ii JiiF |,|,l.|llH, III Ii! ! !• i!l[lil;K C3 77 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg M. Sage 1891 ../^.7-ikr.7.s:. : fjiojo^,. 9963 ^^^P Date Due kg I '7 It was destined to have as its result a contest for several centuries between the emperor, the head of the state, and the pope, the head of the church. The cooperation of the bishops and the counts did not long endure. Already in 8ii Charles says in a capitulary, "At first we desire to have separate con- ferences with the bishops and the counts, to determine for what reason they do not wish to render each other mutual assistance. We shall discuss then and decide to what degree the bishop should engage in secular afTairs and to what degree the count or any other lay- man should engage in the business of the church." Charles was thus seeking the proper boundary between the power of the clergy and the government. It was not discovered by him or any other emperor of the Middle Ages. The Army, — Charlemagne was before all a war chief. During his life he made fifty-three expeditions. To provide for these incessant wars it was necessary that the people should be an army. Following the cus- tom of the Germanic peoples, all land-owners were also warriors. When the king had determined on war, he ordered the people to assemble at a fixed place ; the command coming on one day, it was required that the man be ready on the next. An enormous fine (heer- bann) was assessed on those who failed to appear. Bishops and abbots were to come as well as the lay- men. A letter addressed to the Abbot of Fulda recites, "We command you to be at the rendezvous on the twentieth of June with your men properly armed and equipped. Repair to the place assigned so that you may be able to fight wherever we shall command you. 58 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION — that is to say, with your arms, your equipment, and provisions. Each horseman shall have a shield, a lance, a sword, a dagger, a bow, and a full quiver. You shall have on your baggage carts appliances of different sorts, axes, planes, augers, hatchets, pick- axes, iron shovels, and other implements necessary to the army. You will provide food for three months, arms and clothing for six months." Warriors had to equip and arm themselves at their own expense. Those who were not well-to-do came on foot, equipped with a long shield. But those who could command the means fought on horseback, cov- ered with iron armor. This armor was not new: the Parthian knights had already employed it ; the body of cavalry that fought in the Roman army in the fourth century was armed in the same fashion. Since the war- riors were free to equip themselves as they pleased, they preferred the equipment that placed them most out of danger. Thus the archers disappeared from the army, and at the end of the ninth century there was in west- ern Europe no other military force than knights clad in armor. They are the knights or chevaliers of the Middle Ages. Legislation. — The capitularies of Charlemagne are a collection of all that was written by his government. They are circulars, communications, letters, and even the expressions of some simple designs. The majority of the capitularies were only the product of circum- stances ; but there were also among them laws applica- ble to the whole of the empire. Some of them were preserved and were incorporated into the customs of the people of the Middle Ages. GOVERNMENT OF THE BARBARIAN KINGS 59 Letters and Schools — Charlemagne loved letters with that naive admiration that uncultured men often have for that which is written; he loved them also because they seemed to him inseparable from the Chris- tian religion. In 787 he wrote to the bishops and the abbots of his kingdom, "Let it be known to Your Dis- cretion that after deliberation with our faithful we have determined that the bishoprics and monasteries under our government, besides the regular life and the prac- tice of the sacred religion, ought also to apply their zeal to the study of letters and to teach them to those who by the aid of God can learn them. . . . That those who wish to please God in their lives may not neglect to please Him with right speaking. But in these last years, when you have written us from many convents, informing us that the brethren who live there multiply their holy prayers for us, in most of these letters we have recognized a right sense but an uncouth discourse. And so we have begun to fear that, if there is ignorance in the manner of writing, there may be much less intelligence than is required to interpret the Holy Scriptures. This is the reason that we exhort you to emulate one another in zeal for in- struction, to the end that you may discern more easily and more certainly the mysteries of the sacred writ- ings." As a consequence, he ordered that every cathe- dral and every monastery have its school. At his own court the emperor had a school conducted by the clergy of his chapel, and sometimes he himself was present at the lessons. The children learned to read, to write in Latin, to sing the offices, and it was from among these scholars that Charlemagne took his bishops and abbots. 60 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION Learned men were also the favorites with the em- peror, and he gathered about him quite a little academy. The men who composed it took each the name of a great character of antiquity : Alcuin was called Horace ; Abelard was named Augustine; Angilbert, Homer; Theodulf, Pindar; and Charlemagne, David. They spent the time composing Latin verses, in reading, reciting, and in proposing conundrums. The follow- ing is a series drawn from the works of Alcuin : "What is writing ? The keeper of history. What is the word ? The betrayal of thought. What originates the word? The tongue. What is the tongue ? The flail that beats the air. What is the air ? The preserver of life. What is life? The delight of the happy, the grief of the despondent, the anticipation of death." The works of these learned men were at once affected and puerile, like pupils' exercises. The bar- barians distrusted themselves too much to venture to be original. They applied all their ambition to the imitation of the ancients. And so they did not succeed in producing works of permanent vitality. And yet the efforts made by Charlemagne, his clergy, and his learned men have not been entirely lost: for almost two centuries there was nothing in Gaul that resembled a literature ; no book was written, not even a chronicle ; official acts with which men could not dispense (con- tracts, gifts, wills), were drawn in barbarous Latin; writing, even, was so formless that there is great diffi- culty in deciphering it. From the time of Charlemagne the Latin became very correct and writing very legible, in fact, almost as legible as printed books. GOVERNMENT OF THE BARBARIAN KINGS 61 End of Ancient Civilization The ancient world came to its end with Charlemagne. He is the last sovereign who succeeded in enforcing the obedience of all the peoples of the West. After him Europe was divided into kingdoms, and each kingdom into prov- inces where each lord governed according to his will. The Catholic clergy participated in government. The pope made alliance with the new barbarian emperor of the \yest and soon they came into conflict with him as to which of the two should control the other. It was the end of the absolute and universal government of antiquity. Society was now composed only of warriors, of monks, of peasants and serfs, almost all established in the rural districts. It was the end of the ancient city life. The inhabitants of Europe ceased to construct the- atres, baths, and roads, and began to build churches. It was the end of ancient art. Latin became the language of scholars only, a dead language. In Germany and in England a Germanic tongue was spoken; in France, in Italy, and in Spain a new language sprung from the Latin was spoken, the Romance. It was the end of the ancient language and literature. Europe was converted to Christianity; Africa and a part of Asia to Islamism. It was the end of the ancient religions. The Germans introduced everywhere their customs and their judicial procedure. It was the end of ancient law. 62 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION The Byzantine empire alone preserved the debris of the old world. In the West everything was new — gov- ernment, society, art, language, law, religion. Ancient civilization was extinct; in the midst of the general barbarism modern civilization had its beginnings. CHAPTER VI THE FEUDAL SYSTEM FEUDAL SOCIETY The New Classes — In the tenth century the laws peculiar to the different barbarian peoples disappeared ; all the inhabitants of Europe adopted almost the same customs. From that time they were no longer dis- tinguished from each other by their nationality, but by their wealth and their occupations ; they were no longer spoken of as Franks, Romans, or Burgundians ; there was nothing but knights, lords, clergy and peas- ants. "The house of God is triple," said a bishop of the twelfth century, "some fight, others pray, and others work." With this new social order began a system which lasted until the end of the fifteenth century. The Knights. — From the time of Charlemagne all freemen had to be soldiers. Some Spaniards, pursued by Moslems, having come and settled in Languedoc, Louis le Debonnaire, in granting to them lands, added : "That like all other freemen they go into the army." Whoever did not wish to serve or could not furnish his equipment ceased to be truly free. Only men-at- arms were considered in the society of the time. From the ninth century the man-at-arms always fought on horseback (the Latin word miles, soldier, became synonymous with knight or chevalier) ; he was 63 64 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION armed with a steel sword and a long lance made of ash- wood; to ward off attack, he carried a long buckler made of wood and covered with leather, called a shield. In battle he was clothed in a tunic covered with iron rings. At the close of the eleventh century this tunic was replaced by a coat of mail entirely composed of iron links or rings, and which extended from the chin to the knee. This was called the hauberk. The head was protected by a helmet of steel, and the nose by a nose-piece of the same metal. This equipment was heavy and complicated. Long practice was necessary to enable one to make use of it, and a servant was needed for the purpose of carrying the shield, and to lace the helmet and the hauberk. This servant was called a squire or equerry, from ecuyer (shield-bearer). In the eleventh century these men-at-arms succeeded in forming an hereditary class. In a family of knights the sons became knights, the daughters married none but knights, and it was necessary to be the son of a knight in order to have the right to be armed as a knight. To be a knight was no longer a profession, but a dignity. The knights were no longer contented to be freemen, they called themselves gentlemen (men of race) or nobles, and even their domestics, the squires, entered this privileged class; from the thir- teenth century the words knight and squire were synonymous with the word noble. The Lords, — In that thoroughly military society every important person was a man-at-arms, even the counts, the dukes, and the kings. There were then among the knights many large proprietors. They had received as a gift from the king, or as a heritage from THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 65 their parents, large domains, at least one whole village, almost always several villages. According to the country, these great freeholders were called barons (that is to say, men), sires or seigniors^, rich men, in German Herr, in Latin dominus^ (that is to say, proprietors.) The wife was called dame (domina, mis- tress, lady). Being rich, they could take other knights into their service, and go to war at the head of a small troop. To rally their men they had a flag, the banner, therefore they were called bannerets. Homage and Fealty. — From the time of Charle- magne the barbarian warriors followed the custom of swearing fidelity to the chief who maintained them, and fighting for him alone. The warrior in taking this oath, and the chief in receiving it, were bound together for life ; the chief called the warrior my faithful friend, my man, or my vassal; the vassal called his chief my lord. The vassal accompanied his lord to war, and served him even at table ; he was at the same time a domestic and a companion-in-arms. The lord paid him for his services by feeding him, furnishing him arms, clothing, and a horse; sometimes he gave him a domain. The custom of paying vassals by giving lands to them became general in France at the end of the ninth century, perhaps because in France men-at-arms were rare. The land given in payment was called a fief. Soon it was an absolute rule that every vassal was to receive a fief, and that one could not possess a fief with- out becoming the vassal of the proprietor. When the > Seigneur, in English, sir. ' From this comes the Spanish don. 66 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION vassal died his son had the right to take his place. The knights thus established on their fief from father to son became almost independent of their suzerain. In their turn the lords took an oath to the lords more powerful than themselves, and declared that they had received their lands in fief. The dukes and the counts took an oath to the king who had given them their seigniories in fief. Almost all the lords were at the same time suzerains and vassals. Almost all the lands were con- sidered as held in fief.^ Hence the name feudal system. This system, organized in the tenth century, had little resemblance to the bands of Charlemagne's time, al- though the names and customs remained the same. The vassal still took an oath, which bound him for life; this was the homage, so named because it made the vassal the man of the suzerain. The usual formula is this : "Sire, I become your man, liege of such a fief, and I promise to guard and protect you from all men living or dead." The vassal promised fidelity, aid, and counsel to the suzerain. Fidelity, that is, not to injure him, nor fight against him, not to attack his wife or his children. Aid, that is, to aid him by fighting for him, or by lending him his fortified house, or even by lending him money. Counsel, that is to say, to come to him for the pur- pose of giving him counsel, and especially to aid him in pronouncing judgment. These duties kept on growing less and the homage ended by being nothing more than a mere formality. 1 There remained still much land that was free from all duties to a higher lord. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 67 In the eleventh century, Geoffrey d'Anjou, after hav- ing conquered and captured Thibaut de Blois, forced him to give up to him in fief his county of Tours and then vowed homage to his prisoner. The Clergy. — The clergy, respected as servants of God, were also powerful through their wealth. It was then believed that to give money or lands to the church was the surest means of effacing sins and of saving the soul. The patron saint of the church and the monks who served him recompensed the donor by inter- ceding with God for him. In a deed of gift in favor of a church consecrated to St. Stephen (1145) is found : "I have given to the glorious martyr Stephen a part of my terrestrial inheritance, so that his prayers and those of his servants may secure for me the par- don of my sins and eternal salvation." The acts of donation^ begin with the formula : "For the recovery of my soul and of the souls of my ancestors" ; often is added, "for the burial of my body," as gifts were madfe in order to gain the favor of being interred in the church itself. The clergy sometimes received en- tire villages, gifts of the great lords, sometimes domains or pieces of land, as gifts of the knights and of the peasants. A convent which had been founded with a single domain was soon the possessor of hundreds of \'illages. The bishops and the abbots, masters of these immense domains, became very great seigniors. The Villeins — During the wars of the ninth century all the proprietors, or freeholders, who were obliged ' These acts drawn up as charters were copied by the monks on the register of the convent, which was called the "cartu- laire," or the "chartrier." 68 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION to enter the army had, Httle by little, become knights. The land then belonged to the churches, the lords, and the knights, all great proprietors, who did not cultivate it themselves ; it was divided into great domains called villes (Latin villa, domain). In general a ville^ was what we would call a village, and the domain had the extent of a commune. Almost all the French villages trace their origin to one of these domains of the Middle Ages. The peasants who lived in these towns or villes had taken their name from the word "ville," and were called villeins. They were not proprietors of the soil, they only cultivated it. Some of them were formerly poor freemen, who had gone into the service of the proprietors as coloni, that is to say, as farmers; they were called francs (freemen). Others were descend- ants of former slaves of the proprietors and still bore the Roman name of slave; they were the serfs (servi). However, the serf was no longer the same as the Roman slave; he belonged to the estate, he had a family, a house, and a field. His master could neither take him from his village in order to sell him away from the domain, nor take from him his wife or his children, nor take away his house and his field which had been granted to his ancestors. The serf villein was not much inferior in rank to the franc or free villein. Condition of the Villeins. — In the great domains of the Middle Ages there were two kinds of lands. One kind, the larger portion, had been ceded to the peasants ' A seignior usually was possessed of several villes, some- times isolated, sometimes contiguous. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 69 who cultivated it and kept the produce; the other, which was around the house of the master, belonged to the proprietor, and the peasants were obliged to plow, to sow, and to reap it for his benefit. In our day those who cultivate the soil, when they are not the owners, are day-laborers or lessors; in the Middle Ages they were at the same time farmers on their own lands and day-laborers on the lands of the proprietor ; this condition was hereditary. The proprietor could not take back the land which they occupied. It was a heritage. However, in exchange they endured many burdens.^ I. They owed to the proprietor certain rent-charges (the quit-rents), taxes (the villein tax), a periodical payment of dues in wheat, oats, eggs, and poultry; these were called customs, because they were regulated by usuage, and the peasants distinguished the good customs, i.e., those established of old, from the bad customs, which a suzerain established by force and contrary to ancient usage. II. They had to work on the land of the proprietor, to plow, to harvest, to store in the granaries, to mow, to winnow, to cut wood, to bring straw; this was the corvee. III. They had to take their grain to the seignior's mill to be ground, their bread had to be baked in the seignior's ovens, their vintage had to be taken to his wine-press, and for this service imposed upon them they were obliged to pay. In the market they had to • These burdens were later improperly called feudal rights ; they had nothing of feudality, for the lands of the peasants were not fiefs, they were derived from the right of ownership and are of the same nature as our quit-rents. 70 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION use the measures and weights of their seignior, and they had to pay for this usage. IV. They were under the jurisdiction of the lord of the land. If they committed an offense he made them pay a fine for his benefit, and if they committed a crime he condemned them to death^ and confiscated their possessions. The judgment, that is, the right of levying these fines, afforded an income for the benefit of the lord of the land. It figures in the enumeration of his possessions. The lord said, "my jurisdiction" of such a domain. He sold it, gave it in fief, divided it among his children ; it was not unusual for a lord to possess one-half or one-fourth of the jurisdiction of a village or of several household establishments. As a sign of authority the lord erected on his land a gibbet ; it was called the forked gibbet, or gallows ; the robbers who were hung upon it were an expressive testimo- nial of this authority. When two lords disputed over the jurisdiction of a village (as often happened) the domestics of the disputing seignior came, took down the man who was hung and put him on the gallows of their master. If the case was decided in favor of the lord who had condemned the man, then the body of the victim was returned, or in default of that a shirt stuffed with straw to represent the criminal, and the body or its effigy was hung once more upon the gibbet. The villeins were entirely subject to their lord; they had not the right of assembling, even for the purpose of regulating their own affairs ; if they did so, the lord levied upon them a heavy tax. He was their sole » Except in Normandy, where the right of condemning to death belonged only to the duke. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 71 judge. "If you take anything from your villein over and above the legitimate taxes,' said a jurisconsult of the thirteenth century, you take it at the peril of your soul, like a brigand; but between you and your villein there is no judge but God." ^ The villeins were, how- ever, in a much less precarious condition than were the slaves of ancient times, but they were not yet really free. The knights scorned them, because they worked the land and were without arms; in their mouths the word villein became an insult and signified a craven. MANNERS Wars. — The knights were accustomed to fight among themselves ; this usage became a rule. Every man-at- arms had the right to make war; for an insult, for a dispute over a domain, the knight sent his glove to his adversary, or perhaps he sent some hair from his fur mantle; that was a challenge, a declaration of war. The vassals and the relatives of the two enemies were, willingly or unwillingly, enlisted in the war. They fell upon the domains of the enemy, carried off the flocks of his peasants, burned their houses, besieged his castle, and sought to take him prisoner for the purpose of making him pay a ransom. War thus conducted became a game, a business. The game was not dangerous for men armed in coats of mail. Orderic Vital describes the battle of Bremule ' The revolts of the peasants were rare in the Middle Ages. We only know of one in Normandy in 997, and that of the Jacquerie in the fourteenth century. This does not prove that the peasants were happy, but that they had no hope of bettering their condition. 72 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION (1119) between the King of France and the King of England as follows: "140 knights remained prisoners in the hands of the conqueror; but of 900 engaged in battle I know of three only who were killed. In fact, they were completely clothed in iron; and as much through the fraternity of arms as through the fear of God did they spare each other, seeking less to kill than to take prisoners." The knights often found it more convenient to levy a contribution on the peasants and on the merchants, and the war was turned into brig- andage. There were in all countries knights like Sir Thomas de Marie, who stopped the merchants on the highways, took their baggage and goods, shut them up in the prison of his castle and tortured them in order to force them to redeem themselves by paying a ransom. The right to make war continued in many provinces until the fifteenth century. The knights did not want to give up this right ; war filled their lives. For exam- ple, we see how Fouque, Count d'Anjou, sums up the career of his uncle Geoffrey: "My uncle was made a knight during the lifetime of his father, and served his first campaign against his neighbors ; he fought twice, once with the Count de Poitou, once with the Count du Maine, and took them prisoners. He also made war against his father.^ After the death of his father, having entered into possession of his heritage, the county of Anjou, he made war against the Count de Blois, whom he took prisoner with one thousand of his > This time Geoffrey was forced to submit, his father following an old Germanic custom, obliged him to come and present him- self before him, on all fours with a saddle on his back. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 73 knights, forcing him to give up Touraine. Then he made war on WiUiam of Normandy, the Count de Bourges, the Count de Poitou, the Viscount de Then- ars, the Count de Nantes, the Breton counts de Rennes and de Hugues, and the Count du Maine, who had broken his pledge of fidehty. On account of these wars, and the courage that he had shown, he was sur- named Martel. His end was righteous. The night before his death, renouncing chivalry and the things of the world, he became a monk of the convent of St. Nicholas which his father and himself had built and richly endowed, thus showing their devotion to the church. Donjons and Castles — The knights in these war- like times were obliged to fortify their mansions. In the tenth century the mode of fortifying was rude. There was a ditch protected on the outside by a talus furnished with a stockade. In the middle of this en- closure was an elevation of ground. The mansion of the suzerain, built on the summit of this elevation, was as yet only a strong wood tower, the entrance door of which was some feet above the level of the ground. This door was not accessible save by passing over a movable, sloping plank, which extended from the door across to the other side of the ditch. To prevent the enemy from burning the tower it was kept covered with skins newly stripped from beasts. This rude citadel was the donjon, the house of the master. The other buildings constructed within the walls at the foot of this elevation, the lodgings for the servants, the stables, the granaries, were only annexes. In the eleventh century they began (in the South at 74 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION first) to replace the stockade and the wooden tower with a wall and a tower of stone, such as the Romans had around their fortified cities. These fortresses were called by a Latin name, caste! or chateau (a small forti- fied place). The castles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was a stone wall flanked by towers, sur- rounded on all sides by deep ditches or by precipices. It was constructed, if possible, on a naturally strong position, on the brow of a hill or on a perpendicular rock ; in a level country it was built on an artificial ele- vation; they taxed their ingenuity to add to the de- fenses. On arriving, the enemy first formed in front of the ditch, an advanced work, the barbican; then came the ditch or moat, which the inhabitants of the castle crossed by means of a drawbridge, suspended by chains, then a stockade. Then only were they at the foot of the walls, which were made very thick. The defenders, posted on a platform which ran along the inside of the wall near the top, hurled arrows, jave- lins and stones through the battlements (open spaces along the top of the wall), and through the machicola- tions.^ The enceinte or walls enclosed the lodgings of the soldiers, the servants, and of the men of the cas- tle, the kitchens, the stables, the granaries, the chapel and the master's house or donjon. This donjon was a colossal tower (the tower of Beaugency, built in the eleventh century, was 40 metres high and 24 in diam- eter; that of Coney [thirteenth century] was 64 metres high and 31 in diameter). In this tower was the great 1 In the thirteenth century the machicolation in stone sup- planted the ancient "hourds," or galleries of wood which had been suspended in front of the walls so as to hang over the be- seigers. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 75 reception hall, where the lord welcomed his guests (only the great lords had a hall of ceremony [le palais] outside of this donjon) ; there were also the sleeping- room of the lord and the rooms for his family, his treasury, his record-office (the archives). At the sum- mit of the donjon was a platform whence the sentinel surveyed the environs ; below, two stories underground, was the sombre and humid prison, which was entered by means of a ladder. If the enemy forced the walls, the besieged, who had taken refuge in the donjon, could defend it foot by foot, story by story, so narrow was the winding stairway. The lord lived in his castle and at last took its name; he was called Bouchard de Montmorency, or Enguerrand de Coucy. The knight, too, had his forti- fied house, the manor (the residence), and the name of his domain became the name of his family.^ Chivalry. — The arms of the knight were heavy, practice was necessary to learn how to wield them ; they were a privilege, and could not be borne without permission. No one was born a knight, not even the king. This rule was absolute. Only after a certain apprenticeship and a ceremony of consecration could one become a knight. The young noble must practise riding horseback, wielding a lance or a sword, and how to mount a ladder. Sometimes he served as apprentice in the house of his father, sometimes his father sent him to the castle of another seignior, one of his friends. The young man became a squire or • The name of the estate is however not indispensable in order to be noble; there were nobles, who were called Henri Chair de Vache, Miles Pied de Loup, Chauderon, Tueur de Loups, etc. 76 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION valet/ that is, a servant; he carried the arms of his master, led and cared for his horse, put on his armor, served him at table, and put him to bed. The ancient nations had regarded it as the greatest dishonor to serve another man. Since the arrival of the barbarians, to serve had become an honor; the squire served the knight, the knight served his suzerain lord, the counts and the dukes served the king at table and on all cere- monious occasions. Arrived at the age of manhood, a squire had to be solemnly received, by a knight, into the corps of knights. At first the ceremony was very simple : the knight delivered to the novice the arms of a knight, the shield, the hauberk, and the lance ; then he gave him a sharp blow with his fist (the accolade) on the back of the neck. The new knight leaped into the saddle, put spurs to his horse for a short gallop, and sometimes fenced with his lance against a mannikin erected before the castle. This ceremony was called "dubbing," or consecrating the knight. Later, about the thirteenth century, religious cere- monies were added ; passing the night in prayer in the church, the mass, the prayers, the sermon addressed to the candidate. As for the pompous usages of recep- tion, such as are described in modern romances, they hardly came into use until the fifteenth century. Every squire had the right to become a knight. But he must be rich enough to purchase his equipment and to support a squire and the usual servants. Therefore the greater number of noble gentlemen remained squires all their lives. > Valet and squire were synonymous. Page at t lSn e poch designated the inferior domestics. ^"^"^ THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 77 Manners of the Kniglits.^The noblemen of the Mid- dle Ages were not distinguished from the peasants, either by their pohte manners or by their education. The greater part could not read ; they did nothing but drink, eat, hunt, and fight; they were usually brutal and violent, often ferocious. Richard Coeur de Lion, the model of knighthood, massacred 2,500 Saracen prisoners. In a war with Philip Augustus he ordered that fifteen knightly prisoners should have their eyes put out, then he sent them to the King of France, giving to them as a guide one of their number who had lost but one eye. Philip Augustus, in response, put out the eyes of fifteen knights whom he had taken from Richard, and sent them back to their master under the guidance of a woman; "so that," says his pane- gyrist, "no one could think him inferior to Richard in courage and in strength, or believe that he was afraid of him." In 11 19 a great Norman lord, Eustache de Bertrail, son-in-law of the King of England, ordered the eyes of one of his hostages put out; a nobleman, the father of the victim, caused the daughters of Eustache to be delivered to him by their grandfather, put out their eyes and cut off their noses. These acts of savage violence were still frequent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This adventurous life rendered the knights fero- cious ; but it gave them some virtues demanded by war : it made them courageous and proud. The accom- plished knight of whom poets sang, and whom all wished to imitate, was the "preux," or the "prud- 'homme." When a knight was armed he was ad- dressed, "Be preux" (valiant). The "preux" is a 78 MEDLEVAL CIVILIZATION brave man, proud and loyal, who never retreats, who never fails to keep his word, and who never endures an insult. Bravery, loyalty and pride were henceforth and would ever remain the chief traits of the noble- man. Bravery was esteemed not only for the service it rendered, but because it was thought to be beautiful in itself. The knight would let himself be killed use- lessly rather than to be suspected of cowardice. "Mieux vaudrait etre mort que couard appele" (Better be dead than to be called a coward), says an old poem. The knigiit had to be loyal, to keep his word. He was especially dishonored in violating the oath of fidelity which he had taken to his suzerain; he would have "departed from his fealty" and have become a traitor to his lord. "He who through some motive has done violence to his suzerain, either by hand or by tongue, or has taken from him his castle," said the custom of Barcelona, "has committed the greatest of felonies." iNIany poems of the Middle Ages were inspired by this sentiment. Renaud de Montauban, forced to make war against Charlemagne, his suzerain, avoided doing him any hurt, and when he had taken him prisoner fell on his knees and demanded pardon for the act. Ber- nier, vassal of Raoul de Cambrai, having received affronts from his suzerain, was asked by the other knights how it was possible to continue in his service. He replied: "Raoul, my suzerain, is more of a felon than Judas, but he is my lord," and they answered : "Bernier, you are right." Honor. — The knight was proud of being a gentle- man and a soldier. He was conscious of his dignity. No one dared doubt it, nor even have the semblance of THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 79 doing so. No one dared either to strike, insult or con- tradict him, for that would suppose him guilty of false- hood. He himself must not suffer either a blow, an insult or a contradiction; he would be dishonored in the eyes of all knights, and in his own eyes, if he did not take vengeance upon the one who insulted him. This sentiment was "honor" ; it was the product of a pride and a vanity equally intense ; it supposes a high idea of self, and the need of making others share this opinion. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans had any word to express this quality. It appeared in the Mid- dle Ages and was to remain down to our time as the distinguishing mark of the true gentleman. The point of honor, the desire to preserve his honor intact, be- came more and more the rule of conduct for the nobles and a safeguard to their dignity. THE FEUDAL GOVERNMENT Independence of the Proprietors From the ninth century the king was not strong enough to compel obedience. The suzerains, lay and ecclesiastic, were accustomed each to be master in his own domains. Every proprietor, knight or abbot was a petty sove- reign in his own lands. His farmers and his servants were his subjects ; he had the right to command them, to fine, imprison, or to hang them ; he had his gallows, his public crier, who cried his orders to the inhabitants (the cry was called the ban) ; he made war against his neighbors; often he coined money. "Each baron is a sovereign in his barony," said a jurisconsult of the thirteenth century. Every domain was a petty state, 80 MEDLEVAL CIVILIZATION SO that the people of that domain called those of a neighboring village (or domain) foreigners (non-resi- dents). There were several thousand of these petty sovereigns; many were simple knights, masters of a single village ; the others, richer, styled themselves sires or barons. Finally, in each province, there was one who bore an official title, the count or the duke. He was the largest proprietor of the province. His ances- tors under Charlemagne were as yet only governors in the service of the king. But in the tenth century, the king not being strong enough to take away the power from them, they became hereditary counts or dukes; their county, their duchy became a fief, that is to say, an estate or a property. Like every domain, it could be sold, bequeathed, divided even, or be united to others. If there was no son, a daughter inherited and carried it as dowry to her husband. At this time every proprietor had the power of a sovereign on his domains, and every sovereign could, as a proprietor, dispose of his estate. The result was that property and so\ereignty were confounded. Therefore the whole policy of the sovereigns in the Middle Ages was the policy of a family ; each sovereign, like the country- man of our time, sought to round out his domain and to provide for his children. The King — Of all the suzerains in France the high- est in dignity was the king ; he had a superior title and the others did him homage. But he was not the most powerful; the Duke of Xormandy and the Count of Toulouse had larger domains. The oath of homage by which the great lords bound themselves to the king was but a ceremony; it did not prevent them from THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 81 making war upon him, and even when they would not violate the oath openly, it embarrassed them but little. In iioi Robert, Count of Flanders, in a treaty with the King of England, inserted the following clause : "If the King of France, Louis, attacks King Henry in Normandy, Robert, with ten knights only, will go into the army of Louis, and the 500 other knights will remain in the service of King Henry. If King Louis should march against England and take away with him the count, the count pledges himself to bring back with him as few men as possible." "fhe court of Louis VII. was very much astonished when the bishops of Monde came to Paris to acknowledge the authority of the King of France. "That country," it was said, "had never been subject to any one but a bishop." The king, like the other suzerains, was not really obeyed save in his own domain. In order to be obeyed in the kingdom of France it was necessary for him in the course of centuries to increase his domain and to take into it one after another all the provinces of France. The Custom — The people of the Middle Ages had hardly any written laws; in everything they did as their ancestors had done ; this was called following the custom. The custom was not written and was pre- served only by tradition; even in the thirteenth cen- tury, when there was a case in doubt, the oldest inhab- itants were gathered together and they were asked what they had seen practised in such a case. Thus each village had its own custom, formed by time, and not exactly like that of its neighbor. "Two seigniories could not be found in all this kingdom," said Beauma- 82 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION noir, "wliich, in ever}' case, would employ the same customs." However, in the same section of the coun- try the customs resembled each other sufficiently to form the custom of the whole country. The great difference was between the countries of the North, where the custom came from old Germanic usage, and the countries of the South, which had preserved the usage of the Roman law. The people of the Middle Ages loved custom and respected it, for it was the sole ruling to which they could appeal, the %ole barrier against injustice. "Cus- tom must be guarded, for were it not guarded there would be much strife among the people." Peace and Justice. — In the Middle Ages the pro- prietors maintained peace among the \illeins of their domains and administered justice to tliem as well as they could. But no one maintained peace among the proprietors. Each dispensed justice to himself by making war upon his neighbor. In order to establish peace the knights had to renounce the right of making war and to accept judgment by a tribunal ; it was a question of replacing war with a suit at law ; therefore in the Middle Ages peace and justice \\ ere synony- mous. In some countries ( Xormandy, England, Naples, Spain), the sovereign had been sufficiently powerful to force the knights to keep peace with the king or the duke ; elsewhere the bishops tried to persuade them to keep the "Peace of God" (to lay down their arms on Sundays and on feast-days), but they did not succeed in the establishment of a regular tribunal. When two proprietors quarrelled it came about that their neigh- bors induced them to allow their affair to be regulated THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 83 by arbitration, or their suzerain might be powerful enough to obhge them to appear before him. In this case he had the difference judged by the officers of his houseliold and by some knights of the neighborhood; this was cahed the court of the suzerain. But justice was intermittent and often powerless, for the loser, in place of submitting to the decision, recommenced war. In the eleventh century Hugues, vassal of the Bishop of Cambrai, arrested the merchants of the town, tore out their beards, demanded from them a ransom, and ravaged the villages of the bishojD. The bishop, his suzerain three times in succession, ordered him to ap- pear before him. Hugues came at last, but refused to make any reparation. The knights of the bishop's court condemned Hugues to lose his fief. He troubled himself little about the sentence, returned home, and some time after arrested the bishop himself. The Duel — In the courts, where the knights judged, a suit resembled a war. When the two adversaries were called together they had to fight each other; the conqueror gained the suit. It was thought that God had given him the victory because he had the right on his side. This was called the duel or battle. The judges who formed the court confined themselves to the taking of an oath to the adversaries, that they believed they had the right to trace out the ground on which the combat was to be fought, and also to watch over the combatants. The court ordered the duel, not only when a crime had been committed, or when an insult was offered, but to decide to whom a domain should belong, and even what rule of law should be followed. In the thirteenth century Alphonso, King 84 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION of Castile, had two champions fight in order to decide whether the Roman law should be introduced into his domains. The knights regarded the duel as the most convenient and the most honorable method of deciding a suit; no discussions were gone through, no proofs were given; in offering him battle the adversary was answered. The duel was employed not only in the courts of the knights, but in the tribunals of the towns, among the citizens (bourgeois), often even among the peas- ants in the country; the combatants were then armed with shield and stick. When one of the adversaries could not fight he had himself replaced by a champion. The duel was customary in Paris, even in the tribunal of the bishop. Some people showed scruples in regard to it. Pope Eugenius III., being consulted, answered : "Make use of your custom." The custom of the duel was so deeply rooted that it could not be set aside; the duel suppressed in the courts, continued to be regarded as the sole means of doing oneself justice in affairs of honor. It is like the point of honor, a remnant of the Middle Ages. The Judgment of God. — The duel was not used by women, and was often forbidden to the peasantry. Then was employed the judgment of God. After mass and solemn prayers to ask God to manifest the truth, the accused man or woman submitted to a test. Sometimes he was made to carry a piece of red-hot iron for some distance, or to plunge an arm into a cauldron of boiling water; if, some days after, the hand or arm showed no wound, the judgment of God THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 86 was in his favor. Sometimes he was thrown bound into a pool of water, if he went to the bottom he won, if he floated he lost. At the moment when he was thrown into the water the priest adjured the water in these words : "I adjure thee, oh water ! in the name of the Almighty God, who created thee, and ordained thee to serve the needs of man, not to receive this man if he is culpable, . . . but cause that he float upon thee." Sometimes they were content to make the accused swallow a piece of bread and cheese, after having adjured them to remain in his throat if he had lied. These tests were called ordeals. The church had drawn up a ritual for each ordeal. In 12 15 the general Council gathered at the Lateran ordered these tests to be suppressed. CHAPTER VII THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES ORGAXIZATIOX OF THE CHURCH The Dioceses All the cities of the old Roman em- pire had preserved the diocese.^ In Germany, accord- ing as the country became christianized, the kings created bishoprics. As the church forbade the estab- lishment of a bishop elsewhere than in a city, dioceses and cities were founded at the same time. Old or new, the dioceses were richly endowed. They had received immense domains, often an entire province. The kings had gi\en immunity to the bishops : that is, the right to govern themselves in their own domain. "Let no public functionary," say the conditions of the immunity, "dare to enter the lands of this church, either to levy taxes or to judge, or to arrest men, bond or free, who live there." The bishop became a veritable sovereign. The bishops of Cologne, May- ence and Treves were the three foremost princes in Germany. The Chapters — The priests of the cathedral, so the church of the seat of the diocese was called, were at ' The division into dioceses established under the Romans fell into disuse. The new towns founded in the Middle Ages did not become dioceses, they remained subject to their former metropolitan cit)', often much smaller than they were, e. g., Montpelier to Magnelonne, Dijon to Langres. 86 THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES sT first subject to the bishops. From the ninth century they lived in commons, according to a rule similar to that which governed the monks ; from that came their name canons (submission to rule) ; their united body formed the chapter. The canons had at first only the prebends for their support, that is, the furnishing of food and clothing. But when the chapters had re- ceived many donations the prebend became a domain, often of great extent. Each canon enjoyed the revenue of a prebend, which permitted him to live the life of a lord. "To live like a canon" signified to live in a sumptuous manner. The chapters becoming inde- pendent of their bishops were therefore petty sov- ereigns. The Abbeys — There was no diocese of the Middle Ages which did not contain several couA-ents of monks. All observed the same rules, those of Saint Benedict, but each congregation formed an independent abbey, governed by an abbot. An abbey included the lodging of the monks, the residence of the abbot, the church, the hospice (where strangers were lodged), the workshops, the storehouses, the houses for the domestics and farm- ers. It was at the very least a large village, and often a small town. It was possessed of large domains ; often they were scattered through several provinces. The abbot sent some monks to live upon the distant do- mains. They were under the direction of a prior; these small dependent convents were named priories or obediences. The abbot governed with the aid of the chapter of monks. In the great convents he had dignitaries under him, the provost or cloistered prior, his deputy, the chamberlain in charge of the clothing, 88 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION the cellarer, in charge of the provisions, the treasurer, the librarian, the chorister, and the director of the school. The monks lived in commons, but they were obliged to keep silent save at certain hours ; they came together before day to sing matins at sunrise, to hear prime; then came the mass, prayers, nones and compline. As the regulations of Saint Benedict com- manded labor, the monks were occupied either in culti- vating the soil, in watching over the domestics, in making ornaments for the church, or in copying manu- scripts. Many monks have described the life they led in their abbey, but the pictures differ greatly according as to whether the convent was rich or poor, recently organized or of older date, well or ill disciplined. The Parish — In Roman times, there had been churches and priests only in the towns. When the whole country had become christianized, the large pro- prietors, lords, abbots or bishops set about building chapels in their domains. The founder endowed the church with sufficient land to cover the expenses of worship and to support a priest, and the bishop ap- proved the foundation. From that time the priest of that church (the founder and his heirs reserved the right to name him), had the care (the cure^) of the souls of the village; the inhabitants had to attend his church, and to obey him. The territory administered by a priest formed a parish (administration). When this work of division was ended (in France it was about the tenth century), the whole Christian country was divided into parishes, just as it still is today. Each village had its church, or was attached • From this word came the title curate. THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 89 to the church of a neighboring town. Religion pene- trated the most remote countries. For the first time the peasants could celebrate the mysteries of their re- ligion without going to the city. They had in their own village, their church, where they assembled; their bell-tower^ with its spire, which could be seen afar off, and its bells which called the faithful to prayer; they had their baptismal fonts for the baptism of their chil- dren, and their cemeteries for the interment of their dead. They had in their midst their own priest to instruct them in religion. They had, too, their patron, the saint of their church; his fete day became the festive day of the village, and his name was often given to the village itself. Excommunication — The clergy of the Middle Ages, richer, better disciplined, better instructed than the laity, had in addition an irresistible power; they ad- ministered the sacraments, which no one was able to do without. There were then no unbelievers; if a layman often disobeyed the rules of the church, or in a moment of wrath maltreated a monk or a priest, all believed firmly in the last judgment, and submitted to humiliating penances in order to obtain absolution. Against the criminals, and the stubborn, the clergy em- ployed "spiritual arms," as they said, the culprit was excommunicated, that is, cut off from fellowship with the faithful. "By virtue of the divine authority con- ferred on the bishops by Saint Peter," said the bishop, "we cast him out from the bosom of our Holy Mother ' In Christian countries the exile sighs for the bell-tower of his native village as Ulysses longed for the ' ' smoke of his hearth. ' ' The bell-tower is for us the symbol of our native land. 90 MEDL^VAL CIVILIZATIOX Church. Let him be accursed in his town, accursed in his field, accursed in his home. Let no Christian speak to him, or eat with him ; let no priest say mass for him, nor give him the communion; let him be buried like the ass. . . . And as these torches cast down by our hands are about to be extinguished so may the light of his life be extingviished unless he repent and give satisfaction by his devotion." In the eleventh century the "interdict" began to be employed against the lord who braved the excom- munication. The clergy deprived of the sacraments not only the suzerain, but all the people in his domains : in all the length and breadth of his possessions no one could be married or buried, the church bells were not rung; the people chastised together with their suzerain were obliged to fast, and to let the hair grow as a sign of mourning. Thus did the clergy force the lords to respect the laws of religion, and also prevent them from taking possession of the property of the church. REFORM IX TRE CHURCH Confusion of Power — In the eleventh century the spiritual power over the soul and the temporal power over the body were not sharply defined. Bishops and abbots were not only religious chiefs, they had a large share of political power. Because of their large domains they were great lords, seigniors, sovereigns over their peasants and over their vassal knights. ]\Iore than that, kings, princes and all men at arms needed the help of the ecclesiastics in the, for them, too complicated cares of the government. The bishops THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 91 sat in their courts, drew up tlieir orders, dictated their "judgments," in a word, governed in their place. That was not all ; the bishops had received since the time of Charlemagne, a share in the administration of the provinces ; in Germany many of them had the authority of a count. But in acquiring the power of a lay lord, they had to accept the obligations of such a lord. Like the counts they were vassals of the king, and like them they owed homage and military service to their liege. The army of the king, in Germany, was composed chiefly of knights brought by the bishops and abbots. Even in France, the king obliged them, sometimes to come to the army in person. "It is an ancient custom," wrote Philip I. to the abbot of Saint Medard at Sois- sons, "for the knights of the abbey, the abbot at their head, to join in the royal expeditions. Let the abbot follow the custom, or let him cede his place." The abbot resigned ; his successor joined the army. The Spirit of the Century.— In the tenth century, the bishops and abbots were usually the sons of lords ; the priests and monks were sons of peasants, who, without any inclination, took orders in obedience to their parents or for the purpose of enjoying the wealth of the church. They brought into the church the manners of the laymen, they passed their time in hunting, drinking, gaming, and fighting. The abbots squandered the wealth of the convents in order to main- tain a band of adventurers. Many married and be- queathed their children to the church ; in Normandy priests gave their curacies as dowry to their daughters. Many did not know how to read and had forgotten 92 MEDLEVAL CIVILIZATION how to say mass. The greater number had bought their hvings from the laity, and had sold them again to other ecclesiastics: this traffic in holy things was called simony. The clergy became gross, ignorant, and covetous, like the laity; it was said that the church was infected with the "spirit of the century." ^ The New Monastic Orders. — These scandals caused great horror to those ecclesiastics who had remained faithful to the spirit of the church, and they urged the most zealous to lay new foundations. Some left this corrupt world and fled to the desert. Saint Bruno coming from the north of France, buried himself in the wild mountain regions of Dauphiny, and with a few companions founded the order of the Carthusians (Chartreux hermits who live in a chartre or cell). An Italian seignior. Saint Romualdo, founded in the same manner, an order in the mountains of Tuscany, called the "Camaldules." Others wished to put an end to the scandals by making the clergy come back under the regulations. They began by reestablishing severe discipline in a convent, which afterward served as a model for reforming the others. The great centres of reform were Cluny, the oldest, where the reform took place in the eleventh century; Citeaux, founded in 1094, both in Burgundy; Clairvaux founded in 1115, Premontre founded in 1120. It was not a question of replacing the ancient regulations of Saint Benedict, but, on the contrary, of restoring them to vigor by the practice of labor, obedience, and espec- ' In the language of the church the century is the world. The clergy, who lived among the laity, were called the secular clergy, they were the priests and bishops; the regular clergy were those who Uved out of the world, like the monks. THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 93 ially poverty, which the convents invaded by the spirit of the century had ceased to do. The founder of Clairvaux, Saint Bernard, forbade his monks to wear furs, cowls, or to use bed-clothes, he wanted no luxury even in the churches; he only permitted a a cross of painted wood, an iron candelabra, and cop- per censers. The monks, after the reform, all re- mained Benedictines. But to arrest the progress of the disorders too easily introduced into an independ- ent monastery, it was decided that the reformed con- vents should keep the direction of all convents founded or reformed by them. Thus Cluny, Citeaux, and Pre- montre became heads of the order; the convents of that order were no longer abbeys, but priories, all obeyed the same abbot, and sent delegates to the gen- eral assemblies of the order. The orders increased rapidly in numbers and in power; in the twelfth century, Cluny had more than 400 monks and had charge of 2,000 convents ; Citeaux had 1,800 convents scattered throughout Europe. Then began a rivalry between the black friars of Cluny and the white friars of Citeaux (the Cistercians). It was these reformed monks who obliged the rest of the clergy to reform their manners, they energeti- cally supported the pope and brought all Christians, laity and clergy to submit to his authority. Gregory VII., the great papal reformer and ruler, was a monk of Cluny; Saint Bernard, the great doctor of the twelfth century, was a Cistercian. It was an ancient custom in the church, when one of the faithful con- fessed a sin, before absolution was granted, and before he. was permitted to reenter the church, a public pen- 94 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATIOI? ance was imposed upon him by the priest, provided that the sin had been committed in pubHc. Already in the eighth century, there were in existence books of penitence, where was indicated the punishment to be inflicted for each offence. For a long time these punishments were severe and humiliating. In certain acts of penance, which lasted seven years, the penitent during the first year had to stand barefooted before the door of the church, prostrating himself before all who entered and supplicating them to pray for him. The penances consisted in fasting, reciting prayers, and in beating oneself witli bundles of rods. Little by little the system was regulated; it was admitted that three thousand blows from the rods were equal to a year of penance. Dominic surnamed the Cuirasse, an Italian hermit of the eleventh century, had the reputation of being able to do a hundred years of penance in fifteen days. It was admitted also that penance could be redeemed by charitable works, by pilgrimages, or by gifts to the church. The saints, it was said, had had more virtue than was necessary for their salvation ; these superabundant merits formed a "treasury of indulgences," which permitted com- pensation for the offences of sinners. The church which disposed of them, scattered these indulgences among the believers, it could grant them even to the souls of the dead, who were in purgatory. In exchange it could exact certain pecuniary sacrifices. The sinner did not buy absolution (as has been incorrectly said), he only redeemed the penance, or rather the church remitted it to him. Such is the theory of indulgences. "On receiving lands from the penitents," said Damien, THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 95 "we remit a large amount of penance, according to the value of their gift." There were then two systems of doing penance : one, the more gentle, the indulgences gained through donations or pilgrimages, sufficed for the lukewarm souls, and for peaceful epochs ; the other, more severe, the blows of the rods, was much more reassuring to ardent souls. The zealous Christians like Saint Louis or Saint Elizabeth, wore next the skin a shirt of horse- hair and had their confessors beat them with rods. In moments of religious terror, during epidemics and wars, companies of flagellants were formed. They went about the country, the shoulders naked, and beating themselves until the blood flowed. The Greek Schism. — The Greek Christians in the countries of the Orient had been for a long time united in one church with the Roman Christians of the Occi- dent. They had several patriarchs, at Constantinople, at Alexandria, at Jerusalem, and at Antioch, and they also recognized the superiority of the bishop of Rome. But after the Arabs had conquered Egypt and Syria but one patriarch remained in the Empire, the one at Constantinople who began to be a rival of the pope. When, in the eighth century, the pope had broken off relations with the emperor on account of the worship of images, the Greek Christians began to no longer regard the Christians of the Occident as brothers. There were between the two parties of the Christian world, some slight differences in worship and in doc- trine. The Greeks believed that the Holy Spirit pro- ceeds from the Father only, the people in the west believed that He proceeds from the Father and the 96 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION Son, and that the Son is of the same substance as the Father. The Greeks used bread at the communion, the western church used unleavened bread. The Greeks permitted the marriage of priests, the western church forbade it. The secret hostihty of the two churches was manifested openly about the ninth cen- tury. The emperor had deposed Ignace, the patriarch of Constantinople, and had put in his place Photius, a former diplomat and general, the best educated man of his time, who was not a priest, and who in a few days was made to pass through all the degrees of the hierarchy. Pope Nicholas took the part of the de- posed patriarch, and excommunicated Photius and his partisans. Photius summoned a council at Constanti- nople, which condemned as heresies the peculiar doc- trines of the Latins and excommunicated Nicholas (867). The pope profited by a change of emperors, in order to hold at Constantinople an ecumenical council (869) which deposed Photius and set aside his acts. But in 879 a new council annulled the acts of the council of 869 and declared that the pope had the supremacy only over the church in the Occident. The pope responded by excommunicating Photius, who withdrew into a convent. It seemed that the rupture was decisive. But from the end of the ninth century the popes having fallen into the hands of the Roman barons found themselves too feeble to con- tinue the contest. It was only in the middle of the eleventh century, when the pope felt himself strengthened at Rome, and in the west, that he sent two legates to solemnly de- posit in the church at Constantinople a bill of excom- THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 97 munication against the patriarch and his partisans (1054). The church in the Orient refused to submit and since that time the Christians have remained divided between the two churches : the Latin or catholic church, which obeys the pope, the Greek or Orthodox church which recognizes the patriarch of Constantinople. To this church belong not only the Greeks, but the Russians, Bulgarians, Servians and Roumanians. The Heresies — The rare and isolated heretics of the early centuries of the Middle Ages began about the twelfth century to multiply, especially in the south of France and the north of Italy. They were divided into very different sects, but it is not easy for us to distinguish them. We know them only through the accounts given by their enemies. Some had borrowed from the heretics of Bulgaria the old Persian doc- trine of the ]\Ianicheans concerning the contest be- tween good and evil. Others, the Cathares (pure), the poor of Lyons, the Vaudois had become heretics through aversion for the vices of the clergy of their time. The chief of the sect of the Vaudois, Valdus, a rich merchant of Lyons, had the Holy Scriptures translated into the vulgar tongue; obeying the maxim of the Gospel, he had distributed all his goods to the poor and had begun to preach notwithstanding the prohibition of his bishop. His disciples rejected every- thing which they did not find in the Bible: images, holy water, saints, relics, purgatory, fasting, and in- dulgences. "The Roman church," they said, "is not the church of Christ, but the church of the devil. The prelates are nothing but Pharisees, they ought not to 98 MEDI^VIAL CIVILIZATOX possess territorial wealth, but ought to labor like the apostles; they ought not to command others, for in the true church all are equal ; the laity are not inferior to the priests ; they have the right to preach as did the apostles; a pious layman is more truly a priest and can give the communion better than the clerical preach- ers who go\-ern the church ; the sacraments and the indulgences are useless, for faith and repentance are sufficient for salvation." The strength of these here- tics lay in the fact, that they could address the people in their own tongue, and that their preachers led a poor and simple life in contrast to the manners of a too rich and often corrupt clergy. But the greater part of the Christians held in horror the word heresy, and they willingly put themselves at the service of the clergy for the purpose of exterminating the heretics. In France the knights, at the appeal of the pope, led a crusade against them as they had done against the Moslems; they massacred all the inhabitants of Beziers, as the crusaders in the Orient had slain the nuns and women at Jerusalem. In Germany, the em- peror Frederic II.. a half Saracen, excommunicated by the pope, ordered people who were suspected of heresy to be burned. The Inquisition. — To complete the destruction of the heretics, the pope sent into the towns of Languedoc commissioners, charged with making an inquest (inquisition) concerning the people, who were sus- pected of heresy. He gave the full power to arrest, judge and condemn all persons, leaving them free to proceed as seemed good to themselves, authorizing them to absolve each other in case any irregularity THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 99 was committed. These inquisitors (usually monks) ordered before them the people who had been de- nounced to them as heretics, and examined them, with- out telling them the names of their accusers. If the suspect refused to speak the "dure prison," and the "vie etroite," as they were called were employed. "I have often seen some," said an inquisitor, "who, kept in prison for several years have at last confessed even their former crimes." In order to make them speak, torture, abandoned since the time of the Romans, was again employed, and in that way once more became the usage. This tribunal of Inquisition,^ judged arbi- trarily and without appeal. It condemned some to pay heavy fines, or to make distant pilgrimages, others had to wear a yellow cross sewn on their clothing, which designated them to everyone as suspects, others had to follow processions as penitents, carrying whips with which they must be scourged. Others were "immured," that is, imprisoned forever in a small dark cell, "to eat the bread of anguish and to drink the water of sorrow." Some were burned on the funeral pile; the Inquisition did not execute them, it confined itself to "delivering them over to the secular arm," that is, to a lay judge, who was to put them in charge of the executioner.- The Mendicant Monks — The religious orders which in the eleventh century had struggled against corrup- tion had, in their turn, become very rich. The abbot of Cluny traveled with an escort of eighty horsemen. The white friars sent to convert the heretics shocked them by their luxury. A new organization had to be • Its title was : The Inquisition of Heretical Perversity. 100 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION found ; this was the work of an Italian, Saint Francis, and of a Spaniard, Saint Dominic. Saint Francis (born in 1182), son of a rich mer- chant of Assisi, had voluntarily become poor ; he went through the towns, begging and preaching. He was thought to be mad, and his father cursed him, but his humility, his meekness, and his enthusiasm, soon made him adored. Disciples came to him in crowds, and he decided to organize them and to found the order of "minor friars," the Franciscans. Saint Francis led the life of a hermit, he watched, prayed, fasted, wore hair-cloth, mixed ashes with his food, in order to make it disagreeable ; every night he whipped himself with iron chains (three times, for himself, for living sinners, and for the souls in purgatory), and he died lying on the bare ground. But unlike the anchorites he was tender, and desired the salvation of others. He wanted his Franciscans to always be poor hermits, but hermits living among men to exhort them to piety. "Go, two by two," said he to his diciples, "declare to all men peace and penitence for the remission of their sins. Fear nothing because we appear to be children or fools, but announce simply repentance and a new birth, confident that the spirit of God, who rules the world, will speak through your mouth." His regula- tions were very simple. "The friars should have nothing of their own ; they should go as pilgrims and strangers in this world, serving God in poverty and humility, they should go trusting to alms, and not be ashamed for the Lord made himself poor for our sakes." The Franciscans are clothed as pilgrims, with a gown of coarse wool, with a hood or capuchon THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 101 (hence their name Capucines), they are shod with sandals, and have a girdle of heavy cord (hence their name Cordeliers). They live on alms. Saint Dominic (born in 1170) was also an ascetic; he drank no wine, wore the hair-cloth with a chain of iron, and died lying in a bed of ashes. But first of all he was a preacher. For ten years he preached in the country of the Albigenses in order to convert the heretics. There he saw how eager the people were to have the word of God, and how scandalized they were at the luxury displayed by the clergy. He made a point of going about on foot, and in very simple garments ; he wanted to give missionaries to the peo- ple. He founded the order of preaching friars, des- tined to carry everywhere the word of God for the salvation of the souls of men, and he imposed upon the' order the vow of poverty. So the Franciscans were mendicants, and became preachers ; the Dominicans were preachers and became mendicants. The two orders greatly resembled each other. ^ Both were organized in the same way, with a general, who was directly obedient to the pope; but the Dominicans addressed themselves rather to the lords, while the Franciscans turned to the common people. Both spread with unheard of rapidity. About 1277 there were 417 convents of Dominicans; in 1260 there were 1808 convents of Franciscans, each con- vent had at least twelve members. As they relied on • Saint Dominic proposed to unite them, Saint Francis re- fused, "so that each might serve as model and goad to the other." The two orders, at first competitors and allies, finally, in the fifteenth century, detested and fought each other. 