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 SHORT HISTORY 
 
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 OF THC 
 
 FRENCH PEOPLE. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 
 
 PAUL LACOMBE 
 
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 No :::. 
 
 BOSTOJ^ : 
 HENRY A. YOUNG AND COMPANY. 
 
 1878. 
 
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copyright: 
 henry a. young and company, 
 
A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 • OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 
 
 I. 
 
 WE all know that France was originally called 
 Gaul, and its first inhabitants, our ances- 
 tors, were called Gauls. I will explain how they 
 came to be called French. 
 
 The blood which flows in our veins is not pure 
 Gallic blood ; for our ancestors were twice con- 
 quered, — first, by the Romans ; afterwards, by the 
 Germans. Both nations established themselves by 
 force in our country, married here, and had children, 
 so that the descendents of conquerors and conquered 
 were united, forming one people ; hence we come 
 from three sources, — the Gauls, Romans, and Ger- 
 mans. 
 
 Next to the Gauls, those to whom we owe most 
 are the Romans, who settled here in even greater 
 numbers than the Germans, and ruled for more than 
 600 years ; the government, which had its seat in 
 
8 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 Rome, really or nominally governing this country. 
 Further, the Romans were more civilized than the 
 Gauls, and brought in education : they cut the first 
 roads through the forests, which almost covered the 
 land ; they taught the natives how to develop cop- 
 per and silver mines, and to grow vines and wheat ; 
 in fact, they Introduced agriculture. 
 
 . Before the Roman conquest, the Gauls built their 
 huts only of wood and earth ; the Romans first built 
 houses and public buildings, of which we still have 
 remains. The Romans, in a word, were our supe- 
 riors, as we now are the superiors of the Arabs of 
 Algeria : one of the best proofs of this is, that we 
 gave up our language for theirs. 
 
 Many people do not know what language the 
 French is : it is not Gallic ; indeed, has little in 
 common with that tongue ; it is Roman, or, rather, 
 Latin, but changed, degenerate Latin. It was nat- 
 ural that the Gallic peasant, trying to speak Latin, 
 should thus change it. If, from any cause, we 
 Frenchmen were forced to speak English, the edu- 
 cated classes might speak it in its purity ; but the 
 mass of the people would treat it after their own 
 fashion, that is, maltreat it. So with Latin. 
 
 While the Roman government maintained peace 
 and order in our country, there were educated classes 
 who alone did all the business, both in writing and 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 9 
 
 speaking, and did it in Latin : the common people 
 did not appear ; but there came a long period of 
 troubles, wars, and disorders, when there was neither 
 time nor wish for education To defend his life and 
 earn his daily bread was the only thought of man. 
 There were no upper classes : as regarded educa- 
 tion, every one became of the people, and spoke 
 barbarian Latin, and the French tongue was born. 
 The people, all speaking bad Latin, could under- 
 stand one another because they fell into the same 
 errors ; for this is a well-authenticated fact For- 
 eigners belonging to one country, — English for 
 example, who speak bad French, — always make 
 the same blunders. It was so with the Gauls ; 
 and, when every one had become used to certain 
 regular mistakes in their Latin, and invariably 
 made them, as" it were, correctly, the French 
 tongue had taken shape. This is soon understood, 
 though it seems strange at first. 
 
 The Romans had robbed us of our language ; 
 the Germans took away our name of Gauls. These 
 German invaders were divided into several tribes, 
 of whom the Franks settled in the north of Gaul, 
 the Burgundians in the east, and the Visigoths in 
 the south. The kings of the Frankish tribes de- 
 feated the kings of the two other tribes, and ruled 
 alike over conquerors and conquered throughout 
 
lO A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 Gaul, which thus became the kiugdom of the 
 Franks ; and from that came later the words France 
 and French. 
 
 Having now traced back our source, our lan- 
 guage, and our name, we will return to our origi- 
 nal ancestors, the Gauls. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Gauls did not form one solid and compact 
 nation, but were simply an agglomeration of clans. 
 True, there was no clan living entirely isolated, 
 and without alliance with others, no clan which 
 did not belong to a confederation ; but the clan 
 was always the important unit. It had an elective 
 chief, chosen by all the freemen, who, with the prin- 
 cipal heads of families, formed, when necessary, a 
 sort of tribunal for civil and criminal cases. 
 Above this jurisdiction was that of the Druids, the 
 priests of that day, who received the final. appeal. 
 There was no lack of judges among the Gauls, 
 but a very decided lack of a well-organized public 
 force to see that the judgments were carried out. 
 They did not understand the meaning of The State. 
 It is needless to say that there was neither police 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. II 
 
 nor any semblance of it, so that sentences were 
 executed with more or less rigor in proportion to 
 the force brought by private individuals to the aid 
 of law. 
 
 If each district of the present day were a 
 little republic, where the rich citizens formed 
 a court and gave decisions to be carried out by 
 the people, would not the rich and powerful 
 members of the community, supported by friends 
 and relatives, defy the ' authority of the court ? 
 Further, the republic being small and the frontier 
 close at hand, any one with cause for alarm could 
 flee the state, and escape punishment. Crime, sel- 
 dom repressed, and encouraged by impunity, would 
 become common. This was precisely the condition 
 of the Gauls, with the added fact, that they were 
 much more violent and barbarous than ourselves. 
 
 Next to security, we must consider how the 
 needs of ordinary life were met ; how people were 
 fed, clothed, and lodged, — which leads us to the 
 division of property. Man originally lived b}^ 
 hunting and fishing : that is the first state of 
 humanity, and a most precarious one. The man, 
 whose dinner depends upon his gun and net, ex- 
 periences strange fluctuations, — with more food 
 than he can use 'to-day, and to morrow a fast. 
 So, made ingenious by hunger, he conceives the 
 
12 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 idea of taming and domesticating certain animals, 
 that he may have a dinner always at hand. He 
 forms a herd, with which he slowly scours the 
 country in search of pastures. This is pastoral 
 life, the second state of humanity. 
 
 Now for the rights of property in these two 
 conditions. • In the first, he owned his arms and 
 weapons for hunting and fishing, and to these were 
 added, in the pastoral state, his herd and dogs ; 
 but the idea of property had not extended to laud 
 The words mine and thine were first applied to 
 the soil when two clans met, and disputed the 
 possession of a district. The result was, first, a 
 fight, then a treaty. " You shall take the land, on 
 that side the river; we, on this side." Here was 
 the first idea of territorial property ; but it was as 
 yet common and undivided ; for wdiat was the use 
 of dividing it among the members of a clan, when 
 it was much more convenient and safe for the 
 herds to graze together ? They could thus be 
 better defended against wild beasts; for a party 
 of herdsmen could keep both themselves and flocks 
 in far greater safety than one solitary shepherd 
 alone with his little band. But the herds proved 
 insufficient to save man from famine, and a new 
 effort of industry was called for. 
 
 They found, that, by burning the heath or woods. 
 
• OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I3 
 
 and sowing certain herbs known as eatable, the 
 good seed alone grew in quantities, choking the 
 weeds ; and a new resource was discovered. 
 
 Each man, having burned a little plot around 
 his hut, sowed some seed there ; and this place 
 became the property of the sower until after the 
 harvest ; for he who sows, has clearly a right to 
 reap. But, as soon as the harvest was over, the 
 field fell back into the common lot. Besides, the 
 second year this land was barren, and a new place 
 had to be burned ; and so it went on until the 
 neighborhood was exhausted, and another district 
 had to be sought, or some way of fertilizing the 
 soil discovered. Attention being turned in this 
 direction, the result was the discovery of the first 
 principles of agriculture, — clearing and dressing. 
 Man now put labor "upon his land, and obtained 
 not only immediate fruit, but future promise. 
 Then how unjust that the clan should resume pos- 
 scKsion of land which henceforth contained some- 
 thing of his very self! This new idea arose, and, 
 acting gradually upon the conscience, at length 
 • destroyed, • as unfair, the communal right to culti- 
 vated fields. 
 
 For a long time, however, the clan was con- 
 sidered the only actual possessor of land ; and its 
 council apportioned to each head of a family the 
 
14 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 bit of territory, to which, according to the num- 
 ber of his children, he had a right ; but, by slow 
 degrees, the idea of private property became the 
 ruling one. Originally, the estates had reverted 
 annually to the community for redivision ; this 
 time extended to three years, then to five, and 
 ten, until a period came when the division was 
 only among the members of the family, as each 
 generation grew up ; and the family patrimony was 
 henceforth set free from all communal claims. 
 
 Property must necessarily pass through this in- 
 termediate stage ; having been communal, it must 
 belong to a family, before becoming personal. Of 
 course, during this period, the family chieftain could 
 not dispose of his land by will, since ho was not 
 really the land-owner ; the right to bequeath can 
 exist only with personal property. We must un- 
 derstand, that the change we have mentioned af- 
 fected only cultivated lands ; heaths and forests 
 remained common property, for it did not occur 
 to the people to apply to those the new principles, 
 which had their foundation in agriculture. This 
 state of things long continued among us; indeed, 
 in some cases, down to the present day. 
 
 When history first reveals to us something of 
 these Gallic ancestors of ours, all these conditions 
 of property existed side by side ; sometimes in 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I5 
 
 neigboriDg tribes, sometimes in the same tribe, 
 agriculture being still- very weak, and the pas- 
 toral system predominating, and supplying most of 
 the food. 
 
 Now let us look at Gaul as she was then : al- 
 most entirely wooded ; mountain and hillside cov- 
 ered with a thick growth of oaks and beeches ; 
 the highlands natural prairies; around villages and 
 cities alone, a few little fields of barley and oats; 
 along the river edge some plots of flax and hemp : 
 villages and cities, which were only larger vil- 
 lages, scattered afar through these immense for- 
 ests : houses, or rather huts, all alike, made of 
 wood, with earth in the interstices, and covered 
 with boughs and reeds, and, a little later, with 
 straw, that is, thatch ; within, no furniture but 
 mats or pieces of cloth for beds, and some earthen 
 or wooden jars ; possibly, but by no means surel}^ 
 a table and benches. 
 
 The dwellers in this hovel lived chiefly upon the 
 flesh of their herds, especially the half savage swine, 
 which burrowed in the adjacent woods, and had to 
 be shot with arrows. They had already learned 
 to salt this meat ; and, when even that gave out, 
 as often happened, they filled its place with bar- 
 ley or rye broth. They drank a concoction of 
 rye ; bread was unknown 
 
l6 A SHORT HISTOKY 
 
 III. 
 
 Neither the master of the house, nor any of 
 his male children or relatives worked in the fields : 
 the labor of agriculture was beneath a freeman ; 
 his time was spent in war and hunting, or, when 
 at home, in sleeping or dreaming the day through 
 upon a rug, as is still the custom with some 
 American Indians The women cultivated the 
 soil during the slumber of their lords and mas- 
 ters, while the coloni and slaves watched the cat- 
 tle, and performed the more menial tasks of bring- 
 ing wood and water. 
 
 Hardly have we entered upon history, and al- 
 ready'- we find slaves. It is easy to explain how 
 they have fallen into this condition ; war created 
 this class ; the slave was a man who had been 
 wounded or disarmed in battle, and vp'hom his con- 
 queror might have killed, after the barbarous fash- 
 ion of the day, but whom he preferred to spare 
 for his own purposes. It is noteworthy, that, to 
 the scourge of war, humanity owes the wound of 
 slavery. Slaves became numerous, for war was 
 frequent. Tribes would fight for a pasture, a 
 wood, a spring, a herd of swine, sometimes for 
 
QF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I7 
 
 the simple love of fightinp:, since military courage 
 was ever held in high repute. But besides slaves 
 we find coloni whose condition when Caesar en- 
 tered Gaul did not greatly differ from that of slaves ; 
 and it is not easy to explain the existence of 
 this numerous class. 
 
 They owned no land, but worked for others in re- 
 turn for part of the products, and were in fact a sort 
 of farmer, but not free like farmers of the present 
 day. According to Csesar, they were bound to an 
 estate or master, and not allowed to leave them ; 
 and the master had probably a right to inflict upon 
 them corporal punishment, as upon his slaves. 
 
 The question is how it happened, that, in a so- 
 ciety where was so little landed property, where 
 this property had until very lately been divided 
 periodically among families, and where money was 
 so scarce, — how it happened, we say, that men 
 were forced to toil for others, upon the harshest 
 terms, and that already the inequalities of rank 
 were so striking. We may conjecture many causes 
 which might have produced this result, but it can 
 be only conjecture ; at the same time, it may be 
 well to mention some of them. 
 
 At a certain moment, in certain tribes, the dis- 
 tribution of land ceased, and the size of estates be- 
 coming thus unchangeable, it necessarily resulted 
 
 2 
 
l8 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 that families, in which there were many children be- 
 came much poorer than those in which there were 
 very few children : here is one cause. 
 
 At this time, poverty was the sure forerunner of 
 servitude ; for there was little money, and not 
 enough produce to support all, and a poor man could 
 borrow neither gold nor provisions, except upon the 
 most burdensome terms. His only pledge was his 
 liberty, his person, and he thus became the slave oi 
 serf of his creditor. Caesar says positively, that 
 many slaves and coloni were insolvent debtors ; and 
 this has been a common custom among nations in 
 the early days of society. The Roman people, for 
 instance, were long subject to the patricians 
 through the bond of loans. It is astonishing 
 that the borrowers, being far more numerous than 
 the lenders, had the honesty, or cowardice, to 
 fulfil the severe conditions to which they had 
 agreed : there was no public force to make them 
 keep the terms of their contract, and the only 
 reason why the poor Gauls did not rebel against 
 the rich, as so often happened in Rome, was that 
 the latter were brave and fierce as well as rich ; 
 for, to gain or keep wealth in those days, this 
 character was necessary. These men were feared, 
 and, besides, thanks to their money, were able to 
 employ soldiers and assassins to increase the num- 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I9 
 
 ber of their clients, and hold them under control. 
 I think we are too ready to believe that, among 
 barbarous nations, the Gauls especially, every 
 man was a bravo, a ferocious warrior, whereas it 
 was evidently then, as it is now, as it is always, 
 that some men were timid and peaceful, fearing 
 war and quarrels. They devoted themselves to 
 agriculture and trade, and, to gain protectors, made 
 themselves coloni or slaves ; they constituted the 
 people : the others, violent, turbulent, and ener- 
 getic, gradually formed an upper class, which 
 scorned every thing but war. These were the 
 nobles. The existence of this class is not an hy- 
 pothesis ; for, in the time of Caesar, there were no- 
 bles, princes, and even kings, in certain Gallic 
 tribes. The princes, doubtless, owed their eleva- 
 tion to that eager and grasping disposition which, 
 at that epoch, was the chief cause of all ad- 
 vancement Perhaps war created some of these 
 kings ; for, as soon as it was declared, a chief 
 must be chosen, and, though elected for only one 
 expedition, he might abuse the power gained, it 
 may be, through the fame of a victory, to make 
 his honors permanent. Other principalities had a 
 different source. The clan, as we have said, was 
 merely a family, greatly multiplied by time ; and, 
 in many tribes, that branch, descending most di- 
 
20 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 rectly from the original ancestors, occupied a priv- 
 ileged place, and enjoyed a kind of acknowledged 
 supreniacy. This supremacy, in the hands of a 
 bold and clever warrior, would grow into actual" 
 control over men and their domains. We know 
 the qualities that are honored among us of the 
 present, that distinguish a man and raise him 
 above his fellows, — wealth, courage, blood, rank, 
 eloquence, address, magnificence ; even so were 
 they honored in those days, and destroyed equality, 
 destroying it indeed far more utterly than with us, 
 since it is the nature of coarse, untutored men to 
 push every advantage to excess. It seems highly 
 probable, and, if proved, would explain both the 
 overwhelming power of the warriors, and the ex- 
 treme misery of the lower classes, that the war- 
 riors claimed the untitled lands, those pastures, 
 fields, and forests, which formed much the larger 
 part of the territory of each tribe. They gov- 
 erned the tribe, and pretended to act for it, and, 
 no doubt, under pretext of regulating the public 
 good, did they take possession. So the progress 
 of agriculture was arrested, the further cultivation 
 of these usurped lands being impossible, since the 
 nobles raised immense droves of cattle, and kept 
 ciowds of herdsmen, whilst the ever multiplying 
 plebeian families could win no support from their 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 21 
 
 limited fields which never increased beyond the 
 original size. Vain were their entreaties for land ; 
 they were reduced to accepting their daily bread 
 from the usurping lords, who sold it to them at 
 the price of their liberty. 
 
 IV 
 
 When Gaul was conquered by Julius Caesar, 
 Rome, as we know, was the capital of a large 
 aristocratic republic ; this form of government 
 lasted but a short time, for Julius Caesar employed 
 the vanquished to enslave the victors, and made 
 himself emperor in fact, though he never bore the 
 title ; his nephew and adopted son, Augustus, had 
 both place and name. 
 
 Gaul, henceforth a province of the Roman Em- 
 pire, was ruled by an absolute prince. The fatal 
 principles, inherent in this kind of government, 
 were not immediately felt in Gaul ; on the con- 
 trary, the country seemed to gain by it ; there 
 was more rule, order, and security for all classes. 
 
 An absolute prince docs not like his subjects to 
 fight among themselves, since, in so doing, they 
 destroy property, upon which he meant to levy a 
 
22 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 tax, Gaul rested from those continual wars of 
 tribes against tribes, and confederations against 
 confederations. Roman peace descended upon the 
 people, and gave the Romans an opportunity to 
 accomplish their duties as teachers. The Gauls, 
 under this training, learned many arts previously 
 unknown to them, and in some surpassed their 
 masters. For instance, they wrought metals bet- 
 ter in Gaul than in any other Roman province ; 
 they made brass of the first quality, and invented 
 the art of tinning copper, of gilding and silver- 
 ing iron. Roads were cut, cities built, temples, 
 theatres, and schools erected. They had luxury, 
 education, eloquence, arts, — in a word, brilliant 
 civilization. 
 
 The few Roman structures remaining on our soil 
 are tokens of an architecture at once solid, fin- 
 ished, and chaste ; and the specimens, which 
 have come down of the industry of that day, 
 are stamped with the seal of elegant simplicity. 
 Unfortunately, this civilization brought happiness 
 onl}^ to the few ; the masses, in both town and 
 country, were equally wretched. 
 
 The primary cause of this universal misery was 
 the unjust division of property, the Roman con- 
 quest bringing no change in this respect. The 
 Gallic princes and nobles were left in possession 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 23 
 
 of their dignities and weulth, and deprived only 
 of the government of the tribes, that being hence- 
 forth ill. the hands of Roman functionaries. 
 
 Italy, and other countries already Roman, had 
 experienced the same vicissitudes that we have 
 seen in Gaul, — a small number of aristocratic 
 families having usurped the greater part of the 
 land, which they shared only with a few financiers 
 who had made fortunes by fraud in the collection 
 of public taxes. It was a fixed system with these 
 large land-owners to oppose the cultivation of ce- 
 rials, except in some very fertile spots like Sicily, 
 and let their immense domains lie fallow. There 
 were many advantages in this. It was much less 
 trouble to oversee herdsmen, and require from 
 them an account of their cattle, than to direct the 
 very complicated details of agriculture. Then, 
 agriculture demanded more hands, co/ont must be 
 employed, and the products of the soil shared with 
 theni, whereas cattle could be raised with the aid 
 of a few slaves who needed little food and had 
 no part in the profits. This system and these im- 
 mense estates — lalifundia, as they were called, — 
 were the cause of the many deaths from starvation 
 in the cities. Theie was no industry ; the ^qv7 in- 
 dispensible trades were practised by slaves, com- 
 missioned by their masters Elsewhere, all well- 
 
24 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 to-do mansions employed their own slaves to pro- 
 vide whatever was needed, — shoes, stockings, 
 clothing, &c. The poorer citizens, with no means 
 of support save agriculture, incessantly Legged for 
 land, which the nobles refused to yield, preferring 
 to play the part of almoners to impovished neigh- 
 bors, and feed them from day to day, or lend them 
 money, since thus they were kept under control. 
 This condition of Eoraan society found a corre- 
 spondence in Gallic society ; and there was no 
 difficulty in communicating this system of latifun- 
 dia- to soil prepared to receive it. 
 
 The two centuries following the conquest must 
 have been hard indeed to the agricultural classes, 
 crowded together by this system upon a portion 
 of land too small to support them. We do not 
 know all their sufferings, but we may imagine 
 them. 
 
 In the third century of the Christian era, a rev- 
 olution took place, a revolution so obscure that 
 we rather divine than perceive it. At that mo- 
 ment, it seems that the system of latifandia was 
 abandoned, to be followed by the cultivation of 
 small estates. This change may have been caused 
 by a dearth of slaves. So long as Rome made con- 
 quests, there had been no lack of them It is 
 true, that, crushed by toil, they were shortlived, 
 
OF THE FRENCp PEOPLE. 25 
 
 and left few children to inheri-t their burdens ; but 
 another conquest would supply the deficiency. 
 When these conquests ceased, and the Koman 
 Empire was, on the contrary, harassed by bar- 
 barians, the position was reversed ; the barbarians 
 recruited their slaves from among the conquered, 
 and Roman land-owners were forced to abandon 
 the system of slave labor, and have recourse to 
 one more or less free. Then serfdom appeared, — 
 or, to speak .more exactly, for it already existed, 
 — serfdom made an immense advance. 
 
 They called serfs,— or, rather, coloni, — at that 
 time, men who tilled the estate of a land-owner 
 at a fixed rent, which sometimes amounted to 
 quarter or half the products. The coloni were, as 
 we see, a sort of farmers, but perpetual farmers, 
 since the master could not discharge them, nor 
 could they quit the- domain. They were considered 
 free ; but, we must understand, free as regarded 
 the master, in the sense that they paid him only 
 a fixed rent ; beyond this, they were the slaves 
 of the estate to which they were attached, — serfs 
 of the glebe, as they were called later, — and, 
 should they run away, their masters could have 
 them seized. Some historians think this servitude 
 was decreed by the emperors to bind husbandmen 
 to the soil ; but it is most unlikely. No govern- 
 
26 . A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 ment in the world has ever been so absolute as to 
 decree a change in the radical condition of an 
 immense people ; and, in the third century, serfs 
 composed the majority of the rural populace. Ser- 
 vitude of the glebe was, no doubt, originally one 
 •of the terms of the contract made between the 
 rich land-owner and the poor suppliant for land. 
 This seems almost certain, when we remember that' 
 the latter was probably a client or debtor, (obcera- 
 tus) of the former, which, under Roman customs, 
 was almost equivalent to being his slave ; for we 
 know, that, in Rome, the creditor had a right to 
 seize the debtor, and either imprison him or send 
 him to some estate to work off his debt. These 
 debtors probably furnished the first type of serfs. 
 If land-owners later granted domains to men not 
 their debtors, at a period, too, when the more rig- 
 orous laws concerning debt had been abolished, it 
 was done upon certain, established conditions. 
 The old serfs, so to speak, had made the contract 
 for the new ones, and sealed their fate. . 
 
 It is also probable that many slaves were raised 
 to the rank of coloni, their masters finding real 
 advantage in thus inciting them to greater zeal 
 in labor, since they, too, were become almost 
 farmers. Furthermore, some emperors transplanted 
 whole tribes of vanquished barbarians into imperial 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 27 
 
 territory, and put them upon vast, uncultivated 
 districts, where armed troops kept guard over 
 them. The masters of the world were already dis- 
 turbed at the depopulation of the Empire, and be- 
 gan to regard cultivation of the soil as the first 
 and most pressing interest of the State. It was 
 from the conquered, that they first drew material 
 for a new class of slaves. This is more compre- 
 hensible than that the 'system should have begun 
 with freemen ; but, gradually, it extended to 
 the latter ; and the time came, when whoever 
 put spade to earth became serf of the soil in 
 the name of public interest. The same principles 
 of despotism reached beyond the husbandmen to 
 all classes of subjects, as we shall presently see. 
 The destruction of latifandia, and establishment 
 of serfdom, would have had results of great mo- 
 ment, had the change been made earlier ; but it 
 came at a time when administrative regularity, 
 order, and security had much diminished. Very 
 many barbarians had been forced upon Gaul, as 
 coloni, and became an active element of disorder. 
 The abrupt changes of emperors, on account of 
 military sedition, or conspiracies, were not events 
 calculated to restore peace. The rich and power- 
 ful oppressed the poor and weak more than ever; 
 taxes were excessive, and most uneqaally distribu- 
 ted. • . . 
 
28 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 Uuder the Rom an s, there was a great variety of 
 taxes : we will not enumerate them ; suffice it to 
 say, that the chief burden fell upon the landed 
 property. Landowners alone paid taxes to the 
 government, which required nothing from coloni ; 
 but no one can doubt that the landowners increased 
 the rents in proportion to the demands made upon 
 them by the treasury, in the same way that a land- 
 lord does now. 
 
 One example will show how excessive this tax 
 was. Each city had a sort of municipal council, 
 called the curia, and whoever owned twenty-five 
 acres of land was forced to become a member. 
 Under a moderate government, this would have 
 been a coveted post ; under the Roman govern- 
 ment, it was shunned. The curials administered the 
 affairs of their city, and collected the taxes. 
 When they failed to obtain the full sum demanded 
 by the State, they were required to supply the de- 
 ficit ; so the curials endured all the care and 
 burden of property, to find themselves, at the 
 end of the year, stripped of their income. They 
 could barely exist, and, in any case, lived in the 
 expectation of being ruined sooner or later. Many 
 preferred to quit, once for all, their honors and 
 wealth, and disappear to start afresh, — poor 
 wretches, — unknown, in another province ; but the 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 29 
 
 State pursued them, and dragged them back, or, 
 failing in this, confiscated tlieir goods. The Ro- 
 man government gave the rich a disgust for 
 wealth ; nothing stronger can be said against it. 
 This readily suggests the condition of peasants, 
 coloni, and laborers. 
 
 This class had no direct intercourse with the im- 
 perial treasury; but, as I said before, landowners, 
 oppressed by government, in turn oppressed the 
 coloni. The brightest prospect, often, to the latter, 
 was,, that by constant labor, they might avoid 
 starvation ; by no possibility, could they become 
 rich, and, consequently, they worked so as to ob- 
 tain simply enough for subsistence, as always 
 happens, when the profits of toil are not for -the 
 toiler. As the Roman government gave a disgust 
 for wealth, so it also discouraged labor. 
 
 The more energetic coloni did better ; they took 
 flight, and settled in the extensive forests of Gaul, 
 where they returned to primitive life, and supported 
 themselves upon wild fruits, and the trophies of 
 hunting. These deserters, who were called Bag- 
 audes, occasionally robbed the members of the so- 
 ciety, from which they had broken, and were 
 sometimes strong enough to put cities to the sack. 
 Bagaudie lasted throughout the Empire. 
 
 The ranks of working-men being thus daily 
 
30 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 thinned by desertion, the taxes weighed so much 
 the more heavily upon those who remained. Pov- 
 erty, as ever, led to a crowd of diseases ; people 
 died young, rarely married, had as few children 
 as possible, since they must be born to a life of 
 suffering. Besides, after a family exceeded a cer- 
 tain number, the children died for want of carfe. 
 The population steadily diminished ; each genera- 
 tion was more feeble, enervated, and languid, than. 
 the preceding. When men can hope to gain from 
 life nothing but bare existence in return for hard 
 labor, they live like dying men. Such was the 
 case now, and several times afterwards under the 
 early kings of France. 
 
 Y. 
 
 At the end of the Empire, slaves having de- 
 creased in number, the cities held a larger pro- 
 portion of free artisans, though they were not 
 very numerous. 
 
 Generally, those belonging to one trade formed 
 a corporation. No workman could exist by him- 
 self; competition would have been ruinous. The 
 system of freedom in labor was too powerful for. 
 the poor, feeble industry of that period. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 3 1 
 
 These trade-unions were authorized by govern- 
 ment, and could' not bo formed without its per- 
 mission. Artisans suffered from the same difficul- 
 ties as husbandmen, so there existed' among them 
 great uneasiness, and a constant tendency to leave 
 their trade, and seek elsewhere different and hap- 
 pier fortunes. 
 
 This uneasiness, indeed, was universal ; all 
 classes and iiidividuals were infected with it. It 
 was like the longing of the sick man to leave the 
 bed upon which he feels himself dying. But 
 government allowed ilo change ; it needed soldiers 
 and revenues more than ever ; it needed its levies 
 of money and men to be made with ease and dis- 
 patch. It did not possess an administration either 
 as large or as well-regulated as those of modern 
 days. Besides, the frugal conditions of the age, 
 the lack of coined money, the small number of 
 roads, the prevalence of forests, and the many 
 deserts, singularly fettered ' the action of officials. 
 Government sought a remedy in extreme measures, 
 and applied to all classes the laws which ruled 
 coloni. It bound artisans to their trade, curials to 
 their chair, soldiers to their legions, even senators 
 to their dignities. The son must succeed to the 
 office of his father.- The world was made im- 
 movable, by decree. • To this condition had the Em- 
 pire fallen I 
 
32 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 VI. 
 
