CHAPTER III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHY

Almost at the moment that the Crusades broke out, an institution commenced its aggrandisement which has, perhaps, contributed more than any other to the formation of modern society, and to the fusion of all the social elements into two powers, the government and the people,--the institution of Royalty.--GUIZOT.[m]

[Sidenote: [1180-1270 A.D.]]

Philip Augustus, Louis’ son and successor, who was about fifteen years of age when he began to reign, was already the nursling of court adulation and homage. His predecessors had not attained dignity sufficient to expose them to this bane of the royal nature. Congratulations, couched in the language of oriental hyperbole, had greeted his birth. He was styled the _Dieu-donné_, “the God-given”; and self-constituted laureates began already to celebrate the majesty of the monarch of the French. Formerly, the surrounding nobles had disdained to dispute court favour or influence; but the first years of Philip’s reign were taken up with the rivalry of the houses of Flanders and Champagne, which each sought to be the masters and ministers of the young sovereign. Henry II of England gave his support to the counts of Champagne, and the partisans of Flanders were obliged to retire from Paris. They formed a league, and menaced war; but Philip, with the English monarch’s aid, easily overcame the malcontents. Henry showed generosity on this occasion. Instead of profiting by the divisions of the French, and keeping them alive, he frankly supported the young king against his refractory barons. He was king himself, and sympathised with royalty. Philip ill repaid this kindness: he imitated his father’s policy in seducing the sons of the English monarch from their allegiance; and their frequent ingratitude at length broke the heart of the sensitive and passionate monarch. Richard, duke of Aquitaine, known as Cœur de Lion, and his father’s successor on the throne, was the especial friend and ally of Philip in these quarrels; and for a long time the princes shared the same tent and the same bed.

Meantime a third crusade began to be preached. This prevalent enthusiasm, like the rebellions of an oppressed yet brave people, was sure to arouse itself and reawaken as soon as time had elapsed sufficient to allow the disasters of the past to be forgotten. Saladin had recently taken Jerusalem. Fugitives instantly filled Europe with the dismal tidings. The cry for a crusade became general: it was no longer, however, the church that called a council to debate and decide upon the question; another power had arisen to rob the clergy of their initiative. The king called a parliament (_parlement_) of his barons at Gisors, and there a third crusade was determined upon. Cœur de Lion was the first to assume the cross; and king Philip, only hurt at being anticipated, followed his example. Frederick Barbarossa also took the same resolution.

[Sidenote: [1190-1194 A.D.]]

In June of the year 1190, Philip Augustus received the pilgrim’s scrip and staff from the hands of the abbot of St. Denis. Richard received his at Tours; and it was remarked, as an omen, that, as he leaned on the staff, it broke under his weight. In order to avoid the disasters of former crusades, they were to proceed to Palestine by sea. The two kings wintered in Sicily on their voyage thither, and there laid the foundation of their future jealousy and hate. The crusaders found the barons of Syria engaged in the siege of Acre. Their arrival hastened its surrender, and at the same time marked it with crime. Richard caused upwards of two thousand captives to be massacred in cold blood, and Philip was guilty of a similar piece of cruelty. The monarchs, indeed, had some slight breach of stipulations to allege, or might excuse their conduct as a reprisal for that of Saladin, who put to death many of the prisoners whom he made at the battle of Tiberias, more especially all those whose tonsure marked them to belong to the order of the Templars. It was thus that the ferocity of oriental manners came to alloy the more generous spirit of chivalry. In Palestine the French learned to be merciless towards their religious enemies, and hence it was that the fair page of their history was soon afterwards stained by the massacre of those whom they called heretics at home.

[Illustration: PHILIP AUGUSTUS]

[Sidenote: [1194-1200 A.D.]]

Philip Augustus could not long endure the superior renown and prowess of Cœur de Lion. He seized the pretext of an illness to quit Palestine and abandon the field of glory to his rival. Returning home, he besought the pope to release him from the oath which bound him to respect the rights and territories of a brother crusader. The pontiff refused; but Philip felt himself sufficiently absolved by the Macchiavellian law of monarchical policy: and fortune, in making Richard fall captive to the duke of Austria, on his return from the Holy Land, seemed to favour the envious designs of the French monarch. Philip no sooner was informed of Richard’s captivity, than he leagued with his brother John, and invaded Normandy. He took several towns and castles, but was repulsed from before Rouen. At length Richard was released, or, as Philip wrote to his confederate, “the devil broke loose.” We expect on this occasion to read of a furious war betwixt the sovereigns. And yet no brilliant feat, no general engagement, marked that which ensued. Petty treason and short truce, varied by a skirmish or a marauding party, were all the effects produced by the envy of Philip and the resentment of the lion-hearted king. The death of the latter by an arrow-shot, as he besieged a castle in the Limousin, left a less formidable rival to Philip in the person of King John (1199). The writer of fiction never imagined a baser character than that of John. His cowardice and meanness form a phenomenon and an exception in the feudal ages. The nullity of such a rival converted Philip Augustus from the powerless intriguer to the conqueror and the hero.[b]

PRINCE ARTHUR OF BRITTANY

[Sidenote: [1200-1204 A.D.]]

Although Richard on his death-bed declared John to be his heir, the crown of England descended by right of primogeniture to the young prince Arthur, son of Geoffrey, duke of Brittany and the elder brother of John; the latter seized it. But Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine, weary of English domination, declared for Arthur, and invoked Philip’s protection. The king of France took up Arthur’s cause and then abandoned it (1200), after obtaining from John the advantage his political selfish policy was seeking.[c]

But Arthur had been accepted by the Bretons at his birth as a liberator and avenger. Old Eleanor, alone, held out against her grandson, for her son John, and for the unity of the English realm, which the accession of Arthur would have divided. Arthur, in fact, held that unity very cheap. He offered the king of France to cede Normandy to him, provided he might have Brittany, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou, and Aquitaine. John would have been reduced to the possession of England alone. Philip willingly assented to this, put his own garrisons in Arthur’s best fortresses, and demolished them when he had no hope of maintaining his position in them. John’s nephew, thus betrayed by his ally, turned once more to his uncle; then he came back to the party of France, invaded Poitou, and besieged his grandmother, Eleanor, in Mirebeau. It was nothing new in that family to see the sons armed against their parents. Meanwhile, John came to the rescue, delivered his mother, defeated Arthur, and took him prisoner with most of the great lords of his party. What became of the captive? This has never been clearly ascertained. Matthew Paris[j] alleges that John treated him well at first, but was afterwards alarmed by the threats and the obstinacy of the young Breton. “Arthur disappeared,” he says, “and God grant that it may not have been as malicious rumour reports.” But Arthur had excited too many hopes to allow of the popular imagination resigning itself to this uncertainty. It was confidently affirmed that John had caused him to be put to death, and it was soon added that he had killed him with his own hand. The chaplain of Philip Augustus relates, as if he had seen it with his own eyes, that John took Arthur in a boat, stabbed him twice with a dagger, and threw him into the river three miles from the castle of Rouen. The Bretons placed the scene of the tragedy in their own country near Cherbourg, at the foot of those ill-omened cliffs that present a line of precipices all along the ocean. Thus the tradition went on enlarging in details, and in dramatic interest, and at last Shakespeare makes Arthur a helpless young child, whose gentle and innocent words disarmed the most brutal assassin.[d]

Philip was in the meantime checked in his projects by the court of Rome, which had laid an interdict upon him, on account of his divorce from Ingeborg (Ingeburge) of Denmark. And the preaching of a fifth crusade,[8] which eventually led to the establishment of the Frankish empire of Romania, about the same time took from him the interest and the aid of many nobles and chevaliers. He was, during the same interval, engaged in the conquest of Normandy, which the imbecility and cowardice of John delivered to his arms without defence. Roger de Lascy held the fortress of Les Andelys for several months against the French, and was the only valiant servitor of an unworthy monarch. The barons and warriors of England disdained to fight under his banner. There was as yet none of that rivalry which afterwards sprang up betwixt the nations. The monarchs of both were French princes, speaking the French tongue; and, although subsequent historians have given a national colour to the combats and conquests of Philip, the struggle was almost purely personal. Rouen, the capital of Normandy, surrendered to him (1204), without John’s making a single effort to preserve it. And thus a few years of the reign of one weak prince more than counterbalanced the long-established superiority of the monarchs of England.

[Sidenote: [1204-1208 A.D.]]

It has been seen what use the French monarchs made of their courts of peers, and of the judicial supremacy allowed them, in extending their authority over barons heretofore independent. Philip dared to apply the same principle to the dukes of Normandy, which his father had successfully done with regard to the counts of Bourbon and Auvergne. He summoned John before his suzerain court, to answer for the murder of Arthur and other crimes. Henry II, or Richard, would have given fit answer to such a summons. The Norman princes always held their homage to be that by parade or courtesy, not _homage-liège_. But John had neither the sense of his dignity, nor the spirit to maintain it. He allowed the jurisdiction of Philip’s court, though he feared to obey his summons; and he thus seemed to allow a legal right to the usurpations of Philip. The latter, indeed, appeared to feel the want of dignity in the assessors of his court. All nobles holding their lands directly of the king were peers in his parliament; and thus the petty lords of the counties of Paris and Orleans ranked equally with the dukes of Burgundy or the counts of Flanders. Philip remedied this, by appointing twelve great peers, or rather by pretending that such a number had always existed since the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. Of these, six were clerics, six laics; the latter being the dukes of Normandy, of Aquitaine, of Burgundy, the counts of Toulouse, of Flanders, and of Champagne. This division of the aristocracy in the high and low nobility, was, however, as yet but nominal; the lesser barons still continued to consider themselves as the peers of the greater, and to have an equal voice in the royal courts. It is important for the reader to mark the rise of this feudal institution, and equally so to mark the difference of its fate and progress in France and in England. In the former country, the parliament became amalgamated with lawyers, and preserved to the last its judicial functions, whilst its legislative authority became but a shadow. In England, on the contrary, it guarded the more precious privilege of legislation, abandoning a considerable portion of its judicial rights.

