Chapter IV: Of Provincial and Communal Institutions (3)

"Formosa, or Taiwan, as it is called by the Chinese, is about
400 miles south of the mouth of the Yang-tse, and 100 from the
mainland of China. It lies between 25° 20' and 21° 50' north
latitude, is nearly 240 miles long, by an average of 75 miles
wide, and has an area of about 12,000 square miles. It is
remarkable for its beauty and fertility, and also for the
variety of its products. It was formerly attached to the
province of Fohkien, and governed by a resident commissioner;
but since the Franco-Chinese War, during which the French,
under Admiral Courbet, were foiled in their efforts to take
possession of it, it has been erected into an independent
province by imperial decree, and is now [1887] governed by Liu
Ming-Ch'uan, an able and progressive man, with the title and
almost unlimited authority of governor-general. The island was
once in the possession of the Spaniards, who called it Formosa
(beautiful), but did not colonize it. It then passed into the
hands of the Dutch, who built Fort Zealandia, and established
a trading-post on the southwest coast, near the present city
of Taiwan-fu, and another known as the Red Fort, at Tamsui, on
the northwest coast. But the Dutch in turn abandoned the
island about the year 1660, immediately after which it was
occupied and colonized by the Chinese from Amoy and other
points on the coast of Fohkien. The population is now
estimated by the governor-general at 4,000,000 Chinese and
60,000 savages, but the first figures are doubtless much too
large. The savages are a fine race of men of the Malay or
Polynesian type, who hold nearly all the east coast and the
mountain region, covering over one half the island. They live
mostly by hunting and fishing, or upon the natural products of
the forest, and cultivate but little land. They wear scarcely
any clothing, use bows, arrows, and knives, together with a
few old-fashioned matchlocks, and yet withal they have up to
the present time successfully resisted all efforts to
subjugate them or to take possession of their fastnesses. They
are brave, fierce, and active, but have made scarcely any
progress in the arts of civilization. They are naturally kind
and hospitable to Europeans, but look upon the Chinese as
their deadly enemies."

_J. H. Wilson,
China,
chapter 18._

In 1874, in order to obtain redress for a murder of Japanese
sailors by savages on the eastern coast of Formosa, the
Japanese Government undertook to take possession of the
southern part of Formosa, "asserting that it did not belong to
China because she either would not or could not govern its
savage inhabitants. … The expedition was called a High
Commission, accompanied by a force sufficient for its
protection, sent to aboriginal Formosa to inquire into the
murder of fifty-four Japanese subjects, and take steps to
prevent the recurrence of such atrocities. A proclamation was
issued April 17, 1874, and another May 19th, stating that
General Saigo was directed to call to an account the persons
guilty of outrages on Japanese subjects. As he knew that China
was not prepared to resist his landing at Liang-kiao, his
chief business was to provide means to house and feed the
soldiers under his command. The Japanese authorities do not
appear very creditably in this affair. No sooner did they
discover the wild and barren nature of this unknown region
than they seemed fain to beat an incontinent and hasty
retreat, nor did the troops landed there stand upon the order
of their going. … The aborigines having fled south after the
first rencontre, the Japanese leader employed his men as best
he could in opening roads through the jungle and erecting
houses. Meanwhile the Peking authorities were making
preparations for the coming struggle, and though they moved
slowly they were much in earnest to protect their territory.
General Shin Pao-chin having been invested with full powers to
direct operations against the Japanese forces, began at once
to draw together men and vessels in Fuhchau and Amoy. The
Japanese consuls at Amoy and Shanghai were allowed to remain
at their posts; and during the year two envoys arrived at
Pelting to treat with the Court. … The probabilities were
strong against any settlement, when the parties were induced
to arrange their quarrel by the intervention and wise counsel
of Sir T. F. Wade, the British minister. The Japanese accepted
500,000 taels for their outlays in Formosa for roads, houses,
and defences; agreeing thereupon to retire and leave the
further punishment of the aborigines to the Chinese
authorities. The two envoys left Peking, and this attempt at
war was happily frustrated. … The civilization of all parts of
Formosa has since rapidly advanced by the extension of tea and
sugar culture, the establishment of Christian missions, and
the better treatment of the native tribes."

_S. W. Williams,
The Middle Kingdom,
chapter 26 (volume 2)._

FOURIER AND FOURIERISM.

See SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A. D. 1832-1847,
and 1841-1847 (pages 2939 and 2943).

{3748}

----------FRANCE: Start--------

FRANCE:
Outline Sketch of general history.

See EUROPE (page 1015. and after).

FRANCE: 1ST-5TH CENTURIES.
The early routes and marts of trade.

See (in this Supplement) COMMERCE, ANCIENT.

FRANCE: 12TH-13TH CENTURIES.
Rise of the Privileged Bourgeoisies and the Communes.
The double movement of Urban Emancipation.