 France, as we know, is at the western corner 
 of Europe ; while Spain, Italy, and Greece occu- 
 py the southern part. At the period we have 
 reached, Italy, Spain, • Greece, and France, all 
 provinces of. the Roman Empire, were civilized ; 
 but what are now Germany, Denmark, Sweden, 
 and Russia, the whole vast centre of Europe, were 
 barbarian. 
 
 We have already alluded to the Germans, those 
 barbarians who inhabited Germany, and were the 
 nearest neighbors of the Gallo -Romans. These 
 people, divided, as Gaul had been, into tribes and 
 confederations, and in precisely the condition of 
 the early Gauls, made constant wars among them- 
 selves, even as the Gauls had done before the 
 conquest, but were only too ready to turn their 
 mania for fighting against their neighbors. 
 
 All nations, whose support depends upon cattle, 
 which was the case with the Germans, as it had 
 been with the Gauls, feel sometimes the need of 
 emigrating, in a body, from their own land to an- 
 other, which seems to them more promising. This, 
 with pastoral tribes, is both a natural taste, and a 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 33 
 
 measure of economy. Poverty forced these migra- 
 tions upon the Germans. When a tribe became 
 too large, the younger people had to form com- 
 panies under some chief, and depart far from the 
 settlement to free the tribe from a superfluity of 
 mouths, which would soon have reduced it to 
 starvation. 
 
 The countries to which the Germans would nat^ 
 urally give the preference in these emigrations were 
 the provinces of the Roman Empire ; first, because 
 their climate was warmer and pleasanter ; then, 
 because they contained well-cultivated es.tates, or- 
 chards, and vineyards : wine was there," always a 
 strong temptation to savages ; gold, silver, valu- 
 able furniture, fine arms, beautiful stuffs. The 
 barbarians knew this well, and no doubt exagger- 
 ated the splendors of the Roman cities. The Em- 
 pire offered to the uncivilized world a booty al- 
 ways exposed to view ; and these provinces, as 
 we have said, were the most tempting, Gaul be- 
 ing particularly so to . the Germans, since it was 
 separated from them only by the Rhine. But the 
 Romans hardly wished their visitation, and re^ 
 pulsed the plunderers with all possible energy as 
 soon as they appeared upon the frontier. 
 
 The situation was not the less dangerous for 
 the Roman provinces. Hosts of barbarians were 
 
34 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 always at their gates, ready to force an 'entrance 
 at the first relaxation of watchfulness. The Ro- 
 mans, for their better defence, resolved to make 
 the first attack, and went in search of the barba- 
 rians to tame them by force, thinking that these 
 fickle, restless tribes, once civilized, would settle 
 down, and the danger of immigration be sup- 
 pressed. The Koman legions succeeded in con- 
 quering these people. Several times they trav- 
 ersed Germany without meeting the least resist- 
 ance ; but,' after a period of apparent annihilation, 
 the Germans always recuperated, and, surprising 
 the Roman troops, inflicted upon them a bloody 
 defeat. The attempt to civilize Germany was a 
 failure, and the Roman government tried a new 
 expedient. It established on this side the Rhine, 
 upon the frontiers menaced with invasion, a cer- 
 tain number of these very barbarians, and gave 
 them lands, foreseeing, that, once fairly settled 
 upon their own estates, they would feel it for 
 their interest to repel invasions, which must first 
 pass by them. It was a wise policy. At the 
 same time, an army of at least a hundred thou- 
 sand men was, for years, kept in the rear of this 
 rampart of colonized barbarians ; the Romans were 
 'not blind to their danger. 
 
 This danger was still greater than they sus- 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 35 
 
 pected ; for, far behind Germany, even ' to the 
 midst of Asia, were countless savage tribes in 
 perpetual motion. In the fifth century, by a se- 
 ries of events little known to us, an immense and 
 warlike Asiatic tribe, the tribe of Huns, was pre- 
 cipitated upon Europe, and drove before it the 
 first German nations it met : these drove forward 
 others, — it was one enormous pressing onward, 
 and came just at the time when the Empire 
 was everywhere weakening, — when discipline, 
 valor, and military skill were ' at their lowest ebb. 
 The barriers of the Empire cracked and broke on 
 all sides. Sixty thousand' Burgundians took pos- 
 session of the Jura, of the valley of the Saone, 
 and of the Durance (A. D. 406 to 411), and of all 
 the country -around Lyons; two or three hundred • 
 thousand Visigoths seized the south, with Toulouse 
 for their capital and royal residence (A. D. 412 
 to 450). After them came other bands belonging 
 to divers peoples, less numerous but more savage ; 
 they poured- into Gaul like a torrent. The Franks 
 entered at the north, and spread to Soissons, then 
 to- Paris (A. D. 481 to 500). The Burgundians 
 and Visigoths, already converted to Christianity 
 and slightly unbarbarized , took, as a rule, only 
 two-thirds of the land and one-third of the slaves. 
 The Franks seized whatever land they chose, after 
 
36 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 indiscriminate pillage. We can imagine what this 
 invasion must have been under the guidance of 
 warriors, fierce, cruel, and unbridled in rapacity. 
 When the Franks were titular masters of the north, 
 the Visigoths of the south, and the Burgundians 
 of the east, the wronged and plundered Gauls 
 probably ' hoped for quiet at least ; if so, they 
 were deceived. The Franks were converted to 
 Catholicism ; and, henceforth sure of the support 
 of the clergy throughout France, they resolved to 
 wrest the whole of Gaul from the other barba- 
 rians. 
 
 We must understand the interest this conquest 
 had for the Frankish soldiers and their leader, 
 Clovis. In the first place, both chief and soldiers 
 wished to conquer for the sake of pillage ; — thus 
 far their purposes were the same ; — but the 
 chieftain had, besides, motives of more refined 
 policy. lie hoped to gain property which had 
 belonged to the imperial treasures ; for the bar- 
 barian kings were reported to have succeeded to 
 imperial power. Here would be new lands to 
 bestow. His soldiers, being already provided in 
 this respect, he could distribute these new estates 
 among new soldiers summoned from beyond the 
 Ehine ; and he would thus win the allegiance of 
 a larger number of vassals or leudes, which would 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 37 
 
 at once increase his power and the splendor of 
 his command. Thus far reached the ambition of 
 the barbarian king ; but we need not endow him 
 with political projects, nor with a taste for power 
 simply as power. 
 
 Let me say a few words on the kind of empire 
 these kings held over their soldiers : they were 
 not real kings, they were only leaders, whom the 
 soldiers obeyed in war from an instinct of disci- 
 pline ; but in peace they received little homage. 
 Whilst in German j'-, the warriors had been at lib- 
 erty to choose, from among the chiefs or kings of 
 different tribes, the one under whose command 
 they would go in SLcarch of war or adventures. 
 They were not required to serve the king of their 
 own tribe ; they could desert him, if he were lack- 
 ing in courage or boldness, to take service under 
 a more acceptable leader. What they asked was 
 a chief who would win for them victory, and booty, 
 the fruit of victory. This spirit of independence, 
 and these customs were long retained in Gaul. 
 
 When the Franks entered Gaul, they were di- 
 vided into two grand confederations, and into a 
 certain number of tribes ; there were several kings, 
 though how many is not exactly known. Among 
 these, the soldiers could make choice of a leader. 
 The chiefs, on their side, strove to keep each his own 
 
38 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 soldiers, and to beguile others from neighboring 
 kings. The way to win them, as we have said, 
 was to make war, and gain booty and land for 
 his soldiers, and also for himself, to distribute 
 afterwards. This latter detail is especially to be 
 noted, for it led to consequences of cardinal im- 
 portance. 
 
 Clovis, of whom I have just spoken and who 
 was really the first king of France, excelled in 
 collecting about him warriors from all the Frank- 
 ish tribes. He made war upon the Visigoths and 
 Burgundians to gratify his little army, and to in- 
 crease it by an invitation to soldiers from beyond 
 the Rhine to seek their fortunes under him. He 
 conquered the Burgundians and destroyed the king- 
 dom of the Visigoths, by these means adding to 
 his power until he quite effaced the lesser Frank- 
 ish kings, and, after, reducing them to a species 
 of solitude, by the appropriation of their soldiers, 
 he could with impunity have them assassinated or 
 even treacherously slay them with his own hand. 
 Thus he remained sole chief of Franks and Visi-. 
 goths. Had he left only one heir, Gaul might 
 have been spared the wars which desolated her 
 provinces ; but he had several sons, among whom 
 the country was divided; and once more arose a 
 contest for the largest number of soldiers, to be 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 39 
 
 won by him who should be most active in wars, 
 — wars against Burgundy, .which at last destroyed 
 that kingdom, — wars against Aquitaine, — against 
 Gascony, — against Brittany, which was almost 
 independent, though under the nominal sovereignty 
 of the Franks, — finally, wars among themselves. 
 All these wars had, indeed, no motive but those 
 we have seen — among the common soldiers, a 
 wish for plunder and land ; among the chiefs, 
 also a wish for plunder and lands, with the addi- 
 tion of a certain political idea, which .consisted 
 in keeping for themselves only a part of their 
 gains, and distributing the rest to their soldiers. As 
 the reader must see, I dwell , upon this last as a 
 most important point. 
 
 VII. . 
 
 Nothing is more important to a nation, nor 
 marks with greater precision the degree of civili- 
 zation it has reached, than its forms of justice. 
 For this cause alone, it would be interesting to 
 know how justice was executed among the Ger- 
 man barbarians ; but, besides this reason, their 
 judiciary organization, or, rather, to speak more 
 
40 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 exactly, the absence of any real organization has 
 been the cause of very serious consequences to 
 their descendants. 
 
 .At the beginning of all society, when public 
 power does not exist to punish crime, each man 
 has to protect and avenge himself, that fear may 
 prevent further attacks. In this state, the isolated 
 man is very weak, and people feel the need of 
 binding themselves together in families. When 
 one member of a family is insulted, all unite to 
 avenge him ; on the other side, the family of the 
 aggressor take part with him ; and the result is 
 war between two houses. • Of course, this war dis- 
 turbs the public peace, and threatens the security 
 of the neighbors. The idea naturally suggests it- 
 self that this warfare might be ended by interpos- 
 ing and conciliating the enemies. This is not an 
 hypothesis ; it is a necessary cause -and result. Be- 
 sides, it is well known, that, for some time before 
 their advent into Gaul, it was a common habit 
 among the Germans to cite the two parties before 
 a tribunal composed of all the family chieftains 
 belonging to the tribe. There, the murderer de- 
 nied or confessed his guilt. If he denied, the 
 court tried to convict him : witnesses were rarely 
 employed for this, a well-organized public power 
 being needed to bring them before the tribunal, 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 4I 
 
 confront them with the prisoner, and obtain proof 
 of their honesty. More frequently recourse was 
 had to various ordeals to which the defendant was 
 subjected. He must plunge his arm into boiling 
 water, and lift something from it without burning 
 himself (this was ordeal by hot water) ; or he 
 must walk over a pan of coals (this was ordeal 
 by fire) ; or, after being thrown into water with 
 his arms tied, he must sink to the bottom (this 
 was not so difficult, — they thought water would 
 reject the guilty with horror, — this was ordeal 
 by water) ; or he must fight his adversary, and 
 of cotirse could not fail to conquer, if he were in- 
 nocent (this ordeal was called later the judicial 
 duel) ; or yet again, and this most commonly hap- 
 pened, his guilt or innocence was put to the oath 
 of himself and his family. The defendant some- 
 times brought as many as a hundred people to 
 swear in his behalf. All this was hardly addressed 
 to the judges. The object was to convince the 
 plaintiff, and persuade him to forego vengeance. 
 The judges simply presided over the ceremonies. 
 
 Should the plaintiff, in spite of witnesses or de- 
 nials, trials or oaths, remain sure of the guilt of 
 the defendant, he retained a right to avenge him- 
 self, and the judges had served in vain. If, on 
 the- contrary, the defendant was convicted or made 
 
42 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 confession, the duty of the judges became more 
 serious, — they had to decide upon the reparation 
 to be made. They might, for instance, say, ''-The 
 defendant has killed your slave of such age and 
 sex ; he must make amends by paying^ so much/' 
 Even then the plaintiff might refuse the reparation, 
 and prefer war ; or the defendant might say, " I 
 will not pay ; let us fight/' Justice, in that "early 
 stage, was only an attempt at conciliation. The 
 one thing in its power was 'to estimate the price 
 to be paid for damages. This compensation was 
 called wergheld. There was no other penalty, — 
 no corporal punishment, — no imprisonment, at 
 least among the Franks ; the Burgundians and 
 Visigoths did have certain corporal penalties.. 
 This was the organization which the barbarians- 
 brought into Gaul. 
 
 They did not, however, impose their judiciary 
 customs upon the vanquished. The Gallo-Romans 
 continued to be ruled by their own laws and 
 judged according to the forms of Roman justice. 
 Each barbarian tribe also kept its own law : there 
 was the law of the Visigoths, the law. of the 
 Franks, and the law' of the Burgundians. Law 
 was personal, and this lasted till the eighth cen- 
 tury. Then came a great change, which took for 
 its accomplishment an uncertain length of time, 
 somewhere between fifty and a hundred years. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 43 
 
 When this was achiev,ed, France appeared di- 
 vided into a certain number of provinces, various 
 in extent, each having its own laws and customs, 
 which rtiled both inhabitants and strangers, even 
 the most transient, without distinction of nation- 
 ality. Law had become territorial. This change, 
 so complete' and, at first glance, so surprising, can 
 be readily explained. When the several barbarian 
 tribes settled in Gaul, they differed somewhat from 
 one another, and very decidedly from the Romans, 
 in appearance and language. These distinctions 
 were in time effaced. Marrying Gallo-Roman 
 women, their children did not bear the features 
 of their race ; their manners and customs became * 
 absorbed in those of the Gallo-Romans ; even their 
 own language was forgotten for that of the van- 
 quished. At the end of the tenth century^ the 
 law of the Visigoths could not be applied to one, 
 that of the Franks to another ; for neither Frank, 
 Visigoth, nor Burgundian was distinguishable. So 
 this great change is explained most simply ; it 
 was inevitable. 
 
 Another equally important change was attempted, 
 
 but unfortunately failed. The kings, advised by 
 
 ^ the clergy, and converted to higher ideas of jus-* 
 
 tice, tried to impose upon the convicted criminal 
 
 the obligation to pay the wergheld, and, upon the 
 
44 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 opposite side, the obligation to accept it. Had 
 the kings been obeyed, the multitude of private 
 wars would have ceased, and a grand calm would 
 have fallen upon this turbulent society ; but the 
 kings were not obeyed. Even Charlemagne could 
 with difficulty obtain, for. a few years, a partial 
 compliance with his orders. Under his succes- 
 sors, private warfare became more frequent than 
 ever. We shall see its effects presently. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 It is now time to explain the results which the 
 kings anticipated from that distribution of lands 
 of which I have spoken. 
 
 First, we must carefully discriminate between, 
 the lands which the kings distributed and those 
 which the soldiers received immediately after the 
 victory, and which, in the language of that time, 
 were called sortes (lots) or al-ods. .These sortes were 
 shares acquired by lot, as, after the pillage, a mass 
 was made of all movable booty, which was di- 
 
 • 
 
 vided into as many portions as there were soldiers, 
 or, perhaps, only captains ; and these portions 
 were drawn by lot ; in the same way, an estimate 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 45 
 
 was made of the domains which, it was thought, 
 could be wrested from the natives, and these also 
 drawn by lot. The king, so far as regarded mov- 
 able booty, had a share- scarcely larger than that 
 of the other captains ; but, in the domain, his por- 
 tion, already marked out, comprised the lands pre- 
 viously owned by the Roman fisc. Now, the Ro- 
 man fisc had everywhere a goodly number of 
 lands, so the territorial share of the king was 
 considerable. It is noteworthy, that the captain 
 or soldier, in accepting his allotted booty and do- 
 main, felt no obligation towards his chief: to his 
 mind, they were the trophies of war, — advan- 
 tages due purely to his own courage, — -and upon 
 which the chief could found no claim of sover- 
 eignty. 
 
 As regarded the lands which the king detached 
 from his own domains, and distributed, that was 
 another matter ; in the language of the Gallo- 
 Romans, they were called benefices. Naturally, the 
 kings did not give these without conditions ; they 
 exacted from soldiers thus honored, promises, 
 general oaths. of fidelity and obedience, and often 
 more precise obligations; for example, that bene- 
 ficiaries should go to court, at specified times, to 
 help in the decision of law-cases and in other busi- 
 ness affairs, — that they should respond to a call 
 
46 A SHORT HISTGEY 
 
 to war, and that they should pay certain rentals. 
 These obligations would seem the natural duties 
 of subjects without any need that the king should 
 bestow gifts in return ; but the situation cannot 
 bo judged by modern customs. It must be re- 
 membered that the Germans did not recognize 
 kings in reality, and understood, as a fact in pol- 
 itics, only the radical independence of each. indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 These conditional grants 'made by the kings 
 were imitated by captains, who had received 
 large estates, and, in their turn, wished vassals 
 and soldiers : they gave benefices upon similar 
 conditions. We must remember, that, under the 
 Frankish system, each man held the right to make 
 war upon private enemies, — to avenge injuries 
 and indemnify himself, with his own hand, * for 
 wrong done him, so that every rich and powerful 
 baron needed soldiers under his control. 
 
 Now for the results of this system. The Frank- 
 ish kings had laid Gaul waste by cruel wars, to 
 obtain lands fl^om which to form benefices. These 
 benefices became a new and permanent source of 
 wars, — wars between kings and their beneficia- 
 ries,. — between the lesser chiefs- and their bene- 
 ficiaries. 
 
 The benefices were usually granted only for 
 
• OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 47 
 
 life ; at the time of the donation, it was nnder- 
 stood that they could be recalled at the death of 
 the beneficiary, this being generally a positive 
 clause in the agreement. But probity and respect 
 for promises were not the ruling virtues of these 
 barbarians. The beneficiaries wished to evade the 
 •obligation, and often attempted to keep both the 
 property and their old German independence. On 
 the other hand, kings and patrons tried to des- 
 poil' the beneficiaries at will, by giving, reclaim- 
 ing, and giving to others, according to their in- 
 terest or momentary caprice. 
 
 In the midst of these wars among unjust and 
 violent men, whom war made still more hard, vio- 
 lence was the one only resource. The Frankish 
 warrior was never sure that he might not be 
 treated as a Gallo-Roman or a slave, by his 
 former comrades, now leagued against him. He 
 dared not live alone in this ever-changing world ; 
 he joined some league or society of soldiers, to 
 secure for himself aid in time 'of need. But the 
 most common way of obtaining support was to 
 recommend himself to some chief, either a large 
 landowner or the ^captain of many soldiers* The 
 recommendation consisted in putting into the hands 
 of this chief, his domain, his al-od or freehold, and 
 receiving it .back under the title of benefice, as 
 
48 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 if it had been detached from the estate of his 
 chief. 
 
 Soon there were scarce any al-ods or independ- 
 ent estates ; there were only benefices, the lesser 
 warriors having recommended themselves to cer- 
 tain chiefs, and the latter having done the same 
 in their turn to more powerful lords or to the 
 king. 
 
 With the number of benefices, the occasions for 
 war increased. We can easily fancy the fate of 
 peasants and coloni under these pitiless enemies 
 We will return to them shortly. . 
 
 IX. 
 
 While the beneficiaries were struggling to make 
 their benefices hereditary and were daily approach- 
 ing this end, in spite of kings and patrons, the 
 public officials were trying to do the same with 
 their posts. 
 
 Little as the Frankish kings governed they 
 had, however, established dukes, counts, centuri- 
 ons, and decurions, as rulers over districts very 
 different in importance : these officers presided 
 at the assemblies of frecipen, the mallum or 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 49 
 
 assizes of the Franks ; they transmitted to the 
 kings appeals for war ; they controlled the sol- 
 diery. 
 
 Of course, these oJBficers could originally be re-- 
 called by command of the king; but, from the 
 first, they wisked to make themselves independent 
 in their duties, and to bequeath these duties to 
 their children. They succeeded, at the same time 
 that beneficiaries triumphed on their side, and 
 from the following causes. 
 
 The Roman emperors hiad often rewarded the zeal 
 and devotion of their agents, by allowing them 
 to exercise, for their own profit, the duties of ad- 
 ministration. For instance, they granted to an 
 official all or part of the revenue he collected, or 
 let him apply to his own use the corporal service 
 due from subjects, upon government lands, in le- 
 gions, or as messengers of the Empire. These 
 concessions were called honors, (honores). Some- 
 times the imperial liberality was bestowed upon 
 gentlemen landowners : to these the emperor gave 
 immunities ; that is, he made them a gift of the 
 taxes, which should have been levied upon their 
 estates, upon' their coloni or farmers The coloni 
 and farmers, of course, had to pay the same ; but, 
 instead of paying to the fisc, they gave the money 
 to their masters, by order of government agents, 
 
 4 
 
5o A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 or, perhaps, the latter remitted it to the masters, 
 after collecting it. Still further, the fines assessed 
 ^J judges were given by the emperor to these 
 same judges or to other persons. 
 
 The barbarian kings, when installed in the van- 
 quished country, tried to keep all the traditions 
 
 . of the . imperial system, to levy all the imposts and 
 taxes suggested by the Eomans. We shall soon 
 see how well they succeeded with the Frankish 
 warriors, their compatriots. Certain it is, that, if 
 these latter paid the impost but irregularly, the 
 Gallo-Romans did not fare- so well. • They con- 
 tinued to be oppressed in the name of legal tradi- 
 
 •tion, while, at the same time, they were robbed 
 in the name of the rights of conquerors. After 
 the example of the emperor, the Frankish kings 
 granted immunities and honors. Immunity was an 
 almost universal measure, as regarded estates be- 
 longing to churches or monasteries. As these es- 
 tates were very numerous, and daily becoming 
 more so, the kings lost, in this way alone, a good 
 share of their budget. 
 
 The immunities granted to large landholders, the 
 honors yielded to officials, also increased with 
 time. The same need and hope of attaching the 
 warriors, whfch had led the kings to give estates, 
 prompted their liberality with the different taxes. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 
 
 5^- 
 
 It was a dangerous course ; the kings .thus de- 
 prived themselves of resources, made disobedience 
 easy, and forced themselves to new concessions, 
 besides creating a precedent, which other warriors 
 and officials were only too ready to follow. 
 
 Seeing around them men allowed to keep the 
 revenues formerly claimed by the State, each offi- 
 cial wished a similar advantage. By the side of 
 proprietors regularly endowed with immunities and 
 honors, rose many, who made the endowments for 
 themselves. There appeared a general tendency 
 to usurp all revenues due from the Gallo-Romans 
 to the kings, who had succeeded to the fisc ; to 
 quote one example, the counts and centurions soon 
 reserved, for their own use, all or part of the legal 
 fines. 
 
 Hence it happened that the kings were gradu- 
 ally cut off even from the revenues of the estates 
 they had kept for themselves ; the penury to 
 which they were reduced, or, rather, to which 
 they had reduced themselves by their own lack 
 of foresight, allowed the greatest and most radical 
 usurpations. 
 
 Money, we have seen, was very scarce, more 
 scarce even than under the Eoman dominion. 
 The emperor had been forced to pay officials, in 
 part^ with produce. 
 
52 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 Under the barbarian rule, it became a. custom to 
 attach to each office an estate, of greater or less 
 extent, which should repay the official for his la- 
 bor. This was a custom so general, and believed 
 so advantageous, that lesser services, if permanent, 
 — for example^, that of intendant on a farm, — 
 were rarely paid in any other manner. 
 
 Now it is a law of nature that possession of 
 land or houses should be hereditary ; the human 
 mind cannot accept this possession as for life 
 .only. A man has cultivated the soil of an estate,- 
 •has improved it, has lived there a long time, his 
 children have been born and have grown up there. 
 Public opinion unanimously holds that this man 
 has made the estate his own, since he has put 
 into it something of himself, which cannot be 
 taken away. 
 
 Whenever an official died, and the king ap- 
 pointed a successor, the family of the deceased 
 functionary had to be expelled from the estate, 
 which belonged to the office. This always caused 
 serious difficulties. . The family thought itself 
 robbed, and indulged in protests, which were 
 echoed by the public; Sometimes " resistance was 
 made : force had to be used, with most disastrous 
 result. This state of thing-s could not continue. 
 Either the office must be independent of estates, 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 53 
 
 which was impossible,' there being no money 
 wherewith to pay, or the estate must hold the of- 
 fice by hereditary descejit, as was most natural. 
 
 The latter alternative was chosen, as, indeed, 
 it must of necessity have been. 
 
 Usurpation, however, was not the only cause of 
 the establishment of the feudal system. The kings 
 sometimes only confirmed the encroachments of 
 their officers ; but sometimes they went half way, 
 and, of their own accord, abandoned to their agents, 
 or to private individuals, a more or less extensive 
 share of their power. 
 
 When the hereditary right to benefices and 
 public offices was admitted without question, that 
 political organization which we call feudalism was 
 founded. 
 
 Feudalism was maintained for nearly five cen- 
 turies ; France kept traces of it much longer, 
 even until the Revolution. It is important to take 
 careful note of its origin. • • 
 
 It was in S'lt A. D., that hereditary right to 
 public offices was recognized by the king; -Charles 
 the Bald, .grandson of Charlemagne. The inheritr 
 ance of benefices became general at the same 
 time. So feudalism dates from the end of the 
 ninth century. About three hundred ai;id sixty 
 years had elapsed since the death of Clovis. The 
 
54 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 only iraportant act of these three centuries and a 
 half had been to form this system. , Whoever 
 knows what we have just described, knows the 
 fundamental point of this period : the battles, the 
 assassinations, the overwhelming misfortunes of 
 kings and princes, are only the outside of its his- 
 tory ; a history which is made obscure and com- 
 plicated by a crowd of dramatic events. 
 
 X. 
 
 But there was in feudalism something more 
 than the heritage of benefices and offices ; to 
 understand this other aspect of the system, we 
 must know the condition of the provinces,' from 
 the fifth to the tenth century. 
 
 The barbarians found the rural population di- 
 vided into two classes, — slaves and coloni, or serfs, 
 the latter, much more numerous. The reader will 
 remember this, as well as the difference between 
 the two conditions. The first result of the serious 
 disturbances and infinite cruelty, which followed the 
 establishment of the barbarians, and the wars of 
 the Merovingian and Carlovingian kings, was a 
 large increase in the class of slaves. The Frank- 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 55 
 
 ish warriors, never returned from an expedition 
 without bringing coLoni and freemen, dragged from 
 the estates they had passed. 
 
 These were prisoners of war, and were conse- 
 quently treated without consideration, and reduced 
 to the worst of conditions, that of slavery. Con- 
 sidering the barbarism of the conquerors, the mis- 
 ery of the conquered is not surprising. So a large 
 number of coloni w.ent down one degree, and 
 many freemen two. 
 
 Police and security were a cipher ; even a 
 Frankish soldier could not, single-handed, defend 
 himself from the fierce attacks threatening on all 
 sides ; how much more impossible was it for a 
 simple freeman of Gallo-Roman origin ! The cen- 
 tral government, royalty, which ill represented what 
 we call the State, could do nothing for him. The 
 only thing a freeman could do to win a little of 
 that security which was everywhere lacking, was 
 'to put himself under the protection, the main- 
 bournie, as they called it, of some chieftain or 
 neighboring lord ; or, what amounted to the same 
 thing, under the protection of the nearest convent, 
 which had soldiers in its pay. The lord, naturally, 
 would not accept this office of protector, with- 
 out equivalent. The freeman would deed his es- 
 tate to the lord, wh'o then restored it as a gift. 
 
56 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 but under condition of an annual rent." Or worse 
 might happen, and the lord force him to hold the 
 land; not as freeman, paying rent, but as colonus, 
 with all the dependence belonging to that rank, so 
 that many freemen descended to the grade of eoloni. 
 