By the discomfiture of John, Philip Augustus united to the monarchy of France not only Normandy, but the provinces of Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou. Artois he had acquired as the dowry of his wife, Isabella of Hainault. The counties of the south remained still independent of his sway. They looked to the king of Aragon as their suzerain; and there existed far more congeniality of feelings and habits betwixt the Spaniards and Provençals, than betwixt the Provençals and French. Certain events of the reign of Philip, which we are about to relate, destroyed the independence of the people of the south, as well as their connection with the Aragonese, and extended the authority of the French monarch to the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees.

THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE

While Philip Augustus adroitly wrested Normandy and its dependencies from the hands of John, a series of events took place in Languedoc which had the effect of destroying its independence, and of bringing that fine region not only nominally, as it had hitherto been, but really under the dominion of the kings of France.[b]

At this period the southern part of France held but distant relations with the north. Two powerful houses, that of Barcelona and that of Toulouse, shared dominion over it, with the exception of Aquitaine, which extended to the Pyrenees. This isolation naturally gave the south a separate existence, character, and interest. The tongue, that of the Limousin or of Provence, resembling more the Aragonese than the French of Paris, had become, thanks to the troubadours, a literary language. The cities contained a large bourgeois element, which had become wealthy through commerce.

It was in the midst of this people, active, ardent, isolated from most of their neighbours by political as well as natural barriers, corrupted moreover by the refinements of an equivocal civilisation and by the enervating literature of the troubadours, that there broke forth, at the end of the twelfth century, the Albigensian heresy, a powerful one, that having long undermined the ground, ended by being a menace to Catholic beliefs, the church, and society itself.

Several heretical sects dating from the early Christian time had not ceased to have their obscure upholders in France. Such were the Manichæans or Paulicians who believed in the co-existence of a principle of good and a principle of evil. It was the Paulicians who were condemned to be burned at Orleans by King Robert (1022). During the time of the crusaders, the sect, revived by frequent intercourse with the Orient where it had originated, spread all over the centre of France. It is thought that this extension was the work of the emigrants who arrived from Bulgaria; at last the heretics received the name of Bulgarians or Boulgres, and it was rumoured that they had a mysterious chief, or, as they said, a resident pope in that country. They were called Albigenses because they were especially numerous in the vicinity of Albi, and by this last name they have been preserved in history.

Some of their doctrines are known: they regarded the devil, or principle of evil, as the first author of the creation; they rejected the sacraments; they interpreted the Scriptures in a different way from the Catholic tradition. Also they possessed a kind of sacerdotal college whose members, called “the perfect ones,” performed special rites. It is very difficult to form any idea of their dogmas as a whole, for they had no theologian, no teacher, and they have left no writings. One can judge the basis of this heresy, and the sects belonging to it, only indirectly by the writings of the authors and teachers who fought them. These writers have attacked above all the strangeness of their practices and the vulgarity of their superstitions.

[Sidenote: [1208-1209 A.D.]]

But the dominant character of all these sects was their hatred of the church. They pretended to re-establish the primitive simplicity of the religion, which the church had corrupted, and among themselves they were known as _cathares_, or “the pure ones.”[e]

For a long time the holy see seemed not alive to the importance of this sect. It was Pope Innocent III who first perceived its dangerous tendency, and who took certain steps for its destruction. He issued interdicts against such princes as should favour them, and offered the spoil of the heretic to whoever should subdue and slay him. The principal lord of the south of France was at that time Raymond VI, count of Toulouse; and he at least tolerated the Albigenses, as those primitive reformers were called, aware of their moral purity and sincere devotion. Peter of Castelnau, the pope’s legate, reproached the count of Toulouse with his want of zeal, and was indignant at his forbearance to extirpate the new opinions by fire and sword. The legate used no measured language; he not only excommunicated Raymond, but insulted him in his court, and then took his departure. The count of Toulouse expressed his indignant feelings before his followers as Henry II did after the insolence of Thomas à Becket, and with the same fatal effect. On the day after, Peter of Castelnau fell under the dagger of a gentleman of the count, in a hostelry on the Rhone, where he had stopped.

[Illustration: AN OFFICER OF THE KING’S HOUSEHOLD, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

Pope Innocent was driven to transports of rage on learning the assassination of his legate. He not only excommunicated the count of Toulouse, but promulgated a crusade against him. He called on all the nobles of France, on its princes, and its prelates, to join in the “holy” war, to assume the cross, as being engaged against infidels. And the same privileges and indulgences were granted to the crusader of this civil war, that previously were bestowed on those who embarked fortune and life in the perilous attempt to rescue the Holy Land from the Saracen. Spoil, wealth, and honour in this world, together with certain salvation in the next, were now offered at too cheap a rate to be refused. Crowds of adventurers flocked to the standard; and a formidable army was assembled at Lyons in the spring of 1209, under the command of the legate commander, Amalric, abbot of Cîteaux. The pope at the same time created a new ecclesiastical militia for the destruction of heresy. The order of St. Dominic, or of the friars inquisitors, was instituted; and these infernal missionaries were let loose in couples upon the hapless Languedoc, like bloodhounds, to scent their prey and then devour it.

[Sidenote: [1209-1217 A.D.]]

Raymond, count of Toulouse, had neither the force nor the courage to oppose so formidable an invasion. He repaired to the crusaders’ army, delivered up his fortresses and cities, and suffered the humiliating penance of a public flogging in the church of St. Giles. The count’s relative and feudatory, Raymond Roger, viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, regions infected with the heresy of the Albigenses, came also to make submission. The abbot of Cîteaux, who was prudent enough to accept that of the count of Toulouse, feared to lose all his prey. He refused to admit the exculpation of the viscount of Béziers, and plainly told him that his only chance was to defend himself to the utmost. The young viscount courageously accepted the advice. He summoned the most faithful of his vassals, abandoned the open country as well as towns of lesser consequence to the enemy, and restricted his efforts to the defence of Béziers and of Carcassonne. He shut himself up in the latter. The fury of the crusaders fell first upon Béziers: they had scarcely sat down before the unfortunate town, when a sally of the garrison was repulsed with such vigour that the besiegers entered the town together with the routed host of the citizens. Word of this unexpected success was instantly brought to the abbot of Cîteaux, and his orders were demanded as to how the innocent were to be distinguished from the guilty. “Slay them all,” exclaimed the legate of the vicar of Christ; “the Lord will know his own.” The entire population was in consequence put to the sword; nor woman nor infant was spared. Upwards of twenty thousand human beings perished in the massacre--the sanguinary first-fruits of modern persecution. Carcassonne was next invested, bravely attacked, and as valiantly defended; the young viscount distinguishing himself in defence of his rights, while Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, was the most prominent warrior of the crusaders. At length the legate grew weary of the viscount’s obstinacy, and offered him terms. He gave him a safe-conduct, sanctioned by his own oath and that of the barons of his army. Raymond Roger came with three hundred of his followers to the tent of the legate. “Faith,” said the latter, “is not to be kept with those who have no faith”; and he ordered the viscount and his friends to be put in chains. The inhabitants of Carcassonne found means to fly. In a general assembly of the crusaders, the lordships of Béziers and Carcassonne were given to Simon de Montfort, in reward of his zeal and valour; and to make the gift sure, it was accompanied with the person of his rival. The unfortunate viscount, the victim of the legate’s perfidy, soon after perished in prison.

The victory of the crusaders was of course followed by executions at the stake and on the scaffold. The friars inquisitors of the order of St. Dominic did not relax their zeal. A general revolt against De Montfort was the consequence, in which the people of Toulouse joined. The Provençal army was headed by Pedro king of Aragon, the uncle of the late viscount of Béziers. It was he who had persuaded the unfortunate viscount to trust himself to the legate, and to him in consequence fell the duty of taking vengeance. The cross, however--the profaned cross--was still successful. The Provençals were routed by Simon de Montfort at the battle of Muret, and the king of Aragon was slain. This victory seemed to establish the power of De Montfort in Languedoc. He took possession of all the provinces of his rival, even of the town of Toulouse; and an assembly of prelates sanctioned the usurpation. But the cruel spirit of De Montfort would not allow him to rest quiet in his new empire. Violence and persecution marked his rule; he sought to destroy the Provençal population by the sword or the stake, nor could he bring himself to tolerate the liberties of the citizens of Toulouse. In 1217 the Toulousans again revolted, and war once more broke out betwixt Count Raymond and Simon de Montfort. The latter formed the siege of the capital, and was engaged in repelling a sally, when a stone from one of the walls struck him and put an end to his existence. The death of De Montfort was of course considered a martyrdom by the clergy, and his fame in their chronicles far outshines that of Godfrey de Bouillon or of Richard the Lion-hearted.

