Chapter IV: , VII (45)

"Of the forty-four years of St. Louis' reign, nearly fifteen,
with a long interval of separation, pertained to the
government of Queen Blanche of Castille, rather than that of
the king her son. Louis, at his accession in 1226, was only
eleven; and he remained a minor up to the age of twenty-one,
in 1236, for the time of majority in the case of royalty was
not yet specially and rigorously fixed. During those ten years
Queen Blanche governed France; not at all, as is commonly
asserted, with the official title of regent, but simply as
guardian of the king her son. With a good sense really
admirable in a person so proud and ambitious, she saw that
official power was ill suited to her woman's condition, and
would weaken rather than strengthen her; and she screened
herself from view behind her son. He it was who, in [1236],
wrote to the great vassals bidding them to his consecration;
he it was who reigned and commanded; and his name alone
appeared on royal decrees and on treaties. It was not until
twenty-two years had passed, in 1248, that Louis, on starting
for the crusade, officially delegated to his mother the kingly
authority, and that Blanche, during her son's absence, really
governed with the title of regent. … During the first period
of his government, and so long as her son's minority lasted,
Queen Blanche had to grapple with intrigues, plots,
insurrections, and open war; and, what was still worse for
her, with the insults and calumnies of the crown's great
vassals, burning to seize once more, under a woman's
government, the independence and power which had been
effectually disputed with them by Philip Augustus. Blanche
resisted their attempts, at one time with open and persevering
energy, at another dexterously with all the tact, address, and
allurements of a woman. Though she was now forty years of age
she was beautiful, elegant, attractive, full of resources and
of grace. … The malcontents spread the most odious scandals
about her. … Neither in the events nor in the writings of
the period is it easy to find anything which can authorize the
accusations made by the foes of Queen Blanche. … She
continued her resistance to the pretensions and machinations
of the crown's great vassals, whether foes or lovers, and she
carried forward, in the face and in the teeth of all, the
extension of the domains and the power of the kingship. We
observe in her no prompting of enthusiasm, of sympathetic
charitableness, or of religious scrupulousness; that is, none
of those grand moral impulses which are characteristic of
Christian piety and which were predominant in St. Louis.
Blanche was essentially politic and concerned with her
temporal interests and successes; and it was not from her
teaching or her example that her son imbibed those sublime and
disinterested feelings which stamped him the most original and
the rarest on the roll of glorious kings. What St. Louis really
owed to his mother, and it was a great deal, was the steady
triumph which, whether by arms or by negotiation, Blanche
gained over the great vassals, and the preponderance which,
amidst the struggles of the feudal system, she secured for the
kingship of her son in his minority. … When Louis reached
his majority, his entrance upon personal exercise of the
kingly power produced no change in the conduct of public
affairs. … The kingship of the son was a continuance of the
mother's government. Louis persisted in struggling for the
preponderance of the crown against the great vassals;
succeeded in taming Peter Mauclerc, the turbulent count of
Brittany; wrung from Theobald IV., count of Champagne, the
rights of suzerainty in the countships of Chartres, Blois, and
Sancerre, and the viscountship of Châteaudun; and purchased
the fertile countship of Mâcon from its possessor. It was
almost always by pacific procedure, by negotiations ably
conducted, and conventions faithfully executed, that he
accomplished these increments of the kingly domain; and when
he made war on any of the great vassals, he engaged therein
only on their provocation, to maintain the rights or honour of
his crown, and he used victory with as much moderation as he
had shown before entering upon the struggle. … When war was
not either a necessity or a duty, this brave and brilliant
knight, from sheer equity and goodness of heart, loved peace
rather than war. The successes he had gained in his campaign
of 1242 [against the count of La Marche and Henry III., of
England, whose mother had become the wife of La Marche] were
not for him the first step in an endless career of glory and
conquest; he was anxious only to consolidate them whilst
securing, in Western Europe, for the dominions of his
adversaries as well as for his own, the benefits of peace. He
entered into negotiations, successively, with the count of la
Marche, the king of England, the count of Toulouse, the king
of Aragon, and the various princes and great feudal lords who
had been more or less engaged in the war; and in January,
1243, says the latest and most enlightened of his biographers
[M. Felix Faure], 'the treaty of Lorris marked the end of
feudal troubles for the whole duration of St. Louis' reign. He
drew his sword no more, save only against the enemies of the
Christian faith and Christian civilization, the Mussulmans.'"

_G. Masson,
Saint Louis and the Thirteenth Century,
pages 44-56._

"St. Louis … by this war of 1242 finished those contests for
the crown with its vassals which had been going on since the
time of his ancestor, Louis the Fat. But it was not by warfare
that he was to aid in breaking down the strongholds of
feudalism. The vassals might have been beaten time and again,
and yet the spirit of feudalism, still surviving, would have
raised up new champions to contend against the crown. St.
Louis struck at the spirit of the Middle Age, and therein
insured the downfall of its forms and whole embodiment. He
fought the last battles against feudalism, because, by a surer
means than battling, he took, and unconsciously, the
life-blood from the opposition to the royal authority.
Unconsciously, we say; he did not look on the old order of
things as evil, and try to introduce a better; he did not
selfishly contend for the extension of his own power; he was
neither a great reformer, nor a (so-called) wise king. He
undermined feudalism, because he hated injustice; he warred
with the Middle Age, because he could not tolerate its
disregard of human rights; and he paved the way for
Philip-le-bel's struggle with the papacy, because he looked
upon religion and the church as instruments for man's
salvation, not as tools for worldly aggrandizement.
{1164}
He is, perhaps, the only monarch on record who failed in most
of what he undertook of active enterprise, who was under the
control of the prejudices of his age, who was a true
conservative, who never dreamed of effecting great social
changes,—and who yet, by his mere virtues, his sense of duty,
his power of conscience, made the mightiest and most vital
reforms. One of these reforms was the abolition of the trial
by combat. … It is not our purpose to follow Louis either in
his first or second crusade. If the great work of his life was
not to be done by fighting at home, still less was it to be
accomplished by battles in Egypt or Tunis. His mission was
other and greater than he dreamed of, and his service to
Christendom was wholly unlike that which he proposed to
himself. … In November, 1244, he took the cross; but it was
June of 1248 before he was able to leave Paris to embark upon
his cherished undertaking. …

