Part 340

For England, it was the century in which the enduring bases of constitutional government were laid down; within which Magna Charta and its Confirmations were signed; within which the Parliament of Simon de Montfort and the Parliaments of Edward I. gave a representative form and a controlling power to the wonderful legislature of the English nation. In France, it was the century of the Albigenses; of Saint Louis and his judicial reforms; and it stretched within two years of the first meeting of the States-General of the kingdom. In Switzerland, it was the century which began the union of the three forest cantons. In Spain, it was the century which gave Aragon the "General Privilege" of Peter III.; in Hungary, it was the century of its Golden Bull. In Italy it was the century of Frederick II.,—the man of modern spirit set in mediæval circumstances; and it was the century, too, which moulded the city-republics that resisted and defeated his despotic pretensions. Everywhere, it was an age of impulses toward freedom, and of mighty upward strivings out of the chaos and darkness of the feudal state. It was an age of vast energies, directed with practical judgment and power. It organized the great league of the Hansa Towns, which surpassed, as an enterprise of combination in commercial affairs, the most stupendous undertakings of the present time. It put the weavers and traders of Flanders on a footing with knights and princes. In Venice and Genoa it crowned the merchant like a king. It sent Marco Polo to Cathay, and inoculated men with the itch of exploration from which they find no ease to this day. It was the century which saw painting revived as a living art in the world by Cimabue and Giotto, and sculpture restored by Niccola Pisano. It was the age of great church-building in Italy, in Germany and in France. It was the century of St. Francis of Assisi, and of the creation of the mendicant orders in the Church,—a true religious reformation in its spirit, however unhappy in effect it may have been. It was the time of the high tide of mediæval learning; the epoch of Aquinas, of Duns Scotus, of Roger Bacon; the true birth-time of the Universities of Paris and Oxford. It was the century which educated Dante for his immortal work.

The Fourteenth Century.

The century which followed was a period of many wars—of ruinous and deadly wars, and miserable demoralizations and disorders, which depressed all Europe by their effects. In the front of them all was the wicked Hundred Years War, forced on France by the ambition of an English king to wear two crowns; while with it came the bloody insurrection of the Jacquerie, the ravages of the free companies, and ruinous anarchy everywhere. Then, in Italy, there was a duel to the death between Venice and Genoa; and a long, wasting contest of rivals for the possession of Naples. In Germany, a contested imperial election, and the struggle of the Swiss against the Austrian Dukes. In Flanders, repeated revolts under the two Artevelds. In the East, the terrible fight of Christendom with the advancing Turk. And while men were everywhere so busily slaying one another, there came the great pestilence which they called the Black Death, to help them in the grim work, and Europe was half depopulated by it. At the same time, the Church, which might have kindled some beacon lights of faith and hope in the midst of all this darkness and terror, was sinking to its lowest state, and Rome had become an unruled robbers' den.

There were a few voices heard, above the wailing and the battle-din of the afflicted age, which charmed and comforted it; voices which preached the pure gospel of Wycliffe and Huss,—which recited the great epic of Dante,—which syllabled the melodious verse of Petrarch and Chaucer,—which told the gay tales of Boccaccio; but the pauses of peace in which men might listen to such messages and give themselves to such delights were neither many nor long.

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The Hundred Years War.

The conflict between England and France began in Flanders, then connected with the English very closely in trade. Philip VI. of France forced the Count of Flanders to expel English merchants from his territory. Edward III. retaliated (1336) by forbidding the exportation of wool to Flanders, and this speedily reduced the Flemish weavers to idleness. They rose in revolt, drove out their count, and formed an alliance with England, under the lead of Jacob van Arteveld, a brewer, of Ghent. The next year (1337) Edward joined the Flemings with an army and entered France; but made no successful advance, although his fleet won a victory, in a sea-fight off Sluys, and hostilities were soon suspended by a truce. In 1341 they were renewed in Brittany, over a disputed succession to the dukedom, and the scattered sieges and chivalric combats which made up the war in that region for two years are described with minuteness by Froissart, the gossipy chronicler of the time. After a second truce, the grimly serious stage of the war was reached in 1346. It was in that year that the English won the victory at Crécy, which was the pride and boast of their nation for centuries; and the next season they took Calais, which they held for more than two hundred years.