LEAGUE AGAINST PHILIP AUGUSTUS

King Philip was in the meantime pursuing his darling object, the humbling the power of the princes of England. He had already driven John from the west of France. That monarch, at variance with his barons, and at the same time excommunicated by the church, seemed an easy prey to Philip. The French king meditated the conquest of England. He leagued with the malcontents of that country, and formed a powerful army for the purposes of invasion. John, to ward off the blow, not only became reconciled to the Roman see, but made himself and his kingdom feudatory to the pope. A papal legate immediately took John under his protection; and the French monarch, rather than risk a quarrel with the church, turned his armies towards Flanders, which he wasted and plundered impitiably, from hatred to its count.

The emperor Otto, then in alliance with King John against France, came to the relief of the Flemings; and thus, for the first time since the accession of the new dynasty, the armies of France and Germany found themselves arrayed against each other in national hostility, each commanded by its respective monarch. The rival hosts met at Bouvines, in the month of August, 1214. Twenty thousand combatants on either side, together with the presence of two monarchs, gave gravity and importance to the meeting.[b]

_The Battle of Bouvines (1214 A.D.)_

[Sidenote: [1214 A.D.]]

The two armies remained for a time a short distance apart, not daring to begin operations; and the French were retreating over the bridge of Bouvines to march upon Hainault, when the enemy, attacking the rearguard, obliged them to turn about.

The chaplain, William le Breton,[k] who during the action remained beside the king singing psalms, says: “Philip was resting under a tree near a chapel, his armour laid aside. At the first sound of combat he entered the church for a short prayer, armed hastily, and mounted his steed with as great enthusiasm as though on his way to a wedding or a feast. Loud shouts resounded from the field: ‘To arms, men of war, to arms!’ together with the blare of trumpets. The king rode to the front, not waiting for his banner--the oriflamme of St. Denis, a flag of scarlet silk, that day carried by Gallon de Montigny, a brave man. The bishop-elect of Senlis, Guérin, ordered the battle so that the French had the sun behind them, while the enemy fought with the sun in their eyes. Three hundred mounted peasants of Soissons, vassals of the abbot of St. Médard, opened action on the right wing, boldly charging the Flemish cavalry. The latter hesitated to engage with their inferiors, but the cry, ‘Death to the French!’ raised by one among them proved decisive; and the Burgundians, led by their duke, arriving to reinforce those of Soissons, there was a furious combat. On this side Count Ferrand of Flanders fought.”

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF BOUVINES]

When the battle began the militia had already crossed the bridge; they recrossed in haste, rallied under the royal standard, and took position in the centre in front of the king and his guard. The German cavalry, among whom rode the emperor Otto, charged and penetrated their ranks, and had almost reached the king when they were checked by the prompt action of his officers. In the midst of this encounter arrived the German infantry. These dragged Philip from his horse, and before he could recover his feet attempted to thrust at him through the visor of his helmet or a flaw in his armour. Montigny, who carried the colours, waved his banner frantically for assistance; some horse- and foot-soldiers hastened up. These rescued the king, set him on his horse, and he again plunged into the mêlée.

Otto in his turn was near to being captured. William des Barres, the bravest and ablest of the French cavaliers, the fortunate adversary of Richard the Lion-hearted, whom he had twice overcome, had the emperor by the helmet, and was thrusting at him furiously when overwhelmed by a torrent of the enemy. Unable to make him loose his hold or to close with him, they killed his horse under him; but disentangling himself he succeeded, alone and on foot, in clearing with his sword and his poniard an ample space around him. Otto escaped.

On the right Ferrand, count of Flanders, had fallen wounded into the hands of the French; in the centre the emperor and his German princes had taken to flight: but on the left Renaud de Boulogne and the English held firm. They had overcome the men of Dreux, of Perche, of Ponthieu, and of Vimeu. “Whereupon,” says the poet-chronicler, “Philip de Dreux, bishop of Beauvais, happening to have in his hand a club, and forgetting in his rage and grief the dignity of his office, struck down the English commander and with him many others, spilling no blood but breaking many bones. He enjoined upon those about him the necessity of taking upon themselves the credit of this deed, that he might not fall under reproach for violating the traditions of his office.”

The English were soon completely routed with the exception of Renaud de Boulogne, who had drawn up a double circle of infantry bristling with spears. He charged therefrom as from a fort, and there returned for refuge and to recover breath. At last his horse was wounded; he fell and was captured. Five other counts and twenty-five knights-banneret had been taken.

The return of the king to Paris was a march of triumph. All along the route the churches dispersed indulgences, and the hymns of the choirs mingled with the clash of war implements. The houses were hung with draperies; the roads strewn with branches and fresh flowers. Men and women, children and old people ran to the crossroads to see the count of Flanders who, wounded and in chains, was carried in a litter; some among them crying: “Ferrand, bound and in irons (_ferré_), no longer shalt thou kick against the pricks and hurl defiance at thy masters.”

At Paris the townspeople, with a multitude of clerks and students, burst into songs and hymns on the arrival of the king. The day not sufficing for the jubilation, they festooned the dark with innumerable lanterns, so that the night was brilliant as the day. The students kept holiday for a week. In the midst of these rejoicings the troops, which had comported themselves so creditably in the strife, delivered to the provost of Paris the prisoners in their charge. The king left them a certain number to be ransomed and imprisoned the rest. Ferrand was lodged in the new tower of the Louvre, where he remained for thirteen years. Near Senlis was built Victory Abbey, whose ruins are still to be seen.[c]

LAST YEARS AND INFLUENCE OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS

[Sidenote: [1214-1224 A.D.]]

The brilliant success of Bouvines seems to have contented and allayed the hitherto restless ambition of Philip. In a year or two after, the barons of England, discontented with John, offered their crown to Louis, the son of Philip Augustus. The old monarch hesitated; he dreaded the anathema with which the pope threatened him, if he attacked his vassal, John of England. Prince Louis was obliged to undertake the expedition with but scanty aid from his parent. He was at first successful. Almost all England owned his sovereignty. The castle of Dover alone held out. But the death of John, and the proclaiming of his son, Henry III, soon obliged the French prince to abandon his claim and his conquests in England.

In the south, Philip Augustus showed himself equally dead to enterprise and lost in spirit. Amaury de Montfort, son of Simon, offered to cede to the king all his rights in Languedoc, which he was unable to defend against the old house of Toulouse. Philip hesitated to accept the important cession, and left the rival houses to the continuance of a struggle carried feebly on by either side. He at length expired, in 1223, after a reign of forty-three years. This period of half a century was one of uninterrupted progress to the French monarchy, and to its sovereign power. Though much of this was due to the age, to circumstances, and to the natural development of the country’s political system, still much remains due to the personal character of Philip--to his activity, his prudence, foresight, and courage. The mere list of the provinces which he subdued and united to the monarchy forms the fittest monument to his fame. These were Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou, wrested from John; Picardy and Auvergne, won in the commencement of his reign; Artois, acquired by his marriage with Isabella of Hainault; and, finally, the influence over Languedoc which the crusaders brought him, and which nothing but Philip’s age and declining strength prevented him from converting into sovereignty. In minor matters the active spirit of Philip Augustus equally displayed itself. He put the police on an efficient footing; he walled and paved Paris and the principal towns under his sway; he built and fortified; he encouraged literature by the foundation of professorships; improved the discipline of the army; and, with all his enterprises and expenses, so ordered his finances as to leave a considerable treasure at his death.

LOUIS VIII (1223-1226 A.D.)

When Louis VIII succeeded his father Philip on the throne, it was remarked with joy by the lovers of legitimacy that he was descended by his mother, Isabella of Hainault, from Charles of Lorraine, the last prince of Charlemagne’s blood, and that he thus united the rights of Carlovingian and Capetian. He was feeble in person, and is said not to have been endowed with much capacity; but the sage policy of Philip Augustus, together with the impulse he had given to affairs, continued to direct them, and to render France triumphant over her enemies. Henry III lost the towns of Niort and La Rochelle, and was driven by Louis from Poitou; yet so little did the English feel the loss of this province, that it is scarcely noticed by the historians of the island. The barons were so much occupied with jealousy of their sovereign and of his power, that Henry could procure or send no aid to his French provinces. A feeble expedition was at length fitted out, which preserved Gascony to England, but recovered nothing.

A singular cause of contention arose about this time in Flanders. Baldwin, its last count, had been one of the leaders of the Fifth Crusade, which, in the commencement of the century, took Constantinople from the Greeks. He had been elected emperor of Romania, and had been the first of the Latin dynasty which reigned over it. Soon after, in the year 1205, he had been taken prisoner by the Bulgarians, and had not since been heard of. His daughter Joan succeeded to the county of Flanders, and had married Ferdinand (Ferrand), prince of Portugal, who had opposed Philip Augustus, and who was taken prisoner by that monarch at the battle of Bouvines. Joan took no steps to liberate her husband, or to pay his ransom, when an aged man appeared in Flanders, calling himself Count Baldwin, and giving an account of his long captivity and recent escape from the Bulgarians. Joan denied the identity of this person with her father; Louis VIII was of her opinion; while Henry III treated and allied himself with him as the veritable Baldwin. The self-entitled count appeared before King Louis at Péronne, offering proofs of his identity; but unfortunately he could not recall the place where he had done homage to Philip Augustus, nor the place where he had been knighted, nor yet the place and day of his marriage. Whether he really could not make answer to these questions, or whether age had troubled his memory, the old man was condemned as a pretender, and the countess Joan soon after caused him to be hanged. The common people still persisted in giving credit to his identity with Count Baldwin, and looked on Joan as the murderer of her father. Henry III in no way supported this his unfortunate ally.