 The barbarian warriors, who tumultuously ruled 
 the country, were not people to discern or respect 
 the original distinctions of the men they found 
 there, established on domains, or cultivating the 
 surrounding land. They were inclined to treat all 
 with equal violence, and, with the same spirit of 
 despotism, to exact from each, not what he le- 
 gally owed, but whatever it pldased them to de- 
 mand. Many coloni, beneath an unbridled mas- 
 ter, became slaves ; many freemen became coloni, 
 or even slaves, upon the selfsame spot where 
 they had formerly held higher rank. 
 
 Public and private wars, with their train of 
 fires and mg,ssacres, were constantly overturning 
 the population. Crowds of men were, so to speakf 
 lifted from the ground, and scattered like dust. 
 There was no money • for the fugitives to take 
 away ; no one had any at this time ; so they died 
 of hunger ; all could not find employment in trades 
 nor earn a living as day-laborers. The land was 
 everywhere cultivated by coloni, a kind of im- 
 movable farmer who left no room for accidental 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 57 
 
 labor. Goloni, too, exercised all the trades needed 
 in each place. There was no way of support but 
 to hold land by some tit^e, or enter the service of 
 a chieftain. Our fugitives had but one course 
 open to them, — to beg land of a- lord. If the lat- 
 ter granted this, it was upon the most burden- 
 some conditions : he was master of the situation. 
 There have come down to us, from that time, deeds 
 in which the poor, ruined wretch declares, that he 
 submits to the power of such a lord, either as 
 slave or colonus, in return for food and clothing. 
 Then, what must have been their condition in the 
 service of men without humanity or conscience ! 
 
 For all these reasons, the class of freemen al- 
 most wholly disappeared in the country. IIow 
 many remained, we do not know ; but one thing 
 Is certain, there was no free landj that is, land 
 which did not owe a tribute to some one. At 
 the moment when the confusion that himg over 
 this afflicted period clears away, and the internal 
 workings become visible, we find there is no es- 
 tate without a lord; all estates are either benef- 
 ices, also called fiqfs, or censives,.iha,t is, manors 
 paying a cens or quit-rent to a lord, according as 
 they belonged to noble landholder or plebeian free- 
 man. 
 
 If the disorder of the time tended to destroy 
 
58 A SHORT' HISTORY 
 
 liberty, it must be acknowledged-, on the other 
 •hand, that it tended to improve slavery, and lift 
 it a little towards freedom, — this on account of 
 a trait of character peculiar to the conquerors. 
 The Eomans liked to be served in their houses 
 by a crowd of slaves, and employed them in all 
 domestic offices, even to putting the attendants on 
 a footing of unavoidable intimacy with their mas- 
 ters ; .it .was with his slaves, perhaps, that each 
 master spent the most time : this, indeed, made 
 the servitude more bearable, but it would have 
 perpetuated slavery forever. The Germans, on 
 the contrary, disliked extremely to be surrounded 
 by slaves, who were the object of their bitter 
 scorn. The Frankish warrior preferred the ser- 
 vice of his family, his children, his relatives, or 
 poorer companions, who were half servants, half 
 friends. Household service had nothing .humili- 
 ating in their eyes. Little by little, they sent all 
 slaves from the house to the farm, to be employed 
 solely upon the land. The slave thus became like 
 a colonus in occupation, habits, and, no, doubt in 
 dress. It was soon very hard to distinguish be- 
 tween them, particularly as no register was kept. 
 In the tenth century, slavery had wholly disap- 
 peared into colonage, but into a transformed, ag- 
 gravated colonage, which now became a middle 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. • 59 
 
 term between slavery and the old colonage Col- 
 oni and slaves were united in a single class, much 
 the most numerous, and called by ai common 
 name — serfs. The reader may not understand 
 the difference between the old slave and the serf 
 of the middle ages, — between the old colonus and 
 the serf. The clearest explanation is, that the 
 slave could be sold, snatched from his family, his 
 wife and children, — from the place where he had 
 always lived, — from his habits and trade ; he might 
 see his existence wholly changed, and die, as it 
 were, to his past life several times before his act- 
 ual death, — whilst the serf was attached to the 
 soil. If he could not leave it, neither could he 
 be sent away ; of property, he had almost none, 
 but he had a fatherland and a family, at least by 
 right, barring the accidents of violence, which 
 must always be understood. He lived in great 
 poverty, but among his own people and in his 
 own house. The colonus, too, was chained to the 
 soil, but, by strict care, he might gain a certain 
 independence ; for the sum to be paid his master 
 was regularly fixed, whereas the serf was at the 
 mercy of his master. These were the " essential 
 differences in rights ; for, I repeat, a reservation 
 must alwa^ys be made as regards facts. It is im- 
 possible to know whether, owing to the rapacity 
 
6o A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 of the Roman fisc, the colonus was ever really in 
 a happier condition than the serf of the middle 
 ages. • 
 
 These remarks do not apply merely to the 
 country. The fate of the inhabitants of bourgs 
 and small cities did not differ much from that of 
 the rural populace ; both fell almost entirely into 
 the great class of serfs. The former, instead of 
 being bound to the soil were bound to a trade ; 
 that was all the difference. In lar^^e cities alone, 
 the artisans and workmen kept, for the most part, 
 the position of freemen, which, however, did not 
 save them from extortion at the hands of the lords 
 who were settled either in neighboring castles or 
 in well-fortified mansions within the city walls. 
 
 In some cities, especially towards the south, a 
 shadow of the ancient curia, a certain municipal 
 government, was kept until the political resurrec- 
 tion of the cities, in the eleventh century. But 
 it was hot to this feeble government that the 
 workmen owed their escape from servitude ; rather 
 it was the freedom of the people which saved 
 the government. The dwellers in cities no doubt 
 owed the preservation of their franchise to a cer- 
 tain power of resistance, which naturally resides 
 in numbers, to the mutual education which men 
 acquire from daily intercourse, and, finally, to the 
 wealth which industry creates in cities. 
 
 \ 
 
 3^\ 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 6 1 
 
 XI. 
 
 It seems certaiD that the Roman proprietors ex- 
 ercised over their coloni, and even over freemen, 
 their farmers and husbandmen, a judiciary power, 
 of which the limits are still unknown. After, the 
 establishment of the barbarians, the Roman mag- 
 istrates, presidents and consuls, of course disap- 
 peared. By whom were they replaced ? 
 
 The barbarians had their form of justice, of 
 which we have spoken. The Frankish warrior 
 was judged in civil, as in criminal cases, by his 
 companions, his peers, over whom presided de- 
 curion, centurion, count, or even king. But could 
 these tribunals decide Gallo-Roman cases ? We 
 must admit, I believe, that they decided all cases 
 in which a Frank was interested. Probably, too, 
 the conquerors assumed the right to judge crimes 
 committed by the conquered, even when the vic- 
 tim was a Gallo-Roman. So the Frankish tribu- 
 nals held Jurisdiction over, 1st, all criminal cases ; 
 2nd, civil cases, where one party was of Germanic 
 race. There remained civil cases between the 
 conquered, the Gallo-Romans themselves. It is 
 almost certain that these too were decided by 
 
62 ' A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 counts, centurions, &c. ; but the question has 
 never been settled whether these judges gave the 
 sentence, or only presided over a court composed 
 of Gallo-Eomans, peers of the two contestants. 
 In any case, the tribunal of counts took cogni- 
 zance of cases between free Gallo-Romans only ; 
 the serfs carried theirs before the domestic tribu- 
 nal of their master. 
 
 This state of affairs couM not last. There en- 
 sued, .in the forms of justice, a series of changes, 
 all moving in the same direction with every thing 
 else ; that is, towards the creation of a crowd of 
 petty sovereignties, — towards the establishment of 
 the feudal system. 
 
 A word will explain what happened, and leave 
 us free to consider the way in which it was ef- 
 fected. The proprietors, the lords, were in time 
 the sole judges, taking the place of tribunals of 
 peers collected -undei: the presidency of royal of- 
 ficials. They thus acquired the first privilege 
 of kings, — that of administering justice. 
 
 Now, let us see the steps by which this was 
 reached. It is clear, that each warrior, when es- 
 tablished on his domain, aspired to absolute con- 
 trol in his own house, and to the right of giving 
 final judgment, without foreign interference, in the 
 affairs of his serfs, so much the more that there 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 63 
 
 was a. precedent for this in the judiciary power 
 of the Roman lords. Then, as he forced the free- 
 men of his neighborhood to put themselves under 
 his guardianship, he claimed the right to judge 
 these freemen. He, at length, fully realized his 
 claims, at the very time when he had also obtained- 
 the hereditary right to benefices, and for the same 
 reason, —r- that the royal power had become help- 
 less against the united demands and ambitions of 
 the lords. 
 
 It remains to be seen how the tribunals of counts, 
 &c., disappeared in their turn. The Frankish land- 
 owner was bound to others by the claims of 
 which I have already spoken. He was the vassal 
 of another more powerful Frank, from whom he 
 had received his benefice, "and himself had vassals 
 to whom he had granted benefices. Seignior and 
 vassals formed among themselves a sort of private 
 society, very distinct and visible in the midst of 
 general society, which was then so disjointed as 
 to seem no society at all. It was suited to the 
 ideas of the time, that thes^ members of the same 
 body should administer justice among themselves, 
 without the intervention of any outside power ; and 
 this took place. Each vassal was judged by his 
 co-vassals, his peers, under the direction of the 
 seignior. There are some authors who call this 
 
64 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 form of justice, feudal, in opposition to justiciary 
 justice, the old public' justice exercised by the 
 counts. So there arose, besides the tribunals pre- 
 sided over by royal agents, and besides justiciary 
 justice, courts of seigniors. 
 
 Public justice, as I said, had been usurped by 
 the officials, who were commissioned to exepute it ; 
 it fell from the hands of the central power into 
 those of counts, viscounts, &;c. These being 
 seigniors, possessors of fiefs, and members of the 
 feudal body, already executing feudal justice, ad- 
 ministered .the two powers in the same manner 
 and with the same judges. Consequently the pow- 
 ers, derived from the two sources, were soon in- 
 distinguishable iji the single court. Public justice 
 was merged in feudal justice. 
 
 The gradual revolution, which resulted in the es- 
 tablishment of feudalism, I believe to have been 
 inevitable. Remember that these Prankish war- 
 riors entered Gaul with habits and instincts of 
 fierce independence, under the command of a 
 chief who was, after all, only their equal, and in 
 no respect a king. They found, it is true, among 
 the conquered, the remembrance and traditions of 
 a central power, ruling individual wills, — the mem- 
 ory of an emperor in whose name taxes were col- 
 lected and justice administered ; but, naturally, 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 65 
 
 these memories and traditions were by no means 
 to their taste, and they felt no wish to accept a 
 similar master. The chief, their king, was indeed 
 of a contrary opinion ; he would have liked to re- 
 produce the Roman empire for his own advantage, 
 but means were wholly lacking. 
 
 Evidently Clovis dreamed of becoming a king, 
 according to the Gallo-Roman idea of royalty ; 
 and, owing to his unusually energetic character, 
 his military talents, and his tact, he became as 
 completely master as was possible in his age. 
 But his successors, having none of the same per- 
 sonal resources, deserved and received much less 
 obedience. Under them, royalty retrograded. 
 Tl>ey were without the weapons to hew for them- 
 selves, at the expense of their leudes, a kingdom 
 of either ancient or modern type. They could 
 have used but one method successfully to crush 
 the independence of the Franks ; this was to form 
 an army of the conquered nations, and employ it 
 against their compatriots, — a dangerous method 
 truly, for the Gallo-Roman army might then have 
 driven themselves away. This idea would never 
 have occurred to these barbarians, who were filled 
 with scorn for the conquered race. 
 
 W.e know that the descendants of Clovis, who 
 are called Merovingian kings, from their first 
 
 5 
 
66 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 known leader, Meroveeus, were, through a revcfiu- 
 tion, which I will not relate, the causes being 
 superficial or obscure, -^ were, I say, dethroned 
 and followed by a new family, the Carlovingians, 
 so called, from Carolus, Charles, Charlemagne, or 
 Charles the Great, the most distinguished of his 
 line. Under the Carlovingians, the relations of the " 
 kings and Frankish chiefs were unchanged, the 
 latter striving for absolute independence, which 
 the former tried to curb. Charlemagne succeeded 
 in forming for himself a vast empire, which in- 
 cluded Oaul, Germany, part of Italy, and part of 
 Spain ; he. more particularly succeeded in being 
 obeyed in Gaul, by the leudes, as no other bar- 
 barian king ever had been. So, under him, justice 
 was really administered in his name ; his call to 
 war was always heard and heeded ; the adminis- 
 trative orders he gave were almost always executed; 
 but all this was due to his strong and persistent 
 will, — to his military skill and courage, before 
 which his leudes bowed, — to his eloquence, — in a 
 word, to his genius ; his success was purely the 
 effect of personal might. His descendants, with- 
 out his genius, could not establish their power. 
 
 All that is essential in political history up to 
 the ninth century, can be summed thus : feudal- 
 ism was established : this was the necessary course 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 6*J 
 
 of events ; it was suspended only for a momen£ 
 by the genius of Charlemagne. 
 
 The dimensions of this little book will not al- 
 low me to recount here the turns oT fortune which 
 destroyed the kingdom of- Charlemagne, and, from 
 its fragments, created six or seven kingdoms. 
 
 
 XII. 
 
 Now we will see feudalism in operation. 
 
 The tenth and eleventh centuries were marked 
 by innumerable private wars ; that is, wars be- 
 tween seigniors. 
 
 We have constantly to repeat that the seigniors 
 were like so many kings, and made war among 
 themselves, like kings, only much more frequently. 
 It was but seldom that one of these petty mon- 
 archs was at peace with all his neighbors. 
 
 At the present time, the scene of war is usu- 
 ally confined. to the frontiers of the two countries. 
 There, in a space more or less extended, but within 
 that space alone, it lets loose its horrors, and 
 spreads desolation. On each side of this limit, 
 two vast countries continue to live and work in 
 security. At the time of which we speak, from 
 
68 ' ■ A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 the fact that the soil was divided into an infinite 
 number of little states, every place was upon a 
 frontier, or very near it. The moment one of 
 these small states engaged in warfare, there was 
 not an inch of its territory sheltered from the 
 enemy. As few of these states ever were at peace, 
 war was always raging everywhere. 
 
 The seigniors made war thus constantly, because 
 they had no weighty tribunals to settle quarrels. 
 With no judges to pass sentence, and no police to 
 execute it, each man must protect himself. And, as 
 these lords were kings, and had subjects, and nat- 
 urally forced these subjects to help in their con- 
 tests, every misunderstanding betv/een seigniors 
 resulted in war. Thus also did royal quarrels end, 
 and for the same reason, — there w#.re no courts. 
 
 So every dispute, which, between two citizens 
 of our day, would give rise to^ a lawsuit, then 
 gave rise to wars. Moreover, men were infinitely 
 more violent, more grasping, more dishonest then 
 than now, so that subjects for quarrels were much 
 more common. • 
 
 I have said that there were literally no courts 
 to interpose between seigniors ; let us see. 
 
 We saw how a quarrel between seigniors was 
 decided towards the . end of the ninth century. 
 In the two following ages, there was no change in 
 
. OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 69 
 
 this respect. The two opposing lords must come 
 before their peers, the other lords, all vassals 
 of a common suzerain, who presided over the court. 
 But here arose the first difficulty. There was no 
 one to force the suzerain to decide the case. He 
 was not dependent on any one ; he could not be 
 constrained ■ to pass judgment, and often did not 
 care to decide*. Nor was there any power to oblige 
 the suzerain to give impartial sentence ; there was 
 no one over him to whom he must render account, 
 nor was" there within him a governing conscience. 
 It would not have been so serious, if he had had 
 no interest, and the parties haji been unknown to 
 him ; but, on the contrary, they were his vassals, 
 the people with whom he had most frequent and 
 important relations. It was for his advantage to 
 favor the one most devoted to himself, or most 
 capable of furnishing soldiers for his little empire ; 
 and, though simply presiding officer, the means 
 were in his hands to decide the case as he pleased. 
 He chose the peers, and could select those in his 
 service, so much the more easily, because it was 
 very certain, that, if not summoned, the peers 
 would not protest ; they had no wish to leave 
 their castles and families, to make an enemy of the 
 lords whom they pronounced in the wrong. It is 
 plain that this office of judge was a thankless 
 
70 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 one, and that the lords of the middle ages were 
 peculiar litigants. On account of the unwilling- 
 ness of peers to come, it was agreed that a small 
 number should suffice to form a tribunal ; in some 
 . provinces, two peers were enough. The suzerain 
 could easily find two men wholly at his command. 
 When he did not insist upon the attendance of 
 his creatures, in order to perpetrate an injustice, 
 it often happened that two or three of the lords 
 summoned would not appear, and, when they came, 
 perhaps one of the litigants, or even both, would 
 be absent. In the first place, they had no confi- 
 dence in the impartiality of the judges, and we 
 must own that this distrust was well founded; 
 every one shared it: then, there reigned among the 
 seigniors a kind of foolish pride, which raade it 
 repugnant to them to submit to the will of man, 
 whoever he might be. At heart, each baron cher- 
 ished the haughty thought, that he held from God 
 alone. And, besides, all were sure that the trial 
 would end in an ordeal, or an appeal to God ; 
 that is, a duel. It was then so hard to collect 
 the witnesses of a deed, and, particularly, to make 
 them tell the truth, and judges of that day were 
 so incapable of discerning truth among contradic- 
 tory statements, that recourse was almost always 
 had to these arbitrary means of reaching it. Now 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 7 1 
 
 ordeals were not acceptable to the seigniors, and 
 duels even less so ; they preferred war. In judi- 
 cial duels, the vanguished, if not killed by his foe, 
 was put to death by order of the judge, or taxed 
 according to discretion. War was .less dangerous, 
 and even had certain advantages. 
 
 When, by chance, the peers had assembled, the 
 contestants had appeared, and judgment had been 
 given, without ordeal or duel, something still re- 
 mained to be done ; this was to execute the sen- 
 tence. It was but rarely that the loser yielded 
 with good grace to the decision, especially in se- 
 rious cases, involving life or liberty. It was also 
 rarely that he could be seized at once ; for he took 
 care not to appear without a large retinue : be- 
 sides, feudal law allowed a convict to go first to 
 his home ; so he would take shelter in his castle, 
 arm his serfs, and prepare for desperate defence. 
 On principle, it was the duty of the lords and su- 
 zerains to besiege him, that their sentence might 
 not become a dead letter ; but usually they neg- 
 lected to fulfill this obligation, which would have 
 made the office of justice a very uncomfortable 
 one. 
 
 It was the winning side, to which it was of 
 more consequence to see the sentence executed, 
 which undertook the campaign ; but, ip any case, it 
 was always war. 
 
7Z A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 Never was there so great a . need of a strong- 
 ly organized judiciary force as at that time, 
 when there was none at all. Many seigniors led 
 the life of brigands, overrunning the country in- 
 cessantly, roFbing rich merchants, who ventured 
 upon the highway, stealing cattle, women, and serfs 
 from neighboring lords, who, the next day, returned 
 the visit, under pretext of reprisals. The lords 
 kept up a constant exchange of violence, and a 
 perpetual concert of recrimination, equally well 
 founded on both sides. 
 
 The feudal hierarchy was also an abundant source 
 of wars, each vassal clinging to the hope of be- 
 coming independent of his suzerain^ or, at least, of 
 lessening his dependence ; each suzerain trying to 
 subject his vassals still further, and to impose 
 upon them more than the prescribed burdens. An 
 eminent historian, M. Guizot, says that there was 
 a multitude of wars, simply on the subject of 
 castles. Each seignior made his own as strong as 
 possible ; but, whenever he reinforced his walls, 
 however little, all the neighboring lords, as well 
 as the suzerains, attacked him, because they thought 
 this fortification a menace, and with reason ; just- 
 as at the present day, when one government in- 
 creases its army, the others consider themselves 
 threatened ; explanations follow, then blows. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 73 
 
 With all this, private wars would not have been 
 so common but for another most unworthy cause, 
 which made them dear .to the hearts of the seign- 
 iors. This was, that, owing to the way in which 
 they were conducted, they brought little danger 
 and much profit. Now, it is agreed, that, when 
 two nations are at war, the soldiers of the two 
 armies are the only ones to be attacked ; the un- 
 armed inhabitant must be respected, to whatever 
 country he belongs. This law regarding the rights 
 of people is a strictly modern one. In the mid- 
 dle ages, quite contrary were the proceedings be- 
 tween seigniors. Each lord first attacked the 
 peasants belonging to his foe ; he killed the men 
 or led them captive, violated the women, stole 
 every thing he could carry, burnt the villages, de- 
 vastated the harvests, woods, and vines. He took 
 money, grain, wines, &c., to enrich himself; and 
 destroyed every thing else to impoverish his enemy, 
 thus making it impossible for the peasants to pay 
 their rents. This system of gener^L destruclion, 
 under pretext of impoverishing the foe, has indeed 
 long outlived the middle ages. Louis XIV em- 
 ployed it, to the scandal of the civilized world, in 
 Holland, where he burned the villages by hundreds 
 in the Palatinate, and where even large cities were 
 given to the flames. To return to our seigniors, 
 
74 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 they often avoided one another, as by tacit con- 
 sent ; while one laid waste the seigniory of his 
 adversary, the latter retaliated; and the object 
 of each was to effect the most thorojigh -ruin. 
 From this, we can judge the fate of the rural 
 inhabitants, and the interest a peasant could take 
 in an estate, which, besides, did not belong to 
 himself, and from which he could gain nothing but 
 bare subsistence, even under the most favorable 
 circumstances. Nc 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The ninth and tenth centuries were not only 
 thq period of private warfare, but also that of the 
 invasion of the Normans or Northmen. 
 
 The invasion of the Normans was the last as- 
 sault of the barbarian nations upon the old civi- 
 lized world. They were the last out-come of bar- 
 barism. Of Germanic race, like the Franks and 
 Visigoths, they inhabited Denmark and Sweden. 
 The journey by land would have been too long, 
 and would, besides, have forced them to conquer 
 a multitude of tribes before reaching France ; so 
 they came in small bands, upon light boats, which 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 75, 
 
 they managed with remarkable skill and boldness. 
 They entered all the rivers, sailed up the broad 
 streams, and indeed penetrated wherever the wa- 
 ter was deep enough to float their boats, coming 
 and going with surprising rapidity, and every- 
 where leaving, utter desolation. Bold, swift, brave 
 to frenzy, they conquered or evaded troops far 
 superior in numbers. It does not appear that the 
 feudal lords, who were so brave in fighting against 
 the serfs of their neighboring foemen offered very 
 stout resistance to the Normans ; they shut them- 
 selves into their castles, whence they calmly 
 watched the devastation of the surrounding coun- 
 try, and some even had no scruples against form- 
 ing alliance with the Normans, and themselves 
 guiding the pillage. The boldness of the pi- 
 rates increased : at first, they had confined their 
 ravages to the river valleys, and taken care 
 to keep near their boats ; gradually, having met 
 so little resistance, they ventured into the in- 
 terior_ of the country, and went as far as the 
 centre of France, to Limoges, which they sacked ; 
 they besieged Paris three times in twenty years. 
 At their fourth attack, in 886, they were re- 
 ffhlsed after a siege of several months. The 
 last kings of the Carlovinigan race, powerless to 
 repel these barbarians, often bribed them to leave. 
 
*]6 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 One, Charles the Simple, granted to a Norman 
 chief, Rollo, the province which has since been 
 called Normandy. The latter, now interested in 
 the national peace, defended the valley of the 
 Seine from the incursions of his old companions ; 
 aiid the gate by which the Normans had most 
 quickly reached the heart of France was shut, and 
 shut tight. Soon after, the Norman invasions 
 ceased from other causes. Their activity was 
 turned towards Rus^a and the East, and some 
 of them, being converted to the Catholic faith, re- 
 nounced their habits of maritime expeditions for a 
 more regular life. 
 
 It was not owing to the Normans that strong 
 castles were built and cities surrounded by walls; 
 this had been a custom from the first establish- 
 ment of the barbarians, — from the time that Ro- 
 man security and order disappeared ; but it was 
 owing to the Normans that this custom became 
 more active and general. Places liable to attack, 
 cities and villages built upon the plain, were 
 slowly abandoned as too dangerous ; towns in- 
 clined, so to speak, to ascend hills and mount- 
 ains and other steep places difficult of access. 
 Gorges, defiles, and narrow passages became iJhe 
 sites of buildings, showing various degrees of for- 
 tification, but all fortified. Well would it have 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. ^7 
 
 been if these fortresses had served only for de- 
 fence ; but most of the owners used them to keep 
 the fruit of their rapine in safety, and to escape 
 punishment after • their freebooting raids. The 
 lords of these castles, more than any one else, 
 made the castles necessary ; so the evil came from 
 the remedy. 
 
 No epoch was ever more frighful for the poor 
 peasant : with no hope, since he owned no land 
 and had no chance of becoming rich ; with none 
 of the comforts or even necessaries uf existence, 
 life was to him a perpetual agony. We must 
 understand, that, around each castle, was, generally, 
 a large palisaded enclosure, built to receive the 
 serfs of the domain and their cattle, at the ap- 
 proach of the enemy. To live in his hut, like a 
 hare in its lioUow, with his ear always on the 
 alert; — to cultivate out of season, and against his 
 will, barren soil; — at the slightest sound of danger, 
 to take refuge in the seigniorial enclosure ; — to 
 encamp there in want and fear, hardly sheltered 
 and not at all fed, a prey to epidemic diseases, 
 which never fail to appear in the midst of un- 
 healthy surroundings; — to go out, starved and 
 trembling, to see his plot of ground and harvest in 
 cinders; — to repair the damage, and begin again, 
 with the prospect of another similar raid : such was 
 
78 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 the life of a peasant. Naturally, famine was per- 
 manent ; and there was no cause of death more 
 common than hunger, with its attendant diseases. 
 The poor creatures felt it an impossibility that 
 humanity could survive under this system ; and, 
 seeing no change in the horizon, it is not aston- 
 ishing that they believed the end of the world 
 at hand. The year 1000 approached ; and the 
 opinion spread and became fixed, that the' first 
 hour of this year, marked by a prophetic cipher, 
 would be the last of humanity : fear fell upon all 
 hearts. 
 
 M. Morin very justly asks. Why this universal- 
 ity of terror ? If the world thought its end at hand, 
 it was because it saw evil everywhere and the rem- 
 edy nowhere, — because it felt its own weakness, 
 which betrayed itself like all dying weakness in 
 visions*. 'European society was in paroxysms of 
 agony, feeling that nothing could save it from an- 
 nihilation. 
 
 Yet this was not its fate. 
 
 On the contrary, at this moment, humanity 
 seemed to have reached the depths of the abyss, 
 whence it then began to rise ; and soon new 
 powers appeared on the surface, and destroyed 
 the world of injustice and violence. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 79 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The year 1000 passed tranquilly, like an ordi- 
 nary ^ear, and neither was the sun extinguished 
 nor the earth destroyed. It seems as though peo- 
 ple said, when once this time had elapsed : — Since 
 the earth is to endure, let us have a little order 
 and peace, for our present existence is not to be 
 borne. This idea first spread among the clergy. 
 They, at least their chiefs, were somewhat more 
 educated and honest than the gross and stupid 
 baronage of the* period. 
 
 From 1030 to 1032 were three years of constant 
 rain. Hardly could men sow, and the grain did 
 not germinate ; so the faniiii^ was terrible. A 
 writer of that time says: '* We thought the hu- 
 man race was to perish entirely ; all suffered from 
 hunger ; large and small, rich and poor, wore 
 upon their brows the same ghastly pallor. Bread 
 cost fearful sums. People ate the bark of trees, 
 the grass of the field, and dead bodies, which 
 they disinterred : after that, they ate the liv- 
 ing ; and the traveler, attacked on his journey, 
 would fall a victim to the blows of men fierce 
 with hunger, who shared his limbs. Others 
 
8o A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 would offer eggs or apples to children, to tempt 
 them aside, and then kill and eat them.^' Natu- 
 rally, men thought themselves struck down by •di- 
 vine wrath ; and this decided the clergy. They 
 began everywhere to preach unity and peace, with 
 irresistible enthusiasm. There must be no* more 
 private wars ; every man must lay aside his arms, 
 forget the past, his quarrels with his neighbors 
 and their sins against him, and, in future, live ac- 
 cording to justice. The people entered into these sen- 
 timents with an eagerness we can well understand. 
 Everywhere they cried "Peace! peace P^ Bish- 
 ops and prelates, who had met in provincial coun- 
 cils to make these good resolutions, decided to 
 meet again in five years to maintain the institu- 
 tion of the peace of God. 
 
 As soon as the famine was a little forgotten 
 and people were somewhat reassured, the peace 
 of God fell to ruin, and the world resumed her 
 disorderly courses. The clergy saw that they had 
 gained nothing, because they had asked too much. 
 
