Читать книгу The Close of the Middle Ages, 1272-1494 - Richard Sir Lodge - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Progress of the French Monarchy—Its difficulties—Philip III.—The inheritance to Toulouse, Champagne, and Navarre—Wars with Castile and Aragon—Accession of Philip IV. and the importance of his reign—His War with England and Flanders—His relations with the Papacy—The suppression of the Templars—His policy of annexation—His domestic government—The King’s Court and its departments: the conseil du roi, the chambre des comptes, and the Parlement of Paris—The States-General—Financial maladministration—Death of Philip IV.—Louis X.—His death and the succession question—The Salic Law—The short reigns of Philip V. and Charles IV.

The history of the modern kingdom of France begins with the break-up of the great Karoling Empire in the treaty of Verdun (843). Western Francia, split off from the other dominions of Charles the Great, continued for a century to be ruled by his degenerate descendants. But the decentralising movement did not stop with the division of the Frankish Empire into three fairly well-defined units. The dukes and counts, who had been provincial governors under Charles the Great, took advantage of the growing weakness of the central power to make their position hereditary and practically independent. Superficial unity was only maintained by the necessity of making head against the attacks of the Northmen. The successful resistance of Paris to these invaders gave to the dukes of Paris, the lords of the Isle de France, the royal title which the Karolings at Laon were too feeble to defend. But the early kings of the House of Capet were as powerless as their predecessors. They themselves belonged to the feudal nobles, they owed the crown to the support of their fellows, they were avowedly only primi inter pares. Hugh Capet himself acknowledged this when he undertook to do nothing of importance without consulting the tenants-in-chief. During the eleventh century France was little more than a geographical expression: its political unity was a mere shadow: its ecclesiastical unity was independent of the crown. But in the twelfth century two movements began |Progress of the French monarchy.| which were destined to exert the most decisive influence on the fortunes of France: the rise of the communes, and the growth of the royal power. There was no formal alliance between the crown and the bourgeoisie, but they had obvious common interests in opposition to the feudal nobles, and they rendered the most vital assistance to each other. Feudalism, attacked both from above and from below, seemed destined to perish. The three kings who dealt the most fatal blows to aristocratic isolation were Philip Augustus (1180-1223), Louis IX. (1226-1270), and Philip IV. (1285-1314). The third estate rendered its greatest service to the monarchy by giving birth to the class of lawyers. To their superior training and their persistent advocacy of the principles of Roman Law was due the gradual break-down of feudal jurisdiction. The cour du roy, at first either the court of the royal domain or the court of peers for the trial of cases concerning tenants-in-chief, became, as the Parliament of Paris, the supreme judicial court for the whole of France. Side by side with the advance of the central judicial power, another great change was going on—the extension of the royal domain. In the great fiefs female succession was admitted in default of male heirs, and this proved fatal to the permanence of many of the old families. With regard to the crown there was no acknowledged rule of succession, because no occasion for dispute arose. From the accession of Hugh Capet in 987, to the death of Louis X. in 1316, there was never wanting a son to succeed to his father. This uninterrupted male succession for so many generations, almost unparalleled among the reigning families of Europe, was an invaluable element of strength to the crown in its struggle with feudalism. One by one the great fiefs fell in, were conquered, or were acquired by marriage with heiresses. The most notable successes were the acquisition of Normandy by Philip Augustus, and of Languedoc after the Albigensian crusade. By the time of Philip the Fair the only provinces which retained their feudal independence were the county of Flanders in the north, the duchy of Brittany in the west, the duchy of Burgundy in the east, and the duchy of Aquitaine in the south. The royal power and the territorial unity of France had advanced pari passu, and Philip IV. found himself strong enough to attempt acquisitions beyond the traditional frontiers of France.