102 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION God, who was "their granary and their cellar," they could accept as many brothers as presented them- selves. "To those who came to them was given a gown and a cord, and for the rest, they were en- trusted to the care of Providence." The ancient monks had lived out of the world, the mendicant monks mingled in society. The people allowed them to preach, confess, and bury, and the faithful hastened to them, abandoning the ordinary priest. This was an important evolution, which strengthened still more the authority of the pope. The Jurisdiction of the Church From the thir- teenth century there was in each diocese a tribunal of the church, where sat the delegate of the bishop (the ecclesiastical judge). All the suits in which any one of the clergy was concerned were judged there, for it was not admitted that a layman could lay hands on a man consecrated by God. The clergyman, even if he had committed a crime, could be judged only by a clergyman ; such was the "privilege of the ministry," a privilege much sought for, as the judges of the church never condemned to death ; often a malefactor, in order to escape the gallows, had himself tonsured, learned a Latin prayer, and gave himself out for a clergyman. The tribunals of the church had extended their power over the laity. The church, which administers all the sacraments, it was said, should judge in all afifairs pertaining to the sacraments, and they were many. Marriage, from the establishment of Christianity, had become a sacrament. The intending parties ac- THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 103 companied by witnesses, presented themselves in the porch of the church, the priest asked them whether they were consenting to the marriage. "I, such a one," said the man, "I take thee to wife." "I, such a one," responded the betrothed, "I take thee for my husband." The parents of the woman put her hand in the hand of the husband, the priest blessed the ring, the symbol of alliance. Then all entered the church, and the priest said a mass over the kneeling couple, who were covered with a canopy. This cere- mony put marriage in the power of the church. In the time of the Roman law, the will of the couple was sufficient to conclude or to break off a marriage. Christians, on the contrary, could be married only when the church permitted it (often it forbade the union even of distant relatives) ; once married, it was for life, for the sacrament which bound them was in- dissoluble. Thus divorce disappeared; when living together became impossible, the church permitted only the separation of body, which does not dissolve marriage. The church also adjudicated wills, for a man could not make a will until he had confessed, and confession was a sacrament. "Unconfessed, intestate," says the proverb. The church refused to- inter any who had not confessed, and was, therefore, intestate ; usage demanded that in a testament there should always be a legacy in favor of a church, and it was to the tribunal of the church that all suits concerning wills were brought. The church also judged the laity, who were guilty of any crime against religion: heretics, blasphemers, 104 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATIOX usurers (as the church forbade usury). Innocent III. pretended that the church ought to judge all sins. The tribunals of the church, down to the sixteenth century, in many countries, were more busy than were the civil tribunals. The Papacy. — The popes in the tenth century, like the other bishops of Italy, had fallen under the domin- ion of the laity ; the lords, and demi-brigands of Rome, withdrawing into the ruins of the antique monuments had the pope elected to suit themselves. The Holy See was for a time the property of a family of barons. The women of that family, Theodora and Marozia, chose the sovereign pontiff. One pope was twelve years old ; another sold the papacy to his successor. The Emperor Henry III. put an end to these scandals, but he himself named the popes. The partisans of the reform movement were not willing that the highest dignity of the church should be in subjection to a lay- man. Leo IX., chosen pope by his cousin, the emperor, presented himself at the gates of Rome, as a pilgrim, and insisted on being chosen according to the regu- lations, by the clergy and the people of Rome. Then the Lateran Council of 1061 decided that in the future the pope should be chosen by the cardinals, that is, the priests of Rome and the bishops of the small towns of the Roman Campagna ; confirmation of the election by the emperor was still demanded, but soon even that was omitted. This mode of election, which is still in use, has rendered the papacy inde- pendent of the people of Rome and of foreign sover- eigns. As soon as he had become independent, the pope began to purify the church of the secular spirit THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 105 by attacking the marriage of the priests, simony, and investiture by the laity. Dispute About Investitures. — According to the an- cient rules of the church, the bishop ought to have been chosen by his canons, the abbot by his monks. But to every bishopric, to every abbey, were attached great domains given to them in fief by the king. The kina«|specially in Germany, reserved to himself the ri^^Ht naming those who should enjoy these fiefs, wW^^ bishop or an abbot died : the canons or the monks brought to the king the insignia of the episcopal or abbatical dignity, the crosier, symbol of authority, the ring, symbol of the alliance of the prelate and the church. The king chose whom he wished, usually an ecclesiastic of the court, made him take the oath of fealty, and invested him : that is to say, gave him the crosier and the ring. This custom was revolting to the reformers in the church. "Can it be admitted," said Pope Urban II., "that hands which have the supreme honor of creating the Creator, should be reduced to the infamy of submitting to hands soiled with rapine and with blood?" To receive an ecclesi- astical dignity from a layman is to traffic in holy things, and to commit the mortal sin of simony. Then the pope demanded that the emperor should permit the election of the bishops and abbots, to take place according to the canonical rules. The emperor an- swered, "The bishoprics and the abbeys are 'des regales,' " ^ that is, portions of the royal domain, and the emperor alone has the right to confer them. Thus ' Regales, right to receive revenues of ecclesiastical domains. —Ed. LllC JJU|JC 106 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION' arose between emperors and popes the dispute about investiture. The pope was supported by the monks and the partisans of the reform, the emperor had on his side, the bishops and abbots of Germany and of Lombardy, his vassals and the married priests. When the bishop of Coire came, in 1075, to communicate to the archbishop of Mayence the order of the pope forbidding the marriage of priests, all the clera^^i^s- ent in the assembly, arose in wrath, insulted tr bishop and forbade him to accept that order. The contest lasted for half a century (1075-1122). The "regales," the political power of the bishops ren- dered agreement most difficult. Pope Parsad solved the difficulty by deciding that the bishops should give up "the cities, counties, mints, tolls, chateaux, do- mains and rights" which they held from the emperor. The clergy did not desire this arrangement, and when peace was made in 1122, the bishops held to their "regales." The emperor conceded that the bishops and abbots should be chosen by the canons or the monks, and should receive from them the crosier and the ring, but he reser\ed the right to invest them with their temporalities by the sceptre, as was done to the lay princes. THE PAPACY TRIUMPHANT Rivalry of Pope and Emperor. — So long as the pope and the emperor were agreed to govern in common, as was done under Charlemagne, there was no reason for distinguishing their powers and for defining their rights. It was said that God had given two swords. lot Deen ;v^Fequ£ THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE. AGES 107 the temporal to the emperor, the spiritual to the pope, in order that they should together rule the world. But when the pope and the emperor made war on each other, one had to ask, "what are the rights, what are the limits of the spiritual and of the temporal power?" This difficult question, which succeeding centuries have not been able to answer, is still discussed under the "Relations between Church and State." ^e Middle Ages it was difficult to conceive of tvv^equal, independent powers. Pope or emperor, which should command the other ? Each of them pre- tended to supreme power; the emperor as heir of the Roman Caesars, whose title he bore, demanded the right to govern the world (that is the signification of the globe, which figures among the imperial in- signia) . The pope said : "In giving to Saint Peter the sovereign right to loose and unloose in heaven, and upon the earth, God has excepted no one. God has put under him all princes, all powers in the uni- verse. God has made him prince over the kingdoms of this world." (Epistle of Gregory VII.) The pope is superior to all the princes, he is their judge; if he finds them unworthy of reigning he can excommuni- cate them, depose them, and release their subjects from the oath of fealty. Gregory VII. applied this maxim in deposing Henry IV. The contest between the two powers was a long one. Begun in the eleventh cen- tury on the subject of investiture, and continued with regard to the rights of the emperor over the cities of Lombardy, it lasted until 1250. The emperor was beaten, because his power over the world was imagi- nary: he had no authority save in Germany, and in 108 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION Italy, still he could not make himself obeyed either by the German princes or by the Italian towns. Supremacy of the Pope. — The pope supported by the regenerated clergy was, in the thirteenth century, the real chief of the Christian world. He goverj^ned all the clergy, and all believers through the clergy. He had reserved for himself the right to convoke coun- cils, to depose bishops, to absolve great criminj^^to give dispensations. He communed on an e^^Bd throne, and had his feet kissed. His letters haSRie force of law throughout the church, and they thus defined his power: "The Creator," said Innocent III., "has established in the firmament of the church, two dignities ; the more considerable, the papacy which pre- sides over the souls of men, as the sun rules over the day ; the less important, the royalty which presides over their bodies as the moon over the night. The papacy takes precedence of royalty just as the sun does of the moon." "God has given to Saint Peter the mission to govern not only the church universal, but the world. As all creatures in heaven, in earth, and under the earth must bend the knee before God, so must all obey his vicar, so there shall be but one flock and one shepherd." In 1296, Boniface VIII. wrote to the King of France : "Listen, my son, to the words of a tender father. Beware of the belief that thou hast no superior, and that thou art not subject to the chief of the hierarchy." And in 1300 in the celebrated bull "Unam Sanctam" : "The church is unique, it is a single body with but one head; this head is the suc- cessor of Saint Peter. We learn through the Gospel that in this church there are two swords, the temporal THE CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 109 and the spiritual; the one must be employed by the church, and the hand of the pope, the other by the church and the hand of the king under orders from the pope." During the earlier centuries there were no laws in the church except the canon law, that is, the rules established by the councils. When the pope had suc- ceeded in making all the clergy recognize his author- ity, 'his decretals became the laws of the church, as formerly the edicts of the Roman emperor were the laws of the empire. Gratian, an Italian priest of the twelfth century, gathered together all the decretals attributed to the former popes and made a collection which was called the Decretum. To this Decretum, the popes of the thirteenth century added successively several new collections composed of the letters of the popes which had appeared after the first compilation. Thus, as Justinian had formed the body of civil law, so did the popes form the body of the canon law, which has remained the law of the church. CHAPTER VIII ORIENTAL CIVILIZATION IN THE WEST Superiority of the Peoples of the Orient. — ^Let us examine the two civilizations into which, in the eleventh century, the old world was divided; in the West miserable small towns, cabins of peasants, rude fortresses, a country always disturbed by war, where one could not go ten leagues without running the risk of being plundered. In the East, Constantinople, Cairo, Bagdad, Damascus, all the cities of the "Thou- sand and One Nights," with their palaces of marble, their workshops, their schools, their bazaars, their gardens which extended several leagiies, a country well-watered, and covered with villages, and the con- tinual movement of the merchants going from Spain to Persia. No doubt the Moslem and Byzantine world was richer, better policed, more enlightened than the western world. The Christians felt themselves in- ferior in culture, they naturally admired the marvels of the Orient, and those who wanted instruction went into the Arabic schools. In the eleventh century, the two worlds of the Orient and the Occident began to get acquainted with each other; the barbarous Christians penetrated the lands of the civilized Moslems by two paths, war and com- merce. ORIENTAL CIVILIZATION IN THE WEST 111 The Crusades. — The Moslems had ended their holy war, the Christians began theirs; this was the Cru- sades. The first crusade was organized at Clermont in 1095 by Pope Urban II., who was a Frenchman. It was for the purpose of going to deliver the Holy Sepulchre (the tomb of Christ) from the hands of the infidels. Those who departed put a cross on the shoulder, the cross of the pope, hence the name crusade. The crusader was an armed pilgrim ; the pope had promised remission of penance for all sins committed by whoever would take part in the expedition. The penitents were joined by Italian merchants, and by knights in search of adventure. They profited by the victories of the crusaders over the Moslems in order to establish themselves in Syria, where they founded principalities (these foreigners were called Franks).^ In I20^7an expedition directed by the Venetians turned aside to Constantinople and con- quered the Greek empire. The crusades began about the end of the eleventh century, lasted until the thir- teenth, and until the fifteenth century it was often a question of resumption. In Spain, the last crusade was the taking of Granada, 1492. Character of the Crusades — The crusades were ex- peditions of Christians organized by the pope, the common head of the Christians; every crusader was an armed pilgrim whose penance had been remitted. The pilgrims were gathered in large bodies about the most powerful lords or around the legate of the pope 1 The Arabs called all western Christians Franks, because in the ninth century they were a part of the Frank Empire. 112 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION but they were not subject to any discipline; they remained free to pass over to another troop, or even to abandon the expedition when they judged their vow was accomplished. An army of crusaders was then only a union of bands following the same route. They marched in disorder and slowly, mounted on big horses, clothed in a heavy armor, encumbered with baggage, servants and camp-followers. They lost months in traversing the Byzantine Em- pire and in fighting the Turkish cavalry of Asia Minor. In the deserts, where water was scarce, and where they could not renew their stock of provisions, men and horses died of hunger, thirst and fatigue ; in the camps where they stopped, the lack of care, privations, fasts, alternating with excesses at table and in drink- ing, caused epidemics which carried them off by thousands. Of all who departed, very few arrived in Syria. So that in the twelfth century along the route to the Holy Land there was a terrible destruction of men. The crusaders at last gave up the pilgrimages by land, and in the thirteenth century all took their way over the sea ; the Italian ships in a few months transported them and their horses to the Holy Land, where real war was made. In the combats with an equal number of Moslems the knights had the advantage ; with their heavy horses and impenetrable armor they formed compact battalions that the Saracen cavalry, mounted upon small horses, could not injure with their arrows and sabers. It is true that their victories had hardly any results; the conquering crusaders went back to Europe and the Moslems returned to the Holy City. ORIENTAL CIVILIZATION IN THE WEST 113 These intermittent armies could have conquered the Holy Land, but they would have been inadequate to guard and keep it. But to the crusaders coming to virork out their salvation were joined knights and mer- chants, who had come to make their fortunes and who were determined to hold the country. It is to them that the success of the crusades is due, while using for the moment the force which the mass of crusaders gave them. They directed the operations and con- structed machines for sieges, took the towers and forti- fied them in expectation of the return of the enemy. Left to themselves, the crusaders were incapable of making war in those distant countries. The pompous expeditions led by sovereigns (Conrad, Frederic Bar- barossa, Philip Augustus, the King of Hungary, Saint Louis) all finished miserably. The only crusades which were really successful — the first, which con- quered Syria, and the fourth, which conquered the Greek empire — were led, one by the Normans of Italy, the other by the Venetians. The enthusiasm and bravery of the crusaders were blind forces, which only served when directed by men of experience. The crusaders were nothing but auxiliaries. The real founders of the Christian kingdoms were the adven- turers and the merchants, who, like the modern emi- grants, left their country to establish themselves in the Orient. These emigrants were never sufficiently numerous to people the country; they remained encamped among the native peoples. The Frank principalities consisted only of an aristocracy composed of French knights and Italian merchants. They could not have 114 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION the solidarity of the states of the Occident which rested upon nationality. They resembled the states founded by the Arabian and Turkish war-lords, where the state was entirely confounded with the army and perished with it. These principalities lasted nearly two centuries, a long life for Oriental states. A large emigration alone could have maintained them in face of Moslem and Byzantine Asia; the Europe of the Middle Ages could not furnish that emigration. During half a century they had to fight only the petty princes of Syria; the ]\Ioslems of Egypt lived with them in peace, and that was the time of their prosperity. But when Saladin had destroyed the Cali- phate of Cairo and in its place the military state of the ^lamelukes was formed, the Christians, attacked from the direction of or by Egypt, could no longer resist. If they had continued to keep their states for a century it was because the sultan did not care to destroy them. Doubtless the war was a Holy War for the Moslems as well as for the Christians. But it was interrupted by frequent truces of several years' duration. All the Christian princes should not be represented as united against the Moslem princes; political interests were stronger than religious hatred. Christians fought continually against Christians, and Aloslems against Moslems. Sometimes e\'en a Christian prince made an alliance with a Moslem prince against another Christian prince. Never was there perfect accord in the camp of the Christians. The religious enthusiasm which united them did not destroy commercial rivalry nor race hatred; there were continual disputes between the ORIENTAL CIVILIZATION IN THE WEST 115 princes of the different states, between French, Ger- man and English, between the merchants of Genoa and those of France, between the Templars and the Hospitallers. The same discords arose between the crusaders coming from Europe and the Franks already living in Syria. While living among the Oriental peoples the Franks had adopted their customs; they had organized a light cavalry, armed in the Turkish fashion. They were disposed to treat the Moslems as neighbors, and were not inclined to make war upon them without any motive for doing so. The knights from the West, who arrived full of wrath against the infidels, wanted to exterminate all and were indignant at this tolerance. As soon as they had disembarked they rushed over the Moslem territory, eager for battle and pillage, often without listening to the counsels of the Christians in the country, who were more experienced in Oriental wars. The Occidental writers treated the Christians of the Holy Land as cowards, traitors, and corrupt, and attributed to them the ruin of the Syrian states. What truth is there in these accusations? Doubtless the Frank adventurers quickly enriched, living in luxury, in contact with a corrupt population, must have contracted many vices, especially those of Syrian origin. But the crusaders were not in a position to judge them. They them- selves, by their improvidence, caused more disasters than did the Syrian Christians by their want of vigor. Commerce — The direct result of the crusades was of short duration ; the kingdom of Jerusalem could not hold out against the Turks and was destroyed in 129 1 ; the Latin empire founded in 1204 was destroyed by 116 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION the Byzantines. But each year the Holy Sepulchre attracted thousands of pilgrims. In order to transport these, a service of ships was organized, departing from the ports of Venice, Genoa, and Marseilles. Thus began the regular communication between Italy and the Levant. The objects of luxury and the products of the warm countries, spices from India, pepper, nutmegs, ginger, cinnamon, ivory, silks from China, carpets, sugar, cotton, paper, were found only in the markets of Con- stantinople, Bagdad, and Alexandria. These products, much sought after b}' the western peoples, who bought them at any price, promised large profits. The people of Venice, subjects of the Byzantine empire, had begun by carrying on commerce with Byzantium. In the twelfth centur)- they preferred to get the merchan- dise of the Orient at its source; the great commercial cities of that epoch, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, sent their ships to the ports of Palestine, which were the depots of caravans from Damascus and from Bagdad. In the thirteenth century, after the taking of Con- stantinople, the Venetian merchants had a quarter in the city and had counting-houses even on the Black Sea, where they carried on commerce with Tre- bizond. Pisa obtained permission from the Moslem princes of Egj^pt and Tripoli to trade with their sub- jects; Venice and Genoa concluded similar treaties, and from that time the ships of Venice and Genoa, laden with spices and stuffs, regularly visited Alexan- dria. The relations of the Occident and Orient, begun through a war among believers, ended in business relations among merchants. The German traders who ORIENTAL CIVILIZATION IN THE WEST 117 until the eleventh century had brought the produce from Constantinople up the Danube, preferred to cross the Alps and buy from the Italian merchants. The great highway of commerce was changed. Trade abandoned the Danube and, leaving Alexandria, passed through Venice, the Brenner Pass, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. Introduction of Oriental Civilization into the Occi- dent — By contact with the Orientals the people of the West became civilized. It is often very difficult to tell precisely by what means an invention of the Orient has reached us, whether it came to us through the crusaders from Palestine,^ through the Italian mer- chants, through the Saracens from Sicily, or through the Moors from Spain. But we can make a statement of what we owe to the Arabs, and this statement is a long one. From the Arabs we have : I. Buckwheat, asparagus, hemp, flax, saffron, rice, the mulberry, palm, lemon and orange trees, even cof- fee, cotton and sugar-cane, which have become the chief objects of culture in America. II. The greater part of our manufactured articles of luxury, linen, damask, morocco, silk stuffs embossed with gold and silver, muslin, gauze, taffeta, velvet (later brought to perfection in Italy), crystal and plate glass, imitated in Venice, paper, sugar, confectionery and syrups. ' Perhaps the part taken by the crusaders in this work of civilization has been exaggerated. The crusaders from Palestine were scarcely in contact with any one but the Turkish warriors, new-comers in the Moslem world and almost barbarians. 118 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION III. The beginning of several of our sciences, algebra, trigonometry, chemistry, and the Arabic fig- ures, which the Arabs themselves had borrowed from the Hindoos and which have made easy the most complex calculations, to say nothing of magic, talis- mans, in which the Italians have believed even down to our day, and the philosopher's stone, which alchem- ists in the pay of certain German princes were still searching for as late as the seventeenth century. The Arabs had amassed and condensed all the inventions and all the knowledge of the old worlds of the Orient (Greece, Persia, India, and even China) ; this is what they have transmitted to us ; a number of Arabic words which enter into our language^ are a testimony of this ; through them the western world, having returned to barbarism, became once more civilized. If our ideas and our arts go back to antiquity, all the inven- tions which make life easy and agreeable come to us from the Arabs. Influence of the Orient on Belief This contact with the East acted upon the religious ideas of the Chris- tians. At first they were over-excited by the struggle. But on seeing the infidels close at hand they found among them men grave, enlightened, generous, like Saladin, who released the Christian prisoners without a ransom and sent his own physician to care for a crusader chief who was ill, and they began to respect them. Wishing to prove the merits of the Christian re- ligion to the Moslems and to the Jews, they discussed with them, and the discussion forced them to compare • Alcohol, elixir, algebra, alembic, alcove, sofa, amulet, gala, arsenal, admiral, zenith, cipher, zero, etc. ORIENTAL CIVILIZATION IN THE WEST 119 the three reHgions. From that comparison some con- cluded that the three reHgions were equally false, since each pretended to be the only true religion ; there were, said they, three great impostors: Moses, Jesus Christ and Mahomet, who had deceived the Jews, Christians and Moslems. This phrase attributed (wrongly) to the Emperor Frederic II. circulated in Italy during the thirteenth century. Others on the contrary concluded that the three religions were equally good, and related this parable : A man pos- sessed a ring to which his heritage was attached. As he loved equally his three sons, he had two rings made exactly like his own, and gave one to each of his three sons. The father died. Each of the three claimed the succession attached to the ring, and the judge decided that all three should inherit. The Christian, the Moslem, the Jew, are all sons of one celestial Father, who has wished that all three should have part in the heritage. The Christians gave a different ending to the story : A sick man was sent for and made to touch the three rings : he was cured. In touching the true one the touchstone of the true re- ligion is the miracle, and the miracle pronounced in favor of Christianity. CHAPTER IX THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY PROGRESS OF ROYALTY Increase of the Royal Domain The King of France was master only in his own domain, and until the end of the twelfth century his domain was a small one. The policy of the House of France was that of a family of peasants seeking to aggrandize and round out its domain. By purchase, marriage or conquest slowly it acquired, sometimes a province, sometimes a small county, sometimes a single seigniory. Under Philip Augustus the domain was suddenly increased three- fold by the conquest of the domains of the Duke of Normandy. The king had then more knights in his army, more money in his coffers, more subjects on his lands than any other prince in France ; he was for the first time the most powerful seignior of his kingdom. In his domains, scattered throughout France, he estab- lished bailiffs, agents acting under power of attorney, who began to annoy the bailiffs of the great lords, and who made the name of the king everywhere respected. Paris Under Philip Augustus. — Paris in the ninth century, at the period of the siege by the Normans, was wholly confined to the island of the Cite. At the end of the twelfth century it had extended over on the two banks of the Seine. In order to put the new THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 121 quarters under protection from the enemy, Philip Augustus had built entirely around the city so en- larged a thick wall, flanked by towers, of which remains are found to-day. The Cite still remained the centre of the town; there was to be found the cathedral (later Notre Dame), the residence of the bishop, the palace of the king, where Saint Louis established later his parle- ment and which became the palace of justice. On the left bank of the river, in the direction of Mount Saint Genevieve, lived the scholars, i.e., the students and ecclesiastics, who frequented the schools; here the wall of the city stopped opposite the extremity of the island, at the Tournelle; it passed over Mount Saint Genevieve and joined the Seine opposite the Louvre. On the right bank the wall began opposite the island of the Cite and went as far as the Louvre. In this narrow space the population was crowded to- gether, in order to take up less room ; the streets were narrow, tortuous and dark, neither paved nor lighted. There was almost no police; each evening the curfew was rung, peaceable people withdrew into the house and closed the doors, the streets were given up to thieves and adventurers of every kind, and it was very dangerous to venture into them. The city of Paris had no general administration. It had been built upon lands only a part of which belonged to the king. Many quarters, especially the "faubourgs" situated without the walls, were con- structed upon domains belonging to abbeys which had been originally founded in the country. Saint Ger- main des Pres, beside the Pre aux Clercs, and which 122 MEDIiEVAL CIVILIZATIOX extended down to the bank of the Seine, Saint Martin des Champs and Saint Genevieve. In these quarters the abbot, not the king, was lord, and he had the right not only to have the quit-rents (cens) paid to himself for the houses built on his lands, but to judge at his tribunals all suits of the inhabitants and all crimes committed in the quarter. The city of Paris did not then form a single body, and even the part which properly belonged to the king was not organized, as were much smaller towns (Amiens, Soissons, etc.). Paris had neither charter nor mayor nor bell- tower. But at Paris, as in all the other towns, the workmen who practised the same calling, the merchants who sold the same merchandise, were grouped in corporations, each of which had its regulations, its treasury and its chief. The most pow- erful corporation in Paris was that of the water- merchants, that is, the ship-owners who carried on commerce by boats upon the Seine ; it had its chief, the provost of the merchants, and its administrative coun- cil, the aldermen. Gradually the provost of the mer- chants and the aldermen came to be considered as the representatives of the citizens (bourgeois) of Paris; the house where they met for deliberation was called the "hotel de ville," and their reunion became the corporate body of the city. 'Even to-day the city of Paris has on its coat-of-arms a bark in full sail, the emblem of the ancient corps of water-merchants. Philip Augustus was the first king of France who labored for the betterment of his capital ; not only did he surround it by a wall, but he had some of the streets of the city paved, and the infectious sewers THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 123 which surrounded his palace were filled up. But it was not until the thirteenth century that handsome buildings were erected. In our contemporary Paris, there remains of the Paris of Philip only the tower of Saint Germain des Pres and the little church of Saint Julien le Pauvre. Saint Louis — Saint Louis was the perfect king, such as he was understood to be in the Middle Ages, a hum- ble Christian, an accomplished knight, a severe judge. He had all the virtues that were understood in his time, devotion, bravery, and justice. He heard two masses daily, was present at matins, wore a hair shirt, washed the feet of the poor, was disciplined for his sins, ordered the Jews to be persecuted, burned the heretics, and pierced with a red-hot iron the tongues of blasphemers. In battle "he proved the superior of all his race." "Never," says Joinville, "did one see so handsome a knight." He was "wise in his time as a God." He felt it to be his duty to dispense justice to all. He often went and seated himself under an oak in the forest of Vincennes, or in his garden in the Cite; all who had any business came and spoke with him without being embarrassed by his tipstaffs (huis- siers), and he decided the case. He wanted to render equal justice to all. One of the great lords of the kingdom, Enguerrand de Coucy, had had three stu- dents hung for having hunted in his woods. The king had him arrested and brought to his court. The other knights demanded that "according to the custom" de Coucy should defend himself by the duel. Louis re- fused, saying that "in the affairs of the poor, of the church, or of persons whom one ought to pity," one 124 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION should not proceed by a challenge to a duel. The lords, irritated, left the court. The king went on and judged the case. One nobleman cried ironically, "If I had been the king I would have hung my barons." The king heard it. "What, Jean ; you say I ought to have hung my barons ! Certainly not ; but I shall chas- tise them if they do evil." The sentiment of justice was so strong in Saint Louis that he exalted it even above the custom. He forbade the duel^ in all his domain. All affairs that had been settled by duel were to be henceforth judged by proof and by testi- mony. "For," said he, "to fight is not the way of justice." Saint Ia)uis sanctified French royalty and accus- tomed the people to regard the King of France as the source of all justice. Institutions of Saint Louis — Saint Louis did more by his example and by the veneration that he inspired than by the laws, properly speaking. For a long time it was believed that he had had drawn up the body of laws called the "Etablissements of Saint Louis." It has been found that these pretended "Etablissements" were nothing more than the union of two manuals of the common law, written about the end of the thir- teenth century by unknown practitioners and without any relation to the king. It was also believed that Saint Louis was the author of "Pragmatic statutes," concerning the rights of the church in France ; it is certain that this pretended Pragmatic Sanction was 1 This ordinance was not always enforced. Philip I. was him- self present at a duel, and Philip IV. permitted the duel as the only means of obtaining justice for murder, in cases where there had been no witnesses to the crime. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 125 fabricated in the fifteenth century, probably after that of Charles VII. The only ordinances which are really the work of Saint Louis are the ordinance concerning duels and the ordinance concerning the regulation of the accounts of the employees in his domains. THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE ARTISTIC LIFE The University of Paris — Like all bishoprics, Paris had its school annexed to the cathedral ; several abbeys (Saint Germain des Pres, Saint Germain I'Auxerrois, Saint Genevieve) had also their schools. The schol- ars, too numerous to find lodgings on the island, occu- pied the left bank of the Seine. There from 1103 to 1 120 a young, handsome and eloquent layman, Abe- lard, the best educated man of his time (he knew a little Hebrew and Greek), had given his lessons in philosophy before an audience of three thousand peo- ple. No hall was large enough to hold them, and Abelard spoke in the open air, in the midst of the vineyards which covered Mount Saint Genevieve. It was the general custom that men of the same profession should be united in a single organization ; as there was a corporation of tailors, of shoemakers, and of cloth merchants, so there was formed a single corporation of all men who were occupied with study. This corporation, approved by the pope in the thir- teenth century, was called the University (that is to say, the whole) of Masters and Scholars of Paris. It had its chosen head (the rector), its servants, and even its tribunal, which alone had the right to judge 126 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION the professors and students. Many times the Uni- versity of Paris was in conflict with the provost, and the king always decided in its favor. In 1403 the provost of Paris had caused two students to be hung. They had been arrested in one of those altercations such as took place almost every day in those streets, narrow and full of adventurers. The university closed its courses ; that was its method of obtaining repara- tion ; the provost was obliged to go and solemnly take down the bodies, bury them, and ask pardon of the university for having violated its privileges. The university was divided into as many groups as there were subjects taught. After law and medicine had been introduced (they were not taught in Paris during the thirteenth century) there were four facul- ties, theology, law, medicine, and the arts. The fac- ulty of liberal arts embraced all the sciences of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics), and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy). The professors received a salary and were paid besides a certain sum by the hearers; they had their lesson written in a book, which they came and read. The scholars, men of every age, dwelt in the city, but after charitable persons had in the thirteenth century founded houses for the reception of poor students, many lived as internes in those colleges under a disci- pline founded upon conventual regulations. Each faculty had three degrees or grades of instruction ; the scholar, after having given proof of his knowledge by an examination, a thesis, or a discussion, went up a grade; he became successively bachelor, master, and doctor. These degrees were sought after, for those THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 127 who had them easily found a place in the churches, tribunals, and in the schools. The University of Paris was, in the thirteenth cen- tury, the largest school in Europe. More than twenty thousand students came there from all countries. It has given to Europe the outline of superior instruction. The English universities, Oxford and Cambridge, have been copied from it; and when the German princes wanted to have schools in their states, all founded universities after the model of that in Paris. From it has come the system of grades and the division into faculties which exists intact in Germany.^ The Roman Law. — The Italians had never ceased to apply the Roman law. In the eleventh century they began again to make a study of the works of Justinian.^ The professors and the scholars gathered at Bologna; there were ten thousand of them. For two centuries they labored to explain the books of the Roman law, commenting on them line by line ; their commentaries formed a glossary upon which other jurists of the thirteenth century based all their new commentaries. In France, only the provinces of the South, as far as Auvergne, used the Roman law. The North followed custom; the parlement of Paris judged according to custom. But the Roman law had a great advan- tage over custom : it was the only written law, the ' In Germany the faculty of the arts has taken the name of Faculty of Philosophy; in France it was divided by Napoleon I. into two parts, Faculty of Letters, and Faculty of Sciences. 2 It has been often said that the Roman law had been com- pletely forgotten, when in 1135 the inhabitants of Pisa brought back maanuscript of the Pandects after the pillage of Amalfi. The only true element in this legend is that there was at Pisa a greatly venerated manuscript of the Pandects. 128 MEDLEVAL CIVILIZATION only one taught in the schools ; it was called simply the judgment or the law, as opposed to the custom; the judges and the advocates graduated in law had passed several years in the study of it, some at Bologna, others at Orleans or at iNIontpelier. Now, the Roman law in many cases decided contrary to custom; the lawyers penetrated by the spirit of this law introduced it little by little, themselves unaware of it, into custom. This infiltration of Roman law began in the thirteenth century, continued until after the sixteenth century, and modified greatly the ancient usage. Especially did it enfeeble the power of the lords and the com- munes, of which the Roman law took no cognizance ; it strengthened the power of the king and of his bailiffs, for the lawmakers applied to the king all that the code said of the Roman emperors, and to the bailiffs all that was said to the praetors and of the Roman governors. The Roman maxim, "The de- cision of the prince has the force of law," thus became the rule of the government in France, then in Germany, and it served as the foundation for absolute power. Scholastic Philosophy.— Theology remained during all the ^liddle Ages the chief science (in all the uni- versities the Faculty of Theology took precedence of all the other faculties). But it was to the study of philosophy that all active minds were turned ; all the celebrated scholars of the jNIiddle Ages (Abelard, Saint Thomas, Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus) were above everything philosophers. The "Science of the Schools," scholasticism was nothing but philosophy applied to theology. The scholastic philosophers ac- cepted all the doctrines of the church. "It is not THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 129 necessary to first understand in order to believe," said Guitmond, bishop of Aversa, "but first to believe in order to understand afterward." Later on Saint Thomas said : "The truth of reason is not in contradic- tion to the truth of the Christian faith." But the scholastics had also studied Aristotle (they knew him through bad Latin translations which had been made from the Arabic) ; full of admiration for his logic, they thought that in employing his process of reasoning they could solve the questions which the church had not settled. These questions were often singularly subtle : "Whether God was able to know more things than he did know?" (Peter Lombard.) "Whether the impossibility of being engendered is a constituent prop- erty of the first person of the Trinity?" (Duns Scotus.) "Whether the body of the resurrected Christ bore scars?" "Whether the dove in which the Holy Spirit appeared was a veritable bird?" (Saint Thomas.) The scholastics were hard workers; Duns Scotus, "the Subtle Doctor," dead at 31, left more than twelve folio volumes. Saint Thomas, "the Universal Doctor," has recapitulated in his "Summa" all the ideas of the Middle Ages ; the abridgment of the "Summa" has remained the manual of theology in the Catholic seminaries. Raymond Lulle, in the fourteenth cen- tury, had invented "the grand art," a machine for reasoning without the employment of intelligence. But as the scholastic philosophers employed only deductive reasoning without ever examining the facts, they added nothing to human knowledge. Their philosophy has remained as they themselves have said, "the hand- maid of theology." 130 MELL^VAL CIVILIZATION Libraries and Scholastic Literature. — In the large monasteries there were always some monks occupied in copying and ilkiminating books ; they transcribed the manuscripts which their convent had borrowed from another convent. The Hbraries thus formed did not exceed a few hundred volumes (Fecamp had 148, Saint Evroul 138), for books were rare and parchment was dear. All the books were in Latin ; the greater number were books of de\otion, the Holy Scriptures, writings of the Fathers of the church, prayer-books, lives of saints; the rigid monks did not admit any otiier kind of books into their libraries. "Neither Cicero nor \'ergil," said they, "is necessary to salvation." But in the most literary convents were to be found some of the masterpieces of Latin literature, Cicero, Vergil, Horace, Pliny the Younger, and the Consolation of Boethius. The clergy of the Middle Ages, bishops, abbots and monks, wrote much on their own account.'^ They wrote letters, pieces of verse, treatises on theology, chronicles where was related the history of the world from the creation down to the time of the author, annals, composed of dry and brief accounts, written year by year, where there are reports of famines, epi- demics, comets, battles, the deaths of kings and abbots. All were in Latin, a prolix, florid and pompous Latin, full of quotations, very like the Latin of a student. The men of the Middle Ages had timid spirits, they believed themselves inferior to their predecessors and had no other ambition than to imitate them. We find ' The literary History of France by the Benedictines has accounts of several hundred writers. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 131 here and there, in their letters, some thoughts forcibly expressed, in these chronicles some living pages, but their literature is the literature of pupils. They had application, but originality was wanting. Popular Literature — For the laymen in the towns and castles, who did not know Latin, works in the vulgar tongue, the Romance were needed. So towards the end of the eleventh century the new literature was born. Like all literatures, it began with poetry. The poets were called "trouveres," that is to say, those in the north of France who composed in French were called "trouveres" ; those in the south, who composed in Provencal, were the "troubadours." Some were knights, others were poets by profession, who were called "jongleurs." The "jongleurs" went to the fairs where were assembled the rich merchants, to the courts of the great lords on days of feasting or holidays, and they sang to the accompaniment of a small violin. The poems in verse of eight or ten syllables were called chansons (songs), because they were chanted or sung, romans in the Provengal because they were in the Romance tongue. The poets of the South, more volatile and frivolous, composed especially short pieces, satires or love songs, serenades (songs for the even- ing). The more serious poets of the North sang of wars and battles, of the exploits of Charlemagne and his companions, of Arthur, King of Wales, and even of Alexander. These were the chansons de gestes (actions). During three centuries these songs were composed in all the French provinces of the North. More than a thousand of them have been found in our own times among the manuscripts forgotten since the 132 MEDLEVAL CIVILIZATION fourteenth century, and no one knows how many others have been lost. The most ancient of these poems are conceded to be the most beautiful. They are : the Chanson de Roland, Raoul de Cambrai, Garin de Loh- erain, and the works of Chretien de Troyes. In the Romance, as in the Latin, the mania for imitating and developing spoiled the works of the Middle Ages. The poets of the twelfth century, having as yet no models, were unrestrained in following nature. To say what they felt they must depict what they saw. In the fol- lowing centuries they did hardly more than to work over and lengthen the old poems ; then came the poems of twenty to thirty thousand verses, which the erudite alone condescended to read. ARCHITECTURE Origin of Romanesque Architecture. — ^When the Christians of the fourth century began to celebrate their worship publicly they gathered in basilicas, great halls with flat roofs, which at the same time served for the civil tribunals and as a hall for the merchants. The faithful occupied the place set apart for the mer- chants, the nave, divided into galleries by rows of columns ; the site of the tribunal in the form of a semi- circle, more elevated than the nave, became the choir, where were the bishops and priests. The Christian churches preserved for a long time the form and the name of basilica ; they were composed of a great nave flanked by two smaller naves and a choir, which was called the apse (vault), because of the \^ault which cov- ered it. Litttle by little arose the thought of building THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 133 one or two towers in front of the church for the purpose of containing the bells, and of replacing the light col- umns with the massive pillars, finally to put in place of the wooden beams and the flat roof, too exposed to fire, a construction of stone in the form of a vault. A new style of architecture was created, which was called the Romanesque, because it had its origin in a Romance country. It began in the north of Italy and in the south of France in the eleventh century, but it spread over all of western Europe. The great cathedrals of Worms and Speyer in Germany are Romanesque churches. Many villages in the valley of the Rhone, in Auvergne and in Normandy have still their old Romanesque churches, where they have not been rich enough to replace them with new edifices. Romanesque Architecture. — The Romanesque churches built in the different countries, at an interval of several centuries, by architects who followed no school, are far from being entirely alike in style or in decoration; they are distinguished by other names, for example, Auvergne, Norman, and German Ro- manesque. But all have certain principles in common. The most ornamental part, the faqade, is turned toward the west. The tower (often there are two of them) rises above the faqade and ends in a pointed spire ; it dominates the whole church. Below the great door the portal, through which the faithful enter, is sur- mounted by a recessed arcade, the archivolt orna- mented with sculpture.^ Often a porch must be crossed before entering the portal. This porch is a 1 The half-circle which remains between the archivolt and the top of the door is the tympanum, Christ surrounded by his apostles is frequently represented there. 134 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION portico with columns, the front of the edifice. The portal opens to the great middle nave. On both sides, heavy pillars, united by arcades, support the interior walls, which are joined at the top in the form of a vault. (These two walls are often ornamented by a second story of arcades.) On each side of the great nave, between the rows of pillars and the exterior walls of the church, are two smaller naves, which are called the lateral aisles. The great nave and these lateral aisles are cut across by a wide, high gallery, called the transept, which ends on each side of the church at a lateral portal similar to the one in the faqade, and sometimes surmounted by a belfry. Then, in a straight line with the nave but elevated several steps, is the choir in the form of a rotunda. The lateral aisles extend around the sides, often passing entirely around at the back. All this part is called the apse and is covered by a dome. Under the choir is a vaulted chamber called the crypt (hidden), which contains the relics of the saints. The church is lighted by windows set in the lateral aisles or in the upper part of the nave. In order to aid the interior walls in supporting the crush- ing weight of the vaults, stout piers are constructed on the outside of the edifice, between the windows, and are known as buttresses. The portals, the vaults, the windows of the aisles and the towers, all have the form of the "plein-cintre,"^ that is, a semi-circle, as in the ancient Roman monuments. ' In general we recognize a Romanesque church by its plein- cintres, and a Gothic by its ogives. It is a convenient sign, but there is a risk of being mistaken. In the twelfth century there were some churches where the ogive was employed, but the Style is none the less Romanesque. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 135 The plan of the church is in the form of a cross ; the foot of the cross, occupying three-fourths of the total width, is formed by the nave and the lateral aisles. The worshippers assemble in this part. The transept represents the arms of the cross, the rounded head of the choir the sacred part of the edifice, where are the clergy and where the ceremonies of the service are celebrated. Gothic Architecture — The architects who built the churches began about the middle of the twelfth cen- tury to replace the round arcades in "plein-cintre" by arcades in points, which we call ogives. This inven- tion permitted them to build higher and lighter vaults, and produced a revolution in architecture. The gen- eral plan of the church remains the same, a cross of which the nave is the foot, the choir the head, but all the details are changed. AH the vaults are ogival, no longer semi-circular in form, the central nave rises to a greater height, the side aisles are also higher and become veritable naves. The massive pillars which supported the vaults are replaced by groups of light, slender columns. Above the piers which support the exterior walls extend great flying buttresses, which, passing like aerial bridges over the side aisles, rest against the exterior wall of the great central nave. The feeble points being thus rendered more solid, it was possible to make the openings much higher and wider. The wall, which in the Romanesque church occupied more than half of the sides, gave place to windows. The windows became the most important part of the church. They were of several kinds : the lancet window, employed especially for the towers, is 136 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION a gigantic opening divided into two parts by long slender columns and resembles a cleft crossing the church from top to bottom ; the windows of the aisles are ornamented within and without by indentations in stone filled in with colored glass. Above the portals is a great round window, the rose-window, where the cut-work is in the form of a rose. The columns no longer have capitals, they end at the tops in a tuft of foliage wrought in stone. The whole church, outside and inside, is covered with sculptures in stone. They are at the portals, at the windows, above the piers, at the extremity of the flying buttresses, at each story of the towers and of the facade. The sculptors, becoming more skilful, varied their ornamentation. The foliage in stone of the native plants, the nettle, the wild briar, the thistle, the rose, is of wonderful delicacy, the statues of the saints which decorate the portals and the niches, the scenes represented above the portal are remarkable for their life and truth; the gar- goyles (water-troughs) represent animals and men in fantastic forms, grotesque or hideous demons sus- pended in space, a whole world of bizarre and exuber- ant invention. The figures on the tombs, especially those of the fifteenth century, are often masterpieces of sculpture. This system of construction began about the middle of the twelfth century in the environs of Paris, in the domain of the King of France (probably in the churches of St. Denis and of Noyon.) From there it passed throughout France and then into the other countries of Europe. From the thirteenth century to THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 137 the end of the fifteenth it was the only style in use in France, Germany and England. The Italian archi- tects, who in the sixteenth century were building in imitation of the ancients, made a bitter war against this later order of the Middle Ages; taking it for an invention of the barbarians who had invaded Italy, the Goths, they called it the Gothic. This term of scorn is still applied to it. But to-day no one thinks of deny- ing that the Gothic is a powerful and original art. The most beautiful churches of the Middle Ages, Notre Dame de Paris, the cathedrals of Amiens, Rheims, Laon, Beauvais, Cologne, Strasburg, Basle, Freiburg, all are Gothic churches.^ The Civil Gothic — The Gothic style, employed at first for the church, was later applied to other edifices. Especially in the fourteenth century did the seigniors and the rich bourgeoisie build for themselves chateaux and mansions, and the cities built "hotels de ville." Many of the masterpieces still exist; in Flanders the "hotels de ville" of Bruges, Ypres, Oudenarde; in France, the Palace of Justice at Rouen and the house of Jacques Coeur at Bourges. In civil monuments the chief point is the faqade. That of the "hotels de ville" resembles the fagade of a church, the belfry takes the place of the bell-tower. The fagade of a private man- sion usually looks upon an interior court. The windows divided by a cross in stone are ornamented with little turrets of foliage, the roofs are pierced with elegant dormers; pavilions and turrets in the form of pepper ' No Gothic church has ever been finished. They lack spires, towers, or there has been no time to complete the ornamentation demanded by the original plan. 138 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION boxes are placed at the angles and stand out from the facade ; all the corners are ornamented with statuettes. The interior of the rooms is ornamented with foliage or with sculptured figures, painted in brilliant colors. Never, perhaps, have edifices been erected which make so gay an impression. The Flamboyant Gothic — The more we approach the end of the Middle Ages the more are the churches ornamented, and the more varied and studied are the adornments; the most common is the cabbage leaf, oddly contorted. The church resembles a piece of stone embroidery. This style is called the Flamboyant Gothic, and was chiefly employed in the fifteenth cen- tury. The masterpieces of that epoch are : in England, Westminster Abbey; in France, the Tower of Saint Jacques and the Church of Saint Ouen at Rouen. We are accustomed to treat with scorn the flamboyant style, as if it were a corruption of the pure Gothic. It is true that the most beautiful churches are of the earlier period of the (jothic; but the greater num- ber of beautiful mansions date from the fifteenth century. Character of the Gothic. — There is no agreement as to the impression produced by the Gothic churches. The greater number of visitors are touched by the majesty of the high vaults and by those forests of slender columns which lose themselves in the heavens, by the bizarre aspect of those sharp turrets, of the twisted foliage, of the fantastic monsters, or by the mysterious light filtering down through the colored panes. That cage of stone and glass, which appears to stand only as by a miracle, gives them an impression THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 139 of a fragile work/ contrary to nature, a mad effort to rise to heaven. From this effect there has grown a widely spread opinion that Gothic architecture is the sublime but sickly production of a gloomy^ epoch, stirred by longings for the infinite. Men of the profession say, on the contrary, that this style of architecture is distinguished by a logical, clever, well-calculated arrangement of the parts. The general impression is that of a powerful and harmonious life, an impression of gaiety. ' It is often said that the Gothic churches are fragile, that they must be continually rebuilt, piece by piece, but those that have been well constructed, and are of good materials, such as those of Rheims and Freiburg have lasted over 500 years. 2 See Michelet's Histoire de France, — Taine (Philosophy of Art) says the same thing. "The interior of the edifice re- mains swallowed up in lugubrious and cold shadow . . . or- nament of a nervous and super-excited woman, whose delicate but unhealthy poetic nature indicates by its excess of strange sentiments the troubled inspiration, the violent and important aspirations proper to the age of monks and knights.-' CHAPTER X DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL LIBERTY AND THE PROGRESS OF THE INFERIOR CLASSES The Charters of Liberty — The greater number of the French towns were old villages^ belonging to a lord; even their name indicates that, ville (villa) sig- nifies domain. The towns which dated from the Roman times had fallen under the power of either their bishop (Amiens, Laon, Beauvais), their king (Orleans, Paris), or of some prince (Angers belonged to the Count d'Anjou, Bordeaux to the Duke d'Aqui- taine). The lord, or rather his intendant (the pro- vost), commanded the inhabitants like a master; he made them pay money, judged them, condemned them, often took their merchandise or arrested them without any motive, for he was the sole judge. In the eleventh century the towns, still very wretched, were hardly to be distinguished from the villages, except that they were surrounded by a wall. In the twelfth century, the inhabitants growing richer, began to wish for a more regular government. Gradually, by revolts, the greater number paying large sums for the privilege, they succeeded in obtaining from the suzerain certain promises which they had ' Of 500 French towns not more than eighty were ancient Roman towns. 140 DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL LIBERTY 141 inscribed in a charter.^ "I make known to all," said the seignior, "that I accord to the men of my town the following customs. Henceforth they will pay me such a sum, at such an epoch in each year, and I pledge myself to make no further levy upon them." The charter ordinarily contained a tariff of fines. "Who- ever strikes another with his fist will owe me a fine of 3 sols, with the foot 5 sols, if the blood flows 7 sols; whoever draws a knife or a sword without striking will owe me 60 sols, if he strikes, 10 pounds ; whoever spits on another or calls him a leper will owe me 7 sols," etc. Sometimes it was stipulated that blood flowing from the nose should not be considered as blood shed, that children under twelve years, if they fought each other, should not be amenable to fine. The charter took great care to rigorously fix the fine, that is, what the lord had a right to levy for each offense. An abbot of the twelfth century, Guibert de Nogent, defines this contract between the lord and the town as follows : "Commune is a new and detest- able word, it means that the servitors pay once a year only to their master the habitual debt of their servi- tude, and that should they commit any misdemeanor they have only to pay a sum fixed in advance ; as for the other forced labors and impositions of all kinds which are usually exacted from the serfs, they will be entirely exempt from these." This regulation of the duties of the lord was called custom, liberty, or franchise. All the towns sought to obtain it. The ' It is impossible to find an example which can give an exact idea of these charters, for they were drawn up in a thousand different ways. 142 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION movement began at the end of the eleventh century in the towns of the South and at the other end of France, in those towns of Picardy and Flanders, where lived the merchants who had grown rich in commerce. It extended over all Europe, so that at the end of the fourteenth century there was scarcely any borough that did not ha^'e its franchise. The Communes — There were in the towns several kinds of inhabitants: artisans and their workmen or- ganized into trades,-^ merchants, and even families rich enough to do without work in order to live. All were called "bourgeois," that is, inhabitants of a fortified city (bourg). They remained subjects of their liege, but under the conditions inscribed in their charter. These conditions differed greatly. In the greater number of towns the bourgeoisie had no other right than to designate some of their number, who were called "prud'hommes" (that is, honorable men), to counsel the provost of the lord and to aid him in levying the tax. But in the most favored (Beauvais, Lille, Dijon, Xarbonne, Toulouse, for example), the bourgeoisie had received permission to govern themselves; they were the true communes.^ "Each," said the charter of Beauvais, "should give 'For the organization of the trades see Chapter xiv, "The Cities of the Middle Ages." The trades were organized in the North of France just as in Germany, in the South, one might say, they did not exist. = There is no relation between the size of a city and the extent of its privileges, for the privileges depended only on the contract made with the lord. Laon, Beaune, Saint Jean-de-Losne, many obscure little burgs had more rights than Rouen or Bordeaux; Orleans and Paris were not even communes, and could not govern themselves. y DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL LIBERTY 143 succor to the others and not permit anything to be taken from them." At Lille, when a burgher was attacked by a man from abroad, it was sufficient for him to cry "Bourgeoisie!" All the citizens present were obliged to go to his aid, under penalty of a fine. The commune had the same rights as a knight; it could make war on its enemies and destroy their homes. As a sign of its right it had a seal, in order to seal its acts, a treasury in which to deposit its money, a belfry with a bell to call the citizens to arms (this belfry is the church tower of the bourgeoisie), a hotel de ville, that is, a mansion where assembled the cor- poration of the town, the council of the men who gov- erned the town. The Town Corporation.— The corporation of the town was a council composed of burgher members of the commune; sometimes there were four, sometimes twelve, sometimes one hundred members; sometimes they had equal powers, sometimes they' were presided over by a mayor; in the South they were called con- suls, in the North aldermen, wardens, governors. They were always the notables of the town. No one in the Middle Ages, neither bourgeois nor noble, thought of demanding equality. These notables had absolute power over the inhabitants ; they judged the suits and condemned the criminals, they levied taxes and kept the keys of the city gates ; in case of danger they stretched chains across the streets and they rang the bell in the belfry. At the sound of this bell the citizens must hasten to arms and put themselves under the command of their chief ; they must also go to the great assembly, in the public square, in the cemetery. 144 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION or in the church, to dehberate upon the affairs of the commune, and especially to listen to the decisions of the town corporation. Municipal Justice — In seeking for justice the bour- geois could not, like the knight, have recourse to arms. He must demand justice before the town corporation, or before the provost of the suzerain; that was the tribunal of the bourgeoisie. In this court the old cus- tom was scrupulously followed. The offended party or the relative of the victim was the accuser, he desig- nated the culprit, and on his knees, with his hands on the relics of the saints, he swore that the crime had been committed by that man. The accused swore, word for word, to the contrary. Often the court made them fight a duel with sticks, and the conquered man was condemned. If the accuser brought witnesses, each witness was to swear in his turn, employing always the same words, that the accused was culpable. When two witnesses had so sworn the accused was to be condemned, but it was not easy to find two wit- nesses, as they had to swear that they had been present at the commission of the crime. Ever)rthing took place in public, often in the open air, and nothing was written. After the duel or the oaths, the court pronounced judgment in solemn form : "According to the truth, which the aldermen have heard, we say to you that this man is found guilty; nevertheless we say to you that you should do justly as you are required to do." The bourgeois of the Middle Ages had so much respect for forms that the least error sufficed to cause the loss of a suit. "Who- ever," says the custom of Lille, "takes his hand from DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL LIBERTY 145 the saints (the rehcs) before he has sworn and said the words such as usage and law direct, must lose his case." Every word binds the one who pronounces it, for the judges only take account of words, not of intentions. The punishments were also irrevocably regulated, the judges could change nothing. The homicide was to have his head cut off, the murderer, he who killed with premeditation, was to be dragged on a hurdle to the gibbet and hung, the incendiary was to be burned, the woman condemned to death was to be buried alive. The rule was applied without excep- tion. If the condemned escaped, he was executed in effigy; a manikin, supposed to represent him, was burned or hung. When a man had committed suicide his body was dragged on the hurdle and hung, for "he should have the same justice done to him as if he were the murderer of another." If a bull killed a man, or if a boar devoured a child, the executioners must hang the bull or the boar. These executions of animals continued until the end of the Middle Ages. Amelioration of Serfdom — In the country also the condition of the inhabitants was somewhat amelior- ated during the Middle Ages. In the eleventh century there were still more serfs than freemen to be found among the villeins; the greater part of the peasants were then, as was said, taxable at will, taxable at mercy; that is, their master could make them pay as much money as it pleased him to demand ; they were subject to the law of "mortmain," at their death the master took back the land they had cultivated. Grad- ually, from the beginning of the twelfth century, the serfs of the villages, like the inhabitants of the towns. 146 MEDLEVAL CIVILIZATION induced their masters to fix their rents, and to release them from the "mortmain."' This was called to en- franchise or simply "abonner" (to fix the limit). This favor was dearly bought, the master granted it only in exchange for large sums, but it was irrevocable. The serf (abonne) henceforth paid a fixed tax only, he and his descendants became in perpetuity free villeins. Therefore, according as new villages ob- tained charters, the number of serfs diminished. In the fourteenth century there were no longer any of them to be found in certain provinces; in others (Bur- gundy, Comte, Auvergne) there were a few until the eighteenth century, but only a small number remained. Even those who had not been enfranchised by their master had become more free, the usage was estab- lished that a serf could leave his village on condition of disavowing his master, by declaration made to him, that he no longer recognized him as master ; the lord kept the land, but he was obliged to let the man depart. CHAPTER XI THE INSTITUTIONS OF ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES The Saxons.i — From the sixth century the south of Great Britain had been occupied by German (Saxon and Angle) warriors, who had come from the great foggy and sterile plains of northern Germany. Arriv- ing in armed bands with their families, they had exter- minated the ancient peoples or had pushed them back to the farther end of the country, into the sterile mountains of Cornwall and Wales. They were pure Germans, with red hair, blue eyes, large bony bodies, fair skins; they were great eaters and great fighters, passing their days in feasting (at court they were given four meals a day) ; they devoured whole oxen, drinking a full horn of hydromel, a drink of fermented honey which fells the stoutest of men, and when they were surfeited they liked to sing of the exploits of their warriors. But above everything they loved to fight, even when they had become Christians; they wanted to die with their arms in their hands. "What a shame for me," said the sick Duke of Northumber- land, "not to have been able to die in so many wars, and to end as cows do ! Put on my cuirass, my sword, ' The word Saxony formerly designated the country between the Weser and the Elbe, what is now called Hanover. 147 148 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION my helmet, my shield, and give me my golden bat- tle-ax, so that a great warrior may die as becomes a great warrior." The Saxons, even when of the same family, massacred each other. In the eleventh cen- tury Tostgi, brother of Harold, dissatisfied on seeing his brother in favor with the king, went off into a royal domain, where Harold had ordered a banquet prepared, killed the servants of Harold, cut off their heads and limbs, which he put into great beer and hydromel pots, and then sent word to the king: "If you will go into your domain you will find there a large provision of salted meat." With all that they were brave and devoted men, "faithful to their rela- tives and to their suzerain in the game of swords," steadfast as friends or foes. In the only Saxon poem which remains to us, "Beowulf," the hero dies for his people, in delivering them from a dragon which was guarding a treasure. Such were the founders of the English nation : warriors, brutal and sanguinary, but energetic and faithful. The Normans. — The Scandinavians (Danes, Nor- wegians, Swedes) were still in the ninth century what the Germans were in the fourth, warriors, barbarians and pagans. Their custom required that at the death of a man one son only should inherit the mansion and the property. The others were united in bands, which went abroad to better their fortunes. The barbarian warrior, when he had not received the means of sub- sistence from his parents, pledged his honor to acquire it by arms ; to labor seemed to him dishonorable, when he was not a proprietor he became a brigand. The Scandinavians lived very near to the seacoast, and so ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES 149 they became pirates. A band departed in a fleet ship with two sails, commanded by a chosen chief, one of those "sea kings" who boasted that "they had never slept under a roof, nor emptied a horn of beer near an occupied hearth." These bands went about in every direction. Some went to the North for the purpose of conquering Iceland and Greenland. Others, intrenched in fortresses, pillaged the ships and carried off the flocks and herds. Such were the famous "Vikings" of Jonsborg, who for two centuries scoured the Baltic Sea. The greater part preferred to attack the more civilized countries, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain; they disembarked suddenly on the coasts or went up the rivers, pillaging the castles, attacking the cities when their force was strong enough. They were infuriated against the monks, whom in their quality of pagans they detested. "We have sung the mass of the lances to them," said they. They were called Danes in Eng- land, but elsewhere they were known as men of the North (Normans). Finally their principal band de- cided to settle in France. The province, which became Normandy, had never until that time been known or spoken of; a century and a half later it was celebrated throughout all Europe. The Normans had quickly taken up with the Christian religion and with the French language. Danish was no longer spoken save at Bayeux. They had formed themselves into a society, and this society of pirates was found to be better dis- ciplined and better commanded than any of the others of that epoch. The duke was obeyed by all and dis- pensed justice to all. Normandy was the only country in France where private war was forbidden, and where 150 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION' there was a regularly established justice common to all. The story is told of a gold ring which had hung on a tree for a whole year without any one daring to steal it. The Normans have preserved through all the centuries the tall figure, blond hair and fair com- plexion, the vigor and the audacity in enterprise which they inherited from the ad\enturers, their ancestors. The Norman Conquest William, Duke of Nor- mandy, laid claim to the crown of England. The pope supported him and sent him a consecrated standard. In order to take possession of his kingdom he gathered together a strong army of about sixty thousand adven- turers, all Frenchmen, and promised them a share in the lands of England. After the victory he let his soldiers seek their own reward. They settled in the houses and on the domains of the Saxons, who had fought against them, taking by force their widows or their heirs, and thus becoming proprietors and gentle- men. This is what is called the conquest of England. The greater number of the nobles and the prelates were henceforth French. They did not adopt the manners and customs of the Saxons, whom they des- pised. They continued to speak French and to lead the lives of French knights. They sent their children to Normandy in order to learn the French language ; in the schools one could speak nothing but French or Latin. For three centuries French remained the lan- guage of king, courtiers, nobles and judges. Even at the end of the fourteenth century French poems were composed, and an author of French ballads ex- cused his mistakes, saying: "Pardon me, I am ^n Englishman." ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES 151 The Royalty. — The new kings governed their king- dom of England as they had their dukedom of Nor- mandy, with method and discipline. They began by getting acquainted with their kingdom : barons chosen by the king went through all the country, "making inquest of the lands" ; they wrote down all the do- mains of England, indicating for each "what was the name of the manor, the name of the possessor, how much land there was, how many serfs, villeins, and freemen, how much forest land, how much meadow and pasture-land, how many mills, and the value of the whole." Thus was drawn up the "Domesday Book" ; thanks to this general census the King of England could know what forces he had to dispose of, and what people owed him obedience ; indispensable condition as it seems to us for governing, but which the Normans and English alone realized in the Middle Ages. Afterward the king declared that every free- man (not only the great lords, his vassals, but all the knights) should swear to defend his lands and his person against his enemies. The king could thus gather into his army all the knights of England. In each of the shires (counties) into which the kingdom was divided, the king had an employee, the sheriff, and from the twelfth century he sent out itinerant judges. The king had near him a council to decide upon im- portant matters — judges to adjudicate the "pleas of the crown," that is, all cases where the king might be interested (this tribunal is called the king's bench) ; judges to examine the accounts and the revenues (they were the judges of the exchequer, so called because they gathered around a table covered with a checkered 152 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION cloth). Councillors, judges, sheriffs were named and deposed by the king. In the name of their master they had the right to command the highest lords, to cite them before the court, and to condemn them to death. They prevented the lords from making war among themselves, as was done in France. In England, who- ever, under pretext of doing justice to himself, attacked his enemy was condemned for having violated the peace of the king. There was in all Europe no king- dom so well disciplined and no king so perfectly obeyed. The English Nobility. — England was divided into great domains, cultivated by villeins and by farmers ; each domain, named manor, that is, residence, formed a village. The seigniors in French were called barons, in English they were called lords. They had several manors united in a barony. The greatest lords in England were possessed of five or six hundred manors, and bore the title of count (in English earl). But these manors were scattered throughout England ; the count had not, as in France, one province of which he was the sole master, where he could govern and make war. The counts of England were very rich, but they were not sovereigns, as were those of France. The knights were, at first, quite numerous. There were 60,000 of them, men-at-arms and proprietors; in the eleventh century each usually owned a manor. As the king prevented them from fighting among themselves they quickly lost the taste for war. While the knights of France made war for pleasure, those of England regarded service in the army as a painful duty. It was necessary for the king to force the pro- ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES 153 prietors to equip themselves as knights, and when he offered them the privilege of buying themselves off, by paying a tax, the greater number accepted joy- fully. There came a time (1278) when the king ordered his sheriffs to oblige all men whose revenue exceeded twenty pounds sterling "to receive the acco- lade," that is, to become knights. This title, so much sought for in France, no longer tempted any one in England. The English gentlemen were content to remain squires. They lived in the country, improving their lands; nothing distinguished them from simple freemen. While in France it was necessary to be the son of a noble in order to be a gentleman, in England whoever had sufficient money to live at his ease was considered a gentleman. The son of an enriched farmer became a gentleman. In the fifteenth century there was no difference, except fortune, between the gentry (the country gentlemen) and the yeomen (small proprietors). That is the reason why the English nobility did not become a closed class, opposed to the other classes, as was the case in France. The Magna Charta — In England the king was strong and the nobles were feeble. The king knew that none of his subjects could resist him, and he abused this knowledge, forcing them to furnish him with money, taking their lands, their produce, and their cattle ; he imprisoned them without cause and put them to death without trial. People were executed for killing deer in a forest belonging to the king. This form of gov- ernment lasted for a century and a half. The barons, too feeble to resist individually, finally formed an asso- ciation to resist in common. They profited by the 154 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION moment when John Lackland, beaten by the King of France, needed their support. While threatening to abandon him they obliged him, in 1215, to swear a solemn oath that in the future he would respect all the liberties, that is, all the rights of the freemen of his kingdom. His promises were drawn up in an act of sixty-three articles, which the king sealed with his own seal. This is the famous Magna Charta. Here are the two important articles : "No levy of money shall be established throughout the kingdom unless by order of the common council of our kingdom." "No freeman shall be arrested, imprisoned, banished, exiled or attaint in any way ; we will not seize, nor cause to be seized, any one except through the common judg- ment by his equals, and according to the custom of the country." Thus the king pledged himself : ( i ) To respect the property of his subjects and no longer to take their money except by their consent. (2) To respect their persons in not chastising them save after a regular trial and sentence. These were still nothing but promises; no power could prevent the king from violating them, and he does often violate them. But each king on his acces- sion renews these promises (there have been thirty- three ratifications of the Magna Charta), and this vow at least warns him of his duties. They are inscribed in a solemn act that is known to all Englishman; it recalls to them that they have the right to be neither taxed nor arrested according to the good pleasure of the king. Out of these ideas grew the two institutions which will ever guarantee their liberty, i.e., the parlia- ment and the jury. The Magna Charta has established ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES 155 that the king has duties and that the nation has rights. It is the foundation of the liberties of England. Origin of the Jury — In England the king alone had the right to judge crimes and to condemn to death. ^ He named the judges and sent them to make tours through the kingdom. Each year, in each section of the country, at a fixed epoch, a judge came from the court and in the name of the king held a general assem- bly, where were present freemen, nobles, and even the lords of the country; this was the assizes (the name is still preserved in the term, "court of assize). The judge informed himself concerning suits and crimes committed in the country, he addressed twelve "hon- orable men," and made them swear loyally to what they knew, so he began an inquest in order to discover the truth. He asked them which of the two litigants was right, or, in case of crime, whether the accused was guilty or not ; according to their answers he pro- nounced judgment in favor of one or the other of the two adversaries, he acquitted or condemned the ac- cused. This manner of judging was called inquest of the country;^ the twelve knights consulted were called jurymen. Thus the jury came into existence (at first it served only in suits which concerned property ; from the thirteenth century it also served in criminal trials). The judges had invented it to facilitate their labors. It has become the best guarantee against the tyranny of * Each lord had in his domain his own feudatory court, but it was a petty tribunal, and decided only matters of interest in the domain. « The jury in its principle is like the Inquisition, and bore the same name, inquest, but as they came about in a wholly different manner, so the one became a tribunal of liberty and the other a tribunal of oppression. 156 MEDLEVAL CIVILIZATION the judges, because it leaves the decision to the fellow- citizens of the accused. The jury is one of the most admired of all the English institutions, and almost all the nations of Europe have borrowed it from England. The English Parliament. — The king drew from his great domains, and from the fines for his benefit, enough money to support his household and to pay his domestics. But when he made war his revenues were not sufficient; then he levied taxes on his subjects. The custom demanding that in this case he should ask their consent, he summoned all the important men of the kingdom ; the bishops and the barons, convoked by a personal letter, assembled in his presence and agreed on the amount of tax that the king ought to levy. For a long time these great personages alone were con- sulted (it was they who had extorted the "Magna Charta" from King John. At the end of the thir- teenth century each burgh and town was ordered to send two burgesses, each county assembly to send two chosen knights. These deputies came at first only to listen to what the great lords would decide, and to report it in their part of the country ; then gradually they were admitted to the discussions. This great assembly was called the parliament. The king called it together only to demand money from it ; but usually before granting anything the parliament obliged the king to listen to its complaints, and often to reform his administration, or to remove his officials. This was a means of governing indirectly. Parliament also tried many times to place the king under surveillance, but the king always got rid of it, and the custom could not be established. However, they finally became accus- ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES 157 tomed to the idea that the king must convene parlia- ment each year. The lords and the bishops, who for a long time had been the only ones who were summoned by the king, sat by themselves and formed the House of Lords. The knights of the counties and the burgesses sent by the towns formed a new house, the House of Com- mons. This organization decided the fate of England. The petty nobility, in place of uniting with the higher nobles against the "bourgeoisie" (as came to pass in France), was found to have united with the latter. During two centuries the lords continued to lead the parliament. Finally, during the Wars of the Roses, they destroyed each other, so that in i486, on the accession of the Tudors, there remained only twenty- five lords. The king created some new ones, but these "mushroom" lords were not respected as were those of older lineage. In the sixteenth century the House of Commons began to rule itself and to seize the power. Thus came into existence the English parlia- ment, which alone has put the English into a position to defend their rights against the despotism of royalty ; an original institution, special to England, which, however, all civilized nations have held worthy of imitation. The English Nation. — In the fifteenth century the Saxons and the Normans, after having formed two separate peoples, were finally blended entirely and formed the English nation ; their languages were fused into a new tongue, the English; the foundation is the old Saxon, the language of the people, very similar to the dialect spoken even to-day by the people in the 158 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION north of Germany (platt-deutsch) ; the French, the language of the nobles, furnished only learned terms, terms used in law, politics and philosophy, yet these are pronounced in such a manner as to render them unrecognizable; so that it is impossible to make an English sentence without the aid of Saxon words. At the end of the fifteenth century the English nation was not yet the nation of sailors and merchants which we know, and nothing indicated that it was to become such a nation. The towns were small and poor, only four contained more than 10,000 inhab- itants. The wool of the English sheep was not woven in England ; the English sold it to the weavers of Flanders, as to-day Australia furnishes wool to the English manufacturers. They had, as yet, neither fleets nor sailors. It was a people of farmers and breeders of cattle, yet it was easy to see in them the qualities which were to make them such a great people, vigor and a spirit of independence. The hero of the English ballads is Robin Hood, an outlaw, chief of some bandits who lived in a forest, beating to death the foresters and the police, but generous to the poor laborers. On a bridge he met Little John, who would not make way for him. They fought with sticks until their bones cracked. Robin then fell into the water, and in this way they became good friends. The English already liked those contests, from which they came out with broken teeth and battered ribs. See the singular eulogy that a noble Englishman of the fifteenth century, Sir John Fortescue, delivered on his nation : "One has often seen in England three or four ban- ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES 159 dits rush upon seven or eight honest men and kill them all, but in France one has never seen seven or eight bandits bold enough to rob three or four honest men. Therefore there are more men hung in England in one year for brigandage and murder than there are for the same crimes in France in seven years." The English have an uncontrollable desire for inde- pendence. "The king," says the same author, "cannot govern his people by other laws than those which they themselves have agreed upon, and so he cannot levy on them any tax without their consent." And com- paring the welfare of the English yeoman with that of the French peasant, he continues: "Every inhab- itant of this kingdom enjoys the result which his land and his cattle produce for him, he uses them to please himself, and no one can, by rapine, prevent him from doing so. He is not brought to justice except before the common judges and according to the law of the land. That is the reason why the people of this coun- try are so well supplied with gold and silver and with all the necessaries of life. They drink no water except as a penance ; they eat freely of meat and fish ; they have stuffs of good wool, and are rich in furniture and in instruments of cultivation, and in everything which serves to render their lives tranquil and happy." CHAPTER XII FOUNDING OF GERMAN STATES The German Conquest. — The Germanic peoples, in bearing towards the West in order to enter the Roman Empire, had abandoned the East to people of another race, the Slavs, so that in the ninth century all the countries to the east of the Elbe belonged to the Slav tribes. Saint Boniface had met, even on the banks of the Fulda, Slavs who made sport of him. Back on the shores of the Baltic were preserved some old peoples (Prussians, Lithuanians, and Finns). These peoples were pagans and warriors, but badly armed and divided into tribes, they were too feeble to make any resistance. The Germans undertook to convert them and to subdue them. The kings of Germany founded marks, that is, frontier countries, and permitted the counts in tliese countries (the Margraves) to govern as they pleased. From these marks have come the principal states of Germany : from the mark of Bran- denburg in the north, the kingdom of Prussia; from the mark of Meissen in the centre, the kingdom of Saxony; from the eastern mark, the empire of Aus- tria. They also founded bishoprics, which sent out missionaries. The conversion of the people was very slow (from the tenth to the fourteenth century, and was carried on in many different ways). In the i6o FOUNDING OF GERMAN STATES 161 greater part of the country the Slav princes were con- verted through the influence of their wives, who were soon won over to the Christian reHgion. They broke their idols and forced their subjects to become Chris- tians ; in Poland, those who ate meat in Lent had their teeth drawn. In these countries the inhabitants re- mained Slavs, their national chief took the title of duke or king,^ and was recognized as a vassal of the emperor. The greater number of these people were not zealots. When the Spaniard, Saint Bernard, seek- ing martyrdom, came into Pomerania and broke their sacred idols, the pagans were content to beat him ; then, as he continued preaching, they put him in a boat and set him adrift on the Oder river, saying: "If you are so anxious to preach, go talk to the fish and the birds." Some of the people in the North, on the contrary, showed themselves quite restive ; the Obotrites massa- cred a king who wanted to convert them (1066). Later the Livonians, when the German knights had by force baptized them, on the departure of the army hastened to throw themselves into the Dwina to wash away the baptism. The Germans waged a war of extermination against them. The Margraves of the frontier conquered the country of the Wends (which is called Brandenburg) ; the knights of the Teutonic Order conquered Prussia ; the knights of Porte-Glaive, Livonia and Esthonia. They burned the villages, mas- ' King in Bohemia, and in Poland, Margrave in Moravia, duke in Silesia, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Lithuania. It was the same with the Hungarians, a barbarous people of Finnish origin" They were Christianized and their chief became King of Hun^ gary. 162 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION sacred the men and carried off the women and children. So many captive Slavs were sold throughout Germany that the word slav, in French as well as in German, took and kept the meaning of slave. The Wends were exterminated; of all this people, only a remnant remains. This remnant had taken refuge in the marshes of the river Spree. The Prus- sians and the Livonians were reduced to the condition of subjects. The German race gained, in this way, three new provinces, Brandenburg, Prussia, and Livonia. German Colonization — The great plains of the Oder and the Vistula, low and damp, were then covered with marshy forests. Brandenburg, the sand-pit of Germany, was hardly more than a cheerless desert of sand. Even to-day, when the wind rages, the sand stops up the doorways of the houses, and on the plateau of Flaming the burgomaster keeps the key of the village fountain, and distributes to each villager his ration of water. In order to cultivate these sands, to clear these woods and to found cities, the princes, German and Slav, called from Germany the peasants and artisans who were willing to go.^ The Germans were content to emigrate, and for two centuries thou- sands of German families came and settled in the dis- tant deserts of the East, as in our day they do into the distant deserts of America. The prince sold to a con- tractor a bit of forest or of waste land sufficient for a village. The contractor brought in peasants and dis- tributed to them, by lot, the lands, reserving for him- ' Even the Dutch came from Holland, and constructed the dikes, draining the marshes along the Elbe and the Oder. FOUNDING OF GERMAN STATES 163 self a certain rent of the same ; he became their heredi- tary baihff, but the peasants remained free, "because they were the first to clear the soil," and they kept their German customs. When it was a question of founding a city, the contractor had it surrounded by a moat and by walls, and established there a market, upon which he reserved the right to levy taxes. This great labor was slowly and quietly carried on. The writers of the time were too much occupied with the wars of the emperors to dream of relating the story of the founding of thousands of villages and hundreds of towns in the provinces of Brandenburg, Pomerania, Prussia, Liberia, and Bohemia. On the other side of the Elbe a new Germany was born, a Germany of laborers and soldiers, the Germany of Austria and of Prussia, which was some day to rule all the nations of old Germany. CHAPTER XIII CITIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES The Free Cities — The principal cities of Germany had been built about the palace of the king,^ or around the home of a bishop^ or a prince. The king or the bishop was master of the town ; the merchants were his tenants, for the soil of the town belonged to him ; the artisans were his slaves, and they worked for him and for his people ; his knights and his domestics gov- erned the artisans and merchants. But according as the population increased the master gave up regulating the duties of the inhabitants, and he demanded only a rent even from the artisans, who were descendants of slaves. In the towns all were freemen. The most prosperous towns of the twelfth century were those which belonged to the bishops. A German proverb says: "It is a good thing to live under the crozier." In order to govern his city, the bishop united his domestics and the principal merchants in a council; it was at that time nothing but the bishop's council ; but in the thirteenth century, when the cities, having become powerful, drove away their bishops, it became the town council. This council had all the powers of a prince; it judged, made war, and treated directly 1 For example : Aix-la-Chapelle and Frankfort. ' For example : Cologne, Strasburg, Mayence, Hamburg and Bremen. 164 CITIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES 165 with the superior. The city was called a free city/ for it obeyed no seignior. The Trades Corporations — In the time when the artisans, still slaves of the bishop, worked only for him and for his escort, they were divided into small bands ; each, composed of men who did the same kind of work, was obedient to a domestic of the bishop. This band was called a trade corporation, and the chief was a minister. There was a corporation of black- smiths, of saddlers, of tailors, etc. From that came the word "metier" in the sense which we give to it to-day, a trade. The artisans gradually became free; in place of working for their suzerain, and being main- tained by him, they worked on their own account and sold their products in the market; but they remained organized in a corporation. Each trade formed a single corps. It had its common coffer, its banner, which was carried in processions and which was taken along when the town went to war; it had its patron saint (the carpenters had Saint Joseph, the shoemakers Saint Crispin), it had chiefs, people who were in the same trade (in France they were called wardens), it had its own regulations; following the custom of the Middle Ages, these rules were unwritten. In France it was not until the middle of the thirteenth century even that the rules of the trades corporations in Paris were drawn up in due form. These regulations fixed the conditions upon which any one was admitted into 'The cities of the bishops became "free cities"; the principal ones were the six cities of the Rhine : Cologne, Mayence, Stras- burg, Speyer, Worms, Basle. The cities which had belonged to the Emperor were called "free cities of the Empire"; they were also independent, Nuremberg, XJlm, Augsburg. 166 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION the trade. The child must begin by being apprenticed to a master of the trade ; the master teaches him, feeds and clothes him. The apprentice must work for the master and must obey him; the master having the right to beat him if it is necessary. At the end of several years the apprentice becomes a journeyman; he still works for his employer, but is paid and is only engaged for a short time ; he may leave his employer and go to another. The journeymen were a race of vagabonds ; many went from town to town offering their services ; the usage of "making a tour of France" was preserved among us for a long time. Those who are rich enough to open a shop become masters (employers) ; they alone can vote in the assembly of the trades. The regulations also prescribe how one must work; he is forbidden to work elsewhere than in his shop, so that the public may watch over him ; he is forbidden to work by artificial light, in order not to do bad work; he is forbidden to employ other mate- rials or to make objects by any other measure than the rules call for. The silversmiths must not set gold on silver; the makers of statues must employ only a cer- tain kind of wood. If a piece of cloth was narrower or wider than the prescribed measure it was confis- cated and the merchant was fined. The people of the "guild" insisted on guarding their honor, and their honor consisted in not permitting any but honestly made merchandise to be sold; that is the reason why they watched each other so closely. In return they supported each other against foreigners and against the men of the other trades or guilds. No one in the town had the right to manufacture or sell save the CITIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES 107 masters in the business; the man who would open a tailor shop without having been received into the cor- poration of tailors would be fined and his shop would be closed. The right to manufacture and sell objects of a trade belonged exclusively to the men of that cor- poration. The tailors prevented the old-clothes men from selling new garments, for they alone had the right to sell them; the business of the old-clothes man was to sell old clothes. The makers of bits and bridles had a suit against the saddlers, to for- bid them manufacturing bridles. The trades of the Middle Ages had a horror of competition. The princi- pal trades were those of the butchers, weavers, dyers, masons, tanners, armorers, carpenters. The number of trades depended on the importance of the town; many German towns had only eighteen or twenty; in Paris there were more than one hundred. Many different callings could be united in a single corpora- tion, or one calling could be divided among several corporations; for example, there were three corpora- tions of chaplet manufacturers in Paris. The Patricians — In the Middle Ages all the callings were organized into corporations, even those that we call the liberal professions : there were corporations for the drapers, mercers, wholesale grocers, apothe- caries, money changers, doctors, and the university even was only a corporation of professors. The mer- chants were more honored than the artisans, for they grew rich in selling at a great profit the goods which had come from a distance. At first they had been inferior to the knightly domestics or servitors of the bishop who governed the town; gradually they had 168 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION' mingled with them, had entered into the council and had even become knights. After his victory over the King of Bohemia (1278) the Emperor Rudolph armed as knights one hundred young men of Zurich. The knights in the country scorned the merchant-knights and often refused to allow them to take part in their tournaments. It required some effort not to admit that labor dishonored a man.^ But in their city the merchants and the pro- prietors formed a nobility ; they had themselves called "seignior," and called themselves patricians or fami- lies. Even to the fourteenth century they alone formed the council and governed the town. In the fourteenth century the members of the corporations or guilds demanded permission to take part in the affairs of the town, and in almost all the free cities,^ after several riots, they forced the patricians to admit them to the council. From that time there were two kinds of mem- bers in the council, the "seigniors" and the "masters" (usually the master of a trade) ; the masters were in the majority and held sway. The Hanseatic League — The towns were enriched through commerce especially. The richest were in the South, those through which passed the great high- way from Italy, Augsburg and Nuremberg; in the ' It was said that Rudolph of Hapsburg having seen, near Basle, a tanner dyeing his skins, laughingly said to him: "You would rather have loo marks revenue?" "I have them," said the tanner; and he invited the King to his table, receiving him in ceremonious attire. "How," said the King, "can you, being rich, do such dirty work? " " It is by this noisome work that I have become rich," answered the tanner. ' In some of the cities, however (Nuremberg, Berne, Luzerne), the patricians guarded the power until the end of the eighteenth century. CITIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES 109 North, those that had their ports on the Baltic or on the North Sea, Liibeck, Hamburg, and Bremen. In those times commerce was carried on only with arms in the hands. The merchant had to defend his ships and his merchandise while en route, and to make him- self respected in the marts of trade. In order to be stronger, the merchants of the commercial towns formed an association. Their league was called the Hanseatic League. One by one all the towns in North- ern Germany from the Baltic to the Low Countries became members of it; there were eighty of them in the sixteenth century, extending from Riga in the East to Bruges in the West. In each port of Sweden, Norway, and Russia the league had a mansion, a veritable fortress, guarded by a band of armed em- ployees, all unmarried, organized as a guild, with a master, journeymen and apprentices. No stranger was allowed to go through the building, and at evening the watch-dogs were turned loose. The building served as a storehouse for merchandise, a market and a tribunal. Each year great ships laden with linens and cloths from Flanders, spices and silks from the Orient, departed from the Hanse towns; these ships armed for war had their complement of soldiers, their decks were defended by two strong forts made of wood. They arrived at the foreign ports, at Bergen, Riga pr Novgorod;^ the merchants took lodgings within the walls, unloaded and put on sale their goods. Disputes were adjudicated by a tribunal of the Hanse. Then the ships set out again, laden with woods, wax, skins, and especially with dried fish. At this period ' Novgorod was a great trade centre, but not a port. — Ed. 170 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION enormous shoals of herring frequented the Baltic; in the fifteenth century they began to go towards the North Sea, and gradually the ports of the Baltic were abandoned. The towns of the Hanse with their warlike fleets had become more powerful in Norway than the king himself. They prevented the inhabitants from receiv- ing other ships except their own, and many times they fought great battles on the sea. Their power lasted until the sixteenth century. The Cities of Flanders — In Flanders, also, some cities had become rich. The English, who at this time raised great flocks of sheep, had as yet no workmen to manufacture their wool ; they sent it to Flanders. The Flemish weavers made it into cloths, the Flemish dyers colored them with woad (pastel), the Flemish cloth-merchants sold them throughout all Europe. There were also many linen weavers in Flanders. As in the German cities, the workmen were organized into guilds ; the principal ones were the weavers, dyers, cloth-merchants, and blacksmiths. Bruges was, be- sides, the great seaport for the merchants of the Hanse; the town had 180,000 inhabitants. Three towns especially ruled the others, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres.^ All belonged to the Count of Flanders, but they had their governors taken from among the rich merchants, and they had also an army composed of their own workmen; they did not receive their count until they had made him swear to respect their cus- toms, and even then they often made war upon him. •The towns of Brabant, Brussels and Mechlin, also began to manufacture cloths and linens. CITIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES 171 In the fifteenth century the cities of Flanders began to grow poor and their weahh passed over to Antwerp. The Interior of the Towns The towns of the Mid- dle Ages did not at all resemble our modern towns. The houses of the notables were small fortresses ; the others resembled the houses of the peasants, having a court-yard and granaries. But there were also quar- ters for the artisans ; almost always people of the same occupation were gathered into the same street.^ There was a "Tanner street," a "Saddler street," etc. Each employer had on the ground floor a shop, which served as a work-room where he worked before the eyes of the public. The second story, where he and his family lived, projected over the street, as if it were trying to join on to the house opposite. In the houses which had several stories, each story extended beyond the one beneath. The house, according to the ancient custom, was usually built of wood and was covered with a peaked roof; often it was ornamented by a gable, a turret or an "erker" (alcove, with windows which projected over the street). In the countries where rain was frequent the "erker" took the place of the balcony. The houses which bordered the two sides of the street were not built on a straight line. They formed a slight curve, the street sometimes grew wider, sometimes narrower. The streets were badly paved, full of mud puddles, encumbered with merchan- dise in the commercial quarters; in others, cows and hogs went about freely. In the fifteenth century, when a town was preparing to receive a visit from the em- peror, the council ordered the removal of the men ' The usage was general in Europe. 172 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION hanging upon the gallows, and also the filth lying before the houses. The street was not, as in our time, a place of passage ; it was made for those who dwelt in it, rK)t for those who passed through it. The town was surrounded by a moat and a rampart of stones; on the wall arose here and there towers, round or square, massive or slender. There were very few towns which did not have hundreds of these towers. They were both a defense and a decoration. Nuremberg had more than three hundred of them. The town was a fortress ; it was entered only through a vaulted gateway, which was closed at night. This wall, bristling with towers and spires, these irregular streets, where each house has its own physiognomy, where the eye is ceaselessly attracted to a gable, a pointed roof, a bold ledge, an iron arm bearing a sign, all give to these old^ towns a living and varied aspect. They are less convenient than our great modern towns, with their broad, straight streets and their uniform houses, but one may think them much more agreeable to look at. ' All the towns of the Middle Ages were built in the same style; the old engravings which represent the French or even the Lombard towns in the sixteenth century, show that they re- semble the German towns, but in France and in Italy, almost all the old quarters have iDeen destroyed. But few remains of them are found in places — like Rouen, Dijon, Troyes. In Ger- many and in Flanders, the old houses have been better pre- served. Nuremberg is the best of all the large German towns, but a portion of the ramparts has been demolished. Rothen- bourg on the Lauber, where nothing has been changed since the sixteenth century, gives more perfectly than any other the impression of an ancient town. CHAPTER XIV PROGRESS OF PATRIOTISM AND OF ROYAL AUTHORITY IN FRANCE PROGRESS OF ROYALTY The Innovations of Philip the Fair Saint Louis drew enough revenue from his domains to cover his expenses, and beyond that, for at his death there remained some money in his coffers. Philip IV., though much richer than Saint Louis, passed his reign in need of money, and in trying to invent means to procure it. He had undertaken some ruinous wars, first against the King of England and then against the Flemings, and the revenues of his domains were inad- equate. He conceived the following procedure : 1. He altered the coinage sixteen times in the course of ten years, "so that no one knew how much he really possessed" ; the pound, which in the time of Saint Louis was worth sixteen francs of our money, fell in value to six francs fifty centimes. 2. He expelled the Jews, condemned the Templars in order to confiscate their possessions. 3. He levied taxes on the clergy in spite of the formal prohibition of the pope. 4. He borrowed from those who were willing to lend to him, and even from those who were not so disposed. 173 174 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 5. He established the tax of the "twentieth" (five per cent.), which all who bought or sold merchandise must pay; the people called it the "maltote"^ (unjust levy), and this name clung to it. 6. He established the tax of the "fiftieth" on all property. 7. He several times proclaimed the "arriere-ban," that is, a levy en masse, when all the subjects of the kingdom were called upon to arm or to pay a large sum in redemption. The king much preferred that they should pay; he sent men in whom he had confidence into the towns in order to represent to the citizens how much it would be to their advantage to pay rather than to depart. All these innovations, advised by the lawyers and the Italian bankers, were brutally introduced, without any respect for justice or for custom. The people of sev- eral towns rebelled against these new imposts, and at the death of Philip, in several provinces, Normandy, Burgundy, Picardy, Forez, the lords and the bour- geoisie formed leagues, such as had never before been seen in France. They were for the purpose of forcing Louis X. to renounce the procedure of his father. Louis X. was obliged to yield, and to promise never to levy a money tax. But the habit was formed. The reign of Philip the Fair had Created a precedent, in showing how the king could procure money for him- self. He had also given the example of uniting in one assembly the lords, the prelates, and the deputies from the cities. From that was to come the institution of the Estates-General. ■ MaUolo. Signifies extortion. — Ed. ROYAL AUTHORITY IN FRANCE 175 The Parlement — The kings of France, at first like all the great lords, had but one single court, which fol- lowed them in their journeys; it was composed of all the servants of the king's household, the great lords, their vassals, the bishops, their advisers, the great officers of their households, the clergy, and the bour- geois who had charge of letters and accounts; it con- sidered all the affairs of the king, his ordinances, his suits, and his accounts. In the thirteenth century order was brought out of this confusion, the court was gradually separated into three corps : the Council took care of the affairs of the government, the Court of Accounts was charged with the auditing of the ac- counts of the agents of the king, the Parlement was to sit in judgment in civil suits. Instead of going from place to place with the king, these bodies remained in Paris, they held their sittings in the king's palace (in the city), which has ever since been called the Palace of Justice. There were two sessions of parlement each year. The suits became more niunerous as the king increased his domains. To sit in parlement be- came a painful duty; the sitting began at six o'clock in the morning, it was necessary to listen to the discus- sions until the hour for dinner, about ten o'clock, the litigants succeeded each other without interruption, and the sitting was resumed after dinner "at the after- noon hearing." The lords and the prelates were not made for this business; at the Court of Accounts it was necessary to forbid them to come into the hall for a chat while the clerks were verifying the accounts. Soon they ceased to come to parlement, and from the reign of Philip the Fair it was necessary to designate 176 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION officially, for each session, a lord and a bishop, whom the king made, through propriety, sit in the parlement so that his court should not seem to be solely com- posed of ordinary people. Thus, through the negli- gence of the seigniors, the lawyers, the petty nobility, the bourgeois and the clergy soon became the supreme judges of the kingdom. This parlement had nothing in common with the English parliament save the name. It was not a council of the nation, but a tribunal, not even the tribunal of the kingdom, but only a court of the king. Never was it called the Parlement of France, but only the Parlement of Paris. The other princes of France all had similar tribunals. There was a parlement at Dijon, at Rennes, and at Grenoble; all were inde- pendent of the Parlement of Paris; and even in his own domain the king created for the provinces which followed the Roman law a special parlement, the Par- lement of Toulouse. The Estates General of France In France, Philip the Fair was the first king who convoked the assemblies, He called together the three classes : ecclesiastics (bishops and abbots), nobles and bourgeoisie sent from the towns. The assembly included then the three classes of society, or, as was then said, of the three estates of the kingdom. The clergy and the nobility formed the first two; to the citizens who formed the third class a number instead of a name was given; it was the "tiers," or third estate. Only people from the towns could join it, the peasantry were not repre- sented, for in France they did not form an estate; it is true that the taxes had to be borne chiefly by them. ROYAL AUTHORITY IN FRANCE 177 but the king did not want to consult with them ; it was from their masters, the prelates and the nobles, that he demanded permission to levy taxes upon the peas- sants of their domains. The king united the estates sometimes of a single province, sometimes of several provinces. The assem- bly of a province was called the Provincial Estates, that of the whole kingdom was the Estates General. But these names were not used until after the fourteenth century. Properly speaking, there were no estates truly general before those of 1484, for until that time the estates in the south of France held their assembly by themselves, but there were some estates more gen- eral than were others (that is to say, the assemblies of the estates of almost all of the provinces in northern France). Such were those of Paris (1356) and of Orleans (1439). The sovereign princes, such as the Duke of Bur- gundy or the Duke of Brittany, convened the estates of their domains. For a long time the members of the estates saw nothing in these assemblies but a painful burden ; the towns complained because they had to pay the ex- penses of the journey for their delegates; the lords, to avoid inconvenience, sent a proxy to represent them. It was often necessary for the king to constrain the towns to send their representatives, by threatening to fine those who failed to be present. But gradually the estates learned how to make use of their reunions for the purpose of presenting their complaints to the king, that is, the complaints against his government. They thought of obtaining satisfaction by the refusal 178 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION of money. In 1355, when King John demanded help, the estates of Paris declared themselves ready to vote it, but on condition that the king, in exchange, give up the making of counterfeit money and the confiscation of merchandise without paying for it. When the king was taken prisoner the estates meeting in 1356 de- manded that the dauphin should permit them to organize and to superintend the levy of the aid. They tried to take possession of the government by forcing tlie dauphin to change his councillors, and by deciding that the estates should have the right to assemble with- out being convoked by the king. But the greater number of the inhabitants of France never dreamed of limiting the power of their king. The Great Ordi- nance of 1356, which closely resembled the Magna Charta of England, did not end with guarantees in favor of the subjects ; it remained a dead letter, and the king continued to govern arbitrarily. Charles V. let twenty years pass without convoking the Estates. Louis XI. summoned them only once, and for the mere form; Charles VII. in 1443 refused to call them together, saying that they were but the occasion of expense. In northern France the reunions of the estates were rare ; beginning with the fourteenth cen- tury the king did not want to bring them together after the Estates of 1356 had organized the aid. In the south it was necessary, each year, to call together the provincial estates of several provinces to have them vote the "fouage" (the hearth money) ; but the moment they had voted the king hastened to dissolve the assembly. ROYAL AUTHORITY IN FRANCE 179 PROGRESS OF PATRIOTISM IN FRANCE The Birth of Patriotism in France. — The sentiment which we call patriotism had been unknown among the inhabitants of Europe during the first centuries of the Middle Ages. The bourgeoisie loved their town, the peasants their village, the knights their lord; the inhabitants of a country were attached to the family of their king, but no one could have any patriotism, for the idea of a patrie or fatherland did not exist, that is, the idea of a great country to which one may be attached, no matter what or whom the men may be who govern it. Therefore they had no scruples in passing over from the service of the King of France to that of the Emperor or of the King of England. The national sentiment appeared in France for the first time during the Hundred Years' War. It seemed as if it were born of the hatred which the people of France felt for the English invaders. This antipathy made the French feel as if they were one people, and as if they ought to unite against the common enemy. Already in 1356, when the north of France was being ravaged by bands in the pay of the King of England, two peasants of the burgh of Longueil, in the neigh- borhood of Senlis, Grand Ferre and Guillaume I'Aloue, had fought against the English soldiers established in a neighboring chateau and had killed several of them. When the King of France was obliged, by the treaty of Bretigny (1360), to cede all the country south of the Loire to the King of England, the inhabitants of La Rochelle declared that they wanted to remain 180 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION French, and force was necessary to constrain them to recognize the King of England. But it was especially after the defeat at Agincourt and the treaty of Troyes that French patriotism had an opportunity to manifest itself. The English had profited by the madness of Charles VI. and the hatred of Isabel of Bavaria and the Duke of Burgundy for the Armagnacs, in order to declare the exclusion of the dauphin Charles from the throne and to recognize as King of France Henry VI. of England, still a mere child. The north of France and the city of Paris, where the Burgundian party ruled, accepted without objection this change of dynasty. But in several cities in the heart of the country, at Rouen and in Cham- pagne, a national party was formed, which did not wish to obey the King of England, and which saw no other way of safety than to drive the English out of France. A poet of this period, Alain Chartier, repre- sents France under the figure of a sorrowing mother ; she appears before her three children, the noble, the ecclesiastic, the man of the third estate, and exhorts them to fight the English who have attacked them. "Xext to the bond of the Catholic faith," she tells them, "nature has obliged you, before all else, to seek the common safety of the land of your nativity, and to defend that seigniory under whose government God ordered you to be bom." Alain Chartier was the first to employ the word "patrie," and he calls the French who fought in the ranks of the English renegades. Joan of Arc. — This sentiment of duty towards the fatherland expressed by Chartier was incarnate in Joan of Arc. She was born on the frontier, between ROYAL AUTHORITY IN FRANCE 181 Champagne and Lorraine, in the village of Domremy, which belonged to the King of France, but which was beside some villages belonging to the Duke of Lor- raine, a vassal of the emperor. In her childhood she had witnessed battles between the people of her village, partisans of the Armagnacs, and those of the village of Marcy, partisans of the Burgundian party. She had also seen bands of soldiers ravaging the country. She had heard of the dauphin Charles, whom she re- garded as the legitimate heir to the crown of France, and whom the English had unjustly deposed. She was a daughter of the fields, modest, gentle, brought up to sew in the house, enjoying her church and going often to confession. One day, in the sum- mer of 1423, while in her garden, she saw a great light and heard a voice saying: "Joan, be good and virtuous; go to church often." Another time the voice said to her: "Joan, go, deliver the King of France and give him back his kingdom." For four years^ she resisted; she continued to hear the voices; she always declared that they were the voices of an archangel and of the two saints Catherine and Mar- garet. At last she decided to obey the order, to go and fulfill her mission. She was moved to do so, as she herself said, because of the great misery in the king- dom of France. It is well known how she succeeded in convincing her uncle, then the inhabitants of Vancouleurs, who 'The story of Joan of Arc is well known to us, thanks to the examination at the trial, and to the reports of the witnesses, who were cited to appear, when the king, twenty years after her death, ordered a trial to annul the judgment pronounced against her. 182 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION persuaded the commandant of the place to send her with an escort to the court of Charles VII., how she won over the young king and obtained a troop of knights, at the head of which she entered besieged Orleans ; how she raised the siege and led Charles VII. to Rheims to be crowned. These unexpected successes gave to all her con- temporaries the impression that Joan of Arc was sup- ported by a supernatural power. The partisans of Charles VII. believed that she was a saint sent from God; the English and their partisans declared that she was a sorceress sent from the devil. When they had succeeded in taking her prisoner it was as heretic and sorceress that she was accused. She was judged by the tribunal of the Bishop of Beauvais, and ques- tioned by a great number of doctors of theology who sought to catch her. In that examination, where she showed such good sense and such gentle firmness even to the end, which made whoever approached her adore her, she was forced to answer concerning her senti- ments with regard to the English. "God," said she, "sent me to aid the King of France." "Do Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret hate the English?" "They love whomsoever our Lord loves, and hate those whom He hates." "Does God hate the English ?" "Concerning the love or the hatred which God has for the English I know nothing ; but I do know that they will be driven from France, save those who will perish there." By the burning of Joan of Arc the English had hoped to give the idea that she was a sorceress. Her execution had the contrary effect. "We are lost," ROYAL AUTHORITY IN FRANCE 183 said the secretary of the King of England, who was present; "we have just burned a saint." Some years afterwards (1435) the Duke of Bur- gundy gave up his support of the Enghsh, and by the treaty of Arras he became the ally of King Charles VII. INSTITUTIONS OF CHARLES VII. The Army of the King — The king, like all the other princes, for the purpose of making war took into his service companies of adventurers ; he gave them money (solde), and from that they were called soldiers. Each captain recruited and commanded his band, but the king sent into the garrisons commissioners charged with making the companies show themselves, and who had orders to pay the captain only after the review. With these bands, and the knights who had come as volunteers, the kings carried on the Hundred Years' War. Into these bands, at first composed solely of gendarmes, that is, men fully accoutred (with lance and iron armor), were gradually introduced men wear- ing a jacket of cloth and armed with bow, cross-bow, or knife. Towards the end of the Hundred Years' War it was the custom that each man armed as a knight should take with him three or four of these lightly armed horsemen; the gendarme and his com- panions were called "une lance garnie."^ Charles VII. forbade any one except the king to have these armed men in his pay ; he alone was to have soldiers. Then from among the bands, at that time filling all ' In Germany this group was called Degen (Sword). Degen was synonymous with Kriegsmann, Diener. — Ed. 184 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION France, he took 1,500 lances, which were organized into fifteen companies of 100 lances each, and he sent them to garrison the towns which he designated. All the other adventurers were to disperse ; those who continued to make war on their own account were to be hung as brigands. From that time only the king had the right to keep soldiers. His army was chiefly composed of cavalry : the artillery and the foot-soldiers were united under the grand master of the cross-bowmen. When the king had need of infantry he took into his pay com- panies of Swiss armed with long pikes, Genoese cross- bowmen, Gascons, and later bands of lansquenets (German foot-soldiers). For a century there were hardly any Frenchmen except in the cavalry; almost all the foot soldiers were foreigners. The attempts to form a corps of French francs-archers (tax-free arch- ers) did not succeed; those francs-archers were not soldiers by profession and did not know how to drill. But the king was not afraid to employ foreigners ; the army paid by him obeyed him only. The Imposts — In the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies the kings of France were at war or making merry. They were always short of money. The revenues of their domains no longer sufiSced for their wants. They sought to increase the revenue by alter- ing the coin of the realm. They altered it so often that the pound, after being worth sixteen francs in the time of Saint Louis, finally fell to one franc (while the English pound is still worth twenty-five francs). They also acquired the habit of demanding money from their subjects. The chief personages called together ROYAL AUTHORITY IN FRANCE 185 in assembly granted them an aid, that is to say, the right to levy a tax. In the northern provinces this tax vi^as usually so much per pound on the merchandise sold, especially on beverages (it resembles our indirect tax) ; in the South it was so much per fire, that is, per household^ (this resembles our direct tax). But the assembly did not grant these taxes except for a short time, two or three years at the most; the king was obliged to continue his demands. The assembly always granted them, but always accused him of extravagance. After the defeat of King John, in 1356, the northern assembly (the Estates of Paris) voted a tax on bever- ages, and to prevent the court from squandering the money an exact system of administration was estab- lished : twelve generals were charged each in his province with the apportionment of the tax and to superintend the employment of the funds. They had under them deputies whom they had chosen, who regu- lated the details of the operation. The countries sub- jected to this rule were divided into districts called generalities, and sub-divided into "elections." Three years later the king, having again become all powerful, himself took possession of the whole machine, named the generals and the elus (the elect) and continued to levy taxes without consulting his subjects. The aid on beverages was changed to a perpetual tax, which the king employed for his own benefit without consulting his subjects and without rendering an account to any one. At the close of the Hundred Years' War, Charles ■ It was called fouage (tax per five) ; it was changed into a tax on lands similar to our land-tax. 186 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATIOX VII. demanded of the Estates, assembled at Orleans (1439), a tax which would put him in a position to pay his army. Just as the Estates of Paris had voted the aid, so the Estates of Orleans voted the "taille," which is a tax to be levied each year on peasants and on bourgeois in proportion to their fortune. The "taille," like the aid, became a perpetual tax. Hence- forth the king no longer lived upon the revenues of the royal domains, he lived upon the two taxes which the Estates had established for the needs of the country, the aid and the taille, which the king had appropriated and which were to remain the great sources of the royal revenues until 1789. The Pragmatic Sanction — During the time of the Great Schism the bishops of France and the University of Paris had almost ceased to obey the pope, and they were accustomed to the idea that the church of France, the Gallican church, as it was called, should not be abso- lutely subject to the court of Rome. When the strug- gle began between the pope and the council, assembled at Basle, the king and the bishops profited by it, in order to call together at Bourges a general assembly of the clergy in France, for the purpose of proclaiming the liberty of the Gallican church. This assembly was composed of five archbishops, twenty-five bishops, and a great number of doctors. It began by taking sides with the Council of Basle, and declared that an oecu- menical council should be regularly held, and that this council was superior to the pope. Then it decided that, in the future, the bishops should be chosen by the canons of the cathedral, the abbots by the monks of the convent, according to the ancient rules of the ROYAL AUTHORITY IN FRANCE 187 church, without taking into account the recommenda- tions made by kings, by princes or by any other powers. Through this measure the assembly took away from the pope the power to dispose of bishoprics and abbeys. It also suppressed all the rights which the pope claimed over the functions and benefices of the church : the legal reserves, the expectant favors, the annats, the appeals to the court at Rome. The pope was al- lowed a certain royalty on the benefices; the council declared that it was only accorded under the title of gratuity and was to continue only during the life of the pope then in office. These decisions were ratified by the king, who promulgated them under the name of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438). The clergy had hoped to render the bishops inde- pendent both of pope and king. But the pope did not recognize the right of the bishops of France to alone regulate the affairs of the church, and the successor of Charles VII., Louis XL, found it more advantageous to have an understanding with the pope in order to share the benefices. So the Pragmatic Sanction was only carried out for about twenty years. But for several centuries the parlement and the University of Paris continued to demand the maintenance of the liberties of the Galilean church. THE STRUGGLES OF LOUIS XI. The Opponents of Royalty — Charles VII. had suc- ceeded in expelling the English from France. He had even retaken Guyenne from the King of England, who 188 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION had been in possession for two centuries. His suc- cessor, Louis XL, had to fight against other enemies. Down to the time of Charles V. the kings of France had continued to consider the royal domain as the property of their family. When they had had several sons they had left the crown and the largest part of the domains to the eldest son, but they often detached from it a province which should be the apanage of a younger son. These sons of the king founded in these provinces states, which they transmitted to their chil- dren, and which had often been increased by marriage. So France, in the middle of the fifteenth century, had seven families of royal blood : The House of Burgundy, which descended from King John. The House of Orleans, which descended from Charles V. The House of Alengon, which descended from Philip HL The House of Bourbon, which descended from Saint Louis. The House of Anjou, descended from Louis VIH. The House of Brittany, descended from Louis VL These families owned more than one-half of the territory of the kingdom, where the Duke of Burgundy was at the same time seignior of Franche-Comte and of all the Pays-Bas, that is, of Belgium and Holland. The Work of Louis XI — Louis XL was less rich and less powerful than his vassal, the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, and was really king in the royal domain only, that is, in about one-third of what is now called France. ROYAL AUTHORITY IN FRANCE 189 His reign was a struggle against the princes, who, each in his own province, had as much power as himself, who had, Hke him, their own army, court, bailiffs, and some even a parlement. His principal adversary was Charles the Bold. From the time of his accession Louis XL had troubled the princes and had caused discontent in his subjects : among the clergy in revoking the Pragmatic Sanction; among the bour- geoisie by increasing the "taille," among the nobles by forbidding them to hunt, and among all classes by selling positions of judges and functionaries. The princes united against him and formed the "League for the Public Good," declaring that they wanted to relieve the kingdom from the bad government of the king. Louis XL tried to resist by means of arms, but he was not as strong as the allies; his army was dis- persed, his governors opened their city gates, and Louis was obliged to yield to the princes. By the treaty of Conflans he granted them everything that they had demanded. Several times he tried to profit by the embarrassments of Charles the Bold, in order to recommence the struggle ; but he could not prevent Charles from taking and destroying the towns of Dinant and Liege. The Duke of Burgundy was an ally of Edward IV., King of England, who invaded France and withdrew only for a recompense in money. He intended to have himself chosen Emperor of Germany; he had begun to acquire a part of Alsace and had gone with a large army to the aid of the bishop of Cologne. It was then that Louis XL succeeded in gaining, probably for a large sum of money, the support of the 190 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION most influential members of the Council of Berne. The Bernese began a war against Charles the Bold, when their allies, the Swiss mountaineers, were in- volved in spite of themselves, for they had always been the friends of the Duke of Burgundy. Charles had the imprudence to lead into the Swiss mountains all his knights, who were surprised and massacred in the two battles of Granson and Morat (1476). Then he re- turned to besiege Nancy and was killed in a skirmish. This death did more for the King of France than all his policy had done. Charles left only a daughter. Louis XI. sent an army into the duchy of Burgundy, which submitted without much resistance. Louis XL also had the advantage of inheriting from the family of Anjou, which became extinct, in leaving to him Maine, Anjou and Provence. He caused the condemnation of the Duke of Alen^on, who had con- spired against him, and confiscated his duchy. He also caused the punishment of other less powerful lords, the Count de St. Pol, who had twice betrayed him; the Count d'Armagnac, the Count d'Albret and the Duke of Nemours, whom he had shut up in iron cages. These condemnations and the bitterness which he showed towards his victims gave him a reputation for cruelty. He was not loved, it was thought that he showed the manners of a bourgeois rather than those of a knight ; in place of riding horseback and hunting like the other princes of his time, he remained shut up in his cabinet, clothed in a robe and cap in the style of a magistrate. He frequented the company of the bourgeoisie and lived familiarly with his domestics. That which makes ROYAL AUTHORITY IN FRANCE 191 his reign one of the marked epochs in the history of France is, that in surviving his most redoubtable ad- versary he rendered the king more powerful than all the other princes. Of the seven princely families, three disappeared during his reign. The others are allied to the royal family, and their possessions became a part of the royal domain. CHAPTER XV THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES THE TRANSFORMATION OF CHIVALRY The New Knighthood — The knights of the feudal period made war against each other. In the fourteenth century the king, having become powerful, began to forbid them to fight. Gradually this kind of war ceased. At the same time a great change took place in their armor; the coat of mail was no longer stout enough, the arrow of the crossbows penetrated it, the knights replaced it with pieces of smooth iron, the cuirass, the armlets, the cuisse or cuissart, the helmet with a visor.^ This kind of armor was used from the fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth. The nobles continued to lead the life of a knight. The greater number remained in the country at their manors, passing the time in doing nothing or in hunt- ing. Hunting became an art with very complicated rules; it was divided into "venerie" (hunting with dogs), and "falconrie" (hunting with falcons). A falcon was let loose against birds, dogs were required for hunting the stag, fox, or wolf. The nobles and the ladies on horseback followed the hunt. The poor- est, ordinarily the younger sons of the family, served •This was called "being fully accoutred." 192 THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 193 for pay the princes who were at war, in order to seek their fortunes in adventure. The richest went to the court^ of the great lords, of the king, or of the Duke of Burgundy, or of the Count de Foix. Thus was formed a knighthood pecuHar to the court, far different from the feudal chivalry. The ancient knights had lived the single life of a soldier, devoid of luxury. But in the fourteenth century a more generous mode of living took the place of simplicity, and the knight determined to enjoy it. In that idle and still rather uncultured society every one, nobles and dames, wanted, like children, to have the most brilliant costumes and the rarest jewels. It was a period of ruinous and extrava- gant fashions, when the men wore shoes with a long beak, and the women wore conical caps a foot high; a period when 3,000 skins of squirrels were used for a single mantle, when the Duke of Orleans used 700 fine pearls for the embroidery of a song on his sleeve. Then, as in the German courts during the time of the Minnesingers, there were rules for the manners and for the customs of the court; this was the cour- toisie (courteousness). The young nobleman at the age of twelve years began by serving as a page — that is, a domestic; Tie waited on the ladies at table and ran on errands for them. When he had served his time as a page he then served his apprenticeship in war as a squire. The good breeding of a knight no longer consisted in being able to fight bravely, but in dressing well, in knowing how to entertain brilliantly, and how to speak to ladies in beautiful language. It was good manners to choose for oneself a certain ' Court, as in German Hof, signified simply house. 194 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION lady/ to adore her secretly, and to wear her colors on all festive occasions. Tournaments. — Under these affected forms the no- bles remained vigorous and brutal, and required violent exercise. The favorite diversion of the old chivalry was the simulated combat, either a combat between two adversaries (the joust), or a combat between two troops (the tournament). The old tournament dif- fered little from a real battle, the two troops fought on the open field, often with real arms (with the utmost hostility), the conquered was the prisoner of the victor and had to redeem himself by ransom, and there al- ways remained several dead upon the field. In a tour- nament near Cologne in 1240 sixty knights perished (many more than at the battle of Brimule). The knights of the court made a regular sport of these combats. From the fourteenth century they hardly ever fought with any other arms than those of courtesy, the wooden lance, without a point, and the blunt sword. In the joust it was a matter of receiving the shock of an adversary's lance, without moving in the saddle ; the lance was broken, from that the expres- sion " to break a lance " with some one. The tourna- ment was a grand ceremony, regulated in every detail. The evening before the armorial bearings of the com- petitors were examined, in order to decide whether they were worthy of combat, only knights of noble ' We do not yet know when or where gallantry came into use. Whether in Provence, among the Moors in Spain, or in the German courts. In the "chansons de gestes of northern France, the knights are not very gallant, and seem much less occupied with the ladies than are the ladies with the knights. The word gallant had not the meaning of ardent attention to a lady iintil toward the seventeenth century. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 195 birth were admitted, and those who had degraded themselves by marrying a woman of the middle class were rejected. The combat occurred in a place sur- rounded by barriers, a closed field (the lists). The heroes sounded their trumpets, and the two troops rushed upon each other. - The ladies seated on the stage surrounding the lists encouraged their friends by throwing to them their ribbons and their handker- chiefs. Judges awarded the prize, and often a lady was charged with its bestowal on the victor. Festivals — Other festive occasions were not want- ing. Whether a prince was married, married off his daughter, armed his son as a knight, or entered into a city, or whether he received one of his princely friends, all were so many pretexts for a spectacle. Through all the streets in which the procession was to pass, arches of verdure were erected, tapestries were hung, platforms were built on which figured persons in disguise; in the square were fountains of wine, hydromel and rose-water. For several days the prince kept open house, oxen were roasted whole in his kitchens. The banquet lasted several hours, broken by spectacles which were called the " entremets," then came the balls and the mas- querades. The chronicles of the time are filled with stories of those great feasts. One of the most cele- brated was that given by the Duke of Burgundy when he made his "vow to the pheasant" (1454). In the hall three tables were set up. On one was a church with bells ringing and several choristers singing; on the second there were nine entremets (spectacles), of which one was a pie in which twenty-eight musicians 196 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION were playing. During the festivity an elephant driven by a Saracen giant entered the hall; on its back was a tower from which came forth a nun clothed in white and black satin, symbolizing the church coming to the duke to demand help against the Turks. At the ball twelve ladies dressed in crimson satin and representing the virtues danced ; the affair ended with a grand tournament. These feasts ^ were not like those of our day, digres- sions in the daily life; they formed the very ground- \\'ork of the public life. For three centuries the princes were far more occupied in amusing themselves than they were in governing their dominions ; the peo- ple who shared their amusements apparently believed that such was the office of princes. But these feasts were costly; the princes who until the thirteenth cen- tury had lived largely on their revenues were hence- forth ever short of money; they had to take it from their subjects. Then began the exactions and the fiscal inventions which lasted until the end of the monarchies. Highwaymen — A prince could not carry on a war of any length without the aid of the vassals who owed him feudal service. At the end of forty days at the most the term of service expired, and the knights returned home. In order to retain men in the army it was necessary to pay them. Philip Augustus had already done it. In the fourteenth century every prince had armed men in his pay ; he paid them in proportion ' This chivalry, more brilHant than the old, has been much more attractive to the poets and romance writers of our time. The middle age, that they describe, is especially an age of courts, pages, tournaments and of knights armed cap-a-pie, that of the fifteenth and even the sixteenth century. The model knight, Bayard, and the knightly king, Francis I., are both of the six- teenth century. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 197 to their rank, and divided them into bands, each under the orders of a chief. When fighting became constant the princes preferred to treat with the captain, \\'ho was himself charged with choosing his companions. The captain took the men that he wanted, poor gentlemen, younger sons of a family, adventurers from every country, nobles or bourgeois. Du Guesclin, being as yet nothing but a poor squire, began his career by scouring the country at the head of a band of Breton lads. The company fought for whoever would pay for it, passing from one camp to another in case of need, and often when the prince ceased to pay con- tinued to make war on its own account. Battles were rare; usually the company lodged in a chateau or in a fortified village, went about the country besieging the chateaux of the enemy and taking prisoners for the purpose of getting a ransom, or to put the towns under contribution with threats to burn if these demands were not satisfied, or to carry off the cattle and furni- ture of the peasants. At this time, in order to force the peasant to tell where his money was concealed, the plan was conceived of hanging him over the smoke, shutting him up in a chest, twisting a rope around his head, lighting a fire against the soles of his feet; a practice which the soldiers of every country continued to use even down to the end of the eighteenth century. By this system war became a lucrative business, " And poor brigands ^ succeeded continually in the pillage ' Froissart I. L, ch. 324. The word brigand signified, at first, a lightly armed soldier ; and it was precisely at this time that it took on the modern meaning. See how Froissart ex- presses (iv., 14) the sentiments of an adventurer: "There is no diversion nor glory in this world except among men at arms! " 198 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION of cities and chateaux, capturing there such great pos- sessions that it was marvellous." Some of these cap- tains (I'Archipritre in the fourteenth century, Rod- rique de Villandrando in the fifteenth) retired very rich and became very great lords. These men at arms, half soldier, half brigand, were called troopers. They were designated by the name of their country or by that of the prince for whom they were fighting: Brabangons, Navarrais, Armagnacs. The Robber-Knights of Germany The German chivalry was also transformed. The author of the " Mirror of Chivalry " writes, in 1400, as follows : " There are today three kinds of knights. Some have neither property nor honor, these are prowlers along the highways. Others have a domain in fief of a noble, but although their property may be unencum- bered they live only by theft and by other dishonest means. They are 'the chevaliers de vaches.'