WHEN Hugh Capet became king, the "feudal system" was already in full being and enjoying a healthy life – full of danger for the royal power. Too often the "Feudal Age" is used as a term as if it were synonymous with the "Middle Ages." As a matter of fact it includes only about the years between 900 to 1300, during which time the authority of the kings and of the "nation" was weak and what we call the "feudal nobility" was strong. After that, feudalism decidedly waned, or lived on mainly for the sake of its social trappings, and the kingship ever more steadily gained the upper hand. In the days of its prosperity feudalism was by no means confined to France; Germany, Italy, Spain, and, after the Norman Conquest (1066), England, all had their share of the system. At the same time feudalism had its most complete and characteristic growth in France, and when we use the word we instinctively describe it in French terms, just as in philosophy and art one is always tempted to turn to Greek schools, types, or models.
The origins of feudalism can be traced back to old Roman and Germanic times even before the great invasions. There were plenty of tokens of "feudal conditions" in Charlemagne's day. But what really brought the feudal régime to pass was the direful weakening of the government under his very unhappy successors, and the compelling need men felt for some system of society which would guard against the worst forms of anarchy.
By 900 even, the power of the kings who inherited the fragments of the Frankish Empire, had sunk low indeed. Even if they had been wise and vigorous monarchs the whole spirit of the age was undermining their authority. Many causes, long operating, were tending to upset what we may call the normal political society, in which all men are fellow members of an extensive nation, and replace it with a new order. This "feudalism" is extremely difficult to describe in a few words, but perhaps it is correct to say that it is a condition in which lawful authority is not based on the common allegiance of everybody to a central "government," but on a great number of special compacts, each between two persons, whereby the greater "lord" becomes at once a kind of landlord, and also a high magistrate and war-chief over the lesser "vassal." In the feudal period the question would not be so much, "Of what nation are you?" as, "Of what lord do you hold your lands?" The manner in which this question was answered, settled the social and political status of an individual.
Of all the causes contributing to the growth of feudalism the most general was the fact that kings and other magnates would grant away the lands whereof they were possessed in return for military service. At first this "leasing" (as modern men would say) was only temporary; it ceased when the very peculiar "rent" (military service plus certain financial assistance) was not duty paid, and in any case when either the "landlord" (suzerain) or "tenant" (vassal) died. But when the king's power weakened, and inasmuch as long occupancy of a "fief" (feudal holding) made the tenant feel that the possession thereof was his right, not his privilege, the status of "vassalage" became ever more permanent. The king could not recall the fief except in extreme cases. He was also bound to confirm it to his late vassal's son, or sons, or if there was no son, to his daughter, or even his indirect heirs. By 900 the great vassals of kingdoms were forgetting all but their most formal duties to their nominal overlord. They became independent princes in all but name, and seldom enough did their "liege lord the king" have power to coerce them. The greater vassals, however, were in turn compelled to parcel out their own dominions among lesser princelets still, and these again might have dependent on them a swarm of petty nobles each possessing perhaps only a fortified tower and a few bare acres. The feudal system indeed caught in its tentacles practically the entire social fabric of France. The bishops and abbots of the Church were too frequently feudal lords, with all the political and military rights and duties (except that of personally swinging the sword) of a lay nobleman. Between one fifth and one fourth of the entire territory of France is estimated to have belonged to these wealthy and sometimes direfully "secular" great churchmen.
Naturally enough the miserable lower classes, who had been held in various degrees of bondage during the Roman and Frankish periods, became adjuncts to the feudal system, as mere villeins to the lords: the humble and necessary supporters (serfs or not much better) of the dominant nobility. Their exact condition will be made clearer a little later.
In this feudal régime there was no essential order or system. Theoretically every nobleman owed allegiance to some overlord, and he to some higher overlord, and so on in ascending order up to the king. Actually there was every kind of confusion. "Organized anarchy," so feudalism has been justly called by a despairing scholar. Still, despite the confusion, there are a few lines of demarcation which simplify certain feudal institutions and conditions. The following points may be helpful:
1. In the first place, as a rule the lowest feudal noblemen ranked as mere "seigneurs" or "sires" ("lords"), possessors of a small castle. Above these would follow, in a kind of order, barons, viscounts, counts, marquises, and dukes: and at the head of all the king. A great abbot of the Church might rank up with a viscount, a prince-bishop as a count or even higher. However, there were no fixed usages. In France certain counts were every whit as powerful as certain dukes, while other counts might be "doing homage" for some of their lands to a viscount or even baron. And there were certain noblemen of still lower nominal rank, who held up their heads arrogantly with the best; for example, the lord of a great castle in Picardy, the famous relics whereof were wantonly destroyed by the Germans in 1917, made following proud boast in his family motto:
"No king am I, prince, duke, nor count, I'm just the Sire of Coucy!"