"The 12th and 13th centuries saw the production of that
marvelous movement of emancipation which gave liberty to
serfs, created privileged bourgeoisies and independent
communes, caused new cities and fortresses to issue from the
earth, freed the corporations of merchants and artisans, in a
word placed at the first stroke, beside royalty, feudality and
the church, a fourth social force destined to absorb one day
the three others. While the cultivator of the soil passed by
enfranchisement from the category of things sold or given away
into that of the free people (the only ambition permitted to
the defenseless unfortunates who inhabited isolated farms or
unwalled villages), the population grouped in the urban
centers tried to limit or at least to regulate the intolerable
exploitation of which it was the object. The bourgeois, that
is to say the inhabitants of walled cities, born under the
shelter of a donjon or au abbey, and the citoyens of the
ancient episcopal cities, rivaled each other in efforts to
obtain from the seigneurial power a condition more endurable
in point of taxation, and the suppression of the most
embarrassing hindrances to their commerce and manufactures.
These inhabitants of towns and cities constituted, if only by
being grouped together, a force with which feudality was very
soon obliged to reckon. Divided, besides, into merchants'
societies and companies of workmen they found within
themselves the germ of organization which permitted collective
resistance. The seigneur, intimidated, won by an offer of
money, or decided by the thought that his domination would be
more lucrative if the city became more prosperous, made the
concessions which were asked of him. Thanks to a favorable
concurrence of circumstances, charters of franchises were
multiplied in all parts of France. At the end of the 12th
century, the national territory, in the north as well as the
south, was covered with these privileged cities or
bourgeoisies, which, while remaining administered, judicially
and politically, by seigneurial officers, had acquired, in
matters financial, commercial and industrial, the liberties
necessary to their free development. Feudality very soon found
such an advantage in regulating thus the exploitation of the
bourgeois, that it took the initiative itself in creating, in
the uninhabited parts of its domains, privileged cities,
complete in all their parts, designed to become so many
centers of attraction for foreigners. It is the innumerable
bourgeoisies and 'villes neuves' which represent the normal
form of urban emancipation. Certain centers of population
obtained at the first stroke the most extensive civil and
financial liberties; but, in the majority of cases, the
bourgeois could win their franchises only bit by bit, at the
price of heavy pecuniary sacrifices, or as the result of an
admirable perseverance in watching for opportunities and
seizing them. The history of the privileged cities, whose
principal virtue was a long patience, offers nothing moving or
dramatic. … But the spectacle of these laborious masses
persisting, in obscurity and silence, in the demand for their
right to security and well-being, does not the less merit all
our attention. What forces itself upon the meditations of the
historian, in the domain of municipal institutions, is just
the progress slow and obscure, but certain, of the dependent
bourgeoisie. … The development of the seigneurial cities
offers such a variety of aspects, their progressive and
regular conquests were so important in the constitution of our
rights public and private, that too much care and effort
cannot be devoted to retracing minutely their course. This
history is more than any other that of the origin of our third
estate. It was in the privileged cities, to which the great
majority of the urban population belonged, that it began its
political education. The city charters constituted the durable
lower stratum of its first liberties. In other words the third
estate did not issue suddenly from the more or less
revolutionary movement which gave birth to the independent
communes: it owes its formation and its progress above all to
this double pacific evolution: the possessors of fiefs
enfranchising their bourgeoisie and the latter passing little
by little entirely from the seigneurial government under that
of royalty. This was not the opinion which prevailed at the
time when the founder of the science of municipal
institutions, Augustin Thierry, published in the 'Courrier
Français' his admirable 'Lettres ' on the revolutions of the
communes. The commune, a city dowered with judicial and
political privileges, which conferred upon it a certain
independence, administered by its elected magistrates, proud
of its fortified inclosure, of its belfry, of its militia,—the
commune passed at that time as the pre-eminent type of the
free city of the middle ages. That great movement of urban and
rural emancipation which stirred the France of the 12th
century to its very depths was personified in it. So the
commune concentrated historical interest upon itself, leaving
in the shade all other forms of popular evolution. Guizot, who
had the sense of truth rather than that of the picturesque,
tried to combat this exclusive tendency. In the brilliant
lessons that he gave at the Sorbonne on the history of the
origins of the third estate, he showed, with his customary
clearness, that the development of the bourgeois class was not
accomplished by any single method; that the progress realized
in the cities where the communal regime had never succeeded in
establishing itself must also be taken into account. The
impression left by the highly colored and dramatic recitals of
Augustin Thierry remained for a long time the stronger. …
Contemporary science has not only assigned to itself the
mission of completing the work of the historians of the
Restoration: it has desired also to improve it by rectifying,
upon many points, the exaggerated opinions and false judgments
of which the history of our urban institutions was at first