So far—during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—the tendency towards centralisation, in spite of temporary obstacles and checks, had achieved that success which usually attends directness and persistence of aim, and a politic, if sometimes unscrupulous, choice of means. But at the death of Philip IV. this progress was suddenly arrested, and during the next two centuries a struggle had to be carried |Difficulties of the monarchy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.| on, differing in many respects from that which had gone before, but still involving many of the same problems and ultimately terminating in a victory for the same side. One essential factor in this struggle was the tenure of the duchy of Aquitaine by a foreign prince—the king of England. Obvious interest impelled English kings, like Edward III. and Henry V., to ally themselves with all the forces of disunion in France, and their efforts were aided and stimulated by the chance which gave them a colourable claim to the French crown. But the difficulties of the French kings of the House of Valois were not due merely to English intervention. There were two fatal flaws in their own policy and that of their predecessors. (1) While taking every advantage of the movement of the lower classes, the kings had done little or nothing to satisfy their legitimate aspirations. They gave the lawyers a distinguished position in the service of the crown, and that was all. Before long, the third estate was sure to weary of an alliance in which all the substantial advantages were on one side; and if the commons were able or willing to form a coalition with the nobles against the crown, they might impose checks upon the royal power similar to those which were enforced by the English parliament. That this danger was a real one will be seen when we come to consider the attitude adopted by the States-General at the time of the battle of Poitiers.^[3] (2) While destroying the old feudal nobility, the French kings had created a new one. As the great fiefs fell in, many of them were granted out again as appanages to members of the royal family. Doubtless it was considered that blood-relationship would be sufficient to unite their interests with those of the monarchy. But this proved a complete miscalculation. Relationship counts for very little in politics as against the impulse given by selfish interests. Edward III. tried a similar policy in England, and it led to the Wars of the Roses. In France it led to the long contest of the Burgundians and Armagnacs, to the Praguerie of 1440, and to the League of the Public Weal of 1465. The féodalité apanagée, as French writers call these nobles of royal birth in contradistinction to the old féodalité territoriale, did not long delay to assume the same attitude as their predecessors, and became the opponents of the monarchy which had created them. Their overthrow tasked the devotion of the capable servants of Charles VII., and gave full employment to the mingled craft and resolution of Louis XI.

The futile expedition to Tunis, the expiring effort of that crusading impulse which had urged mediæval Europe to |Philip III., 1270-1285.| heroic deeds, cost France the life of the noblest of her long line of kings. Louis IX. was almost the only French ruler who combined the highest moral virtues with eminent political capacity. His son and successor, Philip III., could claim neither of his father’s characteristics. He was illiterate, and the rashness which earned him the name of le Hardi was not redeemed by any clear insight or any signs of ability. He was only in name the head of the House of Capet: the real master of French policy was his uncle, Charles of Anjou. Paris looked for guidance to Naples, rather than Naples to Paris. That the French monarchy continued to advance, in spite of the incapacity of the king, is a signal proof of its inherent strength and of the ability of the trained lawyers who served it. The reign of Philip III., obscure as it appears at first sight, was marked by the acquisition of three important provinces, of which two remained permanently subject to the crown.

Among the numerous victims who perished on the return journey from Tunis were Alfonso of Poitiers (August 21, 1271), brother of St. Louis, and his wife Jeanne |The Toulouse inheritance.| of Toulouse, the last descendant of the famous House of St. Gilles. They left no children, and their vast inheritance, including the counties of Toulouse, Poitou, Auvergne, and the marquisate of Provence,^[4] fell to the French crown. The only exceptions were the district of Agenais, which was claimed by the English king, and the Venaissin, near Avignon, which was ceded to the Papacy in accordance with the treaty of Meaux in 1229. Thus France completed the absorption of Languedoc, which had been begun in the crusade against the Albigenses. It is true that Philip undertook to rule his new territories as count, and not as king, and that he created a special parliament and law-court at Toulouse, but these concessions to local independence were only temporary and illusory.

In 1274 occurred another important death, that of Henry, King of Navarre and Count of Champagne and Brie, leaving |Champagne and Navarre.| an only daughter, Jeanne, aged three years. The widow, Blanche of Artois, carried the infant heiress to France and threw herself on the protection of the king. Philip at once occupied Champagne and Brie, which were henceforth united to the crown. At the same time he procured a dispensation from Pope Gregory X. for the future marriage of Jeanne to his own second son Philip, who soon afterwards became heir to the throne by the death of his elder brother. The people of Navarre revolted against this high-handed settlement of their fate by a foreign prince, but their resistance was crushed by a French army, and Philip assumed the government of the kingdom as guardian for his future daughter-in-law.

These territorial gains were the only notable successes of Philip III.’s reign, and his remaining years were mainly occupied |Wars with Castile and Aragon.| with two futile wars in Spain. Alfonso X., formerly the claimant of the throne of the Cæsars, was still reigning in Castile, but the actual conduct of affairs fell in his old age to his sons, Ferdinand de la Cerda and Sancho. The elder, who had married Philip III.’s sister Blanche, died in 1275, leaving two sons. The Castilian Cortes, in regulating the succession, passed over these children, and secured the crown on Alfonso’s death to Sancho, who had earned the name of ‘the Brave’ for his exploits against the Moors. Philip was indignant at the exclusion of his nephews, and took up arms to support their claims. But his invasion of Castile was so reckless and ill-planned as to gain him the name of le Hardi, and he was unable to force a passage through the mountains. His intervention was naturally fruitless, and Sancho succeeded to Castile on his father’s death.