2. In the next particular should be observed the ordinary obligations of a nobleman to his suzerain. These were before all "homage," the duty of kneeling down before the overlord on proper occasions and swearing to execute the feudal duties, and to do the lord no injury. The main fulfillment of homage, of course, came in the obligation to fight against the suzerain's enemies, to give him good counsel, especially to aid him in awarding and enforcing justice, and on certain rather rare occasions (ransom from captivity, dowry for eldest daughter, etc.) to supply him with money. In return the suzerain would owe his "vassal" military protection against his enemies, and fair play in any lawsuit, and must also see to it that his children were not cheated out of their father's inheritance.
3. Finally, we observe that the center of all feudal life and action was ordinarily the nobleman's castle. Every full-fledged fief possessed at least one, sometimes an elaborate fortress, sometimes merely a petty tower. Even with the smallest castle, however, the capture thereof (before the coming of gunpowder) was a slow and bloody business. Behind his good walls and with a few trusty retainers and a good supply of bread and beer, even a very feeble baron could often "make good his rights" against his suzerain. These castles had been multiplied particularly to check the ravages of the Northmen and other raiders: but everywhere they sprang up and became so many centers for political disintegration. Only tedious blockade and starvation could ordinarily reduce them, and their masters comported themselves like so many petty kings. They exercised powers of "pit and gallows" (life and death) over their peasants; coined money in their own name; and waged bloody warfare against their neighbors in the next castle, or perhaps against the prince-abbot of the neighboring monastery. A rude sense of honor usually compelled them to execute their bare pledge to their suzerain, especially by giving the stipulated number of days of military service; but if an overlord was a wise man, he did not interfere in the internal management of his vassals' fiefs nor in their private quarrels. The suzerain's hold also upon the dependents of his own liegemen was at best precarious. "The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal" ran the old saying. It was enough if the lesser nobles did their sworn duty by their lord, and did not involve him in war with his neighbors; while he in turn (unless he were the actual king) was probably full of distrust towards his suzerain.
This then was the setting of French mediæval society – the masses of toiling peasantry, without political rights or standing; the barons in armor, riding roughshod over the unprivileged, unarmed multitude; and the enfeebled king, often trembling before his own "vassals." Only for the terrible thunders of the Church had these feudal lords genuine awe.
For two hundred years after the Archbishop of Reims (the first churchman of the land) put the crown on the head of Hugh Capet, the new kingdom of France had a struggling and often precarious existence, and the royal crown must often have seemed to be made indeed of mere tinsel. To buy the support of the nobles who had assented to his coronation, Hugh had been forced to make almost ruinous concessions of land and authority. Nowhere seemed the "organized anarchy" of feudalism more triumphant than in France just before 1000. In theory Hugh had taken over the vast powers of Charlemagne, minus only the imperial title; practically he was only the most honored among several hundred barons, who called him "fair sire" more because each man desired a check upon his own unfriendly neighbors than because he wished to have any effective king over him.
Hugh indeed possessed some real authority over his old "Duchy of France," the land immediately around Paris and stretching southward to Orléans on the Loire. This country has been commonly known as the "Royal Domain Lands." It was not, however, larger than the small American State of Massachusetts, and even within it, there were many petty barons who obeyed the King very reluctantly if they did so at all. Outside of this region the King had almost no effective power. The great Dukes of Normandy, Burgundy, and Brittany, and the equally lordly Counts of Flanders, Champagne, and Vermandois, could each put in the field as many armed retainers as the King, and they never hesitated to fight him when they harbored a grievance or an ambition. In the south of his nominal kingdom, the Duke of Aquitaine and the Count of Toulouse divided the rule over a folk who differed in language and local customs from their northern neighbors, and they usually did not trouble much about tendering the King even their outward and formal homage. The "South Country" (Midi) indeed differed so absolutely from northern France as to constitute almost a separate nationality. The Southerners spoke the melodious "Languedoc" dialect, as against the harsher "Languedoïl" used around Paris; their manners were more luxurious and showed more survivals of the old Gallo-Roman culture: and it was angrily claimed by the North French monks that their morals were far laxer than on the other side of the Loire. In any case, the fusing of "France" and the "South Country" into a happily unified nation was one of the great tasks for the future, and would have remained a sore problem, even if it had not been rendered far harder by the general feudal anarchy.