[Illustration: LOUIS VIII

(From an old French print)]

[Sidenote: [1204-1226 A.D.]]

The sovereignty over Languedoc was still undecided. King Louis was anxious to undertake a crusade in that country, with all the indulgences and advantages of a warlike pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The hostilities with England and the fickleness of the pope delayed the execution of this purpose. Both obstacles were removed at length. Amaury de Montfort being driven from the conquests of his father by the sons of Count Raymond, reanimated the zeal of the pope and the old crusaders. Amaury retired to Paris, and made cession of his claims to King Louis, who, in return, promised him the office of constable. A new crusade was preached against the Albigenses; and Louis marched towards Languedoc at the head of a formidable army in the spring of the year 1226. The town of Avignon had proffered to the crusaders the facilities of crossing the Rhone under her walls, but refused entry within them to such an host. Louis, having arrived at Avignon, insisted on passing through the town: the Avignonais shut their gates and defied the monarch, who instantly formed the siege. One of the rich municipalities of the south was almost a match for the king of France. He was kept three months under its walls, his army a prey to famine, to disease, and to the assaults of a brave garrison. The crusaders lost twenty thousand men. The people of Avignon at length submitted, but on no dishonourable terms. This was the only resistance that Louis experienced in Languedoc. Raymond VII dared not meet the crusaders in the field, nor durst one of his towns or châteaux remain faithful to him. All submitted. Louis retired from his facile conquest; he himself, and the chiefs of his army, stricken by an epidemy which had prevailed in the conquered regions. The monarch’s feeble frame could not resist it: he expired at Montpensier in Auvergne, in November, 1226.[b]

LOUIS IX, CALLED ST. LOUIS (1226-1270 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1226-1236 A.D.]]

Now we come to the true hero of the Middle Ages, a prince pious as he was brave; who was devoted to feudalism and yet struck it the most telling blows; who venerated the church yet knew how to resist its head; who respected law yet placed justice above it; a frank and gentle soul and loving heart filled with Christian charity, yet one that condemned to torture the body of the sinner for the salvation of his soul; who on earth looked only towards heaven and made of his kingly office a magistracy of order and equity. Rome has canonised him, and the people still see him seated under the oak of Vincennes dispensing justice to all comers. This saint, this man of peace, did more in the simplicity of his heart for the advancement of royalty than the most subtle counsellors or ten fighting monarchs, because the king, in after time, appeared to the people as the incarnation of Justice.[9]

For more than a century the sword of royalty, so far as it pertained to France, had been valiantly carried. But the son of Louis VIII was a child of eleven years. A coalition of the most powerful vassals was formed at once to profit by his minority. The regent, his mother, Blanche of Castile, won to her side one of the confederates, Thibaut, the powerful count of Champagne, sent the royal army to save him from the attack of his former allies and obtained from him, when he inherited the kingdom of Navarre, the important counties of Blois, Chartres, and Sancerre. A treaty, signed in 1229, assured to one of the king’s brothers the succession of the county of Toulouse and a marriage arranged between a second brother of St. Louis and the heiress of Provence prepared the way, at a future date, for the union of that country with France. Already the royal seneschals were established at Beaucaire and Carcassonne, by which the king found himself master, through himself or his brothers, of a large part of southern France. The king’s majority was proclaimed in 1236, but the wise regent still held the greatest influence over her son and the direction of affairs.

The great pontificate of Innocent III had given new energy to the church and to religious sentiment. The spirit of the Crusades which had been extinguished during the rivalry of Philip Augustus with Richard Cœur de Lion and John Lackland was rekindled. In 1235 preaching the “holy war” was recommenced in France, and, as on too many other occasions, the movement was begun by the massacre of those whose ancestors had nailed the sainted victim to the cross of Golgotha. Everywhere the Jews were slaughtered, until the Council of Tours was obliged to take these unhappy people under their protection. Heretics found even less mercy. Thibaut of Champagne burned 183 of them on Mount Aimé near Vertus. This crusade, in which Thibaut himself, the dukes of Burgundy and Brittany took part, was not successful. The crusaders were beaten at Gaza in Palestine, and those who returned brought back with them nothing but the honour of having broken a few lances in the Holy Land.

[Sidenote: [1236-1259 A.D.]]

Up to his war with England St. Louis gave little sign of activity; but in 1241 the emperor Frederick II detained the French prelates who had gone to Rome to attend a council, and Louis demanded with great firmness that they be set at liberty.

“Since the prelates of our realm have for no reason deserved their detention,” he writes the emperor, “may it please your grace to set them at liberty. You will thus appease us, for we regard their detention as an insult, and our royal majesty would lose respect if we could keep quiet under such circumstances. May your imperial prudence not go so far as to allege your power or your will, since the kingdom of France is not so weak that it will resign itself to be trampled under your feet.” The emperor released his prisoners. Some time before Louis, on behalf of himself and one of his brothers, refused the imperial crown of Frederick II which the pope had offered him, and he had also refused the pontiff’s request to modify a royal ordinance of 1234 restraining the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical tribunals--a necessary measure, since these courts had come to judge many more civil cases than the lay tribunals.

This man who spoke so firmly acted in the same manner when forced to take up arms. Attacked in 1242 by the English, who sustained several of his rebellious barons, St. Louis beat them at Taillebourg and at Saintes. Perhaps he would have been able to drive them out of France, but he refused to push his victory. Acquisitions made in the last half century had tripled the extent of the royal domain, but they seemed to him tainted with violence because they were the gain of two confiscations. Through conscientious scruples he left the king of England, in a treaty which he did not sign until his return from the crusade in 1259 [The Treaty of Abbeville], the duchy of Guienne, that is to say Bordeaux, Limoges, Périgueux, Cahors, Agen, Saintonge to the south of the Charente, and Gascony, on condition of homage to the crown. And to prevent perjury he obliged the lords who held fiefs from both crowns to choose between the two sovereigns. The limits of the kingdom were equally uncertain on the south; he fixed them at a convention with the king of Aragon, and the county of Barcelona ceased to be dependent on the French crown.

In 1245, Pope Innocent IV, driven out of Italy by the emperor Frederick II, took refuge at Lyons and there held in the cathedral church of St. John of that city the thirteenth ecumenical council at which 140 bishops assisted. The pope solemnly deposed the emperor and exhorted all Christian princes to march to the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre.

The spirit of the Crusades, which had been extinguished during the rivalry of Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion, was rekindled. The Spaniards had their crusade against the Moors, the Germans against the Slavs, and the knights of Italy fought against the cities; but in France, in spite of the great satiety of war from the Albigensian troubles, there remained sufficient martial spirit to undertake new crusades. In 1239 many had gone; we know with what success. Jerusalem, which Frederick II had bought back from the hands of the infidels (1229) had now come again under the power of Khwarismian barbarians (1239).

_First Crusade of St. Louis (1248-1254 A.D.)_

St. Louis had not listened to the appeal of the Fathers of the Council of Lyons to assume the cross, but during an illness which, in 1244, brought him to the edge of the grave, he made a vow to go to the Holy Land. His mother and counsellors struggled in vain against this imprudent resolution. Louis left his power again in the hands of Queen Blanche and embarked at Aigues-Mortes, a little city which at that time was joined to the Mediterranean by a canal across the swamps and salt marshes. The king bought it from the monks of Psalmodi Abbey in order to have a port of his own upon that sea, for Marseilles belonged to his brother the count of Provence. Many crusaders embarked at the latter city, among them the king’s friend the seneschal of Champagne and the sire de Joinville, who, with Villehardouin, is the first in point of date, as in merit, of the old French prose writers. It was not without many misgivings that he determined to follow his master. In setting out to join him he passed near his own castle, “but,” he said, “I dare not turn my face towards Joinville, for fear that my heart would fail me in leaving my two children and my fine castle which are so dear to me.” On the banks of the Rhone he saw the ruins of a castle which the king had had destroyed because its lord had a bad name for stripping and robbing all the merchants and pilgrims who passed by.

[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

[Sidenote: [1249-1270 A.D.]]

St. Louis had been collecting for two years a large store of provisions on the island of Cyprus. The army left there in eighteen hundred ships, large and small, for Egypt. Damietta, at one of the mouths of the Nile, was captured (June 7th, 1249), but precious time was lost before marching upon Cairo. Five months and a half of delay stoutened the hearts of the mamelukes. The crusaders took a month to cover the five leagues which separated them from the town of Mansurah. A badly directed fight at the same place cost the lives of a large number of knights and of St. Louis’ brother the count of Artois. When the prior of the Hospital, says Joinville,[i] came to ask of St. Louis if he had any news of his brother, the king replied that he had, that he knew his brother was in heaven. The prior tried to comfort him in praising the valour the prince had always shown and the glory he had gained that day, and the good king replied that God was adored in all that he had done. And then he began to shed great tears, at which many people who were looking on were oppressed by grief and compassion (February, 1250).

