CHAPTER XI

THE FRANKS AND THE FEUDAL SYSTEM

Now, since the Franks occupied, for a while, so large an Empire, and were the principal people to establish the Pope's power, let us see what they did over this extent of Empire, what they made of it, what it became under them.

For the most part, we must realise they came into territory, as they moved westward, which had been conquered by the Romans and which had again been conquered, from the Romans, by barbarians of the Gothic tribes. So the Franks found a population partly Roman and partly Gothic there, when they came. They found Roman laws as the principal laws of the country, slightly altered, no doubt, by the Gothic customs, but much as the Romans had established them. They found cities built in the Roman way--that is, within a square of walls, with a gate in the centre of each wall and streets running straight through from one gate to the other opposite to it. That was the usual plan of the Roman cities, if the ground allowed of their building in this way; and the roads went on through the surrounding country, from one city to another, very straight, very well made, turning as little as possible to right or left, and only turning this little when a mountain over which, or a river through which, it was impossible to carry the road came in the way.

The Frankish tribes which penetrated into Gaul {80} from time to time--themselves, probably, pushed westward by the Huns who came from further east again--were divided into two great groups, the Ripuarian Franks and the Salian Franks. The name Ripuarian was given to the tribes who settled along the "ripa," which is the Latin word for "bank," of the Rhine. The name Salian, of the other great group, as we have seen already, is of doubtful origin, perhaps from the "saline" or "salt" sea; because this group came from the shores of the Baltic.

For a long time Franks kept pushing in from the East through the Empire's wall. There were Franks with the Gothic and Roman army that defeated Attila at Chalons in the middle of the fifth century. The Salians seem to have been the latest of the Franks to come in, but they became so strong that they dominated all the rest.

I have spoken of those great kings of the Franks, Pepin and Charlemagne, but the king under whom the big work was done of bringing all the Frankish tribes, and indeed all Gaul, under one authority, and giving them that union which means strength--that king was earlier than either of these. His name was Clovis.

He became king of the Salian Franks in 481. The kings of his dynasty were called Merovingian, from Merovig, an old chieftain. He made himself master of the whole of Gaul, except of what was then called Burgundy and Provence, in the south. But you should know that this name Burgundy, derived from that of one of the Gothic tribes, was made to cover very different territories, under rulers of different races, at different times in our story.

[Sidenote: The "counts"]

So here was this King Clovis of the Franks ruling over this large Empire. He found the Roman law and the Roman system of government in use there; and the Franks adopted as much as they could of the Roman customs into their own. But it was difficult. {81} The Roman official who had represented the government of the Empire was called the "comes," or "count," and the Merovingian kings of the Franks seem to have tried to continue to govern through the "count." One of his duties was to collect taxes, but the Franks do not seem to have understood taxation as it was understood by the Romans. The Romans made assessment, that is to say calculations, from time to time, to find out how much money was needed for the government of a province, and they exacted from the people of the province as much as was required to meet that need. Under the Franks the tax came to be a fixed amount on property.

The duty of the Count in levying the tax cannot have been easy, for these Franks were one and all fighting men. In their own country the practice had been to hold an assembly of the tribe for the making of laws and judging cases. That was their idea of government. It was a plan which might work well for a small tribe. It was not suitable for a large empire.

The consequence is that we soon see the Count, and other men of rank and of large possessions in land, becoming more and more independent of the king, who really could not make his authority felt. One of the difficulties that the king found, arose from the custom, which was a Roman custom, of granting "immunities," as they were called, to certain persons and institutions. They were granted especially to institutions connected with the Church. They provided that the lands to which they were given should be "immune from" visits by the king's officials. The great man, or the great institution, to whom or to which the immunity was granted thus became like a small king, within his own kingdom. He could do almost as he pleased.

So there was always this trouble, and it grew greater as time went on, that the king's authority {82} was more and more disputed, more and more weakened; and in this weakening of authority the security for life and for property grew weaker. The poorer people found that their best hope for a secure life was to put themselves under the protection of some rich and powerful man; that rich and powerful man found that his best hope for safety was to take under his protection as many as possible of these people, who, in return for the protection, would fight for him on occasion.