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1248-1254.

On the fifth of June, 1249, he landed in Egypt, which was
to be conquered before Palestine could be safely attacked. On
the seventh of June, Damietta was entered, and there the
French slept and feasted, wasting time, strength, and money,
until the twentieth of the following November. Then came the
march southward; the encampment upon the Nile; the terrors of
the Greek fire; the skirmishes which covered the plain with
dead; the air heavy with putridity and pestilence; the putrid
water; the fish fat with the flesh of the dead; sickness,
weakness, retreat, defeat, captivity. On the sixth of April,
1250, Louis and his followers were prisoners to the
Mussulmans; Louis might have saved himself, but would not quit
his followers; he had been faithful thus far, and would be
till death. … On the eighth of May, 1250, Louis was a
freeman, and it was not until the twenty-fifth of April, 1254,
that he set sail to return to his native shores, where
Blanche, who had been regent during his absence, had some
months since yielded up her breath. On the seventh of
September, he entered Paris, sad and worn. … And scarce had
he landed, before he began that course of legislation which
continued until once more he embarked upon the crusade. … In
his first legislative action, Louis proposed to himself these
objects,—to put an end to judicial partiality, to prevent
needless and oppressive imprisonment for debt, to stop
unfounded criminal prosecutions, and to mitigate the horrors
of legalized torture. In connection with these general topics,
he made laws to bear oppressively upon the Jews, to punish
prostitution and gambling, and to diminish intemperance. And
it is worthy of remark, that this last point was to be
attained by forbidding innkeepers to sell to any others than
travellers,—a measure now (six hundred years later) under
discussion in some parts of our Union, with a view to the same
end. But the wish which this rare monarch had to recompense
all who had been wronged by himself and forefathers was the
uppermost wish of his soul. He felt that to do justice himself
was the surest way to make others willing to do it. Commissioners
were sent into every province of the kingdom to examine each
alleged case of royal injustice, and with power in most
instances to make instant restitution. He himself went forth
to hear and judge in the neighborhood of his capital, and as
far north as Normandy. … As he grew yet older, the spirit of
generosity grew stronger daily in his bosom. He would have no
hand in the affairs of Europe, save to act, wherever he could,
as peacemaker. Many occasions occurred where all urged him to
profit by power and a show of right, a naked legal title, to
possess himself of valuable fiefs; but Louis shook his head
sorrowfully and sternly, and did as his inmost soul told him
the law of God directed. … There had been for some reigns
back a growing disposition to refer certain questions to the
king's tribunals, as being regal, not baronial, questions.
Louis the Ninth gave to this disposition distinct form and
value, and, under the influence of the baron-hating legists,
he so ordained, in conformity with the Roman law, that, under
given circumstances, almost any case might be referred to his
tribunal. This, of course, gave to the king's judgment-seat
and to him more of influence than any other step ever taken
had done. It was, in substance, an appeal of the people from
the nobles to the king, and it threw at once the balance of
power into the royal hands. … It became necessary to make
the occasional sitting of the king's council or parliament,
which exercised certain judicial functions, permanent; and to
change its composition, by diminishing the feudal and
increasing the legal or legist element. Thus everywhere, in
the barons' courts, the king's court, and the central
parliament, the Roman, legal, organized element began to
predominate over the German, feudal, barbaric tendencies, and
the foundation-stones of modern society were laid. But the
just soul of Louis and the prejudices of his Romanized
counsellors were not arrayed against the old Teutonic
barbarism alone, with its endless private wars and judicial
duels; they stood equally opposed to the extravagant claims of
the Roman hierarchy. … The first calm, deliberate,
consistent opposition to the centralizing power of the great
see was that offered by its truest friend and most honest
ally, Louis of France. From 1260 to 1268, step by step was
taken by the defender of the liberties of the Gallican church,
until, in the year last named, he published his 'Pragmatic
Sanction' [see below], his response, by advice of his wise
men, to the voice of the nation, the Magna Charta of the
freedom of the church of France, upon whose vague articles,
the champions of that freedom could write commentaries, and
found claims, innumerable. … But the legislation of Louis
did not stop with antagonism to the feudal system and to the
unauthorized claims of the church; it provided for another
great grievance of the Middle Age, that lying and unequal
system of coinage which was a poison to honest industry and
commercial intercourse. … And now the great work of Louis
was completed; the barons were conquered, the people
protected, quiet prevailed through the kingdom, the national
church was secured in her liberties. The invalid of Egypt, the
sojourner of Syria, had realized his dreams and purposes of
good to his own subjects, and once again the early vision of
his manhood, the recovery of Palestine, haunted his slumbering
and his waking hours. … On the sixteenth of March, 1270, he
left Paris for the seashore; on the first of July, he sailed
from France. The sad, sad story of this his last earthly doing
need not be here repeated."

