Chapter IV: , VII (29)

We have now, in our general survey of European history, just
passed beyond the thirteenth century, and it will be
instructive to pause here a moment and glance back over the
movements and events which distinguish that remarkable age.
For the thirteenth century, while it belongs chronologically
to mediæval times, seems nearer in spirit to the
Renaissance—shows more of the travail of the birth of our
modern mind and life—than the fourteenth, and even more than
the greater part of the years of the fifteenth century.

For England, it was the century in which the enduring bases of
constitutional government were laid down; within which Magna
Charta and its Confirmations were signed; within which the
Parliament of Simon de Montfort and the Parliaments of Edward
I. gave a representative form and a controlling power to the
wonderful legislature of the English nation. In France, it was
the century of the Albigenses; of Saint Louis and his judicial
reforms; and it stretched within two years of the first
meeting of the States-General of the kingdom. In Switzerland,
it was the century which began the union of the three forest
cantons. In Spain, it was the century which gave Aragon the
"General Privilege" of Peter III.; in Hungary, it was the
century of its Golden Bull. In Italy it was the century of
Frederick II.,—the man of modern spirit set in mediæval
circumstances; and it was the century, too, which moulded the
city-republics that resisted and defeated his despotic
pretensions. Everywhere, it was an age of impulses toward
freedom, and of mighty upward strivings out of the chaos and
darkness of the feudal state. It was an age of vast energies,
directed with practical judgment and power. It organized the
great league of the Hansa Towns, which surpassed, as an
enterprise of combination in commercial affairs, the most
stupendous undertakings of the present time. It put the
weavers and traders of Flanders on a footing with knights and
princes. In Venice and Genoa it crowned the merchant like a
king. It sent Marco Polo to Cathay, and inoculated men with
the itch of exploration from which they find no ease to this
day. It was the century which saw painting revived as a living
art in the world by Cimabue and Giotto, and sculpture restored
by Niccola Pisano. It was the age of great church-building in
Italy, in Germany and in France. It was the century of St.
Francis of Assisi, and of the creation of the mendicant orders
in the Church,—a true religious reformation in its spirit,
however unhappy in effect it may have been. It was the time of
the high tide of mediæval learning; the epoch of Aquinas, of
Duns Scotus, of Roger Bacon; the true birth-time of the
Universities of Paris and Oxford. It was the century which
educated Dante for his immortal work.

The Fourteenth Century.

The century which followed was a period of many wars—of
ruinous and deadly wars, and miserable demoralizations and
disorders, which depressed all Europe by their effects. In the
front of them all was the wicked Hundred Years War, forced on
France by the ambition of an English king to wear two crowns;
while with it came the bloody insurrection of the Jacquerie,
the ravages of the free companies, and ruinous anarchy
everywhere. Then, in Italy, there was a duel to the death
between Venice and Genoa; and a long, wasting contest of
rivals for the possession of Naples. In Germany, a contested
imperial election, and the struggle of the Swiss against the
Austrian Dukes. In Flanders, repeated revolts under the two
Artevelds. In the East, the terrible fight of Christendom with
the advancing Turk. And while men were everywhere so busily
slaying one another, there came the great pestilence which
they called the Black Death, to help them in the grim work,
and Europe was half depopulated by it. At the same time, the
Church, which might have kindled some beacon lights of faith
and hope in the midst of all this darkness and terror, was
sinking to its lowest state, and Rome had become an unruled
robbers' den.

There were a few voices heard, above the wailing and the
battle-din of the afflicted age, which charmed and comforted
it; voices which preached the pure gospel of Wycliffe and
Huss,—which recited the great epic of Dante,—which syllabled
the melodious verse of Petrarch and Chaucer,—which told the
gay tales of Boccaccio; but the pauses of peace in which men
might listen to such messages and give themselves to such
delights were neither many nor long.

{1037}

The Hundred Years War.

The conflict between England and France began in Flanders,
then connected with the English very closely in trade. Philip
VI. of France forced the Count of Flanders to expel English
merchants from his territory. Edward III. retaliated (1336) by
forbidding the exportation of wool to Flanders, and this
speedily reduced the Flemish weavers to idleness. They rose in
revolt, drove out their count, and formed an alliance with
England, under the lead of Jacob van Arteveld, a brewer, of
Ghent. The next year (1337) Edward joined the Flemings with an
army and entered France; but made no successful advance,
although his fleet won a victory, in a sea-fight off Sluys,
and hostilities were soon suspended by a truce. In 1341 they
were renewed in Brittany, over a disputed succession to the
dukedom, and the scattered sieges and chivalric combats which
made up the war in that region for two years are described
with minuteness by Froissart, the gossipy chronicler of the
time. After a second truce, the grimly serious stage of the
war was reached in 1346. It was in that year that the English
won the victory at Crécy, which was the pride and boast of
their nation for centuries; and the next season they took
Calais, which they held for more than two hundred years.