Philip died in 1350 and was succeeded by his son John. In 1355, Edward of England repeated his invasion, ravaging Artois, while his son, the Black Prince, from Guienne (which the English had held since the Angevin time), devastated Languedoc. The next year, this last named prince made another sally from Bordeaux, northwards, towards the Loire, and was encountered by the French king, with a splendid army, at Poitiers. The victory of the English in this case was more overwhelming than at Crécy, although they were greatly outnumbered. King John was taken prisoner and conveyed to London. His kingdom was in confusion. The dauphin called together the States-General of France, and that body, in which the commons, or third estate, attained to a majority in numbers, assumed powers and compelled assent to reforms which seemed likely to place it on a footing of equal importance with the Parliament of England. The leader of the third estate in these measures was Etienne or Stephen Marcel, provost of Paris, a man of commanding energy and courage. The dauphin, under orders from his captive father, attempted to nullify the ordinances of the States-General. Paris rose at the call of Marcel and the frightened prince became submissive; but the nobles of the provinces resented these high-handed proceedings of the Parisians and civil war ensued. The peasants, who were in great misery, took advantage of the situation to rise in support of the Paris burgesses, and for the redressing of their own wrongs. This insurrection of the Jacquerie, as it is known, produced horrible deeds of outrage and massacre on both sides, and seems to have had no other result. Paris, meantime (1358), was besieged and hard pressed; Marcel, suspected of an intended treachery, was killed, and with his death the whole attempt to assert popular rights fell to the ground.

The state of France at this time was one of measureless misery. It was overrun with freebooters—discharged soldiers, desperate homeless and idle men, and the ruffians who always bestir themselves when authority disappears. They roamed the country in bands, large and small, stripped it of what war had spared, and left famine behind them.

At length, in 1360, terms of peace were agreed upon, in a treaty signed at Bretigny, and fighting ceased, except in Brittany, where the war went on for four years more. By the treaty, all French claims upon Aquitaine and the dependencies were given up, and Edward acquired full sovereignty there, no longer owing homage, as a vassal, to the king of France. Calais, too, was ceded to England, and so heavy a ransom was exacted from the captive King John that he failed to collect money for the payment of it and died in London (1364).

Charles the Wise.

Charles V., who now ruled independently, as he had ruled for some years in his father's name, proved to be a more prudent and capable prince, and his counsellors and captains were wisely chosen. He was a man of studious tastes and of considerable learning for that age, with intelligence to see and understand the greater sources of evil in his kingdom. Above all, he had patience enough to plant better things in the seed and wait for them to grow, which is one of the grander secrets of statesmanship. By careful, judicious measures, he and those who shared the task of government with him slowly improved the discipline and condition of their armies. The "great companies" of freebooters, too strong to be put down, were lured out of the kingdom by an expedition into Spain, which the famous warrior Du Guesclin commanded, and which was sent against the detestable Pedro, called the Cruel, of Castile, whom the English supported. A stringent economy in public expenditure was introduced, and the management of the finances was improved. The towns were encouraged to strengthen their fortifications, and the state and feeling of the whole country were slowly lifted from the gloomy depth to which the war had depressed them.

At length, in 1369, Charles felt prepared to challenge another encounter with the English, by repudiating the ignominious terms of the treaty of Bretigny. Before the year closed, Edward's armies were in the country again, but accomplished nothing beyond the havoc which they wrought as they marched. The French avoided battles, and their cities were well defended. Next year the English returned, and the Black Prince earned infamy by a ferocious massacre of three thousand men, women, and children, in the city of Limoges, when he had taken it by storm. It was his last campaign. Already suffering from a mortal disease, he returned to England, and died a few years later. The war went on, with no decisive results, until 1375, when it was suspended by a truce. In 1377, Edward III. died, and the French king began war again with great success. Within three years he expelled the English from every part of France except Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg and Calais.

If he had lived a little longer, there might soon have been an end of the war. But he died in 1380, and fresh calamities fell upon unhappy France.

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Rising Power of Burgundy.

The son who succeeded him, Charles VI., was an epileptic boy of twelve years, who had three greedy and selfish uncles to quarrel over the control of him, and to plunder the Crown of territory and treasures. One of these was the Duke of Burgundy, the first prince of a new great house which King John had foolishly created. Just before that fatuous king died, the old line of Burgundian dukes came to an end, and he had the opportunity, which wise kings before him would have improved very eagerly, to annex that fief to the crown. Instead of doing so, he gave it as an appanage to his son Philip, called "the Bold," and thus rooted a new plant of feudalism in France which was destined to cause much trouble. Another of the uncles was Louis, Duke of Anjou, heir to the crown of Naples under a will of the lately murdered Queen Joanna, and who was preparing for an expedition to enforce his claim. The third was Duke of Berry, upon whom his father, King John, had conferred another great appanage, including Berry, Poitou and Auvergne.

