeavour, as far as possible, to draw our estimate of the man and his acts directly from contemporary sources. It is of course impos- sible but that remembrances of Gibbon, Sismondi, and Mil- * " Non ut cognatus populus, non ut domesticus inimicus, sed velut in extemos hostes, in alienigenas, tanta in sese invicem sui gentiles crudelitate SKviunt quanta nee in barbaros deceret." — Otto Fris. lib. i. cap. 39. 262 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay man should now and then influence us ; but we have certainly done our best to form our judgment from the evidence of men who were spectators, and sometimes actors, in the events. Most of the chronicles of this period are to be found in the sixth volume of the great collection of Muratori. Among these, the first place in rank belongs to no less a person than Frederick himself, who gives a summary of the early events of his reign in a letter to Otto, Bishop of Freisingen, prefixed to that prelate's history. The second place in dignity and the first in importance is undoubtedly due to Otto himself. This episcopal historian was himself of princely, even of Imperial descent ; he was the son of Leopold the Third, Margrave of Austria, by Agnes, daughter of the Emperor Henry the Fourth. But as this same Agnes, by her first marriage with Frederick the First, Duke of Swabia, was the mother of Duke Frederick the Second, the father of the Emperor Frederick, it follows that Bishop Otto was himself the uncle of the subject of his history. That history, as we have said, may be read in the sober text of Muratori ;* but we have chosen rather to study it in a noble old copy, dated Strassburg, 1515, ushered in with Imperial diplomas from King Maximilian, and adorned with abun- dance of Imperial eagles. Otto first wrote a general history of the world in seven books, ending with the election of his nephew Frederick, in 1152, followed by an eighth book, of a diviner sort, containing an account of what is to happen at the end of the world. Like all chronicles of the kind, it is valueless alike for prophecy and for early history, but it - becomes useful as it draws near the writer's own time. He afterwards accompanied his Imperial nephew in his first Italian expedition, and wrote two books Be Oestis Friderici Primi, which fill one of the highest places in the list of mediaeval writings. He, however, unluckily gets no further than the fourth year of his hero's reign ; but his work is con- tinued in two books more by Eadevic, a canon of his own church, down to 1160, the year in which Radevic wrote. Both these authors, of course, write from the Imperial side, * [It has since appeared in one of the latest volumes of Pertz.] IX.] FREDERICK TEE FIRST, EIN& OF ITALY. 263 but both seem to write as fairly as one can expect, and they are especially valuable in quoting contemporary documents. Otto writes like a prince, admiring his nephew without wor- shipping him, and showing throughout the wide grasp of a statesman, and a most remarkable spirit of observation in every way. Badevic, as becomes his place, is not the rival, but, as far as in him lies, the careful imitator of the prelate who promoted him. Both of them were high-minded German churchmen, and we look on their witness on the Emperor's side with far less suspicion than on that of the Imperialist writer next in importance. This is Otto Morena of Lodi, an Italian lawyer, who filled some judicial office under Frederick and the two preceding Kings, Lothar and Conrad. We must remember that this was just the time when the study of the Civil Law was reviving ; and there can be no doubt that its study was of no small advantage to the Imperial cause. Fre- derick came into Italy with the sword of Germany in the one hand and the books of Justinian in the other. No doubt the jurisconsult of Lodi honestly saw in the Swabian King the true successor of Augustus and Constantine, the Caesar of whom it was written that quod Principi placuit, legis habet vigorem* But no doubt this conviction produced in the mind of Otto the Judge an allegiance of a far more servile kind than the Teutonic loyalty of Otto the Bishop. We can fully understand the enthusiastic affection which every citizen of Lodi would feel for his royal patron and founder ; still we soon get wearied of the sanctissimus, the duleissimus, the Christianissimus, and the whole string of superlatives which Otto delights to attach to every mention of the Imperial name. Otto's own chronicle goes down to 1162; both as judge and as annalist he was succeeded by his son Acerbus, an equally firm adherent to the Imperial cause, but who is somewhat less profuse in his adulation, and who does not scruple sometimes to pronounce censure on his master's actions. His attachment to Frederick himself never fails • but he paints in strong colours the evil deeds of the Imperial * Inst. Just. lib. i. cap. ii. § 6. 264 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING 01 ITALY. [Essay lieutenants during Frederick's absence,* and the little heed which the Emperor himself took to punish them.t The his- tory of Acerbus Morena ends with his own death, in 1167 ; the record of that event, and the character of the author, were doubtless added by another hand. These are the chief writers on the Imperial side. On the other side we have the too brief chronicle of the Milanese Sire Eaul in the sixth volume of Muratori, and the life of Pope Alexander in the collection of the Cardinal of Aragon in the third. The sixth volume also contains a few smaller pieces on particular parts of the story; one of which is Buoncompagni's Narrative of the Siege of Ancona, a most interesting piece of description, but to which, as it is not strictly contemporary, it strikes us that Sismondi has given more weight than it deserves as a historical document. We may remark generally, that the writers on the papal and republican side commonly speak of the Emperor with a strong feeling of respect. If we want good hearty abuse of Frederick Barbarossa, we must turn to the letters of our own Saint Thomas of Canterbury and his correspondents. The cause of the difference is obvious. To the French and Eng- lish partizans of Alexander, Frederick was a mere distant bugbear, a savage enemy of the Church, to be abhorred as much or more than any Sultan of Paynimrie. Those who saw him nearer, even as an enemy, understood him better. Those who fought against him knew that they were contend- ing with a noble and generous enemy, and with one who, after all, was their own acknowledged sovereign. Popes too always commanded, even from their own party, less of rever- ence in Italy than they did anywhere else ; the sacrilegious warfare of the Ghibelin, which seemed so monstrous on this side the Alps, assumed a dye far less deep in the eyes of those among and against whom it was actually waged. Frederick was elected King in 1152. He came to the crown by that mixture of descent and election which was so common in the early middle age, and which modern writers * Apud Muratori, t. vi. col. 1127. t Apud Muratori, t. vi. col. 1131. IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 265 so constantly misunderstand. Nearly every modern state has settled down into a hereditary monarchy, and has enacted for itself a strict law of succession, because it has been found that, whatever arguments may be brought against that form of government, it has at least the great practical advan- tage of hindering dissensions and civil wars. Those earlier times had no clear idea of strict hereditary right ; but the family feeling was intensely strong, and in those days the personal character of a King was everything. A King could not then be a mere constitutional puppet ; a great man was loved or he was feared — in either case he was obeyed ; a small man, with equal legal authority, was despised, dis- obeyed, perhaps deposed or murdered. The ideal King needed two qualifications : he must be the descendant of former Kings, and he must be himself fit for the kingly office. Hence we constantly find a King succeeded, not by the person whom we should call his next heir, but by him who was deemed the worthiest of the royal house. Thus Conrad, by his last will, recommended, not his son, but his nephew Frederick, as his fittest successor in his kingdoms ; and the princes of those kingdoms confirmed his choice. Conrad's eldest son, who, according to a common practice, had been crowned in his lifetime as his successor, was dead ; his second Bon was too young : Germany had no desire for such another minority as that of Henry the Fourth ; Frederick was young, brave, vigorous ; he united the blood of the two great contending houses ; the son of a Ghibelin father and a Guelfic mother, he was the man of all others who might be expected to secure peace* at home and victory abroad. He was there- fore unanimously chosen King by the Assembly at Frankfurt and he received the crown of the Teutonic Kingdom f at Aachen, the royal city of the Franks.+ But besides Germany, * °"° : f ris ; ii -2 : cf -Urspergen S i S in anno (p. 295), who plays on the' name Fnednch = Pads Dives. t "Post primatn unctionem Aqnisgrani et acceptam cojonam Teutonic! regm."— Ep. Frid. ap. Otto n. Fris. ieuxon«a t "In sede regni Francorum, qua, in eadem ecclesia a Carolo mamo posita est, collocatur."— Otto Fris. ii. 3. SA ° 266 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay the newly-elected monarch had at least an inchoate right to the royal crowns of Burgundy and Italy and to the Imperial diadem of Eome. Of Burgundy we need say little more than that he visited the kingdom once or twice, that he secured his interest there by his marriage with the Burgundian princess Beatrice, and at last, rather late in his reign, in the year 1178, found leisure for a solemn coronation at Aries.* But our interest centres round him in his character of King of Italy and Emperor of the Bomans. Otto of Frei- singen distinctly tells us that Italian barons took a part in Frederick's election at Frankfurt.f We know not who these Italian barons may have been, what was their number, or how far they were really entitled to speak in the name of the Italian kingdom. But whoever they were, whether many or few, whether they were summoned or came of their own accord, it is clear that their presence must have tended to give at least an outward appearance of right to the new King's claims over Italy, both in his own eyes and in those of others. As King-elect of Italy, his course was to hold an assembly of the Italian kingdom at Roncaglia, to receive at Milan the iron crown of the Lombard Kings, and thence to advance to Borne, and there receive the golden crown of the Boman Empire at the hands of the Roman Pontiff. This was the regular course for each newly-elected King ; in theory he went on a peaceful errand to his capital ; in practice he com- monly had to fight his way at every step. Two things always strike us in these Imperial progresses : no Emperor ever gets to Borne and leaves it again without meeting with more or less of resistance, and yet that resistance never assumes any organized national form. No man denies his claims ; a strong party zealously asserts them ; and yet no King is turned into an Emperor without bloodshed. The truth is that it was an utter unreality for a German sovereign of the twelfth century * " Anno Domini mclxxviii. iii. nonas Augusti Fridericus Primus Impe- rator coronatus fuit apud Arelatem." — Vit. Alex. iii. ap. Muratori, torn, iii- p. 447. t " Non sine quibusdam ox Italia baronibus."— Otto Fits. ii. 1. IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 267 to attempt to unite Italy under his sceptre, yet no one fully understood that it was an unreality. The German King claimed only what his predecessors had always claimed ; half Italy was ready to receive him with open arms; learned Doctors of the Civil Law told him that his Imperial rights were something all but eternal ; — how were his eyes to be opened ? Eome herself lived upon memories of the past ; she fiuctated between memories of the Eepublic and memories of the Empire. Sometimes she set up a Consul, a Senator, a Tribune ; sometimes she welcomed the German invader as the true Augustus Csesar. The whole atmosphere of the age seems saturated with this kind of unreality ; it was unreal, but it was not knowingly put on ; people thoroughly believed in it, and therefore the unreality became real, and had most important practical results. We are half inclined to laugh when the German sovereign calls himself Bomanorwm Impe- rator semper Augusts, — when the German historian stu- diously adopts Eoman language, talks about Urbs and Orbis Bomanus, and dates from the foundation of the city of Eomulus. It is quite impossible to avoid laughing, even at the great Frederick, when he writes, or causes some eloquent bishop to write in his name, to tell the Saracen Sultan that he is speedily coming to avenge the defeat of Crassus, and once more to restore his Empire to its widest limits under Trajan* It sounds strangest of all when the Eomans them- selves send, first to Conrad and then to Frederick, asking him to come and live among them, and reign over them as a constitutional Emperor, the choice and the child of the Eoman Senate and People, t This last was too much ; when it came to this, Frederick did find out that, if he was to reign at all, it could only be as a Teutonic conqueror. The suc- cessor of Charles and Otto was not prepared to be told that * See Frederick's letter to Saladin, in Soger of Howden, ii. 357 Stubbs ■ Ralph of Diss, Decern Script. 640. The copy in Boger of Wendover (vol. ii. p. 429, ed. Coxe) leaves out the flourishes about Crassus and Marcus Antonius. t See the letter to Conrad, Otto Fris., i. 28 ; the embassy to Frederick, 268 FREDERICK TEE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay he was a stranger whom Rome had taken in ; and when Rome asked five thousand pounds of gold as the price of her recog- nition, Rome learned, in the triumphant words of Bishop Otto, that the Franks did not buy Empire with any metal but steel. All this was very absurd and very unreal ; that is, we at this distance of time see that it was so. But it is not very won- derful that the men of the time were less clearsighted, that old traditions and venerable names were too strong for them. The result is, that, in reading the history of the times, we can fully sympathize with both sides. Our first and most natural sympathy is with the heroes of Italian freedom, the defenders of Milan, the founders of Alessandria, the men who routed Frederick himself upon the glorious field of Legnano. But we should do very wrong if we looked upon Frederick as a cruel and unprovoked aggressor, or on his Italian partizans as traitors to their native land. Neither side has a monopoly of right or a monopoly of wrong. As no candid man can read our own history of the seventeenth century and not enter into the feelings alike of the best supporters of the King and of the best supporters of the Parliament, so, if we look upon Frederick and his enemies with the eyes of the twelfth and not with those of the nineteenth century, we shall find equal cause for admiration in the patriots of Lodi and in the patriots of Tortona, in the assertors of the venerable rights of the Roman Caesar and in the assertors of the new- born freedom of the Commonwealths of Lombardy. Frederick then came into Italy as a claimant of strictly legal rights, but of rights which we can now see to have been inconsistent with the circumstances of the time. The Impe- rial rights in Italy could be exercised only by fits and starts. Frederick came after one of the periods of intermission. During the reigns of Lothar and Conrad the royal authority in Italy had fallen very low; Frederick came to raise it again, to claim and to win back every power which had been exercised by Charles and Otto and Henry the Third. But he did not come in exactly the same character as any of those great Emperors. They came at the prayer of Italy, as IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 269 deliverers from utter anarchy, from the tyranny of cruel Kings, or from the abominations of rival and wicked Pontiffs. Frederick had no such advantage. During the practical interregnum which preceded his reign, a spirit had been at work, and a power had been growing up, in Italy against which earlier Emperors had not had to struggle. The freedom of the cities had made wonderful advances ; munici- palities were fast growing into sovereign commonwealths. With this spirit a King, anxious to assert his royal rights to the full, especially after a time of partial disuse, could not fail to come into conflict. Otto and Henry the Third came into Italy as champions of right against wrong ; they did not sin against a freedom which in their days was not yet in being ; Frederick unhappily was driven to appear, as no earlier Emperor had appeared, as the direct enemy of free- dom. The rights of the crown, as he understood them, and the rights of the republics, as the republics understood them, must have clashed sooner or later. The immediate occasion of his warfare with Milan is of comparatively little moment, because the immediate occasion, whatever it was, was not the real determining cause. In the narrative of Otto Morena the wrongs of Lodi hold the first place; the holy and merciful King comes mainly to deliver Otto and his fellow-citizens from Milanese oppression.* The Milanese Eaul seems hardly to think Lodi worth speaking of: the sagacious Frederick? wishes to bring Italy under his power ; Milan is at war with Pavia ; his sagacity leads him to take the side of Pavia as the weaker city. Frederick's own laureate tells us how, through the neglect of former Kings, the wicked had grown strong in Lombardy, and how the proud city of Saint Ambrose refused to pay tribute to Camr.* The Prince-Bishop of Freisingen * Otto Mor. ap. Muratori, torn, vi., col. 957 et seqq *£,"££ vvSuS" MustriU8 ' m *** Bm ' ioitis6mw - n A *>- X " De tributo Csesaris nemo cogitabat; Omnes erant Csesares, nemo censum dabat • Civitas Ambrosii velut Troja stabat; Deos pamm, homines minus foimidabat." Qedkhte au/Konig Friedrich, p. 65. 270 FAEDEBICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay sets forth a variety of motives as working on the mind of his Imperial nephew: the wrongs of Lodi are not forgotten, though they are less prominent in the pages of Otto the Bishop than in those of his namesake the Judge. The immediate occasion of the attack was almost accidental ; the Consuls of Milan wilfully led the King's army through a country where no provisions were to be had, and that at a time when the soldiers were generally out of humour at the bad weather.* Anyhow the war, which could not have been long put off, now began, — that great struggle which occupied thirty years out of the thirty-eight of the reign of Frederick. We of course cannot pretend to giye anything like a nar- rative of this long warfare. All that we can do is to comment on a few points which illustrate the character of Frederick and his cause. Primarily the war was a purely political one ; it was only by accident that it put on anything of a religious character. The struggle between Frederick and Alexander the Third is not exactly analogous to the struggle between Henry the Fourth and Hildebrand, or to that between Frederick the Second and a whole succession of Pontiffs. Pope and Caesar neyer could pull together, and Frederick, almost as a matterof course, had several matters of dispute with Pope Hadrian. One indeed concerned nothing less than the tenure of the Imperial crown. The controversy turned on a word. Hadrian spoke of the lenefieiwn which he had conferred upon Frederick by officiating at his Soman coronation, f Frederick, doubtless with a feudal lawyer at his elbow, asks if the word lenefidum is meant to imply that the Emperor of Eome was a vassal of the Bishop of Rome. Hadrian disclaims any such intention ; he held that he had done the Emperor a henejit, but he did not pretend to have invested him with a benefice. It is not unlikely that, if Hadrian had lived, a struggle of the Henry and Hildebrand type might have arisen between him and Frederick. As it was the strife was of another kind. Henry and Frederick the Second were, as far as Popes were concerned, open foes of the Church; Frederick the Second certainly was more * Otto Fris.,.ii. 13. f R a d. Fris., iii. 15 et seqq. IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 2U sinned against than sinning ; still, he was condemned, deposed, excommunicated, by Pontiffs and Councils whose authority- was not disputed. Henry the Fourth indeed disputed the rights of Hildebrand and set up a Pope of his own ; but he did not do so till his crimes had brought down upon him the wrath of the hitherto undisputed Pontiff. Indeed, Henry did not enthrone his Anti-Pope in Eome till Gregory had set up an Anti-Caesar in Germany. The case of Frederick Barbarossa was quite different ; he was not the foe of the Church, but merely of that party in the Church which triumphed in the end. The Eoman See was the subject of a disputed election : the accounts of that election are so utterly contradictory that it seems quite impossible to adopt either statement without imputing (what one is always loth to do) direct falsehood to the other party. Frederick had to choose between the rival Pontiffs, and he doubtless chose the one whose disposition best suited his policy. Poland, otherwise Alexander the Third, had already shown himself a strong assertor of hierarchical claims ; Octavian, otherwise Victor, was more disposed — at all events while his partfy was the weaker — to yield to the successor of Constantino and Justinian that loyal submission which Con- stantine and Justinian * had most certainly exacted from his predecessors. The cause of Alexander naturally triumphed ; a Pope reigning under Imperial protection was no Pope at all ; Frederick's very support of Victor drove strict churchmen to the side of Alexander. Again, the mere fact of Alexander's long reign, which allowed the Papal power to be wielded for many successive years by the same hand, greatly contributed to his strength and dignity, as contrasted with the quick suc- cession of the Imperialist Antipopes. Above all, Alexander, the spiritual enemy of Frederick, found it politic to coalesce' with his temporal enemies ; and the combined strength of the Church and the republics proved in the end too much for the arms of Caesar. Frederick was at last driven to seek absolu- tion from the Pope, and to acknowledge the liberties of the * Pope Hadrian was unlucky in quoting Justinian as the type of Imperial reverence for the Papacy. — Bad. Pris., iii. 1£. 