Philip died in 1350 and was succeeded by his son John. In
1355, Edward of England repeated his invasion, ravaging
Artois, while his son, the Black Prince, from Guienne (which
the English had held since the Angevin time), devastated
Languedoc. The next year, this last named prince made another
sally from Bordeaux, northwards, towards the Loire, and was
encountered by the French king, with a splendid army, at
Poitiers. The victory of the English in this case was more
overwhelming than at Crécy, although they were greatly
outnumbered. King John was taken prisoner and conveyed to
London. His kingdom was in confusion. The dauphin called
together the States-General of France, and that body, in which
the commons, or third estate, attained to a majority in numbers,
assumed powers and compelled assent to reforms which seemed
likely to place it on a footing of equal importance with the
Parliament of England. The leader of the third estate in these
measures was Etienne or Stephen Marcel, provost of Paris, a
man of commanding energy and courage. The dauphin, under
orders from his captive father, attempted to nullify the
ordinances of the States-General. Paris rose at the call of
Marcel and the frightened prince became submissive; but the
nobles of the provinces resented these high-handed proceedings
of the Parisians and civil war ensued. The peasants, who were
in great misery, took advantage of the situation to rise in
support of the Paris burgesses, and for the redressing of
their own wrongs. This insurrection of the Jacquerie, as it is
known, produced horrible deeds of outrage and massacre on both
sides, and seems to have had no other result. Paris, meantime
(1358), was besieged and hard pressed; Marcel, suspected of an
intended treachery, was killed, and with his death the whole
attempt to assert popular rights fell to the ground.

The state of France at this time was one of measureless
misery. It was overrun with freebooters—discharged soldiers,
desperate homeless and idle men, and the ruffians who always
bestir themselves when authority disappears. They roamed the
country in bands, large and small, stripped it of what war had
spared, and left famine behind them.

At length, in 1360, terms of peace were agreed upon, in a
treaty signed at Bretigny, and fighting ceased, except in
Brittany, where the war went on for four years more. By the
treaty, all French claims upon Aquitaine and the dependencies
were given up, and Edward acquired full sovereignty there, no
longer owing homage, as a vassal, to the king of France.
Calais, too, was ceded to England, and so heavy a ransom was
exacted from the captive King John that he failed to collect
money for the payment of it and died in London (1364).

Charles the Wise.

Charles V., who now ruled independently, as he had ruled for
some years in his father's name, proved to be a more prudent
and capable prince, and his counsellors and captains were
wisely chosen. He was a man of studious tastes and of
considerable learning for that age, with intelligence to see
and understand the greater sources of evil in his kingdom.
Above all, he had patience enough to plant better things in
the seed and wait for them to grow, which is one of the
grander secrets of statesmanship. By careful, judicious
measures, he and those who shared the task of government with
him slowly improved the discipline and condition of their
armies. The "great companies" of freebooters, too strong to be
put down, were lured out of the kingdom by an expedition into
Spain, which the famous warrior Du Guesclin commanded, and
which was sent against the detestable Pedro, called the Cruel,
of Castile, whom the English supported. A stringent economy in
public expenditure was introduced, and the management of the
finances was improved. The towns were encouraged to strengthen
their fortifications, and the state and feeling of the whole
country were slowly lifted from the gloomy depth to which the
war had depressed them.

At length, in 1369, Charles felt prepared to challenge another
encounter with the English, by repudiating the ignominious
terms of the treaty of Bretigny. Before the year closed,
Edward's armies were in the country again, but accomplished
nothing beyond the havoc which they wrought as they marched.
The French avoided battles, and their cities were well
defended. Next year the English returned, and the Black Prince
earned infamy by a ferocious massacre of three thousand men,
women, and children, in the city of Limoges, when he had taken
it by storm. It was his last campaign. Already suffering from
a mortal disease, he returned to England, and died a few years
later. The war went on, with no decisive results, until 1375,
when it was suspended by a truce. In 1377, Edward III. died,
and the French king began war again with great success. Within
three years he expelled the English from every part of France
except Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg and Calais.

If he had lived a little longer, there might soon have been an
end of the war. But he died in 1380, and fresh calamities fell
upon unhappy France.

{1038}

Rising Power of Burgundy.

The son who succeeded him, Charles VI., was an epileptic boy
of twelve years, who had three greedy and selfish uncles to
quarrel over the control of him, and to plunder the Crown of
territory and treasures. One of these was the Duke of
Burgundy, the first prince of a new great house which King
John had foolishly created. Just before that fatuous king
died, the old line of Burgundian dukes came to an end, and he
had the opportunity, which wise kings before him would have
improved very eagerly, to annex that fief to the crown.
Instead of doing so, he gave it as an appanage to his son
Philip, called "the Bold," and thus rooted a new plant of
feudalism in France which was destined to cause much trouble.
Another of the uncles was Louis, Duke of Anjou, heir to the
crown of Naples under a will of the lately murdered Queen
Joanna, and who was preparing for an expedition to enforce his
claim. The third was Duke of Berry, upon whom his father, King
John, had conferred another great appanage, including Berry,
Poitou and Auvergne.

The pillage and misgovernment of the realm under these
rapacious guardians of the young king was so great that
desperate risings were provoked, the most formidable of which
broke out in Paris. They were all suppressed, and with
merciless severity. At the same time, the Flemings, who had
again submitted to their count, revolted once more, under the
lead of Philip van Arteveld, son of their former leader. The
French moved an army to the assistance of the Count of
Flanders, and the sturdy men of Ghent, who confronted it
almost alone, suffered a crushing defeat at Roosebeke (1382).
Philip van Arteveld fell in the battle, with twenty-six
thousand of his men. Two years later, the Count of Flanders
died, and the Duke of Burgundy, who had married his daughter,
acquired that rich and noble possession. This beginning of the
union of Burgundy and the Netherlands, creating a power by the
side of the throne of France which threatened to overshadow
it, and having for its ultimate consequence the casting of the
wealth of the Low Countries into the lap of the House of
Austria and into the coffers of Spain, is an event of large
importance in European history.