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1270-1271.

_Saint Louis of France
(North American Review, April, 1846)._

On the part performed by Louis IX. in the founding of
absolutism in France,

See PARLIAMENT OF PARIS.

{1165}

FRANCE: A. D. 1252.
The Crusading movement of the Pastors.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1252.

FRANCE: A. D. 1266.
Acquisition of the kingdom of Naples or the Two Sicilies by
Charles of Anjou, the king's brother.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1250-1268.

FRANCE: A. D. 1268.
The Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis.
Assertion of the rights of the Gallican Church.

"The continual usurpations of the popes produced the
celebrated Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis [about A. D.
1268]. This edict, the authority of which, though probably
without cause, has been sometimes disputed, contains three
important provisions; namely, that all prelates and other
patrons shall enjoy their full rights as to the collation of
benefices, according to the canons; that churches shall
possess freely their rights of election; and that no tax or
pecuniary exaction shall be levied by the pope, without
consent of the king and of the national church. We do not
find, however, that the French government acted up to the
spirit of this ordinance."

_H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 7, part 2._

"This Edict appeared either during the last year of Clement
IV., … or during the vacancy in the Pontificate. … It
became the barrier against which the encroachments of the
ecclesiastical power were destined to break; nor was it swept
away till a stronger barrier had arisen in the unlimited power
of the French crown." It "became a great Charter of
Independence to the Gallican Church."

_H. H. Milman,
History of Latin Christianity,
book 11, chapter 4 (volume 5)._

FRANCE: A. D. 1270-1285.
The sons of St. Louis.
Origin of the Houses of Valois and Bourbon.

St. Louis left several sons, the elder of whom succeeded him
as Philippe III., and his youngest son was Robert, Count of
Clermont and Lord of Bourbon, the ancestor of all the branches
of the House of Bourbon. Philippe III. died in 1285, when he
was succeeded by his son, Philippe IV. A younger son, Charles,
Count of Valois, was the ancestor of the Valois branch of the
royal family.

FRANCE: A. D. 1285-1314.
Reign of Philip IV.
His conflict with the Pope and his destruction of the
Templars.

Philippe IV., called "le Bel" (the Handsome), came to the
throne on the death of his father, Philippe "le Hardi," in
1285. He was presently involved in war with Edward I. of
England, who crossed to Flanders in 1297, intending to invade
France, but was recalled by the revolt in Scotland, under
Wallace, and peace was made in 1303. The Flemings, who had
provoked Philippe by their alliance with the English, were
thus left to suffer his resentment. They bore themselves
valiantly in a war which lasted several years, and inflicted
upon the knights of France a fearful defeat at Courtrai, in
1302. In the end, the French king substantially failed in his
designs upon Flanders.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1299-1304.

