An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 11

Besides the military service due from the va.s.sal to his lord, he was expected to attend the lord's court when summoned. There he sat with other va.s.sals to hear and p.r.o.nounce upon those cases in which his peers--i.e., his fellow-va.s.sals--were involved.[70] Moreover, he had to give the lord the benefit of his counsel when required, and attend him upon solemn occasions. Under certain circ.u.mstances va.s.sals had to make money payments to their lord, as well as serve him in person; as, for instance, when the fief changed hands through the death of the lord or of the va.s.sal, when the fief was alienated, when the lord was put to extra expense by the necessity of knighting his eldest son or providing a dowry for his daughter, or when he was in captivity and was held for a ransom. Lastly, the va.s.sal might have to entertain his lord should the lord come his way. There are amusingly detailed accounts, in some of the feudal contracts, of exactly how often the lord might come, how many followers he might bring, and what he should have to eat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Mediaeval Castle near Klagenfurt, Austria]

[Sidenote: Different cla.s.ses of fiefs.]

There were fiefs of all kinds and of all grades of importance, from that of a duke or count, who held directly of the king and exercised the powers of a practically independent prince, down to the holding of the simple knight, whose bit of land, cultivated by peasants or serfs, was barely sufficient to enable him to support himself and provide the horse upon which he rode to perform his military service for his lord.

[Sidenote: The n.o.bility.]

[Sidenote: Their privileges.]

In order to rank as a n.o.ble in mediaeval society it was, in general, necessary to be the holder of land for which only such services were due as were considered honorable, and none of those which it was customary for the peasant or serf to perform. The n.o.ble must, moreover, be a free man and have at least sufficient income to maintain himself and his horse without any sort of labor. The n.o.bles enjoyed certain privileges which set them off from the non-n.o.ble cla.s.ses. Many of these privileges were perpetuated in France, and elsewhere on the continent, down to the time of the French Revolution, and in Italy and Germany, into the nineteenth century. The most conspicuous privilege was a partial exemption from taxation.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of cla.s.sifying the n.o.bles.]

It is natural to wish to cla.s.sify the n.o.bility and to ask just what was the difference, for example, between a duke, a count, and a marquis.

Unfortunately there was no fixed cla.s.sification, at least before the thirteenth century. A count, for instance, might be a very inconspicuous person, having a fief no larger than the county of Charlemagne's time, or he might possess a great many of the older counties and rank in power with a duke. In general, however, it may be said that the dukes, counts, bishops, and abbots who held directly from the king were of the highest rank. Next to them came an intermediate cla.s.s of n.o.bles of the second order, generally subva.s.sals of the king, and below these the simple knights.

[Sidenote: Feudal registers.]

43. The great complexity of the feudal system of land tenure made it necessary for the feudal lords to keep careful registers of their possessions. Very few of these registers have been preserved, but we are so fortunate as to have one of the count of Champagne, dating from the early thirteenth century. This gives us an idea of what feudalism really was in practice, and shows how impossible it is to make a satisfactory map of any country during the feudal period.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fiefs and Suzerains of the Counts of Champagne]

[Sidenote: Growth of the possessions of the counts of Champagne typical of the period.]

At the opening of the tenth century we find in the chronicles of the time an account of a certain ambitious count of Troyes, Robert by name, who died in 923 while trying to wrest the crown of France from Charles the Simple. His county pa.s.sed to his son-in-law, who already held, among other possessions, the counties of Chateau-Thierry and Meaux. His son, in turn, inherited all three counties and increased his dominions by judicious usurpations. This process of gradual aggrandizement went on for generation after generation, until there came to be a compact district under the control of the counts of Champagne, as they began to call themselves at the opening of the twelfth century. It was in this way that the feudal states in France and Germany grew up. Certain lines of feudal lords showed themselves able, partly by craft and violence, and partly, doubtless, by good fortune, to piece together a considerable district, in much the same way as we shall find that the king of France later pieced together France itself.

[Sidenote: The register of the counts of Champagne ill.u.s.trates the complexity of feudal relations.]

The register referred to above shows that the feudal possessions of the counts of Champagne were divided into twenty-six districts, each of which centered about a strong castle. We may infer that these divisions bore some close relation to the original counties which the counts of Champagne had succeeded in bringing together. All these districts were held as fiefs of other lords. For the greater number of his fiefs the count rendered homage to the king of France, but he was the va.s.sal of no less than nine other lords beside the king. A portion of his lands, including probably his chief town of Troyes, he held of the duke of Burgundy. Chatillon, epernay, and some other towns, he held as the "man"

of the Archbishop of Rheims. He was also the va.s.sal of the Archbishop of Sens, of four other neighboring bishops, and of the abbot of the great monastery of St. Denis. To all of these persons he had pledged himself to be faithful and true, and when his various lords fell out with one another it must have been difficult to see where his duty lay. Yet his situation was similar to that of all important feudal lords.

