Part 338

Louis IX.—Saint Louis in the calendar of the Catholic Church—who came to the throne in 1226, while a child of eleven years, was a king of so noble a type that he stands nearly alone in history. Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor, and King Alfred of England, are the only sovereigns who seem worthy to be compared with him; and even the purity of those rare souls is not quite so simple and so selfless, perhaps, as that which shines in the beautiful character of this most Christian king. His goodness was of that quality which rises to greatness—above all other measures of greatness in the distinction of men. It was of that quality which even a wicked world is compelled to feel and to bend to as a power, much exceeding the power of state-craft or of the sword. Of all the kings of his line, this Saint Louis was probably the one who had least thought of a royal interest in France distinct from the interest of the people of France; and the one who consciously did least to aggrandize the monarchy and enlarge its powers; but no king before him or after him was so much the true architect of the foundations of the absolute French monarchy of later times. His constant purpose was to give peace to his kingdom and justice to his people; to end violence and wrong-doing. {1030} In pursuing this purpose, he gave a new character and a new influence to the royal courts,—established them in public confidence,—accustomed his subjects to appeal to them; he denounced the brutal senselessness of trials by combat, and commanded their abolition; he gave encouragement to the study and the introduction of Roman law, and so helped to dispel the crude political as well as legal ideas that feudalism rested on. His measures in these directions all tended to the undermining of the feudal system and to the breaking down of the independence of the great vassals who divided sovereignty with the king. At the same time the upright soul of King Louis, devotedly pious son of the Church as he was, yielded his conscience to it, and the just ordinances of his kingdom, no more than he yielded to the haughty turbulence of the great vassals of the crown.

The great misfortunes of the reign of Saint Louis were the two calamitous Crusades in which he engaged (1248-1254, and 1270), and in the last of which he died. They were futile in every way—as unwisely conducted as they were unwisely conceived; but they count among the few errors of a noble, great life. Regarded altogether, in the light which after-history throws back upon it, the reign of Louis IX. is more loftily distinguished than any other in the annals of France.

Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface.

There is little to distinguish the reign of St. Louis' son, Philip III., "le Hardi," "the Rash" (1270-1285), though the remains of the great fief of Toulouse were added in his time to the royal domain; but under the grandson of St. Louis, the fourth Philip, surnamed "le Bel," there was a season of storms in France. This Philip was unquestionably a man of clear, cold intellect, and of powerful, unbending will. There was nothing of the soldier in him, much of the lawyer-like mind and disposition. The men of the gown were his counsellors; he advanced their influence, and promoted the acceptance in France of the principles of the Roman or civil law, which were antagonistic to feudal ideas. In his attitude towards the Papacy—which had declined greatly in character and power within the century past—he was extraordinarily bold. His famous quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII. resulted in humiliations to the head of the Church from which, in some respects, there was no recovery. The quarrel arose on questions connected chiefly with the taxing of the clergy. The Pope launched one angry Bull after another against the audacious king, and the latter retorted with Ordinances which were as effective as the Bulls. Excommunication was defied; the Inquisition was suppressed in France; appeal taken to a General Council of the Church. At last Boniface suffered personal violence at the hands of a party of hired ruffians, in French pay, who attacked him at his country residence, and received such indignities that he expired soon after of shame and rage. The pope immediately succeeding died a few months later, and dark suspicions as to the cause of his death were entertained; for he gave place (1305) to one, Clement V., who was the tool of the French king, bound to him by pledges and guarantees before his election. This Pope Clement removed the papal residence from Rome to Avignon, and for a long period—the period known as "the Babylonish Captivity"—the Holy See was subservient to the monarchy of France.

In this contest with the Papacy, Philip threw himself on the support of the whole body of his people, convoking (1302) the first meeting of the Three Estates—the first of the few general Parliaments—ever assembled in France.

Destruction of the Templars.

A more sinister event in the reign of Philip IV. was his prosecution and destruction of the famous Order of the Knights Templars. The dark, dramatic story has been told many times, and its incidents are familiar. Perhaps there will never be agreement as to the bottom of truth that might exist in the charges brought against the Order; but few question the fact that its blackest guilt in the eyes of the French King was its wealth, which he coveted and which he was resolved to find reasons for taking to himself. The knights were accused of infidelity, blasphemy, and abominable vices. They were tried, tortured, tempted to confessions, burned at the stake, and their lands and goods were divided between the Crown and the Knights of St. John.