 When the provincial council met the second 
 time, as appointed, they were less exacting and 
 more politic. Instead of the peace of God, they 
 established the triioe-cf^God. They decreed, un- 
 der pain of excommunication, that, in each week, 
 there_should be a space wherein all war should 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 8l 
 
 be suspended — from Wednesday night to Monday 
 morning ; the rest of the week, that is, for three 
 days, they were allowed to fight as much as they 
 chose. Feast days. Advent, and Lent were also 
 sacred to peace. The seigniors were henceforth 
 ordered to refrain^ from killing or mutilating un- 
 armed peasants, and from the destruction of cat- 
 tle and harvests. The truce of God was never 
 observed with regularity, especially in this latter 
 point ; still, it restrained, to a considerable ex- 
 tent, the crimes and sufferings of war. 
 
 XV . 
 
 The cities gave birth to Industry. Whilst, in 
 the country, each household produced almost 
 every thing it needed, in tbe city there was di- 
 vision of labor. Some cultivated the soil; some 
 made clothing ; others, *shpes, objects of luxury, 
 &c. Then they exchanged. Industry brought 
 into the city the money necessary for exchange. 
 The circulation of money, industry and commerce 
 enriched a certain number of men, who, -becoming 
 rich, became also independent. 
 
 It was impossible that the rich burgesses, the 
 
 6 
 
82 A SHOR':^ HISTORY 
 
 successful tradespeople, should bear the seigniorial 
 yoke with the same bitter patience shown by the 
 peasants in their depths of toil and poverty. In 
 the former it was that the spirit of protest and 
 revolt awoke ; and they communicated it to all 
 around them. 
 
 We have now reached that interesting and im- 
 portant portion of our history, known as the foun- 
 dation of the communes. 
 
 The foundation of a commune was in some re- 
 spects a small revolution, a revolution kept within 
 city limits. 
 
 At first, some of the more courageous burgesses 
 talked among themselves of the exactions and 
 abuses of the seigniors, and strengthened them- 
 selves by speech ; then, they sought means to put 
 a stop to these extortions ; and, by degrees, these 
 dreams and projects resulted in a clear and de- 
 termined resolution, in fact, a conspiracy. 
 
 It appears, that, in forming a conspiracy, the 
 first idea of each membe'r is to assure himself of 
 the secrecy and fidelity of his comrades, by im- 
 posing an oath to live and die together: this was 
 done by the burgesses of the middle ages ; they 
 mutually swore to defend and to assist one an- 
 other. Gradually, the conspiracy gained adher- 
 ents ; and, when they become sufficient in num- 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 83 
 
 ber (the plot sometimes included almost every 
 citizen), the revolution broke forth. 
 
 The seignior had usually in the city a judge 
 and sergeants, or soldiers, representing himself: 
 the insurgents dr0|ve them out, not always with- 
 out bloodshed ; but these sergeants were so much 
 in the minority that there was -little- difficulty. 
 This blow executed, the gates were shut. Once 
 ■free, and the gates firmly closed, the conspirators 
 assembled all the inhabitants in some square, or, 
 as squares then were very small, in the cemetery, 
 and made the people swear, that, while life should 
 last, they would defend the commune. This name 
 was given to the new system on account of the 
 unanimity, the community of sentiments which 
 were its principle. The people, meantime, chose 
 the most notable among the conspirators for mag- 
 istrates, in some places under the name of con- 
 sul, in others under that of sherifi" or mayor, and 
 the municipal body was framed. 
 
 The next step was to draw up the communal 
 charter, which should decide the public condition 
 of the citizens, — their relations towards the seign- 
 ior and the new magistrates. Then, preparations 
 had to be made for a seige by the seignior, who, 
 without fail, would try to destroy the commune 
 and punish the rebels. 
 
84 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 X 
 
 The communists did not know against what 
 strength they would have to contend. 
 
 It might be that the seignior would be reduced 
 to his own forces in the strife against the com- 
 mune ; in that case, they were almost sure of 
 victory ; but he might find allies among the no- 
 bility of the province, who detested the commune, 
 as the kings of Europe, in 1189, detested the Revo- 
 lution ; or, even the kings of France, notified by. 
 the seignior, might come to help in suppressing 
 the revolt. 
 
 The kings of France, whatever may have been 
 said, did not, at least in the beginning, wish to 
 favor the communes ; they rather opposed them as 
 effects of that spirit of independence, which is al- 
 ways suspected by the masters of the world. 
 But this first and natural inclination of the kings 
 often yielded to their interests ; and they frequently 
 supported the communes against the seigniors, 
 either to degrade those lords towards whom they 
 ielt ill will, or because the communes had bought 
 their protection with good money. 
 
 This was the situation of the communists the 
 day after their uprising. They had many chances 
 against them, and, indeed, a large number of com- 
 munes were destroyed, stifled in blood at their 
 birth ; others, on the contrary, at first crushed 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 85 
 
 and apparently dead, revived, were annihilated a 
 second time, again revived, and this sometimes 
 three or four times with unconquerable vitality. 
 Others had an easy, scarce-questioned existence. 
 Some even were formed with the consent of their 
 seigniors, who were more just and enlightened 
 than their contemporaries. All the diversities of 
 fortune possible to individuals were felt by the 
 communes. The southern communes, as a rule, had 
 more brilliant careers than the northern ones, be- 
 cause there were more burgesses and fewer nobles 
 among them. ^ 
 
 We come now to events , within the commune. 
 We said that the leaders of the movement gave 
 their first attention to framing a communal charter. 
 This charter was to the city, what, in our century, 
 the constitutions are to all France. In the char- 
 ter was first decreed what should be the future 
 relations between communists and seigniors, what 
 taxes they should pay him, what they should re- 
 pudiate. Of course, they largely reduced the list, 
 the revolution being undertaken for this purpose ; 
 and sometimes they abolished taxes altogether. 
 The charter then fixed the number of magistrates 
 in the commune, the duties of these magistrates, 
 the extent of their powers, and the form by which 
 they should be elected. Usually, the magistrates 
 
86 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 in office were invested with the right of present- 
 ing their successors before a popular meeting, to 
 be accepted or refused by acclamation. At first, 
 this, no doubt, was a serious formality ; but it soon 
 became a mere ceremony. In other cities, the 
 magistrates offered two or three names, instead of 
 one, that the people might at least make a choice. 
 We know the names borne by these magistrates, — 
 > sheriffs, mayors, consuls, councillors; the length 
 of their term of office varied in different places 
 from one to three or five years. In these points, 
 the charters of the communes resembled the con- 
 stitutions, to which we compared them. But they 
 differed from these, and went further, in having, 
 in a rudimentary state, a civil and criminal code, 
 wherein general principles for the judgment of 
 cases were given, and the forms expounded by 
 which judges should decide civil as well as crimi- 
 nal law. There were also rules, sometimes ex- 
 tremely detailed, for the police of the city. In 
 short, all matters which the deputies of France 
 and the executive power, either separately or col- 
 lectively, regulate at the present day, were then^ 
 regulated by this single communal charter, though, 
 of course, with much less of accuracy and detail. 
 I said that each of these cities formed a sort of 
 little nation. This was absolutely true of certain 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 87 
 
 communes in the south, which were really inde- 
 pendent republics, coining money, and making 
 peace or war, either with other cities or with 
 neighboring lords. These large cities, like Tou- 
 louse, for instance, were dependent on their nomi- 
 nal sot'ereigns only ,in theory, and, in the height 
 of their prosperity, hardly paid even the duties of 
 deference ; the name of republics alone was lacking. 
 
 As there were infinite diversities in the fate of 
 the communes and equally numerous degrees in 
 the liberties they enjoyed, some going to the ex- 
 treme limit of independence, others stopping half- 
 way, or on the very threshold of the path, so 
 there were communes of all degrees of size and 
 importance, from Toulouse, of which 1 just spoke 
 and which had perhaps 150,000 inhabitants, to 
 some burgage of YOO or 800 souls. They ev?^^ 
 sprang up where there was no community, among 
 peasants in scattered huts. These, historians call 
 rural communes ; but they were scarce, while the 
 others, the civic communes, swarmed for a time 
 like ant-hills Many, doubtless, did not long sur- 
 vive, but some trace always remained. 
 
 Wherever the cominune did hold, a gap was 
 made in the feudal system. Its compactness was 
 broken ; and not only within the communal city did 
 the feudal system languish, or wholly disappear, 
 
88 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 but in the surrounding country the effect of the 
 revolution made itself felt. The seigniors, half- 
 ruined by the loss of their civic subjects, and 
 sometimes, too, by the wars which the latter 
 waged against them, had so much the less strength 
 to hold under the old yoke their rural su^jyects, 
 who, on the other hand, were less disposed to pa- 
 tience. Everywhere, the lords were themselves 
 forced to lighten the burden, lest it should be 
 wholly cast aside. 
 
 The communes were, if the expression may be 
 allowed, the first attack of that mortal illness, 
 which was eventually to destroy feudalism. Roy- 
 alty did not sanction them ; but of themselves they 
 assumed the duty of putting an end to the feudal 
 system. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Before showing how the royal power, little by 
 little, reduced, or rather absorbed, the power of 
 each seignior, it will be wise briefly to recapitu- 
 late the nature of feudalism in the eleventh cen- 
 tury. 
 
 The soil of France was divided into a multitude 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 89 
 
 of seigniories, little hierarchical kingdoms, of dif- 
 ferent ranks. Each seigniory, was, on one side, 
 the vassal of a higher seigniory, and, on the other, 
 suzerain of a lower one. At the two extremities 
 of the ladder were the seigniories which were, 
 in point of fact, independent of any suzerains, and 
 the seigniories which were without vassals : this 
 state of things was on the verge of a change ; 
 the kings of France were about to seek, and gain 
 suzerainty over all seigniories, from the smallest 
 to the greatest. 
 
 Every vassal owed his seignior homage for his 
 land, when he entered upon possession at the death 
 of his father ; this homage was a ceremony, by 
 which the vassal, figuratively, resigned the estate 
 to his suzerain, who restored it as a gift in re- 
 turn for promise of services. 
 
 The vassal promised to follow the suzerain to 
 war, to lend him the aid of the sword in certain 
 specified cases, to help him even with money ; and 
 the ^suzerain in turn swore to protect the vassal. 
 
 This was the sum of the relations of seigniors 
 one to another. 
 
 Now for the other side of feudalism — the atti- 
 tude of the seignior towards the men who inhab- 
 ited his seigniory. 
 
 We said, that, at the end of the tenth century, 
 
90 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 there were very few freemen in the country ; still, 
 there were some whom the seignior either had not 
 reduced to servitude, or, having made serfs, .had 
 afterwards freed, so that in each seigiriory there 
 were, 1st, freerden ; 2nd, serfs. 
 
 Servitude, was, by no means, a uniform condi- 
 tion in all the seigniories, though it would be 
 impossible to enumerate the many fine distinctions. 
 SuflSce it to note the two great divisions, personal 
 serfs, and land serfs. 
 
 Personal. -sarfs, or serfs of the suite, were al- 
 most slaves ; custom prevented their sale, but 
 that was the only point of difference. Their 
 masters could transfer them from one farm to an- 
 othei|^ change their trade, require all their time 
 and labor, put them in chains at pleasure, and seize 
 them in any place to which .they had fled. 
 
 Land serfa were less serfs of the seignior, than 
 of the soil. The seignior could not separate them 
 from an estate, nor require other service from 
 them than that belonging to their business of ag- 
 riculture. Generally, they could run away, leav- 
 ing every thing behind them ; and the seignior had 
 no right to pursue them. In this last class 
 were, however, essential diJBferences. Some serfs 
 had certain fixed rents to pay, and a regular 
 amount of work to do, beyond which nothing 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 9I 
 
 could be claimed by the seignior ; others were 
 wholly at the mercy of their lord in these respects. 
 Some, although subject to his pleasure in rents and 
 labor, had a right to bequeath their property, while 
 otbers, though only bound by fixed obligations, 
 could make no wills. These latter, were said to 
 be in mortmain ; for they lived freemen and died 
 slaves ; whereas, the former lived slaves and died 
 freemen. Besides all these, were some who were 
 not only subject to the will of their seignior 
 through, life, but after death were subject to mort- 
 main ; they held, after personal serfs, the lowest 
 rank in the feudal hierarchy, 
 
 And even in mortmain, there were degrees. 
 Some could bequeath nothing, and the seignior in- 
 herited all their property ; others could dispose of 
 their furniture ; still others, of only a portion of 
 it. It must be understood that the serf, under no 
 circumstances, could bequeath his property, with- 
 out the tacit consent of his heir to pay, in his 
 turn, the same duties to his seignior. 
 
 Serfs, as a rule, could not marry without the 
 sanction of their seigniors. 
 
 To the serfs, the seignior was, as we see, more 
 than a king : he was, in some degree, their pos- 
 sessor ; with personal serfs, he was actually this, 
 owning them, as one owns any thing, and doing 
 
92 A SHORT HISTORY . 
 
 with them as he willed. Let us return, however, 
 to the different services he could exact from them. 
 
 First, a kind of tax, the taille ; but it was not 
 the same from all serfs. As we said, there were 
 some from whom the seignior could claim as much 
 as he liked, whenever he liked ; these were tax- 
 able at will : others from whom he could claim 
 one taille a year, the sum being fixed ; these were 
 called bound serfs. This was the ordinary taille ; 
 but, besides, there was an extraordinary taille pay- 
 able on four occasions, 1st, when the eldest son 
 of the seignior, having come of age, was armed 
 and knighted ; 2nd, when the eldest daughter was 
 married ; 3rd, when the seignior went on a cru- 
 sade or to war ; 4th, when a seignior was made 
 prisoner, and needed a ransom.* 
 
 The Gorveeif. — We must consider a seigniory 
 as separated into two great divisions, 1st, the land 
 which the seignior had granted, or was supposed 
 to have granted, for cultivation, either to serfs or 
 to freemen ; 2nd, the land which he kept around 
 his castle for his own domains. If we do not 
 
 *NoTE. — We warn the reader, once for all, that we are 
 describing only the most common conditions. In thfe middle 
 a<res, there was an infinite diversity in every thing ; and the 
 book would never come to an end should we try to give every 
 exception. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 93 
 
 keep this distinction clear, we shall have no ex- 
 act knowledge of corvees. This, the seigniorial 
 domain, was cultivated by Inhabitants of the 
 seigniory, who worked by corvees, that is, each 
 person must give to this estate one, two, or three 
 days of labor in each week ; generally, the kind 
 of labor to be given by each family was specified, 
 some to plough, others to reap, others to stack 
 the hay. Not only the cultivation of the land was 
 done by cormes, but house service also ; one wo- 
 man was to do the sweeping Wednesday, another, 
 Sunday ; one man must drive the lord on his 
 travels, another must cut clothes for the soldiers," 
 &c We shall presently see the origin of the cor- 
 vees. 
 
 Let us now pass to the hanalites, or monopolies. 
 There was in each seigniory but one oven, one 
 granary, one mill, — all the property of the 
 seignior. The inhabitants of the seigniories could 
 bake their bread, store their grain, and grind 
 their corn nowhere but in these ovens, granaries, 
 and mills, and, of course, the lords fixed the ratos 
 to be paid. This obligation bore very heavily 
 upon the people, not because the prices charged 
 were exorbitant, but because of the many attend- 
 ant, inconveniences ; for example, there being 
 only one mill, it was crowded, — men coming 
 
94 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 from the extreme limits of tlie seigniory were 
 sometimes obliged to wait several days for their 
 turn. 
 
 The seigniory, instead of being pierced through- 
 out with highways, had few roads, all of which 
 were in bad condition. A carriage could hardly 
 have been dragged through the mud in winter ; 
 but there were no carriages, only two-wheeled 
 carts used for transporting the harvest. The road 
 was also used by horsemen, neighboring seigniors 
 or merchants. 
 
 These roads had been built by peasants, either 
 spontaneously or by corvees, at the order of the 
 seignior. For this reason, the seignior claimed 
 a toll from each passenger. At a certain spot, a 
 chain was hung across the way, and guarded by 
 two or three disreputable looking men, who might 
 easily have been mistaken for robbers, and who 
 never drew the chain aside until the toll was 
 paid. 
 
 Such were the general claims affecting all serfs. 
 Besides these were many, some affecting this class 
 of people, others that class. Serfs about to marry 
 must buy a for-mariage, or license ; artisans start- 
 ing in trade must pay fees, which we will not 
 enumerate, as they have various names; mer- 
 chants selling in the market-place or at seigniorial 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 95 
 
 fairs must pay aides, or duties, upon the value of 
 objects sold. 
 
 The serfs were not the only ones from whom 
 corvees and taille were demanded ; freemen, too, 
 were subject to them, but naturally paid only a 
 fixed amount, like the better class of serfs. They 
 were exempt from marriage fees and mortmain ; 
 their corvees, too, were less heavy, but they had 
 to pay a cens, or quit-rent, from which serfs were 
 free. The land which the freeman owned was 
 considered to have belonged originally to the 
 seignior, who had sold or ceded it to the freeman 
 in return for a rent. The cejis was this rent. 
 
 This quit-rent was accompanied by the fee for 
 lods and ventes. Whenever a freeman sold or gave 
 away this land, which was always considered to 
 belong- to his suzerain, he was forced to receive a 
 warrant of the deed from the seignior, and pay in 
 return a fee. Lods and ventes corresponded to the 
 fees for registry of deeds, collected for the benefit 
 of the State, which we have now. Summed^-up, 
 the freeman was distinguished from the serf, 1st, 
 in his power to bestow, exchange, or bequeath 
 his property ; 2nd, in his freedom .from certain 
 corporal punishments, which the master could in- 
 flict upon serfs. Now we will return to royalty. 
 
gS A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 XVII. 
 
 The royal power, almost annihilated under Louis 
 the Debonair, son of Charlemagne, began to in- 
 crease in the twelfth century, and rose quickly. 
 The kings began to play, and to play in good 
 faith, a part which conciliated all the down-trod- 
 den ; they offered themselves as guardians of order 
 and security. 
 
 The grateful people lent their aid against the 
 seigniors, and helped to make the kings absolute 
 masters of the nobles, and of themselves as well. 
 
 This point reached, royalty exercised upon the 
 people all the excesses inseparable from absolute 
 power ; and these excesses inevitably produced 
 the Revolution of 1189. 
 
 The communes had been the spontaneous crea- 
 tion of people resolved to gain liberty by their 
 own hands. Unfortunately, in the twelfth century, 
 the people thought they could all together make a 
 similar attempt, and that the king would be their 
 savior. They were cruelly deceived : the first 
 things royalty destroyed were the communes ; 
 then feudalism, soon after. 
 
 If royalty had continued weak, feudalism would, 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 97 
 
 in all probability, have lasted longer ; the com- 
 munes would have taken more time for its over- 
 throw ; but the result would have been the same. 
 The destiny of France would have been different, 
 and probably her part in the drama less brilliant : 
 it is to be supposed that we should have missed 
 some adventures of world-wide celebrity, and some 
 glory, or rather fame ; but probably also we should 
 now be richer, more peaceful, more free, and more 
 happy. 
 
 It was in the nature of things that royalty 
 should rise in power. Ord ex, justice, and security 
 are indispensible blessings. They had been so cru- 
 elly lacking, their need had become so pressing, 
 that the power which promised, and seemed able 
 to give them, had upon its side, naturally, all the 
 world except the feudal brigands. Even these 
 might be moved by it, because justice never 
 wholly loses its empire over the human soul, and 
 royalty was the plainly indicated power destined 
 to this office of justice. In fact, royalty has, in 
 all time, but one plea for existence, — the need 
 of a central force regulating every thing, that jus- 
 tice may reign and order prevail. Doubtless the 
 priests first unfolded to the Capetian kings the 
 character belonging to their title ; for history re- 
 cords that the Capetian princes were very devout, 
 
98 * A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 • 
 
 and extremely submissive to the influence of the 
 clergy. ^ 
 
 The Capetians were not the legitimate success-, 
 ors of Charlemagne nor of the Roman emperors ; 
 but they held the same position, and well knew, 
 that, for centuries, supreme power had belonged 
 to the title they bore, and they naturally cher- 
 ished the ambition and hope, that they might 
 some day recover the authority of their rank. 
 The seigniors themselt^es were disposed to grant 
 to the name of king a certain moral superiority, 
 — an indefinite respect, which indeed was followed 
 by no effective obedience, but still it was gener- 
 ally conceded among them that the king of France 
 had the right of suzerain over all the seigniors. 
 
 This point was not to be scorned : the kings, 
 starting thence, could exact and attempt much 
 without departing from feudal law. 
 
 Louis VI, called the Fat, fourth successor of 
 Hugh Capet, and also his successors Louis VII, 
 Philip Augustus, and Saint Louis, w^:cked, in the 
 first plaice, to change their nominal into actual 
 sovereignty. 
 
 If they had seemed animated solely by personal 
 ambition, they might not have succeeded so eas- 
 ily ; but, profiting by the teachings of the clergy, 
 they presented themselves as born defenders of 
 
 / 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 
 
 99 
 
 the weak, and guardians of order. These attributes 
 of royalty first clearly showed themselves in Louis 
 the Fat. He had as yet few resources, and especially 
 was lacking in * soldiers, so that he had to limit 
 his -deeds to the narrow sphere of his own do- 
 mains — the Isle of France and Orleans; but, on 
 this small theatre, at least, he valiantly played his 
 part. Whenever his help was asked, by a seignior 
 oppressed by a stronger, — by an abbey or church 
 molested by neighboring lords, — there he has- 
 tened, always in the field, always in harness. His 
 life was spent in obscure but useful strife with 
 the barons of the Isle of France, with the Bou- 
 chards, lords of Montmorency ; with the lords of 
 Monthlery, • of Puiset, and of Coucy, — who were 
 almost as powerful as himself. 
 
 We can, however, imagine the effect produced 
 in countries tyrannized by these seigniors, by the 
 recital of his expeditions, as they were doubtless 
 told and commented upon by the priests, who were 
 devoted to the new royalty. f^Serfs, peasants, and 
 laborers had. henceforth a protector and avenger : 
 there was at last some one on earth who wished 
 roads to be safe, the life of the unarmed husband- 
 man to be protected, villages to be spared from 
 flames ; and this man was the King of France. 
 I'he- history of the royal deeds and exploits, scat- 
 
lOO A 'SHORT HISTORY 
 
 tered broadcast by the priests, quickly reached 
 the extreijie limits of France, penetrating every- 
 where : this, at least, is probable. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The work of Louis the Fat consisted, as we 
 said, in confirming his position as king, and in es- 
 tablishing the actual power of royalty over his 
 immediate vassals, the seigniors who held from 
 him directly, without intermediary. 
 
 Louis yil, son of Louis VI, did nothing for his 
 part but make a very brilliant marriage. Eleanor 
 of Aquitaine brought him, as dowry, nearly all 
 the south of France, — Touraine, Poitou, Saintonge, 
 and Aquitaine. An explanation is here necessary. 
 The states, properly speaking, of Louis the. Fat, 
 comprised about five of our departments — Seine, 
 Seine et Oise, Seine et Marne, Oise, and Loiret. 
 But we must understand the nature of the regal 
 power over these so-called royal states, and the 
 manner in which the king owned them ; for this 
 had nothing in common with the manner of royal 
 possession in the present. 
 
 These royal„stata& were, ^sL the domain, — the 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. lOI 
 
 lands or cities belonging to him and to him alone, 
 — where he reigned, administered justice, and 
 levied taxes at his own will. There he was sole 
 seignior, absolute master; 2nd, the estates com- 
 posed of seigniories which held direct from the king. 
 The owners of these seigniories were obliged to 
 swear fealty to the king, pay him taille in certain 
 cases, help him in the administration of justice, 
 follow him to war ; and these duties they could, 
 under no pretext, evade. Besides these domains 
 and estates, he held suzerainty over indirect seign- 
 iories. I will cite an example to show the posi- 
 tion of those seigniors who held indirectly. The 
 lords of Normandy had the king for suzerain, but 
 the King of England, Duke of Normandy, for 
 direct seignior. They owed the King of France 
 fealty, taxes, assistance, military service ; but they 
 owed these through their direct seignior, the duke. 
 Wheti the king clainied their services, it must be 
 through the duke. The latter was, in theory, ob- 
 liged to grant the royal behest ; but, in practice, 
 if he refused, the Norman lords were exempt. 
 They were free, as regarded the king, whenever 
 the duke chose to free them, his orders, by feudal 
 right, antedating those of the king. Now, suppos- 
 ing the duke revolted, and made war against the 
 king, the seigniors were bound to follow the duke, 
 
I02 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 who thus, so to speak, took all guilt upon him- 
 self. We see it made a decided difference to the 
 king whether he held direct seigniory or suzer- 
 ainty. 
 
 I repeat, the seigniory of the king extended 
 only over five of our departments f his suzerainty 
 extended over alinost all France, theoretically 
 speaking ; but this suzerainty can be easily es.ti- 
 mated, as well as the respect paid by powerful 
 lords, like the Duke of Normandy, King of Eng- 
 land, or the Count of Toulouse, possessor of a 
 large part of the south, to the distant suzerainty 
 of a king, whose direct and present power the 
 petty seigniors of the Isle of France did not heed. 
 So, when I say that Eleanor of Aquitaine brought 
 to Louis VII, Touraiine, Aquitaine, &c., it means 
 that Eleanor owned these provinces, and brought 
 them to the king, with all the distinctions pre- 
 viously mentioned as existing in his own state, 
 1st, domains ; 2nd, direct seigniories ; 3rd, suzer- 
 ainty. 
 
 Unhappily for royalty, this marriage did nol pro- 
 duce its expected fruit. It was soon broken by 
 divorce ; and Eleanpr then tnarried the King of 
 England, to whose house she carried her large 
 possessions, so that the King of England, already 
 Duke of Normandy, became in France a much 
 more powerful seignior than its king. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. IO3 
 
 Under the same Louis VII, a new opinion was 
 established, a new point of rights, which was 
 more profitable than his martiage with the rich 
 Eleanor. The communal sities claimed to hold di- 
 rect from the king ; they claimed that by him 
 alone they were raised into communes, that they 
 had left the domains of their natural seigniors to 
 enter that of the king. This was an idea utterly 
 at variance with every thing previously established, 
 and contrary to all the principles of feudalism. 
 The interest which the inhabitants of communal 
 cities had . in holding direct from the king, and 
 their motive in proposing and upholding this new 
 revolutionary measure are easily understood. Sup- 
 pose the commune had lawsuits with the seigniors 
 as to the taxes to be paid said seigniors (and the 
 commune was never free from these lawsuits), the 
 seignior was judge of the case, judge and con- 
 testant at the same time ; this was revolting* to 
 equity and common sense* So, when the commun- 
 ists said, " We will hold direct from the king," 
 it was the same as to say, " Let the king be 
 judge between the city and the seignior, for the 
 latter cannot at once be judge and. contestant." 
 
 • Such was originally the meaning of the proverb, 
 that the communes held dire.ct from the king. 
 Later came more radical consequences. If the 
 
I04 A SHORT HISTOEY 
 
 commune held direct from the king and he was 
 the lawful seignior, of what use was the other, the 
 former seignior ? Logic led to this conclusion. 
 The burgesses, besides, abhorred the old seigniors, 
 the secular tyrants, who had so molested them. 
 Royalty, on the contrary, had as yet done them 
 no harm ; little did they know it ; they looked 
 upon the king as their support and savior. Im- 
 bued with ancient ideas, which were re-awakened 
 by the clergy, they fixed their hopes upon the 
 king. On all sides, they called him to crush the 
 feudal world, and resume the character of the Ro- 
 man emperor. 
 
 I have said that the kings entered upon Iheir 
 part without full knowledge of how it should be 
 performed, so that they acted it very unequally. 
 They often abandoned it to become again" purely 
 feudal sovereigns. Frequently, for a small present 
 gain, they betrayed their more considerable inter- 
 ests, by aiding feudalism,' their natural enemy, 
 against the communes, their necessary allies. 
 
 The new rights could not instantly produce the 
 extreme consequences I mentioned just now ; but 
 the first result was this. The quarrels and law- 
 suits of seigniors against communes, that is, im- 
 portant cases, where large interests were at stake, 
 were carried directly before the royal tribunal. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. IO5 
 
 The royal judges thus saw their jurisdiction ex- 
 tended far beyond the royal domain ; and dwellers 
 in cities, the richest, most active, and most en- 
 lightened of the nation, became their clients in all 
 communal cases. . 
 