"It is probable that this long struggle would have been still
protracted, but for a general quarrel which had sprung up some
time before its close, between the French king and Pope
Boniface VIII., concerning the [taxation of the clergy and
the] right of nomination to vacant bishoprics within the
dominions of Philippe. The latter, on seeing Bernard Saissetti
thrust into the Bishopric of Pamiers by the pontiff's sole
authority, caused the Bishop to be arrested by night, and,
after subjecting him to various indignities, consigned him to
prison on a charge of treason, heresy, and blasphemy. Boniface
remonstrated against this outrage and violence in a bull known
in history, by its opening words 'Ausculta, fili,' in which he
asserted his power 'over nations and kingdoms, to root out and
to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to
plant,' and concluded by informing Philippe that he had
summoned all the superior clergy of France to an assembly at
Rome on the 1st of the following November, in order to
deliberate on the remedies for such abuses as those of which
the king had been guilty. Philippe, by no means intimidated by
this measure, convoked a full and early assembly of the three
estates of his kingdom, to decide upon the conduct of him whom
the orthodox, up to that time, had been in the habit of deeming
infallible. This (10th April 1302) was the first meeting of a
Parliament, properly so called, in France. … The chambers
unanimously approved and applauded the conduct of the king,
and resolved to maintain the honour of the crown and the
nation from foreign insult or domination; and to mark their
decision more conclusively, they concurred with the sovereign
in prohibiting the clergy from attending the Pope's summons to
Rome. The papal bull was burned as publicly as possible. …
The Pope, alarmed at these novel and bold proceedings, sought
instantly to avert their consequences by soothing
explanations; but Philippe would not now be turned aside from
his course. He summoned a convocation of the Gallican
prelates, in which by the mouth of William de Nogaret, his
chancellor, he represented the occupier of St. Peter's chair
as the father of lies and an evil-doer; and he demanded the
seizure of this pseudo-pope, and his imprisonment until he
could be brought before a legitimate tribunal to receive the
punishment due to his numerous crimes. Boniface now declared
that the French king was excommunicated, and cited him by his
confessor to appear in the papal court at Rome within three
months, to make submission and atonement for his contumacy.
… While this unseemly quarrel … seemed to be growing
interminable in its complexities, the daring of a few men
opened a shorter path to its end than could have been
anticipated. William of Nogaret associating to him Sciarra
Colonna, a noble Roman, who, having been driven from his
native city by Boniface and subjected to various hardships,
had found refuge in Paris, passed, with a train of three
hundred horsemen, and a much larger body of picked infantry,
secretly into Italy, with the intention of surprising the Pope
at his summer residence in his native town of Anagni. … The
papal palace was captured after a feeble resistance, and the
cardinals and personal attendants of the Pontiff fled for
their lives. … The Condottieri … dragged the Pope from his
throne, and conveying him into the street, mounted him upon a
lean horse without saddle or bridle, with his head to the
animal's tail, and thus conducted him in a sort of pilgrimage
through the town. He was then consigned prisoner to one of the
chambers of his palace and placed under guard; while the body
of his captors dispersed themselves through the splendid
apartments in eager pursuit of plunder. Three days were thus
occupied; but at the end of that time the … people of Anagni
… took arms in behalf of their fellow-townsman and spiritual
father, and falling upon the French while still indulging in
the licence of the sack, drove Nogaret and Colonna from their
quarters, and either expelled or massacred the whole of their
followers."
{1166}
The Pope returned to Rome in so great a rage that his reason
gave way, and soon afterwards he was found dead in his bed.
"The scandal of these proceedings throughout Christendom was
immense; and Philippe adopted every precaution to avert evil
consequences from himself by paying court to Benedict XI. who
succeeded to the tiara. This Pope, however, though he for some
time temporised, could not be long deaf to the loud voices of
the clergy which called for punishment upon the oppressors of
the church. Ere he had reigned nine months he found himself
compelled to excommunicate the plunderers of Anagni; and a few
days afterwards he perished, under circumstances which leave
little doubt of his having been poisoned. … The king of
France profitted largely by the crime; since, besides gaining
time for the subsidence of excitement, he was subsequently
enabled, by his intrigues, to procure the election of a person
pledged not only to grant him absolution for all past
offences, but to stigmatise the memory of Boniface, to restore
the deposed Colonna to his honours and estates, to nominate
several French ecclesiastics to the college of cardinals, and
to grant to the king the tenths of the Gallican church for a
term of five years. The pontiff who thus seems to have been
the first of his race to lower the pretensions of his office,
was Bertrand de Goth, originally a private gentleman of
Bazadors, and subsequently promoted to the Archiepiscopal See
of Bordeaux. He assumed the title of Clement V., and after
receiving investiture at Lyons, fixed the apostolic residence
at Avignon, where it continued, under successive occupants,
for a period, the length of which caused it to be denominated
by the Italians the Babylonian captivity. This quarrel
settled, Philippe engaged in another undertaking, the
safe-conduct of which required all his skill and
unscrupulousness. This important enterprise was no less than
the destruction and plunder of the military order of Knights
Templars. … Public discontent … had, by a variety of
circumstances, been excited throughout the realm. Among the
number of exactions, the coin had been debased to meet the
exigencies of the state, and this obstructing the operations
of commerce, and inflicting wrongs to a greater or less extent
upon all classes, everyone loudly complained of injustice,
robbery and oppression, and in the end several tumults
occurred, in which the residence of the king himself was
attacked, and the whole population were with difficulty
restrained from insurrection. In Burgundy, Champagne, Artois
and Forez, indeed, the nobles, and burgess class having for
the first time made common cause of their grievances, spoke
openly of revolt against the royal authority, unless the
administration should be reformed, and equity be substituted
in the king's courts for the frauds, extortions and
malversations, which prevailed. The sudden death of
Philippe—owing to a fall from his horse while hunting the
wild boar in the forest of Fontainebleau—on the 29th of
November, 1314, delivered the people from their tyrant, and
the crown from the consequences of a general rebellion. Pope
Clement, the king's firm friend, had gone to his last account
on the 20th of the preceding April. Louis X., le Hutin (the
Quarrelsome), ascended the throne at the mature age of
twenty-five."

_G. M. Bussey and T. Gaspey,
Pictorial History of France,
volume 1, chapter 4._

See, also, PAPACY: A.D. 1294-1348,
and TEMPLARS: A.D. 1307-1314.

FRANCE: A. D. 1314-1328.
Louis X., Philip V., Charles IV.
Feudal reaction.