the victim. It has been perceived that the communal movement
properly so called did not have, upon the destinies of the
popular class, the decisive, preponderant influence which was
attributed to it 'a priori.' The commune, a brilliant but
ephemeral form of the emancipation of the bourgeoisie, has
been set back little by little into its true place.
{3749}
It is now no longer regarded as an essential manifestation of
our first democratic aspirations. One might be tempted to see
on the contrary, in that collective seigneury, often hostile
to the other social elements, impregnated with the spirit of
'particularisme,' made for war and agitated without cessation
by warlike passions, an original but tardy product of the
feudal principle. … We must be resigned to a fact in regard to
which nothing can be done: the absence of documents relative
to the municipal constitution of cities and towns during four
hundred years, from the 7th century to the 11th. From all
appearances, this enormous hiatus will never be overcome. …
Facts being lacking, scholars have had recourse to conjecture.
Some among them have supposed that the principal
characteristics of the Gallo-Roman municipalities were
perpetuated during this period. At bottom, their hypothesis
rests principally upon analogies of names. … From the point of
view of positive science, the Germanic origin of the communes
is not more easy of demonstration. … It is even doubtful
whether the essential element of the communal institution, the
confederation formed by the inhabitants, under the guaranty of
the mutual oath, belongs exclusively to the customs of the
Germans. The theory of Augustin Thierry, which made of the
commune a special application of the Scandinavian gilde, has
been judged too narrow by contemporary scholars. They have
reproached him with reason for having localized an institution
which belongs entirely to the Germanic race. But the principle
of association, applied in the cities, is not a fact purely
German. … Association is a fact which is neither Germanic nor
Roman; it is universal, and is produced spontaneously among
all peoples, in all social classes, when circumstances exact
and favor its appearance. The communal revolution then is a
national event. The commune was born, like other forms of
popular emancipation, from the need which the inhabitants of
the cities had of substituting a limited and regulated
exploitation for the arbitrary exploitation of which they were
the victims. Such is the point of departure of the
institution. We must always return to the definition of it
given by Guibert de Nogent. It is true as a basis, although it
does not embrace all the characteristics of the object
defined: 'Commune! new name, detestable name! By it the
censitaires are freed from all service in consideration of a
simple annual tax; by it they are condemned, for the
infraction of the law, only to a penalty legally determined;
by it, they cease to be subjected to the other pecuniary
charges by which the serfs are overwhelmed.' At certain
points, this limitation of the seigneurial power was made
amicably, by pacific transaction between the seigneur and his
bourgeois. Elsewhere, an insurrection, more or less prolonged,
was necessary in order to establish it. When this popular
movement had as a result, not only the assuring to the people
the most necessary liberties which were demanded, but besides
that of abating to their advantage the political position of
the master, by taking from him a part of his seigneurial
prerogatives, there arose not only a free city, but a commune,
a bourgeois seigneury, invested with a certain political and
judicial power. This definition of the commune implies that
originally it was not possible to establish it otherwise than
by a pressure exerted, more or less violently, upon the
seigneurial authority. We have the direct proof of it for some
of our free municipalities, but it is presumable that many
other communes whose primitive history we do not know have
owed equally to force the winning of their first liberties. …
We do not mean that, in the first period of the history of
urban emancipation, all the communes, without exception, were
obliged to pass through the phase of insurrection or of open
resistance. There were some which profited (as the cities of
the Flemish region in 1127) by a combination of exceptional
circumstances to attain political liberty without striking a
blow. Among these circumstances must be mentioned in the first
rank the prolonged vacancy of an episcopal see and the
disappearance of a laic lord, dead without direct heir,
leaving a succession disputed by numerous competitors. But,
ordinarily, the accession of the bourgeoisie to the rank of
political power did not take place pacifically. Either the
seigneur struggled against his rebellious subjects, or he
feared the struggle and bent before the accomplished fact. In
all cases it was necessary that the people were conscious of
their power and imposed their will. This is proven by the
dramatic episodes which the narrations of Augustin Thierry
have forever rendered celebrated. … Later, in the decline of
the 12th century, it must be recognized that the opinion of
the dominant class ceased to be as hostile to the communes.
When the conviction had been acquired that the popular
movement was irresistible, it was tolerated; the best means
even were sought to derive advantage from it. The Church
always remained upon the defensive; but the king and the great
feudal lords perceived that in certain respects the commune
might be a useful instrument. They accepted then the communal
organization, and they even came to create it where it was not
spontaneously established. But it is easy to convince one's
self that the communes of this category, those which owe their
creation to the connivance or even to the initiative of the
seigneur, did not possess the same degree of independence as
the communes of the primitive epoch, founded by insurrection.
On the whole, the communal revolution was only one of the