Besides all these great nobles just named, there was a host of lesser counts, viscounts, and barons who ruled by the "grace of God" (that is, without heeding any suzerain), coined their own money, quarreled or made peace at their own pleasure, tyrannized over their subjects; in short, performed all the acts of petty sovereigns, with scant enough respect for "their lord the king" at Paris. Under these circumstances the real marvel is that the new dynasty of Capet ever built up an effective kingship at all; yet this was actually the case. Out of this feudal chaos was to rise the majestic monarchy of France.
A number of factors worked together to make the monarchy to wax and the barony to wane. Here are some of them.
While the various noblemen were continually resisting the King, these scattered princes could seldom forget their own bitter feuds enough to unite as a body against him. He had the support of some vassals in almost every war.
The Capetian kings were lucky in never lacking a direct heir down to 1328. The reigning king could always present a son eligible for election by the nobles, and for coronation as junior king in the older ruler's lifetime. For a long time, in theory indeed, the kingship was elective, with the great lords as the electors, but by about 1200 it was so clearly understood that only a Capetian was able to succeed a Capetian that the election became an empty form, and insensibly hereditary succession was established in its stead. There were no disputed successions and almost no wars within the royal family, to distract still further the kingly power. Men became accustomed to the idea that a Capetian was the one possible ruler of all France.
Then again while several of these Capetian kings were mediocre men, none were entirely unworthy to rule, and several (and these in the most critical periods) were sovereigns of marked capacity. The personal equation was usually all on their side.
Another decisive factor was the ability of these kings to keep on friendly terms with the Church. The Popes, all through this period, were usually at strife or open war with the Emperors of Germany. All the more reason there was then for Rome to stand on good terms with the second most pretentious monarch in Christendom. The average feudal lord oppressed his neighboring bishop or abbot; the King would usually come to the latter's relief. The Church gladly repaid this protection by giving its own potent moral (and often its physical) support to the King against his vassals.
Also as time elapsed, and the non-noble lower classes, especially the dwellers in the towns, strove to win personal and local liberties, they often found a champion in the King against their baronial lords. The King reaped his reward in the subsidies these new subjects were glad to pay to him, and money has always meant power. Besides every detachment of subjects from the barons of course strengthened the monarchy.
Finally, be it noted, while the Capetian dynasty lasted, many feudal dynasties disappeared. Family feuds, local feuds, crusading warfare, and many similar calamities carried them off. The King would, of course, pounce upon the vacant fiefs and there would be few to gainsay him.
Thus it was that from a pitiful abyss the new French monarchy at last struggled upwards to greatness.
It was over a hundred years, however, before there were any substantial signs of a change for the better. The three Capetians who followed Hugh the Founder were among the most insignificant of their line. Robert (9 96)- 1031), Henry I (1031-60), and Philip I (1060- 1108) were all somewhat weak men, in addition to the ordinary handicap of facing a perilous situation. Philip indeed probably had somewhat smaller dominions than Hugh Capet. To make matters far worse in his day there had arisen a most formidable rival beside the King of Paris. Ever since their conversion and settlement the Dukes of Normandy had been little less than independent princes. Now in 1066, William "the Conqueror" had overthrown the Anglo-Saxon dynasts in England, and become the full-fledged king of a realm, which (thanks to his skillful and valorous policy) he held in a far tighter grip than his nominal suzerain held the bulk of France. It would have seemed a most ordinary turn of events if the Norman duke, now sovereign in his own right of England, had refused homage to Paris, and overthrown his one-time overlord by force of arms. This did not, however, take place. William I died in 1087. His sons quarreled over his possessions. Much of the best Norman fighting energy was drained away to the Holy Land on the First Crusade (1095-99) and perished there. France therefore had respite from absolute disruption, but the threat remained. So long as the Duke of Normandy held a great overseas dominion, whence he could draw gold and warriors, what chance of more than a precarious life had his "suzerain" the Capetian? The twelfth century was to prove critical indeed.