 Soon followed another innovation of great im- 
 port ; this time, not from the people, but from the 
 king. As a remarkable fact, it had, like the first 
 change, its pretext and motive in an idea of equity, 
 and, like the first, dealt with the forms of justice. 
 
 The serfs and villeins, men free, but not noble, 
 were judged in both civil and criminal cases by 
 the seignior, or, rather, by an officer representing 
 him. This officer usually bore the title of bailiff, 
 and was almost always a very bad judge, answer- 
 ing to none of the conditions which guarantee 
 the integrity and impartiality of a magistrate.' 
 He depended absolutely upon tho seignior, had 
 made no especial study, held no rank, either by 
 origin or knowledge, was a man born and bred in 
 the neighborhood, having consequently relatives, 
 allies, friends, and enemies ; and, finally, he was 
 accountable only to the seignior, whose object was, 
 by no means, to secure good ancl true justice for 
 his serfs and villeins. If cases between subjects 
 were ill-judged, how much more so were cases be- 
 tween subject and seigniors 1 It is easy to* imag- 
 
I06 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 ine the reception which the claims of the serf 
 met from the petty officer, who was all devotion 
 to his lord. So it was very rare for the serf, who 
 had been defrauded, or aggrieved by his seignior, 
 to have recourse to the delusive justice of the 
 bailiff. He choked down his wrath and hatred, 
 and bore all in silence ; or, if a man of energy and 
 resolution, he avenged himself, as best he might, 
 then fled to the forest. He was always sure to 
 find there a large band of energetic people, who, 
 wronged like himself, had broken their bonds by 
 some crime ; and he helped to increase this com- 
 pany, which was perforce obliged to support life 
 by theft and brigandage. 
 
 One thing, of which people most vividly felt the 
 need, was assuredly justice. You have seen, from 
 what I have jiist said, how harshly the people of 
 the middle ages were kept from it. They had 
 been starving for justice for centuries, when the 
 king, Philip Augustus, successor to Louis VII, 
 created his grand bailiffs and grand seneschals. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Until the reign of Philip Augustus, 'the kings 
 had, in their domains, only bailiffs, sen.eschals; and 
 
OF. THE FRENCH PEOPLE. IO7 
 
 petty judges of no weight or dignit}'', who were put 
 ill charge of each province, and were, in all respects, 
 similar to the judges appointed by the seigniors. 
 This, state of. things could not last. 'With the 
 growth of royalty came new duties, for- which 
 new instruments were necessary. " Philip Augustus 
 created grand bailiffs and grand seneschals, who 
 were, of course, very different personages from 
 the old provincial judges. At first, the king chose 
 for these duties the chief lords of the nobility, 
 who held direct from him, giving them all the 
 honor and power with which royalt^f could then 
 invest its representatives ; these officers were fur- 
 nished with a household train, sergeants at com- 
 mand, and as much money as the king could sup- 
 ply. Thus equipped, each started for his appointed 
 province. Some went to communal cities, in vir- 
 tue *of the new principle, that these cities held 
 from the king, others to those strongholds which 
 the king had bought on purpose from needy lords. 
 Having these castles and cities for their general 
 residence, part of their time was spent traveling 
 from place .to place, throughout the province, to 
 administer justice, — to the communes first ; that 
 was an established fact; then, and this was an 
 immense innovation, to each dependent of a 
 seignior, who, having been previously sentenced 
 
roS A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 by his lord, felt the decision unjust, and wished to 
 appeal to the justice of the king ; a whole revo- 
 lution lay within this system. 
 
 At the -oewSj that there was in the land a man 
 sent by the king to reform and set aside the de- 
 cisions of the seigniors, in a word, to judge their 
 judgments, the population started up and appealed 
 from all sides. The seigniors were astonished and 
 indignant, but none the less alarmed. The bailiff, 
 that great personage, with his train, his band of 
 sergeants, appeared, resolute to gain respect for 
 the royal orders, and capable of forcing this re- 
 spect from even the most powerful lords. Still 
 some of the more violent dared an indirect ' resis- 
 tance ; they maltreated, sometimes with extreme 
 cruelty, those of their subjects who were so in- 
 solent as to appeal. This was playing into the 
 royal hands ; for the bailiffs instantly took the^field 
 with their sergeants, seized, easily or forcibly, the 
 castle of the recalcitrant lord, and confiscated his 
 office until he made amends. Several seigniorial 
 justices were thus suspended, some even perma- 
 nently superseded. 
 
 The machine by which royalty could undermine 
 and. destroy its enemies was at last found, and, as 
 time went on, the royal courts shattered, piece 
 by piece, the feudal system. Our history is a full. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 
 
 109 
 
 confirmation of the political axiom, " Whoever has 
 the judges on his side, will eventually have every- 
 thing." 
 
 The clergy, as we saw, suggested the truce of 
 God, to restrain, as far as possible, the horrors of 
 private warfare* Philip Augustus, with similar 
 design, proposed the quarantaine, or fyrty days 
 of the king. We must understand, that, whenever 
 a noble had been insulted or aggrieved by an- 
 other, he rarely failed to act in the honorable 
 manner I am about to describe, ^e would mount 
 his horse, and go any distance to attack soma 
 relative of his foe, who^ having heard nothing of 
 the quarrel-, was resting in unsuspicious peace. 
 Our Saron had a fine chance against people taken 
 thus unawares ; he could triumph without diffi- 
 culty, and rob without resistance. The king de- 
 creed that the offended party could not begin a 
 war against the relatives of the offender until 
 forty days after the dispute, so that those latter 
 might have time to be warned, and prepare for 
 defence. 
 
 The reader must see the barbaric absurdity of 
 those wars, which should at least have been lim- 
 ited to the two contestants, without involving their 
 kiiidred ; he must also see how little of knightly 
 spirit there was among knights. 
 
no A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 XX 
 
 Saint Louis went even further than Philip Au- 
 gustus, by giving to those who through fear, or any- 
 other motive, were unwilling to engage in war, 
 means to prevent the opposite party from waging 
 it against them. They had, according to the terms 
 of the statute, only to require surety from their ad- 
 versary, that is, assurance of peace, and the lat- 
 ter, also by the terms of the statute, could not 
 refuse this assurance, if the former at the same 
 time declared that they referred the settlement of 
 the quarrel to the tribunal of the lord suzerain. 
 Saint Louis also decreed the punishment of the 
 gallows to any one refusing this assurance, and de- 
 clared his statute binding, not only upon the royal 
 states, but upon all the fiefs of France, in this 
 overstepping his rights as suzerain. In his own 
 states, he dared still more, forbidding purely and 
 simply all private warfare ; but this was too much 
 for that age, and he was not obeyed. Even a 
 hundred years later, the kings were not strong 
 enough to put an entire stop to these wars ^n 
 their own domain : they did not try, but contented 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. Ill 
 
 themselves with enforcing, as well as they could, 
 the quarantaine of the king. 
 
 Saint Louis also attacked the judicial duel. 
 Other -ordeals, which we have noted, — ordeals by 
 fire, water, &c., — had fallen almost wholly into des- 
 uetude : people at last had come to realize that 
 God did not always interfere, and command the 
 elements to proclaim innocence ; but, strange to 
 say, the judicial duel continued in full force. 
 Whenever a case was involved in doubt, the judges 
 avoided the difficulty by ordering a duel, nor was 
 this duel allowed only to nobles. Plebeians asked 
 and obtained it, first among themselves, then even 
 against nobles, on condition that they should enter 
 the lists armed with only a stick and a leather 
 shield against the noble armed at all points and 
 mounted on a great war-horse. In case a noble 
 demanded the combat against a villein, he must 
 fight on foot with the weapons of a villein. 
 
 We must not be deluded into the idea that the 
 two principals alone fought together ; they also 
 fought with the witn^esses, whose testimony had 
 annoyed them ; and to gain permission from the 
 judges for this combat, they had but to accuse 
 these witnesses of perjury, so that the latter could 
 not be very eager to help justice, ' when, thereby, 
 they risked their lives. It is. true they could 
 
112 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 and often did fight by proxy ; there were cham- 
 pions ready to sell their services. 
 
 The principals also fought with the tribunal : who- 
 ever thought himself ill-judged was allowed to 
 gwe the lie to the judgment, that is, challenge the 
 judges, as false and faithless magistrates ; and, if 
 the judges succumbed, one after another, it was 
 granted that they had indeed given a wrong sen- 
 tence ; the skilful pleader had won his case. 
 This chilled all desire in the barons to,be judges ; 
 for, warriors though they might.be, they did not 
 care to have dangerous quarrels for the simple 
 pleasure of doing service to the public, by filling 
 an office, which was, in other respects, burden- 
 some. 
 
 Saint Louis abolished the duel in his states ; but 
 even there, in his own land, he had to draw back. 
 Under his successors, the duel was not absolutely 
 forbidden; but permission had to be asked of the 
 king, who sometimes granted it, so as not to ap- 
 pear to prohibit the duel altogether. 
 
 XXI.' n/ 
 
 Philip the Handsome was really the .first mod- 
 ern king, the first prince who had a full and en- 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. II3 
 
 tire conviction of the illimitable rights of royal 
 prerogative ; the first, too, who bore himself with 
 majesty on every occasion where he found him- 
 self strongest. It was not, perhaps, that he was 
 more capable or more intelligent than his prede- 
 cessors, nor that, with clearer eye, he pierced the 
 future, and saw what was to be ; but a violent 
 taste for despotism, a tyrant nature, took the place 
 of this far-seeing vision ; and, besides, he never 
 knew a conscience. Louis IX and Philip the 
 Bold were scrupulous men, — Saint Louis, especially, 
 — who allowed themselves to be impressed by old 
 beliefs, and, in the face of the protestations of 
 feudalism, asked themselves whether the rights 
 claimed by the seigniors were not rights indeed. 
 Philip the Handsome never .felt this kind of 
 doubt. 
 
 There was, in . the twelfth century, a sort of 
 renaissance after so many barren ages ; poets and 
 philosophers of real talent at last appeared, and a 
 host of men began to study antiquity. Whilst 
 some souls were absorbed in boundless admiration 
 of Greek philosophy, others were enthusiastic over 
 Roman law, which had continued the law of the 
 southern provinces.' At the period of which I am' 
 speaking, the study of Roman law had spread 
 through all the provinces : in the districts gov- 
 
114 ^ SHORT HISTORY 
 
 erned by common law, judges and lawyers com- 
 paring the diversities and confusion of their stat- 
 utes with the fine logical unity of the Koman 
 (3ode, were seized with unanimous prejudice against 
 their own, and unbounded predilection for the 
 
 _, Roman law, which became, in their eyes, a model 
 by which, gradually, to reform the established sys- 
 tem. 
 
 Now this old Eoman world, whose institutions 
 were so much admired, had, at the last, been ruled 
 by the absolute power of a single man. The em- 
 peror became the living law. Consequently, all 
 lawyers professed and propagated the idea, that 
 
 I the king, representing the emperor in society, ought 
 to be sole and absolute master of all, nobles as 
 well as serfs, priests as well as laymen. ''As wills 
 the king, so wills* the law,'^ became the maxim of 
 all students and practitioners of. the* law. Feud- 
 alism, already so hateful to the middle classes, to 
 the people, saw roused against' it; a new class of 
 men, learned, laborious, active, endowed with that 
 inflexibility which comes from habits of logic, and 
 animated by an aversion at once instinctive and 
 reasoning. Royalty would naturally employ such 
 men as judges, administrators, and agents. They 
 were valuable by reason of their devotion, their 
 superior knowledge, and tlie public respect for 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. II5 
 
 learning, which was then held in the highest es- 
 teem. 
 
 The royal seneschals and bailiffs, and the mem- 
 bers of the parliaments, had originally been chosen, 
 for the most part, from nobles and men of the 
 sword. Under Philip the Handsome, this class al- 
 most wholly disappeared from public office, and was 
 replaced by lawyers. With these new-comers, le- 
 gal warfare, warfare by means of decrees, which 
 royalty had begun to issue against the seigniors, 
 was continued with incomparable energy and rigor. 
 
 At this moment in our history occurred a con- 
 siderable revolution in the condition of the masses, 
 a revolution of which we must here speak, although 
 it was not a result of the movement we have just 
 mentioned, -but rather developed beside it. 
 
 There had been in all ages some enfranchise- 
 ments, but they were few in proportion to the 
 number of serfs, and did not diminish the general 
 servitude ; for, while one serf would now ' and then 
 be freed, diverse causes daily reduced freemen to 
 bondage. In many places, the free immigrant would, 
 within a certain time, find himself a serf; for who- 
 ever through misfortune or fault became poor, un- 
 less he developed into Bohemian or thief, must 
 submit to servitude to gain support. The rank of 
 journeyman did not exist ; a freeman could not 
 
Il6 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 live without land, for which he must apply to the 
 seignior, who naturally granted it on the hardest 
 terms, as a merchant sells at the highest price 
 the food which is an actual necessity. 
 
 In. the thirteenth century, there was a marked ten- 
 dency among the seigniors to free the masses, 
 the opinion having spread among them that it 
 would be a good speculation, as indeed it was. 
 The serfs, working not for their own profit, worked 
 but feebly. It had taken centuries to reach this 
 truth ; but, in the thirteenth century, they did at 
 length reach it. Besides, this freedom was not 
 given gratuitously, it was sold. To the quit- 
 rents, which the freedman had henceforth to pay, 
 to the taille which he still paid, to his tithes and 
 corvees, was now added a special tax as the price 
 of his liberty. . His gain, on the other hand, was 
 the right to. save money, if he could, and bequeath 
 it to his children ; to marry without asking leave ; 
 and to give over his land to another, with this 
 condition*well understood, that the grantee should 
 be subject to all the duties of the grantor. If 
 then the serf gained in being no longer tied to the 
 soil, but free to go at his will, the seignior did 
 not iQse much. 
 
 The kings of France freed, in their domains, 
 many more than the other seigniors. Finally, on 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. II7 
 
 the third of July, 1315, Louis the Quarrelsome 
 freed all serfs by a statute, which is still fa- 
 mous. This statute proves, beyond question, that 
 the lords made this change, not from feelings of 
 justice, unseljSsh humanity, or religion, but from 
 i nterest an d calculation. Louis the Quarrelsome 
 says, in his statute, that his agents had orders to 
 treat with the serfs, on the conditions and price 
 of their liberty. These conditions were, in some 
 places, so heavy that the serfs preferred to remain 
 as they were. Philip^ ..the-Xong, successor to 
 Louis the Quarrelsome, tried to force them to 
 buy their freedom. We find, in the records of 
 the Parliament of Paris, papers authorizing the 
 serfs to remain in servitude, as they had peti- 
 tioned, so little profit could they reap from free- 
 dom. 
 
 However, whether the serfs chose to accept the 
 offers made them, or were forced to it, this is 
 certain : that, at the end of this century, servitude 
 was very limited, and, in some provinces, had 
 wholly disappeared. 
 
 Where it still continued, it grew less and less 
 with each century. It is injpossible to know ex- 
 actly the proportion of serfs to free peasants in 
 each age. In 1Y89, a few serfs still remained in 
 in nearly every canton of France. 
 
Il8 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 On the. other hand, this was the time when the 
 communes, having reached their highest p,oiDi^ji£ 
 prosperity and independence, began visibly to der, 
 cline. They had effected- -ag^mst feudalism, not 
 all it was in their nature to do, but all that des- 
 tiny committed to their charge ; they had weak- 
 ened it much, disorganized and divided it. They 
 were, in turn, to perish under the deadly weight 
 of royalty. The royal power, whose right to jud^e 
 and directly govern them they had recognized, was 
 now at work applying to its own profit the final 
 results of this dangerous principle, which it inter- 
 preted against them, and so claimed a i^^7Ze, and 
 the supervision of all municipal appointments. 
 The royal bailiffs and seneschals, in fact, ruled 
 all elections, and allowed or forbade^ at their will, 
 all the deeds of the chosen magistrates. Nothing 
 was done within the communes without, the con- 
 sent of these too powerful personages. By the 
 payment of tallies, the communes furnished the 
 kings with just the means to keep this power 
 and increase it by maintaining large bodies of ser- 
 geants, who made resistance henceforth as useless 
 for the communes as for the seigniors. Let the 
 burgesses daily increase their hoards of wealth ; 
 their toil was for the benefit of royalty, since they 
 provided the money wherewith to pay the gov- 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. II9 
 
 ernments and officers needed to reduce all to obe- 
 dience. 
 
 At the period we have now reached, the tri- 
 umph of roj^alty over the nobility and people, 
 though not complete, was assured ; the hardest 
 battle was fought, the rest would in time be won. 
 Doubtless, there must still be short intervals of re- 
 action, momentary backward movements towards 
 the re-establishment of feudalism, like that in the 
 beginning of the reign of Louis the Quarrelsome ; 
 but these were insignificant oscillations. The 
 social body, irrevocably started upon the modern 
 track, could not retrace its steps ; the right 
 claimed by ' the king to be supreme and final 
 master, was instilled in all hearts. . This idea had 
 taken possession of the conscience, and that suf- 
 ficed to secure the eventual triumph of royalty. 
 Neither accident nor misfortune could avail against 
 it. 
 
 The very war with. England, that is, the war 
 which the English kings waged against our sover- 
 eigns to deprive them of the kingdom of France, 
 that immense desolation of a hundred years, did 
 not interrupt the course of events. One of our 
 kings, Charles VII, could even sink, after the 
 English victories, to the last stage of weakness *, 
 royalty, none the less, continued, in principle. 
 
I20 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 the sovereign power to which all other must 
 yield. The day after that in which we drove the 
 English from the kingdom, Charles VII, who had 
 long been called in derision the King of Bourges, 
 found himself master of his land, in the face of 
 his lords, as if nothing had happened Eoyalty 
 had not lost one inch of ground ; and the feudal 
 barons had to bow before it, whether they would 
 or no, because its right had remained unques- 
 tioned in the heart of the masses. So true is it 
 that right, or what is believed right, always rules 
 the world ! 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Charles VII did two things, which strengthened 
 and organized the conquests of his predecessors, — 
 he made the taille and the army permanent. 
 
 With a standing army, the king had henceforth 
 
 in his hand a power which was all his own, and 
 
 which was always available for the subjection of 
 
 • • • 
 
 the nobles. Before, the army had been a meeting 
 
 of nobles, gathered together at the appeal of the 
 
 king to serve for a fixed time, as prescribed by 
 
 the feudal laws. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 121 
 
 This time having elapsed, the lords would dis- 
 band, and return home ; and the army would thus 
 be dissolved. Besides, this army, animated by the 
 feudal spirit, was, naturally, quite unmanageable. " 
 In case the king wished to put down the revolt 
 of a great vassal, all the lesser seigniors depend- 
 ent upon this chief, instead of enrolling them- - 
 selves in the royal army, would join the vassal, 
 and aid the revolt. Even those who followed the 
 king were not generally earnest to win for him a 
 complete victory ; they feared too great a tri- 
 umph, seeing between themselves and the vassal ,/ 
 a community of interests. So the feudal army was 
 neither so useful nor so safe for the king as regu- 
 lar troops, who were in his pay, and who, having left 
 home and family forever, had no interest beyond 
 that of the master who paid them. 
 
 The standing army had the further effect of 
 weakening the nobility. The more energetic and 
 martial lords entered the army in the rank of 
 officers. Once enrolled, they formed habits of 
 passive obedience,' of devotion to their supreme 
 head, their honor being staked on that fidelity, 
 which, in all times, has been the soul of military 
 bodies : the king could safely turn the arms of 
 the nobles against their own caste or even their 
 very families. Those lords who stayed in their 
 
122 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 castles were called to war only at long intervals, 
 on those occasions when the regular troops were 
 thought insufficient ; and, consequently, losing their 
 warlike spirit, their taste for arms, and skill in 
 combat, they became less defiant and bold. In 
 the standing army, the art of war grew more and 
 more perfect, as was natural ; for men learn 
 quickly those things to which they devote them- 
 selves with singleness of purpose, — those things 
 of which they make a trade. Every time the lords 
 were called to the feudal army, as happened occa- 
 sionally until the reign of Louis XIV, the superior- 
 ity of the regular troops over these home bands 
 was found more striking, till the feudal army be- 
 came an object of ridicule, and, under Louis XV, 
 ceased to be convoked. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Francis I instituted the Goyrt, and this had a 
 decisive influeiice upon the manners of the nobil- 
 ity. Those lords, whose respect royalty had diffi- 
 culty in keeping when they were at their castles, 
 having come to court, prostrated themselves before 
 the throne, and yielded obedience with their whole 
 hearts. ^A few words will describe this Gourt. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 23 
 
 The king lodged and fed in his own large pal- 
 ace, which was fitted for the purpose, the flower 
 of the French nobility. Some of these lords were 
 in his service, under the title of officers of his 
 household — as chamberlains, purveyors, equerries, 
 &c. Large numbers of domestic offices were cre- 
 ated solely as an excuse for their presence. Others 
 lived there, without duties, simply as guests. 
 All these, besides lodgjjag and food, had often 
 a pension as well. A third class were given only 
 a lodging, and provided their own table ; but all 
 were amused and entertained with various pleas- 
 ures, at the expense of the king. Balls, carousals, 
 stately ceremonials, grand dinners, theatricals, con- 
 versations inspired by the presence of fair women, 
 constant intercourse of all kinds, where each could 
 chose for himself, and where the refined and liter- 
 ary found a place as well as the vain and profli- 
 gate, — such was court life, a truly diff'erent thing 
 from the monotonous and brutal existence of the 
 feudal lord at his castle in the depths of tlie 
 province. So,' from all sides, nobles flocked to 
 court, to gratify both the most refined tastes and 
 the most degraded passions. Some came ho- 
 ping to make their fortune, a word from the king 
 sufficing to enrich a man ; others came to gain a 
 rank in the army, a lucrative post in the finance 
 
124 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 department, an abbey, or a bishopric. From the 
 time kings held court, it became almost a law, 
 that nothing should be granted to a nobleman who 
 lived beyond its pale. Those lords who persisted 
 in staying on their own estates were supposed to 
 rail against the admistration, or, as we of the pres- 
 ent would express it, to be in opposition. ''They 
 must indeed be men of gross minds who are not 
 tempted by the polish of the court ; at all events, it 
 is very insolent in them to show so little wish to see 
 their sovereign, and enjoy the honor of living under 
 his roof.'^ Such was almost precisely the opinion of 
 the king in regard to the provincial nobility ; it 
 certainly was the opinion of Louis XIV. 
 
 Ambition drew the nobles to court ; ambition^ 
 society, and dissipation kept them there. To incur 
 the displeasure of their master, and be exiled from 
 court was, first, to lose all hope of advancement, 
 and then to fall from paradise into purgatory. It 
 killed some people. - 
 
 But life was much more expensive at court than 
 in the castles. As in all society where each is 
 constantly in the presence of his neighbor, there 
 was unbounded rivalry as to who should be most 
 brilliant, most superb The old revenues did not 
 suffice, while, at the same time, the inevitable re- 
 sult of the absence of the lords was to decrease 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 25 
 
 them. Whilst the expenses of the nobleman at 
 Chambord or Versailles were steadily on the in- 
 crease, his intendant, alone and unrestrained upon 
 the estate, filled his own pockets, and sent less 
 money every quarter, so that, to keep up the 
 proper rank, the lord was forced to beg a pension 
 from the king. Low indeed was the downfall of 
 the old pride and feudal independence I 
 
 The question was how to obtain these pensions, 
 ranks, offices, and favors of all kinds. The virtues 
 most prized and rewarded by the kings were not 
 civic virtues, — capacity, and services of value for 
 the public good ; what pleased them was, naturally, 
 devotion to their person, blind obedience, flattery, 
 and subservience. 
 
 Throughout the middle ages, the loyal senti- 
 ments of affection and admiration for the king had 
 been the portion of the people, the middle classes, 
 who, seeing the king only from afar, viewed him 
 as their natural protector against the tyranny of 
 the seigniors, and, with that feeling, always per- 
 sisted in finding only good in all the faults of the 
 government. The nobility had long been refrac- 
 tory to these sentiments, as opposed to their in- 
 terests ; but, after the creation of the court, aban- 
 doning the idea of resisting the king for that of 
 winning his favor, they changed their attitude and 
 
126 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 language, and joined the other classes, with more 
 or less sincerity, in the worship of royalty. Then 
 all united in raising their idol above the earth, 
 far from common mortals, even to the very skies. 
 The concert of voices was unanimous under Louis 
 XIV ; he received the most intoxicating homage, 
 which made him think himself a god, or, at least, 
 a demigod. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 We have seen the rise of feudalism ; we have 
 seen it united in all its essential elements ; we 
 have seen the steps by which royalty sprang up 
 before its very face, and the weapons used to des- 
 troy it : now we will see its dismemberment, bit 
 by bit. The reader must recall those elements of 
 'which we have spoken ; for our purpose is to 
 show how each one became gradually weakened 
 and finally annihilated. It must be said, in the 
 first place, that the destruction of feudalism was 
 not wholly complete until the Revolution consum- 
 mated it. 
 
 The taille. — We have seen that the lords levied 
 an ordinary tax, — which was usually annual, — 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 127 
 
 and au extraordinary tax, on certain grand speci- 
 fied occasions ; — four in particular ; — hence the 
 name of tax for four causes. It must be under- 
 stood that this extraordinary tax was levied, not 
 only upon the little domain depending directly on 
 the seignior, but also upon other seigniories hold- 
 ing from him ; in other words, the lord claimed 
 the extraordinary tax from his own subjects and 
 also from his vassals, who, of course, collected it 
 from the people beneath them. When the kings 
 put forward their claim to the sovereignty of all 
 the domains of the kingdom, they consequently 
 demanded the extraordinary tax from these do- 
 mains ; and, from Saint Louis onwards, their 
 claim having been established by force, they col- 
 lected it everywhere. Only, the cause of a voy- 
 age beyond the seas was replaced, in their sys- 
 tem, by a more frequent cause, that of war. The 
 kings levied this tax whenever they made war. 
 Under Philip the Handsome, it was levied and 
 paid nearly every year, for one reason or an- 
 other. Doubtless, this did not prevent the lords 
 from levying the ordinary tax, but it did prevent 
 the peasants from paying it ; their money was ex- 
 hausted. Besides, as the kings considered the 
 royal impost of the first importance, they forbade 
 the lords to demand any dues until their own had 
 
128 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 been paid ; the result was, that the barons either 
 reduced their claims, or contented themselves with 
 realiziug a small part of the imposed sum. 
 
 Under Philip the Handsome appeared an insti- 
 tution whose history is iutimately connected with 
 that of taxes, and which, besides, played an im- 
 portant part under the old system. I mean the 
 States General, or assemblies of national deputies. 
 
 The States General were convoked for the first 
 time by Philip the Handsome, whom it pleased to 
 rely upon national deputies for support in a dis- 
 pute he had with the Pope. After him, they were 
 convoked very irregularly and at long intervals, 
 by different kings, whenever it seemed profitable 
 to call in their aid, either to oppose turbulent 
 nobles or to vote extraordinary taxes. Unless 
 some pressing interest over-ruled every other sen- 
 timent, the kings dreaded this assembly. That 
 is why, from 1303, the date of the first States 
 General, until 1189, a period of nearly five hun- 
 dred years, this assembly was called only thirteen 
 times ; at the fourteenth meeting of the States, in 
 1789, they proclaimed themselves a national as- 
 sembly, and began the Eevolution, thus proving 
 that the kings had just cause for fear. 
 
 At the present day, the assembly of deputies is 
 held each year, and the members composing it are 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 29 
 
 chosen directly by all Frenchmen who have reached 
 majority. These deputies are considered equals, 
 and each vote is counted ; they vote by heads. 
 
 The de£u|JLes of the States General were divided 
 into three oYders, or classes, as was the nation it- 
 self. There were deputies of the nobility, of the 
 clergy, and of the third estate, the middle class. 
 They voted, not by heads, but by orders, so that 
 the third estate, the oppressed class, had but one 
 voice in the assembly, while the privileged classes 
 had two. 
 
 Let us return to the taxes. The war against 
 the English gave rise to a multitude of taxes, and 
 exhausted the country ; then, more than ever, the 
 kings took from the peasants what little they had, 
 leaving nothiilg for the lords. At the end of the 
 war, Charles YII replaced the feudal army, which 
 was composed of vassals, holding directly and in- 
 directly from the king, by a body of regular, paid 
 troojis, at the same time making the royal im- 
 post annual, under the pretext of paying these 
 troops. 
 