Philip-le-Bel died in 1314. "With the accession of his son,
Louis X., so well surnamed Hutin (disorder, tumult), comes a
violent reaction of the feudal, local, provincial spirit,
which seeks to dash in pieces the still feeble fabric of
unity, demands dismemberment, and claims chaos. The Duke of
Brittany arrogates the right of judgment without appeal; so
does the exchequer of Rouen. Amiens will not have the king's
sergeants subpœna before the barons, or his provosts remove
any prisoner from the town's jurisdiction. Burgundy and Nevers
require the king to respect the privileges of feudal justice.
… The common demand of the barons is that the king shall
renounce all intermeddling with their men. … The young
monarch grants and signs all; there are only three points to
which he demurs, and which he seeks to defer. The Burgundian
barons contest with him the jurisdiction over the rivers,
roads, and consecrated places. The nobles of Champagne doubt
the king's right to lead them to war out of their own
province. Those of Amiens, with true Picard impetuosity,
require without any circumlocution, that all gentlemen may war
upon each other, and not enter into securities, but ride, go,
come, and be armed for war, and pay forfeit to one another.
… The king's reply to these absurd and insolent demands is
merely: 'We will order examination of the registers of my lord
St. Louis, and give to the said nobles two trustworthy
persons, to be nominated by our council, to verify and inquire
diligently into the truth of the said article.' The reply was
adroit enough. The general cry was for a return to the good
customs of St. Louis: it being forgotten that St. Louis had
done his utmost to put a stop to private wars. But by thus
invoking the name of St. Louis, they meant to express their
wish for the old feudal independence—for the opposite of the
quasi-legal, the venal, and pettifogging government of
Philippe-le-Bel. The barons set about destroying, bit by bit,
all the changes introduced by the late king. But they could
not believe him dead so long as there survived his Alter Ego,
his mayor of the palace, Enguerrand de Marigny, who, in the
latter years of his reign, had been coadjutor and rector of
the kingdom, and who had allowed his statue to be raised in
the palace by the side of the king's. His real name was Le
Portier; but along with the estates he bought the name of
Marigny. … It was in the Temple, in the very spot where
Marigny had installed his master for the spoliation of the
Templars, that the young king Louis repaired to hear the
solemn accusation brought against him. His accuser was
Philippe-le-Bel's brother, the violent Charles of Valois, a
busy man, of mediocre abilities, who put himself at the head
of the barons. … To effect his destruction, Charles of
Valois had recourse to the grand accusation of the day, which
none could surmount.
{1167}
It was discovered, or presumed, that Marigny's wife or sister,
in order to effect his acquittal, or bewitch the king, had
caused one Jacques de Lor to make certain small figures: 'The
said Jacques, thrown into prison, hangs himself in despair,
and then his wife, and Enguerrand's sisters are thrown into
prison, and Enguerrand himself, condemned before the knights
… is hung at Paris on the thieves' gibbet.' … Marigny's
best vengeance was that the crown, so strong in his care, sank
after him into the most deplorable weakness. Louis-le-Hutin,
needing money for the Flemish war, treated as equal with
equal, with the city of Paris. The nobles of Champagne and
Picardy hastened to take advantage of the right of private war
which they had just reacquired, and made war on the countess of
Artois, without troubling themselves about the judgment
rendered by the king, who had awarded this fief to her. All
the barons had resumed the privilege of coining; Charles of
Valois, the king's uncle, setting them the example. But
instead of coining for their own domains only, conformably to
the ordinances of Philippe-le-Hardi and Philippe-le-Bel, they
minted coin by wholesale, and gave it currency throughout the
kingdom. On this, the king had perforce to arouse himself, and
return to the administration of Marigny and of
Philippe-le-Bel. He denounced the coinage of the barons,
(November the 19th, 1315;) ordained that it should pass
current on their own lands only; and fixed the value of the
royal coin relatively to thirteen different coinages, which
thirty-one bishops or barons had the right of minting on their
own territories. In St. Louis's time, eighty nobles had enjoyed
this right. The young feudal king, humanized by the want of
money, did not disdain to treat with serfs and with Jews. …
It is curious to see the son of Philippe-le-Bel admitting
serfs to liberty [see SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: FRANCE]; but it is
trouble lost. The merchant vainly swells his voice and
enlarges on the worth of his merchandise; the poor serfs will
have none of it. Had they buried in the ground some bad piece
of money, they took care not to dig it up to buy a bit of
parchment. In vain does the king wax wroth at seeing them dull
to the value of the boon offered. At last, he directs the
commissioners deputed to superintend the enfranchisement, to
value the property of such serfs as preferred 'remaining in
the sorriness (chétiveté) of slavery,' and to tax them 'as
sufficiently and to such extent as the condition and wealth of
the individuals may conveniently allow, and as the necessity of
our war requires.' But with all this it is a grand spectacle
to see proclamation made from the throne itself of the
imprescriptible right of every man to liberty. The serfs do
not buy this right, but they will remember both the royal
lesson, and the dangerous appeal to which it instigates
against the barons. The short and obscure reign of
Philippe-le-Long [Philip V., 1316-1322] is scarcely less
important as regards the public law of France, than even that
of Philippe-le-Bel. In the first place, his accession to the
throne decides a great question. As Louis Hutin left his queen
pregnant, his brother Philippe is regent and guardian of the
future infant. This child dies soon after its birth, and
Philippe proclaims himself king to the prejudice of a daughter
of his brother's; a step which was the more surprising from
the fact that Philippe-le-Bel had maintained the right of
female succession in regard to Franche-Comté and Artois. The
barons were desirous that daughters should be excluded from
inheriting fiefs, but that they should succeed to the throne
of France; and their chief, Charles of Valois, favored his
grand-niece against his nephew Philippe. Philippe assembled
the States, and gained his cause, which, at bottom, was good,
by absurd reasons. He alleged in his favor the old German law
of the Franks, which excluded daughters from the Salic land;
and maintained that the crown of France was too noble a fief
to fall into hands used to the distaff ('pour tomber en
quenouille')—a feudal argument, the effect of which was to
ruin feudality. … By thus rejecting the right of the
daughters at the very moment it was gradually triumphing over
the fiefs, the crown acquired its character of receiving
always without ever giving; and a bold revocation, at this
time, of an donations made since St. Louis's day, seems to
contain the principle of the inalienableness of the royal
domain. Unfortunately, the feudal spirit which resumed
strength under the Valois in favor of private wars, led to
fatal creations of appanages, and founded, to the advantage of
the different branches of the royal family, a princely
feudality as embarrassing to Charles VI. and Louis XI., as the
other had been to Philippe-le-Bel. This contested succession
and disaffection of the barons force Philippe-le-Long into the
paths of Philippe-le-Bel. He flatters the cities, Paris, and,
above all, the University,—the grand power of Paris. He
causes his barons to take the oath of fidelity to him, in
presence of the masters of the university, and with their
approval. He wishes his good cities to be provided with
armories; their citizens to keep their arms in a sure place;
and appoints them a captain in each bailiwick or district,
(March the 12th, 1316). … Praiseworthy beginnings of order
and of government brought no relief to the sufferings of the
people. During the reign of Louis Hutin, a horrible mortality
had swept off, it was said, the third of the population of the
North. The Flemish war had exhausted the last resources of the
country. … Men's imaginations becoming excited, a great
movement took place among the people. As in the days of St.
Louis, a multitude of poor people, of peasants, of shepherds
or pastoureaux, as they were called, flock together and say
that they seek to go beyond the sea, that they are destined to
recover the Holy Land. … They wended their way towards the
South, everywhere massacring the Jews; whom the king's
officers vainly tried to protect. At last, troops were got
together at Toulouse, who fell upon the Pastoureaux, and
hanging them up by twenties and thirties the rest dispersed.
… Philippe-le-Long … was seized with fever in the course
of the same year, (A. D. 1321,) in the month of August,
without his physicians being able to guess its cause. He
languished five months, and died. … His brother Charles
[Charles IV., 1322-1328] succeeded him, without bestowing a
thought more on the rights of Philippe's daughter; than
Philippe had done to those of Louis's daughter. The period of
Charles's reign is as barren of facts with regard to France,
as it is rich in them respecting Germany, England, and
Flanders. The Flemings imprison their count. The Germans are
divided between Frederick of Austria and Lewis of Bavaria, who
takes his rival prisoner at Muhldorf. In the midst of the
universal divisions, France seems strong from the circumstance
of its being one. Charles-le-Bel interferes in favor of the
count of Flanders.
{1168}
He attempts, with the pope's aid, to make himself emperor; and
his sister, Isabella, makes herself actual queen of England by
the murder of Edward II. … Charles-le-Bel … died almost at
the same time as Edward, leaving only a daughter; so that he
was succeeded by a cousin of his. All that fine family of
princes who had sat near their father at the Council of Vienne
was extinct. In the popular belief, the curses of Boniface had
taken effect. … This memorable epoch, which depresses
England so low, and in proportion, raises France so high,
presents, nevertheless, in the two countries two analogous
events: In England, the barons have overthrown Edward II. In
France, the feudal party places on the throne the feudal
branch of the Valois."

