The World's Greatest Books - Volume 11 Part 23

On the pretext of claiming the succession for himself, Edward III. began the great French war which lasted, interrupted by only one regular pacification, for a hundred and twenty years. The brilliant personal qualities of Edward and the Black Prince, the great resources of England, and the quality of the soldiery, account for the English successes. After the peace of Bretigny these triumphs were reversed, and the English lost their possessions; but when Charles VI. ascended the throne disaster followed. France was rent by the rival factions of Burgundy and Orleans, the latter taking its more familiar name from the Court of Armagnac. The troubled reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV.

prevented England from taking advantage of these dissensions; but Henry V. renewed the war, winning the battle of Agincourt in his first campaign and securing the Treaty of Troyes on his second invasion. After his death came that most marvellous revolution wrought by Joan of Arc, and the expulsion of the English from the country.

In France the effect of the war was to strengthen the Crown as against the n.o.bility, a process developed by the subtlety of Louis XI. Out of the long contest in which the diplomatic skill of the king was pitted against the fiery ambitions of Charles of Burgundy, Louis extracted for himself sundry Burgundian provinces. The supremacy of the Crown was secured when his son Charles VIII. acquired Brittany by marrying the d.u.c.h.ess Anne.

The essential distinction of ranks in France was found in the possession of land. Besides the National lands, there were lands reserved to the Crown, which, under the name of benefices, were bestowed upon personal followers of the king, held more or less on military tenure; and the king's va.s.sals acquired va.s.sals for themselves by a similar process of subinfeudation. On the other hand freeholders inclined, for the sake of protection, to commend themselves, as the phrase was, to their stronger neighbours and so to a.s.sume the relation of va.s.sal to liege lord. The essential principle was a mutual contract of support and fidelity, confirmed by the ceremonies of homage, fealty, and invest.i.ture, which conferred upon the lord the right to various reliefs, fines, and rights capable of conversion into money payments.

Gentility, now hereditary, was derived from the tenure of land; the idea of it was emphasised by the adoption of surnames and armorial bearings.

A close aristocracy was created, somewhat modified by the right claimed by the king of creating n.o.bles. Prelates and abbots were in the same position as feudal n.o.bles, though the duty of personal service was in many cases commuted for an equivalent. Below the gentle cla.s.s were freemen, and the remainder of the population were serfs or villeins. It was not impossible for villeins to purchase freedom. In France the privileges possessed by the va.s.sals of the Crown were scarcely consistent with the sovereignty. Such were the rights of coining money, of private war, and of immunity from taxation.

Such legislation as there was appears to have been effected by the king, supported by a Royal Council or a more general a.s.sembly of the barons.

It was only by degrees that the Royal ordinances came to be current in the fiefs of the greater va.s.sals. It was Philip the Fair who introduced the general a.s.sembly of the Three Estates. This a.s.sembly very soon claimed the right of granting and refusing money as well as of bringing forward grievances. The kings of France, however, sought to avoid convocation of the States General by obtaining grants from provincial a.s.semblies of the Three Estates.

The old system of jurisdiction by elected officers was superseded by feudal jurisdiction, having three degrees of power, and acting according to recognised local customs, varied by the right to ordeal by combat.

The Crown began to encroach on these feudal jurisdictions by the establishment of Royal courts of appeal; but there also subsisted a supreme Court of Peers to whom were added the king's household officers.

The peers ceased by degrees to attend this court, while the Crown multiplied the councillors of inferior rank; and this body became known as the Parliament of Paris--in effect an a.s.sembly of lawyers.

The decline of the feudal system was due mainly to the increasing power of the Crown on the one hand, and of the lower ranks on the other; more especially from the extension of the privileges of towns. But the feudal principle itself was weakened by the tendency to commute military service for money, enabling the Crown to employ paid troops.