 The seigniorial taxes still continued: the lords 
 could levy them upon their own estates, without 
 asking permission of the king ; but in regard to 
 the amount of the tax and the manner of collect- 
 ing it, the nobles were forced to conform more and 
 
 9 
 
130 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 more to the custom of their province. The com- 
 plaints and appeals of the taxed were no longer 
 brought before a judge in the employ of the lord, 
 but before parliarrients and royal judges. The 
 latter, naturally hostile to the seigniors, kept a 
 severe hold upon them to prevent their exacting 
 more than their due ; and, when their claims 
 seemed at all doubtful, gave a decision against 
 them, so that at length the king or his agents in- 
 directly authorized or forbade the lords to levy 
 their taxes. This condition lasted until 1789, up 
 to which time a number of seigniors still exacted 
 a tax from their subjects. 
 
 The corve^0_,weTe reduced even more than the 
 seigniorial tax by the royal tribunals. A jurisdic- 
 tion, very harsh towards the lords, was established ; 
 those corvees were abolished which could not be 
 proved by actual written title, neither the au- 
 thority of habit nor the witness of the elders be- 
 ing admitted. By this means, a multitude of cor- 
 vees disappeared. Besides, all those which were 
 not exactly specified, those, for example, impos- 
 ing unlin^ited service upon the peasants, such as 
 working upon the seigniorial estate at the will of 
 the owner, or driving his horse whenever he took 
 a journey, were fixed by the tribunals at a rea- 
 sonable service. They forbade the lords to grant 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 13I 
 
 or sell to any one else the hours of work due 
 from their servants, whence it resulted, that the 
 lords had no interest in exacting more than what 
 was needed by themselves personally. Finally, the 
 -eeigniors were made to feed horses and men dur- 
 ing the hours of enforced labor ; and this discour- 
 aged them from claiming service which was not 
 indispensable. The corvee was everywhere of the 
 lightest at the dawn of the Revolution ; still, it was 
 abhorred by the people as a sign and pledge of 
 the old servitude. 
 
 Monopolies. — A royal statute, in the sixteenth 
 century, abolished all that were not proven by 
 title. Had this order been executed with rigor, 
 monopolies would have been at an end, for scarce 
 one was founded upon a written contract. The 
 lords protested ; and the result was such as is 
 common when a law is too severe, — the statute 
 was enforced upon the petty, uninfluential nobles, 
 and suspended for the more powerful ones. In 
 1189, there were few domains where monopolies 
 still existed. 
 
 Customs became less and less numerous ; upon 
 this point, as upon others, the royal tribunal ex- 
 ercised a good influence by obliging the lord to 
 prove, by title-deed, his right to duties. Unable 
 to fulfill this condition, many seigniors had to re- 
 
132 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 sign their old feudal tributes. As for regular /;us- 
 tom-houses, the courts regulate^ them, each court 
 fixing the tkriif for . itS' own (district. Later, Louis 
 XIV established ..a gen^jal^and uniform tariff, by a 
 statute, which, like many others, was but irregu- 
 larly followed. On the other side, it happened 
 that the kings granted, to some lords, the privilege 
 of exacting new tolls ; but as, in the sum total, 
 more were abolished than created, there were, in 
 
 ]789, less than in the. middle ages. It must be 
 # 
 owned, that, even after the decrease effected by 
 
 royal power, the customs were, in 1'789, too nu-, 
 merous. Commerce could never have been fully de- 
 veloped under this system. 
 
 The right of layde and tonlieu, that is, the fee 
 for a stand in the market, — those claims which 
 the lords had upon the merchandise sold in mar- 
 kets of the seigniory, — were still more reduced. 
 The lords, besides, had to gain permission from 
 the prince to levy them. In many places, the 
 prince, under pretext of the uncertainty of the 
 claim, took upon himself the charge of the market- 
 place and the rights thereto pertaining. 
 
 -^ ^ V • 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I33 
 
 XXV 
 
 We have said that royalty did not radically ex- 
 tirpate feudalism, and have shown that something 
 of it still legally existed, until the eve of the Revo- 
 lution ; but its existence in customs and manners 
 was very different from its position in law, the 
 seigniors allowing themselves many liberties not 
 established by statute. 
 
 Up to the time of the Revolution, there were al- 
 ways a number of lords living after the fashion 
 of their ancestors of the eleventh century ; like 
 brigands expresses their condition. In the do- 
 mains of these nobles, all the abuses and excesses 
 of the old feudalism continued, without a single 
 exception, — private wars, illegal corvees and taxes, 
 constant robbery of the peasants, every possible 
 fibuse, even to the usurped right of coining money, 
 and false money at that. Under Louis XIV, when 
 royalty was at the climax of its power, it would 
 be easy to name one hundred gentlemen who were 
 greedy brigands, living at the expense of their 
 vassals, maltreating and assassinating all who 
 dared resist them. We cannot enter into the 
 
134 "^ SHORT HISTORY 
 
 details of this subject ; but, that the reader may 
 form au idea of the disorders possible under this 
 most absolute of monarchs, we will say a few 
 words about the grand days of Auvergne, held in 
 1^65. 
 
 This tribunal, which was composed of members 
 o^ the Parliament of Paris, who were sent to Cler- 
 mont to hold_.cjpLurt--4ip.on Jhose. crimes of the seig^ 
 iors_, which had passed the limits of the royal pa- 
 tience, had, at least, thirteen thousand criminal 
 cases to decide. In One audience, they pronounced 
 sentence of death upon fifty-three lords. From 
 these figures, we can estimate the sad condition 
 of the people of this province under the tyranny 
 of these provincial seigniors. 
 
 This feudal anarchy, which was to be found only 
 in a limited number of districts during peaceful 
 and comparatively settled times, appeared and en- 
 gulfed every thing when the royal power was in 
 trouble and the public peace disturbed ; for the 
 larger part of the nobles always cherished, in the 
 depths of their hearts, a traditional scorn of law 
 and a -belief that the peasants ought to belong to 
 them body and soul. 
 
 The reader will perhaps ask why royalty, with 
 so many tribunals and agents, could not prevent 
 this multiplicity of crimes. He will be still more 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I35 
 
 surprised to hear that those condemned in the 
 grand days of Auvergne were executed only in 
 effigy, and that the severity of the judges seemed 
 meant only to delude the people. A year after all 
 this tumult and parade of justice, the condemned 
 lords had returned to their homes and to their^ 
 abuse of the peasants, as if nothing had happened. 
 To explain this tolerance, we must remember what 
 the ancient j'eg'me was. 
 
 Notjone^ of the rulers of the period, whether 
 minister or king, had-a-By-^ear- idea , of law, what 
 it should be and the firmness it should show. No 
 one in the government was capable of understand- 
 ing, that, a measure once adopted or a sentence 
 once passed, justice must take its course unmoved, 
 without regard to the rank or quality of the indi- 
 vidual. On the contrary, rulers were always in- 
 fluenced by the condition of the man, by his for- 
 tune, the splendor of his name, the standing of 
 his family ; and they never rigorously executed the 
 law upon those who had any of these claims to 
 consideration. To apply the law to all equally, 
 would have seemed an act subversive and even 
 revolutionary in its bearing. Such was indeed the 
 efifect produced by Richelieu in his attempt to 
 make noble and plebeian alike subject to the same 
 impassive justice. 
 
136 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 Furthermore, it often happened, that a king, re- 
 garding no consideration, would or^ier the punish- 
 ment of some powerful criminal, and yet, in spite 
 of the king, he would go unpunished, because the 
 royal agents could not, like their masters, rise su- 
 pefitiT'tcr" the overwhelming influence then exer- 
 cised by certain ranks. Thus caught between the 
 hammer and auvil, the only thing they could do 
 to satisfy their master and save their own credit 
 was to go through the form of execution. Besides, 
 there was little that was lastiug in the judicial se- 
 verity of kings. Nobles won the princely favor 
 by the aid of friends and relatives, or, as the kiug 
 could not be omnipresent, by means of his repre- 
 sentatives, governors of the province, intendants, 
 judges, &c., whom they either bribed or intimi- 
 dated. Impunity being always possible, and, in 
 fact, probable, they were encouraged to multiply 
 their crimes. Whoever had, near or far, among 
 his family or friends, an influential protector, could 
 risk his head to gratify his passions with eighty 
 chances out of a hundred in favor of his losing 
 nothing by it. 
 
 It must also be considered that the royal officers^ 
 of justice frequently bore within themselves^ that 
 spirit of violence and iniquity so common among 
 the upper classes. The administrative documents 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 137 
 
 of that day show that the royal emissaries, in 
 many places, tyrannized over the people with the 
 same criminal fierceness displayed by the lords. A 
 nuniber of judges in the parliaments and presiden- 
 cies, so their contemporaries attest, had a repu- 
 tation for venality and corruptness, which was well 
 founded. Such persons naturalJy fell an easy prey 
 to the rich man, who sought to evade justice. 
 Besides, materiaX-Xonditions were very different 
 from those- of the France of to-day ; justice could 
 not take a smooth course in^ a land where roads 
 were scarce, where traveling was difficult, where 
 news circulated slowly, and where were no jour- 
 nals nor publicity of any kind. Much more readily 
 than now, could a crime be hidden or the report 
 of it limited to its own little neighborhood. 
 
 We must remember that many lords still lived 
 in. their, old castles in places which were very re- 
 mote and difficult of access, and, at the slightest 
 threat, entrenched themselves there with a little 
 band of outlaws. To execute the sentence hurled 
 against these lords by the judges, the bailiffs must 
 have been reinforced by a battalion, and have be- 
 seiged the place, with a sacrifice of. many soldiers. 
 The governor, or intendant recoiled from this expe- 
 dition so much the more, that, one having been ac- 
 complished, fifty would still remain to be undertaken 
 
138 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 in the province ; a small army would have been 
 necessary. 
 
 So royalty attacked and weakened the lords, 
 but did not altogether destroy them, and, we may 
 add, was powerless to destroy them. The security 
 and order won for France by the Revolution, 
 could not be gained by the kings for many rea- 
 sons, of which the best is that these kings were 
 absolute, and, with absolute monarchs there is 
 never regularity, uniformity, constancy, or univer- 
 sality, either in the laws or in their execution, 
 and, without these, order and security are impos- 
 sible. The reader will understand my meaning 
 better presently. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 We have seen how royalty rose and spread, and 
 how it contracted feudalism into more and more 
 narrow bounds ; we will now show absolute roy- 
 alty in its full development, and the excesses with 
 which it replaced the excesses of the system it 
 had conquered ; in other words, the new evils foi; 
 which the people exchanged their former sufferings. 
 
 We are going to sljow, at one stroke, and with- 
 
• 
 
 OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I39 
 
 out noting the secondary variations, for which we 
 have no room, — we are, I say, going to show 
 the old systeni as it was from Francis I to Louis 
 XIV, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. 
 First, at the summit of society, an absolute 
 king to whom every thing in the kingdom belonged, 
 both men and property. This king was supposed 
 to represent God on earth. Should he abuse his 
 
 power, God, perhaps, would punish him in an- 
 other world ; but here, in this world, the king owed 
 account to no one. Innumerable disorders and 
 excesses of all kinds naturally flowed from this 
 monstrous error. 
 
 Wherever the will of the king is the law, there 
 is no actual law, since law really is one common 
 duty imposed, without exception, upon all citizens 
 as being equal among themselves. In an absolute 
 monarchy, the king, at his caprice, declares this 
 thing or that a duty ; he makes the duty, so it is 
 only natural that, having imposed it, he should also 
 dispense with it, as seems good to him. He also nat- 
 urally exempts those persons who execute his orders, 
 or who are distinguished by his favor ; hence there 
 is soon a whole class placed beyond the control 
 of common obligations. As the king has freed his 
 ministers and ^vgrites, from the rule of law, they, 
 in turn, imitating his example, exempt their own 
 
140 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 a^nts ari(L favorites. Gradually, all who share, 
 however little, in the government, evade the law, 
 which then seems created solely for the lower 
 classes, who are without fortune and without 
 credit, and even by them it is scorned. Each 
 seeks to elude it, so far as he can without dan- 
 ger. When we carefully examine the old regime, 
 we see that the royal statutes were always irreg- 
 ularly executed, were observed by one and not 
 by another, were applied here and ignored there ; 
 no regularity, no equality, no consistency. 
 
 The king, again, believing himself justice incar- 
 nate, held himself above the judgment of tribunals, 
 and respected the sentences of the court no more 
 than the laws of the kingdom, punishing, at his 
 pleasure, those whom the tribunal acquitted, or 
 pardoning those it condemned. The intendants, 
 governors, and officers, who represented the king 
 in the provinces, following where he led, held 
 themselves above justice, and claimed this immu- 
 nity, not only for themselves, but for their rela- 
 tions, their allies and friends ; and generally, by 
 their high rank, discouraged the severity of the 
 judges, so that punishment, like law, seemed 
 made only for the common herd. 
 
 Whoever was an agent in power, or sustained 
 by an agent, or thought himself sure of being so 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I4I 
 
 sustained, on account of his birth or fortune, — 
 and this class was by no means small, — not be- 
 ing restrained by the fear of certain retribution, 
 easily allowed himself to infringe the law, and 
 even the common principles of honesty. 
 
 The hope of impunity is too strong a tempta- 
 tion ; it always degrades in time. Those who, 
 having no credit nor power, cannot cherish this 
 hope, learn to scorn justice, since it is so unjust, 
 and thus lose one of the chief reasons a man has for 
 remaining honest. We see that absolute power 
 is a general cause of depravity. This explains 
 the almost universal dishonesty which the officials 
 of the ancient regime brought to the exercise of 
 their duties. Without this dishonesty, it would 
 be impossible to account for the extreme misery 
 of the people ; the burdens imposed by royalty 
 upon its subjects were, no doubt, excessive, but 
 still were not large enough to impoverish as they 
 did, had they not been considerably aggravated 
 by the functionaries. 
 
 Under an absolute king, all the agents in power, 
 from the ministers to the lowest clerks, are abso- 
 Ijifej^ and_alJ-violate the rights of individuals, and 
 play the tyrant, having little cause to fear that 
 complaints against them will be heard. The mau 
 who complains of an inferior to a superior agent. 
 
142 • A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 is not noticed, because the superior sees in tJiis com- 
 plaint a spirit of resistance and criticism, which 
 may, in time, attack himself; so he hastens to crush 
 it. On the same principle, the inferior officer is 
 zealous to execute the arbitrary commands of his 
 superior, and to. aid his despotism, knowing that, if 
 the tyrannous will above him yields, he too must 
 give up his own petty tyranny; and. that no man 
 willingly resigns. Under a just government, where 
 the prince does not recognize in his subjects 
 rights limitable only by his own power, this never 
 has been seen, and never will be; it would be a 
 contradiction. 
 
 No law, no justice, in the strict sense of the word ; 
 these are the first inevitable fruits of absolute power. 
 
 A man who can do what he wills is not likely 
 to be wise ; certainly not for a long time, human 
 wisdom being little but the forced return of a 
 man upon himself when he has met the resistance 
 of others. He who meets no resistance soon ceases 
 to recognize the limitations of justice and reason. 
 As soon as our kings were absolute, they planned 
 and attempted, in the political world, all sorts of 
 useless and foolish enterprises by which they ex- 
 hausted the blood and wealth of France, except 
 at certain periods, when all-powerful ministers 
 like Richelieu and Mazarin forced the kings to 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 
 
 143 
 
 ajtnore-sensible policy. Charles VIII, Louis VII, 
 and Francis I had a mania for conquering- all or 
 g^ of__Italy, simply because this country charmed 
 them with its climate, its artistic civilization, 
 its brilliancy and ease of manners. We must con- 
 fess that all the French nobility shared this in- 
 fatuation ; but the kings might have opposed it, 
 vt'hereas they encouraged and increased it. Fran- 
 cis I, especially, wished to be emperor of Ger- 
 many, which put France at enmity with the house 
 of Austria, then represented by Charles V, who 
 was king of Spain, of the Low Countries, and of 
 a part of Italy, master of a vast empire in Amer- 
 ica, and, finally, emperor of Germany, and who 
 very nearly overwhelmed France with his superior 
 forces : the kingdom, in this war, narrowly escaped 
 losing some of its provinces. 
 
 The civil wars between Protestants and Catho- 
 Uesys which broke forth under the grandson of 
 Francis I, suspended for nearly a century all great 
 undertakings by. our kings against neighboring 
 princes. But, as soon as this outburst was 
 calmed, and our kings had leisure to ponder anew 
 upon what they called political designs, these 
 greg-t wars were resumed. Louis XIV wished to 
 take Belgium from Spain ; then to conquer the 
 people of Holland, who would have none of us ; 
 
144 ^ SHORT HISTORY 
 
 and, finally, to put npon the throne of Spain one 
 of his grandsons, of which surely France had ao 
 hope. This unreasonable ambition caused a coali- 
 tion of all Europe against France ; and our coun- 
 try ran a serious risk of dismemberment, being 
 saved only by some lucky accidents on which no 
 one could have counted. It was not, however, 
 saved from poverty. 
 
 The kingdom was, for a long time, exhausted 
 both of men and money ; and the population suf- 
 fered untold misery. There were famines, like 
 those of the middle ages. Peasants were reduced 
 to living on roots and herbs, either raw or boiled. 
 A frightful bread, made of all sorts of things ex- 
 cept wheat, became an aristocratic and fashionable 
 food. This result had the fine policy of the grand 
 monarch won for France. 
 
 That of Louis XV had not even a fixed and 
 plausible motive. He engaged in two long and 
 disastrous wars, one against Prussia, for Austria, 
 the other against Austria, for Prussia ; and these in 
 hopes of some minor territorial advantages, — a 
 few cities any thing but indispensible to us, — and 
 also for that vague and fantastic advantage called 
 preponderance. This time we lost only the greater 
 part of our colonies in America and India, besides 
 of course, much money and many men, which was 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I45 
 
 a matter of indifference, doubtless, in a oountry 
 already ruined by Louis ZJV, where the peasant 
 had neither the certainty of food or clothing, nor 
 even a decent thatch upon his little hut, — where 
 agricuUiire had wholly failed beforehand, and. 
 where, for want of laborers, vast spaces remained 
 marshes and fallow land. 
 
 The richest nation in the world would have 
 become incapable of Supplying an absolute mon- 
 arch, with all the money he wanted; for human 
 nature is insatiable. Large as may be the re- 
 sources of a country, the expenses of a prince 
 whose course, nothing stays are always larger. 
 And then, in his imprudent greed, he drains the 
 savings of his people, who, without means to 
 make a fresh start, cannot renew their wealth. 
 To profusion is added disorder and squandering. 
 What we see in the house of a careless spend- 
 thrift, befalls the nation, on a large scale. We 
 have had very few kings who were, I do not say 
 economical, but reasonable, in their expenditures, 
 which, always disproportioned, changed only in 
 nature from reign to reign according to the char- 
 acter of each king. Louis XIV, in his part of 
 grand monarch, united all kinds of expenses — 
 wars, feasts, the pomp of dramatic entertainments, 
 the building of palaces, &c. 
 
 10 
 
146 A. SHORT 'HISTORY 
 
 The kings, besides, had always, in the nobles 
 of ■ the court, a wonderful help in exhausting the 
 national treasury ; entertainments, pensions, grants, 
 gifts to princes, dukes, counts, &c., formed one 
 of the most respectable chapters of the daily bud- 
 get. The taxes were often devoured one, two, or 
 even three years in advance. The history of 
 France shows, beyond question, that absolute mon- 
 archs are always poor, and that, amid all their 
 magnificence, they live always under constraint 
 and by means of expedients, in which we shall 
 find another cause of misery to their subjects. 
 
 u 
 
 X X V 1 1. 
 
 A SHORT examination of the system of taxation 
 under the old regime will justify the criticisms we 
 have made. 
 
 The principal taxes, which are all we shall men- 
 tion, were the tgjlle or land-tax, oAde^ or wine- 
 tax, doua7ies or customs, and ggiielle or salt-tax. 
 
 Tjie taille, answering to bur manor-tax, was the 
 tax upon real estate, aiid fell upon only one-third 
 of the inhabitants ; nobles, priests, and govern- 
 ment officials of all ranks were exempt, and found 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I47 
 
 means to -have their tenants exempt, so that the 
 burden, which would have been light if divided 
 among all, crushed with its weight the class in. 
 question; so much the more that this class was 
 composed of poor and struggling laborers. The 
 amount of the taille was fixed each year for all 
 France, and divided among the provinces by the 
 royal council, which named whatever sum it chose. 
 No tax-payer could foresee one year, what would 
 be required the next ; neither his consent nor 
 opinion was asked ; in short, the taille was an 
 arbitrary tax. 
 
 Each intend ant divided the amount of the taille 
 imposed upon his province, among all the parishes ; 
 and, finally, in each parish, the taille was assessed 
 among the inhabitants by collectors. 
 
 The collector was not a functionary like the 
 tax-gatherer of to-day ; each inhabitant- took his 
 turn in filling* the ofiSce, so that the collector was 
 often a coarse peasant, who could neither read 
 nor write. 
 
 To appreciate his embarrassment, we must con- 
 sider that there were then no registers nor any 
 exact means of valuing the different estates ; and 
 tho collector was responsible for the amount of 
 the tax, being called ijpon to supply all defi- 
 ciencies, so that it was for his interest to overtax 
 
148 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 the more solvent peasants*--, I say peasants, be- 
 cause the collector, however eager he might be to 
 do it, dared not tax the rich middle class heavily, 
 lest it should obtain exemption from the intendant. 
 Next to the better class of peasants, the people 
 most highly assessed by the collector were his 
 enemies, who were sure to take revenge when they 
 in turn became collectors. 
 
 So the common policy among the peasants, in 
 order to escape a heavy tax, was " to pretend ex- 
 treme poverty, and make as little show of weaTth 
 as possible. This led to most disastrous con- 
 sequences ; they employed a most limited . num- 
 ber of cattle, and made no improvement on their 
 . larfd. Had cattle been offered to a peasant, he 
 •would have refused them ; and it must be owned 
 that this was reasonable, with collectors and in- 
 tendants on the watch for the least sign of prop- 
 erty, that they might increase the taide. 
 
 Another means, universally employed, was to 
 pay only cent by cent, and that under compul- 
 sion, in order to disgust collectors in future. A 
 writer of that day, Bois Guillebort, has drawn a 
 striking picture of the collection of the iaille in 
 the villages. " The collectors,'' he. says (there 
 were generally several), " meet at the inn, to de- 
 cide the sura to be assessed to each inhabitant, 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I49 
 
 and sometimes spend three months without coming 
 to an agreement. The schedule being at length 
 finished, they start out to collect the money, go- 
 ing all together, as they are in danger of receiv- 
 ing insults, or even worse treatment. 
 
 " Whilst these seven or eight functionaries pass 
 through the street, rousing, on their way, a tu- 
 mult of screams and curses, the collectors of the 
 previous year, who have not yet finished the ever 
 difiicult collection of their sum, are doing the 
 same, — both receiving only insults. Meantime, 
 the intendant becomes impatient, .and sends a file 
 of bailiffs and sergeants ; but matters are not yet 
 serious. The bailiffs are bribed, the sergeants 
 plied with drink ; and they leave without hurting 
 any one, only to repeat this performance five or 
 six times, which is no slight expense to the vil- 
 lage. But at length the time comes when the in- 
 tendant can be kept waiting no longer. The 
 bailiffs return for the seventh and last time, and 
 seize all the cattle in the village, without concern as 
 to who has paid and who has not ; for the inhabi- 
 tants are responsible as a whole. Then follows 
 weeping and gnashing of teeth. The cattle belong- 
 ing to the poor farmers are sold ; and, if these do 
 not sufiice, the wretched furniture is taken, even the 
 doors and shutters are unhung, the house itself 
 
150 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 perhaps is torn to pieces, and the bricks and 
 beams sold. You hear and see nothitjg but women 
 crying and lamenting. With all this, something 
 is still lacking to complete the sum of the taille. 
 The bailiffs seize the collectors, and drag them to 
 prison in the city. The village must then pay for 
 the support of these collectors in their prison, from 
 which they emerge some months later, out of 
 health and ruined." 
 
 The next year, it was the turn of others to go 
 through the same trials to reach the same result. 
 ''It is thus," says Turgot, " that every well-to- 
 do family in the village is in turn reduced to 
 want.'' 
 
 Notice the baneful round. The tax, in that it 
 was too heavy and irregularly "distributed, — in 
 that it was aggravated, first by the enormous ex- 
 pense of collection, and then by the seizures which 
 were its result, and which, being executed* like a 
 sort of pillage, destroyed property of considerable 
 value, — this tax, I say, each year caused the ruin 
 of a large number of people, — each year increased 
 the proportion of insolvents and reduced that of 
 men able to pay ; and, consequently, each year 
 prepared, for the following, more expense, more 
 loss, and more ruin. The old regime was moving 
 on to a frightful catastrophe. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I51 
 
 tn the latter centuries of the monarchy, the name 
 of aides wsLS given to the tax levied upon wine sold 
 at retail. This tax amounted to a quarter or even 
 a third of the price of the wine, — five to seven 
 cents, for instance, on a bottle worth twenty cents ; 
 — but it must be added, that other claims also 
 weighed upon this merchandise, notably the city 
 claims on wine sold within the city limits ; and 
 it was rarely sold at retail elsewhere, for reasons 
 we shall see presently. The tax and the city claim 
 together often equalled the .whole first cost ; so a 
 retail dealer had to sell a bottle of wine worth 
 twenty c^nts for forty, or lose money. In fact, 
 he charged a much higher rate, for this reason. 
 The collectors of aides had a right to draw up the 
 verbal process, which was always* accepted by the 
 judges ; and they had a motive for making as 
 ma.ny of these as possible, since a third of the fines 
 became theirs. So, at any moment of the day, they 
 visited the wine-cellars to see what had been sold. 
 The least suspicion of fraud was distorted by them 
 into certainty ; and, indeed, the merchants did 
 generally cheat, as always happens when burdens 
 are too severe. The collectors thus held all wine- 
 sellers under their control, through the excess of 
 their powers and the very dishonesty of the dcal-^ 
 ers. They abused their position, first, to ruin all 
 
152' A SrfORT HISTORY 
 
 sale in the villages, where they found it hard- to 
 keep a watch ; then, to reduce to a very small 
 nuraber the hostelries or inns in cities, granting 
 existence to these only on one condition, that 
 they, the collectors, should furnish the wine. They 
 were quite willing to carry on this trade, buying, 
 at good bargains, from the owners of vineyards, 
 and selling again, with large profits, to the poor 
 innkeepers, " who found themselves wholly over- 
 ruled ; hence it. resulted, that, in the cities, wine 
 became horribly dear, far above the price that 
 workingmen could pay, and not wine alone, but 
 all other provisions, the landlords giving the ex- 
 cuse, that, as they lost money on wine, they must 
 make it up in other things. In the country, the 
 only man who • drank wine was the owner of a 
 vineyard. . The traveler might journey over seven 
 or eight leagues of highway without means to 
 quench his thirst unless by water from the brook. 
 The exorbitant price of wine leads me naturally 
 to another tax well fitted to aggravate it, and to 
 make all other merchandise high in proportion. I 
 mean the douanes, or customs. Now, we have all 
 around our country a line of custom-houses, which 
 receive certain duties upon exports and imports. 
 The duties go to the State ; but the State, in 
 maintaining these custom-houses, has in view, not 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. i;J3 
 
 SO. much the profit from the duty itself aa a cer- 
 tain economical result. When a duty is levied 
 upon foreign goods entering our provinces, it 13 
 to bring their price to a level with that of home 
 manufactures of the same kind, so that the foreign 
 merchant may not undersell native tradesmen, and 
 rob them of customers. This is a false principle ; 
 but, whether or no, it is the principle which pre- 
 vents, the abolition of custom-houses. Well, for- 
 merly these custom-houses, which are now limited 
 to the coasts and frontiers, were established in the 
 interior, on the borders of every province, making 
 of each a sort of foreign country as regarded its 
 neighbor, except, it njust be added, Normandy, 
 Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, Berry, Anjon, and 
 Maine, — which, in 1664, formed, in this respect, 
 one and the same district, all having a single line 
 of custom-houses. So a duty had to be paid on 
 merchandise going from one province to another, 
 — on one side, an' export, on the other, an im- 
 port duty ; and this must be paid as many times 
 as the goods crossed the boundary. These duties 
 were considerable ; but. Averse still, the custom- 
 officers wielded their powers with the bad faith 
 and arbitrary will habitual to government officials 
 under the ancient regime. They had one singular 
 fashion: instead of fixing the duty themselves, 
 
154 ^ SHORT HISTORY 
 
 they forced the merchants to declare, in writing, 
 the quality, quantity, weight, and measure of their 
 goods, and tfien calculate the sum they, the mer- 
 chants, must pay. If the latter were guilty of a 
 mistake in this calculation, the oflScers made it an 
 excuse for confiscating the goods, under plea of 
 fraud ; it was simply to obtain this excuse that 
 the truly remarkable practice was instituted. 
 