The chief object, however, of the register was to show not what the count owed to others but what his own numerous va.s.sals owed to him. It appears that he subinfeudated his lands and his various sources of income to no less than two thousand va.s.sal knights. The purpose of the register is to record the terms upon which each of these knights held his fief. Some simply rendered the count homage, some agreed to serve him in war for a certain length of time each year, others to guard his castle for specified periods. A considerable number of the va.s.sals of the count held lands of other lords, there being nothing to prevent a subva.s.sal from accepting a fief directly from the king, or from any other neighboring n.o.ble landholder. So it happened that several of the va.s.sals of the counts of Champagne held of the same persons of whom the count himself held.

[Sidenote: The infeudation of other things than land.]

It is evident that the counts of Champagne were not contented with the number of va.s.sals that they secured by subinfeudating their land. The same homage might be rendered for a fixed income, or for a certain number of bushels of oats to be delivered each year by the lord, as for the use of land. So money, houses, wheat, oats, wine, chickens, were infeudated, and even half the bees which might be found in a particular forest. It would seem to us the simpler way to have hired soldiers outright, but in the thirteenth century the traditions of feudalism were so strong that it seemed natural to make va.s.sals of those whose aid was desired. The mere promise of a money payment would not have been considered sufficiently binding. The feudal bond of homage served to make the contract firmer than it would otherwise have been.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The arrow indicates a lord of whom the va.s.sal held one or more fiefs.]

It is clear, then, that no such regular hierarchy existed as some historians have imagined, beginning with the king and ending with the humblest knight included in the feudal aristocracy. The fact that va.s.sals often held of a number of different lords made the feudal relations infinitely complex. The diagram on page 115, while it may not exactly correspond to the situation at any given moment, will serve to ill.u.s.trate this complexity.

[Sidenote: The feudal system maintained only by force.]

44. Should one confine one's studies of feudalism to the rules laid down by the feudal lawyers and the careful descriptions of the exact duties of the va.s.sal which are to be found in the contracts of the period, one might conclude that everything had been so minutely and rigorously fixed as to render the feudal bond sufficient to maintain order and liberty.

But one has only to read a chronicle of the time to discover that, in reality, brute force governed almost everything outside of the Church.

The feudal obligations were not fulfilled except when the lord was sufficiently powerful to enforce them. The bond of va.s.salage and fidelity, which was the sole principle of order, was constantly broken and faith was violated by both va.s.sal and lord.[71]

[Sidenote: The breaking of the feudal bond.]

It often happened that a va.s.sal was discontented with his lord and transferred his allegiance to another. This he had a right to do under certain circ.u.mstances, as, for instance, when his lord refused to see that justice was done him in his court. But such changes were generally made merely for the sake of the advantages which the faithless va.s.sal hoped to gain. The records of the time are full of accounts of refusal to do homage, which was the commonest way in which the feudal bond was broken. So soon as a va.s.sal felt himself strong enough to face his lord's displeasure, or realized that the lord was a helpless minor, he was apt to declare his independence by refusing to recognize the feudal superiority of the one from whom he had received his land.

[Sidenote: War the law of the feudal world.]

We may say that war, in all its forms, was the law of the feudal world.

War formed the chief occupation of the restless aristocracy who held the land and exercised the governmental control. The inveterate habits of a military race, the discord provoked by ill-defined rights or by self-interest and covetousness, all led to constant b.l.o.o.d.y struggles in which each lord had for his enemies all those about him. An enterprising va.s.sal was likely to make war at least once, first, upon each of his several lords; secondly, upon the bishops and abbots with whom he was brought into contact, and whose control he particularly disliked; thirdly, upon his fellow-va.s.sals; and lastly, upon his own va.s.sals. The feudal bonds, instead of offering a guarantee of peace and concord, appear to have been a constant cause of violent conflict. Every one was bent upon profiting by the permanent or temporary weakness of his neighbor. This chronic dissension extended even to members of the same family; the son, anxious to enjoy a part of his heritage immediately, warred against his father, younger brothers against older, and nephews against uncles who might seek to deprive them of their rights.

In theory, the lord could force his va.s.sals to settle their disputes in an orderly and righteous manner before his court. But often he was neither able nor inclined to bring about a peaceful adjustment, and he would frequently have found it embarra.s.sing to enforce the decisions of his own court. So the va.s.sals were left to fight out their quarrels among themselves and found their chief interest in life in so doing. War was practically sanctioned by law. The great French code of laws of the thirteenth century and the Golden Bull, a most important body of law drawn up for Germany in 1356, did not prohibit neighborhood war, but merely provided that it should be conducted in a decent and gentlemanly way.