_J. Michelet,
History of France,
books 5-6 (volume l)._

See, also, VALOIS, THE HOUSE OF.

FRANCE: A. D. 1314-1347.
The king's control of the Papacy in its contest with the
emperor.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1314-1347.

FRANCE: A. D. 1328.
The extent of the royal domain.
The great vassals.
The possessions of foreign princes in France.

On the accession of the House of Valois to the French throne,
in the person of Philip VI. (A. D. 1328), the royal domain had
acquired a great increase of extent. In the two centuries
since Philip I. it had gained, "by conquest, by confiscation,
or by inheritance, Berry, or the Viscounty of Bourges,
Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Valois, Vermandois, the
counties of Auvergne, and Boulogne, a part of Champagne and
Brie, Lyonnais, Angoumois, Marche, nearly the whole of
Languedoc, and, lastly, the kingdom of Navarre, which
belonging in her own right to queen Jeanne, mother of the last
three Capetians [Jeanne, heiress of the kingdom of Navarre and
of the counties of Champagne and Brie, was married to Philip
IV., and was the mother of Louis X., Philip V. and Charles
IV.], Charles IV. united with the crown. But the custom among
the kings of giving apanages or estates to the princes of
their house detached afresh from the domain a great part of
the reunited territories, and created powerful princely
houses, of which the chiefs often made themselves formidable
to the monarchs. Among these great houses of the Capetian
race, the most formidable were: the house of Burgundy, which
traced back to king Robert; the house of Dreux, issue of a son
of Louis the Big, and which added by a marriage the duchy of
Brittany to the county of that name; the house of Anjou, issue
of Charles, brother of Saint Louis, which was united in 1290
with that of Valois; the house of Bourbon, descending from
Robert, Count of Clermont, sixth son of Saint Louis; and the
house of Alençon, which traced back to Philip III., and
possessed the duchy of Alençon and Perche. Besides these great
princely houses of Capetian stock, which owed their grandeur
and their origin to their apanages, there were many others
which held considerable rank in France, and of which the
possessions were transmissible to women; while the apanages
were all masculine fiefs. The most powerful of these houses
were those of Flanders, Penthièvre, Châtillon, Montmorency,
Brienne, Coucy, Vendôme, Auvergne, Foix, and Armagnac. The
vast possessions of the two last houses were in the country of
the Langue d'Oc. The counts of Foix were also masters of
Bearn, and those of Armagnac possessed Fezensac, Rouergue, and
other large seigniories. Many foreign princes, besides, had
possessions in France at the accession of the Valois. The king
of England was lord of Ponthieu, of Aunis, of Saintonge, and
of the duchy of Aquitaine; the king of Navarre was count of
Evreux, and possessor of many other towns in Normandy; the
king of Majorca was proprietor of the seigniory of
Montpellier; the duke of Lorraine, vassal of the German
empire, paid homage to the king of France for many fiefs that
he held in Champagne; and, lastly, the Pope possessed the
county Venaissin, detached from Provence."

_E. de Bonnechose,
History of France,
volume 1, page 224._

FRANCE: A. D. 1328.
Accession of King Philip VI.