272 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay cities. As Alexander was thus in the end triumphant, the Church has branded Victor, his successors and his adherents, with the charge of schism ; and Frederick, in the invectives of churchmen in other lands, appears in the odious character of a persecutor. Still one might think that to choose the wrong Pope in a warmly-disputed and very doubtful case was at worst a venial sin : it does not appear that Frederick sinned against any acknowledged principle of the religion of his age ; his warfare was not against the Popedom, but against a particular Pope, whom he denounced, and whom he may well have sincerely looked on, as an usurper of the Holy See. Our estimate of Frederick's personal character will be mainly determined by the estimate which we may form of his conduct during this long war. Assuming its justice from his own point of view, we can hardly fail to honour his un- tiring devotion to the cause which he had taken in hand. It is of course easy to say that that cause was simply his own exaltation. It would of course be easy to draw a touching picture of all the miseries of war, — of slaughter and plunder and devastation, of stately cities levelled with the ground, of men, women, and children driven from their native homes, merely that one man might enjoy the delight of exercising increased power, or that he might gratify the more childish desire for an useless bauble and an empty title. Nothing would be easier than to accumulate charges of cruelty, obstinacy, and disregard of human suffering, against a sovereign who spent nearly his whole reign in warring against his own subjects. Talk of this sort is extremely easy, but we believe that it would give a very false view of the case. No one, we think,' can go through the history of the time without clearly seeing that Frederick was not actuated by any low personal ambi- tion, but that he felt himself to have a mission, to which he zealously and sincerely devoted himself. To him the rights of the Roman Empire were a sacred cause, in whose behalf he was ready to spend and to be spent. He was doubtless stirred up by as clear a sense of duty to assert his Imperial claims as any Milanese patriot was stirred up to withstand them. Of IX.] FREDERICK TEE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 273 course, in fighting for the rights of the Empire, he was also_ fighting for his own greatness and glory. And what man is there who can quite separate himself from his cause ? Heroes, patriots, martyrs at the stake, do and suffer for a cause which they hold to he righteous ; but it is utterly impossible that they can wholly forget that the triumph of their cause brings success and power to themselves, and that, even in defeat and martyrdom, they win the fame and sympathy of mankind. Take the very purest of men, heroes whom no temptation of rank or wealth or power could ever corrupt for a moment, — Timoleon, Washington, or Garibaldi, — even they, we cannot but believe, must feel a greater excitement in the path of duty from the thought that they are winning for themselves the present love and gratitude of their fellow-citizens, and everlasting glory in the pages of history. That Frederick therefore was fighting in the cause of his own greatness really proves nothing against him. His purpose was no petty, passionate, momentary, ambition, such as has too often in- fluenced the policy of rulers in all ages. We see in him a steady untiring devotion to a cause which, in his eyes, was the cause of right. That we do not sympathize with his cause proves nothing. Let us compare him with a prince in almost everything his inferior, but in whom we see a similar un- bending devotion to a cause conscientiously taken up. What- ever we think of Charles the First in his days of power, his violations of law, his breaches of solemn contracts, it is im- possible not to respect the thorough conviction of right which bears him up through the more honourable days of his ad- versity. When he writes to Eupert that to a soldier or statesmen his cause must seem hopeless, but that, looking on it as a Christian, he knows that God will not suffer rebels to prosper nor his cause to be overthrown, it is impossible not to feel that, despot as he was, he was something very different from the vulgar run of despots. And if we feel this respect for Charles, much more may we feel it for Frederick, whose character rises far above that of Charles in those points where Charles, even from a royalist point of view, decidedly fails. 274 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay Charles, notwithstanding his real devotion to a cause, exhibits a strange mixture of irresolution and obstinacy. Frederick was rationally firm ; he was unyielding as long as there was a reasonable hope of winning his ends, but his firmness never degenerated into blind obstinacy. Again, Charles was one whom no man could really trust ; Frederick was, above all princes of the twelfth century, a man of his word. We have claimed honour for Frederick on the ground of his zealous and unbending devotion to a cause which he honestly adopted as the cause of right. This however is a doctrine which must not be pressed too far. It is im- possible to doubt that Philip the Second was zealously and conscientiously devoted to the cause of the Church and the monarchy. The question in all such cases is, By what means is the end sought for ? We do not blame Philip merely for coercing those whom he looked upon as rebels and heretics; to expect him to do otherwise would be simply to expect him to be gifted with a discernment given in its fulness to no European of that age save his Batavian rival. What we do blame him for is the baseness, perfidy, and wanton cruelty of the means by which he sought to compass his end. In Frederick Barbarossa we find nothing of the kind. According to the standard of his own age, Frederick certainly appears chargeable with neither cruelty. nor perfidy. We must re- member what that age was, though we really think that the twelfth century need not shrink from a comparison with many later ages. War was in the twelfth century undertaken on very light grounds, and it was carried on with very great cruelty. But it certainly was not undertaken on lighter grounds, or carried on with greater cruelty, than it was in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. The horrors of Burgundian and Armagnac warfare, of the Italian wars of the age of the Renaissance, of the Spanish rule in the Nether- lands, of the Thirty Years' War, equal anything in the very darkest times, and they certainly far exceed anything that can be laid to the charge of Frederick the First. Frederick had no guilt upon his soul like the sack of Rome or the sack of IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 275 Magdeburg ; he never, like Charles the Bold,* rode with delight through a town heaped with corpses, congratulating himself on his "good butchers." He did not drown his captives like Philip Augustus, starve them to death like John of England, or flay them alive like his own accomplished grandson.f Charles the Great beheaded four thousand Saxons in cold blood ; Eichard Cceur-de-Lion massacred his Saraeen prisoners wholesale ; the Black Prince looked on unmoved from his sick litter while men, women, and children were murdered in the streets of Limoges. No such scenes marked the entry of the triumphant Caesar into vanquished Milan or Tortona. Stern, even cruel, as he seems to us, yet, when we compare Frederick with his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, we see that there is a meaning even in the clemen- tissimus and dulcissimus of Otto Morena. As long as opposi- tion lasted, Frederick did not shrink from caiaying out to the utmost the cruel laws of war J of that stern age. He did not scruple to cut off the hands of those who tried to bring in provisions to a beleaguered town. He tied his hostages to his engines, that they might perish by the darts of their friends, or rather that their danger might move their friends to submission. When submission came, the injured majesty of Augustus required hard conditions of peace ; but, such as they were, they were always honourably kept, and they at least never involved hurt to life or limb. It was a hard sentence for the inhabitants of a whole city to march forth with their lives alone, or with so much of their worldly goods as they could carry on their shoulders ;§ but such a doom was mercy compared with the lot of those who fell into the jaws of Charles of Burgundy, of Alva, or of Tilly. Milan was levelled with the ground, doubtless as a high symbolic act of justice, a warning against all who should resist the might \Barante, Dues de Bourgogne, vol. x. p. 6. t " Quoseunque in castellis suis ex adversariis cepit, aut vivos excoriavit aut patibulo suspendit." Bog. Wend., iv. 209, ed. Coxe. J " Utar ergo deinoeps belli legibus." Bad. Fris., iv. 50. § Otto Fris , ii. 20 ; Bad., iv. 56 ; Otto Morena, col. 981. T 2 276 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay of the Lord of Germany and of Rome. But the vengeance of Frederick was exercised wholly upon dead walls ; it was another matter when restored Milan fell, three centuries and a half later, into the hands of the Caesar of a more civilized, at all events of a more polished, time. No doubt the wars and sieges of Frederick caused much human misery ; vast, and doubtless not very well disciplined, armies, living at free quarters,* must have been a constant scourge to the country : but all this is common to Frederick with countless other warlike princes ; what is specially his own is his constant moderation in victory. This alone would show that his wars were not wars of passion or caprice, but were waged in a cause which to him seemed a high and holy one. And again, in an age not so much of deliberate bad faith as of utter recklessness as to promises, an age when oaths were lightly taken and lightly broken, Frederick's all but inva- riable adherence to his word stands out conspicuously and honourably. Once, and only once, he failed. He stooped to attack Alessandria during a time of truce,t and he was de- servedly driven back and obliged to raise the siege. This is a deep stain upon Frederick's otherwise straightforward and up- right character. It is utterly unlike any other of his recorded actions. We may therefore at least believe that it was not a case of premeditated perfidy ; we may trust that he concluded the truce in perfect good faith, but that he was afterwards tempted into a breach of faith by the sight of a favourable opportunity for attack before the days of truce were expired. But, after all, the most truly honourable scene in the life of this great Emperor is that which followed his final defeat. After the Battle of Legnano in 1176, it was plain that he had no longer any hope of conquering the Lombard cities. He sought for peace : the negotiations were slow, but at last the Peace of Constanz was agreed upon, and became a law * The panegyrist of Acerbus Morena (col. 1153) mentions it as his special and wonderful merit, that he abstained from plunder himself, and did all he could to hinder it in others. IX.] FREDERICK TEE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 277 of the Empire. By this document the Imperial rights over the commonwealths were confined within certain moderate bounds. To Frederick's eternal honour, when he had given his people a constitution, he kept it. He did not act like German and Italian Kings ten years ago. After the treaty was once concluded, Frederick honestly threw himself into the altered state of things. He did not even sullenly with- draw himself from Italy altogether. In that very Milan whose citizens had broken his power, the city whose very existence showed how vain had been the schemes of his life, the King of Italy came and dwelt as an honoured guest, and, with perhaps too much regard for his new allies, he allowed the banner of the Empire to be displayed in local warfare against the enemies of Milan. Doubtless it was now Frede- rick's policy to preserve the peace of Italy, as his great object now was to obtain the Sicilian Kingdom for his son.* Still there have been few monarchs who could have so thoroughly adapted themselves to their altered fate, or who would have so scrupulously adhered to their faith when it was once plighted. We know few things in history more touching, more honourable to all concerned, than the last years of the Italian reign of Frederick. At last the hero went forth in his later years, as he had gone in his youth, on a yet higher errand than to maintain the rights of the Roman Empire. The temporal chief of Christendom, the highest and the worthiest of Western Kings, went forth once more to do battle for the sepulchre of Christ. We may be sure that no man ever put the cross upon his shoulder with a higher and a purer heart. Well had it been if he had reached the goal of his pilgrimage, and had given the crusading host a worthy leader. But he died before he could again reach the Syrian border bequeathing the destinies of Germany, Italy, and Sicily to the hands of his unworthy son, and leaving the championship of Christendom against the Moslem to the faithless Philip of Paris and the brutal Richard of Poitou. * It must be remembered that the Kingdom of Sicily and Duchy of Apulia did not— de facto, at least— form any part of the Kingdom of Italy, though the Emperors seem always, naturally enough, to have looked on the Norman Kings as interlopers. 278 FBEDESICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY, [Essay The more private and personal character of Frederick comes to us only in the language of panegyric. We hare hiB por- trait as drawn both by a German and by an Italian admirer* After making all needful deductions, it is easy to see in him a high and pleasing type of the pure Teutonic character. He was a man of moderate stature, bright open countenance, fair skin, yellow hair,t and, as his nickname % implies, reddish beard. He was a kind friend and a placable enemy ; he loved war but only as a means to peace ; so at least the Ganon of Freisingen assures us.§ He was bountiful in almsgiving, and attentive to his religious duties. As to his domestic life, we know that his first wife Adelaide was divorced ; the fact is recorded, but we are told little of the circumstances.! His second wife Beatrice is described by his panegyrists as equally admirable with her husband.1l The amount of his literary accomplishments seems doubtful. One passage in Eadevic might almost imply that he could not read ; ** but it may merely mean that he was not an accomplished scholar like his grandson. The same writer tells us of his study of the Scriptures and of ancient histories, which of course may merely mean that they were read to him, but it is more * Bad. Ms., iv. 80. Otto Morena, col. 1115. t " Flava caesaries, paullulum a vertice frontis orispata. Aures vix superjacentibus crinibus operiuntur ; tonsore, pro reverentia Imperii, pilos capitis et genarum assidufi, succisione curtante." Bad. loc. cit. % We have not come across the familiar name Barbarossa in the con- temporary writers. Probably, like many other royal nicknames, it was in popular use during the owner's lifetime, but did not find its way into written history till later. § " Bellorum amator, sed ut per ea pax acquiratur.'' Ead. loc. cit. || Otto of Saint Blaise (Mur., vi. 869) says it was " caus& fornicationis ;" Otto of Freisingen says, " ob vincula consanguinitatis." In this Muratori (ad Otto Mor., col. 1033) sees a contradiction, which we do not. Adultery was no legal ground of divorce ; but a husband's eyes would become very much more sharp-sighted to the consanguinity of a faithless wife. Muratori also argues that a certain Dietho of Bavensburg, who "married her, would not have married a divorced adulteress. Yet Henry the Second of England did. % Acerbus Morena, col. 1117. ** " Qui literas non nfisset." Bead Fris., iv. 6. By the way, Acerbus Morena (col. 1102) dictated his history. Could not a Judge (" curias IX.] FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 279 naturally understood of his reading them himself. Badevic speaks of him also as eloquent in his own tongue, and as having reached the same measure of Latin learning which Charles the Great reached in Greek. He understood the Latin tongue when spoken ; he could not speak it fluently himself. Altogether, we do not see in Frederick Barbarossa one of those mighty original geniuses who change the world's destiny, like Alexander or Charles, or who vainly struggle against the age in which they are cast, like Hannibal or Frederick the Second. He is a man of his own age : he adopts the feelings and opinions of his own age without inquiry ; he throws himself, without hesitation, into all the traditions and prejudices of his own position; in short, he never rises above the received policy and morality of his own day, but he carries out that policy and morality in its best and most honourable form. It is not needful to compare him either with the superhuman virtue of Saint Lewis or with the superhuman wickedness of John Lackland ; compare him with his great contemporary, our own Angevin master, Henry. Henry was evidently a man of far greater original genius, of a far more creative mind, than Frederick was ; but he utterly lacks Frederick's honest good faith and steady adherence to what, in his eyes, was the path of duty. In Henry too there was an element of brutality, a trace of the daemon line from which he was said to spring, of which we see nothing in Frederick in his sternest moods. A far nearer likeness, much as either party would have been amazed at it, may be seen between the Swabian Caesar and the great contemporary English churchman. Frederick of Hohenstaufen and Thomas of Canterbury were alike men of high and noble character, devoting themselves to objects which, in the judgement of their own time, were righteous. We can have no sympathy either with the exemption of the clergy from temporal juris- diction or with the subjugation of Italy by a German monarch. We can rejoice that both Frederick and Thomas failed in the long run, but we can honour the men themselves all the same. Frederick had the great advantage of finding himself in a 280 FREDERICK THE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. [Essay position which allowed all his qualities their free, full, and natural developement. The lot of Thomas constrained him to a course, sincere indeed, but still unnatural and artificial, Frederick would have made but a strange saint and martyr ; but had Thomas been born of Frederick's princely ancestry, he might have shone on the Imperial throne with a glory equal to that of Frederick himself. How far the reign of Frederick worked in the long run for the good or for the ill of Italy may well be doubted. A long and at last victorious struggle against such an adversary of course raised the spirit and confidence of the republics, and thus contributed to the freedom and glory of the great age of mediaeval Italy. But the very same cause doubtless made Italian unity further off than ever. To be a citizen of Milan or Crema or Tortona was to bear so glorious a name that men cared not to sink it in the vaguer and less glorious name of Italians. The war with Frederick gave Italy, as Sismondi says, the opportunity, which she failed to grasp, of forming herself into a powerful and permanent Confederation. Achaia, Switzerland, Holland, and America, formed them- selves under similar circumstances into great and lasting Federal republics ; the Lombard cities had no thought of any union closer than that of strict offensive and defensive alli- ance. Doubtless the constitutional theory, admitted by Guelf no less than Ghibeline, that the republics were munici- palities holding of the King of Italy must have stood in the way of any closer union. The same cause may have hindered even Switzerland from assuming the perfect Federal form till our own day. The Kingdom died out, and the cities remained, not cantons of a strong Italian League, but sove- reign states, weak against any powerful foreign invader. In the next century Italy had another chance of union in quite another form. The process which we see going on under our own eyes might have happened from the opposite quarter, and Italy might have formed a great and united monarchy under the sceptre of the Sicilian Manfred. Such a fate would have shorn Florence and Genoa and Venice of some brilliant IX.] FREDERICK TEE FIRST, KING OF ITALY. 281 centuries ; but it would have saved Milan from the rule of the Visconti and Rome from the rule of Borgia, and it might have saved the whole peninsula from the yoke of Spaniard, Austrian, and Frenchman. To return, in conclusion, to the position from which we started : what conceivable analogy is there between a King of Italy and Emperor of the Romans, reigning by acknowledged legal right, in whose election Italian barons had at least a formal share, and who received the crown of Rome from Rome's own Pontiff, a King whose right no Italian denied, and in whose cause many Italians zealously fought, and the lord of a strange disunited collection of kingdoms, who un- happily possesses a corner of Italian soil, and who till lately exercised an illegitimate influence over Italy in general ? It is hard to see why the Archduke of Austria calls himself Emperor, without election or coronation; it is hard to see what is meant by an " Emperor of Austria " any more than by an Emperor of Reuss-Schleiz ; it is hard to see how a prince the greater part of whose dominions lie out of Ger- many can give himself out as the representative of the old German Kings ; but it is harder still to see the likeness between the foreign prince who does not even claim the Italian Kingdom, who by mere brute violence holds an Ita- lian province without a single Italian partizan, and the We caimot ' hel P protesting, in our turn, against Mr. Kirk's ash,on of speaking of himself as "we" and "us." In a newspaper or a LI 1 & Z ar t manifest reasoas f ° r A" Practice, none of which apply to a book written by a single avowed author. Such a man should not talk of -y ' ¥ C«meT ed be ' ^ WheD ^ d06S talk ° f himS6lf ' * 2£ 320 OB ABLE 8 THE BOLD. [Essay important part of the King of England's dominions. England had been a dependency of Anjou ; Aquitaine was now a dependency of England. At last a King of England under- took a war of aggrandizement in France, from which England and English freedom were then in a position to reap great, though doubtless only indirect, advantage. All this was the direct result of the follies and vices of John. What Lord Macaulay says is perfectly true of the reign of John ; what Mr. Kirk says is perfectly true of the reign of Edward the Third. There is no kind of opposition between the two state- ments, and, both in this and in several other places, Mr. Kirk need not have gone out of his way to pass censures- on Lord Macaulay which are quite undeserved. We also mentioned occasional inaccuracies and misconcep- tions as to earlier times as among the faults of Mr. Kirk's book. It is ludicrous to place (i. 288) the saying "Non Angli sed angeli " in the mouth of Gregory the Seventh. It is hardly less so to call Citeaux (i. 45) the " head of the great Carthusian order." And such a passage as the following is utterly inaccurate in fact, and still more false in deduction: " But the Norman sovereigns of England were not related, at least by any close affinity, to the Capetian race. They had acquired their chief possessions in Fiance, as they had acquired the English crown, not by grant or inheritance, but by the power of their arms. They were foreigners and open enemies ; their only adherents in France were secret traitors or avowed rebels ; and they could not, therefore, mask their designs against it under the pretext of serving the nation and reforming the state " (i. 3). We suppose that Mr. Kirk is not here thinking of the strictly " Norman sovereigns of England," the Conqueror and his sons. It is not likely that he means any King before Henry the Second. But Henry the Second did not acquire his chief possessions in France by force of arms, but by lawful inheritance and marriage : Normandy came from his mother? Anjou from his father, Aquitaine from his wife. He was not a foreigner, but a Frenchman by blood and language ; he was an open enemy only as every powerful and turbulent vassal was an open enemy ; in what sense his " adherents in XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. 