Burgundians and Armagnacs.

When Charles VI. came of age, he took the government into his
own hands, and for some years it was administered by capable
men. But in 1392 the king's mind gave way, and his uncles
regained control of affairs. Philip of Burgundy maintained the
ascendancy until his death, in 1404. Then the controlling
influence passed to the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans,
between whom and the new Duke of Burgundy, John, called the
Fearless, a bitter feud arose. John, who was unscrupulous,
employed assassins to waylay and murder the Duke of Orleans,
which they did in November, 1407. This foul deed gave rise to
two parties in France. Those who sought vengeance ranged
themselves under the leadership of the Count of Armagnac, and
were called by his name. The Burgundians, who sustained Duke
John, were in the main a party of the people; for the Duke had
cultivated popularity, especially in Paris, by advocating
liberal measures and extending the rights and privileges of
the citizens.

The kingdom was kept in turmoil and terror for years by the
war of these factions, especially in and about Paris, where
the guild of the butchers took a prominent part in affairs, on
the Burgundian side, arming a riotous body of men who were
called Cabochiens, from their leader's name. In 1413 the
Armagnacs succeeded in recovering possession of the capital
and the Cabochiens were suppressed.

Second Stage of the Hundred Years War.

Meantime, Henry V. of England, the ambitious young Lancastrian
king who came to the throne of that country in 1413, saw a
favorable opportunity, in the distracted state of France, to
reopen the questions left unsettled by the breaking of the
treaty of Bretigny. He invaded France in 1415, as the rightful
king coming to dethrone a usurper, and began by taking
Harfleur at the mouth of the Seine, after a siege which cost
him so heavily that he found it prudent to retreat towards
Calais. The French intercepted him at Agincourt and forced him
to give them battle. He had only twenty thousand men, but they
formed a well disciplined and well ordered army. The French
had gathered eighty thousand men, but they were a feudal mob.
The battle ended, like those of Crécy and Poitiers, in the
routing and slaughter of the French, with small loss to
Henry's force. His army remained too weak in numbers, however,
for operations in a hostile country, and the English king
returned home, with a great train of captive princes and
lords.

He left the Armagnacs and Burgundians still fighting one
another, and disabling France as effectually as he could do if
he stayed to ravage the land. In 1417 he came back and began
to attack the strong cities of Normandy, one by one, taking
Caen first. In the next year, by a horrible massacre, the
Burgundian mob in Paris overcame the Armagnacs there, and
reinstated Duke John of Burgundy in possession of the capital.
The latter was already in negotiation with the English king,
and evidently prepared to sacrifice the kingdom for whatever
might seem advantageous to himself. But in 1419 Henry V. took
Rouen, and, when all of Normandy submitted with its capital,
he demanded nothing less than that great province, with
Brittany, Guienne, Maine, Anjou and Touraine in addition,—or,
substantially, the western half of France.

Burgundian and English Alliance.

Parleyings were brought to an end in September of that year by
the treacherous murder of Duke John. The Armagnacs slew him
foully, at an interview to which he had been enticed, on the
bridge of Montereau. His son, Duke Philip of Burgundy, now
reopened negotiations with the invader, in conjunction with
Queen Isabella (wife of the demented king), who had played an
evil part in all the factious troubles of the time. These two,
having control of the king's person, concluded a treaty with
Henry V. at Troyes, according to the terms of which Henry
should marry the king's daughter Catherine; should be
administrator of the kingdom of France while Charles VI.
lived, and should receive the crown when the latter died. The
marriage took place at once, and almost the whole of France
north of the Loire seemed submissive to the arrangement. The
States-General and the Parliament of Paris gave official
recognition to it; the disinherited dauphin of France, whose
own mother had signed away his regal heritage, retired, with
his Armagnac supporters, to the country south of the Loire,
and had little apparent prospect of holding even that.

{1039}

Two Kings in France.

But a mortal malady had already stricken King Henry V., and he
died in August, 1422. The unfortunate, rarely conscious French
king, whose crown Henry had waited for, died seven weeks
later. Each left an heir who was proclaimed king of France.
The English pretender (Henry VI. in England, Henry II. in
France) was an innocent infant, ten months old; but his court
was in Paris, his accession was proclaimed with due ceremony
at St. Denis, his sovereignty was recognized by the Parliament
and the University of that city, and the half of France
appeared resigned to the lapse of nationality which its
acceptance of him signified. The true heir of the royal house
of France (Charles VII.) was a young man of nearly mature age
and of fairly promising character; but he was proclaimed in a
little town of Berry, by a small following of lords and
knights, and the nation for which he stood hardly seemed to
exist.

The English supporters of the English king of France were too
arrogant and overbearing to retain very long the good will of
their allies among the French people. Something like a
national feeling in northern France was aroused by the
hostility they provoked, and the strength of the position in
which Henry V. left them was steadily but slowly lost. Charles
proved incapable, however, of using any advantages which
opened to him, or of giving his better counsellors an
opportunity to serve him with good effect, and no important
change took place in the situation of affairs until the
English laid siege, in 1428, to the city of Orleans, which was
the stronghold of the French cause.

Jeanne d'Arc, the Maid of Orleans.