FRANCE: A. D. 1328.
The splendor of the Monarchy on the eve of the calamitous
wars.

"Indisputably, the king of France [Philip VI., or Philip de
Valois] was at this moment [A. D. 1328] a great king. He had
just reinstated Flanders in its state of dependence on him.
The king of England had done him homage for his French
provinces. His cousins reigned at Naples and in Hungary. He
was protector of the king of Scotland. He was surrounded by a
court of kings—by those of Navarre, Majorca, Bohemia; and
the Scottish monarch was often one of the circle. The famous
John of Bohemia, of the house of Luxembourg, and father to the
emperor Charles IV., declared that he could not live out of
Paris, 'the most chivalrous residence in the world.' He
fluttered over all Europe, but ever returned to the court of
the great king of France—where was kept up one constant
festival, where jousts and tournaments ever went on, and the
romances of chivalry, king Arthur and the round table, were
realized."

_J. Michelet,
History of France,
book 6, chapter 1._

FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339.
The claim of Edward III. of England to the French crown.

"History tells us that Philip, king of France, surnamed the
Fair, had three sons, beside his beautiful daughter Isabella,
married to the king of England [Edward II.]. These three sons
were very handsome. The eldest, Lewis, king of Navarre during
the lifetime of his father, was called Lewis Hutin [Louis X.];
the second was named Philip the Great, or the Long [Philip
V.]; and the third, Charles [Charles IV.]. All these were
kings of France, after their father Philip, by legitimate
succession, one after the other, without having by marriage
any male heirs; yet, on the death of the last king, Charles,
the twelve peers and barons of France did not give the kingdom
to Isabella, the sister, who was queen of England, because
they said and maintained, and still do insist, that the
kingdom of France is so noble that it ought not to go to a
woman; consequently neither to Isabella, nor to her son, the
king of England [Edward III.]; for they hold that the son of a
woman cannot claim any right of succession, where that woman
has none herself. For these reasons the twelve peers and
barons of France unanimously gave the kingdom of France to the
lord Philip of Valois, nephew to king Philip, and thus put
aside the queen of England, who was sister to Charles, the
late king of France, and her son. Thus, as it seemed to many
people, the succession went out of the right line; which has
been the occasion of the most destructive wars and
devastations of countries, as well in France as elsewhere, as
you will learn hereafter; the real object of this history
being to relate the great enterprises and deeds of arms
achieved in these wars, for from the time of good Charlemagne,
king of France, never were such feats performed."

_J. Froissart,
Chronicles (Johnes'),
book 1, chapter 4._

[Images: Maps of France]

France in 1154 At the Accession of Henry II. (Anjou)
Showing how he Acquired his fiefs in France.

Acquired By Henry From Matilda.

Acquired By Henry From His Father Goeffrey Of Anjou.

Acquired By Henry From His Wife Eleanor Of Aquitaine

French Crown Lands

Other Vassal Lands.

------------------

France in 1180
At The Accession Of Philip Augustus
Showing The Lands Acquired By The Crown During His Reign.

Crown Lands At Accession Of Philip

Acquired During His Reign Form Angevins

Acquired During His Reign From Other Vassals

Angevin Lands (1223)

Other Vassal Lands

------------------

France at the death of Philip IV (The Fair) 1314

------------------

France at the Peace of Bretigny

-------End: Maps of France----------------

{1169}

"From the moment of Charles IV.'s death [A. D. 1328], Edward
III. of England buoyed himself up with a notion of his title
to the crown of France, in right of his mother Isabel, sister
to the three last kings. We can have no hesitation in
condemning the injustice of this pretension. Whether the Salic
law were or were not valid, no advantage could be gained by
Edward. Even if he could forget the express or tacit decision
of all France, there stood in his way Jane, the daughter of
Louis X., three [daughters] of Philip the Long, and one of
Charles the Fair. Aware of this, Edward set up a distinction,
that, although females were excluded from succession, the same
rule did not apply to their male issue; and thus, though his
mother Isabel could not herself become queen of France, she
might transmit a title to him. But this was contrary to the
commonest rules of inheritance; and if it could have been
regarded at all, Jane had a son, afterwards the famous king of
Navarre [Charles the Bad], who stood one degree nearer to the
crown than Edward. It is asserted in some French authorities
that Edward preferred a claim to the regency immediately after
the decease of Charles the Fair, and that the States-General,
or at least the peers of France, adjudged that dignity to
Philip de Valois. Whether this be true or not, it is clear
that he entertained projects of recovering his right as early,
though his youth and the embarrassed circumstances of his
government threw insuperable obstacles in the way of their
execution. He did liege homage, therefore, to Philip for
Guienne, and for several years, while the affairs of Scotland
engrossed his attention, gave no signs of meditating a more
magnificent enterprise. As he advanced in manhood, and felt
the consciousness of his strength, his early designs grew
mature, and produced a series of the most important and
interesting revolutions in the fortunes of France."

_H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 1, part l._

See, also, SALIC LAW: APPLICATION TO THE
REGAL SUCCESSION IN FRANCE.

FRANCE: A. D. 1337-1360.
The beginning of the "Hundred Years War."