321 France " were " secret traitors or avowed rebels " we cannot in the least understand. It is not likely that Mr. Kirk uses the word France in the older sense, the sense in which it is opposed to Aquitaine and Normandy ; and it is hard to under- stand how a loyal subject and "adherent" of the Duke of Nor- mandy or Aquitaine can be called a rebel or a traitor against the King of France. It may be — indeed the next paragraph makes it probable- — that Mr..Kirk intends this description to apply, not to Henry the Second and Bichard the First, but to Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth. But the " Norman sovereigns of England" is an odd way of describing the two latter princes, and the assertion as to the origin of the dominion of the Kings of England in France remains equally inaccurate in any case. In point of research Mr. Kirk's labours have been in every- way praiseworthy. He has made diligent use of all printed sources, and he has also toiled unweariedly among the manu- script archives of the Swiss Cantons ; nor has he neglected another object of study, which is quite as worthy of the historian's attention as anything recorded by pen and ink. He has thoroughly mastered the geographical features of the districts where the great events of his history took place. Mr. Kirk's geographical minuteness, illustrated as it is by careful ground-plans, makes his battle pieces clear, lively, and intelligible. We can here speak as something more than a mere reader. We cannot pretend to have gone over the field of Grandson with the same minuteness as Mr. Kirk has done, but we have seen enough of it to be able to bear a general testimony to the merit of his description of the siege and the battle ; and at the same time we heard enough in Switzerland of Mr. Kirk's labours among manuscript sources of information to make us put full confidence in whatever he professes to have drawn from archives which we have not ourselves examined. Putting aside then Mr. Kirk'B occasional bursts of extrava- gance, which might be simply cut out of his book without doing it the least damage, and making some other deductions 322 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay which we shall have to make before we have done, we have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Kirk has given us a good, clear, and vigorous narrative of the career of Charles the Bold, containing much that will be quite new to the English reader. Where he breaks down is in failing to give his subject the necessary connexion with the general history of Europe before and afterwards. Mr. Kirk, who ends his history with a frantic ejaculation over his hero's dead body, does not even attempt to connect his hero's story with any- thing that came after him, and his attempts to connect it with anything that went before cannot be called successful. Mr. Kirk hardly attempts to trace matters at all further back than to the establishment of the princes of the House of Valois in the French Duchy of Burgundy, and the few re- ferences which he makes to earlier times, or to countries beyond the immediate range of his story, show no width or accuracy of grasp. He has not, for instance, mastered the various meanings and uses of the name Burgundy, of which minute inquirers have reckoned up no less than ten. In truth it was not likely that Mr. Kirk should make himself thoroughly master of this aspect of his subject, because he shows throughout his book that he has failed fully to grasp the importance of historical geography. Physical and pic- turesque geography he is thoroughly master of, as he shows by his descriptions of Grandson and Morat. But he has not been able fully to emancipate himself from bondage to the modern map. Of course he knows that the frontiers of France and of Switzerland were widely different then from what they are now. But he has not got rid of a sort of super- stition which affects many even among people who know the facts — a sort of notion that, even if France, as a matter of fact, once had a narrower frontier than it has at present, still it was in the eternal fitness of things that it should some day reach to its present frontier, or to a frontier wider still. In short, Mr. Kirk has listened to French babble about natural boundaries and the frontier of the Khine. Now everyone who has mastered historical geography knows that this sort of XL] CBARLES THE BOLD. 323 talk is babble and nothing else. There was no more reason in the nature of things why Aries or Nancy should bow to Paris than there was why Paris should bow to Aries or Nancy. Mr. Kirk does not thoroughly understand the utter difference in blood and speech between Gaul north and south of the Loire, heightened by utter difference in political position between Gaul east and west of the Saone. He seems throughout to identify the modern Kingdom of France with that ancient monarchy of the Franks which is far more truly to be identified with the German Kingdom which was dissolved in 1806. Thus, in introducing a really beautiful description of the County of Burgundy, he tells us how, " After a long separation from the Duchy of Burgundy, it again became subject to the same rule in the early part of the fourteenth century. It was a fief, however, not of France, but of the Empire, though situated within the natural boundaries of France, governed by a line of princes of French descent, and inhabited by a people who spoke the French- language " (i. 47). Here Mr. Kirk knows the facts, but he does not fully understand them. He is in a manner surprised at finding a great fief of the Empire within what, on the modern map, are the boundaries of France. As for " natural boundaries," they may of course be placed wherever anyone pleases. It is quite as easy to call the Elbe the natural boundary of France as it is so to speak of the Khine. It is quite as easy, and more true historically, to give that name to the Ehone and the Saone. The French Counts of Burgundy, one of them a reigning King of France, had come in quite lately through female succession from the descendants of Fre- derick and Beatrice. As for language, the County of Bur- gundy, like nearly the whole of the Kingdom of Burgundy, spoke a Bomance language ; but we greatly doubt its speak- ing in those days anything that could fairly be called French. In another place we read : " Wherever the French race existed, wherever the French language was spoken, wherever mountain or river offered a bulwark to the integrity of the French soil, there the French monarchy must seek to fix its sway and Y 2 324 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay establish its supremacy. France, in distinction from all other nations or countries, aspires to uniformity and completeness. Her foreign wars, her foreign conquests, for the most part have had for their object the attain- ment or recovery of her ' natural boundaries.' Again and again the tide has swollen to those limits, often with a force that carried it beyond them. Again and again it has receded, leaving a margin still to be reclaimed, but bearing still the traces of a former flood" (ii. 157). Towards the end of this passage Mr. Kirk gets so meta- phorical that we hardly know what he means. But what on earth is "the French race"? Why are all sorts of Komance dialects to be jumbled together under the name of " the French language " ? And Elsass at least is surely not peopled by " the French race," nor did its inhabitants ever speak the tongue either of oe or of oil. On Mr. Kirk's principles we must take to " rectifying " the map of Europe ; and a poor look-out it will be for Brussels, Saint Eeliers, Neufchatel, and Genera. So again with regard to Switzerland. Though it is a point essential to Mr. Kirk's argument to bear in mind that Vaud was, in Charles the Bold's time, a country absolutely foreign to Switzerland, though he constantly points out the fact when- ever his narrative calls for it, yet he still carries about with him some notion about Helvetia and the Helvetii, as if that Celtic tribe had some kind of historical connexion with the Swabian cities and districts which united to form the Old League of High Germany.* Of course he knows these * It is most curious to see how early this sort of confusion arose. Valerius Anshelm, who flourished about 1530, speaking of the County of Burgundy, says :— " Ein wunderbare Sach, dass die uralten Eydgmossen so vil uf dise Graffschaft gesetzt hatten, dass ehe sie davon stabn wolltint [siej ehe ihr Land, Lyb und Gut gegem Eomischen Keiser Julio unab- wyslich wagtent " (Berner-Chronik, i. 145). To call the Helvetii "Uralten Eydgenossen " is even more wonderful than when Machiavelli calls the Gauls of Brennus Frenchmen ; but it is almost more amazing still when, in another passage (i. 140), Valerius Anshelm distinctly claims the ancient frontier of the Helvetii as the hereditary frontier of the Confederates : "Hat ein glticksame Stadt Bern, mit Bystand ihrer Eydgnossen . . . eroberet und gewunnen der uralten Eydgnossschaft uralte Landmarch, gegen Sonnen-Nidergang reichend — namlich das Land zwttschen dem Laberer-Gebirg und dem Eotten, von Erlach und Murten an bis gan Ienf an die Brugg," &c. XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. 325 things, but he does not fully grasp them ; and through not realizing them, he often fails fully to grasp the true position of Charles and of those with whom Charles had to deal. He of course knows, but he does not seem thoroughly to enter into, the purely German position and purely German feeling of the Confederates of those days. In the Swiss writers the war is always a war of Dutch and Welsh (Tiitschen and Wdhchen), and the position of the Confederates as members of the Eoman Empire and of the German nation is always put strongly forward. The "txitsche Nation " is constantly heard of in Swiss mouths as something entitled to the deepest patriotic affection, and we hear not uncommonly of " das heilig Kych," and of " unser Herr der Keiser," as of objects to which Swiss loyalty had by no means ceased to be due; Now there is no habit of the historical mind so hard to acquire in its fulness as this habit of constantly bearing in mind the political divisions and the nomenclature of the particular time of which one is writing, and of utterly freeing oneself from what we hare already spoken of as the bondage of the modern map. It is by no means always a question of mere know- ledge, but rather a question of practically remembering and making use of one's knowledge. Many a man who, if directly asked for the names and divisions which existed at a par- ticular date, would at once give the right answer, will go away and use some expression which shows that his know- ledge of them is not" a real living thing which he constantly carries about with him. We do not at all mean that Mr. Kirk is a remarkable offender this way, or that his pages are full of geographical blunders. It is quite the contrary. Mr. Kirk's position as an historian is many degrees above that level. We only mention what strikes us as his deficiency in this respect, because it influences the general character of his narrative, and sometimes hinders him from fully grasping the aspect of affairs as it looked in the eyes of a contemporary. It follows from what we have said that the earlier part of Mr. Kirk's work is the best. The career of Charles the Bold, 326 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay as he points out, naturally falls into two parts, and Mr. Kirk is more successful in dealing with the former of the two. This twofold division is naturally suggested by Charles's twofold position. His career divides itself into a French and a German portion. In both alike he is exposed to the restless rivalry of Lewis of France; but in the one period that rivalry is carried on openly within the French territory, while in the second stage the crafty King finds the means to deal far more effectual blows through the agency of Teutonic hands. That Charles should thus play a part in the affairs of both countries naturally followed from his position as at once a French prince and a Prince of the Empire; but it is certainly remarkable that his two spheres of action can be thus mapped out with almost as much chronological as geographical precision. The position of Charles was a very peculiar one ; it requires a successful shaking-off of modern notions fully to take in what it was. He held the rank of one of the first princes in Europe without being a King, and without possessing an inch of ground for which he did not owe service to some superior lord. And, more than this, he did not owe service to one lord only. The phrase of " Great Powers " had not been invented in the fifteenth century; but there can be no doubt that, if it had been, the Duke of Burgundy would have ranked among the foremost of them. He was, in actual strength, the equal of his royal neighbour to the west, and far more than the equal of his Imperial neighbour to the east. Yet for every inch of his territories he owed a vassal's duty to one or other of them. Placed on the borders of France and the Empire, some of his territories were held of the Empire aud some of the French Crown. Charles, Duke of Burgundy, Count of Flanders and Artois, was a vassal of France ; but Charles, Duke of Brabant, Count of Burgundy, Holland, and a dozen other duchies and counties, held his dominions as a vassal of Ceesar. His dominions were large in positive extent, and they were valuable out of all proportion to their extent. No other prince in Europe was the direct XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. 327 sovereign of so many rich and flourishing cities, rendered still more rich and flourishing through the long and, in the main, peaceful administration of his father. The cities of the Netherlands were incomparably greater and more prosperous, than those of France or England ; and, though they enjoyed large municipal privileges, they were not, like those of Germany, independent commonwealths, acknowledging only an external suzerain in their nominal lord. Other parts of his dominions, the Duchy of Burgundy especially, were as rich in men as Flanders was rich in money. So far the Duke of Burgundy had some great advantages over every other prince of his time. But, on the other hand, his dominions were further removed than those of any prince in Europe from forming a compact whole. He was not King of one kingdom, but Duke, Count, and Lord of innumer- able duchies, counties, and lordships, acquired by different means, held by cLifferent titles and of different overlords, speaking different languages, subject to different laws, trans- mitted according to different rules of succession, and subject to possible escheat to different suzerains. These various terri- tories, moreover, had as little geographical as they had political connexion. They lay in two large masses, the two Burgundies forming one and the Low Countries forming the other, so that their common master could not go from one of his capitals to another without passing through a foreign territory. And, even within these two great masses, there were portions of territory intersecting the ducal dominions which there was no hope of annexing by fair means. The dominions of a neighbouring Duke or Count might be acquired by marriage, by purchase, by exchange, by yarious means short of open robbery. But the dominions of the Free Cities and of the ecclesiastical princes were in their own nature exempt from any such processes. If the Duke of Burgundy became also Duke of Brabant, the inhabitants simply passed from one line of princes to another ; no change was involved in their laws or in their form of government. But, as Mr. Kirk well points out, the Bishoprick of Luttich 328 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay could never pass by marriage, inheritance, forfeiture, or purchase. Just as little could the Free Imperial City of Besanpon. The Duke whose dominions hemmed them in could win them only by sheer undisguised conquest, a con- quest too which must necessarily change the whole frame- work of their government. The rights of princely govern- ment were in no way affected by the transfer, even the violent transfer, of a Duchy from one Duke to another ; but the rights of the Church in one case, and the rights of civic freedom in the other, would have been utterly trampled under foot by the annexation of a Bishoprick or a Free City. Charles too, lord of so many lordships, was also closely con- nected with many royal houses. In France he was not only the first feudatory of the kingdom, the Dean of the Peers of France ; he was also a prince of the blood royal, with no great number of lives between him and the Crown. On his mother's side he claimed descent from the royal houses of England and Portugal : he closely identified himself with England ; he spoke our language ; he played an active part in our politics ; he seems to have cherished a hope, one - perhaps not wholly unreasonable, that, among the revolutions and disputed successions of our country, the extinction of both the contending Louses might at last place the island crown upon his own brow. Looking to his eastern frontier, to the states which he held of the Empire, he was beyond* all comparison the most powerful of the Imperial feudatories. The next election might place him upon the throne of the Caesars, where he would be able to reign after a very different sort from the feeble Austrian whom he aspired to succeed or to displace. Or, failing of any existing crown, he might dream of having a crown called out of oblivion for his special benefit. Burgundy might again give its name to a King- dom, and his scattered duchies and lordships might be firmly welded together under a royal sceptre. Perhaps no man ever had so many dreams, dreams which in any one else would have been extravagant, naturally suggested to him by the position in which he found himself by inheritance. XI.] CHARLES TEE BOLD. 329 And now what sort of man was he who inherited so much, and whose inheritance prompted him to strive after so much more ? We wish to speak of him as he was in his better days ; towards the end of his days the effect of unexpected misfortunes darkened all his faults, even if it did not actually touch his reason. Mr. Kirk is a biographer, and, as such, he is bound by a sort of feudal tenure to " rehabilitate," as the cant word is, the lord under whom he takes service. We do not at all blame him for trying to make out the best case he can for his hero ; indeed we can go much further, and say that, in a great degree, he successfully makes out his case. Though he is zealous, he is by no means extravagant on behalf of Charles. Though he holds, and we think with reason, that Charles has commonly had less than justice done to him, he by no means sets him up as a perfect model. He rates both his abilities and his character higher than they are commonly rated, but he does not claim for him any exalted genius, neither does he undertake to be the apologist jof all his actions. He is satisfied with showing that a man who played an important part in an important time was neither the brute nor the fool that he has been described both by partizan chroniclers and by modern romance- writers. Even in the point where we see most reason to differ from Mr Kirk, we have little to object to as far as regards Charles himself. We shall presently see that, in estimating the causes of the war between Charles and the Swiss, Mr. Kirk lays the whole blame upon the Confederates, and represents the Duke of Burgundy as something like an injured victim. Allowing for a little natural exaggeration, we think Mr. Kirk is fairly successful in his justification of Charles ; we do not think him equally successful in his inculpation of the Confederates. Charles was perhaps unlucky in the age in which he lived ; he was certainly unlucky in the predecessor whom he suc- ceeded and in the rival against whom he had to struggle. It may be, as Mr. Kirk says, that he was better fitted for an earlier age than that in which he lived ; it is certain that he 330 OH ABLE 8 THE BOLD. [Essay was quite unfit either to succeed Philip the Good or to con- tend against Lewis the Eleventh. One can have no hesita- tion in saying that Charles was morally a better man than his father. He had greater private virtues, and he was certainly not stained with greater public crimes. Yet Philip passed with unusual prosperity and reputation through a reign of unusual length, while the career of Charles was short and stormy, and he left an evil memory behind him. Philip, pro- fligate as a man and unprincipled as a ruler, was still the Good Duke, who lived beloved and died regretted by his subjects. Charles, chaste and temperate in his private life, and with a nearer approach to justice and good faith in his public dealings than most princes of his time, was hated even by his own soldiers, and died unlamented by any one.* As in many other men, the virtues and the vices of Charles were closely linked together. He knew no mercy either for him- self or for anybody else. Austere in his personal morals and a strict avenger of vice in others, he probably made himself enemies by his very virtues, where a little genial profligacy might have made him friends. His home government was strictly just ; his ear was open to the meanest petitioner, and he was ready to send the noblest offender to the scaffold. But such stern justice was not the way to make himself popular in those days. A justice which knows not how to yield or to forgive is hardly suited for fallible man in any age, and in that age Charles sometimes drew blame upon himself by acts which we should now look on as crowning him with honour. His inexorable justice refused to listen to any en- treaties for the life of a gallant young noble f who had mur- * Charles, to say the least, never became a national hero anywhere. The writers of the sixteenth century, who compiled their chronicles within his dominions and inscribed them to his descendants, Oudegherst, Pontus Heuterus, his copyist Hararas, and the like, speak of him without any sort of enthusiasm ; indeed, they are full of those views of his character and ■actions which Mr. Kirk strongly, and often truly, denounces as popular errors. t See the story of the Bastard of Hamaide in Barante, Dues de Bour- gogne, x. 116; Kirk i. 462. The better-known tale told by Pontus XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 331 dered a man of lower degree. In this we look on him as simply discharging the first duty of a sovereign ; in his own age the execution seemed to men of all ranks to be an act of remorseless cruelty. In short, Charles, as a civil ruler, prac- tised none of the arts by which much worse rulers have often made themselves beloved. He was chary of gifts, of praise, of common courtesy. No wonder then that so many of his servants forsook him- for a prince who at least knew how to appreciate and to reward their services. And what Charles was as a ruler he was even more conspicuously as a captain. In warfare his discipline was terrible ; he imposed indeed no hardship on the lowest sentinel which he did not equally im- pose upon himself ; but the commander who had no kind word for any one, and a heavy punishment for the slightest offence, did not go the way to win the love of his soldiers. His cruelty towards Dinant and Liittich did not greatly exceed — in some respects it did not equal — the ordinary cruelty of the age ; but the cold and g'wasi'-judicial severity with which he planned the work of destruction is almost more repulsive than the familiar horrors of the storm and the sack. It was his utter want of sympathy with mankind which made Charles the Bold hated, while really worse men have been beloved. The ambition of Philip the Good was quite as unprincipled as that of his son, but it was more moderate, and kept more carefully within the bounds of possibility. The means by which he gained large portions of his dominions, Holland and Hennegau especially, were perhaps more blameworthy than anything in the career of Charles, and in particular acts of cruelty and in violent outbursts of wrath there was little to choose between father and son. But Philip's ambi- tion was satisfied with now and then seizing a province or two which came conveniently within his grasp ; he did not keep the world constantly in commotion ; he had no longing after Heuterus (Rerum Burgundiacarum lib. v. cap. 5), and worked up into the story of Bhynsault and Sapphira in the Spectator, whether true or false is at least quite in character. 332 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay royal or Imperial crowns, and indeed refused them when they came in his way ; his rule was on the whole peaceful and beneficent, and his very annexations, when they were once made, secured large districts from the horrors of border warfare. But Charles was always planning something, and the world was always wondering what he might be planning. He attacked and annexed so widely that it was no wonder if even those whom he had no mind to attack deemed it necessary to stand ready for him. His loftiest flights of ambition were far from being so wild and reckless as they are commonly represented; his dream of a new Burgundian Kingdom was far from irrational ; still less was there any- thing monstrous either in a great French prince aspiring to a paramount influence in France, or in a great German prince aspiring to the Crown of the Empire. But the misfortune of Charles was that he was always aspiring after something ; he was always grasping at something which he had not, instead of enjoying what he had. Neither his own subjects nor strangers were allowed a moment's peace : wars with France, wars with Liittich, G elders annexed, Elsass purchased, Neuss besieged, Lorraine conquered, Provence bargained for, were enough to keep the whole world in commotion. The ten years of Charles's reign are as rich in events as the forty- eight years of his father. Mr. Kirk is fond of enlarging on Charles's good faith, and, for a prince of the fifteenth century, the praise is not wholly undeserved. As compared with the contemporary Kings of England and France, the Duke of Burgundy may fairly pass for a man of his word.* He certainly did not openly trample on oaths and obligations like Edward the Fourth, nor did he carry on a systematic trade of secret intrigue like Lewis the Eleventh. Even in the affair of Peronne, to which Mr. Kirk frequently points as an exception to Charles's general straight- forwardness, there seems to have been no deliberate treachery on Charles's part, though there certainly was a breach in * " Quod numquam antea fecerat, rupta fide," says Heuter (liv. vj). 