Then occurred one of the most extraordinary episodes in
history; the appearance of the young peasant girl of Lorraine,
Jeanne d'Arc, whose coming upon the scene of war was like the
descent of an angel out of Heaven, sent with a Divine
commission to rescue France. Belief in the inspiration of this
simple maiden, who had faith in her own visions and voices,
was easier for that age than belief in a rational rally of
public energies, and it worked like a miracle on the spirit of
the nation. But it could not have done so with effect if the
untaught country girl of Domremy had not been endowed in a
wonderful way, with a wise mind, as well as with an
imaginative one, and with courage as well as with faith. When
the belief in her inspired mission gave her power to lead the
foolish king, and authority to command his disorderly troops,
she acted almost invariably with understanding, with good
sense, with a clear, unclouded judgment, with straightforward
singleness of purpose, and with absolute personal
fearlessness. She saw the necessity for saving Orleans; and
when that had been done under her own captaincy (1429), she
saw how greatly King Charles would gain in prestige if he made
his way to Rheims, and received, like his predecessors, a
solemn coronation and consecration in the cathedral of that
city. It was by force of her gentle obstinacy of determination
that this was done, and the effect vindicated the sagacity of
the Maid. Then she looked upon her mission as accomplished,
and would have gone quietly home to her village; for she seems
to have remained as simple in feeling as when she left her
father's house, and was innocent to the end of any selfish
pleasure in the fame she had won and the importance she had
acquired. But those she had helped would not let her go; and
yet they would not be guided by her without wrangle and
resistance. She wished to move the army straight from Rheims
to Paris, and enter that city before it had time to recover
from the consternation it was in. But other counsellors
retarded the march, by stopping to capture small towns on the
way, until the opportunity for taking Paris was lost. The
king, who had been braced up to a little energy by her
influence, sank back into his indolent pleasures, and faction
and frivolity possessed the court again. Jeanne strove with
high courage against malignant opposition and many
disheartenments, in the siege of Paris and after, exposing
herself in battle with the bravery of a seasoned warrior; and
her reward was to find herself abandoned at last, in a
cowardly way, to the enemy, when she had led a sortie from the
town of Compiegne, to drive back the Duke of Burgundy, who was
besieging it. Taken prisoner, she was given up to the Duke,
and sold by him to the English at Rouen.

That the Maid acted with supernatural powers was believed by
the English as firmly as by the French; but those powers, in
their belief, came, not from Heaven, but from Hell. In their
view she was not a saint, but a sorceress. They paid a high
price to the Duke of Burgundy for his captive, in order to put
her on trial for the witchcraft which they held she had
practised against them, and to destroy her mischievous power.
No consideration for her sex, or her youth, or for the beauty
and purity of character that is revealed in all the accounts
of her trial, moved her judges to compassion. They condemned
her remorselessly to the stake, and she was burned on the 31st
of May, 1431, with no effort put forth on the part of the
French or their ungrateful king to save her from that horrible
fate.

End of the Hundred Years War.

After this, things went badly with the English, though some
years passed before Charles VII. was roused again to any
display of capable powers. At last, in 1435, a general
conference of all parties in the war was brought about at
Arras. The English were offered Normandy and Aquitaine in full
sovereignty, but they refused it, and withdrew from the
conference when greater concessions were denied to them. The
Duke of Burgundy then made terms with King Charles, abandoning
the English alliance, and obtaining satisfaction for the
murder of his father. Charles was now able, for the first time
in his reign, to enter the capital of his kingdom (May, 1436),
and it is said that he found it so wasted by a pestilence and
so ruined and deserted, that wolves came into the city, and
that forty persons were devoured by them in a single week,
some two years later.

{1040}

Charles now began to show better qualities than had appeared
in his character before. He adopted strong measures to
suppress the bands of marauders who harassed and wasted the
country, and to bring all armed forces in the kingdom under
the control and command of the Crown. He began the creation of
a disciplined and regulated militia in France. He called into
his service the greatest French merchant of the day, Jacques
Cœur, who successfully reorganized the finances of the state,
and whose reward, after a few years, was to be prosecuted and
plundered by malignant courtiers, while the king looked
passively on, as he had looked on at the trial and execution
of Jeanne d'Arc.

In 1449, a fresh attack upon the English in Normandy was
begun; and as civil war—the War of the Roses—was then at the
point of outbreak in England, they could make no effective
resistance. Within a year, the whole of Normandy had become
obedient again to the rule of the king of France. In two years
more Guienne had been recovered, and when, in October, 1453,
the French king entered Bordeaux, the English had been finally
expelled from every foot of the realm except Calais and its
near neighborhood. The Hundred Years War was at an end.

England under Edward III.

The century of the Hundred Years War had been, in England, one
of few conspicuous events; and when the romantic tale of that
war—the last sanguinary romance of expiring Chivalry—is
taken out of the English annals of the time, there is not much
left that looks interesting on the surface of things. Below
the surface there are movements of no little importance to be
found.

