Part 26

Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, taxed his subjects but little: "Therefore," says Philippe de Commines, "they became very wealthy, and lived in much comfort." But Louis XI did not imitate him. His first care was to reinstate that great merchant, that clever financier, Jacques Coeur, to whom, as much as to Joan of Arc, the kingdom owed its freedom, and whom Charles VII., for the most contemptible reasons, had had the weakness to allow to be judicially condemned Louis XI. would have been very glad to entrust the care of his finances to another Jacques Coeur; for being sadly in want of money, he ran through his father's earnings, and, to refill his coffers, he increased taxation, imposed a duty on the importation of wines, and levied a tax on those holding offices, &c. A revolution broke out in consequence, which was only quenched in the blood of the insurgents. In this manner he continued, by force of arms, to increase and strengthen his own regal power at the expense of feudalism.

He soon found himself opposed by the _Ligue du Bien Public_, formed by the great vassals ostensibly to get rid of the pecuniary burden which oppressed the people, but really with the secret intention of restoring feudalism and lessening the King's power. He was not powerful enough openly to resist this, and appeared to give way by allowing the leagued nobles immense privileges, and himself consenting to the control of a sort of council of "thirty-six notables appointed to superintend matters of finance." Far from acknowledging himself vanquished, however, he immediately set to work to cause division among his enemies, so as to be able to overcome them. He accordingly showed favour towards the bourgeois, whom he had already flattered, by granting new privileges, and abolishing or reducing certain vexatious taxes of which they complained. The thirty-six notables appointed to control his financial management reformed nothing. They were timid and docile under the cunning eye of the King, and practically assisted him in his designs; for in a very few years the taxes were increased from 1,800,000 écus--about 45,000,000 francs of present money--to 3,600,000 écus--about 95,000,000 francs. Towards the end of the reign they exceeded 4,700,000 écus--130,000,000 francs of present money. Louis XI. wasted nothing on luxury and pleasure; he lived parsimoniously, but he maintained 110,000 men under arms, and was ready to make the greatest sacrifices whenever there was a necessity for augmenting the territory of the kingdom, or for establishing national unity. At his death, on the 25th of August, 1483, he left a kingdom considerably increased in area, but financialty almost ruined.

When Anne de Beaujeu, eldest sister of the King, who was a minor, assumed the reins of government as regent, an immediate demand was made for reparation of the evils to which the finance ministers had subjected the unfortunate people. The treasurer-general Olivier le Dain, and the attorney-general Jean Doyat, were almost immediately sacrificed to popular resentment, six thousand Swiss were subsidised, the pensions granted during the previous reign were cancelled, and a fourth part of the taxes was removed. Public opinion being thus satisfied, the States-General assembled. The bourgeois here showed great practical good sense, especially in matters of finance; they proved clearly that the assessment was illegal, and that the accounts were fictitious, inasmuch as the latter only showed 1,650,000 livres of subsidies, whereas they amounted to three times as much. It was satisfactorily established that the excise, the salt tax, and the revenues of the public lands amply sufficed for the wants of the country and the crown. The young King Charles was only allowed 1,200,000 livres for his private purse for two years, and 300,000 livres for the expenses of the festivities of his coronation. On the Assembly being dissolved, the Queen Regent found ample means of pleasing the bourgeois and the people generally by breaking through the engagements she had entered into in the King's name, by remitting taxation, and finally by force of arms destroying the power of the last remaining vassals of the crown.

Charles VIII., during a reign of fourteen years, continued to waste the public money. His disastrous expedition for the conquest of the kingdom of Naples forced him to borrow at the rate of forty-two per cent. A short time previous to his death he acknowledged his errors, but continued to spend money, without consideration or restraint, in all kinds of extravagances, but especially in buildings. During his reign the annual expenditure almost invariably doubled the revenue. In 1492 it reached 7,300,000 francs, about 244,000,000 francs of present money. The deficit was made up each year by a general tax, "which was paid neither by the nobles nor the Church, but was obtained entirely from the people" (letters from the ambassadors of Venice).

When the Duke of Orleans ascended the throne as Louis XII., the people were again treated with some consideration. Having chosen George d'Amboise as premier and Florimond Robertet as first secretary of the treasury, he resolutely pursued a course of strict economy; he refused to demand of his subjects the usual tax for celebrating the joyous accession, the taxes fell by successive reductions to the sum of 2,600,000 livres, about 76,000,000 francs of present money, the salt tax was entirely abolished, and the question as to what should be the standard measure of this important article was legislated upon. The tax-gatherers were forced to reside in their respective districts, and to submit their registers to the royal commissioners before beginning to collect the tax. By strict discipline pillage by soldiers was put a stop to (Fig. 288).

