Part 11

In 987 died Louis ‘the Good-for-nothing’, the last of the Carolingian kings, leaving as heir to the throne an uncle, Charles, Duke of Lorraine. In his short reign Louis had shown himself feeble and profligate; and the nobles of northern France, weary of a royal House that like Ethelred of England preferred bribing the goodwill of invaders to fighting them, readily agreed to set Charles on one side and to take in his place Hugh Capet, Duke of Paris, descendant of the famous Odo.

‘Our crown goes not by inheritance,’ exclaimed the Archbishop of Reims, when sanctioning the usurper’s claims, ‘but by wisdom and noble blood.’

[Sidenote: The House of Capet]

The unfortunate Duke of Lorraine, captured after a vain attempt to gain his inheritance, perished in prison, and with him disappeared the Carolingians. The House of Capet, built on their ruin, survived in the direct line until the fourteenth century, and then in a younger branch, the Valois, until France in modern times was declared a republic.

Under the Capets France became not merely a collection of tribes and races as under the Merovingians, nor a section of a European Empire as under the House of Charlemagne, but a nation as we see her to-day, with separate interests and customs to distinguish her from other nations. This process of fusion was slow, and King Hugh and his immediate successors appeared in their own day more as powerful rulers of the small district in which they lived than as overlords of France. When they marched abroad at the head of a large army, achieving victories, outlying provinces hastily recognized them as suzerains, or overlords, but when they turned their backs and went home, the commands they had issued would be ignored and defied.

Amongst the most formidable neighbours of these rulers of Paris were the Dukes of Normandy, descendants of a certain Viking chief, Rollo ‘the Ganger’, so called because on account of his size he could find no horse capable of bearing him and must therefore ‘gang afoot’. This Rollo established himself at Rouen, and because Charles ‘the Simple’, one of the later Carolingians,[5] was unable to defeat him in battle he gave him instead the lands which he had won, and created him Duke, hoping that like a poacher turned gamekeeper he might prove as valuable a subject as he had been a troublesome foe. In return Rollo promised to become a Christian and to acknowledge Charles as his overlord. One of the old chronicles says that when Rollo was asked to ratify this allegiance by kissing his toe, the Viking replied indignantly, ‘Not so, by God!’ and that a Dane who consented to do so in his place was so rough that he tumbled Charles from his throne amid the jeers of his companions.

This is probably only a tale, for in reality Rollo married a daughter of Charles and settled down in his capital at Rouen as the model ruler of a semi-civilized state, supporting the Church, and administering such law and order that it was said when he left a massive bracelet hanging on a tree and forgot he had done so, that the ornament remained for three years without any one daring to steal it.

[Sidenote: William the Conqueror]

The rulers of the new Duchy were nearly all strong men, hard fighters, shrewd-headed, and ambitious; but the greatest of the line was undoubtedly William, an illegitimate son of Duke Robert ‘the Devil’. William’s ambition was of the restless type of his Scandinavian forefathers, and his duchy in northern France seemed to him too small to match his hopes. When he noted that England was ruled by Edward ‘the Confessor’, a feeble son of Ethelred ‘the Rede-less’, who had gained the throne on the death of Cnut’s two sons, he determined shrewdly that his conquests should lie in this direction. Many things favoured his cause, not the least that Edward the Confessor himself, who had been brought up in Normandy and who had no direct heirs, was quite willing to acknowledge William as his successor.

The national hero of England at the time Edward died, and who promptly proclaimed himself king, was Harold the Saxon, a member of the powerful family of Godwin that had for years controlled and owned the greater part of the land in the south.

Unfortunately for Harold the north and midlands were mainly governed by the House of Morkere and their friends, who hated the family of Godwin as dangerous rivals far more than they dreaded a Norman invasion. Thus any help that they or their tenants proffered was so slow in its rendering and so niggardly in its amount that it proved of very little use.

In addition to jealousies at home, Harold, at the moment that he heard William, Duke of Normandy, had indeed landed on the south coast, was far off in Yorkshire, where he had just succeeded in repelling an invasion of Danes at the battle of Stamford Bridge. At once he started southwards, but as he marched his army melted away, some of the men to enjoy the spoils taken from the Danes, others to attend to their harvests.

The deserters could claim that they were following the advice of the Father of Christendom, since Pope Gregory VII had given William a banner that he had blessed and had denounced Harold as a perjurer.