12), of the execution of the prisoners at Grandson. XL] CHARLES TBE BOLD. 333 words of the safe-conduct which he had given to Lewis, The King sought an interview of his own accord ; it was to take place in the then Burgundian town of Feronne. The Duke gave the King a safe-conduct, notwithstanding anything which had happened or might happen. "While Lewis was at Peronne, Charles discovered, or believed that he had dis- covered, evidence that the King was plotting with the revolted people of Liittich. Charles then kept him as a prisoner till he had signed an unfavourable treaty, and further obliged him to accompany him on his campaign against Liittich, and to witness and take a part in the utter overthrow of his allies. Here was undoubtedly a breach of an engagement : accord- ing to the letter of the bond, Charles should have taken Lewis safe back into his own dominions, and should have declared war and pursued him the moment he had crossed the frontier. But, setting aside the literal breach of faith, to deal with Lewis as he did, to humble him before all the world, to make him follow where he was most unwilling to go, was quite in character with the stern and ostentatious justice of Charles. As a mere b*reach of faith, it was a light matter compared with the everyday career of Lewis himself. But what shocked the feeling of the time was for a vassal to put his suzerain lord under personal duress. To rebel against such a lord and make war upon him was an ordinary business; but for a Duke of Burgundy to make a King of France his prisoner was a breach of all feudal reverence, a sacrilegious invasion of the sanctity of royalty, which carried men's minds back to a deed of treason more than five hundred years old.* We cannot look upon this business at Peronne as being morally of so deep a dye as the long course of insincerity pursued by Charles with regard to the marriage of his daughter. It is clear that he was possessed with a strong and not very intelligible dread * As Gomines says (liv. ii. c. 7), " Le Eoy se voyoit log6 rasibus d'une grosse tour, oii un Comte de Vermandois fit mouiir un sein predecesseur Eoy de France." The allusion is to the two imprisonments of Charles the Simple at Peronne (928-9) by Count Hubert of Vermandois.— See Richer, lib. i. c. 46,54; Flodoard in anno; Palgrave, Normandy and England ii. 93. ' D ' 334 CHARLES THIS BOLD. [Essay of a son-in-law in any shape. Like many other princes, he shrank from the notion of a successor ; he shrank especially from a successor who would not be one of his own blood, but the husband of his daughter, one who most likely would seek in her marriage and his affinity nothing but stepping-stones to the ducal or royal crown of Burgundy. So far one can enter into the feeling ; but it is clear that Charles first carried it to a morbid extent, and then made use of it for a disingenuous political purpose. He held out hopes of his daughter's hand to every prince whom he wished for the moment to attach to his interests, without the least serious intention of bestowing her upon any of them. Mary was used as the bait for Charles of Guienne, for Nicolas of Calabria, for Maximilian of Austria. Now this, though it might serve an immediate end, was a base and selfish policy, which could not fail to leave, as in the end it did leave, both his daughter and his dominions without any lawful or acknowledged protector. The feelings alike of a father and a sovereign should have made Charles over- come his dread of an acknowledged successor, rather than run the risk of leaving a young girl to grapple unprotected with the turbulent people of Flanders and with such a neighbour as Lewis the Eleventh. It is here, we think, rather than in his formal breach of faith at Peronne, that we should look for the most marked exception to that general character for good faith and sincerity which is claimed for Charles by his biographer. It is certain that he piqued him- self upon such a character, and that his conduct was on the whole not inconsistent with it. The worst deeds of his later career, his treatment of the Princes of Lorraine and Wiir- temburg, his unprovoked attack on Neuss, his cruelties after the loss of Elsass, were deeds of open violence rather than of bad faith. Through the whole of his dealings with Austria and Switzerland there runs a vein of conscious sincerity, a feeling that his own straightforwardness was not met with equal straightforwardness on the part of those with whom he had to deal. Where then Charles failed was that he had neither the XL] CHARLES TEE BOLD. 335 moral nor the intellectual qualities which alone could have enabled him to carry out the great schemes -which he was ever planning. Success has often been the lot of brave, frank, and open-hearted princes, who have carried everything before them, and who have won hearts as well as cities by storm. Sometimes again it has fallen to the lot of a cold, crafty, secret plotter, like Charles's own rival and opposite. The gallant, genial, Bene of Lorraine won the love of sub- jects and allies, and recovered the dominions which Charles had stolen from him. Lewis, from his den at Plessis, esta- blished his power over all France ; he extended the bounds of France by two great provinces, and permanently attached the stout pikes and halberts of Switzerland to his interest. But Charles the Bold, always planning schemes which needed the genius and opportunities of Charles the Great, was doomed to failure in the nature of things. A prince, just, it may be, and truthful, but harsh and pitiless, who never made a friend public or private, whose very virtues were more repulsive than other men's vices, who displayed no single sign of deep or enlarged policy, but whose whole career was one simple embodiment of military force in its least amiable form,— such a prince was not the man to found an empire ; he was the very man to lose the dominions which he had himself inherited and conquered. And now we turn from the character of the man to the events in which he was the actor or the instrument. The history of Charles is a history of the highest and most varied interest. The tale, as a mere tale, as a narrative of personal adventure and a display of personal character, is one of the most attractive in European history. As such it has been chosen by Scott as the material for two of his novels, one of which, if not absolutely one of his masterpieces, at any rate ranks high among his writings. It is probably from Quentin Durward that most English readers have drawn their ideas of Lewis the Eleventh and of Charles the Bold ; some may even have drawn their main ideas of the fights of Grandson, 336 CEABLES TEE BOLD. [Essay Morat, and Nancy from the hurried narrative in Anne of Geierstein. In fact a nobler subject, whether for romance or poetry or tragedy, can hardly be conceived than the exalta- tion and the fall of the renowned Burgundian Duke. But to the historian the fate of Charles and his Duchy has an interest which is far higher and wider than this. Chrono- logically and geographically alike, Charles and his Duchy form the great barrier, or the great connecting link, which- ever we choose to call it, between the main divisions of European history and European geography. The Dukes of Burgundy of the House of Valois form a sort of bridge be- tween the latter Middle Age and the period of the Renaissance and the Reformation. They connect those two periods by forming the kernel of the vast dominion of that Austrian House to which their inheritance fell, and which, mainly by virtue of that inheritance, fills such a space in the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the dominions of the Burgundian Dukes hold a still higher historical position. They may be said to bind together the whole of European history for the last thousand years. From the ninth century to the nineteenth, the politics of Europe have largely gathered round the rivalry between the Eastern and the Western Kingdoms — in modern language, between Germany and France. From the ninth century to the nineteenth, a suc- cession of efforts have been made to establish, in one shape or another, a middle state between the two. Over and over again during that long period have men striven to make the whole or some portion of the frontier lands stretching from the mouth of the Rhine to the mouth of the Rhone into an independent barrier state. The first expression of the idea is to be seen in the Kingdom of Lothar, the grandson of Charles the Great, a kingdom of which Provence and the Netherlands were alike portions. The neutralizations, or attempted neutralizations, of Switzerland, Savoy, Belgium, and Liizelburg, have been the feebler contributions of the nineteenth century to the same work. Meanwhile, various Kingdoms and Duchies of Burgundy and Lorraine have risen XL] CEARLES TEE BOLD. 337 and fallen, all of them, knowingly or unknowingly, aiming at the same European object. That object was never more distinctly aimed at, and it never seemed nearer to its accom- plishment, than when Charles the Bold actually reigned from the Zuyder Zee to the Lake of Neufchatel, and was not without hopes of extending his frontier to the Gulf of Lyons. To understand his position, to understand the position of the land over which he ruled, it is not needful to go back to any of the uses of the Burgundian name earlier than the divi- sion of the Empire in 888. The old Lotharingia of forty years earlier, the narrow strip reaching from the German Ocean to the Mediterranean, had then ceased to exist as a separate state. Its northern portion had become the later Lotharingia, that border land between the Eastern and Western King- doms, which for a hundred years formed an endless subject of dispute between them. Its southern portion had become what our Old-English Chroniclers emphatically call the "middle-rice" — the Middle Kingdom, the state placed be- tween Fraace, Germany, and Italy. This is that Burgundy, sometimes forming one kingdom, sometimes two, which was at last annexed to the Empire, and of which Aries was the capital, where those Emperors who chose to go through a some- what empty ceremony took the crown of their Burgundian Kingdom.* This kingdom took in the County Palatine of Burgundy, better known as Franche Comte, which, till the days of Lewis the Fourteenth, remained a fief of the Empire. It did not take in the Duchy of Burgundy, the Duchy of which Dijon was the capital, which was always a fief of the Crown of France. Now there can be no. doubt that Charles, Duke of the French Duchy, Count of the Imperial Palatinate, Duke, by inheritance, of the Lower Lorraine (or Brabant), Duke, by conquest, of the Upper Lorraine, had always before his eyes the memory of these earlier Burgundian and Lothar- ingian kingdoms. Holding, as he did, parts of old Lotharingia and parts of old Burgundy, there can be no doubt that he * See above, p. 186. 338 CHARLES TEE BOLD. [Essay aimed at the re-establishment of a great Middle Kingdom, which should take in all that had ever been Burgtmdian or Lotharingian ground. He aimed, in short, as others have aimed before and since, at the formation of a state which should hold a central position between France, Germany, and Italy — a state which should discharge, with infinitely greater strength, all the duties which our own age has endeavoured to throw on Switzerland, Belgium, and Savoy. Now Mr. Kirk is by no means wholly blind to this peculiar aspect of his hero, an aspect which brings him into so remark- able a connexion with times long before him and with times long after him. But it is not present to his mind in any life- like way ; it is not present as it would be to one who was really master of European history as a whole. In our way of looking at it, the career of Charles the Bold forms the central point in the history of a thousand years, and it cannot be worthily treated without constantly looking both forwards and back- wards. There can be no doubt that, through the whole latter part of Charles's reign, his object was thus to extend his dominions, and to reign as a Burgundian King, the peer of either of his two overlords to the right and left of him. This view seems to us to explain the whole of his latter policy. It seems also to explain the mixture of dread and wonder with which he was looked on, and the restless appre- hensions which never ceased to work among all who felt that they were possibly marked out for annexation. This twofold position of Charles, as at once a French and a German Prince, forms the key to his history. When he had turned away his thoughts from his schemes of pre-eminence within the French Kingdom, the creation of such a middle state as we have spoken of was a natural form for his ambi- tion to take. His schemes of this kind form the great subject of the second of the two great divisions of his history. The second division then is undoubtedly the more important, but the former is by far the better known. It has the great advan- tage of being recorded by one of the few mediaeval writers — if Philip of Comines is to count as a mediaeval writer — who XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. , 339 are familiar to many who are not specially given to mediaeval studies. It is a plain straightforward tale, about which there is a little difficulty or controversy, and it is so constantly con- nected with the history of our own country as to have special attractions for the English student. The German career of Charles holds a very different position. One or two facts in it, at least the names of one or two great battles, are familiar to the whole world. Every one can point the moral how the rash and proud Duke was overthrown by the despised Switzer at Grandson, at Morat, and at Nancy. But the real character and causes of the war are, for the most part, completely unknown or utterly misrepresented. In fact, no part of his- tory is more thoroughly perplexing than this : the original sources are endless ; the inferences made from them by later writers are utterly contradictory ; and neither the original sources nor their modern commentators are at all familiar to English students in general. We think then that we shall be doing our readers more service if we pass lightly over the earlier and better known years of Charles's history, and give* as much space as we can to the perplexing story of his relations towards Switzerland, Austria, and the Empire. Each of the two positions which were held by Charles assumes special importance in one of tbe two great divisions of his Career. He succeeded to the ducal crown in 1467 ; but his practical reign may be dated from a point at least two years earlier, when the old age and sickness of Philip threw the chief management of affairs into his hands. What we have called his French career lasts from this point till 1472. In these years, both before and after the deatb of his father, he appears mainly as a French Prince. His main policy is to maintain and increase that predominance in French politics which had been gained by his father. During this period, with the single exception of his wars with Liittich, his field of action lies almost wholly within the Kingdom of France ; and Liittich, though it lay within the Empire, had at this time a closer practical connexion with France than with z 2 340 CHABLES TBE BOLD. [Essay Germany. Charles's chief French dominions were the Duchy of Burgundy and the Counties of Artois and Flanders, the last being strictly a French fief, though circumstances have always tended to unite that proTince, together with some of its neighbours, into a system of their own, distinct alike from France and from Germany. There was also that fluctuating territory in Picardy, the towns on the Somme; so often pledged, recovered, ceded, and conquered within the space of so few years. These possessions made Charles the most powerful of French princes, to say nothing of the fiefs beyond the Kingdom which helped to make him well nigh the most powerful of European princes. As a French prince, he joined with other French princes to put limits on the power of the Crown, and to divide the Kingdom into great feudal holdings, as nearly independent as might be of the common overlord. As a French prince, he played his part in the War of the Public Weal, and insisted, as a main object of his policy, on the establishment of the King's brother as an all but independent Duke of Normandy. The object of Lewis was to make France a compact monarchy ; the object of Charles and his fellows was to keep France as nearly as might be in the same state as Germany. But, when the other French princes had been gradually conquered, won over, or got rid of in some way or other by the crafty policy of Lewis, Charles remained no longer the chief of a coalition of French princes, but the personal rival, the deadly enemy, of the French King. In the second part of his life his objects were wholly different. His looks were now turned eastward and southward, or, if they were turned westward, it was with quite different ai ms from those ■with which he went forth to fight at Montlhery. His object now was, not to gain a paramount influence within the Kingdom of France, not to weaken the French monarch, in the character of one of its vassals, but to throw it into the shade, to dis- member, perhaps to conquer, it in the character of a foreign sovereign. For this end probably, more than for any other, Charles sought to be King of the Komans, King of Burgundy, XL] CEABLEB THE BOLD. 341 King of England. For this end he strove to gather together province after province, so as to form his scattered territories into a kingdom greater than that of Prance, a kingdom ex- ternal and antagonistic to France. As he had found that the French monarchy was too strong for him in his character of a French vassal, he would no longer be a Frenchman at all. To curb and weaken the now hostile and foreign realm, he would form a state which should altogether hem it in from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. That is to say, he would call again into being that Middle Kingdom, call it Burgundy or Lorraine* as we will, which he had abetter chance of calling into being than any man before or since. And undoubtedly it would have been for the permanent interest of Europe if he had succeeded in his attempt. It would be one of the greatest of political blessings if a Duke or King of Burgundy or Lorraine could suddenly appear now.f A strong independent power standing in the gap between France and Germany^ would release the world from many difficulties, and would insure thp world against many dangers. It would in fact accomplish, in a much more thorough-going way, the objects which modern statesmen have tried to accomplish by guaran- teeing the neutrality of the smaller states on the same border. How vain such guaranties are the experience of the last few years has taught us. But the kingdom which Charles dreamed of, had it been held together long enough to acquire any consistency, would have needed no guaranty, but would have * Charles, of course, aimed at restoring a Kingdom of Burgundy, not of Lorraine ; but the extent of the dominions which he either actually pos- sessed, or is believed to have aimed at, would answer very nearly to the ancient Kingdom of Lorraine, while it would far surpass the extent of any of the successive Kingdoms of Burgundy, of none of which did the Nether- lands form any part. In fact, the County of Burgundy is the only ground common to Charles's actual dominions and to the later Burgundian Kingdom. His dominions in Picardy and Elsass lay beyond the limits of either Burgundy or Lorraine in any sense. t [In 1871 such a power would come too late, but it might have been useful in 1870.] t " Ut, inter Grermanos Francosque medius imperans, utrisque terrorem incuteret."— Heuter, lib. v. c. 11. 342 CH AXLES THE BOLD. [Essay stood by its own strength. Such a state would indeed have had two great points of weakness, its enormous extent of frontier* and the heterogeneous character of its population. But German and Italian neighbours would hardly have been more dangerous to Burgundy than they have been to France, and such a Burgundy would have been far better able to resist the aggressions of France, than Germany and Italy have been.t The population would certainly have been made up of very discordant elements, but they would have been less discordant than the elements to be found in the modern "empire" of Austria, and they would have had a common interest in a way in which the subjects of Austria have not. Perhaps indeed a common government and a common interest might in course of time have fused them together as closely as the equally discordant elements in modern Switzerland have been fused together. Anyhow, the great dream of Charles, the formation of a barrier power between France and Germany, is one which, if it only could be carried out, would be most desirable for Europe to have carried out. Statesmen of a much later age than Charles the Bold have dreamed of the Kingdom of Burgundy as the needful counter- poise to the power of France. But though the creation of such a state would be highly desirable now, it does not follow that is was desirable then, still less that any prince or people of those days could be expected to see that it was desirable. With the map of Europe now before us, it seems madness in Switzerland, or in any other small and independent state, to league itself with France and Austria to destroy a Duke of Burgundy. That is to say, it is very easy to be a Prometheus after the fact. But neither princes nor commonwealths can be expected to look on so many centuries before them. Austria was in those days the least threatening of all powers. Its sovereigns were small German Dukes, who had much ado On this point see Johannes von Mtiller, b. iv. c. 8, note 469 [The extent of frontier would not have been greater than that of Prussia up to 18b6 : but this argument might be used in two opposite ways.l t [In 1864 I did not foresee 1870.] XI.] CHABLES TEE BOLD. 343 to keep their own small dominions together. In fact, the Duke of Austria with whom we have to do was only a titular Duke of Austria ; his capital was not Vienna, but Innsbruck ; his dominions consisted of the county of Tyrol and the Swabian and Alsatian lordships of his house. And it would have been only by a miraculous foresight of which history gives few examples that a citizen of Switzerland or of any other country could have perceived that France was a power more really dangerous to the liberties of Europe than Bur- gundy was. Lewis seemed to have quite enough to do to maintain his power in his own kingdom, while Charles seemed to ride through the whole world, going forth conquering and to conquer. In this case, as in all others, we must try to throw ourselves into the position of the times, and not to judge of everything according to the notions of our own age. The warning is important, because by some writers,* though not very conspicuously by Mr. Kirk, it is made part of the case against the Confederates that they helped to destroy a power which was really useful to them as a check upon France. This, as we have said, is perfectly true in a modern European point of view ; but the Swiss of the fifteenth century could not see with the eyes of the nineteenth century. And, valuable as a Kingdom of Burgundy would have been in an European point of view, it is by no means clear that it would have been equally valuable in a Swiss point of view. Indeed, it is hard to see how its existence could have been consistent with the retention of Swiss independence in any shape. We have thus reached that later portion of Charles's life which brings him mainly into contact with the Empire, both in the person of its head and in those of many of its members. His dealings now lie mainly with Lorraine and Savoy, with Koln, Elsass, and Austria, with the Old League of High Germany, and with Caesar Augustus himself. His relations to his Imperial overlord were such as might be looked for when he had to deal with a prince who lived politically from hand to mouth, like the Emperor Frederick the Third. The * As, for instance, in the notes of De la Harpe in the French translation of Miiller's History of Switzerland. 