The Capetian monarchy was saved and exalted partly by the dissensions of its enemies, partly by the kind Providence which gave it three kings of very high ability. They were all among the prime builders of France. They were Louis the Fat, Philip Augustus, and last but nowise least St. Louis.
There was nothing sluggish about Louis VI "the Fat" (1108- 37) but his body. Powerful war-horses groaned under the weight of this corpulent but vigorous king, as he hastened incessantly about his dominions exerting all his limited authority to make the king's law respected. The "Ile de France" (Royal dominions around Paris) had been infested beyond most mediæ- val regions with lawless petty nobles, who seized, plundered, and put to ransom travelers, pillaged the property of the Church, and made the whole land a ceaseless Gehenna. Louis found an admirable minister and assistant in the sage Abbot Suger, one of the first of those great royal administrators who were to do so much for the establishing of France. "It is the duty of kings," wrote Suger, "to repress by their power and the innate right of their office, the audacity of the nobles who rend the state by ceaseless wars, desolate the poor and destroy churches." These were high words for the twelfth century. Suger's master had often to let the great feudatories beyond his domain-lands work their will, but he at least became lord within his own limited house. One by one the robber castles were besieged and taken, and the worst oppressors taught a lasting lesson.
In his wars with his great vassals Louis, of course, had not the military strength for wide conquests, yet he at least struggled valiantly for his rights and not entirely in vain. The Normans were kept at arm's length, but in 1124, when Henry I of Normandy and England had made alliance with his son-in-law Henry V, Emperor of Germany, the Capetian King had to face a very serious danger. Henry the German led a great host into eastern France and even threatened Reims. Then it was there flashed the clear sign that Frenchmen were drawing together into a national consciousness, and could unite against a foreign peril. Louis VI boldly took the great "oriflamme," the flame-red silken banner of the realm, and called out all his vassals. For the most part they obeyed heartily and bravely. The great princebishops sent a host of men-at-arms. The Count of Champagne and the Duke of Burgundy led out all their retainers, and so did many lesser dynasts as well. Such an army was collected that Henry the German dared not abide the issue. He slunk home without risking a battle, and Louis reaped infinite credit. Everybody confessed that the King of France was no ordinary feudal overlord, but the consecrated chief of "the most noble and Christian nation of the French," its appointed champion against the alien. As a consequence of this prestige, Louis was able to meddle in the settlement of the troubled affairs of Auvergne (in the South Country) and in Flanders. In both cases he came away with credit, and demonstrated, as was then said, "that kings have long hands."
Another form of Louis's activities was even more menacing to the great nobles. Everywhere the towns of France were forming "free communes" and demanding charters of liberties from their overlords. It was the beginning of a movement of the oppressed non-noble classes that was to bring much to the world. The King had little enough favor for such unsettling proposals within the royal dominions, but outside of them he craftily understood that they would undermine the power of his rivals, the great feudatories. Everywhere else, therefore, he used his influence to get charters from the seigneurs for the communes. It was not that he loved the communes, but the chance for a stroke at the great vassals was not to be resisted.
When Louis VI died (1137) the power of French monarchy was sensibly greater than at his accession (1108), although the danger from Normandy-England had by no means passed. The King had, however, arranged as he thought a most fortunate marriage for his son and heir Louis VII. He had wedded him to Eleanor of Guienne, heiress to the great fief of Poitou and the still greater Duchy of Aquitaine – embracing the lion's share of the South Country. It should have made the royal dominions extend down to the Pyrenees, and rendered the king incomparably more powerful than any of his vassals. Unfortunately, however, Louis VII (1137-80), although not exactly a weakling, was by no means the equal of his energetic father. He was indeed so "pious, so element, so kindly that on seeing him you might think he was not a king, but some good monk." Such a man was no match for the spirit of the times. In 1149 after returning from the disastrous Second Crusade to Palestine, Louis VII quarreled with his high-spirited and not super-devout queen, and speedily divorced Eleanor, honestly returning to her the great dower of nigh all of the South Country. Eleanor was still marriageable and her vast fortune made her the "catch" for every lordly suitor. Almost to the ruin of France she presently married Henry of Anjou, who was not merely Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, but in 1154 became Henry II, King of England. This "Henry Plantagenet" was a prince of abounding energy and almost equal ability. In France his dominions extended now over an infinitely greater area than his nominal suzerain at Paris. He had all of England: he even commenced the conquest of Ireland. The sore quarrels in his own family, and the difficulty of controlling England, prevented him at first from a deliberate attack upon the Capetian, but from this time onward for nearly fifty years the "Angevin" (Anjou) peril hung over the French kingdom like a sword of Damocles, and Louis VII was not destined to live long enough to see it pass.