Soon the army was surrounded by enemies and decimated by pest. Joinville was stricken down, and equally so his poor chaplain. One day it happened that he was chanting mass before the seneschal’s bedside; when the priest was at the sacrament Joinville perceived him to be so ill that with his own eyes he saw him faint. The seneschal got up and ran to raise him and then he managed to finish the mass, but never said it again, and died. The retreat was disastrous and finally they had to surrender. “The good, saintly man, the king,” did honour to his captivity by his courage and inspired even his enemies with respect for his virtues. They released him for a large ransom. Once free he made his way to Palestine and stayed there three years, employing his influence and zeal in maintaining harmony among the Christians and his resources in repairing the fortifications of the places they still occupied.

The news of these disasters only served to increase the king’s popularity in France. The people would not see his faults and thought only of the virtues he had shown. The prelates and lords had deserted and betrayed him, they said; it would take the humble people to rescue him, and an immense crowd of serfs and peasants gathered together to cross the sea and go to the king’s help. This was the Shepherds’ Crusade. These people lived, on the way, by pillage--even murders were committed. It was necessary to deal harshly with them, and they were scattered like wild beasts.

The news of the regent’s death (December, 1252) recalled Louis at last to France. In passing Cyprus the king’s galley grazed a rock, which carried away fully eighteen feet of her keel. Louis was advised to change ships, and according to Joinville[i] said, “If I leave the ship, five or six hundred people who are on it and who value their life as I do mine will be afraid to stay behind and will land at Cyprus with no hope or means of ever returning to their own country. I prefer to place myself, my wife, and children in danger under the protection of God, than to bring such misfortune on so many people.”

_Last Years and Death of St. Louis_

It was after his return to France that St. Louis made treaties with England and Aragon to determine definitely the boundaries of the three kingdoms. He hoped in making substantial sacrifices to strengthen his hold on the provinces he kept for himself and to prevent the war so frequently provoked by uncertainty with regard to frontiers. This solicitude to do justice to all caused him to be chosen as arbitrator between the king of England and his barons in the controversy over the provisions of Oxford (1264). Louis pronounced in favour of the king, and this time was not successful, for the barons did not hold to his decision, and deposed Henry III. More fortunate elsewhere, he settled a dispute of succession which delivered Flanders from civil war. In the year 1270 St. Louis undertook another crusade in which his faithful Joinville this time refused to engage.[f]

[Sidenote: [1270 A.D.]]

A pacific expedition which should merely intimidate the king of Tunis and induce him to become a convert was not what suited the Genoese in whose vessels St. Louis was making his passage. Most of the crusaders preferred violence; it was said that Tunis was a rich town, the pillage of which might indemnify them for their dangerous expedition. The Genoese, regardless of the voice of St. Louis, began hostilities by seizing the vessels they found before Carthage. The landing took place without obstacle. The Moors only showed themselves to provoke the Christians, and make them waste their strength in fruitless pursuits. After spending some weary days on the burning shore, the Christians advanced towards the castle of Carthage. All that remained of the great rival of Rome was a fort guarded by two hundred soldiers, and the Saracens who had retreated into the vaults or subterranean chambers were butchered or suffocated by smoke and flames. The king found the ruins full of corpses, which he had removed, that he might take up his quarters there with his followers. He had to wait at Carthage for his brother, Charles of Anjou, before marching on Tunis.

The greater part of the army remained under the African sun, tormented by the thick dust swept from the desert by the winds, and surrounded by the festering remains of the dead. The Moors prowled all around, continually cutting off some stragglers. There were no trees, no vegetable food; for water there was nothing but fetid marshes and cisterns full of disgusting insects. In eight days the plague had broken out. The counts of Vendôme, de la Marche and Viane, Walter de Nemours, marshal of France, the sires de Montmorency, Piennes, Brissac, St. Briçon, and d’Apremont were already dead.

The legate soon followed them. The survivors being no longer able to bury them, they were thrown into the canal, till they covered the whole surface of the water. Meanwhile, the king and his sons were attacked by the malady; the youngest died in his vessel, and it was not till eight days afterwards that the confessor of St. Louis took on himself to acquaint him with the mournful event. The deceased was the most beloved of his children, and his death announced to a dying father was, to the latter, one tie less to earth, a call from God, a temptation to die. Accordingly, without perturbation or regret, he accomplished that last work of a Christian life, making the responses to the litanies and the psalms, dictating a noble and affecting instruction for his son, and receiving even the ambassadors of the Greeks, who came to entreat his intervention in their favour with his brother Charles of Anjou, whose ambition menaced them. He spoke to them with kindness, and promised to exert himself with zeal, if he lived, to keep them in peace; but the next day he himself entered into the peace of God.

That last night of his life he desired them to raise him from his bed and lay him on ashes; and so he died, with his arms constantly folded in the form of a cross. “And on Monday the blessed king stretched his folded hands towards heaven, and said, ‘Good Lord God, have mercy on this people that here remaineth, and lead it into its country, that it fall not into the hand of its enemies, and that it be not constrained to renounce thy holy name!’ In the night before he deceased, whilst he was reposing, he sighed, and said in a low voice, ‘O Jerusalem! O Jerusalem!’”[d]

In his lifetime the contemporaries of St. Louis suspected in their simplicity that he was already a saint, and more saintly than the priests. Says the king’s confessor, Geoffrey de Beaulieu:[l] “Whilst he lived a word might be said of him which is said of St. Hilary, ‘O most perfect layman whose life priests even desire to imitate.’ For many priests and laymen desired to be like the blessed king in his virtues and his morals; for it is even thought that he was a saint in his lifetime.”[d]

The French during this reign accomplished a great achievement without the help of royalty. Charles of Anjou, count of Provence, summoned by the pope against King Manfred, son of the emperor Frederick II, conquered the kingdom of Naples in 1266. But the Latins had five years before lost Constantinople which the Greeks had taken possession of. It was to the interested advice of Charles of Anjou that was due the direction taken by the last crusade, since the submission of the king of Tunis would free Sicily from the constant attempts of the Saracens upon that island.[f]

_Hallam’s Estimate of St. Louis_

[Sidenote: [1226-1270 A.D.]]

Louis IX had methods of preserving his ascendency very different from military prowess. That excellent prince was perhaps the most eminent pattern of unswerving probity and Christian strictness of conscience that ever held the sceptre in any country. There is a peculiar beauty in the reign of St. Louis, because it shows the inestimable benefit which a virtuous king may confer on his people, without possessing any distinguished genius. For nearly half a century that he governed France, there is not the smallest want of moderation or disinterestedness in his actions; and yet he raised the influence of the monarchy to a much higher point than the most ambitious of his predecessors.

To the surprise of his own and later times, he restored great part of his conquests to Henry III, whom he might naturally hope to have expelled from France. It would indeed have been a tedious work to conquer Guienne, which was full of strong places, and the subjugation of such a province might have alarmed the other vassals of his crown. But it is the privilege only of virtuous minds to perceive that wisdom resides in moderate counsels; no sagacity ever taught a selfish and ambitious sovereign to forego the sweetness of immediate power. An ordinary king, in the circumstances of the French monarchy, would have fomented, or at least have rejoiced in the dissensions which broke out among the principal vassals; Louis constantly employed himself to reconcile them. In this, too, his benevolence had all the effects of far-sighted policy. It had been the practice of his last three predecessors to interpose their mediation in behalf of the less powerful classes--the clergy, the inferior nobility, and the inhabitants of chartered towns. Thus the supremacy of the crown became a familiar idea; but the perfect integrity of St. Louis wore away all distrust, and accustomed even the most jealous feudatories to look upon him as their judge and legislator. And as the royal authority was hitherto shown only in its most amiable prerogatives, the dispensation of favour, and the redress of wrong, few were watchful enough to remark the transition of the French constitution from a feudal league to an absolute monarchy.

It was perhaps fortunate for the display of St. Louis’ virtues that the throne had already been strengthened by the less innocent exertions of Philip Augustus and Louis VIII. A century earlier, his mild and scrupulous character, unsustained by great actual power, might not have inspired sufficient awe. But the crown was now grown so formidable, and Louis was so eminent for his firmness and bravery, qualities without which every other virtue would have been ineffectual, that no one thought it safe to run wantonly into rebellion, while his disinterested administration gave no one a pretext for it. Not satisfied with the justice of his own conduct, Louis aimed at that act of virtue which is rarely practised by private men, and had perhaps no example among kings--restitution. Commissaries were appointed to inquire what possessions had been unjustly annexed to the royal domain during the last two reigns. These were restored to the proprietors, or, where length of time had made it difficult to ascertain the claimant, their value was distributed among the poor.

[Illustration: A FRENCH PAGE, TIME OF LOUIS IX]

It has been hinted already that all this excellence of heart in Louis IX was not attended with that strength of understanding which is necessary, we must allow, to complete the usefulness of a sovereign. During his minority, Blanche of Castile, his mother, had filled the office of regent with great courage and firmness. But after he grew up to manhood, her influence seems to have passed the limit which gratitude and piety would have assigned to it; and, as her temper was not very meek or popular, it exposed the king to some degree of contempt. He submitted even to be restrained from the society of his wife Marguerite, daughter of Raymond, count of Provence, a princess of great virtue and conjugal affection.