_II.--Italy and Spain_

After the disruption of Charlemagne's empire the imperial t.i.tle was revived from the German, Otto the Great of Saxony. His imperial supremacy was recognised in Italy; the German king was the Roman emperor. Italian unity had gone to pieces, but the German supremacy offended Italy. Still from the time of Conrad of Franconia the election of the King of Germany was a.s.sumed, at least my him, to convey the sovereignty of Italy. In the eleventh century Norman adventurers made themselves masters of Sicily and Southern Italy. In Northern Italy on the other hand the emperors favoured the development of free cities, owning only the imperial sovereignty and tending to self-government on Republican lines. The appearance on the scene in the twelfth century of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa introduced a period characterised by a three-fold change: the victorious struggle of the northern cities for independence; the establishment of the temporal sovereignty of the Papacy in the middle provinces; and the union of the kingdom of Naples to the dominions of the Imperial House. The first quarrels with Milan led to the formation of the Lombard league, and a long war in which the battle of Legnano gave the confederates a decisive victory. The mutual rivalries of the States, however, prevented them from turning this to good account. Barbarossa's grandson, Frederick II., was a child of four when he succeeded to the Swabian inheritance, and through his mother to that of Sicily.

It was now that the powerful Pope Innocent III. so greatly extended the temporal power of the Papacy, and that the rival parties of Guelfs and Ghibelins, adherents the one of the Papacy, the other of the Empire, were established as factions in practically every Italian city. When the young Frederick grew up he was drawn into a long struggle with the Papacy which ended in the overthrow of the Imperial authority. From this time the quarrel of Guelfs and Ghibelins for the most part became mere family feuds resting on no principles. Charles of Anjou was adopted as Papal champion; the republics of the North were in effect controlled by despots for a brief moment. Rome revived her republicanism under the leaders.h.i.+p of Rienzi. In the general chaos the principle interest attaches to the peculiar but highly complicated form of democracy developed in Florence, where the old Patrician families were virtually disfranchised. Wild and disorderly as was the state of Florence, the records certainly point to the conditions having been far worse in the cities ruled by the Visconti and their like.

Of Genoa's wars with Pisa and with Venice a detailed account cannot be given. Of all the northern cities Venice achieved the highest political position; isolated to a great extent from the political problems of the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany, she developed her wealth and her commerce by the sea. Her splendour may, however, be dated from the taking of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204, when she became effectively Queen of the Adriatic and Mistress of the Eastern Mediterranean. In effect her government was a close oligarchy; possessed of complete control over elections which in theory were originally popular. The oligarchy reached its highest and narrowest development with the inst.i.tution of the famous Council of Ten.

Naples and Sicily came under the dominion of Charles of Anjou when he was adopted as Papal champion. The French supremacy, however, was overthrown when the Sicilians rose and carried out the ma.s.sacre known as the Sicilian Vespers. They offered the Crown to the King of Aragon. It was not till 1409, however, that Sicily was definitely united to the Crown of Aragon and a few years later the same king was able to a.s.sert successfully a claim to Naples.

When the Roman empire was tottering the Visigoths established their dominion in Spain. In 712 Saracen invaders made themselves masters of the greater part of the peninsula. The Christians were driven into the more northern parts and formed a number of small States out of which were developed the kingdoms of Navarre, Leon and Castille, and Aragon.

Frontier towns acquired large liberties while they were practically responsible for defence against the Moors. During the thirteenth century great territories were recovered from the Moors; but the advance ceased as the Moors were reduced to the compact kingdom of Granada. In the fourteenth century the struggle for Castille between Pedro the Cruel and his brother established the house of Trastamare on the throne. The Crowns of Castille and Aragon were united by the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand.

The government of the old Gothic monarchy was through the Crown and a Council of Prelates and n.o.bles. At a comparatively early date, however, the "Cortes" was attended by deputies from the town, though the number of these was afterwards closely limited. The principle of taxation through representatives was recognised; and laws could neither be made nor annulled except in the Cortes. This form of const.i.tutionalism was varied by the claim of the n.o.bles to a.s.sume forcible control when matters were conducted in a fas.h.i.+on of which they disapproved.