When Edward III. put forward his claim to the crown of France,
and prepared to make it good by force of arms, the English
nation had absolutely no interest of its own in the
enterprise, from which it could derive no possible advantage,
but which did, on the contrary, promise harm to it, very
plainly, whatever might be the result. If the king succeeded,
his English realm would become a mere minor appendage to a far
more imposing continental dominion, and he and his successors
might easily acquire a power independent and absolute, over
their subjects. If he failed, the humiliation of failure would
wound the pride and the prestige of the nation, while its
resources would have been drained for naught. But these
rational considerations did not suffice to breed any
discoverable opposition to King Edward's ambitious
undertaking. The Parliament gave sanction to it; most probably
the people at large approved, with exultant expectations of
national glory; and when Crécy and Poitiers, with victories
over the hostile Scots, filled the measure of England's glory
to overflowing, they were intoxicated by it, and had little
thought then of the cost or the consequences.

But long before Edward's reign came to an end, the splendid
pageantries of the war had passed out of sight, and a new
generation was looking at, and was suffering from, the
miseries and mortifications that came in its train. The
attempt to conquer France had failed; the fruits of the
victories of Crécy and Poitiers had been lost; even Guienne,
which had been English ground since the days of Henry II., was
mostly given up. And England was weak from the drain of money
and men which the war had caused. The awful plague of the 14th
century, the Black Death, had smitten her people hard and left
diminished numbers to bear the burden. There had been famine
in the land, and grievous distress, and much sorrow.

But the calamities of this bitter time wrought beneficent
effects, which no man then living is likely to have clearly
understood. By plague, famine and battle, labor was made
scarce, wages were raised, the half-enslaved laborer was
speedily emancipated, despite the efforts of Parliament to
keep him in bonds, and land-owners were forced to let their
lands to tenant-farmers, who strengthened the English
middle-class. By the demands of the war for money and men, the
king was held more in dependence on Parliament than he might
otherwise have been, and the plant of constitutional
government, which began its growth in the previous century,
took deeper root.

In the last years of his life Edward III. lost all of his
vigor, and fell under the influence of a woman, Alice Perrers,
who wronged and scandalized the nation. The king's eldest son,
the Black Prince, was slowly dying of an incurable disease,
and took little part in affairs; when he interfered, it seems
to have been with some leanings to the popular side. The next
in age of the living sons of Edward was a turbulent, proud,
self-seeking prince, who gave England much trouble and was
hated profoundly. This was John, Duke of Lancaster, called
John of Gaunt, or Ghent, because of his birth in that city.

England under Richard II.

The Black Prince, dying in 1376, left a young son, Richard,
then ten years old, who was immediately recognized as the heir
to the throne, and who succeeded to it in the following year,
when Edward III. died. The Duke of Lancaster had been
suspected of a design to set Richard aside and claim the crown
for himself. But he did not venture the attempt; nor was he
able to secure even the regency of the kingdom during the
young king's minority. The distrust of him was so general that
Parliament and the lords preferred to invest Richard with full
sovereignty even in his boyhood. But John of Gaunt,
notwithstanding these endeavors to exclude him from any place
of authority, contrived to attain a substantial mastery of the
government, managing the war in France and the expenditure of
public moneys in his own way, and managing them very badly. At
least, he was held chiefly responsible for what was bad, and
his name was heard oftenest in the mutterings of popular
discontent. The peasants were now growing very impatient of
the last fetters of villeinage which they wore, and very
conscious of their right to complete freedom. Those feelings
were strongly stirred in them by a heavy poll-tax which
Parliament levied in 1381. The consequence was an outbreak of
insurrection, led by one Wat the Tyler, which became
formidable and dangerous. The insurgents began by making
everybody they encountered swear to be true to King Richard,
and to submit to no king named John, meaning John of Gaunt.
They increased in numbers and boldness until they entered and
took possession of the city of London, where they beheaded the
Archbishop of Canterbury, and other obnoxious persons; but
permitted no thieving to be done.
{1041}
The day after this occurred, Wat Tyler met the young king at
Smithfield, for a conference, and was suddenly killed by one
of those who attended the king. The excuse made for the deed
was some word of insolence on the part of the insurgent
leader; but there is every appearance of a foul act of
treachery in the affair. Richard on this occasion behaved
boldly and with much presence of mind, acquiring by his
courage and readiness a command over the angry rebels, which
resulted in their dispersion.

The Wat Tyler rebellion appears to have manifested a more
radically democratic state of thinking and feeling among the
common people than existed again in England before the
seventeenth century. John Ball, a priest, and others who were
associated with Wat Tyler in the leadership, preached
doctrines of social equality that would nearly have satisfied
a Jacobin of the French Revolution.

This temper of political radicalism had no apparent connection
with the remarkable religious feeling of the time, which the
great reformer, Wyclif, had aroused; yet the two movements of
the English mind were undoubtedly started by one and the same
revolutionary shock, which it took from the grave alarms and
anxieties of the age, and for which it had been prepared by
the awakening of the previous century. Wyclif was the first
English Puritan, and more of the spirit of the reformation of
religion which he sought, than the spirit of Luther's
reformation, went into the Protestantism that ultimately took
form in England. The movement he stirred was a more wonderful
anticipation of the religious revolt of the sixteenth century
than any other which occurred in Europe; for that of Huss in
Bohemia took its impulse from Wyclif and the English Lollards,
as Wyclif's followers were called.