314 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay Confederates were at one moment ordered, at another moment they were forbidden, on their allegiance as members of the Empire, to march against a prince who was at one moment proclaimed as the chief enemy of the German nation, and who at another moment seemed marked out as the destined chief of Germany and the Empire. The unwise and dis- honourable policy which Charles followed with regard to the marriage of his daughter is one main feature of this period. The hand of Mary of Burgundy was promised in succession to every prince whom such a promise might make useful for a moment, and seemingly without any serious purpose of ever really bestowing it on any of them. But it was towards the formation of the Middle Kingdom that everything tended throughout Charles's later years. That kingdom would no doubt have been, in Charles's hands, directly designed as a rival and an enemy to France. Its relations towards Germany were less certain. There is little doubt that Charles at one time aimed at the Imperial Crown ; there is no doubt at all as to his expectations of receiving a crown of some sort or other from the hands of the Emperor. Among the many striking and awful pictures which the history of Charles con- tains, among heavy blows dealt and heavy blows received, the tale is relieved by at least two remarkable touches of the ludicrous. We can hardly help laughing over the field of Montlhery, over the two hosts, each of which fancied itself beaten, and over the tall thistles which bore so terrible a likeness to hostile spears. We laugh still more heartily when Charles has got everything ready for his coronation at Trier, and when the Lord of the World suddenly decamps in the night, leaving the expectant king of Burgundy, or Lorraine, or whatever his kingdom was to be, to go back a mere Duke as he came. One thing however is shown by the willingness of Charles to accept a crown at the hands of the Emperor. A crown so received could only have been a vassal crown. A King of Burgundy so crowned, more than the rival of an Emperor in real power, would still have been, in formal rank, the peer only of a King of Bohemia, not of a King of France or England. With such a vassal crown XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 345 Charles no doubt hoped some day to unite the Imperial diadem itself. But it is plain that at this stage of his life, vassalage to the Empire was less irksome to Charles's mind than vassalage to France. Indeed, he seems to have quite cast away the thought that he was not only a vassal of France, but by descent a Frenchman. He fell back on his ancestry by the female line, and instead of being French he would rather be Portuguese on the strength of his mother, or ^English on the strength of his grandmother. In English affairs, we must always remember, Charles constantly took a deep and by no means a disinterested or sentimental interest. By birth a descendant of the House of Lancaster, by marriage a member of the House of York, each English party looked to him in turn as an ally, while he no doubt dreamed that he might one day be called in as more than an ally. And, had not that been an age when the first thing needed in a King of England was to be an Englishman, the claims of Charles, descended as he was from a legitimate daughter of John of Gaunt, might have seemed far stronger than those of bastard Beauforts or Tudors. It would indeed have been the highest consummation of Charles's hopes could he have thus won a higher crown than that of Burgundy or Lorraine, and coujd have gone on once more to attack his old enemy in the new character of a King of England and France. But though there is little doubt that such dreams did flash across his mind, they had no serious results. Charles probably knew England well enough to feel sure that, except in some most strange conjunction of events, a stranger had no chance of the island crown. It was to aggrandizement eastward and southward, to the union of the two detached masses of his dominions by the annexation of Lorraine, that Charles's whole immediate policy looked in his later days. But there can be little doubt that all this had a further aim, that of turning round some day to deal a blow at his Western rival at the head of an irresistible power. Truces might be made and renewed, but they were merely truces ; Charles and Lewis each knew well enough what were the aims of the other. And the wary King of France knew well how to throw the 346 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay most effectual .check in the way of his rival by raising up against him the most terrible of enemies within the limits of the Empire, partly within the ancient bounds of that Bur- gundian Kingdom of which he dreamed. With Mr. Kirk's way of looking at things it is not won- derful that his treatment of the early part, what we may call the French period, of Charles's career, is better than his treat- ment of the latter, what we may in some sort call its German period. In the latter portion, just as in the former, we have no charge to bring against Mr. Kirk on the ground of research, none on the score of narrative and descriptive power in treating the main events of his history. Still there is a distinct falling-off, both in style and, in a certain sense, in matter. During the later years of Charles the main interest of his story gathers round his relations with the Swiss. And, though Mr. Kirk has probably worked more diligently at the Swiss history and the Swiss archives of that age than any man who is not a native Switzer, still, after all, he does not seem fully to grasp the relations between Charles and the Confede- rates. And it is certain that it is during this latter part of Mr. Kirk's labours that his way of writing begins to change for the worse. He writes far more distinctly as a partizan, with a strong feeling for Charles and against the Swiss. In this there is nothing specially to quarrel with. English readers are so apt to take up the Swiss side of the quarrel too un- reservedly, that it is no bad thing to have the story told, • fervidly and vigorously told, from the Burgundian side. But, ' there are signs that there is somewhere a screw loose in Mr. Kirk's treatment of these events. He is evidently less at his ease than before ; heis more palpably influenced by the feeling that he has a cause to plead, a case to make out, than in his story of Charles's doings at Montlhery and Peronne, at Dinant and Liittich. It is from the beginning of the second period that Mr. Kirk begins to disfigure his pages with those passages of forced and extravagant rhetoric which are the great blemish of his book, and which thicken through the third volume till we reach the mere ravings with which the history ends. We have thus reached the great point of controversy, the XI-.] OHABLES THE BOLD. 347 origin of the famous war between Charles the Bold and the Swiss. The popular conception of this war is simply that Charles, a powerful and encroaching prince, was overthrown in three great battles by the petty commonwealths which he had expected easily to attach to his dominion. Grandson and Morat are placed side by side with Morgarten and Sempach. Such a view as this implies complete ignorance of the his- tory ; it implies ignorance of the fact that it was the Swiss who made war upon Charles, and not Charles who made war upon the Swiss ; it implies ignorance of the fact that Charles's army never set foot on proper Swiss territory at all, that Grandson and Morat were at the beginning of the war no part of the possessions of the Confederation. That is to say, the war between Charles and the Swiss, like most other events in history, will always be misunderstood as long as people do not thoroughly master the facts of historical geo- graphy. The mere political accident that the country which formed the chief seat of war now forms part of the Swiss Con- federation has been with many people enough to determine their estimate of the quarrel. Grandson and Morat are in Switzerland ; Burgundian troops appeared and were defeated at Grandson and Morat ; therefore Charles must have been an invader of Switzerland, and the warfare on the Swiss side must have been a warfare of purely defensive heroism. The simple fact that it was only through the result of the Burgundian war that Grandson and Morat ever became Swiss territory at once disposes of this line of argument. This is just the sort of simple fact than which nothing can be simpler, but on which the real aspect of whole pages of his- tory sometimes turns. . But it is also just the sort of simple fact which people find so hard really to master and carry about with them. The plain facts of the case are that the Burgundian war was a war declared by Switzerland against Burgundy, not a war declared by Burgundy against Switzerland, and that in the campaigns of Grandson and Morat the Duke of Burgundy was simply driving back and avenging Swiss invasions of his own territory and the territory 348 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay of his allies. A Burgundian victory at Morat would no doubt have been followed by a Burgundian invasion of Switzerland ; but, as the Swiss were victorious at Morat, no Burgundian invasion of Switzerland took place. Mr. Kirk, we need hardly say, knows all this as well as any man. He is the last of all men to need teaching that Vaud was not Swiss ground in 1474. He is no doubt doing good service by teaching many people in England and America that it was not so. Thus far he is acting as an useful preacher of his- torical geography. Yet the lack of a full grasp of historical geography affects his argument even here. I cannot think that he has fully understood the light in which a possible restoration of the Burgundian Kingdom must have looked in the eyes of the Old League of High Germany. How then is the war between Charles and the Swiss com- monly looked at ? We fancy that to most of those who go a little further into the matter than usual, to those who, without having looked very deeply into details, still have a knowledge of the history somewhat deeper than, mere popular talk, the aspect of the war is something of this kind. It is held to have been, though not immediately defensive, yet in every way justifiable in right and in policy; it is held to have been provoked, though not by actual invasion on the part of Charles, yet by various wrongs and insults at the hands of his officers, and by the cruelest oppression inflicted on a neighbouring and allied people. In this view, the Swiss, in beginning the war, simply took the bull by the horns, and attacked a power which was on the very point of attacking them. The agency of the King of France is too plain to be altogether kept out of sight ; but his interference would be held to have been shown simply in fomenting a quarrel which had already arisen, and aiding — after his peculiar fashion — the Confederates in a struggle in which he had the deepest possible interest, but which would have taken place equally had he not existed. Those who are used to look at the matter in this light will certainly be some- what amazed at the way in which the story is told by Mr. Kirk. In his view — a view not really new, though doubtless new to XL] OS ABLE S THE BOLD. 349 most of his readers — Charles was wholly in the right, and the Confederates were wholly in the wrong. Charles had no hostile intentions towards the Confederates, but was full of the most friendly dispositions towards them. The mass of the Swiss people had as little wish to quarrel with Charles as Charles had to quarrel with them. The alleged grounds of complaint were either matters with which the Swiss had no concern, or else mere trifles which the Duke would at once have re- dressed on a frank understanding. The war was wholly the device of Lewis of France, who thought that it would be more convenient to overthrow his great adversary by the arms of the Swiss than by his own. He bribed and cajoled certain citizens of Bern, Nicolas von Diessbach at their head ; and they contrived to entangle Bern and the whole Confederation in a war in which they had no national interest. The Swiss patched up a hurried alliance with an old enemy in order to attack an old friend who had neither done nor designed them any wrong. The alleged grounds of provocation given by Charles were utterly frivolous, and if the Confederates had been as anxious for peace as the Duke, an understanding might easily have been come to. The execution of Peter von Hagenbach, above all, was an act of directly illegal violence on the part of the Swiss and their allies. The war against Charles was so far from being defensive that it was utterly unprovoked ; it was not even a war of policy ; the Confede- rates were neither defending their own country nor supporting the rights of an ally. They acted simply as mercenaries, as the '* hired bravos " of a power which had corrupted them. The victories of Grandson, Morat, and Nancy may be glorious as mere displays of valour, but they were unrighteous triumphs won in a cause in which the victors had no interest ; instead of being classed with Sempach and Morgarten, they ought rightly to be classed with the displays of Swiss mercenary valour in later times. The Confederates carried a cruel and desolating war into the dominions of Savoy, a country whose rulers and people had given them no offence ; they hunted the Duke of Burgundy to death, and broke the power of his 350 CHARLE8 THE BOLD. [Essay House at a moment when its preservation was a matter of European interest. And all this they did simply in the interest of their paymaster the King of France, who himself, as soon as he had hopelessly involved them in the war, left them to fight their battles for themselves. From that time began the disgraceful system of foreign pensions and mer- cenary service which permanently degraded the Swiss cha- racter and made Swiss valour a mere article of merchandize. The only section of the Confederates to whom any sympathy is due in the matter are those, whether states or individuals, who did their best to hinder the war, and who joined in it only when it became a matter of national duty to give help to those who were already engaged in it. Such among states was Unter- walden ; such among individuals was Hadrian von Bubenberg, the defender of Morat. In the war itself and its great victories those who take this line see nothing but successful strokes of brigandage. And in those who brought about the war, in the leading Bernese statesmen, above all in Nicolas von Diessbach, Mr. Kirk sees nothing but traitors of the blackest dye. We believe that this is a fair exposition of the view which Mr. Kirk now brings, for the first time, as far as we know, before English and American readers. But it is a view which is far from being unknown in Switzerland itself. It was fully set forth by the late Baron Frederick de Gingins- la-Sarraz, whose papers on the subject will be found reprinted as an Appendix to the sixth and seventh volumes of M. Mon- nard's French translation — not a very accurate translation, by the way— of Johannes von Midler's great History of the Swiss Confederation. De Gingins was perhaps the only ex- ample in Europe of his own class. He was essentially a Bur- gundian of the Kingdom of Burgundy. He had deliberately given his life to the study of every phase of Burgundian his- tory, and Charles, Duke of one Burgundy, Count of another, and would-be King of all, was naturally a character in whom he took a deep interest. Add to this that De Gingins, though he probably cherished no actual wish to be other than the Swiss citizen which modern geography made him, was at XL] CHARLES THE BOLD. 351 heart a Burgundian noble, like his forefathers four hundred years back. He had not forgotten that those forefathers had swelled the armies of Charles, and that their ancestral castle had been burned by the Confederates. A scholar of unwearied research, he worked manfully at this as at all other Bur- gundian subjects, and he had evidently a special pleasure in bringing forward those facts which tell for the Burgundian and against the Swiss side. Considering how exclusively the story had been hitherto, looked upon from the Swiss side, he s was, in so doing, doing a service to the cause of truth. Mr. Kirk seems to have dived yet deeper into the same stores, and distinctly with the same bias. But it was to be borne in mind that, novel as his view of the case may seem to an English reader, he is only working in the beat of De Gingins, by whom his main facts and arguments have been already strongly set forth. Our own views have been mainly formed on those set forth by anpther Swiss scholar, John Caspar Zell- weger, the historian of Appenzell, in a most elaborate essay,* followed by a large collection of hitherto unpublished docu- ments, printed in the fifth volume of the Archiv fwr schweizer- isehe Geschichte (Zurich, 1847). It is not for us to guess how many of Mr. Kirk's readers, British or American, are likely to have read Zellweger or De Gingins, or even Johannes von Muller himself. Swiss historical works, both original autho- rities and modern writers, are not very common in England, and cannot always be got at a moment's notice. And the best authorities for this period consist of documents, documents too, as must always happen in a Confederation of small states, scattered about in all manner of local archives. Each fresh writer brings forth some paper which nobody had seen before, and by its help he crows over the mistakes of those who were unlucky enough to write without having seen it. Zellweger has done a real service by printing his documents at full length, while other writers merely give references which are * "Versuch die wabren Griinde des burgundischen Krieges aus den Quellen darzustellen und die davuber verbreiteten irrigen Ansichten zu beriohtigen." 352 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay little better than a mockery, or extracts which make us wish to see the context. But no reader probably would wish us, even if we had the space, to go minutely through every dis- puted point of detail. We will confine ourselves to setting forth the general conclusions to which we have come, and to pointing out a few considerations which seem to have escaped Mr. Kirk's notice. First of all, we must bear in mind at every moment the real extent and position of Switzerland at that time. We are accustomed to conceive Switzerland as including Geneva, Basel, and Chiir at its different corners, and as being a per- fectly independent power, quite distinct from Germany. We are also accustomed to point to Switzerland as the most re- markable example of a country where diversity of blood, lan- guage, and religion does not hinder the existence of a common feeling of nationality. We are also accustomed to look upon Switzerland as a power conservative but not aggressive, and on the Swiss as a people who are as ready as of old to defend themselves if attacked, but who have neither the will nor the means to annex any of the territory of their neighbours. Such is the Switzerland of our own time, but such was not the Switzerland with which Charles the Bold had to deal. In those days the name of Switzerland, as a distinct nation or people, was hardly known. The names Subtenses, Switzois, Suisses, were indeed beginning to spread them- selves from a single Canton to the whole Confederation ; but the formal style of that Confederation was still the " Great (or Old) League of Upper Germany" — perhaps rather of "Upper Swabia."* That League was much smaller than it is now, and it was purely German. It consisted of eight German districts and cities, united, like many other groups * Liga vetus Alemanniaj altaa (Treaty with Charles the Seventh, ap. Zellweger, 75). Domini de Liga Alamanias (ibid. 130). Domini de Liga magna Alamanias superioris (ibid. 132). " Allemannia " might either mean Germany in general or Swabia in panicular; in either case, "Upper Allemannia" is opposed to the "Lower Union" of the cities on tlie Ehine. XL] OHABLES THE BOLD. 353 of German cities, by a lax Federal tie, which tie, while other similar unions hare died away, has gradually developed into a perfect Federal Government, and has extended itself over a large non-German territory. The League then consisted of eight Cantons only — Zurich, Bern, Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, TJnterwalden, Zug, and Glarus. All these states were prac- tically independent commonwealths; in theory they were immediate subjects of the Emperor, holding certain large franchises by ancient grant or prescription. Moreover, the League was looked on as an eminently advancing, not to say an aggressive, power ; it was always extending its borders, always winning new allies and subjects which stood in various rela- tions to the older Cantons* Bern, above all, was always con- quering, purchasing; admitting to citizenship, in a way which affords a close parallel to old Eome. The League was feared, hated, or admired by its neighbours according to circum- stances ; but it was a power which all its neighbours were glad to have as a friend rather than as an enemy. But as yet, with all its advances, the League itself had not set foot on Welsh — that is, Romance-speaking — ground. Neufchatel, Geneva, Vaud, even Freiburg, were not yet members or even allies of the Confederation, though some of them stood in close rela- tions to the particular Canton of Bern. All these are points which must be carefully borne in mind, lest the history be misconceived through being looked at through too modern a medium. Above all, the strictly German character of the League, and its close relation to the Empire must never be allowed to pass out of mind. The German national spirit breathes strongly in all the chronicles which record the great national war between Dutch and Welsh. Under the former name the Confederate troops are constantly joined with those of Austria and the Free cities, in a way which would certainly not be done by any Swiss writer now. As to their relations to the Empire, there is the manifest fact that the Imperial summons is put prominently forward in the Swiss declaration of war against Burgundy. The Con- federates make war upon Duke Charles at the bidding of 2 A 354 CHARLES TEE BOLD. [Essay their gracious Lord the Emperor of the Eomans. Mr. Kirk rather sneers at this, and asks whether the Swiss were on all other occasions equally obedient to the orders of the Chief of the Empire. Now we certainly do not believe that mere loyalty to any Emperor, least of all to such an Emperor as Frederick the Third, would have led the Swiss into a war to which they were not prompted by nearer interests. But it does not at all follow that the prominence given to the Imperial summons was mere pretence. The Swiss, like the other members of the Empire, had little scruple in acting against the Emperor when it suited him to do so ; still it was a great point to have the Imperial name on their side whenever they could ; it gave a formal legitimacy to their doings, and it doubtless really satisfied the consciences of many who might otherwise have hesitated as to the right course. And in truth the relations of the Swiss to the Empire had commonly been very friendly. Certain Emperors and Kings of the Austrian House, Frederick himself among them, had indeed been guilty of wrongs against the Confederacy, but that had been in pursuit, not of Imperial but of Austrian interests. But with Emperors of other lines the League had commonly stood well ; the war of Charles the Fourth against Zurich is the only important exception. The great Fredericks,* Henry the Seventh, Lewis of Bavaria, and Sigismund, had always been on the very best terms both with the old Forest Cantons and with the more extended League. There can be no doubt that the name of Czesar still commanded a deep reverence throughout the Cantons, which died away only as the Imperial title sank into little more than one of the elements of greats ness in the dangerous House of Austria. It is evident that in the war with Charles, the Swiss, though they certainly never forgot their own interests, sincerely felt that they were fighting * Of course in their day the extended League did not exist. But the three original Cantons were doubtless already bound together by that traditional tie which later written engagements only confirmed ; and the Swabians of those Cantons were among the most devoted supporters of the Swabian Osesars. XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 355 for German nationality and for the majesty of that Empire with which German nationality was so closely identified. That the Emperor himself) when he had once stirred them up, dis- gracefully left them in the lurch proves nothing as to the original feeling ; when their blood was once up, they were not likely to turn hack for King, Csssar, or Pontiff. But feelings of German nationality and of loyalty to the Empire, though they were elements in the case which must not be left out, were certainly not the moving causes of the war between Charles and the Confederates. They might well turn the balance with those who were doubtful, but they were not the things which stirred up men's minds in the first instance. What then was the character of the war ? We have seen that it was not a war of the Morgarten type, a war of pure defensive heroism. Was it then, as De Gingins and Mr. Kirk would have us believe, a war of mere brigandage, an ungrateful attack upon an old friend under the influence of the bribes of a concealed enemy ? Or shall we, with Zell- weger, look upon it as a war which was brought about by the corrupt intrigues of Lewis the Eleventh with Nicolas von Diessbach, a war in which the Confederates generally were taken in by these crafty men, but one in which they them- selves could not be fairly looked upon as wanton aggressors ? This last view is one which seems to us to come much nearer to the truth than Mr. Kirk's; indeed, we are dis- posed to go a little further on behalf of the Confederates than Zellweger seems disposed to do. It seems to us that the war was no more a war of mere brigandage than it was a war of pure defensive heroism. It was rather, like most other wars, a war of policy — whether of good or of bad