But the principal weakness of this king, which almost effaced all the good effects of his virtues, was superstition. It would be idle to sneer at those habits of abstemiousness and mortification which were part to the religion of his age, and, at the worst, were only injurious to his own comfort. But he had other prejudices, which, though they may be forgiven, must never be defended. No man was ever more impressed than St. Louis with a belief in the duty of exterminating all enemies to his own faith. With these he thought no layman ought to risk himself in the perilous ways of reasoning, but to make answer with his sword as stoutly as a strong arm and a fiery zeal could carry that argument. Though, fortunately for his fame, the persecution against the Albigenses, which had been the disgrace of his father’s short reign, was at an end before he reached manhood, he suffered a hypocritical monk to establish a tribunal at Paris for the suppression of heresy, where many innocent persons suffered death.[g]

_Piety and Christianity of St. Louis_

The natural piety of St. Louis but strengthened with his growth. His Christian life, or to reduce the statement to its simplest terms, his daily Christianity, which edified his own century, might very easily fill ours with a sense of shock. But whatever it may leave of such an impression, the history would be incomplete which passed over in silence, or only vaguely indicated, that which filled so large a part in his life. Let us not, therefore, endeavour to build up for ourselves a St. Louis in accordance with our present-day tastes. Nothing is beautiful but the true, and that truth which the saintly king sought in all things is alone worthy to retrace the likeness of him which should endure.

According to those of his historians who were most intimate with him--the chaplain who accompanied him on one and another of the Crusades, the confessor whom he kept beside him for twenty years, the confessor of his wife Marguerite--he seemed to live for God alone. The offices were read in the king’s chapel; almost it might have been the chapel of a monastery or the choir of a cathedral. There he had the Hours sung to him, the Office for the Dead being added by his command. He heard two masses, sometimes three or four; and when the grandees grumbled at his wasting so much time on masses and sermons, he retorted that if he were to lose twice as much time over gaming and hunting no one would complain: a remark which scarcely silenced the murmurs; the barons made no complaint against thus wasting their time with him.

The holy Scriptures and the Fathers were his study. Marguerite’s confessor tells us that he caused a candle three feet or thereabouts in height to be lighted, and so long as it lasted read the Bible. He remained for so long a time upon his knees that sometimes his sight and his wits became confused, and, rising up quite dazed, he would ask: “Where am I?” Led back to his room, he would go to bed, but at midnight he was up again and had matins sung by his chaplains (it was no sinecure being king’s chaplain in those days!). He would, however, grant to his attendants the repose he refused for himself. So softly did he rise that on several occasions they did not hear him, or, awakened too late, ran after him barefoot.

Every Friday he made his confession, after which he made his confessor administer “the discipline” to him. This discipline was composed of five small iron chains, which he enclosed in an ivory box and carried about with him. He had similar boxes made, with similar contents, and presented them to his children and his friends, counselling them to make use of them. When his confessor struck him too lightly, he urged him to use more force. This advice was not always needed. He had one confessor so full of zeal (_solicitus sibi_) who struck the king in such a manner as to terribly lacerate his flesh, which was extremely delicate. St. Louis, however, held his peace; he never mentioned the matter so long as the confessor lived, but afterwards he spoke of it laughingly to another. His confessors, one should add, were not commonly so zealous, and they reprimanded him for austerities which threatened his delicate health, and urged him to substitute for them alms, which, as a fact, the king did not stint; and they ended by forcing him to renounce the hair-shirt which he wore during Advent and Lent and on the vigils of certain feasts. He renounced it only to wear occasionally a girdle of horse-hair next his skin.

On Good Friday he would visit all the churches barefoot; to keep up appearances he wore shoes from which the soles had been removed. For the adoration of the cross he removed his upper garments, retaining only his vest and coat. With bare feet and uncovered head he advanced a short distance on his knees, bowed himself in prayer, then advanced a little further, and the third time arrived at the cross, prostrated himself as though he too were crucified, and kissed it, bathed in tears. Fervently did he desire the gift of tears. When in singing the litanies the verse was reached: “Grant us a fountain of tears” (_Ut fontem lacrymarum nobis dones_), he used to say: “Lord, I dare not ask of thee a fount of tears, but only a few drops to refresh my parched and sterile heart.”

Are all these details, which have perhaps provoked the pitying smiles of more than one reader, the marks of a feeble intelligence, or do they rather bear witness to a powerful mind that has perfected self-control by keeping the senses in sternest bondage? One can only truly judge of things by their results. His singleness of speech and his aversion to coarse or equivocal language bore eloquent witness to the purity of his heart. Not only did he detest the licentiousness of contemporary poetry, he was also filled with loathing for the popular songs, and innocently recommended one of his equerries who sang them to learn instead the _Ave Maris Stella_. His modesty was excessive. The purity of his youth had never been shadowed by the slightest hint of license, and marriage only served to throw his chastity into higher relief. He demanded moral uprightness from all in his household, and banished without mercy whoso offended against a virtue so dear to his heart.

[Illustration: A FRENCH KNIGHT OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

On feast days he would bid to his palace two hundred beggars, and himself serve them at table. On the Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of Advent and Lent, and every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year, he would send for thirteen of them into his own or a neighbouring room and give them food with his own hand, without disgust at their dirtiness. If one among the number was blind the king would give the piece of bread into one of his hands, and guide the other to the bowl containing his portion. If this consisted of fish, he would remove the bones, dip it in the sauce and place the morsel in the blind man’s mouth. Before the meal he gave to each person twelve deniers or more according to his need; and if a mother was there with her child, he added more for the little one. On Saturdays he would choose three of the most decrepit, most miserable among the poor, and leading them into his dressing-room, where towels and three basins of water were in readiness, he washed their feet. With reverence he would dry and kiss those feet, whatever their deformity, however hardened by daily contact with the ground; then, kneeling, he would offer them water to wash their hands, give to each forty deniers, and kiss their hands. Nor was this all. Every day, in all weathers, he sent for thirteen other beggars and from among them chose out the three most repulsive, whom he seated at a table drawn up close beside his own.

On many of these points he would not to-day have won the same universal approbation. It is, however, difficult for us to reinvest his figure with the atmosphere by which it must be surrounded before we can form a just judgment; it is far more difficult to place ourselves at the necessary point of view from which we can see him clearly. The modern historian is ofttimes reduced to pleading extenuating circumstances for the saints; for the saints, and St. Louis among them, have this much in common with the Saviour, that in more than one case they could say with him: “Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.”[h]

St. Louis built the asylum of the Quinze Vingts for the blind, several hospitals, and the church of Vincennes. To provide a place for the crown of thorns which the Venetians had turned over to his keeping, he had built by Pierre de Montereau within the precinct of his palace, now the Palais de Justice, the Sainte Chapelle, a shrine of open-work stone. His confessor Robert de Sorbon founded a community under the title of _Congrégation des pauvres maîtres étudiants en théologie_. This congregation became the Sorbonne, the theological faculty so famous throughout the entire Christian world that Mézeray calls it “the permanent council of the Gauls.”

_Progress of the Monarchy under St. Louis_

The house of Capet had made such progress that no lord now dared say to his vassal, “Come fight under my banner against the lord, our king,” much as this anarchial privilege was still recognised in the so-called “Establishments” of St. Louis, a compilation of customs in vogue in Orleans. The counts of Flanders and of Brittany and the duke of Guienne, were about the only ones who had not degenerated to the condition of docile vassals; yet feudalism still preserved some immense prerogatives and St. Louis attacked these in the name of justice and religion.

In holding to a strict execution of the ordinances of _quarantaine-le-roi_[10] and _asseurement_ (inviolability) he suppressed nearly all private wars. As a Christian he did not approve of these wars which sent to God so many souls ill-prepared to appear before him. As a prince he wished to stop the devastation throughout the country, “the fires and the obstacles placed in the ways of tilling the fields.” He forbade in his domains the _duel judiciare_ which gave over the settlement and right to the chances of skill and strength. The king’s justice usurped the place of individual violence, and proof by witnesses and procedure by writ replaced justice by battle, for “battle is not the path of right.”

The lords still dispensed justice throughout their domains. The villein could not escape this judgment, but the vassal had the rights of appeal to the sovereign from the judgment of his lord “in default of right,” when the lord refused to render justice; for “false judgments” when the condemned believed himself to have been injured by an unjust sentence. Now the king favoured the custom of direct appeal to his court, which subordinated the lord’s justice to that of his own which was final; “for,” says Beaumanoir,[j] “since he is sovereign, his court is sovereign”; and the “Establishments” explain why there could be no appeal from the royal decision: “There is no one who can have this right, since the king gets his power from no one but God and himself.” The duke of Brittany also retained the final appeal. When a case brought to the justice of the lords interested the king, in whatever way it may be, the bailiff raised the “conflict” as we would say nowadays and laid claim to the judgment, the king not being under the jurisdiction of a lord. These cases were the “royal cases.” Legists were most careful to define them so as not to deprive the king’s officials of any pretexts for interfering in trials before the feudal courts. It was easy to multiply these at that time and the officials did not fail to do so--taking as much as possible from the province of the lord’s justice and adding it to the king’s.