Richard was a weak but wilful king, and the kingdom was kept
in trouble by his fitful attempts at independence and
arbitrary rule. He made enemies of most of the great lords,
and lost the good will and confidence of Parliament. He did
what was looked upon as a great wrong to Henry of Bolingbroke,
son of John of Gaunt, by banishing both him and the Duke of
Norfolk from the kingdom, when he should have judged between
them; and he made the wrong greater by seizing the lands of
the Lancastrian house when John of Gaunt died. This caused his
ruin. Henry of Bolingbroke, now Duke of Lancaster, came back to
England (1399), encouraged by the discontent in the kingdom,
and was immediately joined by so many adherents that Richard
could offer little resistance. He was deposed by act of
Parliament, and the Duke of Lancaster (a grandson of Edward
III., as Richard was), was elected to the throne, which he
ascended as Henry IV. By judgment of King and Parliament,
Richard was presently condemned to imprisonment for life in
Pomfret Castle; and, early in the following year, after a
conspiracy in his favor had been discovered, he died
mysteriously in his prison.

England Under Henry IV.

The reign of Henry IV., which lasted a little more than
thirteen years, was troubled by risings and conspiracies, all
originating among the nobles, out of causes purely personal or
factious, and having no real political significance. But no
events in English history are more commonly familiar, or seem
to be invested with a higher importance, than the rebellions
of Owen Glendower and the Percys,—Northumberland and Harry
Hotspur,—simply because Shakespeare has laid his magic upon
what otherwise would be a story of little note. Wars with the
always hostile Scots supplied other stirring incidents to the
record Of the time; but these came to a summary end in 1405,
when the crown prince, James, of Scotland, voyaging to France,
was driven by foul winds to the English coast and taken
prisoner. The prince's father, King Robert, died on hearing
the news, and James, the captive, was now entitled to be king.
But the English held him for eighteen years, treating him as a
guest at their court, rather than as a prisoner, and educating
him with care, but withholding him from his kingdom.

To strengthen his precarious seat upon the throne, Henry
cultivated the friendship of the Church, and seems to have
found this course expedient, even at considerable cost to his
popularity. For the attitude of the commons towards the Church
during his reign was anything but friendly. They went so far
as to pass a bill for the confiscation of Church property,
which the Lords rejected; and they seem to have repented of an
Act passed early in his reign, under which a cruel persecution
of the Lollards was begun. The clergy and the Lords, with the
favor of the king, maintained the barbarous law, and England
for the first time saw men burned at the stake for heresy.

England Under Henry V. and Henry VI.

Henry IV. died in 1413, and was succeeded by his spirited and
able, but too ambitious son, Henry V., the Prince Hal of
Shakespeare, who gave up riotous living when called to the
grave duties of government and showed himself to be a man of
no common mould. The war in France, which he renewed, and the
chief events of which have been sketched already, filled up
most of his brief reign of nine years. His early death (1422)
left two crowns to an infant nine months old. The English
crown was not disputed. The French crown, though practically
won by conquest, was not permanently secured, but was still to
be fought for; and in the end, as we have seen, it was lost.
No more need be said of the incidents of the war which had
that result.

The infant king was represented in France by his elder uncle,
the Duke of Bedford. In England, the government was carried on
for him during his minority by a council, in which his younger
uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, occupied the chief place,
but with powers that were jealously restricted. While the war
in France lasted, or during most of the thirty-one years
through which it was protracted after Henry V.'s death, it
engrossed the English mind and overshadowed domestic
interests, so that the time has a meagre history.

Soon after he came of age, Henry VI. married (1444) Margaret
of Anjou, daughter of René, Duke of Anjou, who claimed to be
King of Naples and Jerusalem. The marriage, which aimed at
peace with France, and which had been brought about by the
cession to that country of Maine and Anjou, was unpopular in
England. Discontent with the feeble management of the war, and
with the general weakness and incapability of the government,
grew apace, and showed itself, among other exhibitions, in a
rebellion (1450) known as Jack Cade's, from the name of an
Irishman who got the lead of it. Jack Cade and his followers
took possession of London and held it for three days, only
yielding at last to an offer of general pardon, after they had
beheaded Lord Say, the most obnoxious adviser of the king. A
previous mob had taken the head of the Earl of Suffolk, who
was detested still more as the contriver of the king's
marriage and of the humiliating policy in France.

{1042}

The Wars of the Roses.

At length, the Duke of York, representing an elder line of
royal descent from Edward III., took the lead of the
discontented in the nation, and civil war was imminent in
1452; but pacific counsels prevailed for the moment. The king,
who had always been weak-minded, and entirely under the
influence of the queen, now sank for a time into a state of
complete stupor, and was incapable of any act. The Lords in
Parliament thereupon appointed the Duke of York Protector of
England, and the government was vigorously conducted by him
for a few months, until the king recovered. The queen, and the
councillors she favored, now regained their control of
affairs, and the opposition took arms.

The long series of fierce struggles between these two parties,
which is commonly called the Wars of the Roses, began on the
22d of May, 1455, with a battle at St. Albans—the first of
two that were fought on the same ground. At the beginning, it
was a contest for the possession of the unfortunate,
irresponsible king, and of the royal authority which resided
nominally in his person. But it became, ere long, a contest
for the crown which Henry wore, and to which the Duke of York
denied his right. The Duke traced his ancestry to one son of
Edward III., and King Henry to another son. But the Duke's
forefather, Lionel, was prior in birth to the King's
forefather, John of Gaunt, and, as an original proposition,
the House of York was clearly nearer than the House of
Lancaster to the royal line which had been interrupted when
Richard II. was deposed. The rights of the latter House were
such as it had gained prescriptively by half a century of
possession.