^ They wear gold and fine clothes, but they entertain in their castles robbers and murderers and share in their booty. Even when they have sent a challenge^ they set forth while the letter is still on the way, and before the adversary could have received it they have eaten the 'vache' meat. The only true knights are those who fight for their prince against the enemies of their country." Western Germany was filled with these gentlemen who, established in their fortified castle were living at the expense of the merchants and peas- ants in the neighborhood. They were called the robber-knights, although very many of them were not ' That is they make a business of stealing cows. ' That is a declaration of war in due form. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 199 regularly constituted knights. But the honorable knights themselves professed to declare war against cities for the purpose of capturing and ransoming the rich bourgeois. Gunther de Schwarzbourg, who be- came emperor in 1350, "had grown rich by seizing the barons and demanding a ransom from them," so says the chronicle by way of eulogy. The famous Goetz of Berlichingen spent his life in waging war against the city of Nuremberg and in ransoming her merchants. Since the emperor could no longer compel obedi- ence the functions of the public tribunals had ceased. In Westphalia, where they were preserved for a much longer time, the special judges were obliged to sit in secret, and could not execute their sentences except by the assassination of the condemned. Such was the tribunal of Sainte-Vehme. Therefore it was said that there was no longer any law in Germany but the law of the fist (Faustrecht). Cross-bowmen and Archers — During the crusades the Christians had made the acquaintance of the cross-bow; this was a bow mounted on a stock and stretched by means of a spring or small crank. It threw a short arrow with sufficient force to pierce through a man at two hundred paces. The cross-bow was used in the chateaux and castles for defence against attack, and there were formed, especially in Italy, bands of cross-bowmen by profession who put themselves in the service of the princes. The most renowned were the Genoese cross-bowmen. The bow which has never entirely ceased to be used was not, for a long time, considered very formidable. 200 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION But in the fourteenth century there appeared in the army of the King of England regular troops of archers with large bows of yew, two metres high, which could shoot six times a minute and kill a man at two hundred metres distance ; the most famous archers were from Wales. Cross-bowmen and archers fought on foot and without iron armor. None of them were noble, the larger number were adventurers, mercenaries (like the Genoese) ; the English archers were peasants, farmers or small land-owners. The king had ordered them to practice archery and summoned them to flght.i Swiss and Lansquenets. — The peasants in the moun- tains around Lake Lucerne, especially those of the Canton Schwitz, were in the last years of the thir- teenth century, well known for their agility and^igor. They became celebrated in the fourteenth century when they had several times surprised and massa- cred the Austrian knights who had come to subjugate them; the name of Swiss was then given to all their allies. At the end of the fourteenth century the Swiss confederates carried a pike much longer than the lance of the knights ; they fought on foot, in closed column, rushing upon the enemy with their lances six metres in length without breaking their ranks. After their victories over the Duke of Burgundy they passed for the best troops in Europe, and all the princes wanted to have them in their pay. •The King of Prance tried to organize a similar corps but the francs-archers (tax-free archers) created in 1445 remained a very mediocre troop, which had to be given up. THE END OP THE MIDDLE AGES 201 About the same time the lansquenets (landsknecht/ a country knave) began to be spoken of in Germany. They too carried the long pike which defended them better than an armor. They were united in bands, chose a captain and swore obedience to him. Each band took along with it women, children and carts to transport the baggage and booty; it had its own flag, and formed a small society. When the lansquenet com- mitted a crime it was the band which sat in judgment ; and if he was condemned it executed him by making him pass between the rows of pikes. When the lans- quenet wanted to be married he led his wife into the " circle of his companions." It was the band assem- bled around the flag which decided what prince they should serve. For the adventurers, Swiss or lansquenets, war was a profession; they would not fight except for money; " No money, no Swiss." But they fought well, and earned their wages faithfully. Often the prince made them wait some years for their pay and did not even support them. At such times the band lived by pillag- ing the country. Weakness of Chivalry. — During the early centuries of the Middle Ages there were no soldiers but the knights.^ Then the cities sent their armed citizens to war. They fought on foot and were called sergeants. These artisans, badly drilled and disciplined, equipped each in his own fashion, were nothing but a mihtia. The soldiers by profession were always knights, and 1 There were some already in the thirteenth century, but they did not become formidable until the end of the fifteenth century. ' Chevalier is translated in Latin by miles (soldier) . 202 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION it was not admitted that a man-at-arms could fight in any other way but on horseback. The cavalry alone really formed the army. However, from the fourteenth century, every time that these knights came in collision with the foot- soldiers, who were regularly organized, it was the knights who were beaten ; beaten by the English arch- ers (even by inferior numbers) at Crecy, at Poitiers and at Agincourt ; beaten by the Swiss at Morgarten, Sempach, Granson, Moret; beaten by the janizaries at Nicopolis and Varna; beaten by the bourgeois of Ghent and Bruges. We are ready to believe that the knights gave way only before bullets and balls. But two centuries before artillery had become for- midable the English with the bow, the janizaries with the yataghan, and the Swiss with the pike, were quite sufficient to conquer the knights. The men of that time could not comprehend how the foot-soldiers could be triumphant over that brilliant corps of knights formed of the most noble, the most courageous and the most experienced men. However, nothing is more easy of explanation. The knights taken separately were very brave sol- diers, but they made a detestable army. In covering themselves with an armor that was strong enough to save them from the risk of being killed, each one had thought only of protecting himself. The armor did indeed prevent them from being killed, but it did not prevent them from being dismounted, and in a battle a man on the ground under his horse was little better than a dead man. The knights were equipped as if they were to fight alone ; that is precisely the reason why THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 203 they manoeuvred so poorly when all together. Each was in the way of his neighbor. These heavy masses required a level and firm ground for their manoeuvres to take a start; a ditch, a hill, a marsh stopped them, and the moment they were crowded together they could neither advance nor retreat. In order to operate in common, discipline also failed them. Accustomed to fight in small bands, they did not know how to organize themselves into an army. Every seignior coming with his knights intended to fight according to his fancy. The general could not command obedience. At Crecy the archers in the service of the King of France were at the head of the army, the knights eager for the fray rushed upon and massacred them, " Now come, kill those ribald fellows who bar our way." Already so weak through their unmanageable equipment and lack of discipline, the knights staked their honor in operating in a most disadvantageous fashion. Having played at war in their tournaments they had become accustomed to the rules of the game, and continued to observe them in war. A battle was an opportunity for giving some fine blows with the lance, and they insisted on giving them according to the rules in fight- ing, as if in the closed field against an enemy, who had been warned and was at least equal in numbers. In 1346 the King of England, finding himself at Poissy, deprived of supplies and on the point of being taken, Philip IV. drew himself out of this embarrassing situ- ation by sending in a cartel in due form, proposing that he should choose a day and a place for the battle ; Edward profited by this opportunity and decamped. The Knights of the Star had sworn never to retreat 204 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION more than four arpents (this was the space needed for room to move). Gui de Nesle, surprised with his hun- dred knights, allowed his whole troop to be massacred rather than to retreat. Thus the bravery of the knights was turned against them. They had forgotten that war is a business, not a game, and that bravery is only a factor, for the purpose is to conquer. THE CHURCH AT THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES The Popes at Avignon — Philip the Fair had suc- ceeded in having the choice of a people fall upon a Frenchman, Clement V., who came and settled at Avignon (1309). During the seventy years that the popes resided at Avignon the cardinals hardly elected any but Frenchmen for popes, and usually men from the south of France, who were disposed to do what- ever the King of France commanded them. This is what the Italians called the "Babylonian Captivity." The Great Schism — Gregory XI. returned to Rome (1377), and at his death (1378) the cardinals chose an Italian pope. Urban VI. But some months later the greater number of them fled from Rome, de- claring that the Roman people had compelled them to do so. They elected another pope, Clement VII., who re- turned to Avignon and put himself under the pro- tection of the King of France. The Christian peoples were divided; France and the kingdoms of Spain and Scotland recognized the pope of Avignon ; Italy, Ger- THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 205 many and England recognized the pope of Rome. There was no difference in doctrine or in worship between the two parties, but each of the two popes considering himself the only legitimate ruler, had ex- communicated the other pope and his partisans. This was the Great Schism ; it lasted more than thirty years ; for the first time Christianity in the Occident was divided. Complaints Against the Court of the Pope From the fourteenth century, the popes, like all the other princes of the time, kept up a costly establishment; like the others they had to invent means of procuring money, especially since their revenues from Rome did not come in. Through their pontifical power they had at their disposal the clergy and their enormous wealth. Almost all the ecclesiastics, bishops, abbots, canons, even the curates, had the enjoyment of a domain at- tached to their office ; they had both the office (that is to say, the duty of fulfilling the function) and the benefice (that is to say the pecuniary advantages). But some, the secular clergy (bishops and curates) had " charge of souls " ; the others, the regular clergy (abbots and canons) had nothing to do but to enjoy their benefices. The pope reserved for himself the right of distributing to whom he wished a certain num- ber of these benefices "without the charge of souls." Sometimes the pope happened to distribute all of them, even those that had charge of souls; this was the " reserve." When the benefice was still occupied the pope promised, while looking forward, to give it away on the death of the incumbent. These were the " ex- pectant favors." 206 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION From the ecclesiastics whom he named he exacted all the revenues that their benefice would bring to them for the first year; this was the annats. Re- serves, expectant favors and annats were just so many sources of revenue for the court of Rome. The ecclesiastics who formed it had the reserved benefices given to themselves or when they gave them to others they required pay for the same. The rule of the church obliged every ecclesiastic to reside in the place where he had his office, the bishop in his bishopric, the abbot in his abbey, the canon in his chapter-house; it was forbidden that the same ecclesiastic should exercise several functions at the same time. But the pope could give dispensation from all rules. By means of these dispensations he per- mitted plurality of offices, and pardoned the incumbent. Then were seen bishops with several bishoprics, abbots with several abbeys, bishops who were not acquainted with their dioceses and abbots who had never seen their abbeys. This system begun at Avignon and continued at Rome, aroused violent complaints. The courts of the two popes were accused of monopolizing and selling the dignities of the church. These complaints were not all disinterested; the princes were displeased be- cause the pope prevented them from themselves con- ferring the benefices, the ecclesiastics of each country were displeased because the benefices were given to the Italians, and that they were heaped upon a single head instead of being divided. Heresies — Almost everywhere a separation from the pope was demanded without being really desired. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 207 At the two ends of the Christian world, in England and in Bohemia, two men arose against the court of Rome. They were two professors, Wycliffe at the University of Oxford, Huss at the University of Prague; both protested in the name of the nations against the domination of the Italians; both braved excommunication and were declared heretics. Wy- cliffe said that the temporal power — that is, the state, alone has the right to pronounce temporal punishment ; that the members of the clergy should be judged by the tribunals of the state.^ He called the pope Anti- Christ, saying that truth is only found in the Scrip- tures, and he translated the Bible into English; he proposed to suppress the monks, and to confiscate the property of the clergy. He had partisans and even missionaries (the poor priests) throughout England. But the king, Richard II., who would have sustained him, was overthrown, and Henry IV. then coming to the throne was allied to the clergy, and had the here- tics arrested and burned. John Huss took up the opinions of Wycliffe and caused their adoption by a party of doctors at Prague. All the people of Bohemia supported him, for in the religious quarrel was mingled a quarrel of races. The Czechs, inhabitants of Bohemia, who were Slavs, would no longer endure that the best places in tke government, the church and in the university should be given to the Germans. They desired to be freed at once from the Germans and from the pope and to form a Bohemian church and nation. When John Huss had been burned by the Council of Constance ■ He had also peculiar doctrines on the communion. 208 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION the Czechs made a saint ^ of him, revolted and dro\'e the Germans from the country. The Hussites, as they were called, demanded only a slight change of form in the matter of religion. According to the ancient usage of the church the priest had the laity commune by giving them bread under the form of the host, and the wine in a chalice; after the twelfth century, in order to avoid that one drop of the blood of Christ should fall and be profaned they adopted the custom of giving the host without the chalice to the laity, this was called to commune in one kind (form). The Hussites wanted to recei\e the host and the chalice, to commune in both kinds. The council refused and declared them heretics. Three crusades were preached against them; the Hussites, armed with scythes and iron clubs and intrenched behind their wagons, beat off the crusading knights and in\-aded Germany, pil- laging the towns and killing the priests. After a war of thirty years the church was resigned to permit the Hussites to commune in both kinds. For the first time a sect beside the church was formed. The Reform Councils — From the end of the four- teenth century all the zealous Christians, the clergy, the doctors and the princes were demanding a general council in order to put an end to schism, to condemn heresy and to " reform the church in its head and in its members," that is to say, to oblige the clergy to change its manners, and the court of the pope to ' His fete was celebrated July 6th, the anniversary of his death, and they venerated him everywhere under the name of Saint John. When the Catholic religion was re-established in Bohemia in the seventeenth century, the Jesuits replaced him by Saint John Neponink, an obscure ecclesiastic of the four- teenth century, who has thus become the national saint of Bohemia. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 209 cease the sale of benefices. They complained that the bishops, priests and monks, even the mendicant monks, had become rich, ignorant and idle; they began to say, " fat as a canon," " lazy as a monk." In twenty years these general councils were held. Not only bishops and prelates came, as in the ancient councils, but many doctors of theology; and they ruled the assemblies. The Council of Pisa could not be satisfied with two rival popes and elected a third, which in- creased the confusion. The Council of Constance deposed the three popes or made them abdicate, and put an end to the schism by choosing a new pope whom all Christians recognized. It condemned the heretics Wycliffe and John Huss, and ordered their writings to be burned. Huss was burned alive; Wy- cliffe had died in 1384, his bones were disinterred and burned. The council did not wish that the pope should govern the church alone, it proclaimed the principle that every general council, assembled under the inspira- tion of the Holy Spirit, holds its power directly from Christ, that it is superior to the pope and cannot be dissolved by him. The council wanted to make a gen- eral reform of the church, but as it had begun by electing the pope, the pope dismissed it without allow- ing it to reform anything. The Council of Basle, summoned in 1431 in spite of the pope, proclaimed the same principles, and forced the pope to recognize them, but it was gradually dis- solved and the reform did not take place. The decrees of these councils, adopted by the universities and the kings of France, remained the law of the French gh^rch down to the eighteenth century. 210 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION Fall of the Byzantine Empire — The Turks had con- quered piece by piece the whole of the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople, which alone remained, was taken in 1453 and became a Turkish city. So ended the Roman Empire in the East. This event touched keenly the minds of the European Christians, even the pope preached a crusade against the Turks, but did not succeed in organizing it. As for the consequences which the taking of Constantinople had for the whole of Europe, the following have been noted : 1. The learned men fled from Constantinople to the great cities of Italy, especially to Florence, where they brought Greek manuscripts and a taste for Greek learning. 2. The Venetians and the Genoese, who had colonies throughout the Levant, were dri\-en away by the Turks. Venice lost its possessions one by one. The commerce carried on between Italy and the Levant ceased, the great merchant republics of the Middle Ages, Venice and Genoa, were impoverished, and it was necessary to find another route for commerce. CHAPTER XVI ESTABLISHMENT OF ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE RISE OF CENTRALIZATION Centralization. — In the Middle Ages every large proprietor lived like a sovereign on his domains, every constituted city governed itself like a republic. Each country was divided into several thousand petty, inde- pendent powers, lords or town corporations, who negotiated with each other as if they were foreign nations. The inhabitant of a town or seigniory was considered a foreigner in the neighboring town or seigniory; to have the right of even taking there his merchandise he was obliged to have a special permis- sion. The towns and the lords of France and Ger- many concluded among themselves treaties of peace or commerce as the great powers of Europe do today. Each seigniory, each town, had its tribunal, its treas- ury, its army, its customs, its complete government; but this government was not exercised except within the seigniory or the town. Consequently there was no common government for the whole country (except England, united under one king, and several kingdoms in Spain), no nation, not even a state.^ 'This is called "feudal anarchy." This word is not appro- priate; anarchy signifies absence of all government ; the anarchy of the Middle Ages was only the absence of a general govern- ment; it resembles the organization of the Greeks, who lived separate in the small cities. 211 212 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION This system pleased neither the churchmen, who al- ways desired unity, nor the lawyers, who had studied the Roman law ; it seemed to them impious and unreas- onable. On the contrary, the knights and bourgeoisie, who knew little of any regulation but that of the cus- tom, were determined to preserve the organization to which they were accustomed. But in almost all countries there was found a seignior more powerful than the others, whether it was a king, as in France, or a prince like the Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of Bavaria, or the Duke of Savoy. This prince had do- mains which belonged to him in his own right. He had servitors of every kind, men at arms, councillors, judges, collectors of rents, intendants to govern the subjects of his domain; they were called the officers of the prince. He sought to increase his domains, rev- enues, power and the number of his subjects; his officers were interested in having a powerful king, and they labored to increase that power. The prince could increase his power either directly through the acquirement of new domains, or indirectly by obliging the towns and the seigniors of his province to recognize his authority, that is, to let themselves be tried before his judges, to furnish him with money and to use his coinage. The princes continued to practice the family policy, marrying their sons to heiresses in such a manner as to unite two houses in one single domain. So that the Low Countries, which had at first formed seventeen domains, were united about the end of the fourteenth century into one single domain, together with Bur- gundy and Franche-Comte. ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE 213 For a long time domains were broken up, just as they were made, by the application of the same family policy : the prince at his death divided them among his children; John the Good, for example, had given Burgundy to his younger son. Finally in the four- teenth century the greater number of princes, desirous of maintaining the power of their house, gave up making sovereign princes of their younger sons, and adopted the rule that the domain should no longer be divided, but should pass intact to the eldest son. Charles V. established in France the principle that " the royal domain is inalienable." Thus they succeeded in creating in each country a unique centre, that is, a power which all the inhabitants obeyed, and in the country there was but one sovereign and one army to suppress wars in the interior of the country and to make treaties with other powers. This is what we call centralization. Centralization began in the fourteenth century; it then consisted of the union of the provinces into a single state, where the prince became the sole sover- eign. In Germany and in Italy the concentration went no farther; these two countries remained divided into principalities, they did not form a nation. Elsewhere, on the contrary, a single king gathered the whole coun- try into a single kingdom; the King of France by incorporating all the provinces of the kingdom in his domain, the King of Aragon by marrying the Queen of Castile, which made him "king of all Spain." France and Spain each formed a single nation. In England centralization went back as far as the establishment of the Norman dukes. 214 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATIOX The Justice of the King — In the Middle Ages each seignior (and in many provinces each knight) had the right of judging and condemning to death the people of his domains ; this was called high and low jurisdic- tion. In order to exercise this right he had his bailiffs (lieutenants) and his provosts (intendants), just as the king had on his estates. According as the king became more powerful his judges sought to subject or supplant the judges of the seigniors. They pre- tended that they alone had the right to sit in judgment on the affairs in which the king was concerned.^ They established the rule that every decision rendered by the tribunal of a seignior losing it could be appealed to the tribunal of the king. (This they named the resort. ) From the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries the gentlemen of the long robe (judges and lawyers) be- came a large and powerful class. The official bailiff, who was a knight, ceased to judge ; he was replaced by a lieutenant of the long robe, that is, a lawyer (later there were two lieutenants, the civil and the criminal, for each bailiwick) . The lieutenant took with him sev- eral advocates belonging to his tribunal, who acted as counsellors and assisted in rendering the decisions; in the sixteenth century these counsellors became real judges. In each tribunal the king had his prosecutor, that is, his representative who conducted the suit in which he had an interest ; for it was admitted that all criminal suits were of interest for the king, because if » The discontented lords having asked Louis X. to clearly define the "cas royaux," the king replied: "Cas royaux" are those which must appertain to the sovereign prince and to none other. ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE 215 the accused were condemned tlie king would confiscate his fortune for his own use ; the result was that the royal prosecutor found himself charged with following up crimes and bringing about the condemnation of the accused. In order to write down the decisions the tribunal had clerks (keepers of records) ; to act as police in the hall, tipstaffs; to carry the summons and writs, ser- geants; to draw up and preserve the civil actions, notaries. Private parties who had suits employed advocates to speak for them ; to conduct the suits they had recourse to the prosecuting attorneys, and the regulation was established under which we still live that no one could sue except through the intermediary of an attorney. All this world of lawyers (lieutenants, counsellors, prosecutors of the crown, clerks, notaries, advo- cates) developed with the royal power, and labored for the king against the seigniors and against the communes. The New Procedure — The tribunals of the Middle Ages observed many rules which came from the ancient Germans, i. The judge had no right to condemn a man if no one appeared against him. This rule came from the very ancient idea that a crime is a personal affair which does not concern the state, but only the victim or his relatives ; the state intervenes only when some one lodges a complaint, in order to prevent the offended party from avenging a crime by the commis- sion of another crime, which would trouble the social order. 2. The judges were to leave the accused free to present his defense, they were to hear him and to 216 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION' judge him publicly, they could condemn him only if he confessed, or if two witnesses swore that they had seen him commit the crime. 3. The trial was com- posed of a series of words and symbolic actions ; noth- ing was written. Such was the old Germanic pro- cedure; oral, public and favorable to the accused. The judges in the church had never ceased to apply the Roman method of procedure; on the contrary, in the lay tribunals were the knights and the bourgeois who judged themselves, and they followed the customs. But as the tribunals became filled with judges by pro- fession who had studied the Roman law, they began to employ the Roman methods. The procedure was written, was more systematized and more convenient for the one who acted as judge. It began to be said that the judge could not let crimes go unpunished; if no accuser appeared it was sufficient that some one should come and lodge information of the crime; so the judge, without waiting for an accusation, took official action, as they said, that is, fulfilled his duty as judge. He ordered the arrest of the man whom he suspected, then he sought to assure himself whether it was he who had committed the crime ; he employed every means that he thought proper for throwing light upon it, inquests concerning the premises, deposi- tions, presumptive evidence, without being bound by any formality. But it was not sufficient that the judge alone should be convinced personally that the suspect was the true culprit; the custom did not per- mit condemnation until two witnesses had sworn that they were present at the commission of the crime or until the accused had himself confessed. As it was ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE 217 rare to find two witnesses, the judge, in order to condemn had no other resource than to obhge the cul- prit to confess. For this purpose they began in the thirteenth century to employ a process very much used in ancient times and quite conformable with the gross manners of the time, the "question," which consisted in tormenting the accused until he decided to confess. All the tribunals of Europe adopted it, and it remained in universal use until the end of the eighteenth century. It was exercised in a different manner, according to the country. In Paris and throughout most of France the culprit was laid on a bench, and water was poured through a funnel into his mouth, this was the torture by water. In Germany the strappado was preferred; the victim with bound hands, and having an enormous weight which held the body tense, attached to his feet, was lifted in the air by means of a cord worked by a pulley, then he was let fall suddenly with a shock which dislocated his joints. In Spain the "boot" was used ; the legs of the victim were placed between two planks, then wedges were hammered in between the planks and the legs until the bones were broken. Else- where the thumbs were squeezed in a vice until the blood gushed from the nails. The instruments of tor- ture varied a great deal, but the principle was every- where the same. When the accused refused to acknowledge himself guilty, the judge ordered the tor- ture applied. If he persisted in his refusal they con- tinued to pour in water, to turn the cord to drive in the wedges or to draw the vice tighter, until he con- fessed or fainted away from the pain. Then they car- ried him back to prison, and as an avowal during tor- 218 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION ture was not sufficient to show guilt, they asked the accused to repeat his avowal outside of the torture chamber. If he retracted, or if at the first sitting he had refused to confess he was again put to torture, until he decided not to retract, that is, to let himself be condemned. The judge repeated the torture as many times as seemed good to him; the accused required a good deal of courage not to confess something or not to retract ; he could then, after submitting to several seances in the torture chamber, weary the patience of the judge, who would decide to release him, maimed usually for the rest of his life. The tor- ture was applied to women as well as to men, but in general the nobles and the rich bourgeoisie were spared. Again upon other points the judges by profession succeeded in replacing the custom with regulations entirely the reverse. Accustomed as they were to hav- ing a great deal to do with criminals, they were naturally inclined to see a culprit in every accused per- son. As soon as a man was suspected they had him arrested, did not allow him to communicate with any one, and they set to work "to examine his case," that is, to prepare the sentence. Everything that could serve as information, depositions, witnesses, declara- tions of the accused, visits to the premises, all was recorded by the clerks of the tribunal. These prepara- tions lasted as long as it pleased the judges, ordinarily some months, often some years. During all this time the accused remained in prison. These prisons, which thus became the indispensable instruments of justice, were hardly any better than those of the old donjons ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE 219 of the Middle Ages. They were usually cells,' badly lighted, humid, with no ventilation, infected, where the half-starved prisoner slept on straw spread on the floor, unless the jailer consented, for a sum of money, to furnish a bed or some coverings ; for it was admitted that the jailer had the right to exploit the prisoners. "They make," said a jurisconsult of the sixteenth century, "in place of humane prisons, cells, dens, cav- erns more horrible than those of the most venomous beasts, or they allow the prisoners to become stifif with cold, mad with hunger, putrid with vermin, so that if through pity one goes to see them, one sees them rise from the damp and cold ground like bears in their dens, worm-eaten, tawny and bloated." When the case is at last examined the judges agree among themselves, and decide "according to the docu- ments," that is, according to what has been put in writing during the progress of the examination; the accused is not allowed to have an attorney nor to pre- sent his defense ; often he is not allowed any knowledge of the testimony by which he is judged. The judges only send for him in order to read the sentence to him. In this way was established a justice entirely opposed to that of the Middle Ages; in place of a procedure, public, oral, rapid, where the accused is presumed to be innocent, the tribunals of the law- makers adopted a procedure, written, secret, slow, which treated the accused as a culprit. The judges of the Middle Ages, often powerless to punish, let many a guilty man escape; the modern judges were sufiSciently well armed for striking the criminal as well as the innocent. Justice on becoming a regulated pro- 220 MEDLEVAL CIVILIZATION fession became stronger, it suppressed more system- atically the criminals by profession; but it was more formidable for the accused. Besides no one thought of ameliorating the bar- barous system of punishments belonging to the Middle Ages. They continued to hang, bum alive, quarter, cut off the fists or the ears, to whip and to expose in the public square. They even invented new torments ; the most common was the wheel, introduced in the sixteenth centurj', which consisted in breaking the arms and legs by blows from a hea\-y bar of wood or iron, then the victim was bound, face toward hea^ en, on a wheel and left to die. Each town had its executioner, its stake, its pillon.- and place of execu- tion, ordinarily in the centre of the towTi (in Paris it was the Place de Greve near the Hotel de \*ille), and to see the torments was one of the diversions of the crowd. Manners became more gentle, but the judges did not temper the penalties, they remained as cruel and as frequent as in the 3iliddle Ages down to the end of the eighteenth century. DECLINE OF REPRESEXTATIVE ASSEMBLIES End of the Estates General in France. — From the time of Philip the Fair the kings of France had often summoned to an assembly the chief men of the king- dom for the purpose of demanding money from them. The Estates convened at Tours during the minoritv of Charles VIIL (1484) were the largest that had ever been known, all the bailiwicks had sent repre- ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE 221 sentatives, three for each baihwick, one of each order. They succeeded in diminishing the imposts which Louis XL had more than doubled, but they could not obtain a promise from the king that he would regularly call together the Estates ; and the kings of the sixteenth century had the habit of not convoking them. The Estates General, instead of becoming a national institu- tion, like the English parliament, remained an extraor- dinary assembly, which the court very unwillingly called together only in great crises, when it no longer knew how to procure money. In ordinary times the king, thanks to the imposts created by the Estates, could do without such a convocation. The Cortes of Spain — The kings who shared the government of Spain had for a long time been accus- tomed to call together their subjects in order to ask counsel of them ; the assemblies were held at the court of the king, and were called cortes (court). They were composed of nobles and deputies, that is, repre- sentatives from the towns. The Cortes of Castile at the end of the fifteenth century had acquired a power similar to that of the parliament of England; each year they gathered in the presence of the king, pre- sented to him their grievances (their complaints against his government), and did not grant him the right to levy a tax until he had promised to "redress these grievances." The Cortes of Aragon had the same power and more besides. In Aragon the king was not ruler over the imposts, nor over the army, nor over the judiciary. He could levy the aid only after he had redressed the grievances, he had to come in person to open and 222 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION close the session of the cortes, he could not have any proposition passed if there were a single voice opposed to it. Philip II., in order to spare himself this long sojourn in Aragon and the weariness of the discussion, preferred for many long years not to levy taxes, not to call together the cortes; during all that time Aragon did not pay any taxes to the king. The king could not permit any foreign soldier to set foot on the soil of Aragon; he had his tribunals in Aragon, but the chief justice named by the cortes had the right to rescind all the decisions made by the judges of the king, and to take under his protection all the people of Aragon who were arrested or condemned. King Peter II. could then say to his Aragon subjects : "You do not live under a tyrannical domination, but you are endowed with much liberty," and this liberty was energetically expressed in the oath which the seigniors of Aragon took to their king : "We who separately are as great as you, and united are more than you, we swear to you, that we will obey you, if you respect our liberties; otherwise not." The Basque provinces in the north of Spain had like liberties; they are the famous "fueros" which exist even in our day. Ruin of the States Assemblies — Almost all the coun- tries of western ^ Europe had assemblies which could have prevented the princes and their officers from gov- erning according to their caprice, and which, in time, could have even taken the government in hand (as ' In Italy there were no state's laws in the kingdom of Naples and in the duchy of Savoy, because all the rest of the country belonged to the pope or to the sovereign cities, Florence, Venice, Genoa. ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE 223 happened in England during the seventeenth century). But the princes were not willing to have their acts discussed by their subjects ; in place of the aids granted only for a time, they wanted perpetual imposts, which they could levy and employ at will. By ruse, corruptions, promises, threats, even by force, they tried to suppress the assemblies or to reduce them to a simple ceremonial. They had in their employ the only two real forces, which decided everything in Europe, since respect for the custom had disappeared: i. Money to pay the members of the assemblies. 2. Soldiers to make them afraid. Thus they succeeded httle by little in being delivered from the disagreeable control of the estates. In France the king ceased the convocation of the Estates General, and in the provinces, which had pre- served their provincial estates, they were only called for exactly the time necessary to vote the tax. In Germany many princes put a stop to the reunions of their Landtag ; those who still retained the assembly had no difficulty in corrupting or intimidating the members. In Spain, the cortes, better organized, revolted when the king touched their liberties; this was a pretext for taking them away. It is reported that Queen Isabella said : "I desire but one thing, that the people of Aragon revolt and give me the opportunity to attack them with arms and to change their constitu- tion." In Castile the towns revolted in 1523; the grandeeS) through jealousy, supported the king, and Charles V., after having executed the chiefs of the revolt, decided that in the future the cortes should 224 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION vote the imposts before they presented their grie\-- ances, he forbade the deputies to have any understand- ing with each other outside of the sittings of the cortes, and sought to have his judges and his courtiers made deputies. From that time the cortes met every third year and voted for everything that the king demanded. At the end of the sixteenth century the holding of the cortes was nothing more than a comedy : the deputies came to the castle to kiss the hand of the king, the king came into the hall of the cortes and made known to them the amount of money which he desired; the cortes demanded time for reflection. At the second session they decided to petition the king to send away his secretaries from the seance. At the third session, the king not having sent away his secre- taries, the cortes in their presence voted for the im- post; then the deputies went and announced it to the king, who gave them his hand to kiss, and each one brought his petition to the council of the king. In Aragon the people rebelled (1592) when the king ordered the Inquisition to arrest his former minister, Perez, who had taken refuge in the country. The king sent out the troops, who conquered the rebels, then he removed the head of the judiciary, appointed the lieutenants of justice and put a garrison in the country. The cortes continued to vote the tax, but from that time the king governed free from any con- trol by the assembly. Thus the government of the country by the nation came to an end throughout all Europe ; ^ and there ' Except in England and Holland. ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE 225 was nothing to protect the people from the absolute authority of their princes. ESTABLISHMENT OF ABSOLUTE POWER The Italian Princes.— The absolute power of the princes began from about the thirteenth century in Italy, where they had no assemblies of the estates. The chiefs of the mercenary soldiers (condottieri), which the towns had taken into their service, suppressed the council and governed like masters. The most power- ful were the Visconti of Milan, who gathered all the Milanese into one state, and bought the title of dukes from the emperor. Those Italian princes were strange personages, at the same time artists and tyrants.^ They loved to make themselves feared through their cruelty, and admired through their magnificence. Having come into power through force they could not, like the legitimate princes of the other countries of Europe, count on the devotion of their subjects, they knew that all their strength lay in their treasure and in their mercenaries ; their whole policy consisted, then, in drawing from the country as much money as they could without causing a revolt among their subjects, in supporting enough spies to be informed of plots, and to be always surrounded by armed guards to defend them against their enemies. Ludovic the Moor, Duke of Milan, whom the Italians admired as the most clever of the princes, held his audiences ' "While forms have become elegant, and taste delicate, char- acters and the hearts have remained fierce; these people are cultivated men of the world, at the same time men at arms and assassins, they are intelligent wolves." Taine, Philosophic de I'Art en Italie. 226 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION behind a grating which he allowed no one to approach, so that it was almost necessary to shout in order to be heard. He levied enormous taxes on his subjects; a bourgeois of Cremona, having spoken against the new imposts, the duke had him secretly strangled. This tyrant had a taste for the fine arts : he founded an academy, and entertained at his court some of the greatest artists of his times, Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci. Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti was also a tyrant, who a century earlier had built the admirable Carthusian monastery at Pavia, and the cathedral of Milan, "the most magnificent of all the churches of Christendom." Theory of the Prince — The other peoples of Europe looked upon custom as a sufficient rule for their guidance, and they had not yet the idea of reasoning about the affairs of government. But in Italy, where for more than two centuries custom had been vio- lated continually by the parties at strife and by the chiefs of the mercenaries, no one in the fifteenth cen- tury had faith any longer in custom. The Italians at that time, having no longer any rules which they had to respect, began to think concerning the state, and to search for some rules of government. To gov- ern appeared to them an art whose purpose is to render more powerful the one who exercises it; the best politician in their eyes was he who knew (not the most honorably, but the most cleverly, how to increase his power). The Duke of Milan and the Republic of Venice had been distinguished in this art ; Venice had invented diplomacy. The theory was established by a Florentine, Machiavelli, in his book "The Prince." ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE 227 "We learn by experience in our own time," says he, "that among the princes those who have done great things are those who have taken Httle account of their oaths and who have known how, through a mere ruse, to turn the heads of other men. A prudent seignior cannot and ought not to keep his word when that is injurious to him and when the motives which induced him to give his promise no longer exist. Be- sides, a prince has never wanted for legitimate reasons to color his failure to keep his word ; but he must color it well, and be a great dissembler." The perfect prince whom Machiavelli gives us for a model is Csesar Bor- gia, who, during his whole life, never failed to "play the lion in the skin of a fox." This Borgia amused himself in killing the condemned by shooting arrows into their bodies, and he massacred his enemies after he had promised to spare their lives. When he had caused several seigniors to be strangled at Sinigaglia after having taken them in an ambuscade, Machia- velli, who had been present, sent to the governors of Florence a special report entitled, "Description of the method employed by the Duke of Valentinois in order to kill Vitellozo, Oliveiro, Seigneur Pagolo and Duke Orsini," and he ends thus : "It has seemed proper for me to write out the details of this affair, and I believe it will be agreeable to you by reason of the character of the deed, which is at every point rare and memorable." Machiavelli was first of all an Italian patriot; he wanted a prince powerful enough to drive the "Bar- barians" (the French and Spanish) from Italy; and, convinced that a prince would be powerful in Italy 228 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION only on condition of being dishonest, he did not hesi- tate to demand a dishonest prince. But his maxims were spread abroad outside of Italy, and became for three centuries the ideals of almost all the states- men of Europe. Absolutism of the King of France. — Louis XI. ad- mired Ludovic the Moor, and made great efforts to imitate him in his own government, crushing the peo- ple with taxes, having all those who embarrassed him imprisoned or executed, often this was done secretly, and he would endure no criticism of his government. His successors were less cruel than he was, but all held to this principle, that the king alone had the right to govern, that in his kingdom there should be no other power than his own and that of his servitors. They respected neither the liberty of their subjects nor the custom. Francis I. decreed ordinances which overthrew all legal procedure without taking counsel even with his subjects. Henceforth everything was regulated in secret in the cabinet of the king; simple private secretaries of the king began in the sixteenth century to become the real masters of France; they were not yet called ministers, but they already took upon themselves and arranged all the business affairs of the government, and in the name of the king they governed the whole kingdom. The nobles, set aside from the royal council, began to say : "Our kings were formerly called the kings of the Francs, now they may be called the kings of the serfs." The clergy since the Concordant of 1516 had been in the hands of the king. Almost all the towns were goverened by the officers of the king. The ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE 229 Estates-General were no longer convened. The Parle- ment of Paris, which at its origin was only a corps of judges appointed by the king, then tried to intervene in the government. When the king made a new ordi- nance it had to be inscribed on the registers of the parlement; that was a means of preserving it, and of making it public. Parlement got into the habit of mak- ing remonstrances to the king before the registration was ordered. But the king was not obliged to listen to the remonstrance; if he wanted an ordinance passed it was sufficient for him to go to parlement in person (having the parlement sit in the presence of the king), that is, give the order for registration under his own eyes. Louis XL had, in 1462, forced parlement to declare "that it was instituted by the king for the purpose of administering justice and that it did not have any control over either war, the finances, the government by the king^ or the great princes." In 15 16, when the delegates of the Parlement of Paris came to protest against the Concordat, Francis I. answered : "I am the king, I intend to be obeyed : to- morrow, carry wy orders to m-y parlement in Paris." No authority in France could henceforth prevent the king from governing in a despotic manner. Absolutism of the King of Spain. — The King of Spain had forbidden the great lords to take into their service any armed men: he alone had an army. He had a treasury supplied by the taxes, which were paid to him by the rich towns of the Low Countries, and (since the middle of the sixteenth century) by the mines of Mexico and Peru. He had besides an instru- ment of domination which was lacking to all the other 230 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION princes, the Inquisition or Holy Office. The Inquisi- tion, invented in the thirteenth century for use against the heretics of southern France, had also been intro- duced into Spain, but in the fifteenth century it had fallen into desuetude. Ferdinand, in 1478, obtained permission from the pope for its re-establishment, but this time under the form of a royal tribunal. The king himself appointed the inquisitor-judges, and con- fiscated to his own use the property of the condemned. The Inquisition had the right of judging all persons without distinction of rank, by employing every means that was deemed expedient, in particular secret denun- ciations and torture, it imprisoned at will, judged secretly, and condemned to a fine, to prison, to punish- ment by rods, or by burning at the stake. Many con- demned were executed at the same time, and their execution was made a religious ceremony, which was called an act of faith (auto da fe). The king often assisted at these ceremonies. Ordinances. — In the Middle Ages all the people of Europe followed the custom. But in the fourteenth century the Roman law, which was taught in the schools, had begun to be introduced into the tribunals without the custom being abolished, so that during two centuries no one in Europe knew exactly by what law he was to be judged. About this time the kings and the princes began to issue regulations which they called edicts or ordinances. Sometimes this was done with the consent of the Estates, but almost always by their sole authority and without taking any other advice than that of their councillors. In France the ordi- nances ended thus : "For such is our pleasure." ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE 231 Since the thirteenth century had been found men of the law, judges or advocates, who for the con- venience of the court or of the litigants, had tried to put into writing the custom, which was followed in the country; but these documents were only manuals, they did not have the force of law, the judge used them only at his pleasure. In the sixteenth century the need of escaping from this confusion by replacing the custom with law was strongly felt. The subjects being accustomed to the idea that they ought to obey the orders of the prince, the ordinances of the princes became the foundation of the laws of each country. Custom did not disappear, but it was transformed. In France, for example, Louis XII. and Francis I. ordered the judges to write out the custom of each province, and these customs approved by the king became the obligatory laws. The same thing was done in other countries. Henceforth there was a law everywhere in Europe, often very obscure, but it was at least fixed in writing.^ This law drew all its force from the authority of the prince; therefore it was admitted that the prince had the right to change it at will. The prince, who had already armies, taxes, governors and judges, in order to make himself obeyed in the present, acquired the power of making the laws, that is, pledges for the future welfare of his house. ' In England the custon; was still invoked, under the name of common law. MODERN CIVILIZATION CHAPTER XVII INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES THE INVENTIONS The Invention of Gunpowder — The Chinese had for a long time known how to make powder, but they did not use it except for fireworks. The alchemists of the thirteenth century had known of a mixture of carbon, sulphur and saltpetre, but this powder fused instead of exploding. The Arabs in purifying the saltpetre suc- ceeded in producing a real gunpowder, and used it for throwing projectiles through a tube. The Christians imitated them; in 1325 Florence had metal cannon and iron balls cast. The invention was adopted throughout Europe, but it was perfected slowly. Until the fifteenth century most of the cannon threw only stone bullets, and did not carry any farther than a bow. The porta- ble cannon was still so heavy to manage that it was necessary to fix it on a forked standard. For a long time the powder made more noise than it did any hurt. Two centuries after they had begun to use it the knights still wore the iron armor, the foot soldiers still fought with the bow, cross-bow and pike, and the towns still erected ramparts and towers. Artillery did not become really formidable until the sixteenth cen- tury, and the portable firearms did not become danger- 23s 236 MODERN CIVILIZATION ous until the seventeenth century. But the effects of the use of powder, though slowly set forth, have been great. Henceforth the castles, whose walls crumbled away under the cannon shot, no longer sheltered the nobles; the princes alone have had sufficient wealth to maintain a body of artillery. Powder ruined the political power of the nobility, and rendered the power of the princes irresistible. The Mariner's Compass — The Arabs knew that the magnetized needle would turn toward the North; it was known in Europe in the thirteenth century, but they were satisfied to place the needle on a bit of straw in a vase of water. When they had thought of putting the needle on a pivot and of protecting it with a box the compass was invented. It rendered great service to the mariners, enabling them to find their bearings at any hour of the day or night, and in all weathers. It must not be imagined, however, that it produced a sudden revolution; the Norwegian sailors had already gone to Greenland, and without the aid of the compass, and the Portuguese mariners, with the compass, dared not venture out into the open sea. The Invention of Paper. — The Arabs had introduced the art of making paper into Europe, and since it had become general to wear ^ shirts of linen,^ there was an abundance of rags for the manufacture of paper. This simple invention was of great import ; the paper, > Toward the fourteenth century body linen came into gen- eral use in France. = It was thought until recently that paper in Europe was first made of cotton and only after the close of the thirteenth century was it made with linen; but, on examining, with a microscope the papers, said to have been made of cotton, it has been found that all are linen papers, but badly made. INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 237 much cheaper than parchment and much more con- venient for use, furnished the printing-press the needed material for its work. Printing. — From the beginning of the fifteenth cen- tury the people of the Low Countries had tried to produce the pictures of saints and religious books in greater numbers by engraving on a wood-plank a pic- ture or a page of writing. Ink was passed over this plank, and immediately a leaf of paper was applied to it, so was printed the "Poor Man's Bible." But for each page of new writing it was necessary to engrave a new plank (as is still done in lithography). They tried to make separate letters which could afterward be put together as desired; then it was found that letters made of wood were worthless, and the idea of making them of metal was tried. Gutenberg finally invented a mixture of lead and antimony which served for the casting of letters for printing. Thus began the art of printing (the first printed book was the Bible in 1455). The art spread rapidly, especially in Italy, where the laity felt a keen desire for reading and instruction. By the end of the fifteenth century more than 10,000 editions had been printed in Europe, of which one-fourth was printed at Venice; 54 Italian towns already had a printing-ofiice. The first books were all in folios, not easy to handle, and in Gothic characters; gradually smaller forms and characters easier to read were adopted. The results of this introduction of printing followed rapidly, and were of grave import. Books, old and new, printed by the thousand were scattered through all classes of society. The clergy and the scholars were 238 MODERN CIVILIZATION no longer the only persons who were acquainted with the works of science and the sacred books. The laity and people in society became acquainted with litera- ture and theology ; and they set about it with the ardor which a new study arouses. Soon a lay theology and a lay literature were formed : one. was the Reforma- tion ; the other the Renaissance. But even then the art of printing had not borne all its fruit. It had only produced the book ; three cen- turies later it produced the newspaper. The book caused a literary and religious revolution; the news- paper was in the nineteenth century to cause a revolu- tion in government and in commerce. DISCOVERIES Progress of Discovery. — During all the Middle Ages the European merchants had gone to Syria or to Egypt for the merchandise of the Indies. The Arabs had made them pay dearly for their goods ; spices from India were sold in Alexandria at prices three times greater than were demanded in Calcutta, and incense was five times more costly than it was in Arabia. The Europeans therefore eagerly desired to find a way by which they could go directly to the Indies for the pep- per, cinnamon, nutmegs and ivory, which they could not do without. This desire increased when the Turks had destroyed the commerce of Italy with the Levant. The Portuguese mariners sought for a route by the east to the Indies, Africa was in the way, they went along the coast from north to south, from time to time discovering islands and the coast. It took them fifty INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 239 years to reach the cape which is at the southern ex- tremity of Africa ; the king ordered them to call it the Cape of Good Hope. The hope was soon realized ; Vasco da Gama doub- led the cape, discovered the eastern coast of Africa and landed in India, where he was able to buy mer- chandise at an advantageous price. On continuing toward the east, the Portuguese discovered Indo- China, the great islands of the Straits of Sunda (the Moluccas), and entered into relations with China and Japan. But they did not go much farther. The thought grew of looking for the route to India by the west. The learned men of the fifteenth cen- tury were not ignorant of the fact that the earth is round ; ^ they knew even that there was land on the other side of the ocean. Two Italian sailors had the audacity to start out across that unknown sea. Both were in the service of a foreign prince, Christopher Columbus in the service of the Queen of Castile, Sebas- tian Cabot in the service of the King of England.^ Cabot, leaving England, sought for the way by the northwest, and came suddenly against the shores of Labrador, and the ice-covered lands of North America. Columbus, leaving Spain, sought for the way by the southwest, and arrived at the Antilles. He thought that he had found the Indies ; and the custom continued to call America the Indies and the inhabitants Indians. Other Spaniards found out that America formed a ' After the voyages of the Portuguese to Africa, they also knew that the countries south of the tropics were not so hot that they could cause the death of the Europeans or make them like unto the negro. It was not this fear that delayed the dis- covery of America. 2 John Cabot should be given the honor. — Ed. 240 MODERN CIVILIZATION continent; they discovered the Pacific Ocean, and found out little by little the shores of South America. However, they continued to seek for the route by the w^est. Magellan finally found it by going around America, as the Portuguese had gone around Africa. The Spanish ships crossed the Pacific Ocean as far as the Moluccas, where they met the Portuguese, who were very much astonished to see Europeans coming from the east; at the end of three years they returned to Spain, having circumnavigated the globe.^ During two centuries all the powers that had any ports on the ocean, Spain, Portugal, England, France and Holland, sent forth expeditions. They succeeded in discovering the shores of North America, they reconnoitred the islands of the Pacific and of Aus- tralia. These journeys for maritime discoveries continued until the end of the sixteenth century. Then only could a complete map of the shores be made. At the same time adventurers following the great rivers of America (Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Amazon, La Plata) explored the new continent. Character and Purpose of the Expeditions Those great voyages of the sixteenth century did not at all resemble the scientific explorations of our times. Neither the sailors nor the princes who sent them out were at all eager for the advancement of the knowl- edge of geography. For them the expedition was an enterprise destined to yield a profit. It was while seeking for spices that the Indies and America were discovered, it was to bring back gold that settlements ' Magellan was killed in the Philippine Islands. — Ed. INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 241 were made in Guinea, and incursions made in Mexico and Peru. For a long time the Spaniards searched everywhere in the interior of the two Americas for the famous Eldorado (the golden country), where they expected to find fields of gold.^ They organized some very singular expeditions. In 1513^ Ponce de Leon departed at the head of a band in search of the fountain of perpetual youth, whose waters rejuvenated every one who bathed in them, and for years the Spaniards explored Florida, dipping into all the rivers and pools in order to see whether they had found the marvellous fountain. The adventurers who departed for the Indies hoped to grow rich quickly, and without any labor ; a cargo of spices, several pounds of gold were sufficient; they counted on soon returning to Europe in order to enjoy their wealth. Columbus himself was thinking of some- thing else beside science before he embarked, for he was then only a miserable adventurer, and he exacted a promise from the Queen of Castile, by an act drawn in due form, that he and his children should be ennobled, and that he should have the title of Admiral of the Atlantic, and be viceroy of the countries that he was going to discover; he was also to have one- tenth of the revenue and one-eight of the commercial benefits. Those explorers did not desire to give the results of their discoveries to the world; they preferred to keep them for themselves. On his first return from ' By chance, resembling the irony of fate, the gold countries, California and Australia, have become known only in our century. 'The year 15 12. — Ed, 242 MODERN CIVILIZATION America Columbus wrote in the diary of his voyage: "I have purposely informed the sailors that the voyage of each day was longer than it really was, so as to deceive pilots and sailors, and keep for myself the key to navigation in the west. I have succeeded so well that now no one is able to determine upon the route in order to return to the Indies." For the peoples who had discovered these new coun- tries it was an important question how to keep away rival nations. Like the PhcEnicians of the olden time, each one wanted to be the only one who was acquainted with the route to the lands of gold and spices. When Columbus landed at the Azores on his return from America, the Portuguese of the Azores took prisoners all the sailors who went on shore, and cut the moor- ings of the ship. When Magellan ^ arrived at the Moluccas, in making the first expedition around the globe, the Portuguese of the Moluccas seized the sailors. Even the explorers of the same country sought to injure each other. The governor of Cuba learning that his lieutenant, Hernando Cortez, was going to conquer Mexico, sent out an expedition in order to stop him. In Peru the Spaniards, as soon as they were masters of the country, separated into two parties, and made bitter war on each other. Pizarro was killed, Amalgro was beheaded. These surprising discoveries were made with very feeble resources ; the greater number of them were com- mercial enterprises. The princes who risked money in these enterprises, wanted the expenses covered by the profits. Columbus had only three small ships • His companions are intended. — Ed. INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 243 and ninety men, the expedition had cost only 5,000 ducats;^ that of Magellan cost 22,000 ducats, and there was brought back 100,000, because the ships returned laden with cloves. Ships were employed, the caravels, were not made for such long voyages. They had to remain months, sometimes years, in the open sea, on an unknown ocean. The expeditions by land, in a wild country without provisions, without shelter, were still more dangerous. In 1540 Orellana left Peru in order to explore the country beyond the Andes. With only a few discouraged and sick men, without provisions, and already reduced to the necessity of eating the leather of their shoes he came upon a trib- utary of the Amazon. They had the audacity to descend the stream, and after unheard-of-sufferings they arrived in Brazil, having crossed the whole width of South America. These adventurers were truly men of iron. The Conquest — The princes who sent out these expe- ditions wanted to increase their domains ; a land was discovered in order to be conquered. The Portuguese established themselves at Madeira and at the Azores; they built lines of fortresses along the two coasts of Africa. In the Indies and in the Moluccas, where they found the country in possession of the native princes or of the Moslem sultans, they obtained, now by treaty with the prince, now by force, the control of some of the ports. Then they built fortresses, storehouses and arsenals, sending there a fleet and a small army, and appointed a governor whom the}' called the Viceroy of India. When they had destroyed ' The ducat was worth about ten francs. — Ed. 244 MODERN CIVILIZATION the fleets of the Sultan of Egypt and of the Sultan of Ormuz, who had up to that time carried on a com- merce with the Indies, they were sole masters in the Indian Ocean, and established the principle that the sea belonged to them, and that no one had the right to sail upon it. A foreign ship, which they chanced to meet there, if it could not show a letter of per- mission, was treated as a pirate, and the crew put to death. The King of Portugal took the title of "Master of the commerce of the Indies and Ethi- opia." The Spaniards on arriving in America found only tribes of very feeble savages, and had no trouble in taking possession of the country. As soon as they approached an unknown' country the chief of the ex- pedition landed, displayed the standard of the King of Castile, and distributed some inconsiderable presents to the natives ; the royal notary, whom they had taken with them for the purpose, drew up an act taking possession, and the country was thereafter the domain of the king. Thus were occupied the Antilles and a large part of South America. In Mexico and in Peru the Spaniards found two large organized empires, but the warriors were seized with awe at the sight of these white men coming up out of the sea, riding unknown animals (horses) and shooting thunder; and they came to meet them, adoring them as children of the sun. When an attempt was made to force the native kings to give up their treasures they decided to make war, but they could not stand against the arms of the Euro- peans, and in Mexico we see 100,000 native warriors INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 245 beaten by a troop of 1,200 men. After the victory came the conquest; the adventurers took the place of the Indian chiefs, and became their seigniors. For a long time the great families of Mexico boasted of being descended from these "conquerors." It was in this manner that the countries discovered became the domains of the kings of Castile and of Portugal. In order to make their titles more secure the kings addressed the pope, who, in his quality of successor to Saint Peter, was the sovereign of the universe; and the pope by an act in due form divided the world between the two kings. He traced a line around the globe. It passed three hundred leagues west of Madeira; all the countries to the east of that line (Africa and the Indies) belonged to the King of Portugal; all the countries to the west (that is, America) belonged to the King of Castile. This was the line of demarcation.^ Later, when the Spaniards arrived in Oceanica through the Straits of Magellan, it was necessary to trace a second line between the Moluccas and the Philippines. Commerce. — These expeditions had been due to the enterprise of commerce; Portuguese and Spanish had sent their ships into countries where they hoped to find precious commodities; they especially sought for spices (pepper, cinnamon, nutmegs, cloves, ginger), which the Orient alone produces and which the Euro- peans had grown accustomed to use. When the Por- » This division caused great differences ; the Spaniards and the Portuguese were not agreed as to what countries the Una must pass through, and there were not enough good maps to help solve the difficulty. Brazil remained under the Portu- guese, although it was west of the line of demarcation. 246 MODERN CIVILIZATION tuguese had found the route to the Indies by way of the cape, they made it their property, and until the end of the sixteenth century aH the trade in spices passed through Portugal. Great ships armed as for war went to the Indies for the spices, and unloaded them at Lisbon. The Spanish were also looking for spices. Colum- bus was charged by the Queen of Castile to conclude a treaty with the Prince of Japan. Arrived at the island of Cuba he took it for Japan, and sent on land a Jew who knew Arabic with samples of spices in order to find out whether the country produced the same kind of commodity. But America was not the country of spices, and the route that Magellan discovered somewhat later was too long to set up a competition with the route to the Indies, which belonged to the Portuguese. By way of compensation the Spaniards, having observed at the very first island when they landed gold orna- ments in the noses of the savages, set about searching for gold. The gold of the Antilles was soon ex- hausted. But in Mexico and Peru, even after they had carried off the treasures accumulated by the native sovereigns, the Spaniards remained masters of the mines. The richest were the silver mines, and still richer ones were discovered at Potosi in Mexico in 1545- Each year a ship laden with gold and silver left America, escorted by Spanish vessels of war, and landed its cargo at Seville. The cargo increased continimlly in value. During the first half of the sixteenth century it was only three INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 247 million piastres : during the second it mounted to eleven millions; from 1600 to 1620 it came to eleven millions of ducats (the piastre v^^as worth about five francs, the ducat ten francs) ; in 1624 to fourteen millions. The king took the fifth of it. America was the coun- try of gold and silver, as India was the country of spices. The Slave Trade. — The Spanish adventurers who occupied the Antilles wanted gold, but they did not intend to give themselves much trouble in looking for it, so they forced the inhabitants to wash out the gold for them. At the same time they introduced the sugar cane, and forced the inhabitants to cultivate it. The natives, not accustomed to heavy labor, could not endure that life; many committed suicide, others fled to the woods, the greater number died of fatigue and illness. At Santo Domingo there were about 400,000 inhabitants when the Spaniards arrived, in 1508 there were only 60,000 remaining; in 15 14 only 14,000 and at the end of the sixteenth century the men of that race had entirely disappeared. The Portuguese who had settled on the coast of Guinea had for a long time employed the negroes as slaves. The Spaniards had the idea of replacing the native Americans with negroes from Africa, more robust and more accustomed to warm climates. In 1 5 19 Charles V. granted the monopoly of the com- merce in slaves for eight years to a Fleming noble, who sold it immediately to a commercial house in Genoa. Thus was created the slave-trade. European merchants went to the shores of Africa for the negroes ; sometimes they bought from the petty negro kings 248 MODERN CIVILIZATION their prisoners of war or even their subjects in ex- change for necklaces of glass beads, and for trump- ery merchandise; sometimes they attacked the negro villages and carried off the inhabitants, as the Arab slave merchants of Central Africa still continue to do. An English admiral of the sixteenth century boasted of having caused the death of several thousand blacks in order to bring away four hundred captives. The negroes were piled up in the hold of the ship, as many as it could contain; and they remained without air, and without light during the passage of several weeks. They died by hundreds. The survivors arriving in America were sold as slaves and sent to the sugar and coffee plantations, where the overseers made them work under the lash. The slave trade continued until 1815. All the nations of Europe have carried it on in order to furnish slaves to the Spaniards at first, and afterward to the Euro- peans who had settled in America. The "commerce in ebony," as it was derisively called, was the most lucrative of all, and the slave merchants were sure to become rich. In proportion as the warm countries were cultivated, producing sugar, cotton and coffee, it was found neces- sary to increase the number of blacks, who were regarded as the needful instruments for that culture. Therefore so many negroes were imported into the Antilles, Brazil, Venezuela, even into the English colonies of North America, that they form today the bulk of the population.