The second war was more prolonged. The Sicilian Vespers in 1282 (v. p. 25), which resulted in the transfer of Sicily to Peter III. of Aragon, made a profound impression in France, and many nobles hurried to offer their services to Charles of Anjou. The Pope excommunicated Peter III., and offered the crown of Aragon to Philip III.’s second surviving son, Charles of Valois, on condition that it should never be united to France. The offer was accepted in 1284, and in the next year Philip himself headed a great expedition against Aragon, which was dignified by the name of a crusade. The capture of the fortresses of Elna and Girona, both after an obstinate resistance, were the only successes of the campaign. Roger di Loria with his Catalan sailors destroyed the French fleet, and cut off the possibility of receiving supplies by sea. At the same time disease broke out in the French army. Philip found it necessary to retreat, and died at Perpignan |Death of Philip III., 1285.| on October 5, 1285. He left three sons: Philip, who in 1284 had married Jeanne, heiress of Navarre; Charles, Count of Valois and Alençon, and titular King of Aragon; and Louis, Count of Evreux, whose descendants afterwards ruled in Navarre.

Philip IV. was seventeen years old when he succeeded his father, and he died at the age of forty-seven. In the course |Philip IV., 1285-1314.| of these thirty years he set a mark upon French life and government which has never been completely effaced, not even by the floods of successive revolutions. Yet our knowledge of his reign, and especially of his person and character, is singularly scanty. That he was good-looking we know from his being called le Bel, but we are not informed whether he was tall or short. His character we have to infer from his actions, and we are forced to conclude that it was far less attractive than his face. This dearth of contemporary records is the more notable when it is contrasted with the striking picture which we possess of his grandfather, and with the wealth of narrative on the subject of the fourteenth century wars. Philip was not the man to be the hero of a Joinville or a Froissart, and no Philippe de Commines had yet arisen. There is little that is heroic or picturesque about his reign. The most striking scene, the humiliation of Boniface VIII., is repulsive in itself and is discreditable to Philip’s memory. It may even be said that there was little result to show for his restless activity. The two enterprises which he had most at heart—the annexation of Aquitaine and Flanders—ended in failure. His only territorial acquisition of importance was Lyons. The suppression of the Templars was not an achievement to be proud of. A notable victory was gained over the Papacy, but it was gained by discreditable methods; and, after all, the residence at Avignon brought no permanent advantages to France. Philip’s great work lay in the comparatively obscure details of domestic government, in the improvement and completion of administrative machinery, and in the removal of all obstacles in the way of an efficient despotism. These are achievements which escape the notice of historians who are attracted by the heroes of chivalry, but they produce far more definite and deep-seated results than the most brilliant exploits on the battlefield. It must be admitted that Philip IV. was cruel and cold-blooded; that his regard for the letter of the law was a mere disguise for unscrupulousness; that this unscrupulousness was the more repulsive for the hypocrisy which could always find pretexts to justify it; it may even be admitted that his failures in external politics outweighed his successes,—yet he must be always memorable as the real founder of that administrative centralisation which has ever since been the dominant characteristic of the government of France, and has been a prominent cause of the subsequent greatness, if also of the subsequent disasters, of that country.