At one time it was decided by the Lords that Henry should be
king until he died, and that the Duke of York and his heirs
should succeed him. But Queen Margaret would not yield the
rights of her son, and renewed the war. The Duke of York was
killed in the next battle fought. His son, Edward, continued
the contest, and early in 1461, having taken possession of
London, he was declared king by a council of Lords, which
formally deposed Henry. The Lancastrians were driven from the
kingdom, and Edward held the government with little
disturbance for eight years. Then a rupture occurred between
him and his most powerful supporter, the Earl of Warwick.
Warwick put himself at the head of a rebellion which failed in
the first instance, but which finally, when Warwick had joined
forces with Queen Margaret, drove Edward to flight. The latter
took refuge in the Netherlands (1470), where he received
protection and assistance from the Duke of Burgundy, who was
his brother-in-law. Henry VI. was now restored to the throne;
but for no longer a time than six months. At the end of that
period Edward landed again in England, with a small force,
professing that he came only to demand his dukedom. As soon as
he found himself well received and strongly supported, he
threw off the mask, resumed the title of king, and advanced to
London, where the citizens gave him welcome. A few days later
(April 14, 1471) he went out to meet Warwick and defeated and
slew him in the fierce battle of Barnet. One more fight at
Tewkesbury, where Queen Margaret was taken prisoner, ended the
war. King Henry died, suspiciously, in the Tower, on the very
night of his victorious rival's return to London, and Edward
IV. had all his enemies under his feet.

England under the House of York.

For a few years England enjoyed peace within her borders, and
the material effects of the protracted civil wars were rapidly
effaced. Indeed, the greater part of England appears to have
been lightly touched by those effects. The people at large had
taken little part in the conflict, and had been less disturbed
by it, in their industries and in their commerce, than might
have been expected. It had been a strife among the great
families, enlisting the gentry to a large extent, no doubt,
but not the middle class. Hence its chief consequence had been
the thinning and weakening of the aristocratic order, which
relatively enhanced the political importance of the commons.
But the commons were not yet trained to act independently in
political affairs. Their rise in power had been through joint
action of lords and commons against the Crown, with the former
in the lead; they were accustomed to depend on aristocratic
guidance, and to lean on aristocratic support. For this
reason, they were not only unprepared to take advantage of the
great opportunity which now opened to them, for decisively
grasping the control of government, but they were unfitted to
hold what they had previously won, without the help of the
class above them. As a consequence, it was the king who
profited by the decimation and impoverishment of the nobles,
grasping not only the power which they lost, but the power
which the commons lacked skill to use. For a century and a
half following the Wars of the Roses, the English monarchy
approached more nearly to absolutism than at any other period
before or after.

The unsparing confiscations by which Edward IV. and his
triumphant party crushed their opponents enriched the Crown
for a time and made it independent of parliamentary subsidies.
When supply from that source began to fall short, the king
invented another. He demeaned himself so far as to solicit
gifts from the wealthy merchants of the kingdom, to which he
gave the name of "benevolences," and he practiced this system
of royal beggary so persistently and effectually that he had
no need to call Parliament together. He thus began, in a
manner hardly perceived or resisted, the arbitrary and
unconstitutional mode of government which his successors
carried further, until the nation roused itself and took back
its stolen liberties with vengeance and wrath.

{1043}

Richard III. and the first of the Tudors.

Edward IV. died in 1483, leaving two young sons, the elder not
yet thirteen. Edward's brother, Richard, contrived with
amazing ability and unscrupulousness to acquire control of the
government, first as Protector, and presently as King. The
young princes, confined in the Tower, were murdered there, and
Richard III. might have seemed to be secure on his wickedly
won throne; for he did not lack popularity, notwithstanding
his crimes. But an avenger soon came, in the person of Henry,
Earl of Richmond, who claimed the Crown. Henry's claim was not
a strong one. Through his mother, he traced his lineage to
John of Gaunt, as the Lancastrians had done; but it was the
mistress and not the wife of that prince who bore Henry's
ancestor. His grandfather was a Welsh chieftain, Sir Owen
Tudor, who won the heart of the widowed queen of Henry V.,
Catherine of France, and married her. But the claim of Henry
of Richmond, if a weak one genealogically, sufficed for the
overthrow of the red-handed usurper, Richard. Henry, who had
been in exile, landed in England in August, 1485, and was
quickly joined by large numbers of supporters. Richard
hastened to attack them, and was defeated and slain on
Bosworth Field. With no more opposition, Henry won the
kingdom, and founded, as Henry VII., the Tudor dynasty which
held the throne until the death of Elizabeth.

Under that dynasty, the history of England took on a new
character, disclosing new tendencies, new impulses, new
currents of influence, new promises of the future. We will not
enter upon it until we have looked at some prior events in
other regions.

Germany.

If we return now to Germany, we take up the thread of events
at an interesting point. We parted from the affairs of that
troubled country while two rival Emperors, Louis IV., or
Ludwig, of Bavaria, and Frederick of Austria, were endeavoring
(1325) to settle their dispute in a friendly way, by sharing
the throne together. Before noting the result of that
chivalric and remarkable compromise, let us glance backward
for a moment at the most memorable and important incident of
the civil war which led to it.

Birth of the Swiss Confederacy.