policy is another question — a war which had some- thing to be said for it and something to be said against it, a war which an honest man might advocate and which an honest man might oppose. It seems to us, like most other wars, to have had its origin in a combination of causes, none of which alone would have brought it about. The Swiss, as a body, were taken in ; they were made the tool or play- 2 a 2 356 CEARLES THE BOLD. [Essay thing — the SjdeTball, as Zellweger expressively calls it — of the contending powers and of crafty and dishonest men among themselves. They were forsaken alike by the Emperor who summoned them to the field on their alle- giance to the Empire, and by the King whose policy and whose gold were undoubtedly among the chief determin- ing causes of the war. We say among the chief determining causes, not the determining cause. We clearly see the hand of Lewis throughout the matter, and we believe that without his interference the war would most likely never have broken out. It is certain that the Confederation had no immediate interest in the war. There can be no doubt that territorial conquest was from the beginning one main object in the eyes of Bern, and that in the later stages of the war a mere eagerness for booty began gradually to mingle itself with other motives. It is certain that large sums were paid by Lewis to many leading men in Switzerland, especially at Bern and Luzern ; and it is certain that from this time the baneful practice of mercenary service took a far wider deve- lopement, and the yet more baneful system of pensions and of military capitulations with the states themselves, took its first beginning. It is hardly less certain that of the men who took the gold of Lewis, some at least took it as a bribe in the strictest sense, and were simply dishonest traitors, sold to the service of a foreign prince. At their head we have as little hesitation as Mr. Kirk in placing the name of Nicolas von Diessbach. In so doing we are only following in the steps of Zellweger, and repeating a sentence which was before him pronounced by De la Harpe. All this we readily admit, but it does not follow that the war was a war of pure brigandage. It was a war very much like all other wars, except those few heroic struggles in which men have simply fought to deliver their country from an unprovoked invasion. Such a war, even if, after weighing the arguments on both sides, we pro- nounce it to have been unjust, is quite a different thing from a war of pure brigandage. Our Eussian war fourteen years back was thoroughly needless and thoroughly unjust, a war XI.] CBABLE8 THE BOLD. 357 waged in a bad cause against a people who had not wronged us ; but there was quite enough to be said on its behalf to take it out of the class of wars of pure brigandage. And the Swiss had in the Burgundian war, not indeed a case like their own case at Morgarten and Sempach, but a better case than England, France, and Sardinia had in the Eussian war. As for particular acts of cruelty, those may be found on both sides, and there is nothing to excuse them on either side except the ferocious customs of the age, customs far more ferocious than the customs of some centuries earlier. Swiss cruelty at Orbe and Estavayer was as blameworthy as Bur- gundian cruelty at Dinant, Liittich, and Grandson. That it was more blameworthy we cannot see. That there was a weak side to the Swiss cause is plain, if only from the witness of their own historians. The most im- portant sources for this period are undoubtedly the documents which have been worked with such good results both by Zell- weger and by Mr. Kirk. But the chroniclers are in some sort better indexes of what was in men's minds at the time. One most important authority, and one most strongly anti-Bur- gundian in its spirit, is the Chronicle of Diebold Schilling of Bern.* Now throughout his story there reigns a sort of un- comfortable, artificial, apologetic tone, as if the writer was trying, by dint of using the strongest epithets and putting everything in- the strongest way, to justify in the eyes of his readers a course that he himself knew could not be fully justified. No contrast can be greater than between Diebold Schilling and Mr. Kirk's favourite author, Valerius Anshelm. Anshelm wrote just after the Reformation, full of all the zeal which awakened that political and moral reformation which was a- temporary result of the religious change.t His * This chronicle has long been known. It must not be confounded with the contemporary chronicle of the other Diebold Schilling of Luzern, which was printed only a few years back, and which is much less full. t Not, I would say, as far as I can see, the result of the peculiar dogmas of the Reformation, but of that moral elevation and purification which must always accompany any great and sincere change in religion. Zwingli un- 358 CHARLES TEE BOLD. [Essay righteous soul is thoroughly vexed by the unlawful deeds of his own generation and of the generation before him. He declaims against the foreign pensions and everything that has to do with them, with the fervour, the sarcasm, and somewhat of the parabolic vein, of a Hebrew prophet. Lewis the Eleventh, whom Diebold Schilling is rather inclined to wor- ship, is painted by Anshelm in the blackest colours.* To be sure he paints Charles of Burgundy in colours equally black, and throughout his narrative of the time two feelings seem to contend, a natural sympathy for the military prowess of his countrymen, and a profound conviction of the evils which followed on once touching the gold of France. But, like most rebukers of the vices of their time, Anshelm's righteous zeal, as Zellweger thinks it needful to warn us, sometimes carries him beyond the mark. We have to strike the balance between ancient partizans of two opposite sides as well as between their modern followers. In striking this balance there are some points which Mr. Kirk can hardly be said to keep steadily enough before him. He insists on the facts that Charles had no hostile intentions against the Confederation, and that it was very hard to make the members of the Confederation agree to the war against him, except those greater and more ambitious states which lay nearest to the frontier, and which were most open to the agency of France. Now let us think for a moment what the doubtedly wrought a wonderful moral reformation at Zurich ; but Saint Charles Borromeo wrought an equally wonderful moral reformation at Luzern. In neither case do I believe the reformation to have been the result of those dogmas on which those two good men spoke different lan- guages, but rather of those on which they spoke the same. And neither theological system proved itself capable of setting up an earthly paradise for more than a short time. * See vol. i. p. 100 of his 'Berner Chronik.' The great point is the contrast between Lewis—" der eigensinnig, listig, frevel Delfin " and his father—" von sinem milden, giitigen und wysen Vater, Kiing Karl dem Sibenten." But he gets just as eloquent over his comparison between Charles the Bold and his father, Philip the Good : Lewis and Charles alike are compared to Turkish tyrants. XI.] CHARLES TEE BOLD. 359 interest of the Confederation really was. To us, looking calmly at the matter from our distance of time, the over- throw of Charles, the aggrandizement of Lewis, the blighting of the best hope which had eyer appeared for the formation of a strong Middle Kingdom, seem a great and lasting Euro- pean calamity. But it is not fair to expect the Swiss of those days to look so many hundred years forwards and so many hundred years backwards. Putting such distant views out of sight, and putting also out of sight for a moment the ques- tion of French influence in the business, had the Old League of Upper Germany any good reason for making war upon the Duke of Burgundy ? It seems to us that they had as good grounds for war as nations commonly have for wars which are not purely defensive ; but it also seems to us that the quarrels which formed the ostensible casus heUi could easily have been made up by a frank understanding between the parties, if it had not been the interest of other powers to keep their differences alive. There is no reason to believe that Charles had any imme- diate intention of attacking the Swiss. Indeed, whatever were his ultimate intentions, it was clearly his interest to keep on good terms with them while he was carrying on his other conquests. It is also clear that the great mass of the Confederates had no sort of wish to quarrel with Charles. His father Philip had been an old friend and a good neighbour ; and, whatever we say of Hagenbach, Charles personally had certainly done the Confederates no direct wrong. But it does not follow from this that peace was the best policy, or that the war was without excuse. Two ques- tions have to be asked : — First, was the general position of Charles really threatening to the Confederates, so as to make it good policy to attack him while he could still be attacked in concert with powerful allies, instead of waiting merely to be devoured the last ? Secondly, were there any particular acts on the part of Charles which, apart from these more distant considerations, rendered immediate hostilities justifiable ? On the former ground the advocates of war could make 360 CHARLES TEE BOLD. [Essay out at least a very plausible case. Charles was, by various means, annexing province after province, in a way which pointed to settled schemes of annexation which put all hi& neighbours in jeopardy. He had annexed Gelders, he had annexed Elsass ; he was clearly aiming at uniting his scat- tered dominions by the annexation of Lorraine; he was besieging the German town of Neuss, in a quarrel with which he had not the least concern/ in a dispute about the rightful possession of the Archbishoprick of Koln * — a question surely to be judged at the tribunal of the Emperor or the Pope, and not to be decided by the arms of the Duke of Burgundy. All these were facts known to all the world. All the world knew also how Charles had, in 1473, gone to Trier, to be raised by the Emperor to the rank of King of some kingdom or other, and how he had been left to paok up his newly-made crown and sceptre and go home again. More lately there had been rumours, true or false, that the restoration of the King- dom was again designed, that Charles was to be Imperial Vicar throughout the old Burgundy, that the Free Imperial City of Besancon was to become his capital, that he was negotiating with good King Bene for the cession or inheritance of Provence. All these things were enough to frighten any- body, especially those who dwelt within the limits which would naturally be assigned to the revived kingdom. Even among the original Cantons, Schwyz and Uri indeed lay without the borders of Burgundy in any meaning of the name, yet among the endless fluctuations of those borders, Unterwalden had sometimes been counted to lie within the Lesser Burgundian Duchy. And Bern and her allies of Solothurn and Freiburg all stood on undoubted Burgundian soil, and they were far * Charles's policy with regard to the See of Koln seems to be the same as his earlier policy towards Luttich. As he could hardly annex the Bishoprick to his dominions, his object was to convert the ecclesiastical sovereign into his instrument. Charles, However, is said to have meditated the ority of the four great ecclesiastical prin dominions in the Netherlands — the Bis! imbray, and Tournay. — Heuter, lib. v. c. 8. XI.] CHARLES TEE BOLD. 361 from being forgetful of the fact.* The re-establishment of the Burgundian Kingdom would thus, if it did not altogether destroy the Confederation, at least dismember it ; it would despoil it of its greatest city, and give the eastern Cantons a powerful foreign King, instead of one of their own Confede- rates, as their western neighbour. Any serious prospect of such a" change was enough to alarm the whole Confederacy; the least hint of the possibility of such a change was surely enough to alarm Bern. This is a feeling which Mr. Kirk does not enter into so much as an historian would to whom historical geography was more of a living thing. But there can be no doubt that the fear existed at the time, and that it was far from being an unnatural fear. Bern then, more directly threat- ened and better yersed than her sisters in the general polities of the world, naturally took the lead in the movement. That the older Cantons lagged behind is nothing wonderful : Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were far less directly threatened, and their position and manner of life naturally hindered them from keeping so keen an eye on the general politics of the world as the astute and polished statesmen of Bern. That Bern therefore was eager for war, while the other Cantons somewhat unwillingly followed her lead, was just what the circumstances of the case would naturally lead us to expect. The alliance with Austria was a necessary part of any scheme of hostility against Burgundy. It of course offended all Swiss traditional sentiment. Austria had up to this moment always been their enemy, while Burgundy had * " Als Krone im Burgundenreich, Als freier Stadte Krone, Als reiner Spiegel, der zugleich Granz mal und maokel ohne : Wird Bern gertthmt all iiberall Von Jungen wie von Grreisen, Auoh muss den grossen Heldensal Das ganze Deutschland preisen." Lied uber Ougler, 1376, in Bochholz's Eidgenossische Lieder-Chronik (Bern, 1842). It is much to he regretted that the compiler of this collection should have modernized the language of the old songs in the way that he has done. 362 - CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay long been their friend, and had only ceased to be so under Austrian influence. But such a feeling was purely senti- mental. If Burgundy was really dangerous, Austria was a natural ally. Sigismund, far too weak to do the Swiss any mischief by himself, was yet strong enough to give them valuable help against a common enemy. The case, in fact, is one in which what we may call the policy of the moment agreed with the permanent policy of Europe, while what we may call the policy of the age, the policy which it needs a long-sighted statesman to reach and which the most long-sighted of statesmen seldom get beyond, suggested another course. The smaller and more remote Cantons, those which lay further from the scene of action and which knew less of the general politics of the world, those which had no hope of that territorial aggrandizement which the war opened to Bern and Freiburg, naturally shrank from attacking a prince who had not directly attacked them. This short-sighted policy accidentally agrees with our judgement four hundred years after that the overthrow of Charles and his power has proved a great European evil. But, at the ' time, a more long-sighted policy might argue that the part of wisdom was to meet the blow before it came, and, as Charles had given real provocation, not to wait till pro- vocation grew into invasion. The particular grievances alleged against Burgundy were grievances of that kind which can be easily got over when both parties are so disposed, but 1 which easily lead to war when the mind of either side is exasperated on other grounds. That the Swiss had real grievances cannot be denied: their merchants had been seized, the Bernese territory had been violated, their allies of Muhlhausen had been attacked. We cannot doubt that Peter von Hagenbach had used violent and insulting lan- guage towards the Confederates. But, except the attack on "MnVilVimioATi nnno r>f tViooe were Charles's own acts. For the > had an excuse which might see it hardly would seem so to the Coj f Hagenbach and others he was XI.] CEABLES THE BOLD. 363 quite ready to make reasonable atonement. But it was not the interest of France, it was not the interest of Bern, it was perhaps not the more remote interest of the whole League, that such atonement should be accepted. A little friendly mediation might no doubt have easily brought both sides to a momentary good understanding. The question was whether such a momentary good understanding was in har- mony with sound policy. And in weighing what was sound policy at the time, it is not reasonable to expect men to look forward for four or five hundred years. As for Hagenbach, we freely grant to Mr. Kirk that his exeoution was a breach of the law of nations. Whatever were his crimes, neither the Duke of Austria, nor the Con- federates, nor the Free Cities of the Bhine, had any right to judge him. He was an officer of the Duke of Burgundy, in a country of which the Duke of Burgundy had a lawful, though only a temporary, possession. His deeds, if left unpunished, might form a casus belli against his master ; we might be inclined-to shut our eyes if he had perished in a popular tumult ; but his solemn judicial trial was a mere mockery of justice. But it is quite in vain that Mr. Kirk attempts to whitewash the man himself. His resolute and Christian end, acknowledged by his bitterest enemies,* proves very little. Men often die well who have lived ill. And Hagenbach at least knew that he was dying by an unjust sen- tence. But the genuine and bitter hatred of all the Alsatian and Swabian towns could not have been aroused for nothing. The whole people of Breisach were not in the pay of King Lewis, nor had they all been led astray by the eloquence of Nicolas von Diessbach. The fact is plain ; they revolted against a cruel, lustful, and insolent ruler. The particular stories in Konigshoven f and elsewhere may perhaps be lies, or at any rate exaggerations ; but even slander commonly shows * See Schilling of Luzem, p. 65. t Die Alteste Teulsche so wol allgemeine als insonderheit Elsassische, und Strassburgische Chronicke, von Jacob von Konigshoven, Priestern in Strassburg. (Strassburg, 1698.) 364 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay some regard to probability. The real deeds of Hagenbach must have been very bad before men could invent such stories about him. The particular grounds of indignation were just those which do most stir up men's indignation, namely, lust- ful excess combined with violence and insult. It is quite in vain for Mr. Kirk to soften down the stories of Hagenbach into his being merely " a man of immoral life." People do not rise up against mere immorality in a ruler ; it sometimes even makes a ruler more popular. Philip the Good, Sigis- mund of Austria, Edward of England, the pious King of France himself, were all men of immoral life, but we do not find that anybody revolted against them on that account.* But then, whatever were their moral offences, they at least abstained from those specially galling forms of vice which brought destruction on Peter von Hagenbach and on the victims of the Sicilian Vespers. As we grant to Mr. Kirk the unlawfulness of the execu- tion of Hagenbach, we can also grant to him another point. The decisive moment of the struggle was when Sigismund of Austria reclaimed the lands in Elsass which he had pledged to Charles. We admit that the repayment of the money — the PfcmdschiUing, as the old chroniclers call it — was made in a way not contemplated in the treaty, and that Charles was therefore justified in treating the redemption as null and void. But we think that this admission leaves the main case very much as it stood before. The important point is the zeal with which the various towns helped to raise the money, and their eagerness to have Sigismund for their master or neighbour rather than Charles. Mr. Kirk tells us — and we are ready to believe it — that the Burgundian government was stricter and more regular than the Austrian, and that the towns simply stood out for franchises which * Unless indeed we accept that version of the quarrel between Warwick and Edward whinVi attributes Warwick's bitterness against the King to an insul 's daughter or niece. If so, we are appr e tales of Hagenbach. As a general rule, ler to have made him popular than othei XI.] CHARLES THE BOLD. 365 were inconsistent with the general good. So possibly they were, but it would have been hard to make the citizens of those towns think so. At any rate we may be quite sure that men did not mingle their political cries with their Easter hymns without some good reason.* We hold then that, taking all these things together, — the generally dangerous designs of Charles, the particular wrongs done by Hagenbach and others, the oppression of neighbour- ing and friendly commonwealths, the summons to the Con- federates in the name of the Emperor, — there was quite enough to explain, perhaps enough to justify, the Swiss declaration of war. And the peculiar position of Bern fully explains and justifies her eagerness and the backwardness of the other Cantons. If the career of Charles did not imme- diately threaten the Confederates, yet it threatened them in the long run, and it had directly touched their allies. German national feeling, and that vague loyalty to the Empire which was by no means without influence, called the Confederates, along with other Germans, to withstand the threatening Welsh power against whom Caesar had summoned all his liegemen. That Caesar afterwards forsook the liegemen whom he had summoned would count for very little when the die was once cast. These were motives which would appeal to the sentiments of the Confederates in general. They would be met by strong motives on the other side. Mere sluggishness, mere unwillingness to stir without mani- fest necessity, would count for something. A powerful sentimental feeling would oppose itself to a war with Bur- gundy, an old friend, undertaken in concert with Austria, the old enemy. There would "be the feeling of jealousy on the part of the small Cantons against Bern, when Bern * The Easter Song of 1474 ran thus : " Christ ist erstariden, der Laridvogt ist gefangen ; Des sollend wir fro syn. Siegmund soil unser Trost syn, Kyrie eleison. War er nit gefangen, so war's tibel gangen ; Seyd er nun gefangen ist, hilft ihm nut syn bose List." J. v. Mtiller, b. iv. o. vii. note 572. So Schilling of Luzerri, p. 66. 