If this estimate of the reign be correct, it is obvious that we need not linger long over Philip’s foreign relations, and that our attention will be better devoted to his domestic measures. The war with Aragon, which he inherited, never interested him, as the only possible gainers by it were his brother and his cousin. After lasting for nearly twenty years, it ended in the final loss of Sicily by the House of Anjou, and the abandonment by Charles of Valois of his claims on Aragon on condition that his cousin, Charles II. of Naples, should give up to him his appanages of Anjou and Maine. Before this settlement had been arrived at, Philip had turned his attention to a far more exciting enterprise—the attempt to |Wars with England.| wrest Guienne and Gascony from Edward I. of England. These provinces had been united to the English crown since the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Aquitaine, and on the whole they were fairly satisfied to remain subject to their distant ruler, whose island kingdom gave them a convenient market for the produce of their vineyards. But Edward I. had his hands full with the suppression of discontent in his recent conquests in Wales, and with enforcing his lately acknowledged suzerainty over Scotland. This gave Philip IV. an opportunity which he was not slow to seize. Taking advantage of a naval quarrel between some Norman sailors and the mariners of the Cinque Ports, and of the refusal of the Gascons to acknowledge the judicial authority of the French courts, Philip summoned Edward I. to appear before him to answer for the breach of his obligations as a vassal (November, 1293). Edward was aware that a contumacious attitude towards his suzerain would set a dangerous example to John Balliol in Scotland, and did all in his power to avoid a rupture. Unable to go to France in person he sent as a proxy his brother Edmund, who had married Philip’s mother-in-law, Blanche of Artois. On this docile envoy Philip played what can only be described as ‘the confidence trick.’ He assured him of his perfect friendliness to England, offered the hand of his sister Margaret to Edward, who was now a widower, and in return he demanded that, as a mere sign of trust and submission, Gascony should be ceded to him for a period of forty days. Edmund consented; but on the expiration of the time, Philip declared the English king to be contumacious for not having appeared in person, and his troops remained in occupation of the Gascon fortresses. After this there was no alternative but war. Edward was at an immense disadvantage. He had a war with Scotland and Wales on his hands; his subjects, especially the clergy, were discontented at his exactions, and the enemy was already in possession of a large part of his territories. His only ally of importance, Adolf of Nassau, was too impotent in Germany to effect any diversion. On the other hand, Philip offered aid to John Balliol, and thus laid the foundation of that permanent alliance between France and Scotland which lasted till the reign of Mary Stuart. The actual hostilities were unimportant, but the balance of success was decidedly against the English. It was at this time that Boniface VIII.’s attempt to interfere led to his first quarrel with Philip IV., and to the issue of the bull Clericis laicos (v. p. 29). In 1297 the war assumed a new phase. Edward I. had succeeded in deposing John Balliol and in conquering Scotland, so that he was now free to take part in the continental war. At the same time he found an ally in Count Guy of Flanders, who had hitherto been kept passive by Philip’s detention of his daughter as a hostage. But Edward was again hampered by quarrels with the clergy and the barons, and the latter refused to serve in Gascony if the king persisted in going in person to Flanders. The result was that Guienne and Gascony were left defenceless, while Edward and his Flemish ally were unable to make head against the French. This check and the outbreak of a Scotch rebellion under Wallace forced Edward to make overtures for peace, and Philip determined to postpone the annexation of Aquitaine until he had completed the reduction of Flanders. Boniface VIII. had been compelled by difficulties in Italy to draw closer to the French king, and he had published a modified interpretation of his bull against clerical contributions to secular rulers. He was now allowed to act as mediator, though Philip protested that he accepted his mediation as a private person and not as Pope. It was arranged that both parties should retain their possessions as they stood until the conclusion of a final settlement. As a security for future peace, Edward I. was to marry Philip’s sister, Margaret, and the young Edward of Wales was betrothed to Philip’s daughter, Isabella. Both kings abandoned their allies (June 30, 1298).

While Edward I. returned to defeat Wallace at the battle of Falkirk, Flanders was left at Philip’s mercy. The Flemish citizens had no love for their count, and would render him no assistance. In this hopeless position, Guy |War in Flanders.| was induced by the treacherous promises of Charles of Valois to trust to the clemency of his suzerain. He was at once thrown into prison, and his fief was declared forfeited to the crown (1300). On his first visit to his new province, Philip’s cupidity was excited by the wealth which he found there. His wife, Jeanne of Navarre, exclaimed, when she saw the jewellery of the ladies of Bruges: ‘I thought I was the only queen in France, but I find that here there are six hundred.’ The attempt to gratify the greed thus aroused was certain to lead to discontent. The Flemings were as fond of their wealth as they were jealous of their independence. They soon discovered that it was better to be oppressed by their count than to be both oppressed and pillaged by their French governor, Jacques de Chatillon. The signal for a general rebellion was given in Bruges, as twenty years before in Palermo, by a massacre of the French. Philip despatched a large feudal army under Robert of Artois to crush the insurgents. The French nobles reckoned on an easy victory over unwarlike and ill-armed citizens, but they were undone by their own confidence and recklessness, and were utterly routed in the famous battle of Courtrai (July 11, 1302). This was the first of a great series of battles which taught Europe that an infantry force, if properly led and handled, could more than hold their own against mounted and heavily accoutred men-at-arms. It was some time before the lesson was thoroughly learned; but when it was mastered, the military system of the Middle Ages collapsed, and with it perished the social organisation which rested on the invincibility of the knightly force. Philip IV. advanced in person to recover the lost honour and power of France, but the approach of winter compelled him to retire without having done anything towards the suppression of the rebellion. The great disaster of 1302, the first which Philip had yet experienced, came at the crisis of his quarrel with the Papacy, and forced him to moderate his ambition. In 1303 he concluded a final peace with Edward I. and resigned his acquisitions in Aquitaine. In 1304, Boniface VIII. being dead, a great effort was made for the reduction of Flanders. At Mons-en-Puelle (August 18), by carefully avoiding the ruinous mistakes at Courtrai, Philip succeeded in defeating the Flemings; but his victory was hardly won, and was by no means so decisive as that of his opponents had been. Within three weeks the rebels had re-formed their army and were as formidable and undaunted as ever. Philip found himself compelled to recognise that he had undertaken a task beyond his strength, and he hastened to escape from it by concluding a treaty (June, 1305). Robert of Béthune, the eldest son of Count Guy, who had died in prison in 1303, was invested with the fiefs of Flanders, Nevers, and Rethel; the Flemings undertook to pay 200,000 livres to the French king, and to hand over as security for the payment Douai, Lille, and other towns on the southern frontier. It was long since a French king had suffered such a humiliating check. In 1300, Philip seemed to have secured the whole of Flanders and the greater part of Aquitaine. Four years later he had lost both provinces.