One of the reasons for Gregory’s anger with the Saxons was that Harold had dared to appoint as Archbishop of Canterbury a bishop of whom he did not approve, while further the crafty William had persuaded him that Harold, who as a young man had been wrecked upon the Norman coast, had sworn on the bones of some holy saint that he would never seize the crown of England. He had been a prisoner in William’s power and only on this condition had he been set free to return to his native land.

The exact truth of events so long ago is hard to reach; but Harold, at any rate, fought under a cloud of suspicion and neglect, and not all his reckless daring, nor the devotion of his brothers and friends, could save his fortunes when on the field of Senlac, standing beneath his dragon-banner, he met the shock of the disciplined Norman forces. Chroniclers relate that the human wall of Saxon archers and foot-soldiers remained unshaken on the hill-side until William, setting a snare, turned in pretended flight. The ruse was successful; for as the Saxons, cheering triumphantly, descended from their position in pursuit, the invaders faced round and charged their disordered ranks. Only Harold and the men of his bodyguard remained firm under the onslaught, until at the last an arrow fired in the air struck the Saxon King in the eye as he looked up, so that he fell down dead. All resistance was now at an end and William, Duke of Normandy, was left master of the field and ruler of England.

Here rose the dragon-banner of our realm: Here fought, here fell, our Norman-slandered king. O garden blossoming out of English blood! O strange hate-healer Time! We stroll and stare Where might made right eight hundred years ago.

These lines of Tennyson on ‘Battle Abbey’ recall the fact that just as the Danes and Saxons were fused into one race, so would the Norman invaders mingle with their descendants, until to after-generations William as well as Harold should appear a national hero.

[Sidenote: Domesday Book]

In his own day ‘the Conqueror’ struck terror into the heart of the conquered. In 1069, when the North of England, too late to help Harold, rose in revolt, he laid waste a desert by sword and fire from the Humber to the Tees. When the Norman barons and English earls challenged his rule he threw them alike into dungeons. What seemed to the Saxon mind even more wonderful and horrible than his cruelty was the record of all the wealth of his kingdom that he caused to be compiled. This ‘Domesday Book’ contained a close account not only of the great estates, lay and ecclesiastical, but of every small hamlet, and even of the number of live stock on each farm.

‘So very narrowly did he cause the survey to be made,’ says the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, ‘that there was not a single hide nor a rood of land, nor (it is shameful to relate that which he thought no shame to do) was there an ox, or a cow, or a pig, passed by that was not set down in the account.’

William, it can be seen, was thorough in his methods, both in war and peace, and through this very thoroughness he won the respect if not the affection of his new subjects. Ever since the death of Cnut the Dane, England had suffered either from actual civil war or from a weak ruler who allowed his nobles to quarrel and oppress the rest of the nation. As a result of the Norman Conquest the bulk of the population found that they had gained one tyrant instead of many; and how they appreciated the change is shown by the way, all through Norman times, the middle and lower classes would help their foreign king against his turbulent baronage.

This is what a monk, an Anglo-Saxon, and therefore by race an enemy of the Conqueror, wrote about him in his chronicle:

‘If any would know what manner of man King William was ... then will we describe him as we have known him.... This King William ... was a very wise and a great man, and more honoured and more powerful than any of his predecessors. He was mild to those good men who loved God, but severe beyond measure to those who withstood his will.... So also he was a very stern and wrathful man, so that none durst do anything against his will, and he kept in prison those Earls who acted against his pleasure. He removed bishops from their sees ... and at length he spared not his own brother Odo.

‘Amongst other things the good order that William established must not be forgotten; it was such that any man who was himself aught might travel over the kingdom with a bosom full of gold unmolested, and no man durst kill another, however great the injury he might have received from him.’

A few lines farther on the chronicler, having mentioned the peace that William gave, sadly relates the tyranny that was the price he extorted in exchange:

‘Truly there was much trouble in these times and very great distress; he caused castles to be built and oppressed the poor.... He was given to avarice and greedily loved gain. He made large forests for the deer, and enacted laws therewith, so that whoever killed a hart or a hind should be blinded ..., he loved the tall stags as if he were their father. He also appointed concerning the hares that they should go free. The rich complained and the poor murmured, but he was so sturdy that he recked nought of them; they must will all that the king willed if they would live.... Alas that any man should so exalt himself.... May Almighty God show mercy to his soul!’

The monk wrote after September 1087, when the Conqueror lay dead. Not in any Viking glory of battle against a national foe had he passed to his fathers, but in sordid struggle with his eldest son Robert who, aided by the French king, had rebelled against him. His crown was at once seized by his second son William Rufus, and with him the line of Norman kings was firmly established on the English throne.