[Sidenote: Tourneys and jousts.]

The jousts, or tourneys, were military exercises--play wars--to fill out the tiresome periods which occasionally intervened between real wars.[72] They were, in fact, diminutive battles in which whole troops of hostile n.o.bles sometimes took part. These rough plays called down the condemnation of the popes and councils, and even of the kings. The latter, however, were too fond of the sport themselves not to forget promptly their own prohibitions.[73]

[Sidenote: Disastrous effects of feudal warfare generally recognized.]

[Sidenote: The 'Truce of G.o.d.']

45. The disastrous nature of the perpetual feudal warfare and the necessity of some degree of peace and order, had already become apparent even as early as the eleventh century. In spite of all the turmoil, mankind was making progress. Commerce and enlightenment were increasing in the older towns and preparing the way for the development of new ones. Those engaged in peaceful pursuits could not but find the prevailing disorder intolerable. The Church was untiring, as it was fitting that it should be, in its efforts to secure peace; and nothing redounds more to the honor of the bishops than the "Truce of G.o.d." This prohibited all hostilities from Thursday night until Monday morning, as well as upon all of the numerous fast days.[74] The church councils and the bishops required the feudal lords to take an oath to observe the weekly truce, and, by means of the dreaded penalty of excommunication, met with some success. With the opening of the Crusades in 1096, the popes undertook to effect a general pacification by diverting the prevailing warlike spirit against the Turks.

At the same time the king, in France and England at least, was becoming a power that made for order in the modern sense of the word. He endeavored to prevent the customary resort to arms to settle every sort of difficulty between rival va.s.sals. By increasing the military force that he had at his command he compelled the submission of cases of dispute to his tribunals. But even St. Louis (d. 1270), who made the greatest efforts to secure peace, did not succeed in accomplis.h.i.+ng his end. The gradual bettering of conditions was due chiefly to general progress and to the development of commerce and industry, which made the bellicose aristocracy more and more intolerable.

General Reading.--The older accounts of feudalism, such as that given by Guizot or Hallam, should be avoided as the reader is likely to be misled by them. The earlier writers appear, from the standpoint of recent investigations, to have been seriously mistaken upon many important points. In French, LUCHAIRE, _Manuel des Inst.i.tutions Francaises_ (Hachette & Co., Paris, $3.00), and ESMEIN, _Cours elementaire d'Histoire du Droit Francais_ ($2.00), are excellent.

In English there is EMERTON'S Chapter XIV on "Feudal Inst.i.tutions"

in his _Mediaeval Europe_, and ADAMS, _Civilization_, Chapter IX, devoted especially to the origin of feudalism. CHEYNEY gives a selection of doc.u.ments relating to the subject in _Translations and Reprints_, Vol. IV, No. 3.

CHAPTER X

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FRANCE

[Sidenote: Importance of studying the beginnings of the modern European states.]

46. There is no more interesting or important phase of mediaeval history than the gradual emergence of the modern national state from the feudal anarchy into which the great empire of Charlemagne fell during the century after his death. No one should flatter himself that he has grasped the elements of the history of western Europe unless he can trace in a clear, if general, way the various stages by which the states which appear now upon the map of Europe--the French republic, the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the kingdoms of Italy, Great Britain, and Spain--have grown out of the disorganized Europe of the ninth century.

It might be inferred from what has been said in the preceding chapters that the political history of western Europe during the two or three centuries following the deposition of Charles the Fat was really only the history of innumerable feudal lords. Yet even if the kings of mediaeval Europe were sometimes less powerful than some of their mighty subjects, still their history is more important than that of their va.s.sals. It was the kings, and not their rivals, the dukes and counts, who were to win in the long run and to establish national governments in the modern sense of the term. It was about them that the great European states, especially France, Spain, and England, grew up.

[Sidenote: Struggle between the Carolingians and the house of Odo.]

As we have seen, the aristocracy of the northern part of the West-Frankish kingdom chose (in 888) as their king, in place of the incompetent Charles the Fat, the valiant Odo, Count of Paris, Blois, and Orleans. He was a powerful lord and held extensive domains besides the regions he ruled as count. But, in spite of his advantageous position, he found it impossible to exert any real power in the southern part of his kingdom. Even in the north he met with constant opposition, for the n.o.bles who elected him had no idea of permitting him to interfere much with their independence. Charles the Simple, the only surviving grandson of Charles the Bald,[75] was eventually elected king by a faction opposed to Odo.

[Sidenote: Election of Hugh Capet, the first of the Capetians, 987-996.]