^ The African race has taken » In portions of these states. — Ed. INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 249 the place of the American race, which was destroyed ; it has conquered tropical America, in spite of efiforts to the contrary. Consequences of the Discoveries Thanks to the dis- coveries of the sixteenth century, the inhabitants of Europe have made the acquaintance of the rest of the world ; of the old world of India and China, inhabited by the most civilized peoples; of the new world of America, occupied by the most savage peoples. Lands, seas, plants, animals, unknown men have been all at once revealed to them. So much knowledge suddenly acquired was a shock to all minds; so much new material totally changed the knowledge of astronomy, physics and natural history. The Europeans had gone in search of spices and gold. They succeeded to the full; the commodities from India, and the precious metals were abundant in Europe; pepper, cinnamon and sugar were no longer reserved for the tables of the rich; Gold and silver began to disappear from Europe about the fifteenth century; there had been very little produced during the Middle Ages, and the European merchants having nothing to offer the Orientals in exchange for their spices and stuffs had taken to them from time to time the accumulated treasures of antiquity. The mines of America, having fallen into the hands of the Span- iards, put more of the precious metals into circulation in Europe than had ever been seen there. Silver declined to one-fourth of its value, that is to say, all commodities were sold at a price four times greater than ever before, and commerce and industry could dispose of four times more capital. Then from one 260 MODERN CIVILIZATION end of the earth to the other was estabhshed the sys- tematic circulation of silver, which is still going on today: America produces it, Europe takes it, carries it to Asia, and receives in exchange the produce of the Orient. The spices passed through the hands of the Portu- guese, gold and silver passed through the hands of the Spaniards. These two peoples were the first to be enriched; the King of Spain was, in the sixteenth century, the most powerful prince in Europe. At the end of the sixteenth century the profits of the world's commerce belonged to Holland. During the Middle Ages the commodities of Asia arrived in Europe by way of the Mediterranean Sea ; the great commercial cities were then the cities of Italy (Venice, Genoa, Florence) and of central Ger- many (Augsburg, Ratisbon, Cologne). The discov- ery of a route to the Indies by way of the Atlantic Ocean changed the highway of commerce. Hence- forth commerce was carried on upon the ocean, and the great cities were the ports of the ocean, at first Lisbon, later Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Nantes and the ports of England. The cities of Ger- many and Italy fell asleep in their solitude. The commercial nations were no longer the Italians and the Germans, but the Portuguese,^ the Dutch, the French and the English. America contained many plants unknown up to that time, maize, tobacco, the potato, cacao, from which > In Spain no port arrived at any importance ; the crown of Castile, for which America had been discovered, had no port but Seville. Spain was satisfied to get silver from the American mines, and had little commerce. INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES 251 chocolate is made, vanilla, the dye-woods of Brazil, the cactus on which lives an insect which furnishes cochineal, the pineapple, the Jerusalem artichoke, the dahlia (from Mexico), the nasturtium (from Peru). These plants penetrated everywhere into Europe; the potato became the "bread of the poor." Other plants of Asiatic origin and imported by the Arabs into Sicily and Spain, were soon acclimated in the New World. Cotton, sugar cane, coffee, have succeeded so well in the colonies of America, Africa and Oceanica that we go to these countries today in order to secure these products. They are no longer Asiatic commodities, but colonial merchandise." The new knowledge, the change in the highway of commerce, the pros- perity of the Oceanic ports and of the western nations, the abundance of spices and of precious metals, the wealth of the King of Spain, the new culture intro- duced into Europe, and the old cultures propagated in America, these were the consequences of the dis- coveries as they were perceived in the sixteenth cen- tury. Others were evident later, and of these no one had dreamed. The Portuguese and the Spaniards had divided the New World among themselves for the purpose of exploiting it, not to populate it; they drew all the silver from it that they could, but sent very few colonists to settle there. No one suspected that in two centuries a part of the Old World, India, would become a European province, and that the New World was going to found a new Europe very much larger than the old one, a new Spain, a new France, a new Holland, a new Portugal (Brazil), a new 252 MODERN CIVILIZATION England, and that each colony would be some day a nation. Like the great inventions (gunpowder and printing), the great discoveries have but slowly produced their most important results. Perhaps they have not yet produced all of them. CHAPTER XVIII STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE HOUSE OF FRANCE AND THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA ITALY AT THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES The Condottieri — All the cities of Italy made war upon each other. There came a time when they no longer had enough inhabitants from which to recruit their army. They negotiated with army contractors. The condottiere (the mercenary) took it upon himself, for a certain sum, to form a troop of soldiers, to com- mand and to support them. These soldiers by profes- sion, recruited among the adventurers from all lands, passed from one city to another, according as they found it to their advantage. They had not even, like the Swiss and the lansquenets, the honesty to fight well for the one who paid them. The condottieri of the two opposing armies agreed not to injure each other, a battle was nothing more than a parade. There were "wars which began without fear, were carried on with- out danger, and which ended without damage" (MachiavelH). The Tyrants. — After two centuries of revolutions the greater number of Italians were disgusted with self-government. Some of the towns decided to choose a prince, who would govern them in a masterful man- 253 254 MODERN CIVILIZATION ner. In 1308 a grand council assembled at Padua to advise together in regard to the means necessary to save the fatherland. A jurisconsult arose and said: "We possess the remedy. We have abused the ple- biscitum, and the republic is hastening to its ruin. Everything demands a prince, the members obey the head, the herds follow their leader, let us choose a prince who will govern the state according to his own will, who will make the laws, and be our seignior." Those present at once proclaimed Giacomo du Carrara lord of Padua, and the people, stamping with enthu- siasm, ratified the choice. The towns which did not give masters to themselves finally became subject to some one ; some were subju- gated by the chief of their condottieri, for example, Milan by Sforza; others were conquered by the more powerful cities, Venice, Florence and Milan. The Commercial Republics — Three cities preserved their constitutions, three great commercial cities, Flor- ence, Genoa and Venice. Florence a city of cloth merchants and bankers, conquered the other cities of Tuscany, and became the capital of a state which will- ingly obeyed a family of rich bankers, the Medici. Genoa and Venice were the two great ports of the Mediterranean:^ their merchants went to Alexandria in search of the spices and the silken stuffs of the Orient, they sold there the young boys and girls whom they had bought from the mountaineers of the Cau- casus along the shores of the Black Sea. Both Genoa • There had been another great maritime city, Pisa, but in 1285 the Genoese had taken it, and had filled up its port. Those comniercial cities bore a deadly hatred toward each other and carried on a war of extermination. HOUSES OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA 255 and Venice had a doge (duke) ; but the power had remained in the council of the nobles. Venice, with a much stronger organization than that of Genoa, had a great council, which none but the members of the ancient families could enter ; the "Golden Book," where the nobles were registered, had been closed in the fourteenth century. A secret council, chosen for one year, and called the council of ten, decided upon all affairs of state, could even condemn and cause to be secretly executed any one whom it considered danger- ous. As for the doge he was hardly more than a figurehead, appearing at the public fetes clothed in magnificent robes. Two doges who tried to govern were condemned and beheaded. Venice had many war-galleys rowed by oarsmen, who had made a conquest of the shores of the Adriatic and the islands of the Archipelago. It had mercenary soldiers, who had conquered all the Italian cities as far as the river Adige. It was from the thirteenth century, "seignior of three-eighths of the Greek Em- pire"; in the fifteenth century it was ruler of all Venetia. It exploited its possessions as a domain ; the nobles sent from Venice governed alone and levied tribute, the Venetian merchants only had the right to sell and buy in the markets of the subject towns. Venice was at that period the richest city in Europe, and the senate was determined that it should be the most splendid ; for the church of Saint Mark, the rarest marbles had been ordered, and the nobles had built for themselves princely mansions along the lagoons and in the water. Today Venice is a dilapidated and deserted city, but it is still a city of palaces. 256 MODERN CIVILIZATION The Weakness of Italy — Italy, as well as Germany, had been a part of the empire which represented uni- versal monarchy in the Middle Ages. Like Germany it had not been able to become a nation. Each seignior, each town had become a sovereign; then the most powerful had subjugated the feeble, and there remained in Italy but a small number of states. The principal ones were : The Kingdom of Sicily, founded by the Normans, and which had passed over successively to the emperors of the Hohenstaufens, to the princes of Anjou and to the kings of Aragon; it included Sicily and southern Italy. Tuscany, subject to the City of Florence, and gov- erned by a family of bankers, the Medici. The Duchy of Milan, formed from countries sub- dued by the City of Milan. Venetia, formed from the countries subdued by Venice. The possessions of the pope, which comprised all of central Italy, except Tuscany. The Duchy of Savoy, which included the larger part of Piedmont. The territory of the Republic of Genoa. None of these petty states were strong enough to put the others into subjection and to organize in Italy a monarchy like the kingdoms of France and Spain. In the fifteenth century each one of them was suffi- ciently well organized to defend itself against its neigh- bors, and the dominant idea of the men of Italy was to maintain the balance of power in Italy. These states were rich and prosperous; no people HOUSES OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA 257 of Europe was at that time as well taught and as well policed as were the Italians. But they had no military force. The condottieri, who carried on wars in the service of the different Italian states were not in a con- dition to resist a good army. They had the habit of fighting without hurting each other ; they had a miser- able artillery service, cannon drawn by oxen and firing stone projectiles. Italy was thus at the mercy of the kings, who were her neighbors. ITALIAN WARS The King of France in Italy — The two most power- ful kings of western Europe, the King of France and the King of Spain, after having succeeded in establish- ing their power in the interior of their kingdoms, undertook to extend it without at the expense of Italy, which seemed to them easy of conquest. The King of Spain had already encroached upon Italy from the south; as King of Aragon he owned Sicily (since 1288). The King of France owned no Italian territory, but Charles VIII. pretended that as heir to the counts of Anjou he was the legitimate King of Naples; his successor, Louis XII., Duke of Orleans, pretended besides that being a descendant of a princess of the Visconti family, he was the legitimate heir to the Duchy of Milan, which the Sforza had usurped. What gave force to these pretensions was that they were supported by a strong army. The states of Italy were incapable of resisting either French or Spaniards. The King of France got the start of his rival. Charles 258 MaDERN CIVILIZATION VIII. descended upon Italy with an army of knights, 6,cx)0 archers, 7,000 cross-bowmen, 8,000 Swiss armed with pikes or halberds and 150 cannon drawn by horses. He met no resistance; the Duke of Milan, through jealousy of the King of Naples, himself had called upon Charles VIII. The French were received with enthusiasm throughout all of Italy, and without a battle Charles VIII. took possession of the whole Kingdom of Naples. But soon the Italian states formed a league against him, and he was obliged to fight for passage on returning to France (1495). This first occupation of the Kingdom of Naples lasted only two years. Louis XII. again began the conquest, but this time he attacked first the Duchy of Milan, which he occu- pied without a combat; the duke was delivered up to him by his own troops. Then he turned to the King- dom of Naples, which, after the departure of Charles VIII. , had taken back its king. The King of Spain, Ferdinand, offered to join with him in the conquest and to divide the spoil. This was done. But the two rivals could not long agree. The French and Spanish fought each other in the conquered country, the French were expelled, and the King of Spain remained sole master of the whole Kingdom of Naples (1505). Italy found herself at that time encroached upon at the two extremities and by two foreign kings, the King of Spain on the south, the King of France on the north. The country was filled with knights and for- eign foot soldiers, who, following the custom of the times, lived at the expense of the country, and often insulted or maltreated the inhabitants. These misfor- HOUSES OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA 259 tunes awakened the patriotism of the Italians, just as the English invasion had aroused French patriotism. The Italians felt themselves more learned, more civil- ized than their invaders ; they groaned at seeing their fatherland subject to these "Barbarians," for so they called the French and the Spaniards. "Turn out the Barbarians!" said Pope Julius II. It was he who organized a general league against the King of France, who then appeared the most powerful and most dan- gerous of the two kings, for he held the Milanese coun- try, he had occupied Genoa, and could, if he so pleased, send armies into Italy. The Italian states remained independent, Florence, Venice, the pope were not strong enough to struggle alone against the King of France. The pope had two foreign sovereigns enter into the league, the King of Spain and the Emperor Maximilian, and the Swiss, a small nation, but at that time very powerful, because it furnished the best foot-soldiers in Europe; he even employed "spiritual arms," he excommunicated Louis XII. and his partisans (1511). "The Holy League" succeeded in driving the French from Italy; the Duke of Milan was reinstated in his duchy; the pope made himself master of all the towns of central Italy, and organized the "States of the Church" (1513). The King of Spain in Italy. — But the Italians gained nothing by being rid of the French. They fell into the hands of the Spaniards. The King of Spain, already master of the whole of southern Italy, wanted to take the place that the King of France had lost in the north, and under pretext of protecting the Duke of Milan against the attacks of the French, he occupied 260 MODERN CIVILIZATION his duchy, and finally remained there as the master. The pope, Clement VII., tried to organize a league against the Spaniards, as Julius II. had done for the expulsion of the French. He united in this coalition Venice, Florence, the Duke of Milan, the Swiss and two foreign kings, the King of France and the King of England (1526). "This war," said his minister, "is going to decide the deliverance of the servitude of Italy." The King of Spain, Charles V., who was at the same time Emperor of Germany, gathered an army of German lansquenets, which, crossing through Italy, went and attacked the pope himself in his capi- tal. Rome was taken by assault and pillaged for several months (1527). The King of Spain was from that time master of Italy. When the family of the Dukes of Milan became extinct, he took possession of the Milanais. The Medici of Florence, who de- stroyed the ancient constitution and took the title of Dukes of Tuscany, became the submissive allies of the King of Spain. Save the Republic of Venice, all the small states of Italy remained dependencies of the Spanish monarchy. Such was the result of the Italian wars. STRUGGLE AGAINST THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA The House of Austria — The wars in Italy had com- plicated the rivalry between the two foreign sovereigns, who wanted to conquer that country, the King of France and the King of Spain. The King of France had a richer country, with a HOUSES OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA 261 larger and more civilized population and a better organized army. But the King of Spain became more powerful because he was at the same time sovereign in other lands. At the end of the fifteenth century there were five great reigning families in Europe : those of France, England, Spain, Austria and Burgundy. The house of Burgundy, even after the defeat of Charles the Bold, was in possession of all the Low Countries, the richest in the world, and of Franche-Comte. The house of Austria had all the German provinces of the Alps (Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Tyrol), and it was from this family that the electoral princes were in the habit of choosing the Emperor of Germany. The house of Austria was feeble and poor until the end of the fifteenth century. It strengthened itself by marriages with the heiresses of the greatest European families. A poet of the Austrian court had summed up this policy in two Latin verses : "Let others make war; but thou, fortunate Austria, marry, for that which Mars (the god of war) gives to others, Venus (goddess of love) gives to thee." The Emperor Frederick, "of the empty pocket," mar- ried his son Maximilian to Mary of Burgundy, daugh- ter of Charles the Bold, and the heiress of the Low Countries. Maximilian, in his turn, married his son Philip the Handsome to Jane, daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and of Isabella of Castile, heiress of all the kingdoms of Spain and of the Kingdom of Naples. Their eldest son, Charles, found himself at the same time King of Spain, and of Naples, Archduke of Austria, seignior of the Low Countries and of 262 MODERN CIVILIZATION Franche-Comte. His brother Ferdinand married the heiress of the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, and became in 1526 king of those two countries. Then the house of Austria reigned in the two extremities of Europe. Rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V. — Francis I., King of France, and Charles, King of Spain, had come to the throne at about the same time. From the very beginning of their reigns they were rivals at several points. The Emperor Maximilian had just died, and each wanted to be chosen in his place. Each wanted to be master in Italy. Each wanted to make an alli- ance with Henry VIII. , King of England. It was the King of Spain who had the ascendency everywhere. Charles won over to his side the electoral • princes of Germany, who did not care to obey the King of France, and he was chosen Emperor of Ger- many; henceforth he was called Charles V. He won over Cardinal Wolsey, prime minister of the King of England, who persuaded his master to become an ally of Charles V. He began a war with Francis I., who had conquered the Milanais in the victory of Marignano (1515); after a ten-years' war he took Francis I. prisoner at the battle of Pavia, and obliged him to sign a treaty by which he renounced all pretensions to the countries in Italy (1526). The pope tried to stop him by forming a league against him. Charles V. took Rome by assault, and obliged the pope again to become his ally (1530). Charles V. became the most powerful sovereign in Europe; he then undertook to re-establish the power HOUSES OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA 203 of the emperor in Germany, and to himself regulate the religious questions which then disturbed the Christ- tian world. He did not want to break with the pope, as did the partisans of Luther, but he wished to have a general reform take place in the church through a council which he would direct. He prevailed upon the pope to convoke a council of all Christendom, not in Italy, but at Trent in the Tyrol, in a country where he was master. It was said at that time that Charles V. aspired to the establishment of a universal monarchy, that is, he would govern all Europe either directly or by making all the other sovereigns submit to his authority. This project created for him several adversaries. The prin- cipal one was the King of France, Francis I., who had not given up the hope of reconquering the Milanais, and who had an interest in weakening the power of the house of Austria, whose states sur- rounded his kingdom on three sides. Against a sov- eign as powerful as Charles V. he had need of allies. He had hoped to find some in Italy, but the petty Italian states, menaced by the Spanish garrisons of Naples and of the Milanais, dared not risk opposi- tion to the King of Spain. He sought an alliance with the King of England, who had just repudiated his marriage with Catherine, the aunt of Charles V. ; but Henry VIII. was not a very safe ally, and was of little use, for he was busy with the affairs of his own king- dom, and had no army. Francis I. determined on an alliance with the enemies of Charles V., the Sultan of Turkey, Sol3Tnan, who had just conquered Hungary, and the Lutheran princes 264 MODERN CIVILIZATION of Germany, who had revolted because the emperor wanted to prevent them from carrying out the Refor- mation in their own territories. He sent secret agents to the Sultan, in order to urge him to make war against Charles V., and in 1534 he concluded a treaty with him, in which they agreed together to attack Italy. He encouraged the Lutheran princes, and at Schmal- kalden, in 1535, he signed a treaty with them whereby he pledged himself to furnish them with money and troops. These two alliances of a Catholic king with the Sultan of the infidels and with heretic princes caused a great scandal. The Turks were at that time a formidable enemy for all Christendom; their armies had penetrated even into Austria; the pirates of Al- giers and Tunis, who called themselves subjects of the Sultan, scoured the Mediterranean, captured ships, ravaged the shores of Italy and of Spain, and brought back thousands of Christian captives, whom they sold as slaves, or whom they forced to work in their gal- leys. As for the Lutheran princes, they were in open revolt against the pope, whom they called Anti-Christ. It was with such allies that Francis I. again began the conflict. Charles V. was able to put himself for- ward as the defender of the Christians against the power of the Moslems, and as the protector of the Catholic religion against the heretics. A fleet of Mos- lem pirates, together with a French fleet, came down upon the coast at Nice, and Francis I. ordered the inhabitants of Toulon to give up their city to the pirates for their use as winter quarters (1543). The war lasted from 1536 to 1546 (with an interrup- tion) ; it had no result of any importance. Francis I. HOUSES OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA 265 made peace, and abandoned his allies. The Sultan continued the war and remained master of Hun- gary. The Lutheran princes, left alone to face the emperor, were conquered; their chief, the Elector of Saxony, was made prisoner (1547), and lost his office, which the emperor transferred to his cousin, Maurice of Saxony. Defeat of Charles V — Charles V. was for a time master of Germany and arbitrator of Christendom ; he then ordered the Council of Trent to resume its sit- tings, which had been interrupted by the war, and himself pretended to regulate all religious questions. But the German princes made a secret alliance with the new King of France, Henry H., and suddenly, in the middle of winter, an army commanded by Maurice of Saxony almost surprised Charles V. in the Tyrol and dispersed the Council of Trent. In this war the King of France presented himself as defender of the "liberty of Germany," that is, of the independence of the princes and of the councils of the German towns, which were menaced by the emperor ; he profited by it, in occupying the three bishoprics, Metz, Toul, Verdun, which since the tenth century had been dependencies of the empire. Charles V. resignedly granted a peace to the Lutheran princes, who reserved the right to themselves of regulating the religion of their subjects (peace of Augsburg, 1555). He tried to retake Metz from the King of France ; but after a long siege, where half of his army perished (1554), he withdrew, and finally concluded a truce with Henry H. (truce of Vaucelle, 1556). Charles V., old and in ill health, abdicated. .The 266 MODERN CIVILIZATION States of the house of Austria were divided into two groups: the son of Charles V., PhiHp II., had Spain and the colonies, the Low Countries and Franche- Comte, the domains of Italy (Naples and Milanais) ; his brother Ferdinand had all the German provinces; he was already King of Hungary and Bohemia, and was chosen Emperor. But the two branches of the house of Austria continued to be allies. The branch in Germany was much less powerful than the one in Spain. It had to wage an incessant war against the Turks, who had taken away from it almost all of Hungary; in the other provinces the seigniors were not very obedient, the head of the Austrian branch was without money and without an army. Struggle Between Philip II. and Henry II The alliance of the King of France with the Lutheran princes of Germany had sufficed to destroy in Ger- many the power of Austria. But she was much more firmly established in Italy. The pope, Paul IV., a Neapolitan seignior, chosen in 1555, detested the Spaniards, and wanted to drive them from Italy. He declared that Philip II. had forfeited the crown of Naples, and gave it to a French prince, the Duke of Guise, he also made an alliance with the French king, Henry II., who was to conquer the Milanais. He himself gathered a small army, which he sent into the Kingdom of Naples, while the French commenced a war in the Low Countries. But Philip II. had just married Mary, Queen of England, and he had in his service the troops of Spain, England, the Low Countries, and he had two skilful HOUSES OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA 267 generals, the Duke of Savoy in the Low Countries, and the Duke of Alva in the Kingdom of Naples. In Italy the Duke of Alva allowed the French army under the Duke of Guise to become exhausted from illness, then he invaded the papal states, besieged Rome, and forced the pope to make peace. In the Low Countries Philip II. and the Duke of Savoy, with an army of 50,000 men, invaded Picardy, besieged Saint-Quentin, and put to rout the French army which had come to relieve the town. They did not profit by this victory; but Henry II., disturbed by the progress of Protestantism, decided to ask for peace. By the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (1559), the King of France gave up all that he had conquered. The King of Spain remained master of Italy. The rivalry of the two sovereigns was suspended during the religious wars, which occupied the King of France, and during the revolt in the Low Countries, which claimed all the attention of the King of Spain. It was to begin again at the end of the sixteenth cen- tury, when internal peace was assured. CHAPTER XIX THE RENAISSANCE ORIGIN OF THE RENAISSANCE What is Meant by Renaissance From the twelfth century there had always been in France, Germany, and especially in Italy, architects, sculptors, painters and poets. But their works, even the most remarkable, if one compares them with the works of the Greeks, appear awkward, bizarre, imperfect. Faces are often very lifelike; but bodies are almost always slender and out of proportion, the legs and the arms are too thin and too long. In the pictures the perspec- tive is false; the objects which the painter wanted to represent in the background are as near as those which he wished to represent in the foreground. In poetry the verses are spun out, monotonous and in- sipid. Neither the artists nor the writers understood their professions well enough to do irreproachable work, and they were not well enough acquainted with the works of the ancients to be inspired by them. Little by little, however, the sculptors and the paint- ers became more skilful, and made the acquaintance of the masterpieces of antiquity. Finally, from the beginning of the sixteenth century, there appeared in great numbers writers, sculptors, and especially paint- ers of extraordinary genius, whose works have not 268 THE RENAISSANCE 269 been surpassed. This florescence of great artists is what we have agreed to call the Renaissance. These brilliant men, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michael Angelo, caused their less illustrious predecessors to be forgotten. The historians of the following centuries believed that art, dead "during the night of the Middle Ages" (as they said), had been suddenly resurrected in the sixteenth century. Ever since the history of art has been known we know that the Renaissance was only a continuation of an artistic movement begun many cen- turies before ; what we call the Renaissance is only the moment when the art of the Middle Ages, renewed by the study of the ancients, arrived at its period of per- fection. This moment is not the same in all countries; the Italians, more advanced than the others, first entered the period of the Renaissance, the Dutch came last, a century and a half later. The Renaissance in Italy began in Florence about the end of the fifteenth cen- tury, and ended in Venice at the close of the sixteenth ; it appeared in France and in southern Germany in the first half of the sixteenth century, in Spain and in England at the beginning of the seventeenth, in Hol- land about the middle of the seventeenth century. There was no Renaissance in Northern Germany and in the Scandinavian countries. The Precursors of the Renaissance in Italy In Italy two great poets, Dante and Petrarch, and a great prose writer, Boccaccio, belong to the fourteenth cen- tury, and one is often embarrassed to know whether they should be classed as belonging to the Middle Ages, or to the Renaissance. Dante is regarded even 270 MODERN CIVILIZATION today as the greatest poet of Italy, the prose of Boc- caccio is considered the purest and the most perfect in literature, and at that time Petrarch had already that enthusiasm for antiquity which all the men of the Renaissance possessed. About the same time many artists celebrated in their country, sculptors like Niccolo Giovanni and Andrea of Pisa in the thirteenth century, Ghiberti and Dona- tello, and architects, like Brunelleschi, in the fifteenth, painters like Cimabue in the thirteenth century, Giotto in the fourteenth, Masaccio and Ghirlandajo in the fif- teenth, had been working in the cities of Tuscany, at Pisa as early as the thirteenth century, at Florence during the sixteenth, and at Perugia in the fifteenth century; without speaking of those unknown masters who made the admirable "Last Judgment" of the ceme- tery (Campo Santo) of Pisa. These artists are called the precursors; they are the ones who prepared the Renaissance. In sculpture and in architecture already very far advanced in the Middle Ages the work of the precursors is limited to an imitation of the orna- ments, the bas-reliefs, the statues of the Romans, and to an introduction into the edifices of the antique columns and cupolas. The painters had more to do, they had to learn how to represent the human body and how to observe the rules for perspective. The greatest progress was made in the middle of the fifteenth century, on the eve of the Renaissance : Masaccio had begun to study geo- metrical perspective and to apply it to pictures; the study of the anatomy of the body was begun at first in the statues of the ancients. Finally a new process THE RENAISSANCE 271 was discovered : they had painted up to that time with colors mixed either with water, white of egg, or with wax. Toward the middle of the fifteenth century it was found that colors could be mixed with oil in such a way that they could be rapidly dried: the inventor is probably a Flemish^ painter, John of Bruges. Since that time there have been two methods of painting, water-color upon a layer of fresh plaster, already known in the Middle Ages; this was called in Italian painting al fresco (whence the name fresco) ; and oil painting, which was at first done upon wood (the word tableau, picture, signifies plank), later upon canvas. THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE The Protectors of the Renaissance Italy, at the end of the fifteenth century, was a soil particularly favor- able to the growth of the arts. The princes and the nobles did not, as in the other countries of Europe, pass their time in hunting and in fighting. The nobles and the rich bourgeoisie had a passionate taste for beautiful things ; they came together in order to read verse, they desired to have handsome churches, beauti- ful palaces, and fine furniture; and not only did they pay the artists, but they esteemed them greatly. While in the other countries the nobles treated the artists as if they were workmen or domestics, in Italy the great- est personages counted it a glory and an honor to be surrounded by men of talent. The most celebrated > In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were in the rich cities of Flanders many painters occupied in making altar pictures and in painting statues of wood for the churches. 272 MODERN CIVILIZATION princes, the Sforza at Milan, the Medici at Florence, the popes Julius II. and Leo X. at Rome, the dukes of Urbino, the princes of Ferrara, called to their courts the savants, men of letters, painters, and lived with them on familiar terms. Lorenzo de' Medici invited the savants to his banquets, where they discussed phil- osophy. Even the public was warmly interested in the artists : when the poet Accolti delivered a public lec- ture at Florence the people closed their shops in order to go and hear him. However, the artists, well-paid and honored as they were, did not became enervated by this life, which was so agreeable and so easy. Some of them wandered from city to city in search of a protector ; Machiavelli lived miserably, Tasso was driven from his native city. All of them ran the risk of being stabbed by a knife : professional ruffians made it their business to assas- sinate for whoever would pay them; there were then no police in Italy, and not a day passed that some one did not rid himself of one of his enemies by assassina- tion. When Csesar Borgia had the body of his brother thrown into the water, a fisherman witnessed the act ; he was asked why he had not been to apprise the court, he answered that he had seen more than a hundred bodies thrown in at the same place without any one ever having been disturbed by it. The life of the Italian artists was a life of festivity and adventure, which stimulated the imagination and kept the mind on the alert. THE RENAISSANCE 273 LETTERS Scholars and Humanists — The Greek scholars came into Italy after the capture of Constantinople, and brought with them the manuscripts of the Greek authors. The manuscripts of the Latin authors had been scattered in the libraries of the convents and of the princes. Often the monks did not take care of these manuscripts ; Boccaccio relates that having gone to the celebrated abbey of Monte Cassino, one of the richest in manuscripts, he begged a monk to open the library for him. The monk showed him an old ladder, saying : "Go up, it is open." Boccaccio found the treasury with- out door or key, and all the books covered with a layer of dust. Some had been torn away from the covers, or were cut on the margins. When he asked why these precious books were so mutilated, he was an- swered that the monks, in order to gain some money, often scraped off the manuscripts and made psalters of them, which they sold to children. "And now," con- cludes Boccaccio, "ye students, wear out your brains in making books." The admirers of antiquity then began to visit the libraries of the convents in Italy and in Germany in order to collect the manuscripts which had escaped destruction. In this manner the letters of Cicero and the works of Tacitus were saved; only one copy of them remained, and if their devotees had not arrived in time to make a transcript of them, these works would have perished as so many other books of antiquity have done. This labor, begun in the fourteenth, continued to the 274 MODERN CIVILIZATION end of the fifteenth century. A Florentine, Niccoli, devoted his whole fortune to the purchase of books; Cardinal Bessarion gathered together six hundred Greek manuscripts. All these books had been copied at great expense ; when Gutenberg had invented print- ing, Italians began by making sport of "this invention made by the barbarians in a German town" ; the Duke of Urbino, who kept about forty scribes occupied in copying upon parchment, said that he w.ould have been ashamed to possess a printed book. Nevertheless, printing was quickly adopted, and the books of the ancient writers, especially those printed in Venice, were rapidly scattered abroad. Then the laity could, without attending the uni- versities, study the Latin literatures ; some, at Florence especially, learned Greek and Hebrew. These studies were called, from an ancient Latin name, the humani- ties; those who studied them were called humanists, in opposition to scholastics (the men of the schools) ; the most brilliant of these humanists was Pico della Mirandola, a gentleman of noble family, who from his youth had had the reputation of a scholar of wide learning. The greater numbers, seized with a feverish enthusiasm for antiquity, devoted their lives to publish- ing the works of the ancient writers (a very difficult task, for the manuscripts, copied and re-copied by the ignorant scribes of the Middle Ages, had come down thickly sown with mistakes). Then they began to comment upon them and to imitate them. Then were seen writers of great reputation, Poggio and Bembo, surnamed the Ciceronian, composer of letters, dis- courses and studies in Latin, and the poets Sannazaro THE RENAISSANCE 275 and Vida, who devoted their talents to making Latin verses. More than one-half of the literature of the sixteenth century in Italy was an imitation of the Latin literature, and its imitators, whose works no one reads today, were more celebrated in their time than were the original writers. The first humanists were the Italians, but the study of the humanities extended into France, Germany and the Low Countries. The most celebrated humanist, Erasmus, was from Holland. This passion for Latin and Greek studies lasted until the middle of the seven- teenth century (the scholars themselves continued to write in Latin until the nineteenth century) ; then only was it understood that the best language for a writer is his maternal tongue. The Latin seemed more noble than the vernacular ; Poggio regretted that Dante had composed his great poem in Italian, and Dante himself had had some scruples, for he began his "Inferno" in Latin verse. The inclination to imitate antiquity was manifest even in the details of the language; the authors gave themselves Greek and Latin names, such as Erasmus and Melanchthon; the Italian humanists even went so far as to call the saints gods and the nuns vestals; some scholars amused themselves in re- newing the sacrifice of the goat, which was the accom- paniment of the antique tragedies. Italian Literature — Italy had already in the fifteenth century a great national literature; in the sixteenth century she had yet another epic poet, Tasso ; a semi- comic poet, Ariosto, and a great prose writer, Machia- velli. But Italian poetry was soon spoiled and became affected in style and thought. About the end of the 276 MODERN CIVILIZATION sixteenth century the Itahans began to compose bur- lesque epics (Tassoni), and insipid pastorals (Gua- rini ) . Ideas and sentiments were no longer demanded from a poet, but sonorous verses and especially the bringing together of unexpected words (concetti). This pretentious and insipid literature was admired throughout all Europe during the whole of the six- teenth century; the fashion of making concetti still existed in France in the time of Boileau. Italian Painting. — The process of painting with oil as a medium was known in Italy about the middle of the fifteenth century; at the end of the century appeared the painters of genius. The greatest artists had disci- ples who imitated them, and they formed a school. There were five schools in Italy ; each had its centre in a different country. Michael Angelo was head of the Florentine school ; Leonardo da Vinci was chief of the Lombard school, and Raphael of the Roman school. All three of these belong to the early years of the six- teenth century. Later, at the end of the century, were formed the Venetian school (whose principal repre- sentatives are Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto), and the Bologna school, at whose head is Carracci. The Vene- tian school is distinguished from the others by its brilliant colors and its golden light. As for the painters of Bologna (who are sometimes called the Eclectics) they seek to combine the methods of the preceding schools ; they are especially imitators, and were already tainted by that taste for studied elegance and affecta- tion which has been the passion of the Italians ever since the seventeenth century. A sixth school might be added, that of Naples, dating from the seventeenth THE RENAISSANCE 277 century, and whose chief representative is Salvator Rosa, but the Neapohtan school is usually considered as a branch of the Spanish school, whose processes and methods it has imitated. The Italian painters worked for the churches and for the great lords (they had as yet neither museums nor expositions). Sometimes, as in the Middle Ages, they painted frescoes upon the walls (of this character are the frescoes of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel and of Raphael in the Vatican at Rome) . But the greater number of their works are pictures on panel or canvas, which were hung in the churches or in the palaces. The painters usually took for their subjects scenes drawn from sacred history, the life of Christ or the lives of the saints, from the pagan theology or from ancient history; but they did not trouble themselves in regard to correctness of costume or of "local color" ; they represented their personages, Jews, Greeks, Ro- mans, in fanciful costumes, and even with the feathers and clothing of the Italians of their time. Thus in the "Marriage at Cana," of Paul Veronese, which is in the Louvre, the guests gathered about the Christ are Venetian gentlemen clothed according to the fashion of the time. Free from all those archaeological scru- ples which torment the artists of today, the painters of the Renaissance could, under ancient names, portray events which they themselves had witnessed. They insisted especially on beauty of form and color. Like the Greek sculptors, they endeavored to represent the human body, and the best proportioned, the most per- fect body that they could imagine. They did not sacri- fice the body for the face, they sought for beauty rather 278 MODERN CIVILIZATION than expression. Even in the most dramatic scenes they gave noble and calm attitudes to their figures ; in the sacred pictures their saints were only distinguished by a delicate halo about the head; the numerous pic- tures entitled the "Holy Family," where the Virgin appears with the infant Jesus, represent hardly any- thing more than a beautiful Italian family. The painter did not seek to give an air of holiness to the faces. The Italian painters knew very well how to give expression to faces, when they wished to do so; the portraits by Raphael, Titian, even those by painters of the second rank, are marvels of truth, and the heads by Leonardo da Vinci still produce on us an irresistible impression of mysterious profundity. But in their great pictures the Italians sought first of all to make their personages as beautiful as possible; they were idealists, as we should say. For the Italian painter, as for the Greek sculptor, the object of art is to repre- sent man; a man more beautiful, more serene, more happy than real humanity could produce, and yet a living man, who united truth with beauty. THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE French Literature — The literary renaissance of France was much later than that of Italy: the great prose writers, Rabelais and Montaigne, the poets Marot and Ronsard did not appear before the middle of the sixteenth century. In France, as in Italy, the greater number of the writers conceived a scorn for the Mid- dle Ages, and had a passionate admiration for THE RENAISSANCE 279 antiquity. The writers, who were the friends of Ron- sard and called their group the "Pleiad," tried to imi- tate, in French, the works of the Greeks and of the Romans; one of them, Jodelle, composed the first French tragedy; it was played at the court of the king, Henry II., and at the close of the representation the friends of the poet went to Arcueil to hold a feast ; in order to imitate the antique sacrifices, they brought out a goat crowned with ivy. Through this enthu- siasm for antiquity the writers introduced into the French tongue many Greek, and many more Latin words ; most of them have remained in it, so that our modern French is composed of two kinds of words, those coming from the Middle Ages, and those from the period of the Renaissance. The influence of the Renaissance was, at first, felt only on the forms and on the language. The original writers in France preserved the naivete, the sly humor, the gaiety, the unrestrained imagination of the people of the Middle Ages. That Renaissance was prolonged even under the reign of Louis XIII. ; a century and a half was needed to form in France what is called the classic type. French Painting — France had in the sixteenth cen- tury painters of the second rank only : Clouet, Cousin, Dubois. The great French painters were those of the seventeenth century : Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Philippe de Champagne ; but they did not form a school, for they worked in wholly different lines. Poussin and Lor- rain passed a part of their lives in Italy ; Poussin repre- sented especially scenes from the Old Testament or from antiquity; Lorrain is chiefly a painter of land- 280 MODERN CIVILIZATION scape; Philippe de Champagne a painter of portraits and of pictures for churches. SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE Sculpture. — Sculpture flourished in the Middle Ages, especially in the fifteenth century, in the domains of the Duke of Burgundy; "The Well of Moses" and the tombs of the dukes of Burgundy are recog- nized as masterpieces. However, even in the most beautiful works of that period, statues or bas-reliefs, although the heads and draperies are often admirable, the bodies are out of proportion. The Italian sculptors sought to return to the forms of the antique sculptures; from the sixteenth century they had begun to copy the bas-reliefs and the statues preserved at Rome. About the end of the fifteenth century the great sculptors Donatello and Michael Angelo appeared. From that time the sculptors en- deavored to reproduce the human body, preferably nude. Following the example of Michael Angelo, they studied carefully, sometimes from dead bodies, the disposition of the bones and muscles; artistic anatomy became an indispensable study for the sculptor. The sculptors of the Middle Ages took for their models the people of their times, monks, bishops, young girls, whom they represented in their usual costumes and attitudes; they tried to represent faithfully the model and to give to the statue an air of life. The sculptors of the Renaissance, seeking for beauty above all things, desired nothing more than a beautiful form. THE RENAISSANCE 281 In Germany the real sculptors were the carvers of Nuremberg, who still kept the naivete of the Middle Ages (the most celebrated is Visscher) ; in France there were some great sculptors, Goujon and Germain Pilon, who worked chiefly for the court. The sculptors, down to the end of the sixteenth cen- tury, produced works at the same time beautiful and simple. In the seventeenth century they continued to seek for beautiful forms, but little by little, as a result of their imitation of ancient works, they lost the habit of observing nature and of depicting life ; they thought only of producing an effect; their works remained correct, but they were affected and cold. Architecture — The Middle Ages had two great styles of architecture, the Romanesque and the Gothic. The Renaissance of architecture consisted in producing edifices not more beautiful than those of the Middle Ages, but more like the antique monuments. It was the Italians who set the example of imitating antiquity. Already in the fifteenth century Brunelleschi, in build- ing the cathedral at Florence, had completely aban- doned the Gothic style and had taken up again the cupola and columns of the Roman edifices. In the sixteenth century Bramante began (1506), and Michael Angelo finished (1546), the great church of Saint Peter's at Rome, which became a model for all the churches of Europe. During the same century the chateaux of the Renaissance constructed by the kings at Blois and Fontainebleau, were built on a Gothic plan and still preserve the pointed towers, the elegant mansards, the projecting stairways, and the animated aspect of the mansions of the sixteenth century; they 282 MODERN CIVILIZATION have taken from the Renaissance only the details of their ornamentation. But the farther we depart from the Middle Ages the more completely is the Gothic obliterated. In the central pavilion of the Louvre, built by Pierre Lescot before the end of the sixteenth century, there is no trace of the Gothic. Gradually the forms imitated from the ancients replaced the original forms of the Middle Ages, and architecture was reduced to an imitative art. CHAPTER XX THE REFORMATION ORIGIN OF THE REFORMATION Complaints Against the Clergy Since the twelfth century complaints against the clergy had never ceased in Europe. Not only the heretics (Albigenses and Vaudois in the thirteenth century, disciples of Wycliffe in the fourteenth century and Hvissites in the fifteenth century), but the doctors of the church, and the coun- cils, declared that the greater number of the prelates, priests and monks had become corrupt through their wealth and their idleness. They were blamed on ac- count of their magnificent vestments, their luxury, their insolence and their ignorance. According as the laity became educated the more shocking seemed this spectacle. The most discontent was shown among the peoples of the north, the English and the Germans ; their hatred was turned against the Italians who governed the church, especially against the pope and the court at Rome. The Renaissance gave the finishing stroke to the scandal; they could not understand how the head of the Christian church could admire the statues and the books of the pagans. Luther describes the impres- sion which his journey to Rome produced as follows : "I would not for a thousand florins have missed seeing Rome; I should always have asked myself if I were 283 284 MODERN CIVILIZATION not doing injustice to the pope. The crimes at Rome are incredible. . . . We Germans, we gorge our- selves with drink until we burst, while the Italians are sober ; but they are the most impious of men, they make sport of the true religion; and they rail at us Chris- tians because we believe everything in the Scriptures. . . . In Italy, when they go to church, they say : Come, let us go and conform to the popular error. If we were obliged, they say, to believe all the word of God, we should be the most unfortunate of all men, and we could never have a moment of gaiety. The Italians are either epicureans ^ or superstitious. The people fear Saint Anthony or Saint Sebastian more than they do Christ, because of the wounds or the maladies which they send^ upon them. ... So they live in extreme superstition, without knowing the Word of God, neither believing in the resurrection of the body nor in life eternal. They celebrate the carnival, which lasts several weeks, with unseemliness and ex- treme folly, and they have introduced into it the most extravagant and wild actions, for they are men with- out a conscience, living publicly in sin." Just or un- just, these sentiments were, in the sixteenth century, shared by many Christians in Germany and in Eng- land, and many people were ready to support whoever dared attack the court of Rome. The Reformers — The men who set the example of revolt were of obscure origin : Luther was a simple monk, doctor in the small University of Wittenberg; • That is to say unbelieving, incredulous. ' At that time it was believed that certain maladies of the skin were sent by St. Anthony. THE REFORMATION 285 Zwingle, a country priest at Glarus ; Calvin, the son of a bourgeois of Noyon in Picardy. The revolt began over a secondary question. Leo X., having need of money in order to build the church of Saint Peter, had sent some Dominicans into Ger- many charged with giving indulgences to the faithful who would aid in the construction of the church by giving their pence for this purpose. That one could gain indulgences through good works was not a nov- elty. But this time the concession of the indulgences resembled a public sale and caused a great scandal. A nobleman in the city of Berne bought indulgences for himself and his squires, giving as recompense a gray horse; the town of Aarburg bought indulgences for all its citizens, living or dead. Luther attacked this sale as being contrary to Scripture. The pope sus- tained his envoy, and censured the opinions of Luther. A conflict ensued under the form of theological contro- versies in Latin. It seems that Luther, who did not at first intend to break with the pope, accustomed himself to this idea during the course of the dispute; finally he made an appeal in writing to the laity of Germany, and this was in German. Many nobles and princes sustained him, and they began openly to preach against the pope and the clergy. Luther admitted the rupture between himself and the pope by publicly burning the pope's bull. The example set at Wittenberg was followed in a great number of towns. It was a fear of the last judgment that especially animated Luther. "These words, the justice of God, were," said he, "like the voice of thunder in my con- 286 MODERN CIVILIZATION science. I shuddered on hearing them. I said to my- self : If God is just, he will punish me." Luther felt himself continually menaced by the devil, who came to tempt him and to take possession of his soul; one day, in his cell at the castle of the \\''artburg, he thought he felt that the devil was near him, and he threw his ink- stand at his head (the stain remained on the wall for a long time). Man, thought Luther, is born in sin, he is naturally corrupt and merits condemnation. He cannot purpose to do well, crushed as he is by the weight of his sins, and even good actions cannot take away the original corruption from the human heart. Given up to himself, man would then infallibly be damned. His only chance of salvation is to supplicate Christ that He would grant him pardon and belief in Him. Belief, according to the doctrines of Luther, is not only a credence in certain dogmas, it is also, and above all, a sentiment, the love of the Saviour and the desire to be united with Him. The one to whom Christ has indeed willingly granted the favor of imparting to him this faith is immediately delivered from sin, regener- ated, assured of salvation. This is what was called "to be justified by faith." When Luther had experi- enced this pardon : "I feel," said he, "as if born again, and it seems to me that I am entering through the open doors into Paradise." Calvin started out with a similar idea. "Original sin has made the heart of man wholly corrupt;^ his will has become so completely wicked that he is incapa- ' Zwingle was less occupied with original sin; he said that men could be saved outside of belief; he wrote to Francis I: •' He (the king) must hope to see the assembly of all the holy, courageous, faithful and virtuous men that there have been THE REFORMATION 287 ble of wanting to be good, but he is still capable of wishing to do evil. Therefore all men given up to themselves would be justly condemned to eternal destruction. God, through an act of kindness, is will- ing to extend to some the grace to save them ; but this grace is only granted to those who believe. For Calvin, as for Luther, all religion was founded on faith. Man is justified, that is, saved, by his faith, not by his works. All the institutions established by the church are therefore useless. One thing only is beneficial to all mankind, the word of God ; but it must be taken directly from its source, in the Scriptures; all the explanations given by the fathers and the doc- tors of the church have done nothing but alter it, or else have made it obscure. "If some one," said Luther, "should attack you by saying that the Scriptures are obscure and that aid from the commentaries of the fathers is necessary, answer : A clearer book than the Bible has never been written upon this earth." Character of the Reformation. — The reformers did not speak in the name of reason and of a free examina- tion as the philosophers had done. For from obliging the faithful to examine freely their beliefs in order to reject those which seemed to them unreasonable, they put them on their guard against reason. "The word of God," said Luther, "is folly in the eyes of reason. . . . Reason does nothing but blas- pheme God and criticise his works, reason does not comprehend God, and must be destroyed. since the foundation of the world. You will see there (in heaven) Hercules, Theseus, Socrates, Numa, Camillus, Cato. There will be no good man whom you will not see there with God." There- fore Luther refused to extend his hand to Zwingle. 288 MODERN CIVILIZATION "The Christian must close his eyes, his ears, all the senses, and ask nothing more." The reformers brought reproaches against the church of their own time, not on account of too much faith, but on account of too little. The Reformation was not a political revolution arranged in order to free the nations from an absolute power. When the peasants of Germany rose in rebel- lion in the name of the Scriptures, Luther vigorously condemned them. "Whatever may be the rights of the peasants, they are culpable on account of the very act of making the demand; they ought to suffer and be silent, if they want to be Christians. The Chris- tian lets himself be robbed, flayed, killed, for he is a martyr on the earth. The doctrine of resistance is a pagan doctrine; the Greeks and the Romans preached it, but the Gospel has nothing in common with natural rights." The reformers did not want to give freedom to reason, nor to reform the state. They even pretended that they would make no innovations in religion, but that they wanted only to re-establish the Christian faith in its primitive purity. They rejected the tradi- tions taught by the church, not that they had found these traditions unreasonable, but they believed them to be contrary to the word of God. They pretended to go back fifteen centuries, to the time of the apostles. The church had modified the religion of Christ, they went therefore to the Holy Scriptures in order to search for the pure doctrine ; it was no longer sufficient for them to read it in the Latin translation, as had been done up to that time; they insisted upon reading the THE REFORMATION 289 Gospels in the Greek, and the Old Testament in the Hebrew. They went back to religious antiquity, as the learned of the Renaissance had gone back to pro- fane antiquity. They believed they were only engaged in a restoration. But the pretended restoration could not be brought about without a general confusion; if all that had been established by the church during those fifteen centuries had been an alteration, everything must be overthrown. In fact the reformers rejected all the doc- trines and all the customs which were not found in the Gospels : purgatory, the doctrines of the merits of the saints, and of indulgences, the authority of the pope and of the bishops, the celibacy of the priests, the con- vents, the masses, the pictures, the ornaments of the church, the processions, the worship of the saints and of the virgin, the relics, the pilgrimages, and the greater part of the sacraments. The ancient religion, founded upon tradition, was to be destroyed. In its place they established, without being aware of it, a new religion founded upon an interpretation of the Scriptures. Of ancient Catho- licism they preserved hardly anything but the beliefs; they allowed almost nothing to remain of the organiza- tion, of the worship, and of the practices of the early church. The Reformation suppressed the clergy, pope, bish- ops, priests and monks; the pastors, charged with teaching the word of God, did not at all resemble the priests ; they married, lived among the laity and did not form a separate class. The Reformation suppressed the mass, the liturgy in Latin, and the processions. 290 MODERN CIVILIZATION There was no longer any other worship except the assembly of the faithful, who gathered each Sunday in order to listen to the reading of the Scriptures, to the sermon and the prayers of the pastor, and to sing hymns. Prayers and hymns were in the language of the believers. As for the communion, the laity received it rarely, and they took it under the form of bread and wine, while in the Catholic communion the wine had been reserved for the priests alone. The Reformation no longer admitted that the clergy could be superior to the laity. In order to put the Scriptures within reach of the laity, the reformers in each country translated the Bible into the vernacular. The example was set by Luther; his translation in German is one of the monuments of the language. Auxiliaries of the Reformation The reformers were opposed by almost all of the clergy. Left to depend upon their own strength they would have been crushed, like the heretics of the thirteenth century; but they found allies, who were ready to support them, either through religious convictions or through politi- cal interest. For the bourgeois and for many of the artisans in the towns, especially in the countries of the North, it was a great consolation to be able themselves to read the Scriptures, to hear them explained in their own tongue, to be able to chant the prayers and the hymns in their own tongue and to receive the cup ^ at the communion. ' It was in order to obtain the service of the cup at commun- ion that the Hussites of Bohemia, in the fifteenth century, sus- tained wars of fextermination against the whole of Germany. THE REFORMATION 291 For many of the nobles this was an opportunity of getting rid of the clergy who restrained them. For the adventurers it was an excellent pretext for taking possession of the valuable objects which had been gathered into the treasuries of the churches. Finally, in some countries, the clergy themselves supported the reform in order to render themselves independent of the popes and to form a national church. But the most powerful auxiliaries of the Reforma- tion were the princes and, in Germany, the councils of the free cities. The bishops still had their tribunals, where they sat in judgment on the suits of the clergy, and besides on many suits which concerned the laity. The bishoprics and the abbeys consisted of immense domains (in Germany almost one-third of the lands belonged to them). Now the reformers declared that the clergy must return to the poverty of the early times of Christianity, and must give up all political power. The princes and the town councils, adopting the ideas of the Reformation, then closed the convents, took from the bishops and the abbots their domains, their power, their jurisdiction, on the ground that such pos- sessions were contrary to the Gospel, and retained all in their own power. In some places the ecclesiastical prince himself became a reformer, married, was trans- formed into a secular prince, and made for himself a secular state out of the domains of the church. This was the case with the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who became a Prussian duke. In adopting the Reformation, the princes not only increased their domains, but their authority also. The Catholic clergy, rich and sustained by the pope, were 292 MODERN CIVILIZATION greatly feared by the princes whom they could excom- municate. The reformed pastors, poor and isolated, depended entirely on the government that paid them. The prince united to all his former powers those of the bishops and the pope; he became at one and the same time head of the state and head of the church. The princes then had a direct interest in the Reforma- tion. It was a prince, the Elector of Saxony, who con- cealed Luther in one of his castles ; they were German princes who presented demands for reform to the Diet, and who protested against its decisions ; and the kings of Sweden, Denmark and England introduced the Reformation into their states. Except in Holland and in Scotland, where protestantism was founded in re- volt, the Reformation has been successful only in the countries where it was carried on under the patronage of the government (England, Sweden, Denmark, the German states). DIFFERENT FORMS OF PROTESTANTISM The Protestant Sects. — The reformed Germans, in revolting against the pope, did not, at first, wish to break away from the church; they demanded that a council be called to reform the abuses in the church and to decide questions of dogma. But while waiting for the council each prince regulated religious affairs in his states according to his good pleasure; and many carried on the reform as they understood it. The Catholic princes still formed the large majority in the Reichstag; they decided at the reunion in Speyer (1529), that henceforth every prince who had not yet THE REFORMATION 293 rallied to the standard of reform must remain in the ancient faith, support his subjects in it, and prevent any one from preaching the new doctrines within the borders of his states until the assem- bling of the council. The reformed princes protested against this decision (the protest was signed by only five princes and fourteen towns) ; from this act the name of Protestant was applied to all the partisans of the Reformation. The two parties tried for a long time to be recon- ciled ; but they could not agree upon the question of the marriage of priests, and Christianity was to be divided into two religions henceforth hostile to each other. Those who remained faithful to the traditions of the church kept the name catholic (universal), those who broke away from the traditions called themselves re- formed or protestant. All the Protestants are agreed on some points ; they all consent to reject the doctrine of the necessity of an intermediate agent between a believer and God, and declare that works are insufficient for salvation. (By the word works it was understood at that epoch not good works, in the modern sense, that is, works of charity, but rather devout works, what we call observ- ances). They all consented to require neither the authority of the pope, nor convents, nor obligatory celibacy, nor the mass, nor the sign of the cross. To be present at mass, to obey the pope, to make the sign of the cross, all these were exterior signs by which Catholics were recognized. But if they were in accord upon what was to be rejected, they did not at all agree on what should be accepted. 294 MODERN CIVILIZATION As the Reformation came about in different coun- tries, through different motives, among many men, wholly different in race or character, and without any general direction, the Protestants have adopted neither the same creeds nor the same organization. Protest- antism, unlike Catholicism, has not been one and the same religion everywhere like unto itself ; it is divided into many sects, which for a long time mutually de- tested each other. Lutheranism — Lutheranism was the form adopted by the German states (of which Prussia is the chief), and by the kingdoms of the North ( Sweden, Denmark and Norway). It was also established in the sixteenth century in Bohemia, Poland, Austria and Hungary, but all these countries have returned to Catholicism. The Lutherans formulated their doctrine in the con- fession presented at Augsburg (1530). They say that the believer can obtain pardon only from God himself, that he must not demand it through the pray- ers of the church, nor through the mediation of the Virgin or the saints ; therefore they rejected indulgence and all the observances of devotion. They said that the word of God is entirely contained in the Scrip- tures, and that the church has not the power to change anything in them ; so the Scriptures should be published in the vulgar tongue, in order to be within reach of all believers. They give the communion of two kinds to the laity. They admit that in the mystery of the com- munion Christ is present in the bread and wine, but in a different manner from that taught by the Church of Rome. "Christ," said Luther, "is present in the sac- rament as fire is present in the red hot iron." How- THE REFORMATION 295 ever, they cannot agree among themselves as to the manner of interpreting the Lord's Supper. They still preserve confession, but in their system the penitent has no need of enumerating his sins, nor of re- ceiving absolution from the priest; the Lutheran confession is nothing more than a ceremony. They admit the greater part of the Catholic dogmas; the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Holy Spirit. In their churches they keep the altar, but they have done away with candles, incense and with all orna- ments. They do not abolish all hierarchial govern- ment; but they declare that the organization of the church is not of divine institution, it depends on the civil organization, and can be changed. They establish in the place of a bishop a superintendent superior to the pastors, but they give him almost no power. In fact, in the Lutheran countries, it is the prince who governs the church, appoints the ministers of public worship, and who regulates even the articles of faith, the hymn books and the catechisms. Anglicanism — Anglicanism is the form of protes- tantism adopted by the English government. Drawn in outline by Henry VIII., it has been definitively or- ganized by Parliament in the adoption of the "Thirty- nine Articles," which remain the foundation of the Anglican church. The doctrines are much like those of the Lutherans (except the manner of explaining the "Lord's Sup- per"). The principle of the Anglican doctrine is ex- pressed in article 5 : "The Holy Scriptures contain all that is necessary for salvation ; no one can be asked to 296 MODERN CIVILIZATION believe as an article of faith anything which cannot be read there." But the Anglican church differs from all the others by its worship and its organization. It has preserved a part of the Catholic liturgy, by trans- lating it into English ; for, says article 24, "it is entirely contrary to the word of God and to the custom of the primitive church to have a public prayer in the church, or to administer the sacraments in a tongue which the people cannot understand;" the liturgical collection, published in 1546, is called the "Book of Common Prayer." It has preserved the bishops and allowed them authority over the pastors and the believers, and given them power over matters pertaining to religion. "The church has the power to decide upon rites and ceremonies, it has authority in controversies concern- ing the faith." Only the bishops, in place of obeying the pope, are subject to the King of England, who is the head of the church. The king has abandoned to the clergy a part of his domains ; therefore the Angli- can church is the richest of all the Protestant churches, but it is strictly dependent upon the state. Calvinism. — Calvinism, established at first at Ge- neva, has been adopted by Holland, Scotland, the Protestants of France and later by a part of the English people and by some of the German princes. There is no single confession of faith; the church in each coimtry has drawn up its own confession ; that of the Calvinists of France is the confession of faith drawn up at La Rochelle. Calvinism is, of all the sects, the farthest removed from Catholicism. Its fundamental doctrine is predestination. All that hap- pens comes to pass solely by the will of God, he has THE REFORMATION 297 arranged the fate of men even before their birth; he has predestined some to be saved, others to be damned, and it does not depend on the man through his acts to change the decrees of God. God could justly con- demn all men, for all are corrupt through sin; but he has elected some, through His grace, and rejected others through His justice. God acts thus "for His glory," and we have only to venerate His w^ill. One thing only is important, therefore: that is, grace; he who has received that is sure of salvation. The Cal- vinists preserve only two sacraments, baptism and communion; furthermore the communion is for them nothing but a ceremony of commemoration, where the bread and the wine are only symbols of the body and blood of Christ. The Calvinist worship admits of no observances (neither the sign of the cross, nor fasting, nor absti- nence, nor confession), of no ornaments, of no sym- bolical ceremony, of nothing which speaks to the eye. It takes place in a bare edifice, and consists exclusively in the reading of the Bible, in sermons, prayers, and in hymns sung by the believers ; some churches will not even have an organ to accompany the singing. In the organization of the churches Calvinism has preserved nothing of the hierarchy, not even the power of the bishops. The churches have been constituted in the form that Calvin imagined to have been that of the primitive church. Each parish (whether it has one or several pastors) forms an independent church, it has a council (a consistory),^ composed of the pastor > The word consistory has lost its primitive seiise in the re- formed church of France and designates today what was formerly called the conference of the church. 