aspects of the vast movement of political and social reaction
which the excesses of the feudal regime engendered everywhere
from the 11th to the 14th century. … One would like to possess
the text of one of those oaths by which the bourgeois of the
northern communes bound themselves together, for the first
time, with or without the consent of their seigneur, in the
most ancient period of the communal evolution. It would be of
the highest interest for the historian to know how they set
about it, what words were pronounced to form what the
contemporary writers called a 'conjuration,' a 'conspiration,'
a 'confederation.' No document of this nature and of that
primitive epoch has come down to us. … The sum total of the
sworn bourgeois constituted the commune. The commune was most
often called 'communia,' but also, with varying termination,
'communa,' 'communio,' 'communitas.'
{3750}
Properly speaking and especially with reference to the origin,
the name commune was given not to the city, but to the
association of the inhabitants who had taken oath. For this
reason also the expression 'commune jurée' was used. Later the
acceptation of the word was enlarged; it designated the city
itself, considered as a geographical unit. … The members of
the commune, those who formed part of the sworn association,
were properly called 'the sworn of the commune,' 'jurati
communie,' or, by abridgment, 'the sworn,' 'jurati.' They were
designated also by the expression: 'the men of the commune,'
or, 'those who belong to the commune,' 'qui sunt de communia.'
They were also entitled 'bourgeois,' 'burgenses,' more rarely
'bourgeois jurés'; sometimes also 'voisins,' 'vicini,' or even
'friends,' 'amici.' … We are far from having complete light on
the question as to what conditions were exacted from those who
entered the communal association, and to what classes of
persons the access to the bourgeoisie was open or interdicted.
The variety of local usages, and above all the impossibility
of finding texts which apply to the most ancient period of
urban emancipation, will always embarrass the historian. To
find upon these matters clear documents, developed and
precise, we must come down, generally, to the end of the 18th
century or even to the century following, that is to say to
the epoch of the decadence of the communal regime. … The
bourgeois could not be diseased, that is to say, undoubtedly,
tainted with an incurable malady and especially a contagious
malady, as leprosy. … The communal law excluded also bastards.
On this point it was in accord with the customary law of a
very great number of French regions. … They refused also to
receive into their number inhabitants encumbered with debts.
The condition of debtor constituted in effect a kind of
servitude. He no longer belonged to himself; his goods might
become the property of the creditor, and he could be
imprisoned. … With still more reason does it appear
inadmissible that the serf should be called to benefit by the
commune. The question of urban serfdom, in its relations with
the communal institution, is extremely obscure, delicate and
complex. There are however two facts in regard to which
affirmation is allowable. It cannot be doubted that at the
epoch of the formation of the communes, at the opening of the
12th century, there were no longer any serfs in many of the
urban centers. It may be held also as certain that the desire
to bring about the disappearance of this serfdom was one of
the principal motives which urged the inhabitants to claim
their independence. … The inhabitant who united all the
conditions legally required for admission to the bourgeoisie
was besides obliged to pay a town-due, ('droit d'entrée'). …
If it was not always easy to enter a communal body, neither
could one leave it as easily as might have been desired. The
'issue de commune' exacted the performance of a certain number
of troublesome formalities. … So, it was necessary to pay to
become a communist, and to pay yet more in order to cease to
be one. The bourgeois was riveted to his bourgeoisie. … Up to
this point we have examined only half the problem of the
formation of the commune, approaching it on its general side.
There remains the question whether all the popular element
which existed in the city formed part of the body of
bourgeoisie, and whether the privileged class, that of the
nobles and clergy, was not excluded from it. … We shall have
to admit as a general rule, that the nobles and the clergy
while taking oath to the commune, did not in reality enter it.
What must be rejected, is the sort of absolute, inviolable
rule which has been formed on this opinion. In the middle ages
especially there was no rule without exception. … The commune
was an institution rather ephemeral. As a really independent
seigneury, it scarcely endured more than two centuries. The
excesses of the communists, their bad financial
administration, their intestine divisions, the hostility of
the Church, the onerous patronage of the 'haut suzerain,' and
especially of the king: such were the immediate causes of this
rapid decadence. The communes perished victims of their own
faults, but also of the hate of the numerous enemies
interested in their downfall. … The principal cause of the
premature downfall of the communal regime is without any doubt
the considerable development of the monarchical power in
France at the end of the 18th century. The same force which
annihilated feudality, to the profit of the national unit, was
also that which caused the prompt disappearance of the
independence of the bourgeois seigneuries. With its privileges
and its autonomy, the commune impeded the action of the
Capetains. Those quarrelsome and restless republics had no
reason for existence, In the midst of the peaceful and
obedient bourgeoisie upon which royalty had laid its hand. The
commune then was sacrificed to the monarchical interest. In
Italy and in Germany, the free cities enjoyed their
independence much longer, by reason of the absence of the
central power or of its weakness."