The union of Castille and Aragon led immediately to the conquest of Granada completed in 1492; an event which in some respects counterbalanced the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks.

_III.--The German Empire and the Papacy_

When the German branch of the Carlovingian dynasty became extinct the five German nations--Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Lorraine--resolved to make the German kings.h.i.+p elective. For some generations the Crown was bestowed on the Saxon Ottos. On the extinction of their house in 1024, it was succeeded by a Franconian dynasty which came into collision with the Papacy under Pope Gregory VII. On the extinction of this line in 1025 Germany became divided between the partisans of the Houses of Swabia and Saxony, the Wibelungs and Welfs,--the origin of the Hibelines and Guelfs. The Swabian House, the Hohenstauffen, gained the ascendancy in the person of Frederick Barbarossa. The lineal representatives of the Saxon Guelfs are found to-day in the House of Brunswick.

The rule of the Swabian House is most intimately connected with Italian history. In the thirteenth century the principle that the right of election of the emperor lay with seven electors was apparently becoming established. There were the Archbishops of Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, the Duke of Saxony, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the King of Bohemia, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. In all other respects, however, several other dukes and princes were at least on an equality with the electors.

In 1272 the election fell on the capable Rudolph of Hapsburg; and for some time after this the emperors were chosen from the Houses of Austria, Bavaria, or Luxemburg.

Disintegration was greatly increased by the practice of the part.i.tion of territories among brothers in place of primogeniture. A preponderating authority was given to the electors by the Golden Bull of Charles IV. in 1355. The power of the emperor as against the princes was increased, as that of the latter was counterbalanced by the development of free cities. Considerable reforms were introduced at the close of our period mainly by Maximilian.

The depravity of the Greek empire would have brought it to utter ruin at a much earlier date but for the degeneration which overtook Mohammedanism. Incidentally the Crusades helped the Byzantine power at first to strengthen its hold on some of its threatened possessions; but the so-called fourth crusade replaced the Greek Empire by a Latin one with no elements of permanency. When a Greek dynasty was re-established, and the crusading spirit of Western Europe was already dead, the Byzantine Princes were left to cope with the Turks single handed, and the last of the Caesars died heroically when the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453.

Throughout the early middle ages the Church acquired enormous wealth and Church lands were free from taxation. It was not till a comparatively late period that the payment of t.i.thes was enforced by law. Not infrequently the Church was despoiled by violence, but the balance was more than recovered by fraud. By the time of Charlemagne the clergy were almost exempt from civil jurisdiction and held practically an exclusive authority in matters of religion. The state, however, maintained its temporal supremacy. When the strong hand of Charlemagne was removed ecclesiastical influence increased.

It was under Gregory the Great that the Papacy acquired its great supremacy over the Provincial Churches. As the power of the Church grew after the death of Charlemagne, partly from the inclination of weak kings to lean on ecclesiastical support, the Papal claims to authority developed and began to be maintained by the penalties of excommunication and interdict.

A period of extreme laxity in the tenth century was to be brought to a close in the eleventh partly by the pressure brought to bear on the Papacy by the Saxon emperors, but still bore by the ambitious resolution of Gregory VII. This remarkable man was determined to a.s.sert the complete supremacy of the Holy See over all secular powers. He refused to recognise the right of secular princes to make ecclesiastical appointments within their own dominions; and he emphasised the distinction between the priesthood, as a cast having divine authority, and the laity, by enforcing with the utmost strictness the ecclesiastical law of celibacy, which completely separates the churchman from the normal interests and ambitions which actuate the layman.

In the contest between Gregory and the emperor, it seemed for the moment as if the secular power had won the victory; but, in fact, throughout the twelfth century; the claims which Gregory had put forward were becoming practically effective partly from the great influence exercised through the Crusades. These Papal pretensions reached their climax in the great Pope Innocent III., who a.s.serted with practical success the right to p.r.o.nounce absolutely on all disputes between princes or between princes and their subjects, and to depose those who rejected his authority. Throughout the thirteenth century Rome was once more mistress of the world.