It was not until 1337 that Edward III. felt prepared to assert
formally his claim to the French crown and to assume the title
of King of France. In July of the following year he began
undertakings to enforce his pretended right, by crossing with
a considerable force to the continent. He wintered at Antwerp,
concerting measures with the Flemings, who had espoused his
cause, and arranging an alliance with the emperor-king of
Germany, whose name bore more weight than his arms. In 1339 a
formal declaration of hostilities was made and the long
war—the Hundred Years War, as it has been called—of English
kings for the sovereignty of France, began. "This great war
may well be divided into five periods. The first ends with the
Peace of Bretigny in 1360 (A. D. 1337-1360), and includes the
great days of Crécy [1346] and Poitiers [1356], as well as the
taking of Calais: the second runs to the death of Charles the
Wise in 1380; these are the days of Du Guesclin and the
English reverses: the third begins with the renewal of the war
under Henry V. of England, and ends with the Regency of the
Duke of Bedford at Paris, including the field of Azincourt
[1415] and the Treaty of Troyes (A. D. 1415-1422): the fourth
is the epoch of Jeanne Darc and ends with the second
establishment of the English at Paris (A. D. 1428-1431): and
the fifth and last runs on to the final expulsion of the
English after the Battle of Castillon in 1453. Thus, though it
is not uncommonly called the Hundred Years War, the struggle
really extended over a period of a hundred and sixteen years."

_G. W. Kitchin,
History of France,
book 4, chapters 1-7._

"No war had broken out in Europe, since the fall of the Roman
Empire, so memorable as that of Edward III. and his successors
against France, whether we consider its duration, its object,
or the magnitude and variety of its events. It was a struggle
of one hundred and twenty years, interrupted but once by a
regular pacification, where the most ancient and extensive
dominion in the civilised world was the prize, twice lost and
twice recovered in the conflict. … There is, indeed, ample
room for national exultation at the names of Crecy, Poitiers
and Azincourt. So great was the disparity of numbers upon
those famous days, that we cannot, with the French historians,
attribute the discomfiture of their hosts merely to mistaken
tactics and too impetuous valour. … These victories, and the
qualities that secured them, must chiefly be ascribed to the
freedom of our constitution, and to the superior condition of
the people. Not the nobility of England, not the feudal
tenants, won the battles of Crecy and Poitiers; for these were
fully matched in the ranks of France; but the yeomen who drew
the bow with strong and steady arms, accustomed to use it in
their native fields, and rendered fearless by personal
competence and civil freedom. … Yet the glorious termination
to which Edward was enabled, at least for a time, to bring the
contest, was rather the work of fortune than of valour and
prudence. Until the battle of Poitiers [A. D. 1356] he had
made no progress towards the conquest of France. That country
was too vast, and his army too small, for such a revolution.
The victory of Crecy gave him nothing but Calais. … But at
Poitiers he obtained the greatest of prizes, by taking
prisoner the king of France. Not only the love of freedom
tempted that prince to ransom himself by the utmost
sacrifices, but his captivity left France defenceless and
seemed to annihilate the monarchy itself. … There is no
affliction which did not fall upon France during this
miserable period. … Subdued by these misfortunes, though
Edward had made but slight progress towards the conquest of
the country, the regent of France, afterwards Charles V.,
submitted to the peace of Bretigni [A. D. 1360]. By this
treaty, not to mention less important articles, all Guienne,
Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge, the Limousin, and the Angoumois,
as well as Calais, and the county of Ponthieu, were ceded in
full sovereignty to Edward; a price abundantly compensating
his renunciation of the title of France, which was the sole
concession stipulated in return."

_H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 1, part 2._

ALSO IN:
_J. Froissart,
Chronicles (Johnes' translation),
book 1, chapters 1-212._

_W. Longman,
History of Edward III.,
volume 1, chapters 6-22._

_F. P. Guizot,
Popular History of France,
chapter 20._

_D. F. Jamison,
Life and Times of Bertrand du Guesclin,
volume 1, chapters 4-10._

See, also, POITIERS, BATTLE OF.

{1170}

FRANCE: A. D. 1347-1348.
The Black Plague.

"Epochs of moral depression are those, too, of great motality.
… In the last years of Philippe de Valois' reign, the
depopulation was rapid. The misery and physical suffering
which prevailed were insufficient to account for it; for they
had not reached the extreme at which they subsequently
arrived. Yet, to adduce but one instance, the population of a
single town, Narbonne, fell off in the space of four or five
years from the year 1399, by 500 families. Upon this too tardy
diminution of the human race followed extermination,—the great
black plague, or pestilence, which at once heaped up mountains
of dead throughout Christendom. It began in Provence, in the
year 1347, on All Saints' Day, continued sixteen months, and
carried off two-thirds of the inhabitants. The same wholesale
destruction befell Languedoc. At Montpellier, out of twelve
consuls, ten died. At Narbonne, 30,000 persons perished. In
several places, there remained only a tithe of the
inhabitants. All that the careless Froissart says of this
fearful visitation, and that only incidentally, is—'For at
this time there prevailed throughout the world generally a
disease called epidemy, which destroyed a third of its
inhabitants.' This pestilence did not break out in the north
of the kingdom until August, 1348, where it first showed
itself at Paris and St. Denys. So fearful were its ravages at
Paris, that, according to some, 800, according to others, 500,
daily sank under it. … As there was neither famine at the time
nor want of food, but, on the contrary great abundance, this
plague was said to proceed from infection of the air and of
the springs. The Jews were again charged with this, and the
people cruelly fell upon them."

_J. Michelet,
History of France,
book 6, chapter 1._

See BLACK DEATH.

FRANCE: A. D. 1350.
Accession of King John II.

FRANCE: A. D. 1356-1358.
The States-General and Etienne Marcel.