_Achille Luchaire,
Les Communes Francaises a l'époque des Capétiens directs
(translated from the French),
pages 1-16, 45-56, 65, and 288-290._

FRANCE: A. D. 1226-1270.
The reign of Saint Louis.
The monarchy in his time and its kingdom.

"The fundamental institution upon which all the social edifice
rested, in the time of Saint Louis, was royalty. But this
royalty, from the double point of view of theory and practice,
was very different from what it had been originally. In
principle it was the divine right, that is, it was an
emanation from the Most High, and the king held of no other
seigneur. This is what the feudal maxim expressed after its
fashion; 'The king holds only of God and his sword.' … Royalty
was transmitted by heredity, from father to son, and by
primogeniture. However, this heredity, which had formerly
needed a sort of election to confirm It, or at least popular
acclamation, needed now to be hallowed by the unction of the
church. Consecration, joined to the privilege of being the
eldest of the royal race, made the king. … It must not be
thought however that the ideas of the time attributed to the
hereditary principle a force absolute and superior to all
interests. Theologians could say to kings that the son should
succeed the father if he imitated his probity; that power was
transferred into other hands in punishment of injustice. …
Christian tradition was, in fact, greatly opposed to what was
then called tyranny. … Not only must royalty not be tyranny,
but it must admit the representatives of the nation, in a
certain measure, to a participation in the government. …