Philip’s relations with the Papacy have been already alluded to (v. p. 29). In his quarrel with Boniface VIII. he had substantial justice on his side, and the national development of France necessitated an energetic resistance to the exorbitant pretensions of the mediæval Papacy. But these considerations do not justify the brutality of the French soldiery at Anagni, nor the vindictiveness with which Philip persisted in blackening the character of Boniface after the latter’s death. Equally inexcusable was his treatment of the ill-fated Benedict XI., though there is no reasonable ground for believing the charge that Philip’s agents poisoned the Pope in consequence of his excommunication of Boniface’s assailants. In Clement V. the king was face to face with a Pope upon whose subservience he had reasonable claims, and who was fully his match in diplomatic subtlety and in the want of scruples. The hold which Philip obtained upon the Papacy at this time enabled him to effect the blackest action of his reign, the destruction of the Templars. The crusades in the East had come to an |Suppression of the Templars.| end with the fall of Acre in 1291, and the Orders which had been formed for the defence or conquest of Palestine must inevitably fall victims to the jealousy which their wealth and independence excited in Europe, or they must undertake some new task which would justify their existence and give them a renewed hold on the public opinion of Europe. The Knights of St. John and of the German Order of St. Mary chose the latter course, and secured a prolongation of their corporate existence—the one in Prussia, and the other in the island of Rhodes. The Templars, who had been the most prominent in the wars of Palestine, were the least prepared to find a new occupation, and their inaction impaled them on the other horn of the dilemma. It is needless to go through the long catalogue of charges, some horrible and some absurd, which were brought by the king’s agents against the Order. It was inevitable that a celibate society of warriors should give occasion for the belief that the vow of chastity was not always observed. It is credible that in their intercourse with the Saracens many of the knights may have been led into unbelief, or even to adopt a contemptuous and irreverent attitude towards Christianity. But it is not credible that the whole Order was guilty of the obscenity, blasphemy, and irreligion that were charged against its members. Confessions extorted under horrible tortures and recanted when health and sanity were restored, do not constitute evidence from which any reasonable conclusions can be drawn. But Philip IV. was deaf to all considerations of justice or of clemency, and his iron will extorted a condemnation from judicial tribunals and from the Pope. In 1310, after the trial had lasted for two years, fifty-four knights were burned in Paris, and many other executions followed. In 1312 the Order was formally suppressed, and its possessions transferred to the Knights of St. John. This last provision was only imperfectly fulfilled, and much of the Templars’ hoarded wealth never passed from the hands of the king. In 1314 the last grand master, Jacques de Molai, after a solemn retractation of all extorted confessions, and a denial of the truth of all charges against the Order, perished at the stake on an island in the Seine.

Philip’s last success was an encroachment on those border territories between France and Germany which constituted |Encroachments in Arles.| the obsolete kingdom of Arles. The first step towards their annexation to France had been taken when Philip III. inherited the marquisate of Provence (see above, p. 47). In 1291 Philip IV. had arranged a marriage between his second son, Philip, and Jeanne, daughter and heiress of Otto IV., Count of Burgundy. This marriage brought Franche-Comté under French influence, but did not result in the final annexation of the province, which was not accomplished till the treaty of Nymegen in 1678. For a long time the city of Lyons and the adjacent territory had been objects of French covetousness, and constant quarrels between the archbishop and the citizens offered frequent pretexts for intervention. At last, in 1312, taking advantage of the Emperor Henry VII.’s absence in Italy, Philip IV. ventured to take the final step, and Lyons was incorporated with France.