And this, shortly put, was, in the main, what brought about the state of society known as the feudal system.

It was the more easy for the lesser men, the vassals, and the great man, the lord, to make these terms with each other, because something of the kind was already in existence, both in the Germany from which the Franks came and in the Roman and Gothic society into which they had come as conquerors.

The name given to the assembling of men of less power and wealth around the greater men had been "comitatus," in Germany. In Rome it had been the custom for a prominent citizen to have a troop of "clientes," or clients, men of the people who came to him to ask him for advice about any legal claims that they were making, or any injustice under which they were suffering. They would receive his advice, and perhaps he would speak for them when their case came before the court. In return, these clients would support their patron, as the great man was called, with their votes whenever they could be of use to him, and they would even accompany him about the city, in times of disturbance, as a kind of bodyguard.

The Frankish kings, we may note, had a bodyguard for their special protection, and this bodyguard was held in very high estimation, so much so that if one of them were killed the killer, or his relations, had {83} to pay a penalty three times as heavy as they would have had to pay for the killing of any other free man. So the service of the vassal to his feudal lord was only an extension of the kind of service that the client did for the patron; and so too the service of protection that the lord gave to the vassal might easily grow out of the protection and help given by the patron, to the client.

[Sidenote: The "precarium"]

And then there was another custom common in the Roman and Gothic society which helped to form the relationship between the vassal and the feudal lord. If a free man were landless he was in a very poor position. It was beneath his dignity to serve as a slave, or even as a "villein," which was a position in society between that of a slave and a free man. But if he were without land, he had no means of livelihood; and as his life was of no value to anyone he had no one to defend him. Therefore it had become usual for these landless free men to come to some large land-owner and offer him to do him certain service if he would grant, or lend, them a piece of land, or possibly the use of a mill--a water-mill for grinding corn--or some other grant out of which they might get a livelihood. If this were granted them, they would give their service and help to the lord. The Latin word for "to pray" is "precari," and so this relationship between the lord and the tenant was called "precarium," because the tenant had "prayed" the lord for it. I have called it a "grant, or loan." It was not a gift, because the lord might take it back at any time, and so end the tenancy, nor could the tenant pass on his right in the land, or whatever it might be, to his heirs. If the lord did allow it to go on to these heirs, they would probably have to pay him some "fine," before they succeeded to it, as well as undertaking to continue the service which the first tenant, when the grant was made, had promised.

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So herein, that it could be taken back by the lord, it was like a loan; and yet it differed from a loan in this--that there was no idea in the mind of either the lord or the tenant that it was likely to be taken back. It was intended to be a permanent loan, if we may use that expression, but still it was recognised on both sides that the lord or the lord's successors had the power at any moment of taking it back, if he or they pleased, from the tenant and the tenant's successors. You must have heard the expression "a precarious possession," or something of the kind. You may now know how that expression arose. The word "precarious" is, of course, from this "precarium," which is derived from the Latin word for "to pray."

You will find that these two ideas, that of the relation between the patron and client, and that between the landlord and the "precarious" tenant, helped to form the foundations, the roots, from which the feudal system grew up. The land or the mill was the fee, or fief (fief was the French form of the word) in return for holding which the holder owed service to the lord.

Just what he should do for the lord, by way of service, differed in different places at first, and was determined by the different customs of each place; but as time went on the duties began to be defined, or laid down, more exactly, and grew to be very much the same wherever the system prevailed. The vassal had to follow his lord to war when called on, he had to serve as a defender when the lord was attacked, he was liable to have to contribute to the dowry of the lord's daughter when she was married and to his lord's ransom if he should be taken prisoner by the enemy. He had to follow the lord to battle armed at his own cost, perhaps mounted, perhaps with some of his villeins following him.

You can realise that when the country was in a {85} very disturbed state, so that the king's authority could not easily and quickly be enforced, the lord who had many of these tenants or vassals could do very much as he pleased on his own territories. You will also realise that when men could no longer get justice from the central authority, which the king represented, they were only too grateful to get it from their feudal lord.