This twelfth century was, of course, an age when the French peoples if not the French kings were showing the effective power that was in them. The Crusades were at their height. The history of these vast military movements to rescue Palestine from the Moslem belongs strictly to the general annals of Europe, not to France. But France was their peculiar homeland, supplying probably more fighting men than all the other Christian nations combined, and endured corresponding sacrifices. It was at Clermont in Auvergne that in 1095 Pope Urban II had first preached his gospel of the sword, and had been answered by the mighty cry "God wills it!"; while of the chiefs who led the army that stormed Jerusalem in 1099, almost every one was either a Frenchman, a Norman, or at least came from the debatable lands of Flanders and Lorraine. The Christian kingdom of Jerusalem which lasted from 1099 to 1187 was almost a slavish imitation of feudal France transported to Oriental shores. In the abortive Second Crusade (1147-49) Louis VII had been one of the main participants, and in each of the five later Crusades which won so much futile glory, all but one (the Fifth, 1228-29) was to be largely under French leadership and with heavy French contingents. The sacrifices and agony of these expeditions were inevitably vast. Their failures were, of course, due to the pitiful ignorance of the conditions of Eastern warfare, but the resourcefulness and courage of the crusaders was superb: – a witness to the high intelligence, energy, and vast potentialities of the consolidating French people.
The reactions of the Crusades were not all of them simply religious and social. Not merely did the returned warriors bring back from Palestine a love for Eastern silks, sherbets, and other refinements, and learn how to improve the fortification of their castles: the political results were also marked. Many noble families were killed off. Many others became so impoverished by the sacrifices entailed by the expeditions they had to quit their fiefs. In any case the royal power was steadily the gainer.
The crisis of the French monarchy came in the days of the son of Louis VII, Philip II, who from his mighty deeds presently earned for himself the lofty title of Philip Augustus (1180-1223). More than any other one personage, he was the author of the greatness of France. When he ascended the throne the very existence of the monarchy was in question. When he departed, its victorious future seemed assured. He is therefore one of the cardinal figures in history.
Modern critics cannot, indeed, wax enthusiastic over this cold, cautious, firmly calculating man, who could, if need be, show himself the lion, but always by preference played the fox. He was not more unscrupulous and morally calloused and cruel than the run of his contemporaries, and there are few major crimes to be laid to his door. Chroniclers of his day give this not unfriendly picture: "He was a well-knit, handsome man, bald (after an illness), of agreeable face and ruddy complexion, loving good cheer, wine and women, generous to his friends, niggardly to those he disliked, catholic [that is, pious] in his faith, farseeing, and obstinate in his resolution." This king was fortunate in enjoying a very long reign, during which he saw his desire upon nearly all his enemies.