{3751}

In practice, without doubt, these salutary principles were
often disregarded; but it is still much that they were
professed, and this fact alone constitutes an enormous
difference between the middle ages and the later centuries.
The royal power, besides, had not yet a material force
sufficiently great to dominate everywhere as absolute master.
Under the two first lines, it was exercised in the same degree
over all points of the territory; from the accession of the
third, on the contrary, it was only a power of two degrees,
having a very unequal action according to the territory and
the locality. A part of France composed the royal domain; it
was the patrimony of the Capetian house, increased by conquest
or successive acquisitions. There, the king exercised an
authority almost without limit; he was on his own ground. All
the rest formed duchies, counties, or seigneuries of different
sorts, possessed hereditarily by great vassals, more or less
independent originally. Here the king was only the suzerain;
he had scarcely any rights excepting to homage, to military
service, to pecuniary assistance in certain stated cases, and
to some privileges called royal, as that of coining money. The
entire royal policy, from Philip Augustus to Louis XI.,
consisted in skilfully increasing the first of these parts by
absorbing little by little the second. … The kingdom of
France, in the time of Saint Louis, was still very nearly as
the treaty of Verdun had established it. On the north and
east, it was bounded by the Empire of Germany. The frontier
line passed a little beyond the cities of Ghent, Audenarde,
Tournai, Douai, Guise, Mézières, Grandpré, Vitry, Joinville,
Fay, Mirabeau; then it followed the course of the Saône and
the Rhône, from which it diverged only in two places in order
to attribute to the Empire the, at least, nominal possession
of part of Lyonnais and Vivarais. On the south, the Pyrenees
formed, as originally, the natural limit; but from the treaty
of Corbeil (1258) Roussillon remained with the king of Aragon,
in exchange for his right over the county of Foix, the
territory of Sault, Fenouilhedès and Narbonnais. On the other
hand, the vast duchy of Guienne, comprising Bearn and the
county of Bigorre, came … under the suzerainty of the king of
France only by virtue of the treaty of Paris (1259). On the
west the kingdom was bounded only by the ocean, Brittany also
having rendered homage to the crown from the time of Philip
Augustus. Thus Saint Louis and his son left it, on the whole,
more extensive than it was before them, and if it was more
limited than the France of the present, on the east, it
reached, on the contrary, farther to the north. The royal
domain embraced in 1226 only the half of this immense
perimeter. It was composed of the primitive nucleus of the
Capetian possessions: that is, of the Isle of France and of
Orleannais; then of French Vexin. Gâtinais and the viscounty
of Bourges, brought by Philip I.; of the county of Corbeil and
the seigneury of Monthléry, acquired by Louis VI.; of Artois,
Vermandois (with the county of Amiens), Valois, Norman Vexin,
of the counties of Evreux, Meulan, Alençon, Perché, Beaumont
sur Oise, acquired by Philip Augustus and Louis VIII.; finally
the territory obtained by the former from John Lackland by war
or by confiscation, that is, all Normandy, Touraine, Perigord,
Limousin, and the viscounty of Turenne. Anjou, Maine, Poitou,
Auvergne, Angoumois, included in the same conquest, had since
been detached from the crown to form princely appanages. The
profitable domain of Perigord of Limousin and of the viscounty
of Turenne, was reconveyed, in 1259, to the king of England, …
in order to bring all the region of the southwest within the
pale of the royal suzerainty. But Saint Louis compensated for
this diminution by acquiring successively the two great
seneschalates of Nîmes and of Carcassonne, the counties of
Clermont, of Mortain, of Macon, and Philip the Bold did more
than redeem it, by realizing the annexation, so skilfully
prepared by Blanche of Castile, of the last domains of the
count of Toulouse, which had become those of Alphonse of
Poitiers, that is, of nearly all Languedoc. The possessions of
the crown thus formed two or three separate groups, cut up in
the most fantastic fashion, and connected only as the result
of long effort. All the rest of the kingdom was composed of
great fiefs escaping the direct action of royalty, and
themselves subdivided into lesser fiefs, which complicated
infinitely the hierarchy of persons and lands. The principal
were the counties of Flanders, Boulogne, Saint Pol, Ponthieu,
Aumale, Eu, Soissons, Dreux, Montford-l'Amaury; the bishoprics
of Tournai, Beauvais, Noyon, Laon, Lisieux, Reims, Langres,
Chalons, the titularies of which were at the same time counts
or seigneurs; the vast county of Champagne, uniting those of
Réthel, Grandpré, Roucy, Brienne, Joigny and the county
Porcien; the duchy of Burgundy, so powerful and so extensive;
the counties of Nevers, Tonnerre, Auxerre, Beaujeu, Forez,
Auvergne; the seigneury of Bourbon; the counties of Blois and
of Chartres; the county or duchy of Brittany; Guienne, and,
before 1271, the county of Toulouse; the bishoprics of Albi,
Cahors, Mende, Lodève, Agde, Maguelonne, belonging temporally
as well as spiritually to their respective bishops; finally
the seigneury of Montpellier, holding of the last of these
bishoprics. To which must yet be added the appanages given by
Louis VIII. to his younger sons, that is, the counties of
Artois, Anjou, Poitiers, with their dependencies. … So when
the government of the kingdom at this epoch is spoken of, it
must be understood to mean that of only the least considerable
part of the territory,—that is, of the part which was directly
submitted to the authority of the king. In this part the
sovereign himself exercised the power, assisted, as ordained
by the theories examined above, by auxiliaries taken from the
nation. There were neither ministers nor a deliberative corps,
properly speaking; however there was very nearly the
equivalent. On one side, the great officers of the crown and
the royal council, on the other the parliament and the chamber
of accounts (exchequer), or at least their primitive nucleus,
constituted the principal machinery of the central government,
and had, each, its special powers. The great officers, of whom
there had at first been five, were only four from the reign of
Philip Augustus, who had suppressed the seneschal owing to the
possibility of his becoming dangerous by reason of the
progressive extension of his jurisdiction; they were the
bouteiller, who had become the administrator of the royal
expenditure; the chambrier, elevated to the care of the