298 MODERN CIVILIZATION and the elders; these elders are laymen, usually the principal men of the parish (sometimes chosen by the members). This council regulates all the affairs of the parish, may call before it the accused members, and order the pastor to reprimand them, or even to exclude them from the communion. As the elders are usually more than the pastors in the consistory, it is usually the laymen who direct the affairs of the church. For the affairs which interest all the churches of a country, general assemblies formed of delegates from all the churches, are held : there are regulated the questions of doctrine and of worship, there are condemned the pastors and the churches who seem to have abandoned the faith. All the churches are equal, without regard to the number of pastors or members; the smallest country church, with a single pastor, and several hun- dred members, has the same right to vote as has a city church composed of several thousand members. In the synod or assembly, as in the parish council, it is the laymen who take the lead. Therefore Calvinism has succeeded in the complete establishment of church government by the laity. This system has been called in Scotland and in Eng- land the Presbyterian method of government (that is, government by the elders). Presbyterianism is the English form of Calvinism; it has been adopted gen- erally by the inhabitants of Scotland, and by a great number of dissenters in England. The Independents. — Many English Protestants in the seventeenth century rejected not only the episcopal organization, but also the presbyterian system of gov- ernment, and formed new sects : the two principal ones THE REFORMATION 299 were the Independents and the Quakers. The Inde- pendents had almost the same doctrines as the Presby- terians. They were the most rigid and the most intol- erant of all the Protestants : they passed their time in reading the Scriptures or in prayer, and declared that they would accept nothing but the pure doctrine ; from this came the name Puritan under which they have become celebrated. They condemned all diversions, the dance, the theatre, all games at cards and the arts, as inventions of the devil; the Christian, they said, who desires to merit pardon, should not be occu- pied with anything but the service of God. That which separated them from the other Calvinists is that they admitted no sort of ecclesiastical govern- ment; they would have neither synod nor consistory, nor any regular office. The members gathered to- gether in order to celebrate their worship and to regu- late their affairs as they understood them; the pastor chosen by the members has no established authority over them. Each church is absolutely sovereign, and in the bosom of the church all members are equal; they themselves censure or excommunicate the mem- bers who are judged unworthy. Each member thus lives under the perpetual surveillance of all the others. The Quakers. — The Quakers will not even have pastors.^ "Religion," they say, "tends especially to withdraw man from the vain spirit of this world in order to lead him into a silent communion with God." Each one is for himself his own pastor ; for each mem- ber can be enlightened and sanctified directly by the • The Hicksite Quakers have pastors. — Ed. 300 MODERN CIVILIZATION spirit of God. In their meetings no one is designated beforehand for the purpose of directing the worship : whoever feels himself inspired by the spirit takes it upon himself to speak ; even the women are so inspired. Sometimes the person inspired falls into an ecstasy or is even attacked by convulsions; that is the reason why the enemies of the sect call them Quakers (trem- blers) ; they themselves have adopted the name of Friends. The Quakers take literally all the words which they find in the Scriptures. Christ said, "swear not at all" ; they refuse to take an oath, even in a court of justice, and would rather let themselves be condemned than to violate the word of God. The Scriptures forbid the shedding of blood ; and they refuse to become soldiers. The Scriptures do not speak of tithes ; and they refuse to pay them. While admitting the truth of the Scriptures, the Quakers take into consideration only their own inter- pretations and their own inspiration; and they arrive at a doctrine very different from the other Protestant doctrines. "Protestantism," they say, "is but a begin- ning of a reformation." It has come about that they admit no ceremony, not even baptism and the Lord's Supper, they reject the doctrine of original sin (which is the foundation of Protestantism), and they declare that the doctrine of predestination is a blasphemy, for all men can be saved, even without knowing Christ, on condition that they follow the light from within, which enlightens the whole human race. But this light is not the light of reason ; the Quakers condemn the philosophers and scorn reason. "It is the art of THE REFORMATION 801 rendering obscure that which is clear, it makes sceptics, and not believers." The Pietists. — The Quakers were, and have re- mained, a purely English sect; but the sect of the Pietists, which was formed in Germany about the end of the seventeenth century, starting out with very different principles, reached analogous conclusions. The Pietists said that sincere faith should be tested by works in imitation of the life of Christ. We ought then to do everything in honor of God, in hatred of the world. "The sincere Christian ought neither to dance, nor play cards, nor go to the theatre, nor even read the works of the ancient authors; for the disciples of Christ ought not to drink of the mirey waters of the pagans, but should draw the truth from the pure foun- tains of Israel." In hatred of the established church, which they had found cold and worldly, the Pietists sought to lead a "life in Christ" ; they kept themselves aloof, not associating with those who lived in the world of society, and forming separate communities, which gathered together in order to sing, pray and to listen to sermons for long hours at a time. They were called Peace Brotherhood; their centre was at Halle, in Saxony. From this sect have come the Moravians. Analogous sentiments gave rise to the sect of the Methodists or Wesleyans, founded about the year 1729 in England, by John Wesley. Latitudinarians — From the earliest times of the Reformation men were found who rejected, in the name of reason, the dogmas of the Christians. Two Italians, the Sozzini, uncle and nephew, taught that one should believe what is conformable to reason, for 302 MODERN CIVILIZATION "reason is the eye within us, which helps us to recog- nize the truth." In consequence they rejected all the mysteries of Christianity, the Trinity, the Incarnation, original sin, the Redemption, the sacraments. Perse- cuted by the Catholics in Italy and by the Protestants in Germany, they took refuge in Poland, where they founded the sect of the Socinians. This sect was equally detested by Protestants and by Catholics. Hol- land, which at the end of the seventeenth century had come to tolerate all the sects, was not yet willing to put up with the Socinians. "The God of the Socin- ians," said the Protestant pastor Juriers, "is the great- est of all monsters ; he is hardly of more value than the Jupiter of the pagans, or the gods of Epicurus." "Few people," says a writer of the seventeenth cen- tury, "dare to read the books of this sect ; to declare in favor of it is to lose honor, repose, property and life." The sect, exterminated in Poland, has vegetated ob- scurely in Transylvania; but its doctrines have been taken up in America by the Unitarians (who reject the Trinity) and are to-day the adopted belief of a body of Protestants. The sect of the Arminians, founded in Holland near the end of the sixteenth century, rejected predestina- tion and original sin. Calvin had said that all men are condemned through sin, and can only be saved by special grace vouchsafed to each one; the Arminians declared that all men, even the pagans, had received sufficient grace from God in order to save them from damnation ; it was enough for them to conform to natural law, that is, to be good, in order to work out their salvation. The Arminians quickly brought them- THE REFORMATION 303 selves to regard creeds and ceremonies as secondary, and to especially take account of actions. "Men must be judged according to what they do, not by what they believe; holiness consists above all in conducting oneself well.' That was putting morals in the place of religion. The synod of Dordrecht condemned ^ these doctrines, and the Dutch Calvinists condemned to death John Barneveldt. But Arminianism spread among the Protestants in England and in France. Then appeared in England the Latitudinarians, who wanted to broaden religion. They said that all men could be saved, for grace is extended to all men, it is universal ; hence the name Universalists is given to them. They had no common doctrine ; some accepted, others rejected the Trinity and the divinity of Christ; but they all agreed upon the doctrine that no one should be condemned on account of belief. "God," they said, "takes pleasure in the homage offered to him by people, each in his own way. Good conduct, follow- ing the light of reason, is what is agreeable to God. The Latitudinarians did not form a separate sect ; they were generally the most intelligent men of their time; they lived like Milton and Locke among the other Protestants : "They hide in the bosom of the church," said one of their enemies, "and will devour it unless some remedy be found to save it." In fact their doc- trines had finally, in the eighteenth century, penetrated into all the churches. A partisan of the old beliefs was ' Zwingle himself had been despised by the other reformers, because he had refused to condemn the pagans to eternal dam- nation. "I despair of his salvation," said Luther, "for he has become a pagan in putting the impious pagans among the souls of the blessed." 304 MODERN CIVILIZATION able to say : "Who is ignorant of the fact that the doc- trines of the Arminians and Latitudinarians have per- meated Christianity? All who pride themselves on having some intelligence are of the opinion that faith is a secondary matter and that piety and virtue are the essential conditions of salvation." CHAPTER XXI THE COUNTER REFORMATION THE REORGANIZATION OF CATHOLICISM The Reforms of the Papacy — The Catholic Chris- tians, who had refused to join in the revoU against the pope, and to abandon the traditions of the church, desired, however, that order should be established in the church. This reform could be accomplished only through the authority of a superior, through the pope or through a general council. Some Italian ecclesias- tics, well-educated and pious, gathered in Rome during the reign of Leo X., for the purpose of praying to- gether, and for mutual edification; thus was founded the "Oratory of the Divine Love." Many of them be- came cardinals (Contarini, Caraffa, Giberti), and aided Pope Paul III. in preparing a system of reform. The pope abolished the abuses which had stirred up the faithful against the court at Rome; he stopped the payment of money for pardons and the granting of dispensations which permitted disobedience to the laws of the church. He even tried to bring back into the fold the German Protestants, sending some cardinals to Ratisbon (1541), who discussed beliefs with the doctors of the Lutheran church. The two parties had agreed already on many points, but concerning the mass, the celibacy of the priests, original sin, penance 3°5 306 MODERN CIVILIZATION and the saints, they did not succeed in arriving at an understanding, and the reconcihation fell through. The surest means of weakening the Protestants was to destroy the abuses, which had driven the faithful from the church, and had been an important factor in the success of the reform movement. The bishops be- gan a surveillance of the conduct of the priests and of all the members of the religious orders, so that scandal might be prevented. Especially had the prelates been reproached for their luxurious and worldly manner of living; the pope himself set the example, and lived like a hermit. Then, as in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, the clergy made an effort to purify the church, infected by the spirit of the world. The Franciscan order was reformed under the name of Capuchins. Other orders were founded. The six- teenth century, which had been a period of reform, was also a century of saints; Saint Gaetan, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Francis Xavier, Saint John of God, Saint Ignatius, Saint Theresa, Saint Louis of Gonzaga, Saint Philip of Neri. The Jesuits. — As the Renaissance of the eleventh century had given rise to Cluny and Citeaux, and that of the thirteenth to the mendicant friars, so this renais- sance of piety produced a new religious order. This was the "Society of Jesus," founded by Ignatius Loyola, in order to combat the growing heresies of the Protestants. "The world," said the founder, "must be represented as two armies in battle array, one serving under God, the other under Satan." The Protestants are with Satan, the Society of Jesus is fighting in the army of God, for the greatest glory of THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 307 God.^ It is organized like the ancient mendicant or- ders, in convents, apportioned into provinces, each under a superior; the general governs the whole so- ciety, and is in the service of the pope. But the organi- zation is more severely ruled than are the other orders. The Jesuits, besides the three vows usually taken by the monks, take the vow of obedience to the pope. The great innovation, which has made the Jesuits so powerful, is the organization of a system of spiritual exercises, a method of training the soldier of Christ in the faith and in obedience. These exercises, "by which they learn how to vanquish self," have in view the detachment from the things of this world, for the novice who is about to enter the Society, and to pre- pare him to become a good soldier of the faith. The novice must meditate five hours a day, for some weeks, alone, in his cell, without seeing any one from the out- side, without speaking to any friar or monk, without reading or writing anything that does not relate to the meditations of the day. He must represent to himself in imagination the things pertaining to religion; "for example, a mountain on which are Jesus Christ and the Virgin, or again Christ with the saints and the angels in a large field near Jerusalem, and in front of them Lucifer, chief of the impious, or in another field near to Babylon placed upon a seat of fire and smoke, horri- ble to contemplate." When the novice comes to meditate on hell, "the first point is to contemplate through imagination the 1 Ad majorem Dei gloriam, is the device of the "Society of Jesus:" it is put in the form of the initials, A. M. D. G. at the head of every book written by a Jesuit. 308 MODERN CIVILIZATION vast conflagrations in hell, and the souls encompassed by real fire ; the second point is to hear, in imagination, the moans, sobs and groans ; the third is to breathe, in imagination, the smoke, the sulphur, the stench of a sink of rottenness; the fourth is to taste, in imagina- tion, the most bitter things; the fifth to touch those fires, contact with which consumes the souls of men." The novice must come to the point of having no will of his own. No one is admitted to the order until he has passed two years as a novice in some Jesuit convent or school, where he has gone through many tests of his faith; exercises in meditation, service in the hospitals, domes- tic service, travelling without money, teaching chil- dren, preaching and confessing. The Jesuits in the World.— In the book of the con- stitutions used for the regulation of the "Society of Jesus," it is declared : "that we intend, with the aid of divine grace, to labor not only for the salvation and perfection of the members of the Society, but to work with all our might for the salvation and perfection of our neighbor." Therefore the Jesuits, as well as the Franciscans and Dominicans, mingle with the world, but they do it more generally and more perfectly. They do not wear the garments of a monk, but those of the secular priests, and they employ every means of strengthening the faith and of weakening heresy. Some preach in order to convert the heretics and to confirm the wavering Christians. Others become con- fessors and directors of the conscience of the princes, for the purpose of persuading them to take measures favorable to Catholicism. Others go into lands which THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 309 are still pagan, to win over souls to the faith. Others work as historians or as philosophers, and write books to prove the superiority of the pope. Others are charged with the instruction of young people. The superiors assign to each one his task, and the Society has also in its service laymen, who are affiliated with the order, and work in its interest and under its direc- tion. The monks of the Middle Ages lived in the country; the Jesuits, on the contrary, are always set- tled in towns, because henceforth everything must be decided in the towns, and one must live in them in order to rule the world. Of all the means employed by the Jesuits in order to control the laity, the two most powerful were edu- cation and confession. In the towns where they had been able to establish themselves the Jesuits founded colleges, where they received the children of the nobles and of the rich bourgeoisie. These colleges which the Jesuits called the "fortresses of the faith," were to labor in training men of the world and Catholics. The pupils were accustomed to the exercises of devotion, especially "those which impiety had sought to de- stroy" (that is, which the Protestants had set aside), processions, pilgrimages, the worship of relics. But they were also taught politeness and the fine manners unknown in the schools of the Middle Ages; it was desired that they should be able to appear and speak with elegance. The Jesuits taught their pupils as if they were to be gentlemen, who would never have to work in order to gain their daily bread ; they were taught nothing but Latin and mathematics. The in- struction was modelled on the famous plan of study 310 MODERN CIVILIZATION (ratio studiorum), which for two centuries has pre- vailed in the education of youth. It was the Jesuits who thought of dividing pupils into classes, of giving prizes to the best pupils, of publishing special editions of the ancient authors for use in the classes (whence the name classics), of having Latin exercises, verses and orations written by the pupils. When Napoleon created the University of France, the Jesuit ^ system had been adopted in all the French colleges, although the purpose of the instruction was quite different; Latin and mathematics were at that time, and have since remained, the foundation of a course of study. The Jesuits, being greatly sought after for con- fessors, have brought to perfection the art of confes- sing, and of directing the conscience. They had to continually decide upon the confessions made by their penitents, so as to suit the penance to the enormity of the offence. They have to study the cases, which may be presented, investigate what actions must be regarded as sins and in what measure, decide whether a sin belongs to the species of venial (pardonable) sins or of mortal sins. For example, a judge has to decide in a suit where the two parties appear to him to have equally just claims ; one of the two parties gives him a sum of money, and the judge pronounces judgment in his favor; has the judge committed a sin? Those who studied cases of conscience were called casuists; the greater number were Spaniards. In this manner the science of casuistry was devised, for which the Jesuits have so often been upbraided by their enemeis. • The College Louis-le-Grand served as a model. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 311 The Jesuits were distinguished from the ancient orders of monks by their gentle and poHshed manners ; they made themselves loved especially in the upper classes ; and as they had the strongest organization and the most effective methods, they soon became, and have remained for three centuries, the most powerful religious order in the church, and the one most for- midable to the Protestants. The Council of Trent — From the moment that the Reformation broke out many Catholics demanded a general council, in order to reorganize the church and reform the abuses which had given the Protestants a motive for revoft. But the council could not be assem- bled as long as the pope was at war with Charles V., and the Reformation had time to win over all Germany before they came to terms. The council, which was finally convoked at Trent in the territory of the em- peror, was twice interrupted, and could not deliberate until twenty years had passed after the first convoca- tion. The assembly was formed of the bishops of four nations, Italy, Spain, Germany, France; England was not represented there. But the Italians alone were more numerous than all the others together; as they voted individually, and not by nationality, they, the Italians, formed the majority, and after long discus- sions they finally voted for all the resolutions demanded by the pope. The aim of the council was to state precisely the belief of the church, and to strengthen the discipline. The Emperor of Germany demanded the acceptance of some of the Protestant reforms, communion under two kinds, the marriage of priests, the suppression of 312 MODERN CIVILIZATION fasts, the hymns in German, the revision of the bre- viary. The council refused; it sought, not to bring back the Protestants, but to combat their errors. It maintained all that they had rejected, mass, justifica- tion by works, worship of the saints, fasts, sacra- ments, purgatory, indulgences; it condemned all their doctrines under the form of anathemas ; for example : "If some one should say that the canon of the mass contains error, and ought to be suppressed, let him be anathema." To summarize the Catholic faith and to set it in opposition to the Protestant heresy, the coun- cil drew up a catechism of questions and answers, which was to be taught to the believers. In order to strengthen the discipline the council ordered that the bishops should have the clergy of their parishes under surveillance, and that they should found seminaries (nurseries), where yoimg priests should be instructed, and to take care that the laymen themselves faithfully fulfilled their duty as Christians. The councils of the fifteenth century had declared all councils superior to the pope: the Council of Trent, on the contrary, before separating, asked the pope to ratify its decisions ; this was a recognition of the pope as superior to the council. The greater number of Catholic sovereigns, even the King of Spain, refused to accept all the canons of the council; some of the decisions were administered only in Italy and in Austria. The result of the council was the complete subjection of the church to the abso- lute authority of the pope. The Propaganda. — The Catholic church, having re- formed its morals, and strengthened its organization. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 313 labored from the end of the sixteenth century with the purpose of augmenting its numbers. The Society of Jesus directed the movement, and the greater num- ber of the missionaries were Jesuits. The Jesuits had to operate in two widely different fields, in pagan coun- tries and in Protestant countries. The great discoveries made by the Portuguese and the Spaniards had just revealed a great pagan world in America and in Asia. In America the missionaries, protected by the Spanish government, converted almost all the savages, and in Paraguay even organized them into a social body. In the Indies, Saint Francis Xavier founded on the Coromandel coast, near to the Portuguese colonies, one hundred and forty Christ- tian communities, and the college of the Jesuits at Goa, which continued making converts. The other religious orders had called to their side the parias, which had for a result the contemptuous treatment of the Chris- tian religion by the Hindus; the Jesuits, accustomed to work especially among the upper classes of society, turned to the Brahmins, and sought to convert them by discussions in regard to belief. In China and in Japan the missionaries succeeded in gaining the favor of the sovereigns by introducing themselves as mathe- maticians and physicians; they were allowed to settle there and found communities of Chinese Christians. The other religious orders, jealous of the Jesuits, suc- ceeded in having the pope take away their missions from them, of which they themselves took possession ; but they irritated the Chinese sovereigns, who began to persecute their Christian subjects and ended by exterminating them. 314 MODERN CIVILIZATION In the Protestant countries, where it was a question of bringing the heretics back to the CathoHc faith, missions were also organized : the friars went through the Protestant countries preaching and lecturing in order to persuade men to believe. As for the children, education was depended upon for their conversion ; in Germany, especially, the Protestant nobles put their children into the Jesuit colleges, where they found the best system of education. "It is almost incredible," said the Jesuit Ribadeneira, "how profitable education is to the Society of Jesus and to the Christian faith ; it keeps the Catholic children in the religion of their fathers and brings back to the church a great number of the children of heretical families, and these children in turn convert their parents." In the eighteenth century the pope founded at Rome a society for the purpose of directing the efforts of the missionaries. This was the Society of the Propa- ganda ( propagandas fidei, in order to propagate the faith). RELIGIOUS STRIFE Intolerance — In the Middle Ages all the Christians of the Occident were united in one and the same faith, and formed a single church, the church universal (Catholic) : it was compared to the "tunic without seam" of Christ. The Reformation tore this seamless tunic and divided the Christians into two hostile camps, the Catholics and the Protestants. Each of the two parties believed that it alone had the true religion, and claimed to support the laws of God against the party of the devil. The Catholics regarded the Protestants THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 315 as sacrilegious, because they rejected the ceremonies of the church; the Protestants called the Catholics idolaters, because they venerated pictures and relics. No one of the two parties would tolerate the other. As the church and state had always operated in com- mon, the people were accustomed to look upon religious affairs as being closely bound up with political affairs. They could not conceive that a society of men having different creeds could be formed, nor that a government could be disinterested concerning questions of religion. Neither the clergy nor the reformers, nor the princes believed that they had the right even to endure the practice of a false religion. Upon this point the Catho- lics were in perfect accord with the Protestants. "The interest of the state," wrote Philip II., the emperor, "is bound so closely to the maintenance of religion that neither the authority of the princes nor concord among the subjects can exist where there are two different religions. I would rather lose all my states, and even a hundred lives if I had them, than to accept the seigniory of heretics. It would be far better to have a ruined kingdom while preserving it intact for God than to have a kingdom intact for the benefit of the devil and the heretics, his votaries." The Sor- bonne, in censuring the doctrine of Luther, called it an "impious insolence, which must be vanquished by chains, and even by flames rather than by reason." Pope Pius V. said : "Do not spare the enemies of God, for they have never spared God. As there is but one sun, and one king, so there must be but one religion." Luther recommended the princes to use rigorous measures with the sectaries, "for the sects are an inspi- 316 MODERN CIVILIZATION ration of the devil." Theodore de Beze called liberty of conscience a "diabolical dogma," and Calvin, learn- ing of the flight of a theologian who thought other- virise than himself, wrote : "Knowing what manner of man he is, I would rather have wished that he were rotting in some ditch. . . . And I assure you that in order to do my duty it would have made no differ- ence to me if he had gone to the stake." Intolerance was still the general principle in the seventeenth cen- tury. "The Protestants," said Bossuet, "are in accord with us, that the Christian princes have the right to make use of the sword against their subjects, who are hostile to the church and to the holy doctrine." In this intolerant society the religious broils pro- duced immediately a general disturbance such as had never been seen in Europe. The quarrel on the sub- ject of the calendar marked the hatred of the two religions. Pope Gregory having rectified the calendar in 1582, the Protestant princes preferred to keep the old one, rather than to use the Gregorian calendar, because it came from the pope. This opposition lasted in England until 1752 and in Sweden until 1753- In all the countries of Europe each party sought the extermination of the other by force. Then began: persecutions in places where one of the religions was dominant, and where the other had only isolated parti- sans ; civil wars where the two parties were sufficiently numerous to have recourse to arms; then wars be- tween the Catholic and the Protestant countries. These disturbances lasted for more than a century, until the time when the dominant party in each country had THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 317 exterminated the other, or when it became resigned to endure its presence. Catholic Persecution — The church had already in the thirteenth century employed the tribunal of the Inquisition for the extermination of the heretics. This tribunal was composed of clergy who had the right to arrest, examine and condemn whoever had departed from the faith ; but in the sixteenth century the Inqui- sition was operative only in Spain. The pope re-estab- lished it in 1542 by the bull "Licet ab initio." He appointed some cardinals as inquisitor-commissioners of the Holy See, and gave them the right to delegate to certain ecclesiastics the power "to inquire concerning the faith of persons of any rank or condition, to punish the culprits, to confiscate their property and to extir- pate errors of doctrine by any means whatever." Soon one of the inquisitor-cardinals, Caraffa, became pope under the name of Paul IV. To organize the Inquisi- tion in any country the consent of the government was necessary; the pope negotiated with the princes in order to obtain it. He succeeded with almost all the governments of Italy. In Spain, where the Inqui- sition had been reorganized against the Moors and the Jews, it was turned against the Protestants, and at the auto da fes chiefly heretics ^ were burned. The other Catholic governments would not have a special tribunal ; but they did not intend to let the heretics go unpunished. They issued edicts to recall the fact that > The figures of the victims of the Inquisition, from the end of the fifteenth century down to 1808, have often been given, according to the report of Llorente, the secretary of the In- quisition: 30,000 burned alive, 290,000 condemned to be scourged or imprisoned. It is difficult to learn how far these figures are correct. 318 MODERN CIVILIZATION heresy was a capital crime, and to pronounce judgment against those of their subjects who were convicted of it. The ordinary tribunals were charged with the adjudication; they proceeded against the heretics as they did against thieves and assassins ; they imprisoned them, put them to torture and condemned them to death. According to the custom of the time, the pun- ishment consisted in burning them at the stake; some- times the hand was cut off, or the tongue cut out before the execution took place. The parliament at Aix (1545) even condemned to death all the Vaudois in Provence; it sent a regiment into the province, which destroyed their villages and massacred all that could be reached, men, women and children ; the sur- vivors were sent to the galleys. In the seventeenth century the procedure became less violent. They ceased burning the Protestants, and were content to drive them a\\ay and to confiscate their property. In Austria the commissioners, accompanied by muske- teers, went into the villages, drove away the pastors, blew up the temples of worship, and forced the inhab- itants to become Catholics or to emigrate. In France, Louis XIV. ordered the pastors to leave the kingdom, but the Protestants were obliged to remain. The pas- tors who tried to stay, or to return, and the laity, who sought to escape, were sent to the galleys. The persecution was brought to bear, not only upon individuals, but on writings. As the reform had been propagated by books, the Catholic governments re- solved upon a rigid surveillance. Commissions were instituted, which were charged with the examination of each work before it was allowed to be published. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 319 Every bookseller who published a book without having it first examined was to be punished with confiscation of goods, with the galleys or death. The same penal- ties were on all who sold heretical books throughout the country. An edict issued in Belgium (1531) de- clared that whoever caused the distribution of the works of Luther should "be so deeply marked with a red-hot iron, in the form of a cross, that it could not be effaced, and also would have an eye put out and a hand cut off." In order to make the condemned works known the pope organized at Rome a special congre- gation, called the "Index," which still exists; it is charged with publishing an index, that is, a list of the prohibited works which no Catholic was to read, and which were to be burned wherever they may be found. Thus came into existence the censorship, which has for a long time been an instrument of religious sur- veillance, and was to become later an instrument of political power. The Protestant Persecution In the countries where the Reformation was adopted by the government the articles of faith drawn up by the Protestants became the laws of the state. Whoever refused to obey them was prosecuted as a rebel. The Protestant princes and the councils of the free cities forbade the celebration of mass in their states, and expelled the priests and monks. In England all functionaries were obliged to swear that they recognized no other head of the church than the king himself ; the Catholics, who could not take the oath, were excluded from all offices, and were sometimes declared incapable of possessing any land in the country, of bequeathing their property or of 320 MODERN CIVILIZATION receiving any legacies. Often they were expelled, or their possessions confiscated. Under the pretext that to recognize the authority of the pope was to deny the supremacy of the king, the English tribunals often accused the Catholics of the crime of high treason, and condemned them to death. The modes of execu- tion differed ; the Catholic tribunals caused the heretics to be burned, the Protestant courts had the Catholics decapitated. Just as the church followed up the heretical books, so did the Protestants make war on the Catholic pictures. Not only did they carry them off from the churches which affected the Protestant worship, but they entered by force into the Catholic churches, destroyed there the crosses, the ornaments of the church, the pictures and statues of the Virgin and of the saints. The Calvinists were especially bitter in regard to these "signs of idolatry," as they called them. Those in Scotland systematically destroyed all the religious em- blems. In France and in Belgium bands went through the land for the purpose of ravaging the churches. In 1560 the Huguenot soldiers, masters of Orleans, had set about devastating the churches ; their chief, the Prince de Conde, wanted to arrest them; spying out a soldier who was occupied in beating down the statue of a saint, which was placed so high that it was difficult to reach, the prince aimed at him, and threatened to fire if he did not at once descend. "Monseigneur," said the Huguenot, "you can kill me if you desire, but first let me break down this idol." The Wars — In the countries where the population was divided between the Catholic church and Protes- THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 321 tantism, the two parties took arms, and civil war broke out. In Switzerland it was a war between the cantons (it began in the time of Zwingli). In Germany, where the first religious war took place, it was a struggle between the emperor and the princes. Each prince, each free city formed an independent state; twice, at very long intervals, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the emperor engaged in war in order to impose a regulation of religious affairs upon the princes and upon the free cities. The quarrel bore especially on the property of the ..church, which was considerable in Germany, and had been appropriated by the Protestant princes. Twice the emperor was the victor, and promulgated an edict which restored the property to the church (the Interim of Augsburg of 1547, the Edict of Restitution, 1629). Twice the Protestant princes aided by the Catholic King of France forced the emperor to recognize their independence (peace of Augsburg, 1556, peace of Westphalia, 1648). In the countries where the sover- eign was a Catholic, in France, in the Low Countries, in Scotland,^ the struggle took the form of a revolt of the subjects against the king. The war was short in Scotland; it lasted about twenty years in Holland; about forty in France; it was sustained by the nobles, who were accustomed to the use of arms, and by the bourgeois ; the peasants, who were used to obedience, took but little interest in it. They were very bloody wars, where the participants considered an act of cruelty to an adversary as most ' The Queen, Mary Stuart, was a Catholic ; the Regent favored the Protestants. 322 MODERN CIVILIZATION agreeable to God ; the prisoners were often treated as criminals. In France, IMontluc, a Catholic captain, boasted of having hung his prisoners to the trees along the roadside; Baron des Adrets, a Protestant captain, had his captives thrown from the top of a high tower. Often women and children were killed, as in the massa- cres of Vassy and of Saint Bartholomew. To sacrifice life in the assassination of the chief of the hostile party was regarded as a heroic act by the fanatics of both parties. So perished Francis of Guise, William the Silent and Henry III. They were ruinous wars, for fighting was going on everywhere at the same time. The land was full of chiefs with bands, who under the pretense of religion, scoured the country at the head of their companies of adventurers, living by pillage and by forced contribu- tions, arresting, ransoming, torturing the partisans of the other religion, and doing much more harm to the inhabitants than to the soldiers of the hostile party. There were few great battles ; none of the combatants could gather great armies. The war was especially a war of sieges, which consisted in taking the fortified towns. There was almost no large village in the sixteenth century which was not surrounded by walls and con- sidered a fortified town. These thousands of small places, incapable of sustaining a siege, were continu- ally taken and retaken, sometimes by force, sometimes by treachery, for there were always, in every place occupied by one of these parties, some of the inhabit- ants who were ready to have a band of the other party enter and take possession. When the place was taken THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 323 by assault, it was the custom to abandon it to the sol- diers, who sacked the dwellings and massacred the inhabitants, unless they preferred to make them pay a ransom. The war carried on in this way prevented the cultivation of the country and destroyed commerce ; it ruined both bourgeois and peasants. CHAPTER XXII PHILIP II., ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. PHILIP II. The Reformation in Europe The greater number of the princes who, in the sixteenth century, demanded a reform in the church, hoped that this reform would be accompHshed through a universal council. When they saw how difficult it was to get this council to- gether some of them decided that they would undertake the reform for their own benefit. For this reason many German princes became Lutherans, and after a strug- gle of twenty years they obliged the emperor to leave them to be masters of religious affairs in their own territories. The kings of Sweden and of Denmark did the same thing. So the Lutheran reform took the shape of a revolt against the pope. That was the first movement; it took place about 1 520-1 540, and only extended through the German countries. Then began a second movement; it started at Geneva, where Calvin had just established a new religious organization. This was the Calvinistic re- form. It was introduced into all the countries of Europe, in France, in England, in Scotland, in the Low Countries, in Holland, in Bohemia, in Poland. This time it was no longer the princes only, but it 324 PHILIP II., ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. 325 was the seigniors, the nobles, the bourgeois, who took part in it. In the countries where the sovereign was a Catholic, and wanted to maintain the church under the authority of the pope, the Calvinistic reform was regarded as a revolt against the pope and also against the sovereign. The Calvinists profited by the war between the two great Catholic sovereigns of Europe; their doctrines were scattered abroad, especially between the years 1555-1560, while the pope and the King of Spain were occupied in fighting each other. Contest with Protestantism In concluding the peace of Cateau-Cambresis, the kings of Spain and of France had formed the project of operating in common for the extirpation of heresy; Henry II. even offered to join in a campaign for the purpose of destroying Geneva, the centre of Calvanism. But he died sud- denly by an accident, and as his sons were too young to govern, the great lords disputed among themselves as to who should exercise the power in the name of the young king. The King of Spain, the emperor and the pope worked individually to re-establish order in the church ; the Council of Trent succeeded finally in bringing about this order, declared that all the Protestants were heretics, and took measures toward reorganizing the church in the countries which had remained faithful to the pope. The Catholics did not intend to give up the re-establishment of papal authority in the Protes- tant countries ; under the direction of the Jesuits, they began to assume the offensive and sought to convert or to exterminate the heretics. This work did not seem 326 MODERN CIVILIZATIOi\ impossible;' the Protestants were wholly masters only in the small kingdoms of Sweden and Denmark ; even in Germany and in Switzerland they formed but a minority. In all the other countries the sovereign and the largest part of the nation were opposed to them. More than that they were without an organiza- tion, incapable of agreeing among themselves for the purpose of resisting in common; the Lutherans re- garded the Calvinists as heretics and impious; they said that they preferred the Anti-Christ of Rome (the pope) to the Anti-Christ of Geneva (Calvin). The Protestants had neither money nor army, and did not even know what they wanted. The Catholics, "on the contrary, had a fixed purpose, a strong organization and a common head, the pope. During the last third of the sixteenth century it seemed as if they were about to succeed in crushing out their adversaries. Philip II — It was the head of the principal branch of the house of Austria, the King of Spain, Philip II., who conducted the war against Protestantism. He began in his kingdom of Spain; the Inquisition had discovered in two cities, Valladolid and Seville, nobles and ecclesiastics who had read the works of the reformers; Philip ordered them to be persecuted, and insisted on being present in person to witness their punishment. Then he wanted to extirpate the heretics in his provinces of the Low Countries, and he commanded that all who could be found should be condemned to death. Thanks to the proximity of Germany, there were already some Protestants in the towns of Belgium and Holland, especially among the bourgeois and the PHILIP II., ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. 327 artisans, who were working in wool. The magis- trates of the towns and the functionaries of the king, who dispensed justice, did not refuse to persecute the heretics, but it seemed to them entirely too severe that any one should be put to death for a mere matter of doctrine; they were content therefore to impose fines or imprisonment. Philip insisted, and obliged them to execute the heretics. At the same time he displeased the seigniors of the Low Countries by having strang- ers at the head of the government of the country, Granvelle, from Franche-Comte, and the Spaniards. It is well known how it ended in exciting the nobles to revolt and how he crushed out the rebellion by send- ing to the Low Countries the Duke of Alva with sev- eral regiments of that Spanish infantry which no one up to that time had been able to resist. Philip IL hoped to again become king of England, as he had been some time before, but his wife, Mary Tudor, Queen of England, who had died without heirs. Philip thought that he could induce Elizabeth to marry him, and to become a Catholic. When he was obliged to give up that idea, he tried to dethrone Elizabeth, and to put in her place the Queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart. At the same time he offered to lend his troops to Catherine de' Medici, whose daughter he had mar- ried, for the purpose of fighting the French Protes- tants. He continued his conflict with the Moslems in the Mediterranean, along the coast of Africa, at Malta, and as far as Greece; it was a Spanish fleet which won the victory of Lepanto (1571) over the Turkish fleet. During the early part of his reign he had labored 328 MODERN CIVILIZATIOX especially to defend himself against the revolts in the Low Countries and against the attacks of the Turks. From 1575 he assumed the offensive. He conquered Portugal (1580), and forced the Cortes of Aragon to give up its privileges; he w^as thus absolute master in the whole peninsula. The Low Countries had again rebelled; Dutch pirates, surnamed the "Beggars of the Sea," under the pretext of religion, captured the ships of Philip's sub- jects, and had taken by surprise the small town of Briel (1572). The towns in the North revolted; the Span- ish army sent to subdue them massacred all the inhab- itants of the towns which surrendered; Haarlem and Leyden preferred to resist to the end. The siege of these cities in mid-winter caused the death of a part of the Spanish soldiers, the others rebelled, and the king was obliged to authorize the States of the Low Countries to levy troops in order to fight its own sol- diers. All the provinces were then in arms, and their repre- sentatives formed a league for self-defence (1576). They recognized as sovereign, first, an archduke of Austria, then a brother of the King of France, and finally relapsed under the dominion of Philip H. The seven northern provinces only, less populous and less wealthy, remained independent, because Philip U. recalled his army to attack Henry IV. at the very mo- ment when it was on the point of putting them imder complete subjection. Philip was chiefly occupied with France and Eng- land. In France he had concluded a treaty with the chief of the League, Henry of Guise, and had furnished PHILIP II., ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. 329 him with money for the purpose of organizing a revolt against Henry III. In England he stirred up con- spiracies against Elizabeth, and had bought the fav- orites of the King of Scotland. It seemed as if he wrere going to become master of the two kingdoms. In 1 588 he collected in Spain an enormous fleet, the "Invincible Armada," equipped with the 'flower of his troops; another army was gathered in the Low Countries. These two armies were to pass over into England; Elizabeth had no regular army, and could not op- pose them. This expedition, whose success seemed assured, failed through the incapacity of the Spanish admiral. Soon after, the murder of Henry III. seemed to deliver the kingdom of France into the hands of Philip II. Henry IV. had been recognized only by a small part of the French people. The Leaguers occu- pied Paris and almost all of the provinces in the North. The Spanish army of the Low Countries attacked Henry IV., forced him to raise the siege of Paris, and went into quarters in the Bastille. The Estates General, which had been convoked at Paris by the Leaguers, held their deliberations under the direction of the three Spanish ambassadors; they recognized the Infanta Isabella, daughter of Philip II., as Queen of France, but they could not decide to accept for their king an Austrian archduke, whom Philip had chosen for the husband of his daughter. Therefore Philip was foiled in his plans against England and against France, and found himself at war with these two countries; the English fleet went as far as Cadiz, burning the Spanish ships everywhere 330 MODERN CIVILIZATION along the route; the French army subdued the Leaguers. Philip, being short of money, decided to make peace (1598). He died, leaving the kingdom of Spain com- pletely ruined. The provinces, united, continued the war, and forced his successor, Philip III., to recognize their independence (1609). However, the efforts of PhiUp H. had not been entirely useless. If he did not succeed in imposing upon all Christendom the Catholic religion, he at least contributed to the re-establishment of it throughout the greater part of Europe. ELIZABETH Protestantism in England — The England of the six- teenth century was very different from the England of our day: it had as yet neither industry nor com- merce; the population was composed of peasants and of country gentlemen. Excepting London and Bristol, there was no town of more than 10,000 souls. From the end of the fifteenth century the king had had abso- lute power over the nation and the clergy. The reli- gion of England then depended upon the decision of the king. Therefore England changed religion with every change of sovereign (four times in the period of thirty years). Henry VIII. , who had studied theology, had decided against the doctrines of Luther ; he even wrote a refu- tation of them; his prime minister, Wolsey, had been made a cardinal, and Henry VIII. was for some time one of the firmest upholders of the pope. He broke PHILIP II., ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. 331 with him on account of a private affair; he wanted to get rid of his wife, Catherine of Aragon, aunt of Charles V., and asked the pope to declare the marriage void. The pope, being an ally of Charles V., refused. Henry declared himself head of the English church, and obliged the bishops and the English doctors to take the "oath of supremacy," that is, to swear that they no longer recognized the pope as the supreme head of the church, but only the king. The clergy decided that the marriage of the king was void. Henry put away Catherine, and married one of the ladies-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn. However, he claimed that he was still a Catholic, and forbade that any- thing should be changed either in the creed or in the former organization of the church. He had the Lutherans burned for being heretics, and had the Catholics beheaded because they would not recognize him as the head of the church. But having broken away from the pope, it became more and more difficult for him not to turn to Protestantism; the Catholics could not obey him, his ministers were secretly Prot- estants, and he allowed his young son to be brought up in the new doctrines. He died, leaving three chil- dren: Edward, son of Jane Seymour, his third wife; Mary, daughter of his first wife, Catherine ; Elizabeth, daughter of his second wife, Anne. All three reigned successively. Edward VI., who succeeded his father, was a Cal- vinist. Being still quite young he was guided by his relatives ; the country became Protestant ; then a con- fession of faith was drawn up for the Church of Eng- land, and all the faithful were required to accept it; 332 MODERN CIVILIZATION there was also prepared a manual of the liturgy, which all ecclesiastics were to follow in the celebration of worship, the Book of Common Prayer. The confes- sion of faith and the liturgy were Calvinist. Edward VI. died, leaving no children. To assure the success of Protestantism he declared that the heir to the throne should not be either of his sisters, but his cousin, Jane Grey, whom he knew to be a Protes- tant. The English were too perfectly convinced of the rights to the throne claimed by the daughters of Henry VIII. to sustain the pretensions of the queen, Jane. The lords and soldiers proclaimed Mary, elder daugh- ter of Henry, Queen of England, and the whole coun- try recognized her as the rightful sovereign. Lady Jane was beheaded. Mary, daughter of a Spaniard, had been brought up a Catholic, she was wholly devoted to the pope, and labored for the re-establish- ment of Catholicism in England. She married her cousin, Philip II., recalled the exiled priests, and re- stored the bishops. She induced Parliament to again recognize the authority of the pope over the English Church, and to renew the laws which condemned the heretics to death. The persecution began again, and thousands of here- tics were burned. Mary would have liked to re-estab- lish the Catholic Church, such as it was before the reign of Henry VIII. ; she demanded that all the domains taken from the monks by Henry VIII. should be restored to them ; the English nobles who had become owners of these domains began to protest. However, no one dared oppose the queen, and England was about PHILIP II., ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. 333 to become Catholic once more, when Mary died, leav- ing no heirs (1558). The Reign of Elizabeth — There remained but one single person of the royal family, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII. and of Anne Boleyn. Since the death of her mother she had lived quite abandoned by her sister. Mary had refused to put her to death, and was preparing to make a declaration that Elizabeth was incapable of ever being entrusted with the crown. The Catholics said that she had no right to the throne, because the marriage of Henry VIII. with her mother was not valid. However, the Catholic king, Philip 11. , aided in having her proclaimed Queen of England ; he hoped to marry her, as he had married Mary, and for several years he continued to demand her hand without her daring absolutely to refuse it. Elizabeth did not like the Calvinist religion. She much preferred the ceremonies of the Catholic wor- ship and the government of the church by the bishops, which was rejected by the Calvinists. But she could not count upon the Catholic party for support, they did not regard her as the legitimate heir, and preferred the Queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart, the next heir to the throne after Elizabeth. On the contrary the Protestant party was devoted to her, for she alone could prevent England from passing under the dominion of Mary Stuart and of the Catholics. Elizabeth then decided, although against her will, to take sides with the Protestant party. But she did not want to accept Calvinism, and therefore organized a special form of Protestantism for England. The Anglican Church was a compromise between 334 MODERN CIVILIZATION Catholicism and Calvinism. The Confession of Faith as set forth in the "39 Articles," and declared obli- gatory on all the English people, is a summary of the Calvinistic doctrines. The Church of England rejects the authority of the pope, condemns the mass and celebrates worship in English, not in Latin. But it preserves the ceremonies of the Catholic worship, the chants, the altar, the surplice and the Catholic organi- zation of the church. The religious power rests with the bishops, named by the government. In reality the king is the head of the church. Eliza- beth had hoped that the Catholics and the Calvinists would accept the idea of the Anglican Church, and that all the English would have the same religion. She only succeeded in creating a third religion by the side of the two others ; there were henceforth three parties in England : the Catholic, the Calvinist or Presbyterian and the Anglican. As the Anglican religion was obli- gatory, the government persecuted both Calvinists and Catholics. The contest was especially bitter with the much more formidable Catholic party, for Elizabeth had refused to marry, and her death was all sufficient to bring into power Mary Stuart and the Catholics. This was the reason why the reign of Elizabeth was chiefly occupied with a contest between the two queens. Mary Stuart had on her side the English Catholics and the King of Spain ; they tried to get rid of Eliza- beth by assassination. Elizabeth and the Protestants sought to be freed from Mary Stuart by exciting the Scotch nobles to revolt ; when Mary came and sought refuge in England they had her imprisoned, and after a long captivity she was condemned and executed. PHILIP II., ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. 335 Her son James, the heir to the crowns of Scotland and England, after having tried to gain the support of the Catholics, decided to accept Protestantism. When Elizabeth died (1603) the Anglican Church was the established church. The reign of Elizabeth was a time of prosperity for England. Notwithstanding the persecutions and the plots, the country lived very nearly at peace with the rest of the world, while France, the Low Countries and Spain were ruined by war. The disasters in the neigh- boring countries enriched England, the weavers and the Protestant merchants from Belgium, persecuted by Philip II., came and settled in the English towns, bring- ing with them the art of manufacturing cloth, linen and lace. The Protestant sailors of England, enemies of the King of Spain, began to pillage the Spanish and Portuguese ships, and grew rich in carrying on the business of corsairs. The queen, through expediency, issued proclamations forbidding these acts of piracy, but she herself furnished money to the corsairs, and shared the profits with them. London became a great city of 300,000 inhabitants. The merchants united for the purpose of forming com- mercial companies. The English had up to that time been only a nation of peasants ; they began to form a class of industrials, of merchants and of sailors. And it was this class which defended England from the attacks of Philip II. and which has maintained the Protestant religion. With her sailors and the revenues from the imposts, Elizabeth was able to play the role of a powerful sovereign ; she was able to be the head of the Protes- 336 MODERN CIVILIZATION tant party in Europe, to save the Calvinists in Holland, Scotland and France. England imder her reign be- came the great Protestant power against which the power of Spain was shattered. HENRY IV. The Calvinist Party in France — The Protestant doc- trines penetrated slowly through France; during the whole reign of Francis I. there were only isolated bodies of Lutherans and Anabaptists in a few towns, more especially among the artisan classes. It was only during the war between Henry II. and Spain (begin- ning in the year 1555) that the Protestants became numerous, and they were chiefly Calvinists. At the time of the dispersion of the Council of Trent the pope, at war with the Catholic King of Spain, began to despair of ever seeing the establishment of order in the church and the reformation of the abuses that were so disastrous to the church. A party of educated men decided to break away from the church and to openly adopt Calvinism. From 1555 they were sufficiently numerous to hold religious assemblies in Paris; in 1559 there were about 250 communities in France, and the pastors and elders were called together in order to draw up a confession of faith. This growing church was almost crushed out by the king. Henry II. had made peace with Spain expressly for the purpose of stopping the progress of heresy ; he was beginning to exterminate the Protestants when he perished by an accident in a tournament. His son, Francis II., too young and too feeble to govern, left PHILIP IL, ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. 337 the power in the hands of the Duke and Cardinal de Guise, who were uncles of his wife, Mary Stuart. The Protestants, who would not have dared to resist the king in person, showed no scruples in opposing his uncles. At that time many malcontents were found among the nobles and among the soldiers, who were disbanded after the war; they joined the Calvinists. Thus was formed the Protestant party. It was com- posed chiefly of nobles, and had at its head a prince of the blood, Conde, and many great lords. Religious Wars — The Guises, following the policy of Henry II. , again began to persecute the Calvinists; they arrested their chief, the Prince de Conde, and had him condemned to death. The Protestant party was on the point of being destroyed when Francis II. died. Calvin looked upon this death as an act of Providence. The Protestant party was saved. Charles IX. was under age ; his mother Catherine de' Medici governed the state. She was the enemy of the Guises, and at first favored the Calvinists, whom she hoped to make use of in her schemes. She had no more religion than had Elizabeth of England, but her position was different; she had no interest in becom- ing a Protestant, for the great majority of the French were determined Catholics. The Council of Trent in arranging for a reform in the church (1562) had pleased the larger number of the disafifected. The progress of Calvinism was stopped at once; and the Protestants remained in a small minority. They were chiefly gentlemen and seigniors. The peasants, the bourgeois (save in a few southern towns), the clergy, the magistrates, the court, 338 MODERN CIVILIZATION remained Catholics. However, the Protestant party, composed of nobles accustomed to war, was too power- ful to be reduced otherwise than by force, and the government had neither money nor army. Catherine, by the advice of the Chancellor L'Hopital tried, while remaining a Catholic, to establish toleration for the Protestants. Edicts issued in the name of the king authorized the Protestant gentlemen to celebrate their worship in their own houses, and for the Protestants who were non-noble permission was granted to build temples in certain towns. But this system of toleration was opposed to the customs of the time ; the Catholics were not willing to see a worship publicly celebrated, which they regarded as pure sacrilege, the Protestants were not willing to remain the tolerated minority, and believed it to be their duty to destroy Catholicism, which they regarded as a system of idolatry. The government could not prevent a conflict between the partisans of the two religions. For more than thirty years (1562-1598) to be at war was the habitual condition of France. As the king was on the side of the Catholics, the war took the form of a revolt of the Protestants against the king. The Catholic party was the stronger ; but for a long time it was imperfectly organized ; the strength of the armies at that time was chiefly in the cavalry composed of the gentry, and the majority belonged to the Protes- tant party. But these horsemen were too undisciplined to make a genuine army. When the war was pro- longed the two parties were obliged to take into their service foreign soldiery ; the king sent for Swiss pike- PHILIP II., ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. 339 men and for Spanish foot soldiers; the Protestants called to their aid cavalry from Germany and from England. France became the battle-field of the two religions. The Protestants were conquered, and pushed back into the South. But the court was not resolved upon their extermination, and preferred to grant them peace ; this grant took the form of a royal edict which authorized the Protestants to practise their religion. In 1572 Catherine de' Medici tried to get rid of the Protestant party by a massacre (Saint Bartholomew) ; she did not succeed. Then was formed a party for the purpose of imposing peace and toleration ; this was the party of the politicians. The League. — Henry III. followed the system employed by his mother ; although he had approved of Saint Bartholomew and had fought the Protestants, he tried to institute toleration in order to put an end to the wars, which were weakening the authority of the king. Therefore he granted by an edict which had been demanded by the Protestant and political parties, liberty of worship to the Calvinist faith; but as the promise of the king had been violated so many times the chiefs of the Protestant party demanded a guaran- tee; Henry HI. provided them with places of refuge; these were fortified places or towns, where the chiefs of the party had the right to support a garrison, so as to be sure of finding refuge there in case the king should again begin the persecution of the Calvinists. The ardent Catholics, seeing that they could no longer count upon the king, formed an association with a view to the destruction of heresy; this was the 340 MODERN CIVILIZATION' League. It was started in Picardy (1576), but it had its centre in Paris. There were henceforth three parties : Protestants, Leaguers and Royalists. The Leaguers were soon masters of all the towns in the North and East of France; their chief was Henry of Guise ; they put themselves under the protection of the Catholic sovereigns, the King of Spain and the pope, who sent them money and troops. The Protestants were driven back to the southwest ; their centre was at la Rochelle ; and they had for their chief a prince of the blood, Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre. Henry was not a \ery good Protestant ; he had been a Catholic for two years, then for three months he remained without any religion, and even when he had become a Calvinist again it happened that one day, when he was eating some cherries during the sermon, he threw the stones at the head of the pastor ; he led the kind of life that was not at all pleasing to the faithful. The Protestants had for their allies the Queen of England and se\eral German princes. Be- tween these two parties Henry HI. sought to main- tain the Royalist party, which continually grew more feeble. A time came when the Leaguers were strong enough to constrain the king to join with them against the Protestants. Henry IIL had no children; his brother, the Duke of Anjou, who was to have been his suc- cessor, died in 1 585 ; his nearest relative proved to be the chief of the Protestant party, Henry of Navarre. The Catholics did not want to accept for their king one who had relapsed into heresy, whom the pope had just excommunicated; the Leaguers tried to force from PHILIP II., ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. 341 Henry III. the declaration that Henry of Navarre had forfeited his right to the throne. The Protestant party seemed ruined; the chiefs of the League took it upon themselves to seize the king, while Philip H. was send- ing his Armada against the Protestants in England. Then came the Day of the Barricades (May 9, 1588). But Henry HI. succeeded in escaping from Paris, and after the defeat of the Armada, he thought he could destroy the League by arranging the assas- sination of the chief, Henry of Guise. The Leaguers then openly revolted against the king, who had no other resource than to accept an alliance with Henry of Navarre and with his Protestant army. The Royal- ists and the Protestants, who had just been fighting each other, united against the Leaguers ; together they were besieging Paris, when Henry IIL was assas- sinated (1589). Accession of Henry IV. — Henry of Navarre became King of France under the name of Henry IV. But almost all of the Royalists abandoned him, and he found himself isolated with his small army in the midst of a country under the dominion of the Leaguers, who refused to recognize him as the king. He had the energy to sustain himself during a period of four years (1589-1593) in the North of France, in spite of the Leaguers of the Spanish army, which Philip II. had sent against him, feeling indeed that should he withdraw toward the South he would cease to be King of France. His army was composed of French Protes- tants, a few Royalists and some troops which his allies, the German princes and the Queen of England, had sent to him. 342 MODERN CIVILIZATION His adversaries could not agree upon the choice of a king to oppose him. The Leaguers wanted the young Duke of Guise, son of Henry; Philip II. claimed the crown for his daughter, the Infanta Isabella, grand- daughter of Henry II., but through the female line, which was to renounce the salic law. The Leaguers at first hoped that Philip II. would give his daughter in marriage to the Duke of Guise, but in the Estates of 1 593 his ambassadors, being urged to explain, declared that an Austrian archduke \\as to be the husband of the Infanta. Almost all of the Leaguers were un- willing to be governed by foreigners; the Spaniards, who were garrisoned in Paris, had made themselves hated on account of their insolence. The national sentiment was pronounced in favor of Henry IV., a French prince and a legitimate heir to the throne; his religion was the sole obstacle; he removed that by an abjuration. From that time there was no longer a place in France for a Catholic party ; the League was nothing but a faction hopeless of success; the chiefs of the League, one by one, submitted, or rather con- sented, for a money consideration, to recognize the king. Henry IV. with his little army would have had great difficulty in taking from them the great cities, which they occupied, and he preferred to pur- chase them. He could then fight the Spaniards and dri\e them from Picardy. Edict of Nantes — In becoming a Catholic, Henry IV. had ceased to be the head of the Protestant party. The Calvinists, much dissatisfied, withdrew into the South; they no longer had a chief, but they still had an army and the control of some fortified cities; the PHILIP II., ELIZABETH, HENRY IV. 343 assembly of their deputies sat permanently. Henry IV. ordered a dissolution, the assembly refused. Henry sent commissioners to them in order to agree on conditions of peace; finally peace was concluded under the form of an edict published at Nantes (1598). The Protestants obtained a complete liberty of con- science, that is to say, the right to profess their religion anywhere in France without danger of being perse- cuted. They obtained the right to practise their worship in all places where they ruled, and in all the rest of France they could have two temples in each bailiwick. They had the right to build their temples, to support schools, to choose schoolmasters, to hold religious assemblies (synods), to levy contributions on their co- religionists in order to provide for the expenses of their worship. The king declared that he would make no difference between them and the Catholics, that they could fill any situation (in fact, some of his ministers were Calvinists). In order to prevent them from being unjustly con- demned the king created in the three parlements in the South chambers where one half of the judges were Calvinists. These chambers were for the express pur- pose of adjudicating the affairs of the Protestants ; at Paris there was a chamber of the Edict, where some Calvinists had to have a seat. As a guarantee of his promises the king allowed the Protestants to keep their fortified places (about 200) for eight years. This term was several times extended. 