[Sidenote: Divisions in Gaul]

And the condition of Gaul under the Franks began to be a condition of general disturbance after the death of the great King Clovis. He died in 511 and he left his kingdom divided between his four sons. The youngest of these sons, by name Clotaire, lived longer than any of his brothers, but on his death, in 561, he in turn left four sons, and again there was division of the kingdom, claims were made by one and were resisted by another. There was continual civil war. Yet again, a few years later, there were new divisions amongst the children of one or other of these, and so it went until the kingdom was once more united, after 613, by the death or defeat of his rivals, under Clotaire II. Clotaire was nominally sovereign, yet still there were the subordinate kingdoms, each claiming some independence.

But during this century, when the Frankish conquerors were fighting with each other, the general condition of society had been altered. We have seen how the large landowners began drawing to themselves a body of vassals, and how they gradually became more independent of the king's authority. We have to notice at the same time that the power of the Church, in the hands of its bishops, was continually growing greater. The Church was constantly being enriched by donations of land given it by pious persons who deemed that they might find salvation by these gifts; and what made the Church the more powerful was the above-mentioned custom of granting "immunities."

The "immunities" were granted by the Crown, in {86} return for some service done, or by way of payment of a debt, or as an act of mere friendliness; and the meaning of the "immunity" was that the land in respect of which it was granted was "immune" from the king's tax collectors or law officers. The Crown officials could not enter on it. The taxes were collected and the law administered by persons acting for the landowner. You see how this again would work towards making the great landowners independent of the Crown. And these "immunities" were largely given to the bishops in respect of the Church lands. The bishops thus grew to great independence and power, and they worked continually to have their own people, the subordinate clergy, subject to their own laws, the laws of the Church, and not to the laws of the Crown.

Now at the court of the Merovingian kings and also of the lesser kings, the chief officer and chief executor of the king's will was an official called "the Mayor of the Palace." He was everywhere a man of great influence and of high family. He acted not so much like an English Prime Minister as like the vizier, the chief officer, of an Oriental king.

As time passed, in the constant distractions of the kingdom and the weakening power of the central authority, the power of these high officials grew continually.

The distractions and the struggles between the lesser kingdoms in Gaul, and also between the nobles and the king, went on for another century. The contest which really settled the matter, for a while, was a battle at Tertry in 687, in which Pepin, Pepin II., as he was called, defeated the king's forces, and took the king prisoner. It was not, however, till the middle of the next century that the line of the Merovingian kings died out. All that while, however, they were practically dominated by Pepin, the victor at Tertry, {87} and when their dynasty came to an end he became king of the Franks, and therewith founded a new dynasty, the Carolingian.

[Sidenote: Charles Martel]

Pepin came to the throne with powers derived from two sources. His family had held the great office of Mayor of the Palace in one of the subordinate kingdoms for nearly half a century, and he was also descended from a great bishop, Arnulf. Thus he had all the power of the Church on his side. Charles Martel, who succeeded him, gained an important victory over the Saracens at Tours in 732. That is a very notable event in our story, for it pushed back the Moors south of the Pyrenees again, and freed Christian Gaul from their danger. Further, this same Charles (Martel, or the Hammer, as he was called) served the Church of Rome faithfully in Germany, supporting a mission which Bishop Boniface was carrying on for the conversion of some of the still pagan German tribes to Christianity.

The Pope, Gregory III., on his accession to the Papal throne, was menaced by the Lombards in the North of Italy and by independent Dukes in the south. He appealed to Charles Martel for assistance. The Lombards, however, had fought with Charles at Tours, to save Christendom from the Saracens, and Charles did not care to take arms against them. But the son of Charles, who succeeded him as Pepin III., seems to have understood how greatly his power would be strengthened if he could claim to be supported by the Church. The authority of the Pope at Rome was becoming every year more powerful; Boniface had now the title of Papal Legate, the Pope's representative, and as such he anointed Pepin III. king of the Franks, in the presence of the great nobles, at the capital city of Soissons. Within two years Pepin had defeated the Lombards and rid the Pope of their menace. He did not take their kingdom, {88} but the territory that he conquered from them he gave to the Papal See. Thus he made the Papacy--that is to say, the successive Popes of Rome--a territorial sovereignty, owning extensive land and much wealth. At the same time he accepted a title, that of "patrician," from the Pope. It was a title which had meant much in the days of ancient Rome. It meant nothing now, except that it was a sign of the close links that bound together the Frankish kingdom and the Papacy. But that in itself meant much, for these were the two most powerful forces in the Western world of that time, and both were growing stronger every year.