366 CHARLES TEE BOLD. [Essay was so sure to reap the chief advantages of war. Motives would thus be pretty evenly balanced. In the end the Confederation was hurried, one might almost say cheated, into the war by French intrigue and Bernese diplomacy. All that did happen might possibly have happened, even though the gold and the intrigues of King Lewis had played no important part in the business. But we are far from denying that they did play a very important part. They clinched, as it were, the whole matter. They made that certain which otherwise would have been only possible; they hastened what otherwise might have been delayed; they made a quarrel irreconcileable which otherwise might have been made up, at least for a season. We do not doubt that the finger of Lewis was to be traced everywhere, at Bern, at Innsbruck, in the Alsatian towns, seizing opportunities, removing diffi- culties, aggravating what needed to be aggravated and soften- ing what needed to be softened. We do not doubt that the Confederates were made the tool of a policy which few among them understood, except the special agents of Lewis. All that we say is that Lewis's interference was not the sole explanation of the matter ; that, though a very important influence, it was only one conspiring influence among several ; that the Confederates had at least a plausible case against Charles, and that they might even have acted as they did though Lewis had never been born. So far as they were unduly or unworthily influenced by the tempter, they had their fitting reward; when they were once committed to the struggle with the power of Burgundy, their royal ally forsook them no less basely than their Imperial lord, and the baneful habits brought in by this first handling of French gold remained the shame and curse of the Swiss common- wealths till the stain was wiped out in our own day. How far then- was the Bernese diplomacy corrupt ? Was Bern, were its statesmen, simply bought by Lewis ? Nicolas voi sold himself, soul and body, to the he whole commonwealth so sell itsc r. Kirk does not make enough XL] CHARLES TEE BOLD. 367 of allowance for the wide difference between the feelings of those days and the feelings of ours with regard to any taking of money by public men. Our feeling on the sub- ject is undoubtedly a much higher and better one, and it is a safeguard against practices which, even in their most harmless shape, are at least very dangerous. But we must judge men according to the feelings of their own time. Every man who took the King's money was not necessarily acting corruptly. No doubt it would have been nobler to refuse to touch a sou of it in any case. The high-minded refusal of Freiburg at the time of the King's first offers reads like some of the noblest stories of the best days of old Eome. To take the money, whether for a common- wealth or for an individual, was dangerous and degrading ; but it was far from being so dangerous or so degrading as the like conduct would be now. We have no right to say that either a commonwealth or an individual was bribed or bought, unless it can be shown that he or they were led by gifts to adopt a line of conduct which their unbought judgements condemned. Diessbach may have been a traitor of this kind ; Zellweger demands his condemnation as well as Mr. Kirk, and Bern and Switzerland can afford to give him up. But we must not extend the same harsh measure to every man who grasped a few gold pieces from the royal storehouse. - It might be a reward ; it might be a subvention ; it was not necessarily a bribe, as we now count bribes.' We have a feeling nowadays about taking money at all which had no sort of existence in the fifteenth century. In those days men freely took what they could get; judges took presents from suitors and ambassadors took presents from the princes to whom they were sent ; sovereigns and their councillors became the pensioners of other sovereigns ; Kings on their progresses did not scruple to receive purses filled with gold as an earnest of the love of their subjects. To sell one's country for money, to change one's policy for money, was as shameful then as it is now; but simply to take money, either as a help or as a reward, from a richer fellow- 368 CHARLES THE BOLD. [Essay worker in the same cause was not thought shameful at all. Kings with their ministers and ambassadors, commonwealths and their leading citizens, freely took money in such cases. Charles spent his money in Switzerland as well as Lewis ; Englishmen took the money of Lewis no less readily than Switzers. If Diessbach or any one else took French money in order to beguile his country into a course which, had he not received French money, he would not have counselled, he was a corrupt traitor. But if Diessbach or any one else, believing a war with Burgundy to be just and politic, took French money as a help towards the common cause, or even as a reward for his services in promoting that cause, the morality of the time did not condemn him. And many of these practices long survived the days of Charles the Bold. The English patriots of the reign of Charles the Second took the money of Lewis the Fourteenth as freely as Aratos in old times took the money of King Ptolemy. But neither Aratos nor Algernon Sidney can fairly be called corrupt ; the interest of the patriot was in either case believed to be the same as the interest of the foreign King, and the patriot did not disdain the foreign King's money as help given to the common cause. The subventions publicly granted by Lewis the Eleventh to the several Cantons were really of much the same nature as the subsidies in which England not so long ago dealt very largely. In all these cases there is much of danger and temptation in handling the seducing metal, but the mere act is not of itself necessarily corrupt. The worst to be said of the Swiss is that, in a not very scrupulous age, they did not show themselves conspicuously better than other people. The friends of France took the King's money, and the friends of Burgundy took the Duke's ; for Charles had his paid partizans also, though he was both less bountiful and less discreet in the business than his rival. In taking foreip-n money, as in serving as mercenaries, the 3 rest of the world, only various cir* d habits more conspicuous and mo .n in other nations. The help XI.] CHARLES TEE BOLD. 369 of France, which took the ugly form of receiving French money, had a great deal to do with fixing the purpose both of Bern and of the other Confederates. And it is pretty clear that, with some particular men, the receiving of French money was simply the receiving of French bribes. But as regards the state, the subsidy need not have been more than a subsidy ; to receive French money as a help against the common enemy was not necessarily any more corrupt than to receive the help of French troops. We do not deny the danger of such practises ; we do not deny their evil effects in this particular case, in which they undoubtedly led, as Valerius Anshelm shows, to the political demoralization of Switzerland. These transactions with Lewis were the be- ginning of these evil practices, — practices which seriously lowered the dignity and independence of the Swiss people down to the abolition of the military capitulations by the Con- stitution of 1848. An individual Swiss can now sell himself to a foreign power, just as an individual Englishman can ; but no Swiss commonwealth can now, as a commonwealth, sell its citizens* to the service of strangers. The beginning of these degrading habits is to be traced to the war of Bur- gundy; but it is not fair to speak, as De Gingins and Mr. Kirk do, of the war of Burgundy itself as an instance of mercenary service. We believe that in that war the Swiss were neither strictly fighting for their hearths and homes nor yet basely shedding their blood in an alien quarrel. They were fighting in a war of policy, a war into which they had drifted, as the phrase is, through a variety of influences. But we decline to look on French gold and intrigues as the single cause of the war, of which we hold them to have been only one cause among several. We look on the war, like most other wars, as a war of doubtful justice and expediency, a war which had much to be said for it and much to be said against it. We cannot look on it as a war of mere brigandage, or on the Swiss who were engaged in it as mere mercenary butchers. The Swiss then acted simply like other people, neither 2 B 370 CHARLES TEE BOLD. [Essay better nor worse ; only there is a sort of disposition in many- minds specially to blame the Swiss if they did not act better than other people. They were republicans, and they ought to have set examples of all the republican virtues. But in truth the Swiss of that age were not theoretical republicans at all. They had the strongest possible attachment to the rights of their own cities and districts, but they had no notion whatever of the rights of man. They had no rhetori- cal horror of Kings, such as appears in some measure among the old Greeks and Romans, and in a form of exaggerated caricature among the French revolutionists. In truth they were subjects of a King ; true they had no King but Csesar, but Csesar was their King, though thay had contrived to cut down his royal powers to a vanishing point. Again, people often fancy that the Swiss of that day were wholly a people of shepherds and mountaineers, like the Swiss of a hundred and fifty years earlier. They expect to find in every part of the Confederation the supposed simple virtues of the inhabitants of the Forest Cantons. But the refined and skilful statesmen and diplomatists of the Bernese aristocracy were men of quite another mould. They lived in the great world of general politics, and they were neither better nor worse than other people who lived in it. Their standard was doubtless always higher than that of the mere slaves of a court, but we have no right to expect from them an impossible career of heroic virtue ; it is enough if they reach the con- temporary standard of fairly honest men in other countries. There are then points in which we cannot unreservedly follow Mr. Kirk, and points in which we think that his way of looking at things is defective. There are also faults of style, which are the more provoking because Mr. Kirk can write thoroughly well whenever he chooses. But we must not be thouerht to be blind to Mr. Kirk's real and great m ' ees removed from that class of hi 1 facts and their inferences alike " c 10 blunder in every detail, and XI.J CHARLES THE BOLD. 371 who, when their blunders are pointed out, repeat them in pamphlets or in new editions, as may be convenient. Mr. Kirk belongs to the school of good, honest, hard work. Such faults as he has clearly arise, not from any want of due care in dealing with his immediate subject, but rather from not fully grasping the position of his immediate subject in the general history of the world. On one point especially Mr. Kirk has done really good service ; that is, with regard to the character of his own hero. It is, of course, easy for a man whose studies have gathered round one particular person to rate that person somewhat above his merits, especially if he be one who has commonly been rated below his merits. But it is just as easy to cry out "hero-worship" whenever a man's studies have led him to take a more favourable view of any historical character than has commonly been taken. Mr. Kirk is very far from being an undiscerning panegyrist or apologist of Charles the Bold. But some ingenious hand might doubtless, by carefully bringing forward this passage and carefully leaving out the other, give the impression that he is an undiscerning panegyrist. To us he certainly seems somewhat to overrate Charles, but he does not overrate him more than is almost unavoidable in one to whom Charles must have been for many years the main subject of his thoughts. And the overrating of Chatles is undoubtedly a fault on the right side. The novels of Scott have led people in general to see nothing but an embodiment of brute force in a man whose very mixed character is a really instructive study of human nature. It would be an abuse of words to call Charles either a great man or a good man ; but there were in his character strong elements both of greatness and goodness. To compare him with a man who soars in all things far above him, we may see in Charles the same in- flexible will, the some stern and unbending justice, many of the same personal virtues, which mark the character of William the Great. We may see in him too the same utter indifference to human suffering ; but in both it is simple in- difference, and never grows into actual delight in oppression. 2 b 2 372 OHABLES THE BOLD. [Essay XI _ But no man was ever further than Charles from William's political skill ; he had no trace of that marvellous power by which William knew how to make every man his instrument, how to adapt the fitting means to every end, how to mark the right time, the right way, the right place, for the accom- plishment of every scheme. Hence, lacking the guidance of that master intellect, those very qualities which made William well nigh the master of destiny made Charles only the sport of fortune. His later history is conceived in the very spirit of JEschylean tragedy. And as far as the part of the Messenger is concerned, one can hardly wish for any improvement in Mr. Kirk's acting. It is then the more pity that he should have failed so thoroughly, failed, so to speak, by his own choiee, as he has failed in the part of Chorus. On the whole then we welcome Mr. Kirk as a worthy accession to the same company as his countrymen Prescott and Motley. The subjects of the three are closely connected. The historian of Philip the Second and the historian of the United Netherlands do, in effect, carry on the story of Charles, his family, and his dominions. Their tale tells how one corner of those dominions rose for a short time to the highest point of European glory, and how the great work of the Middle Kingdom, to act as the bulwark of Germany and of Europe against the aggression of the Western Kingdom, was thrown on a few of the smallest of the many states whose names served to swell the roll-call of Charles's titles. And when we see other large portions of those states now helping to swell the might of the power which they once held in check, we cannot help wishing, even without throwing our- selves on the other side with all the zeal of Mr. Kirk, that the stout pikes and halberts of Switzerland had never been wielded against one who seemed marked out by destiny as the restorer of the Middle Kingdom. ( 373 ) XII. PEESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. In planning a political constitution — an employment which always has a slightly ludicrous side to it, but which, in many conditions of a nation, is a sad necessity — the makers of the new machine have to consider the necessary partition of powers under a twofold aspect. They have to decide both as to the number of departments among which authority is to be divided, and as to the hands in which authority of each kind is to be vested. Thus, the British Constitution in its legal theory, the Federal Constitutions of America and Switzerland, and the type of constitution common among the American States, all agree in dividing the powers of government between two Legislative Chambers and an exe- cutive power distinct from both. The partition of powers, as far as the number of departments goes, is much the same in all these cases ; but the nature of the hands in which power is placed differs widely in the different examples. There is undoubtedly a considerable difference in the amount of power which each of these constitutions gives to its executive ; but the difference in the amount of power is less striking than the difference in the nature of the hands in which that power is vested. England entrusts the executive authority to an hereditary King ; the United States, and the several States generally, entrust it to an elective President or Governor ; the Swiss Confederation entrusts it to an elective Council. America, it is clear, here forms a mean between Switzerland and England. It agrees with England — that is, with the legal theory of England — in placing the executive power in the hands of a single person, and not in those of a Council ; it 374 PRESIDENTIAL GOVUMNMENT. [Ewsay agrees with Switzerland in making the depository of execu- tive power elective and responsible instead of hereditary and irresponsible. An almost infinite number of cross divisions might be made by comparing any of these constitutions with those which agree with them in some particular points and differ in others. Thus the French Constitution of 1791 had an hereditary King, and only a single Chamber ; and the present Kingdom of Greece, where the Senate was abolished by the last-made constitution, has followed the same model. These constitutions, so far as their executive is single, approach to the English and American type ; so far as their executive is hereditary, they approach to the English type as distinguished from the American ; but so far as they have only a single Legislative Chamber, they forsake the models of England, America, and Federal Switzerland, and approach to the type of constitution common among the Swiss Cantons. Almost any number of changes can be rung in this way. We thus see how inadequate any one classification of governments is, if it is sought to apply it to all purposes, and how almost every topic of political disquisition calls for a classification of its own. In the little way that we have gone, we find monarchic and republican constitutions showing marks of likeness or unlikeness to one another, quite independent of their likeness or unlikeness as monarchies and republics. And any questions between aristocracy and democracy have not as yet come in at all. The aristocratic or democratic nature of a constitution depends much more on the constitution of the Legislative Chambers than either on their number or on their relation to the executive. No doubt the purest forms of democracy and of aristocracy, those in which all power is vested in an assembly of the whole people or of the whole privileged class among the people, would be incon- sistent with any of the forms of executive which we have spoken of. But any of these forms could co-exist with what is now generally understood by aristocracy or democracy, namely, an aristocratic or a democratic way of choosing the Legislative Chambers. Of the many possible cross divisions XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 375 the one which concerns us for the purpose of the present essay is one which arranges constitutions according to the nature of the hands in which the executive power is vested ; according, for instance, as that power is placed in the hands of a King, a President, or a Council. The distinction between an executive President and an executive Council is obvious. Is there, or is there not, some one person to whose sole hands the executive power is com- mitted in such a degree that whatever is done in the exe- cutive department is his personal act, while any other persons who may be concerned are merely his agents or advisers ? The American President is a President of this kind ; every executive act is his act ; many things depend wholly on his personal pleasure ; other acts of his require the confirmation of the Senate ; still the Senate merely confirms, and cannot act of itself ; the act is strictly the act of the President. The President has his ministers ; but they are strictly Ms ministers, named by him, and dependent on him ; they are his advisers and agents, not his colleagues. The position of the Swiss President of 'the Confederation (Bundesprasident), though his title is so similar, is wholly different. He is simply chair- man, with the usual powers of a chairman, of the real exe- cutive body, the Federal Council (Bundesrath). The other members of that Council are his colleagues, not his mere agents or advisers ; executive acts are the acts of the Council as a body, not of the President personally, and it is of course possible that a majority of the Council may come to a resolu- tion of which the President does not approve. These two systems may be taken as typical examples. Few republican States have invested a single magistrate with such large powers as the American President, while few commonwealths have given a nominal chief magistrate so small a degree of power as belongs to the Swiss President. In truth, the Swiss President is not a chief magistrate at all ; he is simply chief of a board, which board, in its collective character, acts as chief magistrate. It is not the Federal President personally, but the Federal Council as a body, which answers to the Presidents, 376 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay Consuls, Doges, and Gonfaloniers of other commonwealths. His title in truth is a misleading one; he is not President of the Confederation, but simply President of the Federal Council. Between these two extreme types it is easy to imagine several intermediate forms, some coming nearer to the Ameri- can and some to the Swiss type. Thus the General of the Achaian League, whose position so wonderfully forestalled that of the American President, differed from him in his relation to what may be called his Cabinet, the Council of demiowgoi. In most matters the General and his Council seem to have acted together, while others came within the distinct competence of the General alone and of the Council alone. But, even where the General and Council acted together, they acted as two distinct authorities in the State ; the action of the General in such a case was something between that of the American President asking the con- firmation of the Senate to an executive act and that of the Swiss President taking the chair at a meeting of his col- leagues. So again, many of the American States have, at different times, assisted or encumbered their chief magistrate with a Council of State. For instance, the Pennsylvanian Constitution of 1776 vested executive power in a President and Council, the President being apparently a mere chair- man. This is hardly distinguishable from the Swiss Federal model. The Virginian Constitution of the same year gave its Governor a Privy Council, but allowed him a somewhat more independent position. He was bound, in most cases, to act by the advice of the Privy Council, but this is a different thing from being a mere chairman of that body. The Swiss Cantons again commit the executive power to Councils ; there seems to be no Canton where the chief magistrate holds the independent position of an American Federal President or an American State Governor. But here too intermediate shades may be seen; in many of the Cantons the chief magistrate, like the Federal President, is a mere chairman of the Council, but in others he holds a decidedly higher relative position. His official title, for instance, often forms XII.] PBESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 377 part of the style of the Canton ; in the purely democratic Cantons, the Landammann has the great advantage of pre- siding both in the executive Council and in the Landesge- meinde or Assembly of the People ; in Inner- Appenzell he even has large constitutional powers to be exercised personally. In fact, in these cases where the executive power belongs to a President and Council, it is easy to conceive every possible shade between the two types. There is manifestly a wide dif- ference between merely presiding in a Council, with a casting- vote in case of necessity, and having to act by the advice of a Council. If, in the latter, case, the President retains the sole initiative, his position will come very nearly to that of the President of the United States with regard to the Senate. Another type of executive, which may in some sort be called intermediate between the Council and the independent President, may be found in such a magistracy as that of the Eoman Consuls. Here are two chief magistrates of equal power, whose number at once distinguishes them alike from the Council and from the single President. The Achaian League too, in its earlier days, placed two Generals at the head of the State. The first impression of a modern reader is that such a government must have come to a perpetual dead-lock. Yet it is certain from the Eoman history that such was not the ordinary condition of the Eoman common- wealth. Interruptions to the regular march of government arose much more commonly from the clashing of the con- sular and tribunitian power than from dissensions between the Consuls themselves. But in truth, though the Consuls were the chief magistrates of the commonwealth, it cannot be said that the executive power was vested in them in the same sense in which it is vested in the President of the United States. The government of Eome, in the modern sense of the word government, was certainly vested in the Senate. The other magistrates also, though inferior in rank * * That is the regular permanent magistracies, all of which were inferior to the Consulship. The Dictatorship was only an occasional office, and though Censors were appointed at regular intervals their office was not a permanent one. 378 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay to the Consuls, were still strictly co-ordinate with them, and were in no sense their agents or delegates. We know so little of the Achaian League during the days of the double generalship that we cannot say from direct evidence how it worked. But the fact that a single General was, after a few years, substituted for two, seems to show that it worked badly. As a President is, on the one hand, clearly distinguished from a Council, so he is, on the other hand, no less clearly distinguished from a King. This distinction seems almost more obvious than the former one ; yet intermediate forms may be seen here also, and to define a King may not be quite so easy as it seems at first sight. What, for instance, was the King of Poland or the Doge of Venice? What were the two Kings of Sparta ? The Spartan case may be easily set aside. Sparta was not a case either of regal or of presidential government. The Kings were so far from being Kings in the ordinary sense that they were not even chief magistrates. The real executive was a Council, the College of Ephors. The Kings were hereditary generals and here- ditary priests ; they were reverenced on account of their divine ancestry, and were placed in a position where an able King might attain to a commanding influence in the state ; but their constitutional powers were of the very narrowest kind. The mere title of King proves nothing; it was kept on in other Greek commonwealths besides Sparta ; it was even the style of one of the annual Archons under the Democracy of Athens. The two modern cases are more difficult. Venice and Poland, though both had princes, both bore the name of republics, and Venice is universally classed among republican states. Poland is less usually recognized as a republic. This is probably because there is felt to be a contradiction in the notion of a republic under a King, which is not felt in the notion of a republic under a Doge. People do not fully grasp that Doge is simply the local form of Duke, nor do they fully grasp that other Italian Dukes were, in all save a barren precedence, the equals of Kings. But the King of Poland and XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 379 the Duke of Venice were in the beginning ais truly sovereign as other Kings and other Dukes ; only their powers had been gradually cut down to a point which seemed almost