Henry II of England, Anjou, and Normandy had been prevented from throwing off his nominal dependence upon France by the strife within his own family and dominions. There was intermittent fighting between him and Philip until 1189, when the news that the Saracens had retaken Jerusalem caused all the kings of Europe to dedicate themselves to the Crusade, and temporarily to drop their feuds. Henry II died almost immediately thereafter. He was a very able prince who had just missed founding a great empire. His son, Richard the Lion-Hearted (Richard I of England, of "Ivanhoe" fame), was a magnificent cavalier and field-captain, but without the political and diplomatic ability of his father. Late in 1189 Philip and Richard set off as brothers-in-arms for Palestine to recapture the Holy City. They departed as sworn friends, on the journey they quarreled, and their bickerings while in Syria went far to bring the unhappy Third Crusade to grief. In 1191 Philip washed his hands of the situation in disgust, and hastened back to France as soon as the strong city of Acre was taken. Richard more honorably stayed in Syria until 1192, when it was evident that Jerusalem was not to be recaptured. Then he made a truce with Saladin, the Moslem Sultan, and also started home. While, however, he was passing through Europe he was treacherously imprisoned by his enemy Duke Leopold of Austria, and held several years in German captivity – years which Philip used to full advantage to intrigue with all the disaffected elements in the Angevin lands and to undermine his rival's power. In 1194 Richard was at liberty again, and such was his prowess as a general that Philip's schemes were effectively checked for five years, until the English King perished (1199) by a chance arrow while attacking a South French castle. This arrow was to determine much history. It is hard to tell the fate of France had this capable warrior enjoyed a normal lease of life. Richard's lawful heir to at least part of his dominions was very probably his nephew, Prince Arthur; but his younger brother John (King John of England, probably the greatest scoundrel who ever disgraced the English throne) put forth his hands upon all the territories. The great "Angevin" interest was divided. Philip, as the suzerain "bound to render justice," made haste to espouse the cause of young Arthur, whom he declared lawfully entitled to Anjou, Normandy, and Brittany.
John did not lack a certain military ability. He defeated Arthur, took him prisoner, and then completed the deed by murdering him. Philip had now a perfectly clear case under feudal usage. John had slaughtered the heir to three great fiefs and usurped them; he had "broken all the bonds of fealty." In the lack of proper heirs the fiefs lapsed back to the suzerain. John was so outrageous and so unpopular with the barons of France that Philip's other vassals for the most part supported the King gladly. John's vassals on their side often fought for him very slackly or not at all.
In the winter of 1203-04 John, like the coward that he was, took refuge in England. Philip then pressed the siege of the great Chateau-Gaillard, possibly the strongest castle of the time, which Richard had built at a vitally important spot to bar the passage from Paris down the Seine into Normandy. It was valiantly defended, but no outside relief arrived. One by one Philip's engineers forced its outworks, and in April, 1204, the great castle surrendered. In June of that year Rouen, the capital of Normandy, opened its gates, and nearly all the old duchy of Rollo the Northman was soon in Philip's hands. After that display of strength it took little more than a military promenade into the Loire territories in 1204 and 1205 to make Maine, Touraine, Anjou, and Poitou change fealty. By 1208 John retained little more in France than Saintonge and Gascony – a part of the old Aquitainian duchy in the South Country. The once great "Angevin Empire" had faded to a shadow.
John did not succumb, however, without a struggle. In 1214 Philip faced a genuine crisis. The Angevin interest had stirred up rebels and enemies in many parts of France, and above all had induced the Emperor Otto IV of Germany to invade France by way of Flanders. With Otto rode nearly all the dynasts of the Low Countries, those princelets of uncertain allegiance who wished neither France nor Germany to become too powerful. The danger was great. John himself was re-invading France along the line of the Loire, but Philip called out all his vassals, and was notably aided by the burgher militia of the new "free towns," anxious to prove their gratitude and value for their royal protector. At the bridge of Bouvines (between Lille and Tournai) French and German collided. It was a headlong medi- æval battle, marked by little high generalship but by much valor. Philip was in the midst of the fray. The German footmen dragged him from his horse and almost took him prisoner till his knights thundered down to his aid. In the end the headlong charges of the North French chivalry cleared the field alike of the Germans and of their Flemish and English auxiliaries. Otto in turn barely escaped capture, and fled ignominiously, leaving six counts and twenty-five lesser barons captive in French hands as well as a swarm of ordinary knights and commoners.
Philip returned to Paris amid the rejoicings of the royal city. We are told how on the day of entry the Te Deums of the clergy mingled with the clang of the bells and the bray of the trumpets. The houses were hung with curtains and tapestries; the roads strewn with green branches and flowers, and citizens, churchmen, and university students all went forth to meet the King, singing canticles of praise. It was a truly national victory, for the militia of the communes no less than the feudal men-at-arms had borne their brave part in the battle. The French people was finding itself and sensing its own unity and power. Bouvines therefore has to go down in history as one of the world's decisive battles.