We must now turn to Philip IV.’s domestic government, |Domestic Government.| which constitutes his sole claim to a place among the great kings of history. His aims were those of his predecessors—those, in fact, of all kings in the later Middle Ages who wished to extend their power. He had to destroy feudalism as a basis of government, or, in the words of a great historian, to ‘eliminate the doctrine of tenure from political life.’ The essential vice of the feudal system was that every man was directly bound only to the immediate lord of whom he held his land; the connection with that lord’s suzerain was purely indirect. Hence came an inevitable tendency to disruption; the tie between vassal and lord was stronger than the indirect tie between the sub-tenant and the king; if a great noble rebelled he could compel his tenants to follow him even against his suzerain. For this system, which had many merits, but was inconsistent with either national unity or a strong government, Philip desired to substitute an organisation in which all Frenchmen, whether tenants-in-chief or sub-tenants, should stand in equal subjection to the law and to the king as the source and guardian of the law.

To accomplish this end, an efficient administrative machinery was necessary, and of this the foundations had been laid by Philip’s predecessors. The country was divided into bailliages in the north and sénéchaussées in the south. Philip IV. regulated and extended the functions of the bailiffs and seneschals, and employed them not only to carry out his edicts in the provinces, but also to supply him with that accurate local information without which centralisation is useless and incompetent. Besides these local officials, he |The King’s Court.| had the cour du roi which attended his person. This body, the earliest institution of Capetian France, was originally merely the court of the king’s domain, and consisted of the household officers and the immediate domain tenants. From time to time, however, the king must have had to decide questions concerning the great tenants-in-chief, and by the essential principle of feudalism such questions must be referred to their equals. Hence arose the court of peers, the creation of which is assigned by tradition to Philip Augustus when he summoned John of England to answer for the murder of Arthur of Brittany. Whether this court ever had a separate existence from the domain court is difficult to decide, but if it had, it soon lost it. In the reign of Louis IX. the domain court was transformed, when necessary, into a court of peers by the addition to it of some of the great vassals. At the same time, the court was made more efficient by the introduction of trained lawyers. Under Philip IV. these lawyers became the real managers of the work of justice and administration; and the nobles, though retaining the right of attendance, preferred as a rule to absent themselves from business in which their want of legal training placed them at a conspicuous disadvantage. The work of the court included all departments of government: the advising of the king, the management of finance, and the administration of justice. And the judicial work was enormously increased, partly by the compulsion of the nobles to allow appeals from their local courts to that of the suzerain, and partly by the reservation of an increasing number of cas royaux—i.e. cases which had to be brought in the first instance before the king. It was impossible for one body of men to discharge such a vast mass of business, and the court was gradually split up into three great departments, which continued, with modifications in detail, to conduct the routine administration of France till the Revolution.

(1) The first of these divisions was the conseil du roi, which corresponds roughly to the Privy Council in England. It consisted of the great officers of the household with fifteen councillors of state and two or more secretaries. Its chief business was to advise the king in all affairs of government. Ordinary jurisdiction was delegated to the Parliament, but the council continued to exercise judicial power. Appeals could in the last instance be made to the king in council, and he could evoke cases to it from other courts.

(2) The chambre des comptes was the financial division of the royal court, and resembles the English Exchequer. It received and audited the accounts of the bailiffs and seneschals; it had jurisdiction in all financial suits, and it registered all edicts and deeds which concerned the domain.

(3) The most famous of the three bodies was the great law-court of France, the Parliament of Paris. Its functions correspond to those of the courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas in England, but its peculiar history arises from the maintenance of a corporate unity and authority which the English judges never possessed. Philip IV. not only gave to the Parliament a separate existence, he also fixed its sessions in Paris, and organised its three earliest sub-divisions. The chambre des requêtes decided the lesser cases of first instance brought directly before the Parliament. The chambre des enquêtes received and prepared for further consideration all appeals from lower courts. The grande chambre was the largest and most important of the sub-divisions, and is often called the Parliament by itself. In it the peers retained the right of sitting down to the Revolution, but they only appeared on formal occasions. The grande chambre decided all important appeals, and cases of first instance concerning the peers, the royal officers, and the members of the sovereign courts. At first the Parliament only met twice a year, at Easter and All Saints. But the two sessions proved insufficient to discharge the growing business of the court, and, later in the century, it was made a permanent court, and its members were appointed for life or during the royal pleasure. In addition to its judicial work, the Parliament had to register all royal edicts, treaties of peace, and other formal documents. This was originally a duty rather than a right; and it was not till much later that the Parliament based upon this practice a claim to remonstrate against, or even to veto, the edicts of the king.