Flemish Wealth and Independence.

The wilful king had little mercy in his cold heart and few scruples in his calculating brain. His character was not admirable; but the ends which he compassed were mostly good for the strength and independence of the monarchy of France, and, on the whole, for the welfare of the people subject to it. Even the disasters of his reign had sometimes their good effect: as in the case of his failure to subjugate the great county of Flanders. Originally a fief of the Kings of France, it had been growing apart from the French monarchy, through the independent interests and feelings that rose in it with the increase of wealth among its singularly industrious and thrifty people. The Low Countries, or Netherlands, on both sides of the Rhine, had been the first in western Europe to develop industrial arts and the trade that goes with them in a thoroughly intelligent and systematic way. The Flemings were leaders in this industrial development. Their country was full of busy cities,—communes, with large liberties in possession,—where prosperous artisans, pursuing many crafts, were organized in gilds and felt strong for the defense of their chartered rights. Ghent exceeded Paris in riches and population at the end of the thirteenth century. Bruges was nearly its equal; and there were many of less note. The country was already a prize to be coveted by kings; and the kings of France, who claimed the rights of feudal superiority over its count, had long been seeking to make their sovereignty direct, while the spirit of the Flemings carried them more and more toward independence.

In 1294, Philip IV. became involved in war with Edward I. of England over Guienne. Flanders, which traded largely with England and was in close friendship with the English king and people, took sides with the latter, and was basely abandoned when Philip and Edward made peace, in 1302. The French king then seized his opportunity to subjugate the Flemings, which he practically accomplished for a time, mastering all of their cities except Ghent. His need and his greed made the burden of taxes which he now laid on these new subjects very heavy and they were soon in revolt. By accident, and the folly of the French, they won a fearfully decisive victory at Courtray, where some thousands of the nobles and knights of France charged blindly into a canal, and were drowned, suffocated and slaughtered in heaps. The carnage was so great that it broke the strength of the feudal chivalry of France, and the French crown, while it lost Flanders, yet gained power from the very disaster.

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In 1314, Philip IV. died, leaving three sons, who occupied the throne for brief terms in succession: Louis X, surnamed Hutin (disorder), who survived his father little more than a year; Philip V., called "the Long" (1316-1322), and Charles IV., known as "the Fair" (1322-1328). With the death of Charles the Fair, the direct line of the Capetian Kings came to an end, and Philip, Count of Valois, first cousin of the late kings, and grandson of Philip III., came to the throne, as Philip VI.—introducing the Valois line of kings.

Claims of Edward III. of England.

The so-called Salic law, excluding females, in France, from the throne, had now, in the arrangement of these recent successions, been affirmed and enforced. It was promptly disputed by King Edward III. of England, who claimed the French crown by right of his mother, daughter of Philip IV. and sister of the last three kings. His attempt to enforce this claim was the beginning of the wicked, desolating "Hundred Years War" between England and France, which well-nigh ruined the latter, while it contributed in the former to the advancement of the commons in political power.

England after the Norman Conquest.

The England of the reign of Edward III., when the Hundred Years War began, was a country quite different in condition from that which our narrative left, at the time it had yielded (about 1071) to William the Norman conqueror. The English people were brought low by that subjugation, and the yoke which the Normans laid upon them was heavy indeed. They were stripped of their lands by confiscation; they were disarmed and disorganized; every attempt at rebellion failed miserably, and every failure brought wider confiscations. The old nobility suffered most and its ranks were thinned. England became Norman in its aristocracy and remained English in its commons and its villeinage.

Modified Feudalism in England.

Before the Conquest, feudalism had crept into its southern parts and was working a slow change of its old free Germanic institutions. But the Normans quickened the change and widened it. At the same time they controlled it in certain ways, favorably both to the monarchy and the people. They established a feudal system, but it was a system different from that which broke up the unity of both kingdoms of the Franks. William, shrewd statesman that he was, took care that no dangerous great fiefs should be created; and he took care, too, that every landlord in England should swear fealty direct to the king,—thus placing the Crown in immediate relations with all its subjects, permitting no intermediary lord to take their first allegiance to himself and pass it on at second hand to a mere crowned overlord.