After Bouvines, John quickly slunk back to England again, not risking a serious blow. The old heritage of the Norman dukes was definitely lost. Philip showed admirable ability in conciliating the factions in the conquered land, knowing how to take away the sting of conquest and yet to confirm his new power. His innovations for the management of the enlarged royal dominions, the introduction of baillis as high royal officers to supervise the lower prévots and to check up abuses, his skillful financial measures whereby he was able to fill his armies with soldiers at steady wages, and not to depend merely on feudal levies, the marked favor he showed the new "free towns," which were giving scope and liberty to the lower classes – all these things, without entering into technical details, show him the great statesman as well as the successful warrior.
In 1223, when Philip Augustus died, he left a kingdom in which enormous blocks of territory from Picardy down almost to the heart of Aquitaine had been added to the direct royal domains. In 1180 these dominions had contained only thirty-eight provostships (prévotes), in 1223 there were ninety-four. The royal revenues had more than doubled. The feudal lords knew for a trembling certainty that they were henceforth only at best the privileged subjects of a mighty king. In other words, under Philip Augustus the great power of France was born.
During this reign also an important step was taken towards bringing the region of Toulouse, the eastern part of the South
Country, into dependence upon northern France. Philip had no direct part in the movement, though he did nothing to discourage it. In this soft and luxurious region the Catholic religion is said to have relaxed its hold and much of the population became infected with the "Albigensian" heresy; a hybrid type of half Christianity, half Oriental mysticism, which set at nought nearly all the orthodox dogmas. Milder efforts by preachers having failed, in 1207 the great Pope Innocent III caused a general "crusade" to be preached against the heretics. Many North French barons were delighted at a summons to pious warfare in a country near at hand and full of plunder. Between 1207 and 1218 lovely Provence, Toulouse, and other districts were ravaged from end to end; their towns sacked; their civilization stunted; and great numbers even of devout Catholics were slaughtered. The power of the Counts of Toulouse, once nearly as independent as "kings," was almost completely broken.
At length the crusading fury burned itself out. The heretics disappeared, and the surviving Southerners turned in despair on the invaders and for the most part expelled them. But to secure any kind of protection, Count Amaury of Toulouse and other barons were forced to appeal to the King of France, and to pledge themselves to be his humble vassals. Under Philip's son Louis VIII, nearly the whole of this great fraction of the South Country was brought under royal control. The standards of the Capetian were thus to float proudly across the whole land from the gray Channel to the blue Mediterranean.
Louis VIII (1223-1226) apart from this achievement had too brief a reign to put any real impress upon his time. He left his throne to his twelve-year-old son Louis IX (1226-70), known to later annals as St. Louis, who was, next to Philip Augustus, to be the chief architect of the grandeur of royal France.
At the time of his nominal accession, the kingly power faced what was always a grievous peril in any feudal monarchy – a regency. A weak rule would mean a perfect heyday for the great barons. But all the selfish dissidents missed their reckoning when it came to dealing with Blanche of Castile, the young King's remarkably capable and energetic mother. By the time her son was old enough to reign for himself the feudatories had been put effectively in their place, Henry III of England (John's son), who had dreamed of meddling in French affairs, had been beaten and chased home, and the royal grip upon Toulouse, established by Louis VIII, had been further strengthened. Between mother and son there seems always to have been perfect harmony and confidence. She continued to be the prop of his government for many years, remained as regent of France when he went to Palestine on crusade, and until she died (1252) it is hard to tell whether she or the king were the most powerful personage in the realm. The character of this puissant queen-mother seems sometimes hard and masculine, but no one can deny her great abilities and her use of them for the weal of France. In her we meet about the first of those remarkable women who were destined to play such a part in the annals of the French monarchy.
If we except the story of St. Louis's two crusades (whose details lie outside the scope of this history) there are few events in his reign that are dramatic and striking, but he made an enormous impression upon his age. From his friend and comrade-inarms, the Sire de Joinville, we have a delightful memoir, giving a naïve, but loving and seemingly highly accurate, sketch of the personality and doings of this truly good man. We have him pictured to us as with a slender figure, large blue eyes, long blond hair, and "the manner of a young girl." But there was nothing timid in the manner in which he brought to justice malcontent barons who defied his law, or in which he charged to battle when his honest efforts had failed to maintain the peace. In him medi- æval piety shone at its best, and proved that it was possible to be hyper-scrupulous in masses and fasts, to tend the sick, to give bread with one's own hands to beggars, to abound in building churches, hospitals, and every other like charity, and yet also to enforce law and order over a great realm, to chase away enemies, enact righteous laws, and make the wicked tremble at a king's just anger.