At the same time the king’s _bourgeoisie_ was established. An inhabitant of a piece of seigniorial land might under certain conditions of establishment and residence in a royal city acquire the condition of “king’s bourgeois.” “I am a king’s bourgeois” was equivalent to “I am a Roman citizen.” The Roman citizen could only be judged at Rome. The king’s bourgeois could not be tried except by the king’s officials.

The king’s court was on this account much more occupied than formerly. It continued to accumulate every possible prerogative. It was a court of exchequer, and, if it pleased the king, a political council; but it was above all things, in the days of St. Louis, a court of justice. The royal finances were always of a very simple nature; in case of crusades, captivity of the king, knighthood conferred upon the king’s eldest son or his marriage, feudal aid was demanded. The revenues of the domain, if well administered, were quite sufficient for royalty to live upon. When it had greater needs and it was necessary to increase revenues of all sorts, the financial prerogatives of the court became more important. The office of the exchequer was detached from it; but in the time of St. Louis justice was the court’s business.

But even in this court considerable changes were taking place. The rôle of the great vassals and the crown officials was diminishing, that of the legists was beginning. Now, since judgment was pronounced on written procedures, it was not the knights who had sufficient knowledge and application of mind to deal with the stability of proof and the obscurities of the black-book. The lawyer was necessary to them. At first the barons disdainfully made these plebeian personages sit at their feet, on stools. But in the meeting of ignorance and knowledge the latter quickly asserted its sovereignty. The baron, who had nothing but nonsense to talk, kept quiet before the learned counsellors, and upon these latter soon devolved the direction of judgment; and the fate of the guilty, even of the noblest station, lay in their hands. The king’s court, which was always held at Paris, had regular sessions, usually four times a year; and it kept a record of its deliberations which under the name of “Olim” was the beginning of royal jurisprudence.

In the administration of the provinces, St. Louis protected his own power and that of his subjects against any abuses his officials might practice. He forbade bailiffs and seneschals to make presents to the members of the council or receive money from those dependent on them or to loan such any, or to take part in sales, markets, or leases held in the king’s name. They were forbidden to purchase any property within their jurisdiction or to marry their sons and daughters without the king’s permission. If they disobeyed they were punished both in their property and their persons. When going out of office they were obliged to live forty days within their territory, in order to reply to their successors or to royal inquiries in any charge of misconduct that might be brought against them.

St. Louis sent into the provinces commissioners or royal inquirers, a custom adopted from Charlemagne. These inquirers defended the king’s rights and those of his subjects as well. The care which they took to protect the latter against exaction, won them the name of _enquesteurs aux restitutions_. In all these measures can be recognised the influence of the legists and echoes of Roman administration.

We have noted the organisation of provostships. That of Paris demanded large funds. Therefore several officials joined together to farm it out, and these provosts, according to Joinville, trampled upon the people, sustained their families by the “outrages” they committed, let themselves be corrupted by the rich, and took no notice whatever of the robbers and malefactors who infested Paris and its vicinity.

The king resolved to give in the future “great and high wages to those who should look after his provostship,” and sought for someone “who would give good and stiff justice.” He chose Étienne Boileau who maintained so well the provostship that no malefactor, robber, or cut-throat dared come to Paris but he was at once hanged and exterminated; and neither lineage, gold, nor silver could save him. Justice and policing were the principal functions of the provost of Paris, who commanded the watch and presided at the tribunal of the Châtelet.

St. Louis struck hard blows at feudalism by the suppression of judiciary duels, the interdiction of private wars, and the establishment of appeal; but he was not for all this a revolutionary king in the sense of Philip the Fair. He repeated constantly that none must “take away any one’s rights; but it is,” so he said at the head of an ordinance, “the duty of royal power to assure peace and happiness to our subjects.” Besides he had that same spirit of justice that is found in Roman law, and which united so well with the principles of Christianity. When he condemns, for example, the duel, he does it because “battle is not the way to determine right”--here is the Roman spirit; and because it “criminally tempts God”--here is the spirit of Christ.

He expected that all would submit to what it seemed to him he was charged by God to establish. His brother the count of Anjou, had, on trial, condemned a knight; and the latter, on appealing to the king’s court, was imprisoned by the count. The king let his brother know that there was but one king in France and although Charles was his brother, he would not be treated in any different ways as regarded justice. The count of Anjou had to release his prisoner and came in person to oppose the appeal at the king’s court, which, however, was decided in favour of the knight.

One of the most powerful lords of the realm, the lord of Coucy, caused three young men to be hanged for offence against the hunting laws, and although all the barons pleaded for him he was ordered a heavy fine. A lord cried with irony, “If I were king I would hang all the barons; for the first step taken, the second costs nothing.” The king heard and called him back. “How, Jean, you say that I should hang all my barons. Certainly I shall not do it, but I will punish them if they do wrong.” We have seen how the reputation for equity of the good king was so well established that the English barons in revolt against their king chose Louis as arbitrator, an example followed by the counts of Bar and Luxemburg.

The right of coinage belonged to more than eighty lords who sometimes made bad money. St. Louis decided that his own should have circulation throughout the entire kingdom and alone should be legal tender in the royal domain and those whose lords had not the right of coinage; that the seigniorial coinage should only be legal in the province of the lord who issued it and that this lord could only strike off the _tournois_, and _parisis_,[11] and other coins whose legal value was fixed by relation to the _tournois_ in the ordinance. Thus the king ruled, in absolute power, in his own domain. He recognised elsewhere seigniorial rights, but limited them in the interest of the subjects whose protector he was. His money circulated everywhere.

It only remained for the king to coin better _parisis_ and better _tournois_ than those of the lords; which he did. His money, like his justice, was worth more than his vassal’s. Another measure was extremely useful to commerce. It made the lords responsible for the policing of the roads through their domains. In Paris he established the royal watch and had drawn up by the provost, Étienne Boileau, the ancient rules concerning the hundred trades which existed in the town, in order to infuse peace and order into industry as he had done in the country. These trades grouped themselves into great corporations; in the fifteenth century all the Parisian merchants formed six bodies of “arts and trades.”

St. Louis showed a respectful firmness towards papal authority; we have seen that he did not recognise the pope’s right to dispose of crowns. There has even been attributed to him a pragmatic sanction, the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican church, which would have confirmed the liberty of canonical elections, restrained to the most urgent necessities the impositions which the court of Rome could levy upon the French churches and contained the king’s vow that they should be established. This ordinance is not authentic, but its principles are those of the government. When the bishops demanded that the king force the excommunicated to submit, he declared that he could not do so without knowing the reasons for excommunication, which made him a judge of the bishops.

St. Louis’ lively faith assured him against all fear of the church’s wrath; and led him besides to severe practices which seem to us of to-day barbaric. “No one,” he said, “unless he be learned clerk or perfect theologian, should dispute with the Jews, but may do so with the layman who is heard to slander the Christian faith, and defend it not only with words but with his good drawn sword, striking the miscreant across the body or even letting it cut him.” He punished blasphemers by running red-hot irons through their tongues.

He loved to recall that on one occasion during his minority, when pursued up to the very walls of Paris by rebel vassals, he had been saved by the city soldiers who came to his rescue. He always took great interest in the welfare of the large towns, but without sacrificing to them the new needs of society. He conferred a number of charters, and amended others. Communal independence never seemed to him better than feudal liberties, and he favoured the transformation of the communes into royal cities which were dependent on and watched over by the supreme power, while their internal affairs were attended to by officials chosen in free election. An ordinance of 1256 prescribes that the communes name four candidates among themselves from whom the king shall choose a mayor who shall come to Paris once a year to give account of his stewardship.

Thus little by little was established the principle that it was the king’s prerogative to deal with the communes and that all owed him allegiance above everyone else. Thus the communes gradually disappeared and with them the proud sentiments, the strong ideas of right and liberty which sustained the men who had founded and defended them. The “third estate” was beginning.

Through his undermining of feudal and communal independence, and through his strong ruling with regard to the church, St. Louis pointed the way of absolute power to French royalty. He rendered it still another service. The remembrance of his virtues did not perish with him. Venerated in his lifetime as a saint, he was canonised after death. He put the seal of sanctification, so to speak, upon French royalty, and his descendants were fond of invoking at the head of their decrees the name and example of “Monsieur St. Louis.”[f]

ASPECTS OF THIRTEENTH CENTURY CIVILISATION

[Sidenote: [1100-1270 A.D.]]

In proportion as the Middle Ages advanced, national individuality took more definite shape. Intellectual life had been during a protracted period confined almost exclusively to religious circles, and had been given expression in the universal language--Latin. Accordingly the beginning of the thirteenth century saw only three active established literatures--in Germany, in the north and in the south of France; the last having preceded the others and served them as models. This was the literature of the _langue d’oc_, also called Provençal, which overflowed the Pyrenean borders into Christian Europe, passed over the Alps into the whole of Italy, and awakened the muse that lay sleeping on the banks of the Ebro, as on those of the Po and the Arno. Brilliant, sonorous, harmonious, full of imagery and movement, it was unexcelled as the language of love and battle songs. Bernard de Ventadour, Bertram de Born, and Richard Cœur de Lion moulded it with a skill and ardour worthy of Tyrtæus. The songs of Bertram de Born, above all, were like swords, dazzling and penetrating; the passion of war flamed in them like fire. This language of the south, into which something of the Arabian accent has passed, lent itself gracefully to the requirements of the courts of love presided over by ingenious tribunals of noble dames.