The pillage and misgovernment of the realm under these rapacious guardians of the young king was so great that desperate risings were provoked, the most formidable of which broke out in Paris. They were all suppressed, and with merciless severity. At the same time, the Flemings, who had again submitted to their count, revolted once more, under the lead of Philip van Arteveld, son of their former leader. The French moved an army to the assistance of the Count of Flanders, and the sturdy men of Ghent, who confronted it almost alone, suffered a crushing defeat at Roosebeke (1382). Philip van Arteveld fell in the battle, with twenty-six thousand of his men. Two years later, the Count of Flanders died, and the Duke of Burgundy, who had married his daughter, acquired that rich and noble possession. This beginning of the union of Burgundy and the Netherlands, creating a power by the side of the throne of France which threatened to overshadow it, and having for its ultimate consequence the casting of the wealth of the Low Countries into the lap of the House of Austria and into the coffers of Spain, is an event of large importance in European history.

Burgundians and Armagnacs.

When Charles VI. came of age, he took the government into his own hands, and for some years it was administered by capable men. But in 1392 the king's mind gave way, and his uncles regained control of affairs. Philip of Burgundy maintained the ascendancy until his death, in 1404. Then the controlling influence passed to the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans, between whom and the new Duke of Burgundy, John, called the Fearless, a bitter feud arose. John, who was unscrupulous, employed assassins to waylay and murder the Duke of Orleans, which they did in November, 1407. This foul deed gave rise to two parties in France. Those who sought vengeance ranged themselves under the leadership of the Count of Armagnac, and were called by his name. The Burgundians, who sustained Duke John, were in the main a party of the people; for the Duke had cultivated popularity, especially in Paris, by advocating liberal measures and extending the rights and privileges of the citizens.

The kingdom was kept in turmoil and terror for years by the war of these factions, especially in and about Paris, where the guild of the butchers took a prominent part in affairs, on the Burgundian side, arming a riotous body of men who were called Cabochiens, from their leader's name. In 1413 the Armagnacs succeeded in recovering possession of the capital and the Cabochiens were suppressed.

Second Stage of the Hundred Years War.

Meantime, Henry V. of England, the ambitious young Lancastrian king who came to the throne of that country in 1413, saw a favorable opportunity, in the distracted state of France, to reopen the questions left unsettled by the breaking of the treaty of Bretigny. He invaded France in 1415, as the rightful king coming to dethrone a usurper, and began by taking Harfleur at the mouth of the Seine, after a siege which cost him so heavily that he found it prudent to retreat towards Calais. The French intercepted him at Agincourt and forced him to give them battle. He had only twenty thousand men, but they formed a well disciplined and well ordered army. The French had gathered eighty thousand men, but they were a feudal mob. The battle ended, like those of Crécy and Poitiers, in the routing and slaughter of the French, with small loss to Henry's force. His army remained too weak in numbers, however, for operations in a hostile country, and the English king returned home, with a great train of captive princes and lords.

He left the Armagnacs and Burgundians still fighting one another, and disabling France as effectually as he could do if he stayed to ravage the land. In 1417 he came back and began to attack the strong cities of Normandy, one by one, taking Caen first. In the next year, by a horrible massacre, the Burgundian mob in Paris overcame the Armagnacs there, and reinstated Duke John of Burgundy in possession of the capital. The latter was already in negotiation with the English king, and evidently prepared to sacrifice the kingdom for whatever might seem advantageous to himself. But in 1419 Henry V. took Rouen, and, when all of Normandy submitted with its capital, he demanded nothing less than that great province, with Brittany, Guienne, Maine, Anjou and Touraine in addition,—or, substantially, the western half of France.

Burgundian and English Alliance.

Parleyings were brought to an end in September of that year by the treacherous murder of Duke John. The Armagnacs slew him foully, at an interview to which he had been enticed, on the bridge of Montereau. His son, Duke Philip of Burgundy, now reopened negotiations with the invader, in conjunction with Queen Isabella (wife of the demented king), who had played an evil part in all the factious troubles of the time. These two, having control of the king's person, concluded a treaty with Henry V. at Troyes, according to the terms of which Henry should marry the king's daughter Catherine; should be administrator of the kingdom of France while Charles VI. lived, and should receive the crown when the latter died. The marriage took place at once, and almost the whole of France north of the Loire seemed submissive to the arrangement. The States-General and the Parliament of Paris gave official recognition to it; the disinherited dauphin of France, whose own mother had signed away his regal heritage, retired, with his Armagnac supporters, to the country south of the Loire, and had little apparent prospect of holding even that.