 We must recall here, that the roads were gen- 
 erally barred at certain distances by order of 
 the lords, the masters of the- soil, against all 
 passers, and that the traveler, to have the bar re- 
 moved, must pay a fee to the seigniorial agents. 
 These tolls were still quite numerous in the 
 eighteenth century; there was hardly a bridge 
 of any size, or even a ferryboat on the river 
 banks, which had not its toll. We saw just now ■ 
 that inns were very expensive ; on the other 
 hand, roads were few and bad. Transportation 
 wa^ carried on with discouraging slowness, and 
 often with much damage and the loss of horses. 
 So it happened that the wine of Touraine, sold at 
 two cents a pint to the merchant, was worth twenty 
 cents a pint after he had traveled forty leagues ; 
 and, even then, in selling it at ten times its first 
 cost, he gained no profit, to say nothing of the 
 risks and annoyances to which he was subjected 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 155- 
 
 by the admistration through the whole length of 
 his journey. It needed courage to attempt com- 
 merce in those days. 
 
 Of all the taxes, the. gabelle was most detested, 
 and well deserved so to be. The gabelle was the 
 tax on salt, or, to speak more accurately, a tax with 
 salt as the medium. The State alone had a right 
 to sell it ; alone possessed salt-factories. Naturally, 
 the State sold it at a price above its worth ; but 
 this was not all : had it been, the people would 
 have submitted with patience ; but the State forced 
 each subject to buy a fixed amount. ' This amount 
 varied in different provinces, as did also the price ; 
 and there were even some provinces which did 
 not pay this tax at all. We shall presently -see 
 the result of this diversity. So each man was 
 obliged to go to the State magazines, and buy the 
 quantity of salt assessed to him whether he needed 
 it or not. He received, at the same time, a ticket 
 called gabelement. This salt was called sel de de- 
 voir, and, curious to relate, had to be kept for 
 daily consumption : it could not be used for salt- 
 ing down ; another supply must be bought for 
 that, even though the purchaser had already more 
 than he could use. 
 
 It resulted from all this, that, as the price of 
 salt varied much in different places, and was 
 
156 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 everywhere dear beyond reason, there was a great 
 profit in selling contraband salt, or in buying sel 
 de devoir from particular people, in places where 
 it cost leasts and transporting it where it was 
 most expensive. Of course this was prohibited, 
 and called salt-smuggling,^ .hwt, in spite of that, a 
 large number of men devoted themselves to this 
 industry, and, in certain cantons, the larger part 
 of the peasantry deserted agriculture for salt-smug- 
 gMng. Even priests and soldiers were implicated ; 
 and thus the mal-administration of the time, by 
 making laws which all were tempted to break, and 
 which a great number did break, caused political 
 depravity among the people. 
 
 The profit accruing from this smuggling multi- 
 plied the frauds so excessively, that their frequency 
 and the difficulty of suppressing them led to an 
 atrocious penalty. The salt-smuggler was sen- 
 tenced to a heavy, fine for the first offence, pun- 
 ished with the galleys for a second, or, if he were 
 armed and belonged to a union, he was condemned 
 to the galleys for his first offence, and hung for 
 his second ; aud this latter often happer.ed. There 
 were three thousand five hundred imprisonments 
 and fifteen hundred sentences to severe or capital 
 punishments every year, for salt-smuggling. There 
 were executed in France seven or eight or even 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 57 
 
 ten times as many salt- smugglers as assassins, in 
 the same time. The gabelle had a regular army 
 of guards and soldiers ; and, putting together all 
 the spaces over which watch had to be kept in the 
 provinces, we find the gabelle had to guard twelve 
 hundred leagues of barrier. 
 
 The search for smugglers was an excellent pre- 
 text for annoying the subjects in a thousand ways. 
 The spies appeared unexpectedly in villages, en- 
 tered houses, and demanded the salt-tickets. Woe 
 to him who had mislaid his ! he was a smuggler, 
 and treated as such. Having received the ticket, 
 they would compare it with the salt in the bin. 
 If the salt was gone, or if only a little remained, 
 they forced the' purchase of a new supply. If 
 there- was a full supply, or nearly so, it was evi- 
 dently contraband salt; then followed an action 
 and fine. Between too much and not enough of 
 the terrible article, there was but one line, which 
 the commissioner fixed according to his fancy 
 ]f salt was wanted in large quantities for a special 
 purpose, one was not at all sure of being able to 
 pet it Just before, he was forced to have too 
 much; now, it- was refused him, there being a 
 doubt whether he might not want it to sell under- 
 hand to the smugglers. 
 
 This fine administration executed four thousand 
 
158 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 household seizures in a year ; and, on its twelve 
 hundred leagues of internal frontiers, made con- 
 stant war upon the salt-smugglers, or struggled 
 with the peasants. Never had fiscal absurdity 
 reached such a height. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 We must say a few words about the adminis- 
 trations in charge of the collection of taxes. The 
 taille was under government ; that is, was dis- 
 tributed and levied by functionaries appointed to 
 the post for life or for a certain time — the same 
 system now in practice for all general taxes. The 
 gabelle, customs, and wine- tax were leased, as the 
 city tax is now in some places. The taxes were 
 put up at auction ; and the highest bidders, — for 
 it was not a business that one alone could under- 
 take, — obtained, in return for the sum they of- 
 fered, a right to collect -these taxes, whose amount 
 was naturally uncertain, and to keep for their own 
 benefit whatever was in excess of the sum pledged. 
 
 So forty or fifty of the richest financiers would 
 form a company to buy together the lease of the 
 three indirect taxes. They had the wit to admit 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 159 
 
 into their association a certain number of poorer 
 comrades, chosen from among the magistrates and 
 members of parliament ; they thus obtained an in- 
 terested support from the class wielding the chief 
 power. They also took care, before the bidding 
 at the auction, to bribe the princes and great lords 
 in favor with the king, and the officers in charge 
 of the sale. Having thus gained to- their side all 
 who might warn the king, or guard the interests 
 of royalty, they obtained the taxes at a very low 
 price. They then raised a regular army of em- 
 ployees, superiors and subalterns, whom they 
 scattered over the country to levy the contribu- 
 tions. The government was supposed to have 
 given the farmers, as they were called, an exact 
 schedule of the sums to be assessed ; but, in point 
 of fact, this schedule was very inexact, and, in 
 any case, there was no one to see that it wa3 re- 
 spected. The functionaries were bribed, the judges 
 were accomplices, or else bound by family ties 
 or the brotherliood of one profession to those judges 
 who were accomplices. The farmers of the royal 
 revenues were thus able to tax the country with 
 impunity. All the agents, from first to last, were 
 filled with this idea of impunity ; their chiefs, on 
 the other hand, having in view, not .good govern- 
 ment, but large profits, required only the largest 
 
l6o A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 possible returns, prizing in them nothing but this 
 form of talent. * 
 
 • Under these conditions, the agents were of neces- 
 sity dishonest, faithless to the public, meddlesome, 
 and violent. The farm extolled from its subjects 
 five or six times more than its due ; so, having 
 bought the tax very low, it gained on both sides. 
 For every crown which the farm paid to the gov- 
 ernment, it took ten from the public. 
 
 The question is how so flagrant an abuse could 
 long exist; for, while it was for the interest of 
 the subject not to be despoiled, it was also for 
 the interest of the government to receive the tax 
 into the treasury, and not lot it fall into the • hands 
 of agents ; but it must be remembered, that the 
 government was then, in a condition which made 
 it dependent upon the financiers. At the present 
 day, a government spends only in proportion to 
 the taxes received, supporting itself each year upon 
 the revenues of that year, or nearly so. The gov- 
 ernment then begged of its farmers an advance 
 of the revenues for one, two, or three years, and 
 absorbed them all, thus living upon future income 
 advanced by the farm. Should this system of 
 farming be abolished and the tax put under gov- 
 ernment, three, four, or even . more . years must 
 elapse before a cent of these taxes could be 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. l6l 
 
 touched. The disorder and prodigality common 
 to absolute power had put t^is power at the mercy 
 of the financiers, and these financiers gave France 
 over to plunder. 
 
 And then, as we said, the financiers were very 
 strong, — strong in the purchased support of court- 
 iers, of the chief administrator, and of the magis- 
 trates. Had a king wished to change this detest- 
 able system of taxation, he would have been in- 
 stantly deafened by the appeals and complaints 
 of those most nearly surrounding him, even in his 
 very palace ; his existence would have been made 
 unbearable. This king must have possessed a ter- 
 rible energy for good. Such a character is rarely 
 found among absolute monarchs, certainly not 
 among ours. Louis XVI, the best intentioned of 
 our kings, abolished the corvees and corporations 
 for eighteen months or two years, and then re- 
 established them. This was the best proof that 
 could be given, that reform could come only 
 through the Revolution. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 CoEVEES were required from the peasants for the 
 king as well as for the lords ; the latter claim had 
 
 11 
 
l62 A SI^DRT HISTORY 
 
 in time grown lighter, but the former, on the con- 
 trary, became daily heavier and more exacting. 
 The intendants used and abused the peasants in 
 divers tasks. Did -they wish to open or repair a 
 highway, they called upon the peasants, who rarely 
 traveled themselves ; did they wish to build bar- 
 racks or magazines, the peasants must come; ,. did 
 a regiment change its quarters, the peasants must 
 carry the luggage ; were there criminals to trans- 
 port to the galleys, the peasants must furnish the 
 wagons and horses needed for the different stages. 
 When the work was on a large scale, crowds of 
 men were brought even from a distance with their 
 cattle : escape was impossible ; the intendants 
 taxed and imprisoned recalcitrants. They had, be- 
 sides, no regard for weather, season, or the re- 
 quirements of agriculture ; the peasant must obey 
 the first order, and show no pity for his beasts, 
 of which a large number would perish, and the 
 peasant would return from his work, alone, in de- 
 spair, and ruined, without either cattle or horse, and 
 'with no hope of redress According to law, the 
 State must, in some cases, feed him during the 
 corvee ; but this was one of those ideal commands 
 that intendants find too hard to execute. This 
 was by no means all, but every thing cannot be 
 told. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 163 
 
 To give an .exact idea of the condition of the 
 peasant, we will here briefly recall the taxes, 
 claimed by the seigniors at the same time with 
 all the others . There were the seigniorial taille, 
 the rent, fines of alienation, percentage on mer- 
 chandise sold in market, monopolies, and corvees. 
 
 There were seigniorial dovecotes, warrens, and 
 hunting-grounds. The seignior alone of all the 
 village had a right to a dovecote, and he raised 
 an immense number of pigeons. He alone had a 
 right to a warren, and he raised an army of rab- 
 bits. These pigeons and rabbits vied with each 
 other in pillaging the country ; the former ate the 
 grain, the latter the vegetables. The peasant could 
 touch neither : whoever killed a rabbit was pun- 
 ished with severest penalties ; under certain lords, 
 he was straightway hung. Game was equally pro- 
 tected ; . the seignior alone had a right to kill 
 beasts of the afield, and showed himself almost as 
 jealous of his hunting rights as of his titular pre- 
 rogatives. 
 
 When the lord hunted, dogs, horses, and men 
 passed over the fields like a storm. Hedges and 
 enclosures were broken ; for the peasant had no 
 right to shut in his land, and thus restrict the 
 hunting of his seignior ; even walls were frequently 
 ordered to be leveled when the lord had a grand 
 
 > 
 
164 A SHORT HISTOEY 
 
 hunt. As for the respect, tact, and temper brought 
 by the lord to the exercise of his sport, we may 
 conjecture from the general character of the chase 
 as we have shown it. 
 
 After this, it is unnecessary to say that all 
 Frenchmen, except a very insignificant number, 
 were a prey to misery. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Let us see the testimony of contemporaries as 
 to the general condition during a period consid- 
 ered glorious in our history — from 1650 to 1750. 
 We cannot here quote all our witnesses, but must 
 be satisfied with extracts taken at intervals of 
 about ten year's. 
 
 Extract from a letter written by the lady supe- 
 rior of a convent of Blois : — 
 
 " 1662. 
 
 "There is nothing more certain than that, in 
 Blaisois, Solonge, Vendomois, Perche, the Char- 
 trian country, Maine, Touraine, Berry, part of 
 Champagne, and other places, where there is a 
 scarcity of wheat and money, there are more than 
 thirty thousand wretches in the last extremity, most 
 of them dying of hunger. These poor creatures 
 
OF THK FRENCH PEOPLE. 165 
 
 have neither beds, clothing", linen, nor furniture ; 
 they are, in fact, stripped of every thing. They 
 are black as Moors, nearly all skeletons, and the 
 children bloated. . . . Several women and children 
 have been found dead in the roads and fields, with 
 their mouths full of herbs. . . . M. Boullon vicar 
 of the Holy Savior, at Bloi.s, attests that he has 
 seen children eating refuse ; and, stranger still, he 
 saw two in the cemetery, sucking the bones of 
 dead bodies, which had been taken from a grave 
 to make room for a corpse. The cure also writes, 
 that he has heard the same thing JProm several of 
 his chaplains, who had witnessed the unheard-of 
 sight." 
 
 Letter from the Duke of Lesdiguieres, to Col- 
 bert : — 
 
 " 1615. 
 ''Sir : I cannot delay telling you of the misery 
 to which this province is reduced. Commerce has 
 absolutely ceased ^ and, from all sides, people come 
 to beg me to notify the king of the impossibility 
 of their paying their dues. It is certain. Sir, and 
 I speak on good authority, that the. greater pait 
 of the inhabitants of the said province have lived 
 through the winter upon nothing but bread made 
 of acorns and roots ; and soon they will be re- 
 duced to eating the grass of the field and the bark 
 of trees. I feel myself obliged to tell you these 
 things as they are, leaving it to you to present^ them 
 in what form you choose to His Majesty. . . ." 
 
l66 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 Letter of the Abbe Grandet to the Bishop of 
 
 Anvcrs : — 
 
 "1683. 
 
 "^ We went into houses which looked more like 
 stables than human dwelling-places. 
 
 " We found mothers holding children to dry 
 breasts, and without a farthing to buy milk, . . . 
 Some of the inhabitants are living upon bread 
 made of ferns ; others have not eaten a morsel 
 for three or four days.'' 
 
 About the same time, the intendant of Boiirges 
 wrote : " There is nowhere a nation more savage 
 than these people. They are found sometimes in 
 troops in the country, far from the road, seated 
 around in a circle on a ploughed field ; but, if any 
 one approaches, they instantly disperse " 
 
 A famous writer, La Bruyere, paints the same 
 picture in more glowing colors : " You see," he 
 says, " certain fierce animals, male and female, 
 scattered through the country ; they are black, 
 livid, and burnt by the sun, and bound to the land 
 which they watch with invincible obstinacy ; they 
 have an articulate voice, and, when they rise upon 
 their feet, they show a human face, and are, in 
 fact, men and women. They withdraw at night 
 into dens, where they feed upon black bread, wa- 
 ter, and roots ; they spare other men the trouble 
 of sowing, toiling, and harvesting for support, and 
 thus deserve this btead which they have sown. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 167 
 
 " I confess that seizures of land, attachments 
 of furniture, prisons, and punishments are neces- 
 sary ; but justice, law, and necessity aside, it is 
 an ever new sight to me to* see with what feroc- 
 ity men treat their fellow-men.*. . ." 
 
 FeneTon wrote to the king: "Your people are 
 dying of hunger. The cultivation of the soil is 
 almost abandoned; city and country are depopu- 
 lated ; all trades languish, and are unable to sup- 
 port the workmen. Instead of money being 
 wrenched from these poor creatures, alms and food 
 should be given them. ' France is simply a large 
 hospital, full of woe and empty of food. Popu- 
 lar commotions, long unknown, are becoming fre- 
 quent. . . . You are reduced to the deplorable state 
 of leaving sedition unpunished, or causing the 
 massacre of people, whom you have driven to de- 
 spair, and who are dying every day of diseases 
 induced by famine. Whilst they need bread, you 
 want money, and do not choose to see the ex- 
 tremity to which you are reduced.^' 
 
 A. D. 1698. This is the situation of France as 
 described by the intendants : — 
 
 " In the district of Rouen, in Normandy, which 
 has always been one of the most laborious and 
 thriving provinces, among 700,000 souls, there are 
 not 50,000 who have bread to eat when they 
 choose, or who sleep on any thing but straw. 
 
l68 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 " In the district of Caen, the population is re- 
 duced one half, by want. 
 
 " District of Alen9on. One is saddened' to see 
 half the houses falling to pieces, for want of re- 
 pairs and props ; many of the owners have no 
 shelter over their heads, and poverty is spreading 
 everywhere a melancholy and fierceness which star- 
 tle one. 
 
 " The district of Rochelle has lost a third of its in- 
 habitants from divers causes ; among others, want 
 The peasmts have to deny themselves necessary 
 food; and die before their time, because the slight- 
 est illness easily destroys a body already con- 
 sumed by inanition and suffering 
 
 " The peasants of the district of Moulins are 
 black, livid, and ghastly ; they live upon chestnuts 
 and turnips, like their cattle. , . . 
 
 *' In the district of Riom, the peasant drinks the 
 oil of nuts ; it is • almost his only nourishment, 
 which is astonishing in a country naturally so 
 bountiful, but the burdens imposed upon the peo- 
 ple do not allow them to enjoy the natural bless- 
 ings of their fatherland. 
 
 ''In Dauphiny, general misery." 
 
 And all France was* in the same condition as 
 the provinces we have mentioned. 
 
 . ItO*?. — A great man, Vauban, writes: — 
 
 " The tenth part of the people are reduced to 
 beggary, and beg effectively (2,000,000 beggars 
 in a nation of 20,000,000) ; of the other nine- 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 169 
 
 teuths, five are in no position to give alms, being 
 themselves reduced t(j the same unfortunate state : 
 of the four remaining tenths, three are very poor." 
 
 1725. — We read in a letter from Saint-Simon : — 
 
 " The poor people of Normandy are eating grass, 
 and the kingdom is turned into a vast hospital of 
 dying and despairing men." 
 
 1140. — Bishop Massillon writes to Minister 
 Floury : — 
 
 " Sire : The country people -are in frightful pov- 
 erty, without bed or furniture ; the greater part, 
 during half the year, eat bread made of barle}'- or 
 oats for their only food, and are oblis^ed to snatch 
 even that from themselves and their children to pay 
 their taxes. 
 
 " It grieves me, Sire, to have this sad sight be- 
 fore my eyes every year upon my visits ; it is a 
 certain fact that, in all the rest of France, there 
 are no people poorer or more miserable than these. 
 Without question, the negroes of our islands are 
 infinitely happier ; for, in return for their labor, 
 they are fed and clothed, themselves, their wives, 
 and their children, whereas our pe.a^ants, who are 
 the most industrious in the province, cannot, with 
 even the most assiduous toil, provide bread for 
 themselves and their families, and, at the same time, 
 pay their subsidies. If any intendants of this prov- 
 ince have told a different story, they have sacri- 
 ficed truth and conscience for a miserable for- 
 tune.'^ 
 
170 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 1*745. — The Duke of Orleans,- giving Louis XV 
 a piece of bread made of fern, said, " Sire, this 
 is what your subjects live upon." 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 We will now, as briefly as possible, describe 
 the condition of the workmen and artisans in the 
 cities. 
 
 We have said a few words on the subject of 
 communes : the reader will remember that this 
 class freed itself from the tyrannical power of the 
 lords by a communal revolution, and attained a 
 more or less complete political liberty. The royal 
 power, at the same time, began to increase. So 
 long as that remained weak and down-trodden, com- 
 munal liberty flourished. The workman lived under 
 the rule of popular magistrates, in whose election 
 he had shared ; he himself often became a magis- 
 trate ; his intelligence, activity, and manners rap- 
 idly improved in this state of politics, which un- 
 fortunately soon ended. The moment royal power 
 acquired a little force, it interfered in the affairs 
 of the communes, appointed the magistrates, either 
 directly or indirectly, and remodeled, after its own 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 171 
 
 fashion and for its own profit; the city constitu- 
 tions, which were called charters of the communes. 
 Liberty was confiscated ; workmen and artisans, 
 ceasing to be citizens, were thrust back into the 
 limited spheres of their shops and trade. 
 
 To understand the economy of the system under 
 which they lived, we must return for a moment 
 to the middle ages, showing what it was in the 
 beginning, and what it became under the more 
 and more sovereign influence of the royal power. 
 
 In these days, whoever will, establishes himself 
 as a tradesman. For the sake of clearness, let 
 me give an example. Whoever wishes to be a 
 locksmith, has simply to open a shop, buy some 
 locks, iron bars, &c., ready made, or else have 
 them made by his own apprentices. He sells his 
 merchandise at any price he likes, and sells good 
 or bad articles, according to his honesty or skill. 
 It rests with the public to refuse to buy, if it 
 finds his stock costly or defective ; the public 
 must defend itself. The locksmith, on the other 
 hand, cannot prevent another locksmith from open- 
 ing a shop next door to him ; he must protect 
 himself against competition by probity and good 
 work We live, in this respect, under the rule of 
 liberty, when each does what he chooses, at his 
 own risk, and trusts to himself and his talents to 
 
172 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 earn a' living. As for the apprentices of the lock- 
 smith, they make what contract they like with 
 their master, binding themselves by the year, 
 month, or even day ; they stay in one city, or go 
 to another in search of work, all their acts being 
 dependent simply on their own wills. What is 
 the case with IdT^ksmiths, is equally the case with 
 all trades. When we investigate the system of 
 industry in the middle ages, we see that each 
 trade formed a corporation For example, the 
 locksmiths, in each city, instead of living and 
 working alone in total independence of one an- 
 other, lived and worked in a certain obligatory 
 manner, decided by the regulations of the trade; 
 The locksmiths would meet, and frame these regu- 
 lations, then have them approved by the authori- 
 ties of the place, — either king, seignior, or city 
 magistrates. In return, the authorities would lend 
 their weight to the corporation, to make its laws 
 respected, though control was really exercised by 
 officers, elected from the corporation for one year 
 or two, by a free choice of all the members. 
 These officers were generally called inspector 
 (prudliommes) , and were two, four, or even eight 
 in number. These regulations and the inspectors 
 who superintended their observance bound all the 
 locksmiths in a city together. We must now see 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 73 
 
 why locksmiths, of their own accord, gave up all 
 or part of their personal independence, and sub- 
 mitted to a trades-union, and we must also see 
 what was the spirit of this organization. 
 
 The chief aim of the locksmith, in forming a 
 corporation, was to restrain competition and es- 
 tablish a monopoly. Consequently, their laws for- 
 bade all strangers to sell,, within the city limits, 
 locks, bars, wrought iron, in fact, any produce 
 whatever peculiar to this trade ; the same prohi- 
 bition held for all natives who were not master 
 locksmiihs, the latter alone being allowed to sell 
 this branch of goods. The number of these mas- 
 ters was fixed by law, and, I believe, could not 
 exceed twenty. To become a master locksmith, a 
 man must wait for another master to .die, and 
 leave a vacancy. There were still other condi- 
 tions : a man must have been an apprentice for 
 five years, and companion or journeyman five years 
 more. 
 
 Suppose a young man of fifteen wished to be- 
 come a master locksmith : he must first apprentice 
 himself to a master. The number of apprentices 
 was also limited, generally to one for every shop ; 
 so, if, in his own city, each shop was already sup- 
 plied, the young man had to wait until one of 
 these twenty apprentices attained the rank of 
 
174 -^ SHORT HISTORY 
 
 journeyman, when he would make a contract, by 
 which he agreed to work for his master five years, 
 receiving no salary, but, on the contrary, paying 
 a fee, which was settled by the rules of the society, 
 and was about equal to a third or half of what a 
 workman could earn in a year. The master 
 pledged himself to lodge, feed, and clothe the ap- 
 prentice. 
 
 After the five years had elapsed, our young man 
 would become a journeyman., being required to 
 pay for this a small sum, which went into the 
 treasury of the corporation. As a journeyman, he 
 began to receive wages ; but he could work only 
 under a master, and was allowed no private work. 
 If he wished, at the end of his ten years, to be- 
 come a master, and there was a vacant place, he 
 must first pay a third sum, rather less than the 
 first, and then be accepted by the assembly of 
 master locksmiths ; his fate was in their hands, 
 and he might be rejected as incompetent or 
 worthless. This workman was, to each of his 
 judges, a rival more or less formidable, accord- 
 ing to his talent, and should he be very skil- 
 ful, he stood in great danger of being rejected 
 as incompetent ; many other chances also threat- 
 ened him. A place might very possibly be va- 
 cant ; but it was for the interest of the masters to. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 75 
 
 keep it so indefinitely, and an excuse could easily 
 be found; or there might be a son or nephew- 
 just of age, who had but to ask, to gain the 
 place, and the latter need serve neither as appren- 
 tice nor as journeyman ; he had only to pay the 
 usual fees, raised less than half as much again, 
 and he was excused from that terrible specimen 
 piece of workmanship which ordinary workmen 
 had to bring to the masters for criticism before 
 they could be accepted. Thus, every thing com- 
 bined to restrict the trade to a few hands, and, as 
 much as possible, to a few families, who trans- 
 mitted it from father to son. 
 
 The trade of locksmith is taken merely as an 
 example ; the same system extended to all trades. 
 
 When a merchant finds himself without rivals, 
 he naturally profits by the fact to sell poor goods 
 at a high rate ; such is human nature ; and it 
 was a principle as well understood in the middle 
 ages as now. So, to prevent the annoyances 
 necessarily resulting from a monopoly granted to 
 each corporation- in its specialty, the public, or 
 rather the authorities, everywhere exercised over 
 the corporations a rigorous police system. Con- 
 sequently, under the pressure of this supervision, 
 their laws gave minute directions concerning the 
 manufacture of goods For example, the rules of 
 
176 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 the cloth-trade fixed, with strict detail, the way 
 in which cloth should be woven, the length, 
 breadth, number of threads, &c. Not a piece of- 
 cloth was offered for sale until the inspectors had 
 tested it to see whether it conformed to the di- 
 rections of the statute. Tested and warranted, it 
 was stamped. At first sight, one would fancy 
 that this system had the advantage of doing away 
 with all cheating in trade and of protecting the 
 buyer ; but it was not so efficacious as would ap- 
 pear. The history of corporations is full of suits, 
 condemnations, confiscations, and fines inflicted 
 upon fraudulent artisans. 
 
 This system of supervision, which did not pre- 
 vent fraud, did, on the contrary, put a stop to 
 all innovation and progress. An inventor, who 
 had done his work differently from his associates, 
 was in danger of being treated as a cheat, — a 
 good thing for the stupid or lazy merchant, who 
 had no aspirations beyond enriching himself by 
 following calmly the blunders of his ancestors. 
 He was not threatened, as in our day, with the 
 loss of custom by competitors who used their wits 
 in a way that was profitable to the public. The 
 regulations did not guarantee the buyer against 
 fraud, but it did guarantee the jealousy of the 
 merchant against the skill of an intelligent rival. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 1 77 
 
 I said jealousy ; for this was certainly a ruling 
 characteristic of the old industries, as is forcibly 
 shown by the constant lawsuits of tho different 
 guilds against one another. Those whose trades 
 had any affinity were always at war, each attempt- 
 ing to reserve to itself some mixed production, 
 which, by its nature, belonged equal'y to both. 
 So the tailors of Paris, who had an exclusive 
 right to the manufacture of new clothes, have liti- 
 gated for centuries against the secondhand deal- 
 ers, who had an exclusive right to make over 
 clothes. Shoemakers have fought scarcely less 
 with cobblers ; bakers and pork-sellers, with inn- 
 keepers, to prevent their selling bread and pork ; 
 button-makers, with tailors, to prevent their mak- 
 ing the buttons they needed ; and so with other 
 corporations. . ' 
 
 These were the marked features of the corpora- 
 tions in their original state, before it was modified 
 by the royal power. 
 
 Freedom in money matters never truly exists in 
 corporations ; but at least, whilst the communal 
 life was energetic and the royal power feeble, the 
 corporations obeyed only the laws imposed by 
 themselves. The rules were made either by a 
 general assembly of members of the guild or by 
 chosen representatives. Furthermore, from the 
 
 12 
 
178 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 members of the guild were drawn the officers ap- 
 pointed to inspect the workrooms and shops. 
 The royal power interfered with all that, not at 
 one blow, but gradually. 
 