The effect of this diluted organization of feudalism in England was to make the monarchy so strong, from the beginning, that both aristocracy and commons were naturally put on their defence against it, and acquired a feeling of association, a sense of common interest, a habit of alliance, which became very important influences in the political history of the nation. In France, as we have seen, there had been nothing of this. There, at the beginning, the feudal aristocracy was dominant, and held itself so haughtily above the commons, or Third Estate, that no political cooperation between the two orders could be thought of when circumstances called for it. The kings slowly undermined the aristocratic power, using the communes in the process; and when, at last, the power of the monarchy had become threatening to both orders in the state, they were separated by too great an alienation of feeling and habit to act well together.

It was the great good fortune of England that feudalism was curbed by a strong monarchy. It was the greater good fortune of the English people that their primitive Germanic institutions—their folk-moots, and their whole simple popular system of local government—should have had so long and sturdy a growth before the feudal scheme of society began seriously to intrude upon them. The Norman conqueror did no violence to those institutions. He claimed to be a lawful English king, respecting English laws. The laws, the customs, the organization of government, were, indeed, greatly modified in time; but the modification was slow, and the base of the whole political structure that rose in the Anglo-Norman kingdom remained wholly English.

Norman Influences in England.

The Normans brought with them into England a more active, enterprising, enquiring spirit than had animated the land before. They brought an increase of learning and of the appetite for knowledge. They brought a more educated taste in art, to improve the building of the country and its workmanship in general. They brought a wider acquaintance with the affairs of the outside world, and drew England into political relations with her continental neighbors, which were not happy for her in the end, but which may have contributed for a time to her development. They brought, also, a more powerful organization of the Church, which gave England trouble in later days.

The Conqueror's Sons.

When the Conqueror died (1087), his eldest son Robert succeeded him in Normandy, but he wished the crown of England to go to his son William, called Rufus, or "the Red." He could not settle the succession by his will, because in theory the succession was subject to the choice or assent of the nobles of the realm. But, in fact, William Rufus became king through mere tardiness of opposition; and when, a few months after his coronation, a formidable rebellion broke out among the Normans in England, who preferred his wayward brother Robert, it was the native English who sustained him and established him on the throne. The same thing occurred again after William Rufus died (1100). The Norman English tried again to bring in Duke Robert, while the native English preferred the younger brother, Henry, who was born among them. They won the day. Henry I., called Beauclerc, the Scholar, was seated on the throne. Unlike William Rufus, who had no gratitude for the support the English gave him, and ruled them harshly, Henry showed favor to his English subjects, and, during his reign of thirty-five years, the two races were so effectually reconciled and drawn together that little distinction between them appears thereafter.

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Henry acquired Normandy, as well as England, uniting again the two sovereignties of his father. His thriftless brother, Robert, had pledged the dukedom to William Rufus, who lent him money for a crusading expedition. Returning penniless, Robert tried to recover his heritage; but Henry claimed it and made good the claim.

Anarchy in Stephen's Reign.

At Henry's death, the succession fell into dispute. He had lost his only son. His daughter, Matilda, first married to the Emperor Henry V., had subsequently wedded Count Geoffrey of Anjou, by whom she had a son. Henry strove, during his life, to bind his nobles by oath to accept Matilda and her son as his successors. But on his death (1135) their promises were broken. They gave the crown to Stephen of Blois, whose mother was Henry's sister; whereupon there ensued the most dreadful period of civil war and anarchy that England ever knew. Stephen, at his coronation, swore to promises which he did not keep, losing many of his supporters for that reason; the Empress Matilda and her young son Henry had numerous partisans; and each side was able to destroy effectually the authority of the other. "The price of the support given to both was the same—absolute licence to build castles, to practise private war, to hang their private enemies, to plunder their neighbours, to coin their money, to exercise their petty tyrannies as they pleased." "Castles innumerable sprang up, and as fast as they were built they were filled with devils; each lord judged and taxed and coined. The feudal spirit of disintegration had for once its full play. Even party union was at an end, and every baron fought on his own behalf. Feudalism had its day, and the completeness of its triumph ensured its fall" (Stubbs).

Angevin Kings of England.