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Two Kings in France.

But a mortal malady had already stricken King Henry V., and he died in August, 1422. The unfortunate, rarely conscious French king, whose crown Henry had waited for, died seven weeks later. Each left an heir who was proclaimed king of France. The English pretender (Henry VI. in England, Henry II. in France) was an innocent infant, ten months old; but his court was in Paris, his accession was proclaimed with due ceremony at St. Denis, his sovereignty was recognized by the Parliament and the University of that city, and the half of France appeared resigned to the lapse of nationality which its acceptance of him signified. The true heir of the royal house of France (Charles VII.) was a young man of nearly mature age and of fairly promising character; but he was proclaimed in a little town of Berry, by a small following of lords and knights, and the nation for which he stood hardly seemed to exist.

The English supporters of the English king of France were too arrogant and overbearing to retain very long the good will of their allies among the French people. Something like a national feeling in northern France was aroused by the hostility they provoked, and the strength of the position in which Henry V. left them was steadily but slowly lost. Charles proved incapable, however, of using any advantages which opened to him, or of giving his better counsellors an opportunity to serve him with good effect, and no important change took place in the situation of affairs until the English laid siege, in 1428, to the city of Orleans, which was the stronghold of the French cause.

Jeanne d'Arc, the Maid of Orleans.

Then occurred one of the most extraordinary episodes in history; the appearance of the young peasant girl of Lorraine, Jeanne d'Arc, whose coming upon the scene of war was like the descent of an angel out of Heaven, sent with a Divine commission to rescue France. Belief in the inspiration of this simple maiden, who had faith in her own visions and voices, was easier for that age than belief in a rational rally of public energies, and it worked like a miracle on the spirit of the nation. But it could not have done so with effect if the untaught country girl of Domremy had not been endowed in a wonderful way, with a wise mind, as well as with an imaginative one, and with courage as well as with faith. When the belief in her inspired mission gave her power to lead the foolish king, and authority to command his disorderly troops, she acted almost invariably with understanding, with good sense, with a clear, unclouded judgment, with straightforward singleness of purpose, and with absolute personal fearlessness. She saw the necessity for saving Orleans; and when that had been done under her own captaincy (1429), she saw how greatly King Charles would gain in prestige if he made his way to Rheims, and received, like his predecessors, a solemn coronation and consecration in the cathedral of that city. It was by force of her gentle obstinacy of determination that this was done, and the effect vindicated the sagacity of the Maid. Then she looked upon her mission as accomplished, and would have gone quietly home to her village; for she seems to have remained as simple in feeling as when she left her father's house, and was innocent to the end of any selfish pleasure in the fame she had won and the importance she had acquired. But those she had helped would not let her go; and yet they would not be guided by her without wrangle and resistance. She wished to move the army straight from Rheims to Paris, and enter that city before it had time to recover from the consternation it was in. But other counsellors retarded the march, by stopping to capture small towns on the way, until the opportunity for taking Paris was lost. The king, who had been braced up to a little energy by her influence, sank back into his indolent pleasures, and faction and frivolity possessed the court again. Jeanne strove with high courage against malignant opposition and many disheartenments, in the siege of Paris and after, exposing herself in battle with the bravery of a seasoned warrior; and her reward was to find herself abandoned at last, in a cowardly way, to the enemy, when she had led a sortie from the town of Compiegne, to drive back the Duke of Burgundy, who was besieging it. Taken prisoner, she was given up to the Duke, and sold by him to the English at Rouen.

That the Maid acted with supernatural powers was believed by the English as firmly as by the French; but those powers, in their belief, came, not from Heaven, but from Hell. In their view she was not a saint, but a sorceress. They paid a high price to the Duke of Burgundy for his captive, in order to put her on trial for the witchcraft which they held she had practised against them, and to destroy her mischievous power. No consideration for her sex, or her youth, or for the beauty and purity of character that is revealed in all the accounts of her trial, moved her judges to compassion. They condemned her remorselessly to the stake, and she was burned on the 31st of May, 1431, with no effort put forth on the part of the French or their ungrateful king to save her from that horrible fate.

End of the Hundred Years War.