The three cantons of Switzerland which are known distinctively
as the Forest Cantons, namely, Schwytz (which gave its name in
time to the whole country), Uri, and Unterwalden, had stood in
peculiar relations to the Hapsburg family since long before
Rudolph became Emperor and his house became the House of
Austria. In those cantons, the territorial rights were held
mostly by great monasteries, and the counts of Hapsburg for
generations past had served the abbots and abbesses in the
capacity of advocates, or champions, to rule their vassals for
them and to defend their rights. Authority of their own in the
cantons they had none. At the same time, the functions they
performed so continually developed ideas in their minds,
without doubt, which grew naturally into pretensions that were
offensive to the bold mountaineers. On the other hand, the
circumstances of the situation were calculated to breed
notions and feelings of independence among the men of the
mountains. They gave their allegiance to the Emperor—to the
high sovereign who ruled over all, in the name of Rome—and
they opposed what came between them and him. It is manifest
that a threatening complication for them arose when the Count
of Hapsburg became Emperor, which occurred in 1273. They had
no serious difficulty with Rudolph, in his time; but they
wisely prepared themselves for what might come, by forming, or
by renewing, in 1291, a league of the three cantons,—the
beginning and nucleus of the Swiss Confederation, which has
maintained its independence and its freedom from that day to
this. The league of 1291 had existed something more than
twenty years when the confederated cantons were first called
upon to stand together in resistance to the Austrian
pretensions. This occurred in 1315, during the war between
Louis and Frederick, when Leopold, Duke of Austria, invaded
the Forest Cantons and was disastrously beaten in a fight at
the pass of Morgarten. The victory of the confederates and the
independence secured by it gave them so much prestige that
neighboring cities and cantons sought admission to their
league. In 1332 Luzern was received as a member; in 1351,
1352, and 1353, Zurich, Glarus, Zug, and Bern came in,
increasing the membership to eight. It took the name of the
Old League of High Germany, and its members were known as
Eidgenossen, or Confederates.

Such, in brief, are the ascertained facts of the origin of the
Swiss Confederacy. There is nothing found in authentic history
to substantiate the popular legend of William Tell.

The questions between the league and the Austrian princes,
which continued to be troublesome for two generations, were
practically ended by the two battles of Sempach and Naefels,
fought in 1386 and 1388, in both of which the Austrians were
overthrown.

The Emperor Louis IV. and the Papacy.

While the Swiss were gaining the freedom which they never
lost, Germany at large was making little progress in any
satisfactory direction. Peace had not been restored by the
friendly agreement of 1325 between Ludwig and Frederick. The
partisans of neither were contented with it. Frederick was
broken in health and soon retired from the government; in 1330
he died. The Austrian house persisted in hostility to Louis;
but his more formidable enemies were the Pope and the King of
France. The period was that known in papal history as "the
Babylonish Captivity," when the popes resided at Avignon and
were generally creatures of the French court and subservient
to its ambitions or its animosities. Philip of Valois, who now
reigned in France, aspired to the imperial crown, which the head
of the Church had conferred on the German kings, and which the
same supreme pontiff might claim authority to transfer to the
sovereigns of France. This is supposed to have been the secret
of the relentless hostility with which Louis was pursued by
the Papacy—himself excommunicated, his kingdom placed under
interdict, and every effort made to bring about his deposition
by the princes of Germany. But divided and depressed as the
Germans were, they revolted against these malevolent
pretensions of the popes, and in 1338 the electoral princes
issued a bold declaration, asserting the sufficiency of the
act of election to confer imperial dignity and power, and
denying the necessity for any papal confirmation whatever. Had
Louis been a commanding leader, and independent of the Papacy in
his own feelings, he could probably have rallied a national
sentiment on this issue that would have powerfully affected
the future of German history.
{1044}
But he lacked the needful character, and his troubles
continued until he died (1347). A year before his death, his
opponents had elected and put forward a rival emperor,
Charles, the son of King John of Bohemia. Charles (IV.) was
subsequently recognized as king without dispute, and secured
the imperial crown. "It may be affirmed with truth that the
genuine ancient Empire, which contained a German kingdom, came
to an end with the Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian. None strove
again after his death to restore the imperial power. The
golden bull of his successor Charles IV. sealed the fate of
the old Empire. Through it, and indeed through the entire
conduct of Charles IV., King of Bohemia as he really was, and
emperor scarcely more than in name, the imperial government
passed more and more into the hands of the prince-electors,
who came to regard the emperor no longer as their master, but
as the president of an assembly in which he shared the power
with themselves." "From the time of Charles IV. the main
object and chief occupation of the emperors was not the
Empire, but the aggrandisement and security of their own
house. The Empire served only as the means and instrument of
their purpose" (Dollinger).

The Golden Bull of Charles IV.

The Golden Bull referred to by Dr. Dollinger was an instrument
which became the constitution, so to speak, of the Holy Roman
or Germanic Empire. It prescribed the mode of the election of
the King, and definitively named the seven Electors. It also
conferred certain special powers and privileges on these seven
princes, which raised them much above their fellows and gave
them an independence that may be said to have destroyed every
hope of Germanic unity. This was the one mark which the reign
of Charles IV. left upon the Empire. His exertions as Emperor
were all directed to the aggrandizement of his own family, and
with not much lasting result. In his own kingdom of Bohemia he
ruled with better effect. He made its capital, Prague, an
important city, adorning it with noble buildings and founding
in it the most ancient of German universities. This University
of Prague soon sowed seeds from which sprang the first
movement of religious reformation in Germany.