Notwithstanding the resources obtained by the King through mortgaging a part of the royal domains, and in spite of the excellent administration of Robertet, who almost always managed to pay the public deficit without any additional tax, it was necessary in 1513, after several disastrous expeditions to Italy, to borrow, on the security of the royal domains, 400,000 livres, 10,000,000 francs of present money, and to raise from the excise and from other dues and taxes the sum of 3,300,000 livres, about 80,000,000 francs of present money. This caused the nation some distress, but it was only temporary, and was not much felt, for commerce, both domestic and foreign, much extended at the same time, and the sale of collectorships, of titles of nobility, of places in parliament, and of nominations to numerous judicial offices, brought in considerable sums to the treasury. The higher classes surnamed the king _Le Roitelet_, because he was sickly and of small stature, parsimonious and economical. The people called him their "father and master," and he has always been styled the father of the people ever since.

In an administrative and financial point of view, the reign of Francis I. was not at all a period of revival or of progress. The commencement of a sounder System of finance is rather to be dated from that of Charles V.; and good financial organization is associated with the names of Jacques Coeur, Philip the Good, Charles XI., and Florimond Robertet. As an example of this, it may be stated that financiers of that time established taxes on registration of all kinds, also on stamps, and on sales, which did not before exist in France, and which were borrowed from the Roman emperors. We must also give them the credit of having first commenced a public debt, under the name of _rentes perpetuelles_, which at that time realised eight per cent. During this brilliant and yet disastrous reign the additional taxes were enormous, and the sale of offices produced such a large revenue that the post of parliamentary counsel realised the sum of 2,000 golden écus, or nearly a million francs of present currency. It was necessary to obtain money at any price, and from any one who would lend it. The ecclesiastics, the nobility, the bourgeois, all gave up their plate and their jewels to furnish the mint, which continued to coin money of every description, and, in consequence of the discovery of America, and the working of the gold and silver mines in that country, the precious metals poured into the hands of the money-changers. The country, however, was none the more prosperous, and the people often were in want of even the commonest necessaries of life. The King and the court swallowed up everything, and consumed all the resources of the country on their luxury and their wars. The towns, the monasteries, and the corporations, were bound to furnish a certain number of troops, either infantry or cavalry. By the establishment of a lottery and a bank of deposit, by the monopoly of the mines and by the taxes on imports, exports, and manufactured articles, enormous sums were realised to the treasury, which, as it was being continually drained, required to be as continually replenished. Francis I. exhausted every source of credit by his luxury, his caprices, and his wars. Jean de Beaune, Baron de Semblançay, the old minister of finance, died a victim to false accusations of having misappropriated the public funds. Robertet, who was in office with him, and William Bochetel, who succeeded him, were more fortunate: they so managed the treasury business that, without meeting with any legal difficulty, they were enabled to centralise the responsibility in themselves instead of having it distributed over sixteen branches in all parts of the kingdom, a system which has continued to our day. In those days the office of superintendent of finance was usually only a short and rapid road to the gibbet of Montfaucon.

[Illustrations: Gold and Silver Coins of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.

Fig. 289.--Royal d'Or. Charles VII Fig. 290.--Écu d'Argent à la Couronne. Louis XI. Fig. 291.--Écu d'Or à la Couronne. Charles VIII. Fig. 292.--Écu d'Or au Porc-épic. Louis XII. Fig. 293.--Teston d'Argent. Francis I. Fig. 294.--Teston d'Argent au Croissant. Henry II. ]

Law and the Administration of Justice.

The Family the Origin of Government.--Origin of Supreme Power amongst the Franks.--The Legislation of Barbarism humanised by Christianity.--Right of Justice inherent to the Bight of Property.--The Laws under Charlemagne.--Judicial Forms.--Witnesses.--Duels, &c.-- Organization of Royal Justice under St. Louis.--The Châtelet and the Provost of Paris.--Jurisdiction of Parliament, its Duties and its Responsibilities.--The Bailiwicks. Struggles between Parliament and the Châtelet.--Codification of the Customs and Usages.--Official Cupidity.--Comparison between the Parliament and the Châtelet.