treasury; the connétable, a kind of military superintendent;
and the chancelier, who had the disposition of the royal seal.
{3752}
These four personages represented in a certain degree,
secretaries of state. The two latter had a preponderant
influence, one in time of peace, the other in time of war. To
the chancellor belonged the drawing up and the proper
execution (legalization) of the royal diplomas; this power
alone made him the arbiter of the interests of all private
individuals. As to the constable he had the chief direction of
the army, and all those who composed it, barons, knights, paid
troops, owed him obedience. The king, in person, had the
supreme command; but he frequently allowed the constable to
exercise it, and, in order not to impose too heavy a burden
upon him, or rather to prevent his taking a too exclusive
authority, he had appointed as coadjutors two 'maréchaux de
France' who were second in command. … The king's council had
not yet a very fixed form. Saint Louis submitted important
questions to the persons about him, clerics, knights or men of
the people; but he chose these advisers according to the
nature of the questions, having temporary counsellors rather
than a permanent council. Among these counsellors some were
more especially occupied with justice, others with finance,
others with political affairs. These three categories are the
germ of the parliament, of the exchequer, and of the council
of state; but they then formed an indistinct ensemble, called
simply the king's court. They were not completely separated so
as to form independent institutions until the time of Philippe
le Bel. The first, that which later constituted the
parliament, belongs especially to the judicial department. …
The second, while not yet elevated into a distinct and
permanent body, is already delegated to special duties, being
charged with examining the accounts of the baillis and
seneschals. The 'gentlemen of the accounts' ('gentes quae ad
nostros computos deputantur') began under Saint Louis to meet
periodically in the Temple, at Paris, and to exercise a
regular control over the public finances; so that this new
creation, which was, later, to render services so important,
was an outcome of the scrupulous probity with which the royal
conscience was filled. … The superior jurisdiction is
represented by the parliament. The organization of this famous
body was begun in the lifetime of Philip Augustus. Under the
reign of this prince [Saint Louis] and notably as a result of
his absence, the 'cour du roi' had begun to render more and
more frequent decisions. The section which was occupied with
judicial affairs, appears to have taken on, in the time of
Saint Louis, an individual and independent existence. Instead
of following the sovereign and meeting when he thought it
expedient, it became sedentary. … The date at which the series
of the famous registers of the parliament, known under the
name of Olim begins may be considered that of the definitive
creation of this great institution. It will be remarked that
it coincides with the general reform of the administration of
the kingdom undertaken by the good king on his return from
Syria. … From its birth the parliament tended to become, in
the hands of royalty, a means of domination over the great
vassals. Not only were the seigneurs insensibly eliminated
from it, to the advantage of the clergy, the lawyers, and the
officers of the crown, but by a series of skilful victories,
its action was extended little by little over all the fiefs
situated outside the royal domain, that is over all France. It
is again Saint Louis who caused this great and decisive
advance toward the authority of the suzerain. He brought it
about especially by the abolition of the judicial duel and by
the multiplication of appeals to the parliament. … As for the
appeals the interdiction of 'fausser jugement' (refusal to
submit to the sentence pronounced) was not the only cause of
their multiplication. Many of the great vassals were led to
bring their affairs before the king's court, either on account
of the confidence inspired by the well known equity of Saint
Louis, or by the skill of the royal agents, who neglected no
opportunity to cause the acceptance of the arbitration of the
crown; and those who did not resign themselves to it were
sometimes compelled to do so. The appeals of their subjects
naturally took the same route; however they continued to
employ the medium of the seneschal's court or that of the
bailli, while those of the barons and the princes of the blood
went directly to Paris. No general law was promulgated in
regard to the matter. Royalty was content to recover little by
little, by partial measures, the superior jurisdiction
formerly usurped by the feudality. … Above and outside of the
parliament justice was rendered by the king in person. … Saint
Louis, always thoughtful of the interests of the lowly, had a
liking for this expeditious manner of terminating suits.
Nearly every morning, he sent two or three members of his
council to inquire, at the palace gate, if there were not some
private individuals there wishing to discuss their affairs
before him; from this came the name 'plaids de la porte' given
to this kind of audience. If his counsellors could not bring
the parties to an agreement, he called the latter into his own
room, examined their case with his scrupulous impartiality,
and rendered the final sentence himself on the spot.
Joinville, who took part more than once in these summary
judgments, thus describes to us their very simple mechanism.
'The king had his work regulated in such a way, that
monseigneur de Nesle and the good count de Soissons, and the
rest of us who were about him, who had heard our masses, went
to hear the 'plaids de la porte,' which are now called
'requêtes' (petitions). And when he returned from the
monastery, he sent for us, seated himself at the foot of his
bed, made us all sit around him, and asked us if there were
any cases to despatch which could not be disposed of without
him; and we named them to him, and he sent for the parties and
asked them: Why do you not take what our people offer you? And
they said: Sire, because they offer us little. Then he said to
them: You should take what they are willing to give you. And
the saintly man labored in this way, with all his might to set
them in a just and reasonable path.' Here the great
peace-maker is clearly seen; private individuals as well as
princes, he desired to reconcile all, make all agree. These
patriarchal audiences often had for theater the garden of the
palace or the wood of Vincennes. The legendary oak which
sheltered the modern Solomon remains in all memoirs as the
symbol of his kindly justice and of his popularity, well
acquired."