344 MODERN CR^ILIZATION The Edict of Xantes ended the religious wars in France. No one of the two parties had been able to crush the other. The ad\antage remained with the Catholics; their religion was the religion of the king and of the kingdom; but they decided upon toleration for the Protestants, they accorded to them guaran- tees which no other religious minority in Europe had been able to obtain. CHAPTER XXIII ABSOLUTE MONARCHY RISE OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY Change in the Manners of the Kings. — From the six- teenth century the kings of France acted as if they were absolute sovereigns; they pretended to gov- ern alone without the aid of the people, and would not endure remonstrance any more than they would resistance to their power. Their policy was already that of a master, even in regard to the nobles, and yet their manner of living continued to be that of the other great seigniors. In France the king was only the "first gentleman of his realm." He continued to lead the wandering and adventurous life of the kings of the Middle Ages; he himself went to war ; sometimes like Francis I. and Henry IV., he led the charge at the head of his cavalry. He had no palace, but only chateaux: Fontainebleau, Amboise, Blois, the Louvre; he went frequently with an escort from one to the other. He lived familiarly in the midst of his friends and his family ; Henry IV. played with his children, an ambassador found him one day on all fours carrying one of his sons on his back. In the seventeenth century the manners of the princes changed entirely. They had a fixed residence, built for themselves a palace, ceased going to war and 345 346 MODERN CIVILIZATION adopted a ceremonial which kept their subjects at a distance. Louis XIIL and Richelieu — The royal authority had been very much weakened by the religious wars; the great lords especially had lost the habit of obedience to the king. It was necessary to reconstitute absolute power. Henry IV. began the work, and Richelieu completed it in the name of Louis XIII. The royal authority was not disputed, all the French recognized the right of the king to govern as a master. But the great lords and the princes of royal blood, if they accepted conditions and submitted to the orders given by the king in person, refused to obey his officials, and pretended that by \'irtue of their birth they had the right to form a government council. The Prince of Conde, aided by his friends, had made war on the regent during the minority of Louis XIIL, and had forced her to admit him to the Council. The seigniors were dangerous because of the armed gentry which they maintained in their dwellings and in the fortified chateaux, where they could sustain a siege, also because of the governorships, which the king had conferred upon them. Richelieu ordered the destruction of all the fortified chateaux (1626), and sent his engineers with the power to blow them up. He labored to diminish the power of the governors, sending out intendants to hold them in surveillance. The nobles conspired together to rid themselves of this importunate minister. Richelieu employed spies in order to obtain informa- tion of their plots. He had the seigniors who con- spired against him arrested and brought to judgment. ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 347 as if they had conspired against the king himself. Sometimes he allowed them to be judged by the or- dinary tribunals ; but when he feared lest Parlement would not condemn them to death he made up a special tribunal, picking out the judges to suit himself. For the trial of Marshal de Marillac he was not satisfied with the Parlement of Paris, and he formed a commission by taking some docile judges from the Parlement of Dijon, and for more security he com- pelled them to hold their sittings in his own house at Rueil. Marillac was accused of embezzling money. "In all of which I am guilty," said he; "there cannot be found enough for which to chastise a page." But he was an enemy of Richelieu, he was condemned to death. It was a commission drawn from the Parle- ment of Grenoble which condemned to death Cinq- Mars and de Thou. Richelieu found himself in a precarious situation ; he enjoyed absolute power, so perfectly did he have the confidence of the king; but a caprice of the mon- arch could suddenly take from him this power and place him at the mercy of his enemies. That is what he saw in 1630 at the time of the famous "Day of Dupes." Louis XIII., during an ill- ness, had finally yielded to the wearisome demands of his mother, and had promised her that he would send Richelieu away, but only after the end of the war. One day Maria de' Medici, eager to get rid of the cardinal, shut herself up with the king, and wanted to persuade him to give at once the order of dismissal. The car- dinal entered; at sight of him the queen grew angry, and demanded of the king "whether he preferred a 348 MODERN CIVILIZATION servant to his mother." Louis XIIL, without answer- ing, fled, and went off hunting to Versailles, taking with him Michel de Marillac. The court concluded from that movement, that the king had resolved to dismiss the cardinal ; immediately all the courtiers crowded to the palace of the Luxembourg, in order to pay court to Maria de' Medici, who had sent couriers in all directions to announce the "good news." Dur- ing this time Richelieu was arranging his establish- ment in order to flee to Havre and to leave France. But in the evening the king ordered him to come to Versailles, and retired with him into his cabinet. Im- mediately the courtiers left the queen mother, and returned to the home of the cardinal. Little by little, however, France grew accustomed to the respect of royal authority even in the person of the officials, and the minister of the king was obeyed as if he were the king himself. IMazarin, who gov- erned France for twenty years, was but an obscure Italian adventurer, who had come to France only four years before his elevation to the office of minister. Richelieu had caused his appointment as cardinal; and he ruled the kingdom as if he were master, because it pleased the regent to confide everything to him. In 1648 an insurrection broke out, which obliged the regent to send away the foreigner. But the Fronde proved that the Parlement of Paris, the princes and the Parisian people were not as strong as the king's minister. Absolute monarchy was fully established. ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 349 ABSOLUTE MONARCHY IN FRANCE Theory of Divine Right — Until the seventeenth cen- tury authority had been founded upon hardly anything more than upon custom and rehgion. It was said that the inhabitants of a kingdom ought to respect the king, and obey him, because his power came from God, which was the meaning of the formula, "by the grace of God," which all the Christian princes added to their title. Under Louis XIV. the formula- tion of the theory of the divine right of kings was com- pleted. It is set forth in the "Art of ruling a State, drawn from the Holy Scriptures," which Bossuet, pre- ceptor of the dauphin, wrote in order to make the future king acquainted with his rights and his duties. "God," said Bossuet, "is the true king. But He estab- lishes kings to be his ministers, and through them reigns over all peoples. Royal authority emanates from God ; therefore the person of the king is sacred." Doubtless the princes have many duties; the power which they have from God should only be employed for the good of the public, "for the prince is born for the public" ; they should make themselves loved, know the laws, study affairs and even expose their lives for the safety of their people. But all these duties do not bind them to their subjects. "Royal authority is absolute." The prince is not obliged to give an ac- count to any one for any of his commands. Not that the king always decides justly, but he is supposed to do so. Therefore princes must be obeyed as if they were justice itself. He who will not obey the prince 350 MODERN CIVILIZATION is not sent away to another tribunal, but is irremissibly condemned to death as an enemy to pubHc security and to human society. "One should always respect the princes, always serve them, whatever they may be, good or bad, for there is an inherent holiness in the roj^al character, and the prince does not lose through his crimes the quality of a seignior." In principle this system is very different from tyranny. "The absolute government is not an arbi- trary government," for the king has the duty of gov- erning according to the laws. But should it please him to follow his caprices only, "there is no power capable of controlling him" ; princes are gods, they "share in the divine independence." The result is that the king has duties, but his subjects have no rights, consequently no means of recalling to him his duties, and of obliging him to fulfill them. The subjects owe perfect obedience to the prince. To the violence of the princes they can only oppose respectful remonstrances, without mutiny, and without a murmur, and should offer prayers for their conversion. "So the king ought not to be a tyrant, but he can be one in perfect secur- ity." There is no co-active force against the prince. His power must be such that no one can hope to escape from it. The people must fear the prince, but the prince must fear only to do e\il. Louis XIV. formulated a similar theory in his in- structions to his grandson: "You must be convinced that the kings are absolute lords, and have naturally the full and entire disposal of all that they possess, as well through the church as through the secular powers. By the same right all that is found in the extent of ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 351 our states belongs to us." He does not admit that the nation has any rights. "The subjection, which puts the sovereign under the necessity of adopting the law of his people, is the greatest calamity that can fall on a man of our rank." It is doubtful whether Louis XIV. ever uttered that famous : "L'Etat c'est moi" (I am the State) ; but he expressed the thought which is contained in it : "The king," said he, "represents the entire nation ; the nation is not embodied, it exists en- tirely in the king." It is the same lesson that the tutor of the young Louis XV. gave to his pupil, when the multitude gathered under his windows, he said: "Sire all these people are yours." The Court — Louis XIV. was the first King of France who had a fixed place of residence. He did not like Paris, which reminded him of the disturbances of the Fronde. He chose a site at Versailles, several leagues from Paris, and where there was only a small hunting lodge. It was then a sterile plateau, without trees, and without water; the king, at a great outlay, built an immense palace in the style of the Italian palaces, planted a park and brought in water. The palace of Versailles was from that time down to 1789 the official dwelling of the King of France. About him was lodged an army of servitors, which was called the household of the king. This household was composed of domestics organized in distinct service under the orders of high stewards. There were three great dignitaries. The grand almoner had under him all the almoners, chaplains and musicians. The grand master of France had charge of "seven offices" : all the stewards, the chief pantler, the chief cup-bearer. 352 MODERN CIVILIZATIOX the chief can'er and all the sendees connected with the supplies of the table ; the officers of the kings buttery, the royal cooks, the common pantry, the common wine cellars, the common kitchen,^ the fruit-room, and the wood-house, where fuel was stored. The grand chamberlain had charge of the gentlemen of the bed- chamber, pages, ushers, valets, footmen, cloak-bearers, gun-bearers, barbers, upholsterers, clockmakers, wait- ers, doctors, officers of the wardrobe, the closet and the storeroom. The king had also a military household, which was quite an army: the life-guards, the royal body-guard, the provost guards, Swiss guards, gen- darmes, the light cavalry, musketeers, the regiment of French guards and the regiment of Swiss guards. Under the grand equerry of France was the whole personnel of the stables, squires, pages, lackeys, super- intendents of the stables ; under the grand master of the hounds and the grand falconer were all the depart- ments of the chase, the packs of dogs for hunting hare, or for deer, two casts of falcons for the kite, casts for the hare, for crows, ducks, magpies and herons. In the annual entitled the "Register of France," the list of all this personnel fills more than 500 pages. To this crowd of people whose functions kept them near the king is to be added all the lords coming to Versailles to visit His Majesty. The custom of gather- ing about the king had become quite general among the French nobility ; Louis XIV. made it almost an obliga- tion; he wanted the nobles of birth to live near him; each day he made his rounds to see if any one was ' 0£ these two ser^dces, one was especially for the king, the other for the people of his household. ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 353 missing, and was very much displeased with those who remained on their estates. Besides the nobles went willingly; to show oneself in the dwelling of the king was in itself an honor to which the bourgeois, even the very richest among them, could not pretend that he did not desire it. To be admitted to the court was in itself sufficient proof of noble birth. To stand "well at court" was the hope of sudden wealth, for the only career open to a gentleman was in the offices which the king bestowed, and the sole means of obtaining them was to go and demand them. We hear of old courtiers who spent forty-five years standing in the ante-chambers of the kings, princes and ministers. Gentlemen quickly accustomed themselves to look upon the court as the sole place of sojourn, proper for a man of noble birth. To be sent to one's estates was a disgrace. De Wardes, returning to court after a long exile, said to Louis XIV. : "Sire, when one is far away from Your Majesty, one is not only unfortunate, one is ridiculous." Therefore the palace was always full of gentlemen and ladies soliciting the favor of a presentation to the king. In order to be nearer to the court many families had magnificent mansions constructed beside the pal- ace of the king; Versailles became a city of 80,000 souls ; the gentlemen who remained "in the city," that is, in Paris, came continually to Versailles; the route between the two cities was always covered with car- riages. The ensemble of the household of the king and his visitors kept the old name of court; those who came 354 MODERN CIVILIZATION into the presence of the king "paid him court," and were called courtiers. The king lived in the midst of this multitude, and even when he went hunting or to his chateau of Saint Germain he was followed by a file of state carriages bearing his servitors and his courtiers. The Ceremonial — The court of France was no longer a disorderly crowd ; Louis XIV. had established the etiquette for it, he regulated the life of the king; he made a ceremony out of each act in his daily life. The levee of the king was divided into five acts. At the hour indicated the first "valet de chambre" ap- proached the bed of the king, then went and opened for the grooms of the chamber ; another went to inform the chief officer of the buttery and the cook, so that the breakfast could be brought in; another took pos- session of the door, and would not admit any one not privileged to enter. The persons admitted to see the king rise, entered in groups. The first was the "familiar entry," composed of the princes of the blood, physicians and surgeons. Then came the "grand en- try" : the grand chamberlain, the first gentleman of the bed-chamber, the grand master of the wardrobe, the barbers, the watch and the clock makers. The king being still in bed, the first "valet de chambre" pours some spirits of wine on the hands of His Majesty, holding under them a dish of silver gilt. Then the vase of holy water is presented to him, the king takes some of the water, makes the sign of the cross, and repeats several prayers. When the king gets out of bed he puts on his slippers. The grand chamberlain ptits on him his dressing-gown, the first valet de cha:rnbre hold- ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 355 ing it. The king then seats himself in his arm-chair. Then begins "the entry of the brevets," that is, the seigniors to whom the king has given the right to enter, the four secretaries, the readers, the intendants, the consulting physicians. The officers of the ward- robe draw near in order to dress the king. This is "the entry of the chamber"; with the ushers enter the fol- lowing: the valet de chambre, the cloak-bearers, gun- bearers; then the gentlemen of quality, cardinals, bishops, ambassadors, dukes, high officers; then the usher allows all the nobility and officers to enter in the order of precedence. During this time the king is dressed, the two pages take off his slippers. His Majesty takes off his dressing- gown, the grand master of the wardrobe pulls off the right sleeve of the royal nightgown and the first valet de chambre pulls off the left sleeve. A groom of the wardrobe brings the king's shirt. To present the shirt to the king is a signal honor, reserved for a prince of the blood, if there is one present, if not it is the duty of the grand chamberlain to present it. When the shirt is given to the king a valet de chambre holds the right sleeve and a valet of the wardrobe holds the left sleeve. The king rises from his seat, the mas- ter of the wardrobe assists him in raising his trunk- hose. Valets bring his sword, jacket and blue ribbon, the grand master of the wardrobe fastens the sword at his side, then puts on his jacket ; afterward one of the valets of the wardrobe presents his doublet. There is even a ceremonial for putting on the boots and for removing them, for the repasts, the audiences and for going to bed. "You will observe," it is said 356 MODERN CIVILIZATION in the "Register of France," "that it is only the king who has a candlestick with two sockets and two can- dles; the queen's candlesticks have only one socket and one candle." Louis XIV. also regulated the order in which each one should be presented, who should pass in first, or be put in the place of honor ; this is the order of precedence. He decided who had the right to be present at the repasts, at the spectacles, at all feasts or celebrations, who had the right to sit down in the presence of the king. The duchesses alone were seated on the tabourets or folding seats, the others remained standing. The "tabouret," the "divine tabouret," as Madame de Sevigne calls it, was the greatest honor that a lady could have at the court. There is a court costume. The simple and elegant dress of the time of Louis XIIL was replaced with garments of silk stuffs, trimmed with lace, on the sleeves, down the front and at the knees ; the hat with its long plumes was presened, but the enormous pow- dered peruke became under Louis XIV. an indispensa- ble part of the costume. The ladies confined the waist in a sort of stiff corset. That which is from the court became the fashion; the court costume was adopted in Paris, and they even tried to imitate it in the smaller towns. It is the court too which gives tone to conversation and to manners. In each town the seigniors, the functionaries, the rich bourgeois had their salons where they received the people of the city or town, and where all tried to take on the tone of the court. The life at court created the salon in France. ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 357 The Government. — The king wanted alone to exer- cise absolute authority. As he would not have been able to take upon himself alone the burden of all the affairs of such a great kingdom, he chose ministers to aid him in governing. These ministers bore differ- ent titles : chancellor, controller general, superintend- ent of buildings; several had only the ancient title of secretary of state. He divided the supervision of the affairs of state among them, without, however, making an exact division, as in the modern cabinet. For example, Colbert, who was controller of finances, also had charge of the marine service, of the commerce of the kingdom and of the department of justice; Louvois had at the same time charge of the war department, foreign affairs and of public build- ings. In order to regulate questions of general interest the ministers came together in council with the king. All business was brought to the cabinet of the king, and the ministers decided everything without control in a sovereign manner. They were, however, nothing but ordinary people, from the petty nobility or per- haps from the bourgeoisie. "It is not to my interest," said the king, "to take men of eminent rank. It must be made known to the public, from the very rank where I take them, that my design is not to share my author- ity with them." This is the reason why the Duke of Saint-Simon calls the reign of Louis XIV. "a long reign of vile bourgeoisie." It was the same during the whole of the eighteenth century. The Administration. — The king and the ministers could not enter into details of affairs in each province. They reserved for themselves the government, that is. 358 MODERN CIVILIZATION the decision in general and in important affairs; they left the administration, that is, the decision in local and in affairs of minor importance, to agents chosen by them. Into each province they sent an agent, whose business it was to inform the minsters of what was taking place, to receive their orders and to see that they were carried out. He was called the intendant of police, justice and finance (this title indicates that he united in one all these functions). Like the minis- ters, the intendants were only bourgeois or those who were ennobled by their office; they were taken from among the maitre des requetes, that is, from the magistrates, who presented the reports to the council. But, like the ministers, they were all-powerful in their provinces because they were the king's men. The minister was in regular correspondence with them, and had them send to him secret reports concerning the great personages and the magistrates of the country. He had confidence in them only, and supported them against the established powers, the parlements and the governors. As their functions were vast and not clearly defined, they constantly augmented their pow- ers. By the end of the seventeenth century they had full authority. The Scotchman, Law, who was minis- ter in 1718, said to d'Argenson: "Never would I have believed what I saw when I was controller of finance. You must know that this kingdom of France is gov- erned by thirty intendants. You have neither parle- ments nor estates, nor governors; there are thirty maitre des requetes, provincial clerks on whom depends the happiness or unhappiness of these provinces." In order to facilitate their labor the intendants had ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 359 under them sub-delegates, each one of whom admin- istered a subdivision of the province. The adminis- tration continued its encroachments, and grew more powerful ; one could not build a school-house, repair a church, make a road, without first obtaining permis- sion from the intendant. The Police — It was under Louis XIV. that the police began to be distinguished from the judiciary. In 1667 the king created the office of lieutenant of police, with the mission of preventing disorder in the streets of Paris, of taking charge of the streets and of watching over the supplies. The police, like the administration, quickly became a great power ; it had spies who penetrated into every house, and who knew the secrets of every family, agents, bailiff's followers, who arrested suspected par- ties. As the police acted in the name of public safety, it had the right to proceed rapidly, without formality and without control; a "lettre de cachet" was sufficient to cause the arrest and imprisonment in the Bastille of any one, whoever he might be. The police was the more feared, because it operated secretly; no one felt himself safe from attack. It was a maxim of all the absolute governments that no private individual had the right to publish anything until he was assured of the approbation of the govern- ment. A commission of censorship was charged with the examination of all printed matter, books or journals, and nothing that appeared dangerous was to be allowed to pass. Every book was to have in front a permit to print. If a book had appeared with- out authorization the author and the publisher were 360 MODERN CIVILIZATION prosecuted as criminals, sometimes they were sent to the galleys. In 1694 a journeyman printer and a binder's apprentice were hung on the Place de Greve for having printed and bound libels against the king and Madame de Maintenon. The Telemaque of Fene- lon, "the Dime royal" of Vauban were prohibited; copies of these works found at the bookshops were seized and burned. The Finances — The government had continued the ancient imposts, the villein tax, the aids, the gabelle to which Louis XIV. added the capitation tax and the land tax. Several provinces (Languedoc, Provence, Burgundy) had kept the right of voting their own im- posts ; the Estates of the province assembled each year and fixed the amount of the tax to be levied; these were called Estates-districts. But the greater number of the provinces of France had no longer any Estates. They were called Elective-districts, because the control of the finances in those districts was under the elected, that is, the chosen officers of the king. In these dis- tricts the king's council fixed the sum to be paid by the province, the intendant and those in charge of the moneys apportioned it among the towns and parishes. In each parish the administration chose collectors from among the richest citizens; these collectors were to have charge of the tax-levy. They decided what amount each inhabitant of the parish should pay, and they collected the money; they could employ force if necessary. As the villein tax was paid neither by the clergy nor by the nobles, nor by the functionaries, nor by the rich bourgeois it fell with all its weight upon the peasants. Generally it could be levied only by the ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 361 most rigorous measures : bailiffs were sent to the one who was in arrears, they were lodged in his house and ate at his expense until he had paid in full, or else they seized and sold his furniture. The collectors were themselves responsible for the impost; when they did not succeed in collecting it their own property was confiscated, and they were thrown into prison. The aids fell upon the wine, brandies, oils, cards and upon stamped paper. The government did not take the trouble to levy these taxes, it made an agreement with certain contractors, who were called farmers of the revenue, or financiers. In consideration of a fixed sum it sold to them the right to levy the tax for their own benefit. The farmers of the revenue united in companies, and had a numerous personnel of sub- altern agents in their service. They usually made enormous profits ; in the eighteenth century the wealth of these financiers had become proverbial. RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS Relgious Policy of Louis XIV — Louis XIV. intended to govern his subjects as an absolute master and to regulate their religion according to his will, just as he regulated the affairs of the state. He admitted no more liberty of conscience than he did political liberty, and he believed that he had the right to force his subjects to obey him in matters of faith. That was the doctrine of Bossuet: "Those who will not suffer that the king should use rigor in the matter of religion, because religion should be free, are living in ungodly error." 362 MODERN CIVILIZATION Louis XIV. considered himself as the head of the French Church; in virtue of this he wanted to com- mand the clergy and to dictate to them what their con- duct should be in regard to the pope. He regarded himself as the defender of the Catholic religion; for this reason he wanted to force his Protestant subjects to become Catholics, and to oblige his Catholic sub- jects to profess the same form of Catholicism as that held by the king. But while it was at that time easy to obtain obedience in secular affairs, because the subjects believed that they had no right to oppose the sovereign, it was some- times impossible to constrain the consciences of the believers, who feared that in obeying the king they might disobey God. Louis XIV. could govern des- potically without encountering any opposition; but when he tried to impose his will concerning questions of religion he met with a resistance that the might of his power could not break. He had to contend with three kinds of adversaries : the Protestants, the Jan- senists and the partisans of the papal power. Conflict with Protestantism After the time of Richelieu the Protestants had ceased to form a political party; but they still held the right to worship accord- ing to their own belief; the king had recognized this right, and had guaranteed it by an edict which con- firmed the Edict of Nantes. But the ecclesiastics who surrounded Louis XIV. did not regard as valid any promise made to heretics, and contrary to the interests of the church. The assembly of the French clergy, which met every five years in order to vote the tax imposed on the clergy, persuaded the king to take ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 363 measures against heresy. As the edict prevented the immediate suppression of Calvinism they tried at first by measures in detail to compel the conversion of the Calvinists. They adopted the plan of giving to all questions the interpretation most unfavorable to the Protestants. The Edict of Nantes had declared that the Calvinists had the right to establish schools for the children of their faith, but it did not say how many; the king decided that there could be only one school in a town, and only one instructor in that school. The edict had declared that the Calvinists had the right to bring up their children in their religion; but it did not set a limit to the age ; the king decided that the children should have the right to become Catholics at the age of seven, inasmuch as at that age "they are capable of reasoning and of choosing in a matter as important as that of their salvation." At the same time two methods of procedure were employed for the conversion of the Calvinists. Favors, places, honors, were given to those who became Catho- lics; even a conversion-fund was created, which was used to pay those who were converted. On the other hand, they made life unendurable for those who remained Protestants. One by one all professions by which they could earn their living were closed to them ; a Calvinist could not be a notary, attorney, prosecutor, doctor or book-merchant, and finally they were pre- vented from engaging in commercial or industrial pur- suits. The intendants had their orders to choose in preference the Calvinists when it was necessary to increase the taxes, or to quarter soldiers in lodgings. At last they sent to the homes of the Calvinists troops 364 MODERN CIVILIZATION of dragoons, to whom every excess was permitted; these were the dragonnades. At the same time a great number of temples were demolished under the pretext that they were unauthorized, and the Calvinists were forbidden to assemble in the open air for the purpose of worship. In order to escape these annoyances many Protes- tants were resigned to declare themselves Catholics; the intendants exaggerated the number of conversions, and Louis XIV., believing that there were almost no Protestants in France, revoked the Edict of Nantes (1685) because it was useless. He ordered all the pastors to leave the kingdom within fifteen days under pain of the galleys. Then the persecution changed in character. It was no longer a question of conversion ; all the Protestants were reputed to have passed over to Catholicism ; they were called the "new converts." But they refused to show any proof of Catholicism, to go to mass, to com- mune, to confess, to receive extreme unction; they continued to bring up their children in their religion, to hold their worship, to receive their pastors in secret, even to hold their assemblies in the open air in some out of the way place, "in the desert," as they were accustomed to say. Many sought to leave a kingdom where their conscience had no freedom, in order to emi- grate to Protestant lands. The government wanted to compel them to remain in France, to become good Catholics, to bring up their children in Catholicism. A guard was set at the frontiers; the Protestants, seek- ing to escape, were captured, the men were sent to the galleys, and the women to prison. Those who were ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 365 suspected were watched; the pastors who were seized were put to death ; the people who were present at any service were sent to the galleys. The children were taken from their parents, the daughters were placed in convents, and the sons were put in charge of Catholics whose duty it was to edu- cate them in the true faith. This persecution lasted thirty years (until the end of the reign of Louis XIV.), and it was several times renewed during the eighteenth century. The purpose of Louis XIV. was to extirpate Cal- vinism in France. He succeeded in part; in the North of France, where the government was more perfectly organized, no more Protestants remained. On the other hand many of them remained in the South, in Poitou, and in the Cevennes Mountains. But there were hardly any except peasant families among them. The nobles and the bourgeois were converted, or else they emigrated. The Protestant countries in the North, England, Holland, Prussia especially, gained through this emigration industrious and intelligent inhabitants. By it French Calvinism lost its most potent force, and has never recovered from the blow. In the seventeenth century the Calvinists formed one- fifteenth of the population of France ; the present pro- portion is one in sixty. The Jansenists — The Jansenists, disciples of Jan- senius. Bishop of Ypres in Belgium, had remained Catholic, but they had found themselves in opposition to the church ever since the Jesuits had obtained from the pope the condemnation of several propositions taken from the works of Jansenius. The sect was not 366 MODERN CIVILIZATION numerous. Its importance was due to the fact that it included in its membership many famiHes of magis- trates and several great writers, Pascal, Arnaud, Nicole, Racine. Louis XIV. had a Jesuit for his con- fessor ; he wanted to make the Jansenists sign a declara- tion that they acknowledged the falsity of their peculiar doctrines. The Jansenists refused ; the king employed force. There were two persecutions under his reign ; one from 1664- 1666, the other began in 1701. The first persecution closed the schools of the Jansenists, and dispersed the nuns in the convent of Port Royal de Paris ; it was stopped, thanks to Clement IX., who modified the declaration in such a way as to make it acceptable to the Jansenists. The second persecu- tion was more violent; the pope proclaimed the sup- pression of the Convent de Port Royal des Champs. In 1709 the lieutenant of police went and arrested the nuns, the convent was demolished, the church destroyed, the bones of dead Jansenists were exhumed and scattered abroad. Jansenism became an obscure sect, and slowly disappeared. The Conflict with the Court at Rome Louis XIV. wished to compel his subjects to return to the Catholic Church, but he himself claimed to control the French Church. He was often in conflict with the pope, and did not scruple to send troops to Avignon to occupy the papal domains, and to force the pope to yield. The chief difference began on the subject of the "regale." In nearly all the provinces of France the king had the -right to the revenue of a bishopric so long as the charge was vacant; this was called the "regale." Louis XIV. presumed to extend this right over four provinces in ABSOLUTE MONARCHY 367 the South, where none of his predecessors had ever had any such right. Two bishops refused, and were sustained by the pope; Louis XIV. seized their rev- enues. The pope excommunicated all ecclesiastics who would submit to the edict of the king (1681). Louis XIV., in order to intimidate the pope, then carried the quarrel into the field of doctrines. He con- vened the clergy of France in an assembly ruled by Bossuet, and demanded them to formulate the doc- trines of the Galilean Church; the prelates, who were dependent upon the government, adopted the proposi- tions, which were presented to them, and signed the Declaration of 1682. This manifesto sets forth in four articles the old theory sustained by the councils of the fifteenth century, and preserved since then by the French magistrates, under the name of the liberties of the Galilean Church. The oecumenical council is superior to the pope, the decisions of the pope are only irrevocable after they have been adopted by the coun- cil ; the pope has no power in temporal affairs, he has not the right to make any change in the usages of the Gallican Church. That means that the Church of France is perfectly free, so far as regards the pope; but it is subject to the king. The parlements, parti- sans of this doctrine, ordered the faculties of theology to transcribe this declaration upon their registers. The faculty of Paris (Sorbonne) protested; the parlement had the registers brought and ordered its own clerks to write off the declaration; the king sent away from Paris eight doctors who had attracted especial notice by their opposition. But the pope, Innocent XL, did not accept that 368 MODERN CIVILIZATION declaration, and punished those who had signed it by refusing to allow the investiture when the king ap- pointed the bishops. As no one could bear the title of bishop without having been invested by the pope, it became impossible to fill the office; at the death of Innocent XL, twenty-nine dioceses were vacant. Louis XIV., engaged in a war against the whole of Europe, decided to yield. The new pope. Innocent XII., granted the bulls of investiture, the king ceased to impose upon the faculties of theology the acceptance of the declaration of 1682. All the prelates who had signed it, by an official act, demanded pardon from the pope, declaring that they never had had any intention of "saying anything against the authority of the Roman pontiff, even in favor of the authority of the councils." CHAPTER XXIV INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS DIPLOMACY Balance of Power in Europe. — The emperor had for a long time claimed that his title made him superior to all the other sovereigns; Charles V. was even sus- pected of wishing to establish a "universal monarchy," and several of the powers had united to make war upon him. In the seventeenth century the diplomats ad- mitted that it was to the interest of the countries of Europe that no state should become sufficiently power- ful for the temptation to arise of wanting to have dominion over all the others. When a state already powerful sought aggrandizement all the others must feel themselves menaced, and must unite against it, so as to make a counterpoise; this was called the bal- ance of power in Europe. The balance of power had been threatened by the King of Spain, Philip II., about the end of the six- teenth century ; it was preserved by the alliance made between Henry IV., Elizabeth of England and the revolting subjects of Spain in Holland. Toward 1628 the balance of power was again destroyed when the two branches of the house of Austria, that is to say, the King of Spain and the emperor, united in a war against the Calvinists of Hol- 369 370 MODERN CIVILIZATION land and Germany. Thanks to the army commanded by Wallenstein, the emperor found himself in a posi- tion to lord it over all the German princes, and to impose on them the Edict of Restitution, which took away from them all the ecclesiastical domains, secular- ized since 1558. The equilibrium was restored through the efforts of the King of Sweden and the King of France. They, feeling themselves menaced by the conditions, made an alliance in order to oppose the growing power of the house of Austria, and succeeded, after they had rav- aged Germany, and forced upon the emperor the peace of Westphalia (1648). During all these wars the kings of England were too busy making war on their own subjects to play an important role in the afifairs of Europe. Treaties of Westphalia.— The Thirty Years' War having been general throughout Europe negotiations with all the great powers were necessary in order to put an end to the strife. It was agreed that a congress should assemble in two of the towns in West- phalia. At the congress each power would be repre- sented by plenipotentiaries charged with acting in the name of their governments. The congress met in 1643, ^"d continued for five years; kings of France, Spain and Sweden were not anxious to conclude a peace, and had given instructions to their envoys that the negotiations must be protracted. The treaties of Westphalia, drawn up by the con- gress, recognized Holland, Switzerland and the Ger- man princes as independent powers, having the right to declare war and to form alliances. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 371 The emperor gave up the government of Germany, each of the petty German princes became a sovereign, and had the right to regulate the rehgion of his own domain. The kings of France and Sweden had trans- ferred to themselves a portion of the territory of the empire, by way of compensation for the aid they had given against the emperor. The Negotiations — From the middle of the sixteenth century every government had its accredited ambassa- dor to the other governments ; by accredited we mean appointed oiScially to represent the government. The King of France, for example, had his ambassador to the King of Spain, to the King of Sweden, to the emperor, etc.; reciprocally these monarchs sent their envoys to the King of France. Henceforth the ambassador is a fixture, he remains in the country to which he is sent ; he is withdrawn only to give place to his successor. To recall an am- bassador without sending another in his place signifies that there is a desire to break off relations, and the recall is equivalent to a declaration of war. The ambassador represents the person of his sover- eign. The government to which he is sent treats him with much respect; he is invited to all the entertain- ments ; he has the precedence of the most distinguished persons in the country ; his house is held inviolate, the police have no right to enter it. In ordinary times the role of ambassador is confined to the transmission of the official communications of his government, to pre- sent felicitations or condolences on the part of his master and to be present at official ceremonies. There- fore care is taken that the choice of an ambassador 372 MODERN CIVILIZATION should be made from men of noble birth, accustomed to the manners and customs of court Hfe, capable of observing the etiquette and of brilliantly representing the sovereign. But the ambassador has also the negoti- ation of affairs which concern the two governments; he must persuade the government to which he is sent, to conclude an alliance with his own government or to make peace with a powerful friend or to break off an alliance with a powerful enemy. In order to pre- pare for the war with Holland the agents of Louis XIV. held negotiations with the powers, who were allies of Holland, until they succeeded in detaching almost all of them; the envoys of Holland in their turn passed years in forming a coalition against Louis XIV. When powers at war decide to make peace their diplomats go and confer in some town agreed upon, for the purpose of discussing the terms of peace ; often a neutral power offers to mediate, and its envoys unite with those of the belligerent powers to help them to come to an agreement. The diplomats depart with instructions from their governments, tracing out the line of conduct that they must follow, and they continue to receive their orders in special dispatches. But usually they have full powers; they can set the conditions of treaties; what- ever they may do is approved in advance ; their signa- ture pledges their government. Therefore only clever and trustworthy men are chosen. The diplomat should know how to conduct all negotiations in a way favor- able to his master, to beguile the diplomats with whom he treats in order to make them agree to the most advantageous conditions, all the w^hile holding him- INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 373 self on guard against seduction, dissimulating his intentions while inspiring confidence. He must al- ways be composed and must always observe the forms of polite society. Diplomacy became a doubly refined art in the eighteenth century, and the word diplomat was synonymous with "crafty dissembler." Diplomatic negotiations had at that time (the eigh- teenth century) a great range. Each country ^ was considered to be the domain of a reigning family, and the government followed the rules common to private ownership. At the death of a sovereign the State passed over to his heir, if need were it was divided among several heirs; if he had no direct heir the country fell to the share of some distant relative, usu- ally to some foreign prince, for the members of a reigning family could marry only into another royal family, consequently only outside of their native land. The sovereign also had the right to exchange or to give up his provinces, if he so wished. In any case the subjects were not consulted ; the country belonged to the sovereign, not to the inhabitants. It was the sovereigns who carried on negotiations, not the in- habitants. Until the nineteenth century treaties had been signed only in the name of the sovereigns; a treaty was concluded not between France and Prussia,^ but between the King of France and the King of Prussia. This system is called the family policy. It reduces affairs of the state to family affairs. Questions of > Except the republics of Switzerland, Holland, Venice, and Genoa. 2 This manner of speaking, which is usually employed in the manuals of history is very inexact. 374 MODERN CIVILIZATION marriage, of succession, of contracts, give rise to wars, which ravage Europe and serve as a foundation for treaties, which change the fate of nations. All these affairs are arranged in secret by the diplo- mats, they are decided without taking into account the interests of the people, but only according to the desires of the sovereign. The Operations of Diplomacy The ambassadors have an interest in knowing the secrets of the court where they reside ; it may be to keep their government informed of them, or it may be to aid their own move- ments in the negotiations. They pay spies to gather information, or even corrupt, by the payment of money, some servant or favorite of the prince. This has been the recognized usage. Already, during the negotia- tions in Westphalia, the court of Spain had bribed the son of Trautmansdorf, the plenipotentiary of the em- peror, by giving him 12,000 ecus, to induce him to tell what he knew, and Mazarin wrote to his envoys that "it would be a good thing to make him take a larger sum." Wicquefort, who, about the end of the seven- teenth century, wrote a "Treatise on the Duty of an Ambassador," thus entitled one of the chapters : "It is permissible for an ambassador to corrupt the ministers of the court where he resides." "The ambassador," he says then, "is an honorable spy; when he is winning over one of the ministers he remains within the limits of his function." Another means of gaining information was to in- tercept letters. In 1685 Louvois, learning that the courier of the emperor was coming back from Spain, wrote to the commandant at Strasburg: "His Majesty INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 375 deems it important that this post should be rifled and the dispatches seized. Therefore he commands that you place in some village close to the post-route, be- tween Saverne. and Strasburg, three or four trust- worthy men, who can rob the courier, take his dispatches; his person must be carefully examined, as well as under the saddle, to be done under pretext of searching for money." The letters in this case were carried off by pretended brigands. WAR Permanent Armies. — The princes preserved, until the seventeenth century, the custom of taking bands of mercenaries into their pay; they dealt directly with the colonel or the captain, who had taken it upon him- self to muster into service these men, and to support them for a certain amount of money. It was with these bands of mercenaries that the Thirty Years' War was carried on. The soldiers were for the most part not the subjects of the prince whom they served, and with- out any scruples they went over to the service of another, even to the enemy. The army was a set of adventurers from every country, Germans, Croatians, Irish Walloons, held in service through their pay only. The army had no uniform ; each soldier dressed as he pleased ; to be able to recognize each other in a battle it was necessary to adopt a common sign: at the battle of Breitenfeld the imperial army had a white ribbon on the arm and on the hat, the Swedes had a green branch. It was difficult to make these bands manoeuvre to- 376 MODERN CIVILIZATION gether, even to make them obey. In 1647 the Wey- marians in the pay of the King of France (for so were called the bands that had formerly served under Ber- nard of Saxe-Weimar) refused to start on the cam- paign ; Turenne ordered the French cavalry to charge on them. Often after a defeat the generals could not find their army ; the soldiers had disbanded. The gov- ernments felt the need of having more trustworthy armies, and adopted the custom of maintaining on a war footing, even in times of peace, the troops which they would need in case of war. In place of the bands which they used to hire only during a time of war, each state supported a permanent army, formed of regiments which kept their organization in time of peace. This army was the property of the prince; he not only appointed the colonel, but all the other officers ; the soldiers were enlisted especially for his service, and wore his uniform. (In France the uniform was introduced by Louvois. ) There was a regular organi- zation, each regiment was divided into a fixed number of companies, and each company had to have a fixed number of men. Recruitment — The army was composed of soldiers, who enlisted voluntarily, but as the armies increased in size and number recruiting became more diiificult. Each government had special officers, the recruiting- sergeants, who went about looking for vigorous young men, persuading them to enlist. These sergeants were sent into the towns of the country, and even to foreign countries, to the petty states where there were no stand- ing armies. In order to procure the men the recruiting officers often employed trickery ; they staid at a tavern. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 377 invited the young men to come and drink with them, boasted of the advantages of a soldier's profession, made them drunk, and forced them to accept a small sum of money, which was the earnest money of the bargain ; from the moment that a man had accepted the king's money he was enrolled and could not withdraw. The soldiers led a miserable life; they were badly lodged, badly fed and badly treated. The officers al- ways carried a cane in order to be able to strike a soldier during the drill; a good, sound beating was the usual punishment. The soldier did not receive sufficient pay to support himself and his family ; it was necessary for him to have some supplementary business in the town, such as laborer, street porter or messen- ger. There was, besides, no hope of advancement, for the officers were nobles or wealthy bourgeois ; the only prospect for an old or an infirm soldier was to beg for his daily bread; the government gave no retiring pension. The construction of the Invalides was re- garded as an act of generosity on the part of Louis XIV. With such a system many soldiers were tempted to desert. In Prussia, surveillance and severe punishment were necessary in order to keep them. As soon as a de- sertion was noted a cannon was fired, and guards met to go in pursuit. If the deserter was taken he was made to pass between two lines of soldiers, each one armed with a stick, with which they gave him a blow as he "passed; the blood flowed in streams and the skin fell in strips; at the third oiTence the deserter was hung. This profession was in little demand ; the army found its recruits chiefly among vagabonds ; it was a disgrace 378 MODERN CIVILIZATION to be a soldier ; sometimes a gentleman was condemned to serve as a soldier/ in punishment for a crime. Soon the governments could not find enough men to recruit the armies. From the end of the seventeenth century they tried to procure them, as they procured their money, by compulsory levies. The King of Sw^e- den, Gustavus Adolphus, had already imposed upon his subjects the obligation to serve in his army. Sev- eral states organized a compulsory service in the eigh- teenth century. Louis XIV., near the end of his reign, created a militia service, which was continued down to the Revolution; every year, in each parish, they drew lots as to who should go into the army, but it was only the poor people who drew ; the bourgeois, their domestics and the rich peasants were exempt. The Armament — At the time of the Thirty Years' War there still remained in the armies bodies of mounted men clothed in iron armor and carrying lances, just as in the Middle Ages; these men at arms had fought at Rocroy. But the cavalry was composed of an entirely new body; the cuirassiers, who still wore the cuirass ; the carbineers ; the dragoons, who were only foot soldiers mounted on horseback; the hussars, dressed in Turkish fashion and mounted on swift horses. Their arms were a sword and firearms, especially the long pistol, which has retained the name of cavalry pistol. After the Thirty Years' War the corps clothed in full armor were abandoned. Neither did the old infantry survive this war. The corps of foot soldiers ^\•as composed of two kinds of ' Such was still only a few years ago the organization, dis- cipline and kind of life in the armies of Russia. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 37& men, the pikemen, armed like the former lansquenet, with a long pike; the musketeers, armed with a sword and a musket. The very heavy musket was lighted with tinder; a forked rest was necessary to support it while one took aim, and a fuse had to be lighted in order to make it go off. After the musketeer had fired he was disarmed, and had to seek shelter behind the pikemen. During the Thirty Years' War they did away with the forked rest, and replaced the tinder with flint. Then was invented the bayonet, which fastened into the gun-barrel and served as a pike. The soldier armed with the gun and bayonet could fight at long range or in close quarters without being disarmed. The pikemen became useless, and were abandoned; all foot soldiers were armed in the same way. Picked soldiers carried grenades, which they threw, with the fuse lighted, into the ranks of the enemy ; these grena- diers marched with the infantry. The bayonet fast- ened inside of the gun-barrel had still the defect of taking too much time, and of preventing the bearer from shooting. At the battle of Killicrankie (1688), the English soldiers, after they had fired, were adjust- ing their bayonets when the Scotch Highlanders rushed upon them, and put them to rout before they had finished the operation. At the close of the seventeenth century this defect was remedied by the invention of a bayonet with a socket, which is fixed around the barrel of the gun. The cavalry, which had been more rapidly perfected, had the advantage during the whole of the seventeenth century; it was the cavalry which decided almost all 380 MODERN- CIVILIZATION the battles of the Thirty Years' War; again in 1692 at Steinkirk, it was the cavalr}- of the king's own which put the enemy to flight. It was then admitted that in the open country a corps of infantry could not withstand a body of cavalry. The Fortifications The artillery was changed also. In place of long, irregular pieces, they had cannon of a regular calibre, which threw iron balls. Toward the close of the seventeenth century howitzers and mor- tars for throwing bombs were invented. They began to support a special personnel of artillery to man these weapons ; in France this was the Royal Artillery regi- ment. In order to be able to resist the artillery the whole system of fortifications had to be changed. The high stone walls served as a target for the artillery, which demolished them piece by piece, and the higher they were the more easily was this done. The dominant for- tifications were given up in the seventeenth century, and an entirely opposite system was adopted. Instead of raising a rampart they tried to conceal it in such a manner that it would be difficult for the cannon balls to reach it. A low and thick rampart was built, and this was covered by a ridge of earth, on top of which was a layer of thick turf, the "scarp" or "escarp," into which the balls plunged without destroying anything. The rampart was surrovmded by a moat, but this moat is no longer beneath at the foot of the wall, as in the an- cient fortified chateaux ; it is on the same level, formed by one side of the rampart itself, and the bank or talus of the same height which forms the other side is called the "counterscarp," and slopes away so gently INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 381 to the surrounding country that it conceals the ram- part. The enemy perceived only the line of the coun- terscarp, and behind it the bank of earth which is the scarp, while they were themselves exposed to the shots from the cannon in the place sheltered by the talus. The towers at the corners of the town were also replaced by bastions, which were also concealed by earthworks. Such was the system of razed fortifica- tions which Vauban applied to all the fortified places in France. Against this new method of defence a new mode of attack was contrived. The besiegers dug long and deep ditches, the trenches, and made their advance under cover until near enough to make an assault on the rampart. During this time they threw bombs into the town, setting on fire the houses, arsenals and bar- racks, obliging the garrison to take refuge in the case- mates, which were under the rampart. The War. — The operations in the Thirty Years' War were all carried on with small armies; Tilly said that an army should not exceed 40,000 men. But a corps of 40,000 men represented more than 100,000 per- sons. As there were neither supply stores nor ambu- lances, the soldiers carried along with them women, children, servants and carts for their utensils and their booty. As soon as the governments took it upon them- selves to provide for the needs of soldiers on a cam- paign, the army train was reduced, but it has been impossible to suppress it entirely. The army did not go on a campaign until the spring months ; it was necessary to have green grain, and meadows with sufficient growth to feed the horses. 382 MODERN CIVILIZATION' The object of the campaign was usually to seize the fortified places ; the army went off to camp before a place, and opened trenches there. Almost all the wars of the reign of Louis XIV. were sieges; they did not give battle save for the relief of a besieged place, or to repulse the army sent to aid in its defence. Grand in\asions were rare ; almost always war was confined to frontier provinces. Therefore it was rarely decisive. Operations ceased at the end of autumn, the cam- paign ended, the soldiers constructed barracks, where they passed the winter; this was called going into winter quarters. A war rarely ended with one cam- paign; it usually lasted several years, until one of the powers ran short of money. The Rights of War. — The armies fought for the sake of the profession and without national hatred. The officers of one camp were treated by those of the others with the respect that gentlemen owe to each other ; often they were acquainted and visited each other. In times of peace the soldiers looked upon each other as brothers in arms, who were doing their duty in the service of different masters. The prisoners were honorably treated and were often released on parole. During the Thirty Years' War the old custom of de- manding a ransom for prisoners was still observed. In the eighteenth century the government took upon itself the burden of redeeming the prisoners or of exchanging them. But the usages of war were still severe for the people of the countries which were invaded. The right to defend their own village was not recognized, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 383 neither dare they commit any hostile act, for which the punishment was death. When Louis XIV. entered Holland he issued this proclamation : "Those who do not wish to submit, and who may attempt resistance to His Majesty's forces by cutting their dikes, will be punished with the utmost severity." At Crequy, Lou- vois wrote: "His Majesty, having considered that the places belonging to M. de Lorraine are inadequately provisioned, that they cannot hope for any succor and that, therefore, it is a temerity in those who are defend- ing them which merits exemplary punishment. His Majesty has resolved that all the knights, soldiers, militia and people of Lorraine who shall have con- tributed to the defence of the place, shall be sent to the galleys, unless they redeem themselves at lOO ecus each." In 1744 the Austrian generals who invaded Alsace declared that if the inhabitants resisted they would be hung, "after being forced to cut off their own noses and ears." It was admitted that when a place was taken by assault it belonged to the soldiers, and they were free to pillage and massacre at will. It was admitted that the enemy had the right to live at the expense of the country invaded. The government did not furnish food nor forage for its troops; they went foraging themselves, and made requisitions for their supplies. Often they levied contributions on the bourgeois ; this was a resource upon which they counted, and they called it the "necessaries of war." If the inhabitants did not deliever what was exacted from them their homes were burned over their heads. Marshal de Luxembourg wrote in 1672: "Never have attacks of 384 MODERN CIVILIZATION fever been as regular as our custom of burning out every two days those who are fools enough to oblige us to do it." That was almost a recognized law. When Turenne began to burn the villages of the Palatinate, this prince wrote to him : "It seems to me that in a strict sense we are only burning the places which refused to make the contributions demanded." Louvois went still farther; he ordered the devastation of all the states of the Elector Palatine, although Louis XIV. was not at war with him, so that the enemy could not find anything there to live upon. An order was given to the inhabitants to evacuate their houses ; 500,000 persons found themselves without resources; all the towns and villages were burned, the country was ravaged and the castle of Heidelberg was mined and blown up. In view of the principles avowed by the govern- ments it is easy to imagine what the soldiers were ac- customed to do. The undisciplined armies were full of marauders who scattered through the country for the purpose of pillage. Sometimes an example was made of them, a band was captured and they were hung on trees (it was a soldier's privilege to be hung only on a tree, or on a military gibbet). But rarely did the inhabitant succeed in obtaining justice; the chiefs did not like to take the part of a stranger against one of their own soldiers. The most popular generals, Wallenstein, Turenne (the father of his soldiers), were very hard on the people. The soldiers knew that they could indulge in every liberty. Not content with pillaging they often tortured simply for their own amusement. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 385 The bands in the Thirty Years' War surpassed the "Ecorcheurs" ; the Hungarians commanded by Dam- pierre cut off the hands of children and fastened them to their hats ; Mansf eld's soldiers threw the peasants into the fire; Tilly's troops cut off the breasts of the women, and the arms, legs, noses and ears of the Protestant pastors; the Croatians had their prisoners devoured by dogs, used them for targets or poured melted lead into their mouths. By the end of the war the greater number of the peasants were dead, from massacre or from suffering in the woods; all the villages had been burned; four- fifths of the population of Germany had perished. There were in 1618, before the war, as many inhabi- tants and as many head of cattle as there were in 1848 ; it took more than two centuries to repair the disasters of that war in Germany. Maritime Wars. — The marine service had made great progress. On the Mediterranean they still em- ployed galleys, swift-moving boats manned by oars- men. In the Middle Ages these oarsmen were chiefly Turkish slaves; in the seventeenth century they were chiefly convicts, and were fastened to their seats. The convict-keeper, whip in hand, watched over them. In order to make up the complement of the crews the government of Louis XIV. often sent to them smug- glers, contraband salt-makers, Protestants, and even beggars. More than once he advised the judges to condemn as many as possible to the galleys. On the ocean, where ships were moved by sails, the Dutch began to use vessels with several decks, square sails and armed with cannon. From the middle of 386 MODERN CIVILIZATION the seventeenth century France and England lia\e each supported a large war fleet. In order to recruit the crews Colbert had organized the maritime inscription in France, that is to say, an obligatory service for all sailors along the coast. England depended on volun- tary enlistment ; but when the number was not sufficient the ports were closed, and all the merchant-sailors that could be seized were forced to enlist; this was called pressing into service; this custom continued until the middle of the nineteenth century. Maritime war was not merely a conflict between two war fleets. It was admitted that a warship had the right to capture even the merchantmen of the hostile nation; the cargo was sold for the benefit of the state. The government authorized private individuals to arm and man a ship in order to pursue the merchantmen of the enemy; this was called "to fit out a privateer." The corsairs were given letters of marque or commis- sions, and could take prizes on their own account without being regarded as pirates. The profession of corsair was considered honorable ; one of the most celebrated French sailors, Jean Bart, had made his reputation when he was a corsair. The ship-owners of Dunkirk and Saint-Malo had grown rich by following the English ships and seizing them; in nine years the corsairs of Saint-Malo captured 260 war vessels and 3,480 merchantmen. CHAPTER XXV FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGH- TEENTH CENTURIES REVOLUTIONS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY The English Parliament — The kings of England had become accustomed to the idea that they ought not to levy taxes upon their subjects before they had obtained the consent of the Parliament. Parliament, from the end of the thirteenth century, had been divided into two chambers. The House of Lords, or Upper Chamber, vi^as composed of bishops and lords, to whom the king had sent a personal letter of convoca- tion; the king had the right to convene, and conse- quently to make any man whom he wished a member of the House of Lords, but whoever had sat as a lord had henceforth the right to be always called upon, and this right was transmitted from eldest son to eldest son. The House of Commons, or Lower Chamber, was composed of three kinds of deputies, some chosen by the assembled property owners of a county, others chosen by the citizens of the towns of the kingdom, or by the inhabitants of certain boroughs, where existed the right of election. The two chambers deliberated and voted separately, but both sat in the same city, usually at Westminster, where the king lived. 387 388 MODERX CIVILIZATION The session continued at the pleasure of the king; it is still a principle in England that the king has the right to dissolve Parliament. But the custom was to hold a session each year; only, during the civil wars, did five years pass by (1477-83) without the convoca- tion of the Parliament. In fact, the kings of England had almost as much power as the kings of France. In the sixteenth cen- tury they could change the religion of the country, reor- ganize the church, arrest, put to torture, and condemn to death thousands of persons, and the greatest per- sonages of the kingdom, without meeting resistance from any one. But when Henry VIII. decreed the levy of a tax without asking permission from Parlia- ment, the people rebelled and nearly massacred the commissioners ; the king withdrew his orders, par- doned the insurgents and publicly expressed his re- grets. Queen Elizabeth was obeyed during her whole reign, and yet in 1601, when the House of Commons protested against the monopolies, which she had just established, the queen thanked the Commons and re- voked the monopolies. Absolute Monarchy in England. — The family of the Tudors became extinct in 1603, and James Stuart, King of Scotland, became King of England. The Stuarts had the same ideas concerning royal authority as were held by the other princes of the seventeenth century. James wrote a book in which he set forth the theory of the divine right of kings. God himself, said he, has instituted the hereditary monarchy; He has charged the kings to govern in His place, and has given to them absolute power. The king can do what- FORMATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 389 ever he deems best, and even if he has made promises to his subjects, he has a perfect right not to keep these promises : for there can be no contract between a king and his subjects. This theory, which at that time was everywhere admitted in Europe, the Enghsh found quite opposed to their ancient customs, and to the Magna Charta. They acknowledged that they were bound to the king by their oath of fidehty, but they legarded the promises made by the king as a pledge to the nation. In spite of his theory, James was obliged to convene Parliament so that he could have some money, and Parliament never failed, before voting the tax, to make a remonstrance to the king because of his bad administration, and because he left so much power in the hands of his favorites. Charles I. tried to obtain, in the first place, subsidies from the Parliament. He decided even to accept the Petition of Rights, when he renewed the pledges of the Magna Charta; he promised not to levy any tax without the consent of Parliament, not to arrest any one without due process of law, not to establish mili- tary courts. But, as he did not want to receive any remonstrance, he resolved no longer to convoke the Parliament, but to govern after the manner of the absolute kings in the other countries. His favorite, Lord Strafford, who served him as councillor, wanted to do in England what Richelieu was at that moment doing in France: to habituate the nation to obey the ministers of the king, and to relieve the government from all control ; he called this project the "Thorough." The King of England had already great power. He 390 MODERN CIVILIZATION had at his disposal the revenue from three large do- mains. He filled all the offices at court, in the govern- ment, in the church, in the army, with his favorites. The judges appointed by him were quite disposed to pronounce against the adversaries of the royal power, and when he did not feel sure of the ordinary judges, he sent the case before two extraordinary tribunals, the Star Chamber, which adjudicated political crimes, the High Commission Court, which decided upon reli- gious offenses. The nation had no means of oppos- ing the royal power sa\e by remonstrance of the Parliament. But the Parliament could not assemble unless convoked by the king. Not to convoke it was thus all-sufficient. The king did not need the services of that body except for the purpose of making new laws, or of fixing an impost; the policy of Charles I. was to do without taxes, so that there should not be any excuse for the convocation of Parliament. The only thing that was wanting to complete the absolute authority of the king was a standing army, and his revenues were insufficient to support such an army. In order to procure money, he determined to re-estab- lish the old tax on vessels, which formerly had been levied on the coast counties in time of war. To restore it, without an act of Parliament, to exact it in time of peace, and throughout the country, was obviously contrary to the custom. A large land-owner, Hampden, dared to refuse, and let himself be prose- cuted. The judges decided that he was in the wrong, and the tax was levied without further resistance. The English were indignant with Charles I., and thought that in violating the custom he had failed in FORMATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 391 his duty. But they still respected their king too much to offer resistance by force. Charles troubled himself very little about the opinion of his subjects, and force alone could stop him. Religious Persecution — Perhaps the king would, notwithstanding the custom, have succeeded in making himself as absolute as Louis XIV. if he had only attacked the political rights of his subjects. But he found it more difficult to break up an opposition in regard to religion. The King of England was head of Church and State; the Anglican religion was oblig- atory on all the inhabitants of the kingdom ; he had to impose it on his subjects. Anglicanism was repugnant to many Englishmen ; the authority of the bishops and the existing ceremonies seemed to them only a residue of the Catholic religion, which they held in horror. A group of dissenters was formed, which separated from the official church. They were called Puritans, be- cause they desired to purify the religion, and under this name were gathered sects of varied faith (Presby- terians, Independents, Baptists, Quakers). The Angli- can church persecuted the dissenters ; it wanted to force them to follow the example of the other believ- ers, to make the sign of the cross, to kneel at com- munion, to use the liturgical prayer-book (the book of Common Prayer) ; but their consciences revolted at these customs, which they called marks of idolatry, and they would not go to church. The Puritan pastors disliked the ecclesiastical costume (the white surplice and the square caps). In 1570, a pastor said before his judges : "I can never consent to wear this surplice ; it is contrary to my conscience. I hope, with the aid 392 MODERN CIVILIZATION of God, that I shall never put on that sleeve, which is a mark of the beast." Those who refused through scruples of conscience to conform to Anglican usage were called non-conformists. They were removed from the civil offices, they were obliged to pay fines, and if they spoke against the established church they were condemned to prison or to the pillory, and had their ears and hands cut off. Dr. Leighton, after spending fifteen weeks in irons, in a dog-kennel, with- out bed or fire, was put into the pillory, during in- tensely cold weather, then whipped, branded on the forehead, his nose and ears cut off, and then he was shut up in the prison for criminals. The Puritans pardoned Queen Elizabeth for perse- cuting them, because she opposed the Catholics. A Puritan, who had just had his right hand cut off by the executioner, threw his hat in the air with the left hand, crying: "Long live the Queen!" Under Charles I. the persecution became more sys- tematic. Prynne, a reputable man, had his ears cut off and was exposed in the pillory for having written against the church. Archbishop Laud succeeded in crushing out the Puritans in England, so that in 1638 no one dared acknowledge himself a dissenter. Then he ordered the Scotch to adopt in their turn the Angli- can ritual. But while in England the Puritans were but a minority, in Scotland almost the whole nation was Presbyterian. A league was formed in order to repel, by force, the innovations which the king wanted to impose on Scotland. All the Scotch, through hor- ror of the Anglican church, declared solemnly for the Covenant, that is, for the agreement to maintain a FORMATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 393 national church. Thus began the revolt against the king. It was a religious uprising. The Revolution of 1648 — The king needed an army to conquer the rebellious Scotch; therefore he decided to demand money from the Parliament (1639). The Parliament, quite disposed to grant the demands of the king, displeased him by its remonstrances. He dissolved Parliament, but was soon obliged to con- voke another. This time there was a small majority of Presbyterians in the House of Commons; Charles I. strengthened the party of the opposition by going with an armed force into the chamber, in order to arrest some of the members. The people revolted ; the king left London, and placed himself at the head of an army so as to come back through force. All England was divided into two camps ; on the side of the king were the noblemen, the clergy, and almost all the inhabitants of the North and West ; on the side of Parliament were the Puritans, the citizens of the towns, the farmers, and the small proprietors (yeo- men) of the south-east. The royalists called them- selves "Cavaliers," and they called their adversaries the "Round-Heads" (because they wore the hair cut short). The Parliament had only a miserable army, composed of mercenaries; the Cavaliers, more accus- tomed to the use of arms, were at first victorious. It was again a religious movement that gave the victory to the Parliament ; Cromwell formed the Puri- tan yeomen into regiments of cavalry, which were able to resist the army of royalist nobles. The Parliament, victorious, took the government away from the king. But the real power lay in the Ppritap 394 MODERN CIVILIZATION armies, which had carried off the victory. It was the army which had the imprisoned king beheaded, pro- claimed the repubhc, and gave the absolute power to its chief, Oliver Cromwell. During thirteen years the army ruled England. In its turn the Anglican church was persecuted : the Puritans forbade the read- ing of the book of Common Prayer, even in the fam- ily, they expelled the bishops, and ordered the burning of all pictures whereon was found an image of Christ or of the Virgin. They also forbade all diversions, the May-poles were cut down, dancing was prohibited, the theatres were closed and the actors whipped. The Restoration — The army ruled only through force; almost all the inhabitants of the kingdom were opposed to it. When Cromwell died, the general of the Northern army. Monk, decided to call a conven- tion (1660) ; all the members were agreed upon the recall of the legitimate king, Charles II., son of Charles I. He was recalled without conditions. The Restora- tion set up once more the royal power, such as it was before the revolution. The Parliament, chosen in 1661, and which lasted eighteen years, was composed of members devoted to the king; it voted an impost and granted to Charles the right of levying it during the whole of his reign. The Anglican church, fright- ened by the troubles of the re\-olution, taught hence- forth that in no case had the subjects the right to resist the authority of the king. In the oath of allegiance, which all functionaries were obliged to take, the follow- ing was inserted : "I declare and believe that it is not legitimate, under any pretext, to take arms against the king." When Lord Russell was condemned to death FORMATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 395 for political causes, the ecclesiastics, who visited him in prison, declared to him that unless he accepted this doctrine they could not believe in his repentance. So the King of England found himself with the same power as formerly, and, more than that, he was pro- vided with a subsidy for life, and was sustained by the whole church. Formation of Political Parties. — Charles II. gov- erned during eighteen years without meeting any oppo- sition. But he was to have a successor in his brother, James II., who was a Catholic. The English people found themselves divided between their devotion to the royal family and their horror of Catholicism. Some of them wished to have James II. excluded from the succession, others wished to respect the normal order. The new Parliament, chosen in 1679, was divided among the two parties. Both received from their ad- versaries a sobriquet which they adopted : the partisans of the royal family were called "Tories," and their opponents were the "Whigs."