Amongst the ancient Celtic and German population, before any Greek or Roman innovations had become engrafted on to their customs, everything, even political power as well as the rightful possession of lands, appears to have been dependent on families. Julius Cæsar, in his "Commentaries," tells us that "each year the magistrates and princes assigned portions of land to families as well as to associations of individuals having a common object whenever they thought proper, and to any extent they chose, though in the following year the same authorities compelled them to go and establish themselves elsewhere." We again find families (_familiæ_) and associations of men (_cognationes hominum_) spoken of by Cæsar, in the barbaric laws, and referred to in the histories of the Middle Ages under the names of _genealogiæ, faramanni, faræ_, &c.; but the extent of the relationship (_parentela_) included under the general appellation of _families_ varied amongst the Franks, Lombards, Visigoths, and Bavarians. Generally, amongst all the people of German origin, the relationship only extended to the seventh degree; amongst the Celts it was determined merely by a common ancestry, with endless subdivisions of the tribe into distinct families. Amongst the Germans, from whom modern Europe has its origin, we find only three primary groups; namely, first, the family proper, comprising the father, mother, and children, and the collateral relatives of all degrees; secondly, the vassals (_ministeriales_) or servants of the free class; and, thirdly, the servants (_mansionarii, coloni, liti, servi_) of the servile class attached to the family proper (Fig. 296).

Domestic authority was represented by the _mund_, or head of the family, also called _rex_ (the king), who exercised a special power over the persons and goods of his dependents, a guardianship, in fact, with certain rights and prerogatives, and a sort of civil and political responsibility attached to it. Thus the head of the family, who was responsible for his wife and for those of his children who lived with him, was also responsible for his slaves and domestic animals. To such a pitch did these primitive people carry their desire that justice should be done in all cases of infringement of the law, that the head was held legally responsible for any injury which might be done by the bow or the sword of any of his dependents, without it being necessary that he should himself have handled either of these weapons.

Long before the commencement of the Merovingian era, the family, whose sphere of action had at first been an isolated and individual one, became incorporated into one great national association, which held official meetings at stated periods on the _Malberg_ (Parliament hill). These assemblies alone possessed supreme power in its full signification. The titles given to certain chiefs of _rex_ (king), _dux_ (duke), _graff_ (count), _brenn_ (general of the army), only defined the subdivisions of that power, and were applied, the last exclusively, to those engaged in war, and the others to those possessing judicial and administrative functions. The duty of dispensing justice was specially assigned to the counts, who had to ascertain the cause of quarrels between parties and to inflict penalties. There was a count in each district and in each important town; there were, besides, several counts attached to the sovereign, under the title of counts of the palace (_comites palatii_), an honourable position, which was much sought after and much coveted on account of its pecuniary and other contingent advantages. The counts of the palace deliberated with the sovereign on all matters and all questions of State, and at the same time they were his companions in hunting, feasting, and religious exercises; they acted as arbitrators in questions of inheritance of the crown; during the minority of princes they exercised the same authority as that which the constitution gave to sovereigns who were of full age; they confirmed the nominations of the principal functionaries and even those of the bishops; they gave their advice on the occasion of a proposed alliance between one nation and another, on matters connected with treaties of peace or of commerce, on military expeditions, or on exchanges of territory, as well as in reference to the marriage of a prince, and they incurred no responsibility beyond that naturally attached to persons in so distinguished a position among a semi-barbarous community. At first the legates (_legati_), and afterwards the King's ambassadors (_missi dominici_), the bishops and the dukes or commanders of the army were usually selected from the higher court officials, such as the counts of the palace, whereas the _ministeriales_, forming the second class of the royal officials, filled inferior though very honourable and lucrative posts of an administrative and magisterial character.

Under the Merovingians the legal principle of power was closely bound up with the possession of landed property. The subdivision of that power, however, closely followed this union, and the constant ruin of some of the nobles rapidly increased the power of others, who absorbed to themselves the lost authority of their more unfortunate brethren, so much so that the Frank kings perceived that society would soon escape their rule unless they speedily found a remedy for this state of things. It was then that the _lois Salique_ and _Ripuaire_ appeared, which were subjected to successive revisions and gradual or sudden modifications, necessitated by political changes or by the increasing exigencies of the prelates and nobles. But, far from lessening the supremacy of the King, the national customs which were collected in a code extended the limits of the royal authority and facilitated its exercise.