_A. Lecoy de la Marche,
La France sous Saint Louis et sous Philippe le Hardi,
liv. 1, chapter 2, and liv. 2, chapters 1 and 3._

_François Guizot,
Great Christians of France: Saint Louis and Calvin,
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62518._

{3753}

FRANCE: A. D. 1423-1429.
The family and circumstances of Jeanne d' Arc.

"What were the worldly circumstances, what was the social
position, of the parents of Jeanne d'Arc? Questioned on these
points, the people of the country, called to testify at the
public inquiry, in the course of the rehabilitation
proceedings, all made the same reply; they said that the
father and mother of the maid were unassuming husbandmen and
possessed with their cottage only a moderate patrimony.
According to a memorandum, made out with the assistance of
papers and family traditions, a memorandum transmitted by the
abbé Mandre, curé of Damvillers (Meuse), who died about 1820,
to his nephew Mr. Villiaumé, father of the historian of Jeanne
d' Arc and of the Revolution, the real estate belonging to
Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée represented about twenty
hectares, of which twelve were cultivated, four were meadow
and four woodland, and in the latter the 'bois Chesnu'; they
had beside their house, their furniture and a reserve of two
or three hundred francs which they kept carefully in view of
the possibility of a flight before some invasion, such as they
had been obliged to take to Neufchâteau. By cultivating,
themselves, what they possessed, they could obtain from it an
annual revenue equivalent to four or five thousand francs of
our money, which permitted them to distribute alms to the
poor, notwithstanding their moderate patrimony, and to give
hospitality to the mendicant friars as well as to the
travelers who often passed through that country. If these
valuations are not rigorously exact, they appear to us at
least quite reasonable, though we are ignorant of the data
upon which they rest. In a parochial register of Domremy,
transcribed in 1490, we read that Jacob d'Arc and Ysabellot,
his wife, had established an annual income of two gros [gros
of Lorraine, coin worth 1/8 oz. of silver] in favor of the
curé of Domremy from a 'fauchée' and a half [day and a half's
mowing] of field situated in the 'ban' of Domremy, above the
bridge, between the heirs Janvrel and the heirs Girardin, on
condition of the celebration of two masses each year during
the week of the Fontaines for anniversary services for the
dead. The property of these honest people constituted, if we
may judge by the different replies of the Maid compared with
one another, what was called then in the Barrois a 'gagnage'
or little farm; now, what distinguished the gagnage from the
simple 'conduit,' was that the first always employed for the
needs of cultivation a certain number of horses. The usage was
at that time, in that region, to attach three or four mares to
the plough, and they even had, at least in the great gagnages,
a special horse to drag the harrow. Besides this property
situated at Domremy, it may be supposed that Jacques d'Arc
possessed in right of his wife some pieces of land at Vouthon,
for we see by a register of the writs of court of the
provostship of Gondrecourt that the eldest of his sons named
Jacquemin made his residence from 1425 in this village of the
Barrois holding where he cultivated undoubtedly the little
patrimony of Isabelle Romée. Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle de
Vouthon had three sons, Jacquemin, Jean and Pierre, and two
daughters, the elder named Catherine, the younger Jeanne or
rather Jeannette, she who was by her heroism to immortalize
her line. Two documents … prove with evidence that Jacques
d'Arc figured in the first rank of the notables of Domremy. In
the first of these, dated Maxey-sur-Meuse, October 7, 1423, he
is styled 'doyen' of that village and by this title comes
immediately after the mayor and alderman. 'In general,' says
M. Edward Bonvalot, speaking of the villages in the region of
the Meuse governed by the famous charter of Beaumont in
Argonne, 'there is but one doyen or sergeant in each village,
who convokes the bourgeois to the electoral assemblies and to
the sittings of the court; it is he also who convokes the
mayor, aldermen and the men of the commune to their reunions
either periodical or special; it is he who cries the municipal
resolutions and ordinances; it is he who commands the day and
night watch; it is he who has charge of prisoners. Among the
privileges which he enjoys must be cited the exemption from
the taxes (deniers) of the bourgeoisie. At Linger, he has the
same territorial advantages as the clerk of the commune.' It
is seen by various documents that the doyens were also charged
with the collection of the 'tailles,' 'rentes' and
'redevances,' and that they were appointed to supervise bread,
wine and other commodities as well as to test weights and
measures. In the second document, drawn up at Vaucouleurs
March 31, 1427, Jacques d'Arc appears as the agent of the
inhabitants of Domremy in a suit of great importance which
they then had to sustain before Robert de Baudricourt, captain
of Vaucouleurs. … The situation of Domremy was privileged,
and, thanks to this situation, humble peasants who had few
needs found even in the soil which they cultivated nearly
everything which was necessary for their subsistence. The
heights crowned with beeches and venerable oaks, which shut in
on the west the valley where the village lies, furnished
fire-wood in abundance; the acorns permitted the fattening of
droves of hogs; the beautiful vineyard of Greux, exposed to
the east and climbing the slopes of these heights since the
14th century, produced that light wine, excessively acid,
which is not the less agreeable to the somewhat harsh palate
of the children of the Meuse; the fields lying at the foot of
these slopes and contiguous to the houses were reserved for
the cultivation of the cereals, of wheat, of rye and of oats;
finally, between these cultivated fields and the course of the
Meuse, over a breadth of more than a kilometer stretched those
verdant meadows whose fertility equals their beauty and from
which is still taken the best and most renowned hay of all
France. The principal wealth of the inhabitants of Domremy was
the cattle which they pastured in these meadows, where each,
after the hay-harvest, had the right to pasture a number of
heads of cattle proportioned to that of the 'fauchées de pré'
[days mowings of field] that he possessed. This is what was
called the 'ban de Domremy' the care of which was confided, by
turns, to a person taken from each 'conduit' or household. It
may be seen by certain replies of Jeanne to her judges at
Rouen that she had been more than once appointed to this
charge, when the turn of her parents came, and her enemies had
not failed to seize upon this circumstance to pretend to see
in her only a shepherdess by profession. …
{3754}
Most of the historians of Jeanne d'Arc have made a great
mistake when they have imagined Domremy an out-of-the-way
corner and isolated, so to speak, from the rest of the world;
on the contrary, a road much frequented toward the end of the
middle ages crossed this village. This was the old Roman road
from Langres to Verdun which passed through Neufchâteau,
Domremy, Vaucouleurs, Void, Commercy and Saint-Mihiel; it had
acquired yet more importance since the marriage of Philip the
Bold and Margaret, daughter of Louis de Male, had brought into
the same hand Flanders, Artois and Burgundy. This marriage had
had the effect of giving increased activity to the exchanges
between the extreme possessions of the Burgundian princes. …
It may be seen by what precedes that, like the legendary beech
of her native village, the childhood of the virgin of Domremy
sprang out of a soil full of vigor and was in the main haunted
by beneficent fairies. Born in a fertile and smiling corner of
the earth, the issue of an honest family, whose laborious
mediocrity was elevated enough to touch nobility when
ennobling itself by alms-giving, and humble enough to remain
in contact with all the poor; endowed by nature with a robust
body, a sound intelligence and an energetic spirit, the little
Jeannette d'Arc became under these gentle influences all
goodness and all love. Certain facts which are related of her
early years show her religiously enamored of country life. She
gave some wool from her sheep to the bell-ringer of Domremy to
render him more zealous in fulfilling his office, so much did
the silvery chiming of his church bell, sounding suddenly in
the quiet of the valley, enchant her ear. And the inspiring
virtue of the cool shadows, of the 'frigus opacum' of Virgil,
who had better felt it than she who replied to her judges at
Rouen: 'If I were in the midst of the woods, I should hear my
voices better.' … One of the consequences of the treaty of
Troyes was the occupation of Champagne by the [English]
invaders.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1417-1422 (page 1175).