The Church derived great influence from the inst.i.tution of mendicant orders, especially those of St. Dominic and St. Francis which recovered much of the esteem forfeited by the old Monastic orders. Another instrument of Papal influence was the power of granting dispensations both with regard to marriages and as to the keeping of oaths. If the clergy were free for the most part from civil taxation, they were nevertheless severely mulcted by the Papacy. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction encroached upon the secular tribunals; the cla.s.ses of persons with respect to whom it claimed exclusive authority were persistently extended, in spite of the opposition of such Princes as Henry II. and Edward I.

At last, however, the Papal aggressor met his match in Philip the Fair.

When Boniface VIII. died, his successors first submitted to the French monarchy and then became its nominees; while they resided at Avignon, virtually under French control. The restoration of the pontificate to Rome in 1375 was shortly followed by the Great Schism. For some years there were two rival Popes, each of whom was recognised by one or the other half of Western Christendom. This was terminated by the Council of Constance, which incidentally affirmed the supremacy of general councils over the Pope. The following council at Basle was distinctly anti-papal; but the Papacy had the better of the contest.

_IV.--England_

The Anglo-Saxon polity limited the succession of the Crown to a particular house but allowed a lat.i.tude of choice within that house. The community was divided into Thames or gentry, Ceorls or freemen, and serfs. The ceorls tended to sink to the position known later as villeinage. The composition of the king's great council called the Witenagemot is doubtful. The country was divided into s.h.i.+res, the s.h.i.+re into districts called hundreds, and the hundreds into t.i.things. There appears to be no adequate authority for the idea that trial by jury was practised; the prevailing characteristic of justice was the system of penalty by fine, and the responsibility of the t.i.thing for the misdeeds of any of its members. There is no direct evidence as to the extent to which feudal tenures were beginning to be established before the Norman conquest.

The Norman conquest involved a vast confiscation of property and the exclusion of the native English from political privileges. The feudal system of land tenure was established; but its political aspect here and in France was quite different. There were no barons with territories comparable to those of the great French feudataries. That the government was extremely tyrannical is certain. The Crown derived its revenues from feudal dues, customs duties, tallages--that is, special charges on particular towns,--and the war tax called the Danegelt; all except the first being arbitrary taxes. The violence of King John led to the demand of the barons for the Great Charter, the keystone of English liberty, securing the persons and property of all freemen from arbitrary imprisonment or spoliation. Thenceforth no right of general taxation is claimed. The barons held themselves warranted in refusing supplies.

The King's Court was gradually separated into three branches, King's Bench, Exchequer, and Common Pleas. The advance in the study of law had the definite effect of establis.h.i.+ng a fixed rule of succession to the Crown. One point must still be noticed which distinguishes England from other European countries; that the law recognises no distinction of cla.s.s among freemen who stand between the peers and villeins.

The reign of Edward I. forms an epoch. The Confirmation of the Charters put an end to all arbitrary taxation; and the type of the English Parliament was fixed. In the Great Councils the prelates and greater barons had a.s.sembled, and the lesser barons were also summoned; the term baron being equivalent to tenant in chief. A system of representation is definitely formulated in Montfort's Parliament of 1265. Whether the knights were elected by the freemen of the s.h.i.+re or only by the tenants in chief, is not clear. Many towns were self governing--independent, that is, of local magnates--under charters from the Crown. Montfort's Parliament is the first to which towns sent representatives. Edward established the practice in his Model Parliament; probably in order to ensure that his demands for money from the towns might in appearance at least receive their formal a.s.sent.