But the continued development of the north of France gave the preponderance to its idiom. The Normans carried it into Italy, where it failed to establish itself; and to England, where it prevailed during three centuries. By the crusaders it was everywhere disseminated. While the intellectual fame of Paris attracted there the eminent minds of the whole Catholic world, the vulgar tongue which the doctors disdained extended its empire well beyond the frontiers. We must add also that French genius, so often accused of epic sterility, poured over into the adjacent countries a flood of great poetry. The troubadours had been mute since the Albigensian crusade had drowned in blood the civilisation of the _langue d’oc_; and no more were heard the virile accents of Bernard de Ventadour or of Bertram de Born, nor the melodious lyrics of the _jeux partis_.[12] But north of the Loire the _trouvères_ still composed heroic songs--veritable epics, which were translated or imitated in Italy, England, and Germany.

But these epic cycles were exhausted: the heroic ode disappeared. Robert Wace, “clerk of Caen,” composed about 1155 the _Roman de Brut_, a legendary history of Britain. Christian de Troyes, who wrote after 1160, spun out a diluted version of the Arthurian legend in a long poem in lines of eight syllables, while the same tale was given a religious twist by another school of poets by adding the history of the Holy Grail. The aspect of the times was mirrored in the poem with its double face--chivalry and piety. The naïve inspiration of the song of Roland was lost; the new school subtilised, ran after novelties, or rummaged among the classics. The story of Ulysses and that of the Argonauts, borrowed from _The Thebaid_ of Statius, furnished tales which could not fail to please those Christian Ulysseses whom the Crusades had sent wandering in Asia. The Trojan War, the sorceress Medea, and Alexander, attracted the _trouvères_ of this period. They had already begun to imitate the style of the ancients. Thus the nature of the epic was altered and a transition took place from primitive composition to the diverse styles of advanced civilisation. The epic was divided: the elements dealing with the passions were blended into allegorical romance; the narrative elements, into prose history. Analysis and realism took the place of spontaneous and poetic inspiration.

Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, began the famous _Roman de la Rose_, whose personages were abstract qualities--Reason, Good-will, Danger, Treason, Baseness, Avarice. Jean de Meun continued it later, after another transformation had given birth to satire. The fable flourished already, having derived its origin from that very romance: animals played the rôles of passions, of social conditions; and the tale of _Renard_, developed in its turn from the others, made its appearance, in 1236, as the comedy of the period. Rutebœuf offers the first example of the professional poet, ill remunerated, perishing with cold, agape with hunger; yet, in the depths of this misery, gay, daring, caustic, he wrote upon all sorts of subjects in the frank, open style which heralded Villon. Language acquires in his hands skill and power; it is more mellow and more tender than that of Guillaume de Lorris or from the lips of the famous count of Champagne or of Marie of France.

The most noteworthy event in French literature in the thirteenth century was the appearance of prose. The first prose writers were not, be it understood, professional historians, but two noblemen, both involved in the events they depicted. Geoffroy de Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne, has left us the history of the Fourth Crusade in the _Conquête de Constantinople_, in which he himself figured. He writes as a soldier, his style being firm and brief, not without a touch of military stiffness; he invents little, goes straight ahead, from one attack to the next, with a brief exclamation when encountering some object which astonishes him. The lord of Joinville, also seneschal of Champagne, exhibits in his _Mémoires_ a greater suppleness of style, a more marked refinement of mind; he observes, reflects, and talks upon all subjects, discussing his personal sentiments as freely as the events of war. He was the foreshadowing of Froissart, as only the councillor and friend of the pious and excellent Louis IX could be.[c] “In point of time,” says Villemain, “the narrative of Joinville is perhaps the first monument of genius in the French language,--a work of genius being, as I understand it, one having a high degree of originality of diction; a characteristic and expressive physiognomy; in short, a work that has been done by one man and that could not have been done by another. Such is the book of Joinville.”[o]

France was indebted to St. Louis for the multiplication of manuscripts. It is remarkable that he should first, while in the East, have resolved to establish a library at Paris. Hearing that the soldan of Egypt was indefatigably collecting from all parts, and causing to be transcribed or translated, the works of the ancient philosophers, “he was afflicted,” says a chronicler of the times, “to perceive more wisdom in the sons of darkness than in the children of light.” He began to collect manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments, and of the fathers, which he caused to be multiplied by transcription; all these he placed in the royal chapel at Paris, making them accessible to professors and students. The same liberality was shown by the Dominicans of Toulouse, by the bishops of Beauvais and Paris, by the archbishop of Narbonne, by many chapters, and by more monasteries. The professors of the University of Paris, too, were eminent enough to draw students from all parts of Europe: in fact, such names as Alexander de Hales, Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Buonaventura, would have conferred splendour on any establishment. With inferior fame, but probably with equal utility, the universities of Bourges, Toulouse, Orleans, and Angers--foundations of this century--imitated the example of the capital.[n]

The thirteenth century marks the triumph of the style of architecture so improperly called Gothic. Its characteristic is the arch. This form, at no other time and in no other country employed with such profusion and prominence as in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, has been attributed primarily to the Goths, whence its name; afterwards, with as little justification, to the Arabs. Undoubtedly pilgrims to the Orient, among them many ecclesiastics, brought back from their travels impressions and souvenirs which left their traces upon Christian edifices; numerous churches were built after the pattern of the Holy Sepulchre. Mosaic and colour alternation appear also to be importations from the East. As to the arch, if it is much in evidence in the Arabian style, it is also prominent in that of the Byzantines; it is of all times and all countries, from the tomb of Atreus and the gates of the Pelasgian cities in Italy to the constructions of the savages of Nubia and America. It is simply an elementary form and easy to construct in building vaulted roofs, which require more precision than science.

Vulgar and irregular at first, the arch became monumental little by little--by natural progression, by a gradual refinement of line, by a greater diversity of ornament, by the ribs and columns which began to adorn it. It lent itself marvellously, moreover, as a delineation of the celestial vault, to the mysticism of the Christians and to the passionate soaring of their souls toward heaven: thus soared the mass of Gothic columns, straight, bold, fearfully light, and appearing higher in proportion as the vaulted roof was less open. It was not in the formal Roman _Midi_, it was in the mystic North that the Gothic spread and attained perfection.

The new style, born north of the Loire, crossed the Channel, the Rhine, and the Alps; and the colonies of French artists transplanted it to Canterbury, to Utrecht, to Milan, to Cologne, to Strasburg, to Ratisbon--even into Sweden. A crude but ingenuous statuary adorned portals, galleries, and cloisters; and the art of glass-painting possessed, for the production of magic effects on glazed windows, secrets which we are only just beginning to recover. Miniature paintings adorned the missals, and the books of Hours have preserved to us some exquisite masterpieces.

Astrology was one of the fads of this period; it reached its highest development in the sixteenth century, and was not wholly extinguished till the seventeenth. The astrologers pretended to read in the stars the destiny of human lives. Another folly was the search of the alchemists for the philosopher’s stone--that is to say, the method of creating gold by the transmutation of metals. These dreams, however, led to happy results: the astrologers from much star-gazing discovered the laws that governed the movements of those bodies; the alchemists found in their crucibles--not gold, indeed, but new substances, or new properties of those already known. So were discovered the process of forming salts by distillation, powerful acids, enamels, and convex glasses leading to the making of spectacles.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[8] [This is called by many historians the Fourth Crusade.]

[9] [“St. Louis,” says Guizot,[m] “was above all a conscientious man, a man who before acting weighed the question to himself of the moral good or evil, the question as to whether what he was about to do was good or evil in itself, independently of all utility, of all consequences. Such men are rarely seen and still more rarely remain upon the throne. Truly speaking, there are hardly more than two examples in history, one in antiquity, the other in modern times: Marcus Aurelius and St. Louis. These are, perhaps, the only two princes who, on every occasion, have formed the first rule of their conduct from their moral creeds--Marcus Aurelius, a stoic, St. Louis, a Christian.”]

[10] [Custom had permitted that when anyone had murdered, wounded, or beaten another the victim or his relatives might immediately avenge themselves by killing, wounding, or beating the offender or any of his relatives, even if the latter were ignorant of what had occurred. The ordinance of _quarantaine-le-roi_, forbade the injured to attack any of the offender’s family until after the lapse of forty days (_une quarantaine_). During the interval the offender himself was alone held answerable for his action. Furthermore, if either victim or offender chose to submit his cause to his suzerain he could secure inviolability (_asseurement_), for his goods and person, until a judicial decision had been given. When this inviolability had been demanded its breach was punishable by death.]

[11] [The livres of Tours and of Paris; their values being 20 and 25 sous respectively.]

[12] The disquisitions of the _troubadours_ or the _trouvères_ on questions of gallantry were called _jeux partis_; whence grew those “courts of love” in which were tried, before tribunals of noble ladies, complicated cases and subtle questions. These “courts of love” were of course but a poetical fiction, never a serious or permanent institution.

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