to remove them out of the class of princes into that of mere magistrates. But, as having once been really sovereigns, they still kept much of that personal position which distinguishes the prince from the magistrate. The King of Poland especially, though he might not be of royal birth, though he was not in the possession of ordinary royal powers, was still, in personal rank and privilege, looked on as the peer of other Kings. The constitutional authority of both princes was far less than that of the American President, but, being elected for life, they enjoyed, like the Spartan Kings, far greater opportunities of obtaining a permanent influence in the state. Other in- stances might be found elsewhere, as the hereditary Stadt- holder in the United Provinces, the Lord Protector in England, the First Consul in France. But it may be observed that this ambiguous kind of government has seldom been lasting. Venice and Poland have been the only countries where it could really be called permanent. In France and England— we might perhaps add Holland — it has either fallen to pieces or grown into undisguised monarchy. Setting aside these intermediate cases, and forbearing also to speculate as to the exact nature of kingship, we may say that the main difference between a King and a President is that the President is distinctly responsible to the law, that he may be judged and deposed by a legal process, and that there is nothing about him of that mysterious personal dignity which, in the minds of most people, still hangs about a King. Whether the powers of a President are great or small, he is simply a magistrate, to be obeyed within the range of his powers, but who is liable to legal punishment if he outsteps them. This would seem to be the most essential difference between a President and a King. A King, how- ever limited his powers may be, is, in all modern constitu- tions, personally irresponsible. His command is no justifica- tion of any illegal act done by another, but no constitutional 380 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay monarchy seems to supply any regular means of punishing an illegal act done by the King's own hands. If the King be deposed or set aside in any way, it is clearly by some un- usual — not necessarily unjustifiable — stretch of authority on the part of some other power in the state ; there is no court before which the King can be arraigned in ordinary process of law. But the President holds office only during good behaviour, and he may be deposed by sentence of a com- petent court. This responsibility of the President and irresponsibility of the King seems to be the main difference between them. It seems indeed essential that the President should be elective, but this is no necessary point of difference between the President and the King. An elective King is none the less a King, but an hereditary President would have made a most important advance towards exchanging pre- sidentship for royalty. So, though it is essential to kingship that the office should be held for life, this again is no neces- sary distinction between a King and a President. A repub- lican President may be elected for life, as the Florentine Gonfalonier was in the latter days of that republic, and as the President of the United States would have been according to the first scheme of Alexander Hamilton. The one real dis- tinction lies in the President's responsibility. The divinity which hedges in a King, and which does not hedge in a President, is something which is of no small practical impor- tance, but it is hardly capable of political definition. This special feeling about a King seems mainly to arise from that vague religious character with which most nations have loved to invest their princes. In most heathen nations a supposed divine descent is held to be essential to the royal office ; most Christian nations have supplied an analogous kind of sanctity in the form of an ecclesiastical consecration of the monarch. But even this is not an essential distinction. Some modern Kings dispense with any ecclesiastical ceremony ; and though no religious character attaches to any modern republican ruler, such has not been the case in all commonwealths. The official sanctity of the Eoman Kings clave in no small measure XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 381 to the republican magistrates among whom their powers were divided ; and there is, to say the least, no contradiction in terms in conceiving an ecclesiastical inauguration of a responsible President as well as of an irresponsible King. We have thus reached our definition of a President. He is a single, elective, responsible, magistrate to whom the chief executive power in a commonwealth is entrusted. His responsibility distinguishes him from a King ; his numerical unity distinguishes him from an executive Council. His elective character he shares with the Council ; he may share it with the King. Whether he is elected for life or for a term is a point of detail of the particular constitution under which he acts. It may be here remarked that the examples of the several classes which have been chosen have been taken indiscriminately from single commonwealths and from Federations. For in a perfect Federal government, one where the Federal and the State power are strictly co-ordi- nate, where the Federal power has direct authority, within its own range, over every citizen, the powers, executive, legisla- tive, and judicial, to be distributed among the Federal authorities will be precisely, the same as in a consolidated state. The form of government may be exactly the same in a great confederation as in a single small canton. The peculiar position of a Federal Government, its special duties, relations, and dangers, may suggest one form of legislature or of execu- tive as preferable to another, just as any other circumstances of the commonwealth may do so. But there is nothing in the Federal character of any particular state which directly affects the distribution of the powers of government, or which hinders its constitution from being fairly compared with other con- stitutions which are not Federal. The President of the Union and the Governor of the State are powers exactly analogous within their several spheres ; that they both form part of one greater political system in no way affects their position as the heads of two distinct and parallel political constitutions. We have compared our President with a King and with a Council, and we have distinguished him from both. But it 382 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay will at once be felt that the comparison between the Presi- dent and the constitutional King is not a very practical one. In most limited or constitutional monarchies the person really to be compared with the President is not the King, the legal and apparent head of the state, but another person of whose position as practical head of the state the law in most cases knows nothing. That is to say, it is not the King, but his First Minister, who fills the position which is really analogous to that of the President of a republic. At the same time it may be as well to remark that this is by no means necessarily the case in all constitutional monarchies. It is curious to see how people always assume that " constitutional monarchy" must mean that particular form of it where the royal power is practically vested in the King's Ministers. In like manner it is commonly assumed that " parliamentary government " must mean that particular form of it where Parliament is assisted, guided, or controlled by the same body, a body it may be, as in our own country, wholly unknown to the law. That is to say, by " constitutional monarchy " and " parlia- mentary government " people understand exclusively that form of government by which all the powers of the King and a large portion of the powers of the Parliament are practically transferred to the body known as a Cabinet or Ministry. This mode of speech puts out of sight those states where the powers of the King are distinctly limited by law, but where, within the limits of his legal powers, he acts according to his personal will. Such is the case with the constitutions both of Sweden and of Norway. Both are constitutional monarchies, both are parliamentary governments ; but the device of a Cabinet to guide both King and Parliament till Parliament prefers the guidance of some other Cabinet is unknown to them. The Norwegian Constitution is probably the most democratic form of government that ever included an here- ditary King as one of its elements. The royal authority is more narrowly limited than in any other kingdom, yet the personal will of a King of Norway counts for more than the personal will of a King of England. That is to say, small as XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 383 is the degree of authority which the law gives him, he is free to exercise it according to his personal discretion. The con- stitution binds him to consult his State Council, but it dis- tinctly affirms that the final decision of all matters within the range of his authority rests with himself. He is personally irresponsible ; all responsibility rests with his Councillors, but any Councillor who dissents from the royal decision may escape all responsibility by a formal protest against it. Here is a limited monarchy, a constitutional monarchy, but a mon- archy in which there is no approach to a Ministry in our sense of the word. King and Parliament have their distinct functions traced out by law ; but in case of differences be- tween them, they are brought face to face as opposing powers, in a way in which an English King and an English Parlia- ment have not been brought face to face for some genera- tions. Here then is a king who clearly may be personally compared with a republican President. He is personally irresponsible; he succeeds by hereditary right and not by election ; but his actual functions are as nearly as possible the same as those of a President, and they are quite different from those of an English King. In England it is not the King, but his chief Minister, with whom the President should really be compared. The theory of cabinet government, of what is commonly called constitutional or parliamentary government, is that the legal functions of the King and a large portion of the legal functions of Parliament are transferred to a body of Ministers. These Ministers are appointed by the King, but, as they must be chosen by him out of the party which has the upper hand in the House of Commons, they may be said to be indirectly chosen by the House of Commons itself. They exercise the executive functions of the Crown, and they possess a practical initiative in all important points of legisla- tion. If their policy is censured, or even if any important ministerial proposal is rejected, they resign office. They may indeed escape for a season by dissolving Parliament, but if the new House of Commons confirms the adverse vote of its pre- 384 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay decessor, there is no hope for them left. At the head of this body stands one Minister, the chief of the Cabinet, the leader of one or other House of Parliament, who is really the person to be compared with the President under the other system. Now all this is purely conventional ; the law knows nothing of the Ministry, as a Ministry ; it knows the several Ministers as personal holders of certain offices ; it knows them as Privy Councillors and as members of one or other House of Parlia- ment ; in all these characters, if they come within the reach of the law, the law can deal with them. A Minister who acts illegally in his office, a Privy Councillor who gives the sovereign illegal advice, can be touched by impeachment or otherwise ; his parliamentary conduct, like that of any other member, is cognizable by that House of Parliament to which he belongs. All this is matter of law ; but the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, the duty of a Ministry to resign if the House of Commons disapprove of its policy, the duty of the whole Ministry to stand together in Parliament, the consequent duty of a dissentient Minister to compromise or conceal his differences with his colleagues or else to re- sign his office — all these doctrines, familiar as we are with them, are mere customs which have gradually, and some of them very recently, grown up, and of which the law of England knows nothing. The power of the Cabinet has gradually increased during the last hundred years. The names by which the persons actually in power have been called at different times bear witness to their rapid increase in importance. In George the Third's reign people spoke of " Administration ;" at the time of the Eeform Bill it was " Ministers," or " the Ministry ;" it is only quite lately that the word " Government," which once meant Kings, Lords, and Commons, has come to be applied to this extra-legal body. Yet we now habitually speak of " the Government," of " Lord Palmerston's Government," of " Lord Derby's Government," meaning thereby a certain knot, of Privy Councillors, of whom it would be impossible to give any legal definition. The expression is so common that people use it without in XII.] • PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 385 the least thinking how very modern it is, and how singular is the state of things which it implies. As Lord Macaulay says, the Cabinet seems to have been unknown to writers like De Lolme and Blackstone, who never mentioned it among the powers of the state. It is more important to remark that the existence of the British Cabinet seems to have attracted no attention among the disputants for and against the Ameri- can Constitution. The opponents of the Constitution objected to the position and powers of the President as being too near an approach to kingship. Hamilton answered them by showing how much greater were the restrictions placed upon the power of the President than those which were placed upon the power of the King. But neither party seems to have paid any attention to the fact that the President can exercise his smaller powers far more freely than the King can exercise his greater powers. They speak as if the King of Great Britain could act as independently within his own range as the King of Sweden and Norway. They recognise the restrictions imposed by the written law, but they pay no attention to the further restrictions which were even then imposed by the conventional "constitution." This shows how widely the Cabinet system has developed since Hamil- ton's time, and how complete is the recognition which, with- out receiving any more legal sanction than before, it has obtained in general opinion and in popular modes of speech. No one now could fail to see the fallacy of comparing a President who acts for himself, or by the advice of Ministers chosen by himself personally and dependent on him only, with a King who acts at every step by the advice of Ministers who may have been forced upon him in the first instance, and whom he may, at any moment, be called on to dismiss. Every one now would see that the real comparison, for like- ness and unlikeness, lies between the two practical leaders of the state under the two systems, though the chiefship of the one is a matter of positive legal enactment, while the chiefship of the other is a matter of unwritten constitutional tradition. The main distinction between the President of a republic 2 o 386 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay and the First Minister of a constitutional kingdom seems to be this. The President is elected for a definite time, and except in the case of some definite crime being judicially proYed against him, he cannot be constitutionally got rid of before the end of that time. Be his rule never so bad, still, if he does not break the letter of the law, he must be endured till the end of his year or of his four years; be his rule never so good, the country must part with him at the end of his term, or at any rate his further existence in office must be put to the risk of a fresh election. But the First Minister, hold- ing a purely conventional office, holds it for no fixed term ; if his policy be disapproved, a vote of the House of Commons can get rid of him at any moment : if he continues to give satisfaction, he may, without any formal vote about it, be continued in office for the rest of his days. This seems to be the one essential difference between a President and a First Minister ; any other differences are not inherent in the nature of the two offices, but depend on the circumstances of par- ticular countries and on the provisions of particular constitu- tions. It follows that there is an important difference between the position of an English Minister and that of an American President withregardtothe national Legislature. TheEnglish Minister and all his colleagues in the Cabinet are necessarily members of one or other House of Parliament ; they take the lead in its debates, and have the chief management of its business ; it is in the House, as members of the House, and not as an external power, that they explain their policy and defend it against objectors. In America, on the other hand, neither the President nor his Ministers can be members of either House of Congress. The President indeed, under a representative constitution, can hardly be conceived as being a member of either branch of the Legislature. He can com- municate with Congress only by formal messages and speeches like a king ; he cannot take his place as a member and join in a debate.* But the exclusion of the President's Ministers * [The existing state of things in France (January, 1872)— one can hardly dignify it by the name of constitution— does give us a President who is. also a member of the Assembly. XIIJ PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 387 is a mere point of detail in the American Constitution, which might quite well have been otherwise ordered. There is not indeed the same necessity for the President's Ministers to be members of the Legislature as there is in a constitutional monarchy ; but there seems no inherent difficulty in their being so if it should so happen. Accordingly the Constitu- tion of the Confederate States has somewhat relaxed the restriction.* By that constitution no office-holder can be a member of Congress, but Congress is empowered to grant by law to certain great officers a seat in either House, with the right of discussing measures affecting his own department. And in one class of republics it is clear that neither the President nor any officer of the state can be excluded from the legislative, body. In a pure democracy, transacting its affairs in a primary assembly, the magistrates as citizens of the commonwealth, can be no more shut out of the assembly than any other citizens. Thus in the purely democratic Cantons of Switzerland, the chief magistrate, the Landam- mann, is President alike of the executive council and of the Landesgemeinde or general assembly of all citizens of full age. So in the Achaian League, the General, being an Achaian citizen, was necessarily a member of the Federal Assembly, and, being a member of the Assembly and more- over not being its President, he naturally took a place in it exactly answering to that of our Leader of the House. In fact, the constitution of the Achaian Assembly, as a primary assembly, allowed the Achaian General to hold a position much more nearly answering to that of an English First Minister than the representative constitution of the American Congress allows to the American President. A Eoman Consul I ought perhaps to have mentioned, though it does not strictly bear on the position of Presidents, that the members of the Swiss Federal Council may attend and speak in either House of the Federal Assembly, but with- out the right of voting.] * [I leave the references to American affairs as I wrote them in October, 1864. The Confederate constitution is" just as well worth studying as a piece of constitution-making as if the Southern Confederation had lasted.] 2 C 2 388 PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. [Essay again, as being a Koman citizen, was necessarily a membex of the Roman popular Assembly, which he could convoke and preside in at pleasure. And this same rule equally applies to aristocratic commonwealths possessing a primary assembly, one, that is, in which every member of the privileged order has a seat by right of birth without any election. Thus the Duke of Venice could not be shut out from the Great Council nor the Spartan Kings from the Assembly of the Spartan citizens. It follows therefore that this peculiarity of the American Constitution, by which all executive officers are excluded from the legislature, is by no means inherent in the nature of Presidential Government. Still less is the mode of election, or any other detail of the American Con- stitution. The one real and essential difference between a President and a First Minister is that given already, that a President holds a legal position for a definite time, a First Minister holds a conventional position for such a time as the legislature, or one branch of it, may tacitly think fit. And now for a few words as to the practical working of Presidential Government, especially in its American form, as compared with the working of constitutional monarchy as it is understood among ourselves. In making this comparison we must take care to confine it to the points which really enter into the comparison, for there are many points of difference between the British and American Constitutions which wholly arise from other causes, and which have nothing to do with the difference in the form of the executive. Thus both Houses of Congress are elective, while one House of our Parliament is hereditary. But in other constitutional monarchies the body answering to our House of Lords is often elective or nominated, and an hereditary chamber in a republic, though not at all likely, is perfectly possible. So again, the peculiar constitution of the American Senate arises from the fact that the American constitution is a Federal constitution, but it has nothing to do with the special form of the American executive. The same constitution of the Senate is, as we see in Switzerland, equally consistent with XII.] PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 389 an executive Council ; it would be equally consistent with a Federal monarchy, a form of government as yet untried, but perfectly possible in idea.* But some of the special func- tions of the Senate, the necessity of its confirmation to certain acts of the President, are, in the nature of the case, derived from the fact that there is a President, and could hardly exist in a state governed by a First Minister, f Again, the fact that the constitution of the American House of Eepresentatives is much more democratic than that of the English House of Commons has nothing whatever to do with the form of the American Executive. A House of Commons chosen by universal suffrage is perfectly consistent with hereditary kingship, and a House chosen by as narrow a body of electors as may be thought good is perfectly consistent with Presidential Government. In fact, it is a mistake to look upon the American Constitution as one inherently de- mocratic. The American Federal Constitution is in itself neither aristocratic nor democratic, but it is capable of being either, or any mixture of the two, according to the nature of the State constitutions.! None of these points have any * [It has at last arisen in the German Imperial Constitution of 1871.] t One can conceive the acts of an hereditary King needing the confirma- tion of one branch of his legislature, just like the acts of the American President. Such an arrangement would be quite possible in a monarchy where the King, as in Sweden and Norway, acts for himself within the legal limits of his authority ; but it can hardly be conceived as existing, or at least as being practically efficient, in a monarchy where the King is in the hands of a ministry. % Speaking roughly, we may say that both the House of Eepresentatives and the electors of the President— that is, practically, the President himself —are now chosen by universal suffrage ; but the Constitution in no way orders such a mode of election ; it is consistent with it, but it is equally consistent with modes of election highly aristocratic. The House of Eepresentatives is to be chosen by those persons who have votes for the most numerous branch of the Legislature of their own State, a provision perfectly consistent with an aristocratic, or even with an oligarchic, con- stitution of foe State Government ; and it is well known that, though no State could ever be strictly called aristocratic, yet most of the States at first required a higher or lower property qualification in the electors. A