In 1248 Louis "took the Cross" for a crusade. The spirit of the first crusaders was waning. Men were no longer so anxious to save their souls by pilgrimage to Jerusalem as they had been a century earlier, but Louis conceived it his high duty to make another attempt to rescue the Holy City. The expedition was no more fortunate than its predecessors. The King landed in Egypt, where, after some brave fighting, he was taken prisoner by the paynims in 1250, and only released after paying a heavy ransom. By his heroic bearing in captivity, however, he won the admiration, not merely of all Christendom, but even of his Egyptian captors, who are alleged to have considered making him their sultan if he would only turn Moslem.
In 1254 he came back to France, and for the next fifteen years devoted himself to the happiness of his kingdom. He was undoubtedly the most powerful monarch of his age. Delightful are the pictures given us of how he used to love to award shrewd and speedy justice alike to high and low, sitting with his legal counselors under an oak in the royal forest at Vincennes. The Popes listened attentively to the respectful but very plain counsels he sometimes gave them about their miserable quarrels over secular issues. The great barons submitted their differences to him for arbitration, even when under feudal usage they were entitled to draw the sword. Turbulent factions or dynasts in England and Lorraine (not then part of France) requested him to judge between them. All this meant that the King of France was adding to his physical power that imponderable but often irresistible moral power which comes when worldly greatness, intellectual force, and spiritual worthiness are all united in the same person.
Louis was not a great innovator as a statesman, but without striking any one violent blow at feudalism he steadily strengthened the royal authority. He used all his influence to prohibit or at least discourage the "noble right" of ordeal by battle, that is, the settling of the justice of a lawsuit by the blows between two champions instead of by honest evidence before a judge. The system of royal courts was developed, and the way made easy for appeals from the decisions of the seigneurial courts to those of the king. In time (with important cases at least) the "seigneurial justice" would become only a nominal preliminary before the "royal justice," and France would be further consolidated by being subject to a single set of tribunals. Another and even more direct stroke for national unity was this: Louis reformed the royal coinage and put it on an honest basis. Henceforth it circulated anywhere in the realm. The corruption and irregular standards of the wretched little private mints of the scores of barons made their coinage circulate only within each narrow seigneury. The natural result was that the king's good money presently drove out the feudal bad money – an incalculable factor for developing the economic life of France.
It is impossible to overestimate the gains in authority and prestige for the Capetian monarchy accruing from this fortyfour-year reign of a genial, wise, valiant, energetic, and genuinely pious man. Louis IX met the perfect ideal of the thirteenth century for a royal layman. Even his misfortunes in Egypt seemed only sent from Heaven that his virtues might shine forth the clearer. His end added to the sanctity already associated about his name. In 1270 he went on a crusade again, although nearly all his worldly-wise intimates urged him against it. Europe was weary of crusades, and only the King's great personal influence induced a large army to embark. On the way to Palestine the host landed at Tunis in Africa to coerce its Moslem prince who was threatening Sicily. The camp was soon attacked by pestilence, the King sickened and died after a brief illness (1270). The expedition, of course, at once broke up, and returned to France with the casket of the beloved King. The universal opinion of the age declared this ruler to be a "saint," and in 1297 (an unusually short time by Catholic usage) he was duly canonized at Rome, and placed in the Calendar. From that time onward French royalty could not merely boast in its line statesmen and warriors, but an accepted saint of the Church, worthy to rank with martyrs, holy bishops, and inspired doctors. The gain to the dynasty from such an honor, so long as the spirit of the Middle Ages persisted, was incalculable.
In 996 Hugh Capet had left a narrow domain land around Paris, and a fragile claim to the homage of various unruly feudatories, to his weak and distracted successors. In 1270, St. Louis, his lineal descendant, left a solid dominion, spreading from sea to sea, with great revenues and a formidable fighting power, to his son Philip III. France had reached a high estate in Europe, from which, notwithstanding many hours of sore trial, she was never really to fall.