By the time of Pepin's death, in 768, he was king of all Gaul.

He left two sons, and to the younger, before an assembly of his nobles, he bequeathed certain provinces; but, fortunately perhaps for the peace of France, the younger son died and all came into the hand of the elder, who was Charles the Great.

And by this time that custom which we have seen growing common, of vassals leaguing themselves together around a lord, had established itself over a great part of the Empire. The feudal system had really become a fact, although it was a fact which was concealed by the power and the splendour of this great emperor, who was so constantly victorious.

The big territorial landowners became "Counts" and the lands over which they exercised authority were called "counties." We noted the origin of the title a few pages back. Sometimes counties, two or more, had been drawn together into a single larger domain, which might then be called a "duchy," with a "duke," or, in French, "duc," over it. But Charlemagne's policy was to break up the duchies and collect their revenues and taxes by his own officers as the originally appointed "Counts" had collected them. {89} Even when the feudal system was fully established, the powers of the lords were not unlimited, by any means, and they governed within the bounds of their lands largely through the "curia," or assembly, summoned from time to time, of the vassals. The king, as well as the lords beneath him, would summon a "curia," and this was called the "curia regis," the king's curia, when it was the assembly of the king's vassals and was summoned by him. There seems to have been no limit to the points that might be discussed in these assemblies; but the lord's assent to any vote passed by them appears to have been required before the measures voted on could be put into operation.

[Sidenote: Pope and Emperor]

Now the help that Charlemagne gave to the Pope was valuable to him not only against the Lombard foreigners, but against the Roman nobles themselves. It was the Pope, the Bishop, and not the Duke, of Rome who appealed to Charlemagne; and that very fact shows how far the position of the Pope had altered from that of the early bishops of the Church. He had become ruler of a territory, of a great city, even of a State. And yet he had little force of arms with which to defend this possession, which had come to him by the donations of pious Christians. Pepin, we have noted, had given him lands recovered from the Lombards. But the great men in Rome, the great families, constantly disputed the Pope's authority over the city and the State. To have the Emperor as his ally gave the Pope a power against which they could do little.

Under Charlemagne the Frankish Empire grew to its greatest extent and splendour, but it had no rest.

One of the reasons of the Emperor's success in keeping his nobles in tolerable obedience was, doubtless, that he kept them so busy, fighting his battles. He subjected the Northmen (later, Normans) who had come down from Scandinavia in their ships and settled {90} themselves along the northern shores of France, facing Britain. Afterwards this land of the Northmen had the name of Normandy.

The Saxons, occupying what later were called the Netherlands, put up a surprisingly strong opposition to the great Emperor, but in the end he conquered their independence. Elsewhere, around his ever-extending boundaries, the smaller nations gave him less trouble. In the end it is not too much to say that his Empire included all of what we know as France and Germany with Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and parts of Scandinavia. Southward he held the northern parts of Italy, nearly as far down as Rome. He crossed the Pyrenees, but gained no lasting hold on any of Spain. Indeed, it was on return from a Spanish expedition that he suffered the greatest disaster that ever befel his arms. This was the defeat of a large body of his forces at Roncesvalles, in which fight were killed the great hero Roland and a number of the most illustrious of the Frankish leaders and nobles.

In later years both Charlemagne himself and his great men, such as Roland and others, his paladins, and "the twelve peers," were made the subjects of the most extravagant stories. They were related to have performed superhuman exploits, to have been eight feet in height and to have conducted themselves generally in a manner which Cervantes, the Spanish novel writer, caricatured in his famous story of Don Quixote. The twelve peers may remind us of the twelve knights of King Arthur's Round Table, and it is likely that there was some original connection between the stories.

But Charlemagne was truly Charles the Great without these fabulous additions to his greatness. He died at Aix la Chapelle in 814 and was succeeded by his only surviving son, whom he had crowned with his own hand the year before his death.

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