 In the last centuries of the monarchy, trade- 
 laws emanated wholly from the government, the 
 corporations not having a single right on thia 
 point. A minister like Colbert was doubtless more 
 enlightened than the average artisan. The direc- 
 tions issuing from his brain were certainly clearer, 
 wiser, and more exact than they could have been 
 from other sources, but they were also more com- 
 plex ; his superiority of mind had this effect, that 
 no detail escaped control, nothing was left free ; 
 slight openings for invention and progress were 
 perceived, and hermetically sealed. A minister, 
 too, was more jealous, of his authority and more 
 exacting of obedience, and had at his command 
 laws, penalties, and many more agents than the 
 corporations. The very force and perfection of 
 the government machinery finished the subjection. 
 
 But even the genius of Colbert could not fore- 
 see all that the human mind, at odds with the 
 system, and trying to evade it, often to satisfy 
 the demands of the public, which was always call- 
 ing for novelties, — all, I say, that the human 
 mind was capable of inventing in the way of ruses 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I 79 
 
 and expedients. Every time a new case appeared, 
 another rule had .to bo added to the list, so that 
 in time each ordinance became as large and lull 
 of detail as a code. It was almost impossible for 
 an artisan to keep all the rules fixed in his mind, 
 and he was of necessity constantly violating some 
 of them . 
 
 When a law is so constituted that it cannot be 
 wholly kept, the punishment of those who break 
 it must be irregular and arbitrary, because all 
 cannot be prosecuted ; the poor are the only suf- 
 ferers ; the rich and powerful are spared. The 
 public grows to scorn the law ; and even though 
 mixed with the absurd points there may be desir- 
 able and legitimate rules, all are regarded with 
 equal aversion. So it was with the artisans. 
 Deeds fatal to commercial honesty and lack of at- 
 tention to insignificant details incurred the same 
 punishment. The artisans, whenever they could, 
 cheated ordinance and customer with no more re- 
 morse for one than for the other. Foolish laws 
 always pervert the public. 
 
 The regulations of trade had still another ef- 
 fect — they arrested nearly all progress for five 
 centuries. There were five almost sterile centu- 
 ries, in which could not be counted nearly as 
 many inventions as in the first thirty years of the 
 present one. 
 
l8o A SHORT HIST-ORY 
 
 Slowly the royal power usurped the right of 
 uaming the inspectors of trades. These function- 
 aries were elective and temporary when depend- 
 ent upon guilds ; the royal officers were appointed 
 for life, but the apporntment was not a free gift. 
 The inspectors bought their posts of the king, as 
 did all the other officials of the ancient regime. 
 It is of course understood that they were re-im- 
 bursed by the fees required from the artisans at 
 each visit, and also by their share of the goods 
 confiscated as bad. , To inspect all the guilds 
 in all the cities, a large number of officers was 
 needed ; but the kings did not limit themselves 
 to the actual requirments ; they invented a niul- 
 titude of useless and even irregular offices, for the 
 very evident reason, that the creation of these 
 offices was a very easy way of filling the royal 
 purse. It was an indirect tax, which cost nothing 
 to collect ; for the post was not created until a 
 fool (sot was the word used by a minister of those 
 days) appeared to buy and pay for it ; and it was 
 liis business to make his purchase good at the ex- 
 pense of the artisans. This was one of the expe- 
 dients most popular under the monarchy ; at the 
 least call for money, offices were created, and 
 sometimes sold for very considerable sums. True, 
 they were often suppressed soon after, and the 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE.. l8l 
 
 sot was left stranded witlioiit his money. When 
 the need returned, the same office was renewed, 
 and the {>ot was not always wise enough to refrain 
 from buying it a second time. 
 
 The king also employed this means for making 
 presents to his courtiers. The Duchess of X, let 
 us suppose, has married ; the king has signed the 
 contract, and wishes to bestow a gift, and, if 
 short of monej^, invents some office of inspector 
 of wigs or measurer of logs, which he gives to 
 the bride to sell for her own profit. 
 
 Frequently, artisans, rather than submit to the 
 tricks and exactions of these inspectors, would 
 buy the offices themselves, and leave them vacant, 
 knowing that the kings did not take the trouble to 
 invent reasonable offices, which would have some 
 practical value ; they fully understood that these 
 duties would never really be executed. 
 
 One would suppose that, the corporations hav- 
 ing once bought the post, the thing would be done 
 with forever ; by no means. Royalty never prided 
 itself upon honesty towards the working classes. 
 Under Louis XIY, n guild had to pay five or six 
 times over for the abolishment of the same of- 
 fices. 
 
 The king also sold letters of mastership ; that is, 
 the right to become master of a craft, without 
 
l82 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 submitting to the conditions imposed by the trade- 
 laws ; but, if the former musters would give him 
 a larger sum, he would withdraw this right. He 
 also sold ihe privilege of admitting no new mas- 
 ters during a certain period, or only the sons of 
 existing masters, which made the trade more lu- 
 crative, by restricting it to a smaller number. 
 
 These facts suffice to show that the earnings of 
 the working classes were always in the power of 
 the king, and that he did not scorn to use this 
 power. 
 
 Corporations, besides special taxes made ex- 
 , pressly for themselves, bore also the weight of 
 the aidea and tallies like the rest of the people. 
 
 Then, besides public charges, there were many 
 large expenses within the guild. First, those con- 
 stant lawsuits, which were ever on the increase ; 
 then, whenever a master was admitted or had a 
 son baptized, there were religious ceremonies, 
 which they took pride in making more imposing 
 than those of the neighboring guild. After the 
 religious ceremonies, came the banquets of the 
 corporations. All this exhausted their money, even 
 with the fees paid by apprentices and journey- 
 men. Every year the corporation had to borrow, 
 and some of them were so sunk in debt that no 
 one would join them. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 183 
 
 In times of sufifering, so frequent under an ab- 
 solute monarchy, the consumption of articles of 
 prime necessity must be restricted, and that of 
 other things almost stopped, so that there were 
 periods of stagnation in every trade. For all these 
 reasons, it was diiScult and unusual for an artisan 
 to become rich ; but, on the other hand, the num- 
 ber of workmen in each guild being limited, they 
 could keep up the price of goods, so that they 
 rarely sank to bitter want, and there were none 
 of those extremes which we now see in trade. 
 Good and bad workmen were in almost equal con- 
 ditions, — very ordinary and very limited, but never 
 altogether wretched, and always about the same. 
 This class always had bread to eat, unless it rose 
 to a fabulous price, as happened quite often. 
 They had some furniture, and a Sunday coat which 
 would last ten years, or even a lifetime, if prop- 
 erly treated. 
 
 When we speak of the working class of the 
 middle ages, we must lay aside modern ideas. It 
 might be said in the present, that workmen or ar- 
 tisans formed nearly the whole population of the 
 cities. Under the ancient regime, they formed, in 
 the mass of the nation, a small, privileged class, 
 a sort of aristocracy; and I speak not merely of 
 the master, but of the journeyman too, for he had 
 
184 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 the privilege of working at a trade, which was 
 not granted to every one. 
 
 The riglit to choose a trade and work at it, a 
 right which now seems so natural, was then 
 thought contrary to order and justice. If a man 
 lor any reason, was obliged to leave the condition 
 of farmer, and abandon the country, or if the 
 hardships of his position discouraged him and he 
 turned to the city lor refuge, no trade was open 
 to h^m but that of beggar, Bohemian, or robber. 
 E^pccial stress should be laid on this point, which 
 is not sufficiently noticed. Beggars and Bohemi- 
 ans-formed a very numerous class in France; and 
 this was due, not so much to the vice of indi- 
 viduals, as to that of institutions. 
 
 As, under the Roman government, the greed of 
 nobles and rulers had, for centuries, cut off the 
 mass of the people from landed property, and 
 forced them to die of hunger and suffering, at 
 tiie very side of immense tracts devoted to use- 
 less pasture lands ; so the old regime forbade ac- 
 cess to trades already existing, and to hundreds 
 of others that might harve been started, to a crowd 
 of men, who would have gladly given their toil, 
 and who would thus have at once have escaped 
 want themselves, and enriched the nation. These 
 beggars and vagabonds bore in their brains, though 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 185 
 
 unconsciously, the germs of those rich inventions, 
 those endless forces a,nd resources which did not 
 burst forth till this century, but which would have 
 come sooner, if liberty had torn down the bar- 
 riers which were raised against work. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Such was the condition of the people in HSQ, 
 at the time of the Revolution. 
 
 The work of the Revolution may be briefly told. 
 The nation was divided into three classes, — nobles, 
 priests, and people. The two former contributed 
 scarce any thing towards the expenses of society, 
 and enjoyed all its advantages. The clergy pos- 
 sessed a third of the soil, and levied tithes upon 
 the rest, which either belonged directly to the 
 lords, or was burdened for their profit with various 
 heavy claims. 
 
 The Revolution first freed the land from these 
 claims, and put noble and priest under the empire 
 of equality, which is the same thing as justice. 
 No more classes; all must pay the taxes, and all 
 could aspire to office. 
 
 All men equal in the sight of the law, was one 
 of the grand features of the new society formed 
 by the Revolution. 
 
l86 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 The people were, in no way/ protected against 
 the excesses of government ; and the government 
 was betrayed into excesses indeed. The Revolu- 
 tion put bounds to the power of government and 
 obtained pledges in favor of the people. This 
 was the other grand feature of the Revolution, 
 v/hich means liberty. Equality and liberty — the 
 whole' Revolution is contained in those two words. 
 
 The Revolution was not easy of accomplish- 
 ment. Within and without, it met unbridled and 
 furious resistance. Like a sea arrested by a dike, 
 the Revolution broke down all opposition with 
 pitiless fury. It was drawn into deplorable ex- 
 cesses, but those excesses were not the Revolu- 
 tion. They soon passed, but the principles and 
 monuments of the Revolution have lived. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Not yet is the work of the Revolution done, nor 
 has the society, sprung from it, realized, in all re- 
 spects, the ideal to which it aspired. 
 
 As regards equality, the Revolution is three- 
 quarters accomplished ; it still remains for equality 
 in the sight of public opinion to be established 
 beside equality in the sight of the law. 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 187 
 
 Opinion still makes a distinction between the 
 middle class and the work'ngmeu. This is due 
 less to the fact that the latter work with their 
 hands and are without fortune than to their want 
 of education. When the time comes, — and per- 
 haps it is near, — that laborers shall have elemen- 
 tary teaching, the distance will be lessened. The 
 time when these laborers shall have more than 
 elementary teaching is much further away ; but, 
 happily, this event is not necessary for the rest 
 of the gulf to be bridged. It will be enough if a 
 certain number of workmen shall be as well taught 
 as the m'ddle classes. 
 
 .The two classes, — for there are but two now, — 
 avc also different in exterior, in their dress ; but 
 this disparity is daily less noticeable. It is 
 through the women that the classes lose their 
 distinctive appearance. Woman is more impa- 
 tient of inequality. She is often blamed for this 
 trait ; preachers and moralists are always chiding 
 her for it, and, in one sense, they are in the 
 right When a women goes beyond her means, 
 it clogs the whole household ; but, when she is 
 in easy circumstances, her ambition is rather 
 praiseworthy because of its results. 
 
 It is certain that the tradespeople and laborers 
 will never associate, as it would be desirable for 
 
l88 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 them to do, until the time when there shall be an 
 end to this marked difference in dress. 
 
 What will be the event in France is easily seen 
 from the example of the United States, which are 
 lUrther advanced than ourselves, and have this in- 
 terest for us, that they show us where we are 
 tending, and hold up to us our own image in the 
 time to come 
 
 In the United States, a workman wears through 
 the day his working- clothes, blouse or overalls, as 
 the case may be ; but, when his work is done, he 
 dresses like every one else, that is, like a gen- 
 tleman. In the streets, of an evening, the men all 
 belong to one class. 
 
 Light minds declaim against this confusion of 
 ranks, this uniformity of costume, and regret the 
 time when every class, and almost every trade had 
 its outside physiognomy, its peculiar dress. Those 
 people think themselves artists, and particularly 
 wish to appear as such. At all events, they are 
 poor, inferior artists. They do not see, that what 
 the men of a lower class bear impatiently is not 
 v/ealth, but the air of wealth, that combination of 
 appearances which makes the rich man seem to 
 belong to another and higher sphere. There lies 
 the principle of that base passion, jealousy, with 
 which the men of the people arc often justly re- 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 189 
 
 proached Equality is consolation for every thing, 
 even for want of fortune. It is profitable for 
 every one to see around hira only equals ; for 
 the workman to feel himself the peer of the 
 tradesman is a gain in morality and dignit}'' ; for 
 the tradesman, it is a growth in the spirit of jus- 
 tice, since, as we know, there is no justice ex- 
 cept between equals 
 
 The human mind and character will gain much 
 from this uniformity, which has been so decried. 
 There will be in every thing a change for the 
 better, and for the more beautiful too. But the 
 false artists, of whom we spoke, are not able to 
 undei stand this aesthetic fact. The picturesque- 
 ness of shoe and hat was good enough for them. 
 But, they say, equality can never be perfect, the 
 inequality of the moral and intellectual faculties 
 must ever continue There is no doubt of that, 
 and, still further, that inequality will become more 
 mark-ed and natural superiority will show more 
 clearly when the false and superficial inequality 
 of rank and fortune shall be effaced. Far from 
 fearing this result, we should wish it. Nothing 
 is more useful and proper than that public appro- 
 bation which is paid to qualities of mind and 
 character ; and this inequality has none of the 
 awkwardness of the other ; the human conscience 
 
190 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 revolts from claims of superiority or inferiority 
 only when they are attached to the conditions^ 
 into which the accident of birth has thrown us. 
 
 As regards liberty, the work of the Revolution 
 leaves us more to desire. 
 
 Government is, if one may 'so express it, a ne- 
 cessary evil. Reason and experience prove, that, 
 without "government, without the organization of a 
 collective force able to rule all other special 
 forces, there is neither order nor security. With- 
 out government, there is no equality. In this re- 
 spect, the philosophy of our history and of that 
 of many other nations can be formulated in a few 
 words When there is no government or a feeble 
 one, as was the case once in Gaul before the ad- 
 vent of the Romans, and again in France at the 
 beginning of the middle ages, there are formed 
 superior classes, who rule and tyrannize over those 
 classes which are called inferior ; and the ine- 
 quaility tends ever to increase : when, on the con- 
 trary, the government is strong, its first care is 
 to put down the domineering classes ; inequality 
 grows but slowly, the state tends to a level. 
 Such was the case with us, first, under the Ro- 
 man government, and, later, under our absolute 
 monarchy. Between these two terms, equality 
 and absolutism, there is an easily explained af- 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I9I 
 
 finity, which makes the latter follow in the train 
 of the former ; but, both times, the government 
 made ns pay dearly for the advantages it brought ; 
 both times its result was to make barren the Roil, 
 to kill the activity and vitality of the countjy, 
 and to make of France one of those languid na- 
 tions rarely seen outside of oriental lands. 
 
 The sphere of government is to establish order 
 and security ; but government does not always 
 see the necessary limits of its domain, or wish to 
 be bound by them, and, in this respect, the form 
 is nothing, heads of republics having been as 
 overbearing as the most absolute kings, Still, 
 nothing can be more fatal, in the long run, than 
 the government which goes beyond its province. 
 It can be said, that, for three centnries, the gov- 
 ernments of France caused each year more woes 
 than any natural plague would ever have done. 
 
 Unfortunately for the people, the Revolution did 
 not know how to mark with exactness the point 
 at which the legitimate action of government ends 
 and the inflexible right of the individual begins. 
 This work is bequeathed to us, and upon its ac- 
 complishment depends the future of the working 
 classes. The immense progress in their material 
 condition within fifty years should not be con- 
 sidered definitive ; it may, at any moment, be 
 
192 A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 compromised, so long* as this problem remains 
 unsolved. The working classes can themselves 
 lend much help towards solving it, and that with- 
 out requiring government to leave its proper 
 sphere, and give them monetary privileges, as 
 has been done too many times already, ' 
 
 They must not expect from government what 
 their own free activity, their own work and col- 
 lective efforts alone can secure. — the gradual dim- 
 inution of poverty, the gradual abolition of all 
 those fatal servitudes which nature makes so 
 heavy a burden for man. 
 
 To reduce the government to the strict measure 
 of its natural action is the task of the future ; it 
 is already the object towards which history is 
 pointing. The form of government matters much 
 less than many believe ; what does matter is the 
 limit of government. A republican assembly like 
 the Convention has more in common with an abso- 
 lute monarchy, whose immense disadvantages we 
 have shown, than with a truly liberal regime. 
 
 One reassuring fact is, that, by the force of 
 events, no country is now condemned to a soli- 
 tary destiny. On the contrary, the influence of 
 nation upon nation will become more obvious 
 daily, and the nations most advanced in the path 
 of liberty will possess the greatest power of at- 
 
OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE. I93 
 
 traction, this power being inherent in all true 
 ideas ; so those nations will draw others into 
 their broad movement. 
 
 There will always be some nations to lead and 
 others to follow; the destiny of the former will 
 no doubt be the more glorious, but all will ad- 
 vance. It is enough for the intelligent man, to 
 whatever country he may belong, to put from 
 him all dread, and look with tranquil gaze towards 
 the future. 
 
 E ND. 
 
 13 
 
194 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Agriculture, first principles of, 
 
 13 
 
 Aides, 
 
 95, 151-2 
 
 Alen^on, . . . 
 
 168 
 
 Al-ods, . . . . 
 
 44, 47, 48 
 
 Anjou, ...... 
 
 . 153 
 
 An vers, Bishop of, ... 
 
 166 
 
 Aquitaine, ...... 
 
 39, 100 
 
 Army, standing, .... 
 
 . 119-22 
 
 Artisans, condition of, in cities, . 
 
 170-85 
 
 Augustus, ..... 
 
 . 21 
 
 Austria, ...... 
 
 144 
 
 Auvergne, grand days of, 
 
 . 134, 135 
 
 Bagaudie, 
 
 29 
 
 Bailiffs, grand, .... 
 
 ; 106, 107 
 
 Belgium, 
 
 143 
 
 Benefices, 
 
 . 45-8, 53 
 
 Berry, . . . - . 
 
 153, 164 
 
 Blaisois, . ...... 
 
 . 164 
 
 Blois, . . . . . . 
 
 165 
 
 Blois, Lady Superior of, 
 
 . 104 
 
 Bo is Guillcbcrt, . . . . . 
 
 118 
 
 Bouchards, Lords of Montmorency, 
 
 . 99 
 
 BouUon, ]\I., 
 
 . 165 
 
 Bourges, Indendant of, . 
 
 . 166 
 
 Brittany, ...... 
 
 39 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 195 
 
 P.\C E. 
 
 Burgundians, . 
 
 
 . 9, 35, 43 
 
 Burgundy, . . . . 
 
 • 
 
 89, 153 
 
 Caen, .... 
 
 
 . 16S 
 
 Cgesar, Julius, 
 
 , , 
 
 21 
 
 Capctian Kings, 
 
 
 9Y, OS 
 
 Carlovingian Kings,. . 
 
 • . 
 
 . 54, 6Q 
 
 Castles strengthened, 
 
 
 . 1Q 
 
 Cens, .... 
 
 • • 
 
 95 
 
 Censives, 
 
 
 . 57 
 
 Centurions, . 
 
 . 
 
 48 
 
 Champagne, 
 
 
 . 153, 164 
 
 Charlemagne, 
 
 . • 
 
 44, 66 
 
 Charles III, the Simple, 
 
 
 . 76 
 
 Charles V, of Germany, 
 
 ■ . • 
 
 . 143 
 
 Charles VII, . 
 
 . 119, 120, 129 
 
 Charles VIII, 
 
 > • . 
 
 . 143 
 
 Clans, .... 
 
 
 . 10 
 
 Clermont, . . . . 
 
 . . 
 
 . 134 
 
 Clovis, . 
 
 . 36, 
 
 38, 53, 65 
 
 Colbert, 
 
 > . 
 
 165, 178 
 
 Colonage, . * 
 
 . 
 
 . 56-60 
 
 Coloni, . . . . 
 
 n, 18, 25, 
 
 26, 54, 55 
 
 Communes, 
 
 . 
 
 83-8, 118 
 
 Convention, the, . 
 
 . 
 
 . 192 
 
 Corporations, . 
 
 30, 
 
 31, 172-85 
 
 Corvees, 
 
 . 92-3, 130-1, lGl-2 
 
 Coucy, .... 
 
 . 
 
 . 99 
 
 Counts, 
 
 . 
 
 48 
 
 Court, the, 
 
 , 
 
 122-6 
 
 Curia, .... 
 
 • • 
 
 . 28, 60 
 
196 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Customs, ..... 
 
 131-2, 152-5 
 
 Daupliiny, ..... 
 
 . 168 
 
 Decurions, ..... 
 
 48 
 
 Denmark, ..... 
 
 . 32 
 
 Douanes, . . 
 
 . 152-5 
 
 Druids, ...... 
 
 . 10 
 
 Duels, judicial, .... 
 
 71, 112 
 
 Dukes, . . , . 
 
 . 48 
 
 Durance, ..... 
 
 35 
 
 Eleanor, of Aquitaine, 
 
 . 100 
 
 Estates, attached to offices, . 
 
 52 
 
 Fees, 
 
 94, 95 
 
 Fenelon, . ... 
 
 . 167 
 
 Feudalism, ..... 
 
 . 53, 126 
 
 Fiefs, 
 
 57 
 
 Fleury, . . . 
 
 . 169 
 
 For-mariage, .... 
 
 91 
 
 France, . . . . . . 
 
 10, 32, 43 
 
 France, Isle of, . 
 
 99 
 
 Francis I, . . . . 
 
 122, 139, 143 
 
 Frankisli Kings, power of, . 
 
 37 
 
 Franks, ...... 
 
 9, 35, 36, 43 
 
 French language, derivation of, 
 
 . 8, 9 
 
 Grabelle, ...... 
 
 155-8 
 
 Gallo-Romans, .... 
 
 43 
 
 Gascony, ..... 
 
 . 39 
 
 Gaul, ...... 
 
 . 7-10 
 
 Gauls, 
 
 . 7 
 
INDEX. 
 
 197 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 oc» 
 
 Germans, ..... . 7, 33 
 
 Germany, .... . 32, 34 
 
 Grandet, Abbe, 166 
 
 Greece, 32 
 
 Guizot, ....... 12 
 
 Dolland, .... . . 73 
 
 ITonores, 48, 50 
 
 Houses, first built in France, ... 8 
 
 Huns, invasion of, ..... 35 
 
 Immunities, ...... 48-50 
 
 Italy, - . . 
 
 Julius Csesar, ..... 
 
 Jura, . . . . . . 
 
 Justice, among German barbarians, 
 
 in Gaul, ..... 
 
 under Franks, 
 
 feudal, . . . . , 
 
 justiciary, .... 
 
 under absolute kings. 
 
 La Bruyere, ..... 
 
 Land, distribution of, . 
 Latifundia, ..... 
 Law, personal, ..... 
 
 study of Roman, . 
 
 territorial, ..... 
 
 Lesdiguieres, Duke of, . 
 
 Limoges, ...... 
 
 Lods and ventes, .... 
 
 21, 32 
 
 35 
 
 40-2 
 
 . 42, 4 3 
 
 61, 66 
 
 04, 68-71 
 
 . 64 
 
 134-38 
 
 . 166 
 
 . 44, 47 
 
 23, 24 
 
 42 
 
 113, 114 
 
 43 
 
 . 165 
 
 75 
 
 . 95 
 
198 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Louis I, the Debonair, .... 96 
 
 Louis VI, the Fat, .... 98, 99, 100 
 Louis VII. .... 93, 100, 102, 103, 143 
 Louis IX, the Saint, . . 98, 110, 112, 127 
 Louis X, the Quarrelsome, . . . .lit 
 Louis XIV, 13, 122, 124, 12G, 132, 133, 139, 
 
 143, 145, 181 
 Louis XV, . . . . . 122, 144, HO 
 
 Louis XVI, .161 
 
 Lyons, . . . . . . . 35 
 
 Mainbournie, ....... 55 
 
 Maine, 153, 164 
 
 Mallum, 48 
 
 Massillon, Bishop, ..... 169 
 
 Mastership, letters of, .... . 181 
 
 Mazarin, ....... 142 
 
 Merovingian Kings, .... 54, 65 
 
 Merovseus, ....... 66 
 
 Monopolies, . . . . . .93, 131 
 
 Monthl^ry, 99 
 
 Montmorency, Lords of, .... 99 
 
 Morin, M., . IS 
 
 Mortmain, . . ■ . . . . .91 
 
 Moulin, .... . . . 168 
 
 Normandy, . . . . .16, 153, 169 
 Normandy, Duke of, ... . 101, 102 
 Noimans, invasions of, . . . . 14-6 
 
 Offices, public, under Frankish kings, . 48-53 
 Offices, right to hereditary, ... 53 
 
INDEX. 
 
 199 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Ordeals, .... 
 
 , ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 . 41 
 
 Orleans, 
 
 , , 
 
 , 
 
 99 
 
 Orleans, Duke of, . 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 . 170 
 
 Palatinate, . . 
 
 f • 
 
 
 73 
 
 Paris, . . . . 
 
 , , 
 
 , 
 
 85, 75 
 
 Pastoral life, 
 
 , , 
 
 , 
 
 12 
 
 Peace of God, 
 
 , . 
 
 . 
 
 . 80 
 
 Peers, trial by, . 
 
 ■ • • 
 
 . 
 
 61 
 
 Perche, .... 
 
 , 
 
 . 
 
 . 164 
 
 Philip Augustus, 
 
 98, 106, 
 
 107, 
 
 108, 119 
 
 Pliilip IV, the Handsome, 
 
 . 112, 
 
 113, 
 
 1:27, 128 
 
 Philip V, the Long, 
 
 . 
 
 • 
 
 117 
 
 Picardy, .... 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 . 153 
 
 Poitou, 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 . 100 
 
 Property, division of, 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 10-14 
 
 Provinces, condition of. 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 54 
 
 Prussia, . . - . 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 . 144 
 
 Puiset, 
 
 . 
 
 • 
 
 99 
 
 Quarantaine, . 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 . 109 
 
 Quit-rents, . 
 
 * • 
 
 • 
 
 95 
 
 Revenues usurped, . 
 
 
 
 . 51 
 
 Revolution, work of, . 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
 . 
 
 . 185-6 
 
 Richelieu, 
 
 
 
 135, 142 
 
 Riom, .... 
 
 m • 
 
 . 
 
 . 108 
 
 Rocheile, 
 
 
 
 . 168 
 
 Rollo, .... 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 76 
 
 Roman conquest, 
 
 
 
 . 22 
 
 Romans, 
 
 , . 
 
 . 
 
 7, 8, 22 
 
 Rouen, .... 
 
 
 
 . 167 
 
200 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Royal power, nature of, under feudal system, 100--2 
 Royalty, absolute, ..... 138-46 
 Russia, ....... 32 
 
 Saint Simon, 
 
 . 169 
 
 • 
 
 Saintonge, , , . . 
 
 . 100 
 
 Salt-smuggling, 
 
 . . .156 
 
 Salt-tax, 
 
 155-8 
 
 Saone, .... 
 
 .35 
 
 Security, . . . . 
 
 11 
 
 Seigniory, 
 
 . 101 
 
 Seneschals, grand, 
 
 106, lot 
 
 Serfs, .... 
 
 , 59,60,89-95 
 
 Serfs, freedom granted to, . 
 
 . 116, in 
 
 Slavery, causes of, 
 
 . 16 
 
 Soissons, 
 
 35 
 
 Solonge, .... 
 
 . 164 
 
 Sortos, . . . . 
 
 44 
 
 Spain, . . ' . 
 
 . 32, 143, 144 
 
 States General, 
 
 128-9 
 
 Suzerainty, 
 
 . 101 
 
 Sweden, 
 
 . . . 32 
 
 Taille, .... 
 
 . 92, 126-30, 146--50 
 
 Taxes, collection of, 
 
 158-61 
 
 Taxes under Romans, 
 
 . 28 
 
 Tolls, 
 
 94, 154 
 
 Toulouse, 
 
 . 35, 87 
 
 Touraine, 
 
 ICO, 164 
 
 Truce of God, 
 
 . 80, 81 
 
 Turgot, 
 
 . 150 
 
INDEX. 201 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 United States, ...... 188 
 
 Vassalage, ....... 63 
 
 Vaubaii, 168 
 
 Vendomois, , . . . . • .104 
 Visigoths, 35, 43 
 
 Warfare, private, . . . . 6t, H 
 
 Wcrgheld, 42,43 
 
 Wine-tax, . ..... 165-8 
 
 V