The organisation of this administrative machinery is the greatest achievement of Philip IV.’s domestic government. |The States-General.| But his reign is also noteworthy for the origin of the States-General, which at one time promised to become the basis of a constitutional system of government such as was our Parliament established in England, but was ultimately crushed into insignificance by the crown which had created it as a mere instrument to serve its own ends. The first meeting was held in 1302, when Philip wished to parade the unanimity of his subjects in opposing the pretensions of Boniface VIII. They were summoned again in 1308 to condemn the Templars, and in 1314 to support the king in a renewed war with Flanders. Philip may have found a model for these assemblies either in the provincial estates of Languedoc and Brittany, or in the Cortes of Castile and Aragon, but it is more than probable that he was inspired by the example of his great contemporary, Edward I. of England, who in 1295 had summoned the famous ‘model parliament,’ and had himself in 1301 obtained a protest against the papal claims from a parliament at Lincoln.

The States-General under Philip IV. are especially remarkable for their numbers. All tenants-in-chief, whether clerical or lay, were invited to attend in person, and those who were prevented by any unavoidable cause might send proxies. The cathedral chapters and monasteries sent representatives; and so did all the towns of any size in the kingdom. There was no attempt to determine the condition which entitled a man either to vote or to be elected. The only class which was unrepresented was the peasantry. When the States met, they were divided into three estates: clergy, nobles, and citizens. The meeting only lasted a day, and there was no general discussion. The royal spokesman explained the object for which they were summoned, and then each estate separately drew up a document in accordance with the wishes of the king.

It is obvious that the summons of the States-General was not in any way forced upon the king by external pressure, but was a mere expedient to strengthen his hands. The assembly never got rid of this taint on their origin. If a French king thought his end could be best attained by summoning the States-General, he summoned them: but if, on the contrary, he thought it advisable to treat separately with the various provinces, he did so. Later in the century an attempt was made to secure regular assemblies with definite authority, but the attempt was a failure, and parliamentary government was never established in France until the nineteenth century.

The whole of Philip’s rule is marked by the steady encroachments upon feudal independence and privilege of an unscrupulous but efficient despotism. He claimed for the crown the right of creating peers, which he exercised in favour of Charles II. of Naples and of Robert of Artois. He raised to the rank of nobles men who had no qualification either by descent or by tenure, and was thus enabled to reward those ministers who borrowed from Roman Law the phrase, quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem, and coined from it a French legal adage, which the monarchy might have taken for its motto: que veut le roi, si veut la loi. But there was one glaring defect in Philip IV.’s government, which he also bequeathed to his successors. His financial |Financial maladministration.| administration was as incompetent as it was tyrannical and oppressive. He strained to the utmost the normal sources of revenue, the income from the domain and the feudal incidents. When these were exhausted, he imposed gabelles or taxes on the sale of commodities. But these taxes he was foolish enough to farm out to his creditors in order to obtain large sums of ready money. Such an expedient, especially in early times, always results in loss to the state and oppression to the taxpayer. More ruinous, because more dishonest, was the constant debasement of the coinage, which Philip carried to such lengths that contemporaries called him the ‘false coiner.’ Thus the founder of the French monarchy was also responsible for the defect which ultimately ruined his creation. It is an extraordinary thing that France, one of the richest countries in Europe, and in some ways one of the most efficiently governed, never had a sound financial system under the old monarchy. Philip’s successors imitated the defects as well as the merits of his rule. To his devices of farming the taxes and of debasing the currency they added the disastrous practice of selling offices, and of increasing their value by granting their holders exemption from taxation. Many Frenchmen saw and deplored the evil results of this system, but no one was strong enough to apply a drastic remedy. The deficit which resulted was the immediate occasion, though not the cause, of the great revolution. It may be fanciful, but it is not preposterous, to contend that, if Philip IV. had been a capable and honest financier, the Bourbons might still be seated on the throne of France.

Such a harsh government as that of Philip IV. could not possibly be popular. His direct attack upon their |Death of Philip IV.| interests exasperated the noblesse, and his financial extortions alienated the bourgeoisie. In 1314 a new war broke out with Flanders, and Philip attempted to defray its expense by a heavy tax upon all commodities, to be levied on their sale, from both seller and purchaser. This caused an explosion, and for the first and only time nobles and third estate were leagued together against the king. Such an alliance threatened to ruin the monarchy, and Philip was forced to yield. He abolished the tax, and promised to redress the grievances of his subjects as regards the coinage. Soon after this humiliation he died (November 29, 1314).