Parliament was not definitely divided into two houses until the reign of Edward III. In this reign the Commons succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng the illegality of raising money without consent; the necessity that the two houses should concur for any alterations in the law; and the right of the Commons to enquire into public abuses and to impeach public counsellors. Under the second heading is introduced a distinction between statutes and ordinances; the latter being of a temporary character, and requiring to be confirmed by Parliament before they acquire permanent authority. In the next reign the Commons a.s.sert the right of examining the public expenditure. Moreover the Parliaments more openly and boldly expressed resentment at the acts of the king's ministers and claimed rights of control. For a time, however, the king secured supremacy by a coup d'etat; which in turn brought about his deposition, and the accession of Henry IV., despite the absurd weakness of his t.i.tle to the inheritance of the Crown.

The rights thus acquired developed until the War of the Roses. Notably redress of grievances became the condition of supply; and the inclination of the Crown to claim a dispensing power is resolutely combated. It is also to be remarked that the king's foreign policy of war or peace is freely submitted to the approval of Parliament.

This continues during the minority of Henry VI.; but the revival of dissatisfaction with the government leads to a renewed activity in the practice of impeachments; and Parliament begins to display a marked sensitiveness on the question of its privileges. The Commons further definitely express their exclusive right of originating money bills.

At this time it is clear that at least all freeholders were ent.i.tled to vote in the election of the knights of the s.h.i.+re. The selection of the towns which sent up members, and the franchise under which their members were elected, seems to have been to a considerable extent arbitrary. Nor can we be perfectly certain of the principles on which writs were issued for attendance in the upper house. We find that for some time the lower clergy as well as the higher were summoned to attend Parliament; but presently, sitting in a separate chamber, they ceased to take part in Parliamentary business.

We have seen the King's Court divided into three courts of justice. The court itself, however, as the king's Council, continued to exercise a juridical as well as a deliberative and administrative function. In spite of the charter, it possessed an effective if illegal power of arbitrary imprisonment.

So far the essential character of our const.i.tution appears to be a monarchy greatly limited by law but swerving continually into irregular courses which there was no constraint adequate to correct. There is absolutely no warrant for the theory that the king was merely a hereditary executive magistrate, the first officer of the State. The special advantage enjoyed by England lay in the absence of an aristocracy with interests antagonistic to those of the people. It would be truer to say that the liberties of England were bought by money than by the blood of our forefathers.

The process by which the villein became a hired labourer is obscure and an attempt was made to check it by the Statute of Labourers at the time of the Black Death. This was followed by the peasant's revolt of 1382, which corresponded to the far worse horrors of the French Jacquerie.

Sharply though this was suppressed, the real object of the rising seemed to have been accomplished. Of the period of the Wars of the Roses it is here sufficient to say that it established the principle embodied in a statute of Henry VII. that obedience to the _de facto_ government is not to be punished on the ground that government is not also _de jure_.

_V.--Europe_

In spite of the Teutonic incursion, Latin remained the basis of language as it survived in Italy, France, and Spain. But the pursuit of letters was practically confined to the clergy and was by them employed almost exclusively in the interests of clerical authority. To this end a mult.i.tude of superst.i.tions were encouraged; superst.i.tions which were the cause of not a few strange and irrational outbursts of fanaticism. The monasteries served indeed a useful purpose as sanctuaries in days of general lawlessness and rapine; but the huge weight of evidence is conclusive as to the general corruption of morals among the clergy as among the laity. The common diversion of the upper cla.s.ses, lay and clerical, when not engaged in actual war, was hunting. An extended commerce was impossible when robbery was a normal occupation of the great.

Gradually, however, a more orderly society emerged. Maritime commerce developed in two separate areas, the northern and western, and the Mediterranean. The first great commerce in the north arises from the manufacture in Flanders of the wool exported from England. And in the fourteenth century England herself began to compete in the woollen manufacture. The German free manufacturing towns established the Great Hanseatic League; but maritime commerce between the Northern and Southern areas was practically non-existent till the fifteenth century, by which time English s.h.i.+ps were carrying on a fairly extensive traffic in the Mediterranean. In that area the great seaports of Italy, and in a less degree, of Catalonia and the French Mediterranean seaboard, developed a large commerce. Naturally, however, the law which it was sufficiently difficult to enforce by land was even more easily defied on the sea, and piracy was extremely prevalent.