The adventurous spirit of the Northmen had led them from Denmark and Scandinavia to the coasts of England and France; and from France their descendants, driven by the same roving instincts, had crossed the Channel in search of fresh conquests. Other Normans in the eleventh century sailed south instead of north. Their talk was of a pilgrimage to Rome, perhaps to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem; but when they found that the beautiful island of Sicily had been taken by the Moslems, and that South Italy was divided up amongst a number of princes too jealous of one another to unite against any invaders either Christian or pagan, their thoughts turned quite naturally to conquest.

[Sidenote: Norman Conquests in Italy]

An Italian of this time describes the Normans as ‘cunning and revengeful’, and adds: ‘In their eager search for wealth and dominion they despise whatever they possess and hope whatever they desire.’ Such an impression was to be gained by bitter experience; but not knowing it, Maniaces, the Greek governor of that part of South Italy that still maintained its allegiance to the Eastern Empire, invited these Northern warriors in the eleventh century to help him win back Sicily from the Saracens. They agreed, attacked in force, gained the greater part of the island, but then quarrelled with Maniaces over the spoils. Outraged by what they considered his miserly conduct, they invaded the province of Apulia, made themselves master of it, and established their capital at Melfi.

The head of the new Norman state was a certain William de Hauteville, who with several of his brothers had been leaders in the Italian expedition.

‘No member of the House of Hauteville ever saw a neighbour’s lands without wanting them for himself.’ So says a biographer of that family; and if this was their ideal it was certainly shared by William and his numerous brothers. Since other people’s possessions were not surrendered without a struggle, even in the Middle Ages, it was fortunate for them that they had the genius to win and hold what they coveted.

Pope Leo IX, like his predecessors in the See of Peter ever since Charlemagne had confirmed their right to the lands of the Exarch of Ravenna,[6] looked uneasily on invaders of Italy, and he therefore attempted to form a league with both the Emperors of the East and West that should ruin these presumptuous usurpers. The league came into being, but the Pope’s allies failed him, and at the battle of Civitate he was defeated and all but taken prisoner.

Here was a chance for Norman diplomacy, or, as Italians would have called it, ‘cunning’, and the conquerors promptly declared that it had been with the utmost reluctance that they had made war on the Father of Christendom, and begged his forgiveness. His absolution was obtained, and a few years later, through the mediation of Hildebrand, then Archdeacon of Rome and later as Pope Gregory VII, one of the leading statesmen of Europe, a compact was arranged by which the Normans recognized Pope Nicholas II as their overlord, while he, on his part, acknowledged their right to keep their conquests. Both parties to this bargain were pleased: the Pope because he had gained a vassal state however unruly, the Normans since they felt that they no longer reigned on sufferance, but had a legal status in the eyes of Europe. Neither had any idea of the mine of trouble they were laying for future generations.

The fortunes of the House of Hauteville, thus established, mounted steadily. William died and was succeeded by a younger brother, Robert, nicknamed ‘Guiscard’ or ‘the Wise’. During his reign he forced both the Greek governor and the independent princes who held the rest of South Italy to surrender their possessions, while he even carried his war against the Eastern Empire to Greece itself. Only his death put an end to this daring campaign.

Robert Guiscard, as master of South Italy, had been created Duke of Apulia; his nephew, Roger II, Count of Sicily, who inherited his statecraft and strength, induced the Pope to magnify both mainland and island into a joint kingdom, and thereafter reigned as King of Naples. ‘He was a lover of justice’, says a chronicler of his day, ‘and a most severe avenger of crime. He hated lying ... and never promised what he did not mean to perform. He never persecuted his private enemies, and in war endeavoured on all occasions to gain his point without shedding blood. Justice and peace were universally observed through his dominions.’

Roger II of Naples was evidently a finer and more civilized character than William of England; but in both lay that Norman capacity for establishing and maintaining order that at first seems so strange an inheritance from wild Norse ancestors. Clear-sighted, iron-nerved, an adventurer with an instinct for business, the Norman of the Early Middle Ages was just the leaven that Europe required to raise her out of the indolent depression of the ‘Dark Ages’ that followed the fall of Rome.

_Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73._

The Emperor Lothar 840-55 Massacre of St. Brice’s Day 1002 William, Duke of Normandy 1035-87 William, King of England 1066-87 Edward the Confessor 1042-66 Domesday Book 1086 Pope Leo IX 1048-54 Battle of Civitate 1053 Pope Nicholas II 1058-61 Robert, Duke of Apulia 1060-85 Roger II, King of Naples 1130

X

FEUDALISM AND MONASTICISM

FEUDALISM

Wherever in the course of history men have gathered together they have gradually evolved some form of association that would ensure mutual interests. It might be merely the tribal bond of the Arabians, by which a man’s relations were responsible for his acts and avenged his wrongs; it might be a council of village elders such as the Russian ‘Mir’, making laws for the younger men and women; it might be a group of German chiefs legislating on moonlit nights, according to the description of Tacitus, by their camp fires.

In contrast to primitive associations stands the elaborate government of Rome under Augustus and his successors; the despotic Emperor, his numberless officials, the senators with their huge estates, the struggling _curiales_, the army of legions carrying out the imperial commands from Scotland to the Euphrates. When Rome fell, her government, like a house whose foundations have collapsed, fell also. Barbarian conquerors, established in Italy and the Roman provinces, took what they liked of the laws that they found, added to them their own customs, and out of the blend evolved new codes of legislation. Yet legislation, without some method of ensuring its execution, could not save nations from invasion nor the merchant or peasant from becoming the victim of robberies and petty crimes.

Mediaeval centuries are sometimes called the Age of Feudalism, because during this time feudalism was the method gradually adopted for dealing with the problems of public life amongst all classes in nearly all the nations of Europe. There are two chief things to be remembered about feudalism--first that it was no sudden invention but a growth out of old ideas both Roman and barbarian, and next that it was intimately connected in men’s minds with the thought of land. This was natural, for after all, land or its products are as necessary to the life of every individual as air and water, and therefore the cultivation of the soil and the distribution of its fruits are the first problems with which governments are faced.

Feudalism assumed that all the land belonging to a nation belonged in the first place to that nation’s king. Because he could not govern or cultivate it all himself he would parcel it out in ‘fiefs’ amongst the chief nobles at his court, promising them his protection, and asking in return that they should do him some specified service. This system recalls the ‘villa’ of Roman days with its senator, granting protection to his tenants from robbery and excessive taxation, and employing them to plough and sow, to reap his crops, and build his houses and bridges.

In the Middle Ages the service of the chief tenants was nearly always military: to appear when summoned by the king with so many horsemen and so many archers fully armed. In order to provide this force the tenant would be driven in his turn to grant out parts of his lands to other tenants, who would come when he called them with horsemen and arms that they had collected in a similar way. This process was called ‘sub-infeudation’. Society thus took the form of a pyramid with the king at the apex, immediately below him his tenants-in-chief, and below them in graded ranks or layers the other tenants.

This brings us to the base of the pyramid, the people who could not fight themselves, having neither horses nor weapons, and who certainly could not lend any other soldiers to their lord’s banner. Were they to receive no land?

In the Roman ‘villa’ the bottom strata was the slave, the chattel with no rights even over his own body. Under the system of feudalism the base of the pyramid was made up of ‘serfs’, men originally free, with a customary right to the land on which they lived, who had lost their freedom under feudal law and had become bound to the land, _ascripti glebae_, in such a way that if the land were sub-let or sold they would pass over to the new owner like the trees or the grass. In return for their land, though they might not serve their master with spear or bow, they would work in his fields, build his bridges and castles, mend his roads, and guard his cattle.

From top to bottom of this pyramid of feudal society ran the binding mortar of ‘tenure’ and ‘service’; but these were not the only links which kept feudal society together. When a tenant did ‘homage’ for his land, and ‘with head uncovered, with belt ungirt, his sword removed’, placed his hands between those of his lord, and took an oath, after the manner of the thegns of Wessex to their king, ‘to love what he loved and shun what he shunned both on sea and on land’, there entered into this relationship the finer bond of loyalty due from a vassal to his overlord. It was the descendant of the old Teutonic idea of the _comitatus_ described by Tacitus,[7] the chief destined to lead and guide, his bodyguard pledged to follow him to death if necessary.

Put shortly, then, feudalism may be described as a system of society based upon the holding of land--a system, that is, in which a man’s legal status and social rank were in the main determined by the conditions on which he held (i.e. possessed) his land. Such a system, to return to our example of the pyramid, grew not only from the apex, by the sovereign granting lands, as the King of France did to Rollo ‘the Ganger’, but from the middle and base as well.