^ In this manner came into existence the two parties into which the English Parliament has been divided for two centuries.^ The Whig party was, at first, in the minority, and Charles, supported by the Tories, was able, at the end of his reign, to no longer convene the Parliament, and ordered that the chiefs of the Whig party be con- demned to death. Restoration of Absolute Monarchy — At the death of Charles II. (1685), James II., who had remained a 1 The word Tories designated the Irish Catholic outlaws. The word Whigs, Scotch Puritan rebels. 2 Today the Tories are called the Conservatives, and the Whigs the Liberals. 396 MODERN CIVILIZATION Catholic, became king, without any opposition. He believed in the theory of the absolute power of mon- archs, and governed accordingly. It was evident, then, that the old institutions of England — the Parlia- ment and the jury — were not sufficient to protect the liberty of the English people against the authority of the king. James convoked Parliament, but his officers conducted the elections in such a manner that none but Tories were elected, and the Parliament so chosen began by granting to the king full power to levy an impost during his lifetime. James preserved the jury ; but the judges, who designated the jurors and con- trolled them, were functionaries named by the king, and they took care to choose jurors de\oted to his interests, who were ready to declare the accused guilty. The chief -justice, Jeffreys, became celebrated for the manner in which he conducted the cases brought before him; he swore at the witnesses, to prevent them from speaking, insulted the accused and threatened the jurors. A respectable woman, Alice Lisle, was brought before the jury, accused of having given shelter to two fugitives from the king's ven- geance. Jeffreys, after a speech full of insults to the Presbyterians, demanded that she be found guilty of high treason ; the jury could not decide upon it ; they deliberated for a long time; Jeffreys sent word to them that he was going to have them locked up for the night; the jury returned to the court-room and declared that the accusation was, in their opinion, not proven. Jeffreys sent them back, with violent denun- ciations ; finally the intimidated jurors decided to re- turn a verdict in the affirmative. The next morning FORMATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 397 Jeffreys condemned the accused to be burned alive that very evening. It was not the tyranny of James, but his measures in favor of the persecuted CathoHcs which induced them at last to oppose him. In the Declaration of Indulgence of 1687, James said that the conscience should be free, that persecutions are injurious to a nation; he repealed all laws punishing Catholics and dissenters, and authorized them to hold public wor- ship. The Tories, who were then dominant in Eng- land, were very much attached to the Anglican church ; they had been resigned to political oppression, but they did not want religious liberty. Revolution of 1688 — Many Englishmen, through hatred of Catholicism, went over to the Whig party, and the Tories themselves began to consider resistance as a legitimate act. But it was only with the help of foreigners that the English brought about the revo- lution. They waited until William, son-in-law of the king, had landed in England, bringing with him an army from Holland, and until James himself had taken flight. It required all the tact of William, and all the blunders of James, to make the revolution of 1688 possible. Apparently it only consisted in replacing one king with another. A new Parliament, where the Whigs were in the majority, declared that James had for- feited his right; the throne was vacant, and William and Mary should be King and Queen of England. No new law was established. But by this simple change in persons the Parliament had affirmed the right to try the king and to dispose of the crown. 398 MODERN CIVILIZATION As the rights of the nation did not seem sufficiently clear as set forth in the ancient charters, the Parlia- ment passed the Bill of Rights, which was submitted to the king for his approval. This bill enumerates all the illegal acts of James II., and adds : "The lords and the commons assembled having done what their an- cestors under similar circumstances had done before them, for the purpose of defending and affirming their ancient rights and liberties, do declare : "That the power to suspend the laws by royal authority, and without the consent of Parliament, is illegal. "That the levies of moneys for the use of the crown, under pretext of a prerogative, and without the assent of Parliament, are illegal. "That the subjects have the right to petition the crown for the redress of any grievance, and that the prosecution of such petitioners is illegal. "That to raise and support a permanent army in the kingdom, in time of peace, and without the con- sent of Parliament, is illegal. "That the election of members of Parliament ought to be free from interference. "That liberty of speech should not be restrained, nor put in question before any tribunal. "That excessive fines should not be imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. "That Parliament should frequently assemble, in order to redress all griefs, to amend, strengthen, and sanction the laws." In signing this declaration, the King of England promises to respect the rights therein recorded. This FORMATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 399 promise is not violated. King and subjects have be- come accustomed to regard their rights and duties in a totally different light. The king does not assume that he is invested with a power superior to the will of his people; he knows that he is bound to his sub- jects by a formal contract ; the subjects have promised to obey him only within the limits provided for in the contract, and just as long as he himself observes the terms of the contracts ; if he fails in that particular, the subjects are released from their promise; if he would constrain them, they have the right to resist him by force and to take another king. Parliament represents the nation, and speaks in its name ; the king must take into consideration the wishes of the Parliament. PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Formation of Parliamentary Government. — The kings who succeeded each other in England after the revolution of 1688 found themselves in a difficult posi- tion. The Stuarts, James II. and his descendants, continued to call themselves Kings of England ; a large party, composed chiefly of the Irish, the Scotch High- landers, and many English noblemen, still looked upon them as the only legitimate kings, and regarded the new kings as nothing but usurpers. Three times the Jacobites took arms to re-establish the Stuarts, 1689, 1715, 1745. The kings, in order to defend themselves against the attacks of the Jacobites, needed the sup- port of the Whigs, who controlled Parliament; but, unlike the Tories, the Whigs had no personal affec- 400 MODERN CIVILIZATION tion for the royal family ; they only supported the king on condition that he would let himself be guided by them. William, who wanted to pursue an independent policy, had a life-long struggle \\ith Parliament. The kings of the House of Hanover (the Georges) were not at all interested in the government of England ; they habitually permitted their ministers to govern for them. But, instead of being able to choose their ministers from their personal favorites, as did the other kings in Europe, they were obliged to take the most distinguished members of the party which held the reins of power in the Parliament. Henceforth, Parliament had not only the right to determine the imposts and to control the acts of the government, but it governed itself by means of the chiefs of the major- ity. Thus, in the eighteenth century, was constituted a parliamentary government, which consists in giving the power into the hands of a representative assembly. This system, which in the nineteenth century was to serve as a model for all the countries of Europe, had an unfortunate beginning, amid scenes of violence, intrigue and disorder in the finances; England was ruined by the war with Louis XIV., the public debt, which in 1688 amoimted to 600,000 pounds sterling, had increased to 16,000,000 in 1700, and to 41,000,000 in 1714. The Cabinet. — In the government by Parliament the king continued to appoint the high officers charged with guiding the affairs of State (Chancellor, Lord- treasurer, Lord of the Admiralty, President of the Council). But he did not select them one at a time and to suit himself ; the ministers had to agree among FORMATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 401 themselves concerning the pohcy to be followed, and also to agree with the majority in the Parliament. Beginning with 1695 it was the established custom to give the power, not to individual ministers, each a master in his own branch of the service, but to a body whose members would act in concert. This body keeps the name of the Council or the Cabinet, because it is understood to be the council gathered in the cabinet of the king. It is in reality an entirely new institution, which has appeared for the first time in the history of the world. It is founded upon certain habits which usage has gradually confirmed and which are regarded as the rules of parliamentary life : 1. The king alone names the ministers, but he yields to them the right to govern; this principle is thus formulated: the king reigns but he does not rule. 2. The king is no longer responsible for the gov- ernment, the ministers alone are responsible, and to Parliament only; it has the right to accuse and to condemn them. 3. Parliament alone has the right to make the laws and to vote the imposts. When a bill has been accepted by the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the king must give it his approval. 4. The Cabinet must be drawn from the majority in Parliament. When there is a question of forming a ministry, the king calls upon the leader of the majority, names him President of the Council, and charges him to himself select his colleagues. It is the president who, in Parliament, speaks in the name of the whole cabinet; the ministry is designated by the 402 MODERN CIVILIZATION name of the premier (the Walpole ministry, the Pitt ministry). 5. The ministry forms a constituted body; all meas- ures to be taken are discussed in the council, every measure taken by a minister must be tacitly approved by his colleagues. One minister alone cannot w^ith- draw ; if the Parliament votes against his measure, the whole cabinet must retire. 6. The ministers can remain in power only by con- sent of Parliament. If the majority in the House of Commons expresses by vote a want of confidence, the ministry must resign, and the king must call upon the leader of the opposition to form a new ministry. 7. If the political policy of the cabinet is not in accord with that of the majority, and if the ministry think that Parliament no longer represents the opinions of the electors, it has the power to ask that the sover- eign dissolve the Parliament, and order a new elec- tion. But if the new Parliament does not give its support to the existing ministry, then the latter must go out of power. The principle is that the ministry has the right of appeal to the electors, but that their will should be sovereign. Treaties of Utrecht — In the beginning of the seven- teenth century the House of Austria, which had threat- ened to dominate all Europe, had been stopped in its career by the governments of France and Sweden ; the treaties of Westphalia had sanctioned this defeat, and had fixed for some time the position of the different states of Europe. But the victorious King of France had felt that he was strong enough to dictate the laws for the other great powers. The "balance of power" FORMATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 403 was again threatened. In order to restore it, the Euro- pean States formed a coaHtion against Louis XIV. They began by being conquered ; their league lacked the support of the most important of the great powers, England. Her kings were in the pay of the French king. That is the reason why the decisive event of this time was the revolution of 1688, which gave the crown of England to William of Orange, the leader of the coalition. England had money and a fleet; it was England which rendered certain the victory of the allies. At first Louis XIV. offered a glorious re- sistance, but he had to exhaust the resources of his kingdom, and when the war began once more, over the Spanish succession, although he had Spain and Bavaria on his side, he was vanquished by the English general Marlborough, and could not prevent the inva- sion of France. He seemed to be ruined, when a change in the English ministry brought the Tories into power. They desired peace (1711), hoping thus to prepare the way for the restoration of the Stuarts. England having alone been strong enough to over- throw the King of France, was also strong enough to save him. It was English influence that assembled the congress at Utrecht, in order to prepare the terms of peace, and the same influence dictated the conditions of that peace, as had been done by France and Sweden in 1648. Louis XIV. was only too glad to accept the terms offered; they were much more favorable than he had hoped for. All the advantages of the treaties of Utrecht were on the side of England. The King of Spain was obliged to cede to England Gibraltar, Minorca, the privilege of importing negro slaves into 404 MODERN CIVILIZATION the Spanish colonies, and of sending there one ship^ each year. The King of France gave up all claims tp Newfoundland and Acadia, promised to expel the Pretender, and to destroy the port of Dunkirk, the rendezvous of the French corsairs. England obtained Montferrat, and Sicily for her ally, the Duke of Savoy. The other allies received almost nothing, and the enemies of the coalition were treated about as well as the allies. France preserved all that she had acquired under the reign of Louis XIV. Philip Y. remained King of Spain and kept all the Spanish colonies. The emperor, whom the English had up to that time recognized as the heir to all the possessions of Spain, had now to content himself with the possessions which were in Europe (Belgium, the Milanais, the kingdom of Naples and Sardinia). He had to return all that he had taken from the Duke of Bavaria, the ally of Louis XIV. Charles VI. was indignant and refused to ac- cede to the demands of the treaty. But, remaining alone with an empty treasury, he could not oppose the army of Louis XIV., which was invading Germany, and was ready to sign the peace of Rastadt (1714). The treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt organized Europe as the governments were to remain during the eighteenth century. The treaties of W^estphalia, in destroying the domination of the House of Austria, had put in its place that of the King of France. The treaties of Utrecht really established the balance of power in Europe. • This ship served as a warehouse, and made smuggling lawful. FORMATION OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 405 The Spanish succession, which was in dispute be- tween the famihes of Austria and France, had been divided between the two rivals. The family of France had the larger part, Spain and the colonies; but the succession was only of benefit to the royal family, not to France, since the two kingdoms could not be united. The House of Austria had only fragments of the heritage, but the countries which she had received became provinces of the Austrian State. There was no longer a preponderant power in Europe; there were three great powers, each suffi- ciently strong to preserve the equilibrium : England, strong through her wealth and her marine; France, whose growth had been arrested, but which had not been diminished ; Austria, which had become the largest state in Europe since she had reconquered Hungary and obtained the Spanish possessions in Italy and in the Low Countries. Germany and Italy re- mained divided ; the emperor had great power in those two countries, but he was restrained in Italy by the new king of Sardinia, and in Germany by the new king of Prussia. CHAPTER XXVI FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DEVELOPMEXT OF THE ^^^EALTH AND XATIOXAL FORCES IX FRAXCE Henry IV. and Sully. — France entered upon the seventeenth century exhausted by forty years of civil war. The people were ruined, the State had neither army nor money. How to reconstitute the wealth of the country, and the forces of the State, was the ques- tion ; and this was the work of the reign of Henry IV. Many councillors assisted the king in this work, of whom the most celebrated is Sully/ who took care to make himself known to posterity by the part which he took in the government. In order to have a powerful state there must be a rich people, who can systematic- ally furnish the king with the necessary resources. The people were impoverished, because the soldiers and the adventurers in the service of the parties had prevented the peasants from tilling their lands, the artisans from manufacturing their specialties, and the merchants from transporting their merchandise. By putting an end to the war, Henry IV. permitted the peasants, artisans and merchants to resume their ' Xear the close of his hfe (1635-^8) he wrote, or had one of his secretaries write Royal Economics, where he attributes to himself the greater part of the economic measures of Henry IV. ; it is certain that he has magnified his r61e, and credited himself with more influence than he really possessed. 406 PRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 407 labors. This was the greatest benefit brought by his reign; several years of peace were sufficient to restore prosperity to the country. Henry IV. aided still more directly by remitting the taxes which had been in arrears for some time, and in making high- ways which made possible the transportation of prod- uce. Sully, chief inspector of the highways in France, was here the principal auxiliary to the king. But it was not enough for Henry IV. to restore the country to the conditions existing before the war; he wanted to create new sources of wealth. France up to that time had been an agricultural country. It pro- duced chiefly wheat, wine, and cattle. Almost all the manufactured products came from foreign lands, silk stuffs were bought in Italy, cloth, laces and linens came from England and from Belgium. At this epoch, when the principal luxury was that of clothes, there went out of the country every year immense sums of money used for this purpose. Trade was largely carried on by foreign merchants. The king resolved to create French trade, and to establish French industries, so that the benefits, instead of pass- ing over to the foreigners, should remain in the country. This was the work of Henry IV. personally. Sully, brought up a country gentleman, did not comprehend the utility of industry and commerce. He said that manufactures, in drawing people to the towns, depopu- lated the country, and made a population unfit to fur- nish soldiers. He admitted no other sources of wealth save grain and cattle. "Tillage and pasturage are the two udders of the state." To prevent the impoverish- 408 MODERN CIVILIZATION ment of the country in the purchase of foreign textiles, he wanted to forbid all objects of luxury and to pro- hibit the exportation of gold and silver. Henry IV. preferred to follow the counsel of Olivier de Serres, and of de Laffemas. In order to found an industry in silk goods, he had mulberry trees planted in his gardens, and established shops for spinning and weaving, where Italian work- men taught the art to the French artisans ; he organ- ized a company, which alone had the right to trade in silk stuffs. The success was notable; throughout the south of France mulberry trees were planted, and the factories of Tours, Lyons, and Paris produced suffi- cient silk goods to supply the kingdom, and the French ceased to import these goods from Italy. In order to establish a system of commerce in France, Henry IV. asked advice of the merchants, whom he called together in an assembly under the title of High Chamber of Commerce. The French merchants had complained because they could not send their merchandise into Spain, on ac- count of the high tariff; they demanded the protection of the king against the English pirates, who took pos- session of the French ships. Henry IV. obliged the king of Spain to lower the tariffs, and the king of England to forbid piracy among his subjects. There was also a complaint that the government forbade the sale of grain outside of France; the king, without es- tablishing freedom of commerce in grains, permitted the exportation of French wheat, at least in the years of abundance. France, becoming richer, could furnish more aid to FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 409 the government. Henry IV. had found the treasury empty ; the taxes, instead of entering the coffers of the state, were stopped on the way, either by the gov- ernors of the provinces or by business men charged with receiving the taxes. For the last thirty years the government had been obhged to borrow in order to support the army. In 1559 the debt amounted to 350,000,000 Hvres.^ When peace was restored. Sully labored to set in order the finances. He made no change in the ancient system of taxation.^ The only improvement was the surveillance of the agents, whereby the government re- ceived all of the funds collected. He preserved the former division of the receipts into ordinary and extraordinary. The principal merit was the diminution of the expenses. He succeeded thus in reducing the debt from 350,000,000 to 228,000,000 livres and in accu- mulating the sum of 40,000,000 livres in silver. The government had saved on an average 13,000,000 livres per year. Henry IV. found the army disorganized from the result of the religious wars. There was no infantry except that formed by the foreign mercenaries, and the cavalry had become the principal arm of the ser- vice. Henry IV. wanted to give the infantry the most responsible role, and wished to recruit it from 'The pound was worth I fr. .95, but if one takes into ac- count the difference in the value of silver, it represented almost five francs. ^ Henry IV. had tried a new tax on sales of goods; the tariff popularly known as the "pancart," one sou per pound, that is, one-twentieth of the value of the object sold; this tax stirred up several riots and the king decided to abandon it. 410 MODERN' CIVILIZATION among the French. He formed regiments which bore the names of the provinces. His system consisted in supporting in times of peace only a small, well-paid army, and in accumulating his savings so that in case of war he could rapidly raise by a levy as many men as would be needed for ser\'ice. In 1610 he had an army of 100,000 men; no other European state could put a like force in the field. Richelieu — Henry IV. had amassed a treasure, and gathered an army, which made the King of France the most powerful sovereign in Europe. He was begin- ning to use them against the House of Austria when he was assassinated. His sudden death destroyed a part of his work; Maria de' Medici, who took the reins of government, did not care to play any role in the affairs of Europe, and could not maintain order even in the kingdom. The army of Henry IV. was dis- persed and became disorganized, the treasure was wasted, or divided among the lords, who threatened to rise in revolt. The government, depri\ed of every resource, became so feeble that the governors ceased to respect and obe)' the reigning authority; the em- peror and the King of Spain, relieved from their fears of the power of France, could begin a war against Holland and against the Protestant princes of Ger- many, a war whose success was assured. The army of Louis XIII. was not strong enough to take the town of Montpellier, which was defended by the citizens. But France was in a prosperous condition, and it was known that, if the finances were reorganized, the army would be in a position to sustain a contest with FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 411 the House of Austria. There was no lack of French- men, who desired that the king should become strong enough to take up the work of Henry IV., and it was one of the glories of Richelieu that he induced Louis XHI. to adopt this policy. As soon as he had become prime minister, Riche- lieu began to work for the submission of the country, and to organize a conflict with the House of Austria. He began with an underhand war, by furnishing sub- sidies to the enemies of the emperor and of the King of Spain. In 1635 he entered upon an open war by sending French armies into the Low Countries and over the Rhine. He was obliged to have money for the army, and in order to carry out his system of diplomacy. At first he had contemplated many reforms : to diminish the imports, to pay fixed amounts for all the offices, so that the venality in these posts could be suppressed. But these reforms could only be brought about through the employment of all the resources of the kingdom, and by the entire abandonment of the war. Richelieu never hesitated ; he believed that war was more nec- essary than the reforms. In the Assembly of the Notables, which he called together in 1626, he de- clared : "It is impossible to meddle with the expendi- tures necessary for the conservation of the State (the expenses of the army) ; merely to think of it would be a crime." "The expenses cannot be diminished ; noth- ing remains therefore but to increase the receipts, not through new burdens which the people cannot carry, but through innocent means." Consequently, Riche- lieu demanded that the Assembly should find some 412 MODERN CIVILIZATION mode of procedure, by which the equilibrium of the budget would be maintained, without increasing the taxes, and without selling the offices. Richelieu could not himself point out any method, and no one succeeded in finding one. However, as the expenditures were constantly increasing, it was neces- sary to increase the receipts. Then it was decided to return to the former methods : 1. The imports were increased so that the villein tax (taille) mounted from the sum of 30,000,000 livres in 1626, to 44,000,000 in 1643. The inhab- itants were obliged to lodge, feed, and equip the sol- diers. Then this obligation was replaced by a tax (called rations and subsistence), which amounted to 26,000,000 livres. Therefore in 1643 the people were supporting a burden of 70,000,000 livres (which would to-day correspond to about 400,000,000). Richelieu wanted to establish an indirect tax, one sou (cent) per livre, that is, one-twentieth on merchandise sold, but the proposition stirred up so many riots that he was obliged to renounce the project. 2. They began to create offices for the purpose of sale. In fifteen years the income from these sales amounted to 500,000,000 livres, and thousands of use- less functionaries were appointed, whom it was neces- sary to pay out of the public treasury. The people suffered cruelly from this system ; there- fore Richelieu became very unpopular during his life- time. He had concentrated all the resources of the country in order to make the State more powerful from without, sacrificing the internal prosperity to military strength. FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 413 The expenses of the war amounted in 1639 to 86,000,000 livres. But this effort was not lost. The money exacted from the people served to create arm- ies of more than 100,000 men. The emperor and the King of Spain were decisively vanquished, and France was for half a century the superior power of Europe. Colbert. — Mazarin completed the work of Richelieu, by forcing the emperor (1648) and the King of Spain (1659), to sue for peace. But he had too great a need of money to be able to diminish the taxes, or to restore the equilibrium of the budget. When Louis XIV. took the reins of the government (1661) he found the finances in confusion and the army dis- organized. It took several years to re-establish order in the kingdom. Colbert took charge of the finances, and Louvois began to reorganize the army. Like Henry IV. Colbert wanted to enrich the treas- ury by making the people richer. Son of a cloth merchant, he was especially interested in commerce and in industry, particularly in the manufacture of cloths. Although he may have taken some measures favorable to agriculture, he labored above all to increase the commerce of France, and to develop manufactures. He thought that the surest means of selling manufactured products was to gain the con- fidence of patrons by selling none but well-made goods. In order to give a good reputation to stuffs of French manufacture, he wished that all manufac- turers should be obliged to employ the same processes, so that a buyer might always be sure of what he was buying. He had regulations drawn up, which pre- scribed the manner of weaving and dyeing, the ma- 414 MODERN CIVILIZATION terials to be employed, the length and width of each piece of goods. The manufacturer had to submit to this regulation under penalty of fine or confiscation. Colbert even sent some to the pillory and had the stuffs burned. This was a suppression of freedom in industry. Colbert thought that private parties should not be depended upon for the founding of new industries in France; those who had available funds found it more advantageous to buy stocks or offices than to risk it in the establishment of a manufactory. To introduce an unknown industry into a country is a hazardous operation even in our day, and it was still more so at that time, when manufacturers were exposed to annoy- ances of every description. Colbert believed that the aid of the government was necessary in order to create industries. He used his influence, therefore, either by giving a premium to the private individuals who established factories, or by himself founding State manufactories. In this manner he succeeded in im- planting in many French towns several industries, which, until that time, had been found only in Italy or in Flanders ; the tapestry works at Beauvois and at Paris (the Gobelins), the glass works at Saint Gobain, the lace manufactures at Alengon and at Chantilly, furniture factories at Paris. The manufacturers of France could not make their products for as low a price as could their foreign rivals. Colbert tried to protect them, by forcing the foreigners to raise their prices. He increased the duties collected at the customs on the manufactured products (cloths, laces, arms, etc.), which entered France. So the sys- FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 416 tem of protection was organized, which was to allow French industries to reap a benefit from labor, even when done under much worse conditions than were common among the foreign manufacturers. Colbert believed (every one believed it at that time) that the wealth of a state depends on the quantity of gold and silver it possesses, and that commerce shquld be regulated in such a way as to attract the most silver possible to a country. "I believe," he wrote to the king, "that we shall easily remain in agreement on this principle, that it is only the abundance of money in a state which makes the difference in its grandeur, and in its power. Every year there go out of the kingdom products of its own growth, necessary for consumption abroad (wines, brandies, fruits, silks, notions, etc.), to the amount of from 12 to 1 8 millions livres. These are the mines of your kingdom. The people of Holland and other foreigners are making perpetual war on these mines. As we are able to retrench the gains of the Hollanders from the sub- jects of the king, and the consumption of the mer- chandise which they bring to us, by so much shall we augment the amount of ready money which must be brought into the kingdom." Therefore, Colbert endeavored to keep foreign merchandise away from France. In 1664 he had established a tariff of the amount of duties to be paid on all merchandise brought into France; the duties were still insignificant enough not to interfere with commerce. In 1668 he made out a new tariff, raising the duties so that it was almost impossible to import many kinds of merchan- dise. The Hollanders and the English retaliated by 416 MODERN CIVILIZATION forbidding the importation of brandies and French wines. Colbert wanted commerce to be carried on by French merchants and on French ships. He gave a premium to every ship-owner who bought a ship, or who had one built. To keep foreign ships away from France, he declared a tax of fifty sous per ton on every foreign ship that entered a French port. Colbert would have liked the French to have large colonies, where they could have gone for the products, which they were obliged to buy from Holland. He tried to establish them in the way which had so well succeeded with the people of Holland. He formed two large commercial companies, one for the East Indies, and the other for the West Indies (America). The company alone had the right to sell and buy in the colonies. The war with Holland ruined these companies. Colbert then tried the experiment of per- mitting all the French merchants to carry on commerce with the colonies. The administration of Colbert contributed to the increase of manufactures, and to the activity of com- merce in France. Colbert restored order to the finances, which the great expenditure by Richelieu and by Mazarin had disturbed. He was able to reduce the villein tax, which weighed especially on the peasantry, from 53,000,000 livres to 38,000,000. He diminished the State debt, and the debts of the cities. He abolished the customs in all the central provinces. However, he could not make any great reform in the organization of the imposts — and of the budget ; he FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 417 preserved the system as he had found it, and after his death, the abuses were renewed. Louis XIV. needed enormous sums for his buildings and for his wars. These sums the people could not furnish without be- coming bankrupt. • Louvois. — The French army had become disorgan- ized during the long wars, and through the Fronde. Letellier and his son Louvois, who succeeded each other as Secretaries of War, tried to restore the mili- tary strength. They made no great general reform. Their work consisted in a great number of rules in detail, made for the most part in the years 1668, 1675, 1680. In France, as in the other European countries, there was no really permanent army; a few regiments only remained under arms in time of peace. When war began, the government dealt with colonels or captains, who took it upon themselves to enroll, arm, equip, and support a regiment or a company. The State paid them the money which they were to give to their men. To raise a regiment was an operation similar to a labor contract. These army contractors were in- terested in spending as little as possible; they let the soldier live at the expense of the country where they were carrying on the war, and furnished him none of the things that he needed. In order to lessen the ex- pense they sought to have as few soldiers as possible under arms. To prevent the inspectors from discover- ing the fraud, the officers, on the days of review, were accustomed to fill up the regiments with people dressed as soldiers (and called passe-volants) . They profited by the first combat in which the regiment was 418 MODERN CIVILIZATION engaged, to count as dead all the soldiers that were lacking on the roster. Louvois wished to put the army under the direc- tion of the government. He could not suppress the custom of giving, and even of selling brevets; nor could he take away from the officers the right them- selves to form companies. But he exacted that every officer should do regular duty, and that every regiment should be complete. He also put war commissioners in surveillance of the army. He wished that the troops should always be in con- dition to take the field, and he organized a perfect system to supply them with provisions. "The admin- istration," said he, "cannot be improvised like a vic- tory." He established military stores in the frontier provinces, organized the forage routes through which the soldiers had to pass. At each stop they were lodged in the house of some inhabitant, who was to furnish them with fire, light, and a sum of five pounds a day for each company. This was called indemnity. He established hospitals and ambulances. He per- suaded the king to build the Hotel des Invalides for wounded and infirm soldiers. Louvois was before all things else an administrator. He was the creator of the commissary department. This regular system permitted a large army to be kept permanently on a war footing. Under the reign of Louis XIV. armies ready for action became much more numerous, and when peace was signed the regiments preserved their organizations. The ist of January, 1678, the military force numbered 219,- 000 foot, 47,000 cavalry, and 9,800 dragoons. FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 419 THE SCIENCES, LITERATURE, AND THE ARTS Progress of the Sciences — In all the countries of Europe, from the sixteenth century there have been men who were occupied in studying science. Some (Bacon, Descartes, Newton) were gentlemen, or rich bourgeois, who were able to devote their time to dis- interested study. The larger number were professors in some university, or the pensioners of some prince. Almost all were laymen ; since the end of the Mid- dle Ages the clergy have produced few distinguished savants. A revolution in the manner of comprehending sci- ence took place in the sixteenth century. In the Middle Ages science was sought for in the ancient books ; to be a savant, meant to know what the mas- ters had written : Galen in medicine, Aristotle in philosophy, Ptolemy in astronomy. From the time of the Renaissance people became gradually accustomed to the idea that the only way to know things was to look at them ; science was constituted through observa- tion of phenomena. The savants were less occupied with learning what had been said before them than with studying what they could see for themselves. They began to experiment, to weigh, to dissect, to collect. There were invented in Holland two kinds of instruments, which greatly increased the field of observation: the microscope (1590) showed objects too small, the telescope (1609) objects too far away to be seen with the naked eye. 420 MODERxM CIVILIZATION The savants constructed apparatus wliich permit the production of phenomena at the will of the operator, as well as to observe and measure them, the barometer, the thermometer, pneumatic machines, and electric machines. In order to communicate to each other the results of their labors, their observations, and their theories, books were no longer sufficient; societies of learned men were founded after the example of the literary academies of the Renaissance. These societies held their sittings regularly, and printed a detailed account of their discussions. The most celebrated are the Royal Society in London, founded in 1665; the Acad- emy of Sciences in Paris, founded under Louis XIV., and the Academy of Berlin, created by Frederic II. Astronomy. — Until the end of the Middle Ages the system of Ptolemy was taught in all the schools, Christian as well as Arab ; the earth is immovable in the centre of the universe, and the fixed stars and the se\-en planets, including the sun and moon, revolve around it. In the sixteenth century the great astrono- mers began to overthrow this theory. A Polish canon, Copernicus, discovered that the earth is itself a planet revolving around the sun; he died about 1543. His book on the "Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," which he had dedicated to the pope, appeared about the same time. A German professor, Kepler, formu- lated the laws which govern the planets in their move- ments around the sun. An Italian professor; Galileo, added that the earth made a revolution on itself once in twenty-four hours. Towards the end of the seven- teenth century, astronomy was definitely' constituted by FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 421 an Englishman, Newton, who gave out the formula of the gravitation of bodies. These new theories had at first an unfriendly re- ception; they contradicted the Ptolemaic system, hon- ored by tradition; they shocked common sense, which is rarely in accord with science. The professors in the universities refused to accept them. The Inquisi- tion forbade the teaching of the Copernican theory, and ordered that the passages in his books, where he advocated it, should be suppressed. It declared that the opinion of the daily revolution of the earth, and its revolution around the sun, was an absurd and heretical opinion (1616). Galileo was cited to appear before Cardinal Bellarmino, and was ordered to renounce his theory. He then wrote a book in the form of a dialogue between three interlocutors; one explained the theory of Ptolemy, another the doctrine of Coper- nicus, and the third summed up the debate, without making any decision. It was manifest that Galileo's preference was for the second theory. The Inquisi- tion had him appear at Rome, condemned him (1632) to retract his theories and as an expiation for his disobedience he was ordered to repeat the seven penitential psalms once a week for three years, and he was kept under strict surveillance until his death. Mathematics — Elementary arithmetic, geometry and algebra had been in use at the close of the Middle Ages. The mathematicians of the seventeenth cen- tury, Viete, Descartes, Leibnitz created analytical geometry, differential and integral calculus (the higher mathematics). 422 MODERN CIVILIZATION" Physics. — The physics of the Middle Ages consisted in hardly anything but several propositions of Archi- medes. They were entangled with the theories of Aristotle, which were rehearsed, instead of studied. The Italian savants began the formulation of the laws of physics. Galileo discovered the law which governs the fall of a body; he was at that time a professor at the University of Pisa, and was obliged to leave the town because he had demonstrated that bodies fell in a manner quite otherwise from what Aristotle had said. Torricelli invented the barometer. Until that time it was believed that water rose in pumps, be- cause "nature abhors a vacuum." Torricelli discov- ered the pressure of air. The theory of Xewton on the law of gravitation perfected the formulation of the science of gravity. Anatomy and Physiology — Early in the sixteenth century some scientists had practised the dissection of the human body, and had created the science of human anatomy. The founder was a Belgian, Vesalius, phy- sician to the King of Spain, author of a book on the "Construction of the Human Body," which appeared in 1543. The Spanish Inquisition condemned Vesalius to death, and commuted the penalty to a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre; he perished in a shipwreck while on his return from the Holy Land. During the century some Italian savants completed the description of the human body. The more difficult study of the functions of the body, physiology, did not become a science until in the seventeenth century after the Englishman, Harvey, had discovered the circulation of the blood. Near the close of the seventeenth cen- FRANCE IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 423 tury, Swammerdam invented the art of injecting a colored solution which makes the smallest duct visi- ble. The observations made with the microscope have greatly advanced the knowledge of physiology. But the science of tissues, histology, was not constituted until our day. The progress in anatomy, and in phys- iology, were of great benefit to the science of medi- cine, but were only of profit after some time. The physicians came from the universities where they persistently taught the doctrines of Galen. They had neither dissected a body, nor studied its anatomy, and believed that they were maintaining the dignity of their corporation by the employment of the ancient remedies : by bleeding, and the use of purgati\-es and pills. It was only in the eighteenth century that they finally resolved to study the effect of maladies on the sick, and that clinics were founded in the hospitals. Philosophy — The philosophers of the Renaissance still admired the ancients too much to dare to think for themselves ; they reproduced the doctrines of Plato especially, by way of opposition to the theories of Aristotle, which were taught in the schools. Modern philosophy dates from the seventeenth century. It was created by an Englishman, Bacon ; a Frenchman, Descartes; a German, Leibnitz, and by a Dutch Jew, Spinoza. The philosophy of the seventeenth century was an impartial study ; the philosophers no longer held the sayings of the ancients in such respect as did the scholastics. Descartes starts out from the principle that one should believe only what appeared certain. They sought through reflection and observation to grasp 424 MODERN CIVILIZATION the laws of thought, and to construct a system which would render the world intelligible, and which would explain the relation of thought to matter. But they did not combat religion; almost all had studied the- ology; some of them (Gassendi and Malebranche) were priests; all admitted the existence of a soul dis- tinct from the body. They did not dream of changing the government, and mingled little in the society of the time. Descartes composed his "Discourse on Method," while he was shut up in his room in Hol- land; returning to France he hid himself so that he might escape being disturbed by visitors. Spinoza, so as to be independent, gained his livelihood by polish- ing spectacle lenses, and lived modestly in a humble bourgeois family. A part of his philosophical works are still in Latin and are addressed only to scholars. LETTERS The Rise of Classic Taste — The literary movement of the Renaissance ended in Europe about the middle of the seventeenth century. There appeared no more great writers in Spain, nor in Italy, nor in Germany. France, only, was for a century the country of learn- ing. The writers of that period had a totally different conception of the art of writing from those of the time of the Renaissance. They neither wrote for the learned nor for the common people; they wrote for society; for those whom they called well-bred people, and it was the well-bred company gathered in the salons which decided upon the value of the works. The salons were set up in France during the reign of FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 425 Louis XIII. ; manners and language had been rude at first ; the nobles brought with them the customs of the soldier; little by little the ladies brought about a change in the general tone, and introduced the custom of speaking politely, and in choice terms. The Mar- quise de Rambouillet set the example, by holding in her own mansion regular reunions where questions of literature and morals were discussed. The employ- ment of trivial expressions was forbidden; the ladies called themselves "Precieuses." They sought to purify the language, and were aided in their work by the grammarians, and by the Academy. The French language at that time was composed of many words and turns of phrase, which had their origin in the French of the Middle Ages; others had been drawn from the Greek or Latin by the men of the Renais- sance. The grammarians and the "Precieuses" pro- scribed a great many expressions on account of their coarseness, or their provincialism and many new words taken from the Latin, because they were too pedantic. They endeavored to "follow good usage," that is, to employ only such words as were used in the best cir- cles in Paris. "It is far better," said Vaugelas, "to consult the women, and those who have not studied, than to counsel with those who are learned in Greek and Latin." The French language thus purified, be- came the language of the court, and of the salon, which every one must speak if one wished to be con- sidered educated, and well-bred. "One word amiss is sufficient to make one scorned in society." "To speak well is one of the forms required by good breed- ing." In order to fix rules for the language, Riche- 426 MODERN CIVILIZATION lieu founded the French Academy ; to edit a dictionary of the French language is its especial charge. "This small band called good society is the flower of the human race," said Voltaire. "It is for them that the greatest men have labored." "It is the taste of the court that should be studied," said Moliere. "There is no place where decisions can be more just." This taste which was imposed on all writers, is called the classic taste. It consists in expressing only ideas that can be easily understood, and expressing them in terms clear, precise, and elegant, setting them forth in perfect order, taking care to employ no popular expression, neither a term of science, trade, or of the household; in one word, sparing the reader every- thing which may demand an effort of the mind, or which may shock the proprieties. Literature became the art of making fine discourses; it was oratorical rather than poetic. Its dominant quality was per- fection. The most glorious period in this classic literature was at the close of the seventeenth century. All forms of literature are represented : tragedy, comedy, fables, criticism, oratory, fiction, moral philosophy. We owe to Voltaire our custom of calling this period the century of Louis XIV., and even of attributing part of its merit to the king. In fact, many of the great writers were developed in the reign of Louis XIII. or during the minority of Louis XIV. (Des- cartes, Pascal, Corneille). Those still had some of the qualities which are characteristic of the Renais- sance. The classic taste was dominant during the second half of the seventeenth and during all of FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 427 the eighteenth century. The rule of employing only noble words and dignified expressions became more and more strict. Racine did not permit himself to use the word "dog" in his letters to Boileau. In the eighteenth century the poets no longer called any thing or object by its name, but obliged themselves to use circumlocution. The Theatre — Beginning with the end of the six- teenth century, companies of actors had been formed in imitation of the custom in Italy; they went from city to city, leading a wandering life, which Scarron describes in "Le Roman comique." A company set- tled down in Paris and played at the Hotel de Bour- goyne. This theatre was miserably arranged; part of the audience remained standing in the parquet, the stage was small, and the young noblemen seated on stools along the sides took up a large part of it; there was neither decoration nor machinery. It was under such conditions that the masterpieces of the seventeenth century were brought before the public. Tragedies and comedies were played. The sub- jects of the tragedies were borrowed from Greek and Roman history. Racine showed great temerity in his daring attempt to put Turks on the stage in a representation of Bajazet; but the classic writers troubled themselves as little about local color, as did the painters of the Renaissance ; they represented their Greek and Roman heroes, with the noble manners, and as speaking the chosen language, of the lords and ladies of the court. The actors representing Augustus and Achilles, played the roles in perruke and in the cos- 428 MODERN CIVILIZATION tume worn at court. However, out of respect for the ancients, the authors were constrained to adopt the forms of the Greek drama. Their plays are in verse, divided into five acts, and subject to the "rule of the three unities," which is attributed to Aristotle. They imposed new restrictions upon themselves ; they repre- sented neither battle nor death. All the events which set forth the intrigue are related by the characters; the whole drama is a discourse. Oratory — All important affairs in French society were decided upon in secret, in the cabinet of the king, or in the halls of the Parliament. Therefore there was no oratory in politics nor on the bench. The orators of the seventeenth century were all preachers. Every year during Advent and Lent the court was present at a series of sermons. It was the custom to pronounce an oration at the obsequies of distinguished persons. These sermons and funeral orations are still consid- ered as masterpieces of pulpit eloquence. Fiction. — Good society was no longer interested in the adventures of the knights, who were the heroes of the romances of the Middle Ages. During the reign of Louis XIIL it became enamored of the pastoral romance of d' Urf e, where the heroes are shep- herds. Under Louis XIV. the romance was trans- formed; it relates the adventures and describes the manners of the time at which the author lives. The romance has great variety; it can represent all classes of society. In the "Roman comique" of Scarron, the heroes are comedians; in the "Princesse de Cleves," they are princes, and in "Gil Bias" they are adven- turers. FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 429 The French Influence — The classic form created by the French writers was welcomed with admiration everywhere, in the courts and in the salons. England excepted, no country had at that time produced any original work. French literature became the universal literature. French became the language of good society everywhere: It is the official and diplomatic tongue, and all governments employ it in drawing up their treaties. At this time it became the fashion to teach French to the children of good families, to play French plays, and even to speak the language in the salons. In Ger- many the mania went to the greatest extreme. The princes and courtiers no longer knew how to speak German. They considered it a sort of "patois," good enough for workmen, and for the peasants. The King of Prussia wrote his books in French; Maria Therese corresponded with her ministers in French, and at the end of the eighteenth century the Berlin Academy gave as a subject for discussion in a competitive examina- tion : "Explain the pre-eminence of the French lan- guage." THE ARTS Painting. — The art characteristic of the painters of the Renaissance continued through the first two-thirds of the seventeenth century. At the close of the cen- tury the movement was arrested ; the artists ceased to study nature, and produced hardly any works which were not stiff and affected. In most countries not one painter of talent could be found. It was the French painters who lead in all this period. Those 430 MODERN CIVILIZATION of the reign of Louis XIV. decorators like Lebrun, or portrait-painters like Mignard. Sculpture. — From the close of the Renaissance the sculptors departed farther and farther from the sys- tem of the antique. They tried to rival the painters in representing animated scenes and in giving move- ment and expression to figures. Their works were intended to be used for the ornamentation of the churches, and the palaces and gardens of the great lords. The most renowned sculptor of this epoch was Puget, a Frenchman from Marseilles. Architecture. — The architects • had churches and palaces to build. The churches were usually like Saint Peter's at Rome : surmounted by a dome, and ornamented in the interior with flat columns. The facade was crowned with a pediment, but the pediment instead of being at the summit of the edifice, as in the Greek temples, was nothing more than a wall ornamented with festoons or garlands; it only served as a decoration. This is called the Jesuit style. The palaces constructed in the Italian style are formed of long buildings intersecting each other at right angles. In order to give them a noble air the facades were straight and without ornamentation. Gardens. — A new art grew up in Italy in the six- teenth century: the art of making beautiful gardens. Every palace had to have its garden ; the trees and the buildings were disposed in such a fashion so as to form a harmonious ensemble. The Italian mode perfected in France consisted in looking upon the garden as a prolongation of the edi- fice. All the alleys and paths had geometrical forms. FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 431 were in straight lines or in circles. The ground was levelled and held by terraces. The trees were trimmed into shapes, and those were preferred which could be trimmed straight like walls : yoke elms, yew, box- wood. Sometimes they found amusement in cutting the tree into the form of a square, a ball, or even of some animal. Water brought from a distance, gushed forth in jets of spray which fell back into basins of stone or of marble. In the Italian gardens these jets of water were often set in motion by a spring con- cealed under a seat; the visitor on sitting down re- leased the spring, and in a moment found himself drenched by the falling spray. The alleys and the fountains were decorated with statues representing nymphs, fawns or streams. Such is the French style of garden. All is artificial there; it is a construction made of trees and water, a salon in the open air. It was the desire to give to those who walked there the impression of an art dominating nature. Music — The musical instruments which we employ had been already invented or introduced into Europe by the close of the Renaissance. Ever since the six- teenth century the princes had had orchestras of musi- cians, which played in their chapels and at their ceremonies. In Germany an orchestra is still called Kapelle, and the leader is the Kapellmeister. Ever since the invention of printing, pieces of music had been scattered among the people. Composers were numerous in France, Germany, and in England, and the theory of music had already begun to make its way, but there were only detached pieces, dances, masses and hymns. 432 MODERN CIVILIZATION In the seventeenth century were created the forms in which pieces of music were going to be henceforth embodied : the opera, and the oratorio ; both origi- nated in Italy, and in the same year (1600). That year, at Florence, at the festivities for the marriage of Maria de' Medici and Henry IV. a piece of music was represented, which was called a tragedy in music.^ This was the first opera. At Rome Saint Philip de Neri had a sacred drama accompanied by a recitative in music given at the church of the Oratoire. This was the first oratorio. Italy was regarded from that time as the country of music, and until the end of the eighteenth century, it was the fashion at all the courts, even in Germany, to have an orchestra of Italian musicians. The opera was soon altered in Italy. The amateurs (dilettanti) were more interested in the voice of the singer than in the drama, or even in the music. In order to please them, it was necessary to reduce the opera to a succession of airs sung as solos or as duos. It was simply a question of giving an opportunity to the virtuoso* (for so the singer in vogue was called) to show off his fine voice, and his skill in using that organ; during this time the orchestra ceased playing, and all action was stopped. The piece was but a can- vas intended to furnish words to the singer ; the book- let, as it was called was regarded as a property of the piece. It was composed by a librettist in the pay of the director. The Italian composers have kept, down > Orpheus and Eurydice, where each character sang his r61e. 2 The word virtuoso has kept the meaning of one who seeks out useless difficulties. FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 433 to our time, this scorn for the drama. In the eigh- teenth century they went so far as to make up operas with pieces of music taken here and there. The Ital- ian music was preserved only in opera bu£fa, composed to comic speeches. The opera was perfected in France and in Germany. In 1669 Louis XIV. granted to two managers per- mission to establish in Paris an academy, in order to represent there and sing in public, operas and musical dramas in French verse like those in Italy. The first French opera, "Cadmus and Hermione," was played in 1673. APPENDIX REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING This list contains the titles of books suitable for reference or for further reading. Those which are recommended especially for Secondary schools are marked *. For references to authori- ties in the German and French languages special bibliographies may be consulted. Original Sources — Adams, G. B., and H. M. Stephens; Select Documents of Eng- lish Constitutional History. Macmillan. Archer, T. A. : Crusade of Richard I. Putnams. ♦Arnold: The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi. Dent. Cox, George W., and Eustace Hinton Jones : Popular Romances of the Middle Ages. Holt. Chronicles of the Crusades. Bell. Dante, The Divine Comedy. Translation by Norton or Long- fellow. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. *Eginhard (Einhard) : Life of Charlemagne. American Book Company. *Fling, F. M. : Monasticism. Ainsworth. Froude, J. A.: Life and Letters of Erasmus. Scribners. *Henderson, E. F. ; Historical Documents of the Middle Ages. JIacmillan. ♦Henderson, E. F.: Side-lights on English History. Holt. *Hill, Mabel: Liberty Documents. Longmans. Jones, Guernsey: Civilization during the Middle Ages. Ains- worth. ♦Kendall, E. K. : Source Book of English History. Macmillan. Lane-Poole, Stanley : Speeches and Table Talk of the Prophet Mohammed. Macmillan. Lanier: Boys' Froissart. Scribners. Lee, G. C. : Source Book of English History. Holt. Luther, Martin : Table Talk. Bohn. Machiavelli, Niccolo: The Prince. Bohn. *Munro, D. C, and G. C. Sellery: Mediaeval Civilization. Century. ♦Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History. Longmans. Life of St. Columban. Vol IL, No. 7. Monastic Tales of the Thirteenth Century. Vol. IL, No. 4. 435 436 APPENDIX England in the Time of Wycliffe. Vol. II., Xo. 5. Period of the Early Reformation in Germany. Vol. II., No. 6. Period of the Later Reformation. Vol. III., No. 3. The Early Christian Persecutions. Vol. IV., No. i. Ordeals, Compurgation, Excommunication. Vol. IV., No. 4. The Early Germans. Vol. VI., No. 3. *Robinson, J. H.: Readings in European History. 2 v. Ginn. Robinson, J. H. and Rolfe: Petrarch. Putnams. Smith, Justin H.: The Troubadours at Home. 2 v. Putnams. ♦Thatcher, O. J., and E. H. McNeal: Source Book of Mediaeval History. Scribners. Secondary Authorities — *Adams, G. B. : Civilization during the Middle Ages Scribners. *Adams, G. B. : Growth of the French Nation. Macmillan. Alzog, J. : Universal Church History. 3 v. Clarke. Archer, T. A., and Kingsford, C. L. : The Crusades. 2 v. Putnams. Baird, H. M.: Rise of the Huguenots of France. Scribners. Besant, Walter: Gaspard de Coligny. American Book Com- pany. Bryce, James: The Holy Roman Empire. Macmillan. *Bulfinch, T. : Age of Chivalry. Lee & Shepard. Bury, J. B. : History of the Later Roman Empire. 2 v. Mac- millan. Burckhardt, J. : The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Macmillan. Cambridge Modern History : The Renaissance ; The Reforma- tion; The Wars of Religion. Macmillan. *Cheyney, E. P.: Social and Industrial History of England. Macmillan. Cheyiley, E. P. : The European Background of American History. Harpers. Cunningham, W. : Western Civilization. Macmillan. Davis, H. W. C. : Charlemagne. Putnams. Duruy, Victor: The Middle Ages. Holt. Emerton, Ephraim: Erasmus. Putnams. *Firth, C: Oliver Cromwell. Putnams. Fisher, G. P.: History of the Christian Church.- Scribners. *Fisher, G. P. : The Reformation. Scribners.. *Fletcher, C. R. L. : Gustavus Adolphus. Putnrms. *Fiske, John: The Discovery of America. 2 v. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Freeman, E. A. : Short History of the Norman Conquest. Oxford University Press. Freeman, E. A. : William the Conqueror. Macmillan. ♦Gardiner, S. R. : Students' History of England. Longmans. ♦Gardiner, S. R. : School Atlas of English History. Longmans. Gardiner, S. R. : Thirty Years' War. Scribners. Gardiner, S. R. : Oliver Cromwell. Longmans. Gardiner, S. R. : Puritan Revolution. Scribners. APPENDIX 437 Gibbins, H. De B. : History of Commerce in Europe. Mac- millan. Gibbon, Edward: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 7 V. Macmillan. Gilman, Arthur: The Saracens. Putnams. *Green J. R. : Short History of the English People. 4 v. Harpers. Guizot, F. P. G. : Popular History of France. 8 v. Estes. Gummere, F. B.: Germanic Origins. Scribners. Harrison, Frederic : William the Silent. Macmillan. Hassall, A. : The Balance of Power. Europe in the Eighteenth Century. Macmillan. HassaU, A. : Louis XIV. Putnams. Hausser, Ludwig : The Period of the Reformation. American Tract Society. Henderson, E. F. : Short History of Germany. 2 v. Mac- millan. *Higginson, T. W., and E. Channing. English History for Americans. Longmans. *Hodgkin, Thomas: Charles the Great. Macmillan. Hutton, W. H. : Philip Augustus. Macmillan. Jackson, S. M. : Zwingli. Putnams. Jacobs, H. E.: Luther. Putnams. Johnson, A. H. : The Normans in Europe. Longmans. Kitchin, G. W. : History of France. 3 v. Oxford University Press. K5stlin, Julius: Life of Luther. Scribners. *Labberton, R. H. : Historical Atlas. Silver, Burdett. Lane-Poole, Stanley: Saladin. Putnams. ♦Laurie, William; Rise of the Universities. Appletons. Lavisse, E. : Political History of Europe. Longrnans. Lodge, R. : The Close of the Middle Ages. Macmillan. Macy, Jesse: The English Constitution. Macmillan. *Morfill, W. R. : Story of Poland. Putnams. *MorfiU, W. R. : Story of Russia. Putnams. Morison, J. C: St. Bernard. Macmillan. Motley, J. L. : Rise of the Dutch Republic. 3 v. Harpers. Motley, J. L. : History of the United Netherlands. 4 v. Harpers. *01iphant, M. O. W. : The Makers of Florence. Macmillan. *01iphant, M.'O. W. : The Makers of Venice. Macmillan. *Oman, C^ W. C. : The Dark Ages. Macmillan. *Parkman, Francis: La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West. Little, Brown & Co. *Parkman, Francis: Montcalm and Wolfe. 2v. Little, Brown & Co. *Parkman, Francis: The Jesuits in North America. Little, Brown & Co. Pastor, Ludwig: History of the Popes. 6 v. Herder. Payne, E. J. : European Colonies. Macmillan. Perkins, J. B. : Richelieu. Putnams. Poole, R. L. : Wycliffe and Movements of Reform. Longmans ■138 APPENDIX Prescott, W. H. : History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. 3 v. Macmillan. Rambaud, Alfred : History of Russia. 3 v. Estes. Seebohm, F. : The Era of the Protestant Revolution. Scrib- ners. Seebohm, F. : The Oxford Reformers. Longmans. *Symonds, J. A. : A Short History of the Renaissance. Holt. *Tout, T. F. : The Empire and the Papacy. Macmillan. Trench, R. C. : Gustavus Adolphus. Macmillan. Tuttle, Herbert; History of Prussia. 4 v. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. ♦Wakeman, H. O. : The Ascendency of Prance. Macmillan. ♦Walker, W. : The Protestant Reformation. Scribners. *West, A. F. : Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools Scribners. Willert, P. F. : Henry of Navarre. Putnams. THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION By CHARLES SEIGNOBOS Translated and edited by A. H. 'Wilde With an introduction by James A. James $1.2S net This is the first volume of " The History of Civilization," of which " The History of Mediaeval Civilization" is the second volume, and "The History of Contemporary Civilization" will form the third. OPINIONS OF THE BOOK " The substance of the book is admirable, and the clearness of statement such as characterizes all of the author's work." Prof. William MacDonald, Brown Untversitv. " I have the pleasure to inform you that your translation of Seignobos' ' History of Ancient Civilization,' a copy of which you sent me recently, has proved so satisfactory that I have selected it as a text-book for our first-year students in Ancient History." M^ jj l Patterson, University of Wisconsin. " I am greatly pleased with it. This book, I think, ought to find wide use not only in colleges, but also for reading by the side of a narrative text-book in secondary schools. The style is simple and the subject matter elementary." Prof. Geo. W. Botsford, Columbia University. " It is scholarly and, I think, the best of its kind." Prof. H. W. Elson, Ohio University. " It is the most interesting and instructive brief treatment of ancient civilization that I have seen. I shall take occasion to recommend the book to my classes and to those preparing for entrance to coUege." prqf. Herbert P. Gallinger, Amherst College. THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION OPINIONS OF THE BOOK " The characteristic French perspicuity of style has lost little, if anything, by way of translation. . . . As an outline of ancient civilization this work would be difficult to surpass." Prof. P. O. Ray, Penmsylvania State College. " I have examined with pleasure the translation of Seignobos' ' History of Ancient Civilization ' ; it is clear, condensed, teach- able and attractively gotten up. It appeals to me as an .admirable introductory manual." prof. J. H. MacPheeson, University of Georgia. " I am glad the book has been translated, for there is nothing like it on this side of the water. It will be a pleasure for me to call the attention of teachers to it." Prof. A. C. Flick Syracuse University. " I have examined attentively Seignobos' ' History of Ancient Civilization ' and think it an admirable work, and interesting as valuable." Prof. Kemp P. Battle, University of North Carolina. " M. Seignobos has in eminent degree the happy French fac- ulty of swift and easy narration, of telling a story by the selection of significant facts or events, letting a few aptly selected details stand for the mass." Chicago Record-Herald. " The work b one of the most valuable brief histories one can have in the home." 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