At length, in 1153, peace was made by a treaty which left Stephen in possession of the throne during his life, but made Henry, already recognized as Duke of Normandy, his heir. Stephen died the following year, and Henry II., now twenty-one years old, came quietly into his kingdom, beginning a new royal line, called the Angevin kings, because of their descent from Geoffrey of Anjou; also taking the name Plantagenets from Geoffrey's fashion of wearing a bit of broom, Planta Genista, in his hat.

Henry II. proved, happily, to be a king of the strong character that was needed in the England of that wretched time. He was bold and energetic, yet sagacious, prudent, politic. He loved power and he used it with an unsparing hand; but he used it with wise judgment, and England was the better for it. He struck hard and persistently at the lawlessness of feudalism, and practically ended it forever as a menace to order and unity of government in England. He destroyed hundreds of the castles which had sprung up throughout the land in Stephen's time, to be nests of robbers and strongholds of rebellion. He humbled the turbulent barons. He did in England, for the promotion of justice, and for the enforcement of the royal authority, what Louis IX. did a little later in France: that is, he reorganized and strengthened the king's courts, creating a judicial system which, in its most essential features, has existed to the present time. His organizing hand brought system and efficiency into every department of the government. He demanded of the Church that its clergy should be subject to the common laws of the kingdom, in matters of crime, and to trial before the ordinary courts; and it was this most just reform of a crying abuse—the exemption of clerics from the jurisdiction of secular courts—which brought about the memorable collision of King Henry with Thomas Becket, the inflexible archbishop of Canterbury. Becket's tragical death made a martyr of him, and placed Henry in a penitential position which checked his great works of reform; but, on the whole, his reign was one of splendid success, and shines among the epochs that throw light on the great after-career of the English nation.

Aside from his importance as an English statesman, Henry II. figured largely, in his time, among the most powerful of the monarchs of Europe. His dominions on the continent embraced much more of the territory of modern France than was ruled directly by the contemporary French king, though nominally he held them as a vassal of the latter. Normandy came to him from his grandfather; from his father he inherited the large possessions of the House of Anjou; by his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine (divorced by Louis VII. of France, as mentioned already) he acquired her wide and rich domain. On the continent, therefore, he ruled Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Guienne, Poitou and Gascony. He may be said to have added Ireland to his English kingdom, for he began the conquest. He held a great place, in his century, and historically he is a notable figure in the time.

His rebellious, undutiful son Richard, Cœur de Lion, the Crusader, the hard fighter, the knight of many rude adventures, who succeeded Henry II. in 1189, is popularly better known than he; but Richard's noisy brief career shows poorly when compared with his father's life of thoughtful statesmanship. It does not show meanly, however, like that of the younger son, John, who came to the throne in 1199. The story of John's probable murder of his young nephew, Arthur, of Brittany, and of his consequent loss of all the Angevin lands, and of Normandy (excepting only the Norman islands, the Jerseys, which have remained English to our own day) has been briefly told heretofore, when the reign of Philip Augustus of France was under review.

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The whole reign of John was ignominious. He quarreled with the Pope—with the inflexible Innocent III., who humbled many kings—over a nomination to the Archbishopric of Canterbury (1205); his kingdom was put under interdict (1208); he was threatened with deposition; and when, in affright, he surrendered, it was so abjectly done that he swore fealty to the Pope, as a vassal to his suzerain, consenting to hold his kingdom as a fief of the Apostolic See. The triumph of the Papacy in this dispute brought one great good to England. It made Stephen Langton Archbishop of Canterbury, and thereby gave a wise and righteous leader to the opponents of the king's oppressive rule. Lords and commons, laity and clergy, were all alike sufferers from John's greed, his perfidy, his mean devices and his contempt of law. Langton rallied them to a sober, stern, united demonstration, which awed King John, and compelled him to put his seal to Magna Charta—the grand Charter of English liberties (1215). A few weeks later he tried to annul what he had done, with encouragement from the Pope, who anathematized the Charter and all who had to do with it. Then certain of the barons, in their rage, offered the English crown to the heir of France, afterwards Louis VIII.; and the French prince actually came to England (1216) with an army to secure it. But before the forces gathered on each side were brought to any decisive battle, John died. Louis' partisans then dropped away from him and the next year, after a defeat at sea, he returned to France.

Henry III. and the Barons' War.