During the next fourteen years Philip’s three sons ruled in rapid succession, and their reigns are chiefly notable for |Louis X., 1314-16.| the establishment of the all-important rule of succession which excluded females from the succession to the French throne. The eldest, Louis X., was only twenty-four years old at his father’s death, and took no interest in the work of government. The conduct of affairs was allowed to fall into the hands of his uncle, Charles of Valois, who had always sympathised with the feudal opposition to Philip IV. The triumph of the reactionary party was seen in the trial and execution of Enguerrand de Marigny, one of the chief advisers of the late king. But the nobles, freed for the moment from royal domination, were short-sighted enough to throw over their recent alliance with the bourgeoisie, and thus lost an excellent chance of imposing permanent restrictions upon the power of the crown. The concessions which they obtained were solely in the interests of their own class, and even they were not national concessions but were embodied in a series of provincial charters. The absence of national unity, to which these events testified, was a cause of the ultimate victory of the monarchy, which had never again to face such a hostile union of classes as had been formed for the moment in 1314.

Apart from this momentary victory of the feudal nobles, the reign of Louis X. is absolutely uneventful. He got rid of his first wife, Margaret of Burgundy, in order that he might marry Clementia, sister of Carobert of Hungary. He also undertook an expedition to Flanders in order to force the Count to observe his treaty obligations; but the campaign was wholly unsuccessful, and soon afterwards the young king died, on June 5, 1316. His death was more |Succession question in 1316.| important than his life, as it gave rise to the first doubtful succession since the reign of Hugh Capet. For the first time for more than three centuries there was no male heir to the crown, as Louis only left a daughter, Jeanne, the offspring of his first marriage. As the question of female succession had never arisen before, there was no rule to decide either way. But the problem in this case was further complicated by the fact that Clementia, Louis’s second wife, was expecting a child to be born five months after her husband’s death. Until this event took place nothing could be settled, and during the necessary interregnum the regency was naturally intrusted to Philip, the elder brother of the late king. Meanwhile the interests of Jeanne were maintained by her maternal uncle, Eudes IV. of Burgundy, with whom Philip concluded a treaty. This provided that if Clementia gave birth to a son he should succeed to the whole inheritance, but if the posthumous child were a daughter, then Jeanne was to have Navarre, Champagne, and Brie until she was of marriageable age, when she was to choose whether to renounce the crown of France or to demand a formal consideration of her claims.

In November, 1316, Louis X.’s widow gave birth to a son, who is reckoned in the list of French kings as John I. The child was born on a Sunday, and died on the following Friday. Thus the claims of Jeanne were left in full force, but they were seriously prejudiced by the fact that during the previous five months her uncle had obtained a firm hold of the reins of government, which he was by no means prepared to resign. The Duke of Burgundy was bribed to abandon the cause of Jeanne by a marriage with Philip’s daughter, and by the gift of Franche-Comté and 500,000 crowns as his bride’s dowry. The French lawyers, sharing the general prejudice against female rule, which resulted from so long a period of male succession, hunted out a clause in the laws of the Salian Franks which forbade |The so-called Salic Law.| the inheritance by women of terra Salica. This clause they arbitrarily applied to the crown, and thus coined the famous expression, the Salic Law. But it must never be forgotten that the exclusion of women from the throne of France rests, not upon any ancient rule, but upon the precedent of Jeanne’s exclusion in 1316, followed and confirmed by further exclusions in 1322 and 1328.

Once securely established on the throne, Philip V. showed |Philip V., 1316-22.| himself a resolute and able ruler. The reaction in favour of feudal independence was checked; the lawyers recovered their ascendency in the royal counsels; and the administrative machinery of Philip IV. was once more set in working order. Numerous assemblies were held, in which the third estate was fully represented; and a vigorous attempt was made to improve trade, and to check provincial isolation by establishing uniformity in coinage, weights, and measures. But Philip did not live long enough to carry out designs which, if successful, might have given him a place among the great administrators of France. He died in 1322 leaving only daughters, and his brother Charles IV. had little difficulty in seizing, not only the throne, |Charles IV., 1322-28.| but also Navarre, Champagne, and Brie, which ought to have been left in the hands of Jeanne. The reign of Charles is of little importance except in connection with England, where Edward II. was deposed and murdered by a conspiracy headed by his faithless wife and Charles’s sister, Isabella of France. To his nephew, the young Edward III., Charles handed over Guienne, but retained the district of Agen, to be the source of future disputes. With Charles IV.’s death (January 31, 1328) the main line of the House of Capet came to an end. There was still one doubt as to the rule or custom of succession. That women could not themselves hold the crown had been settled by three successive precedents within twelve years. But could they transmit a claim to their male descendants? There were in 1328 two possible claimants on this ground—Philip, the son of Eudes IV. of Burgundy by a daughter of Philip V., and Edward III. of England, whose mother was a sister of the three last kings. But France was not likely to adopt a rule of succession which might at any moment give the crown to a foreign prince. And so the crown passed to the nearest male heir, Philip of Valois.