In 596, Childebert, in concert with his _leudes_, decided that in future the crime of rape should be punished with death, and that the judge of the district (_pagus_) in which it had been committed should kill the ravisher, and leave his body on the public road. He also enacted that the homicide should have the same fate. "It is just," to quote the words of the law, "that he who knows how to kill should learn how to die." Robbery, attested by seven witnesses, also involved capital punishment, and a judge convicted of having let a noble escape, underwent the same punishment that would have been inflicted on the criminal. The punishment, however, differed according to the station of the delinquent. Thus, for the non-observance of Sunday, a Salian paid a fine of fifteen sols, a Roman seven and a half sols, a slave three sols, or "his back paid the penalty for him." At this early period some important changes in the barbaric code had been made: the sentence of death when once given had to be carried out, and no arrangements between the interested parties could avert it. A crime could no longer be condoned by the payment of money; robbery even, which was still leniently regarded at that time, and beyond the Rhine even honoured, was pitilessly punished by death. We therefore cannot have more striking testimony than this of the abridgment of the privileges of the Frankish aristocracy, and of the progress which the sovereign power was making towards absolute and uncontrolled authority over cases of life and death. By almost imperceptible steps Roman legislation became more humane and perfect, Christianity engrafted itself into barbarism, licentiousness was considered a crime, crime became an offence against the King and society, and it was in one sense by the King's hand that the criminals received punishment.

From the time of the baptism of Clovis, the Church had much to do with the re-arrangement of the penal code; for instance, marriage with a sister-in-law, a mother-in-law, an aunt, or a niece, was forbidden; the travelling shows, nocturnal dances, public orgies, formerly permitted at feasts, were forbidden as being profane. In the time of Clotaire, the prelates sat as members of the supreme council, which was strictly speaking the highest court of the land, having the power of reversing the decisions of the judges of the lower courts. It pronounced sentence in conjunction with the King, and from these decisions there was no appeal. The nation had no longer a voice in the election of the magistrates, for the assemblies of _Malberg_ did not meet except on extraordinary occasions, and all government and judicial business was removed to the supreme and often capricious arbitration of the King and his council.

As long as the mayors of the palace of Austrasia, and of that of Burgundy, were only temporarily appointed, royal authority never wavered, and the sovereign remained supreme judge over his subjects. Suddenly, however, after the execution of Brunehaut, who was sacrificed to the hatred of the feudal lords, the mayoralty of the palace became a life appointment, and, in consequence, the person holding the office became possessed almost of supreme power, and the rightful sovereigns from that time practically became subject to the authority of the future usurpers of the crown. The edict of 615, to which the ecclesiastical and State nobility were parties, was in its laws and customs completely at variance with former edicts. In resuming their places in the French constitution, the Merovingian kings, who had been deprived both of influence and authority, were compelled by the Germanic institutions to return to the passive position which their predecessors had held in the forests of Germany, but they no longer had, like the latter, the prestige of military authority to enable them to keep the position of judges or arbitrators. The canons of the Council of Paris, which were confirmed by an edict of the King bearing date the 15th of the calends of November, 615, upset the political and legal system so firmly established in Europe since the fifth century. The royal power was shorn of some of its most valuable prerogatives, one of which was that of selecting the bishops; lay judges were forbidden to bring an ecclesiastic before the tribunals; and the treasury was prohibited from seizing intestate estates, with a view to increasing the rates and taxes; and it was decreed that Jews should not be employed in collecting the public taxes. By these canons the judges and other officers of State were made responsible, the benefices which had been withdrawn from the _leudes_ were restored, the King was forbidden from granting written orders (_præcepta_) for carrying off rich widows, young virgins, and nuns; and the penalty of death was ordered to be enforced against those who disobeyed the canons of the council. Thence sprung two new species of legislation, one ecclesiastical, the other civil, between which royalty, more and more curtailed of its authority, was compelled for many centuries to struggle.

Amongst the Germanic nations the right of justice was inherent to landed property from the earliest times, and this right had reference to things as well as to persons. It was the patronage (_patrocinium_) of the proprietor, and this patronage eventually gave origin to feudal jurisdictions and to lordly and customary rights in each domain. We may infer from this that under the two first dynasties laws were made by individuals, and that each lord, so to speak, made his own.

The right of jurisdiction seems to have been so inherent to the right of property, that a landed proprietor could always put an end to feuds and personal quarrels, could temporarily bring any lawsuit to a close, and, by issuing his _ban_, stop the course of the law in his own immediate neighbourhood--at least, within a given circumference of his residence. This was often done during any family festival, or any civil or religious public ceremony. On these occasions, whoever infringed the _ban_ of the master, was liable to be brought before his _court_, and to have to pay a fine. The lord who was too poor to create a court of sufficient power and importance obtained assistance from his lord paramount or relinquished the right of justice to him; whence originated the saying, "The fief is one thing, and justice another."