Chapter IV: Philip III to the House of Valois (1)

Of all epochs of French history, the second half of
the thirteenth century appears to be that in which the
subordination (of the people to the crown) was most
complete.--DARESTE.[k]

PHILIP (III) THE BOLD (1270-1285 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1270-1285 A.D.]]

Little is known of the reign of St. Louis’ eldest son in spite of its length of fifteen years. It began under the walls of Tunis whence Philip III brought home his father’s body, after forcing a treaty upon the Mohammedans in which they recognised themselves tributary to the king of Sicily and agreed to pay the costs of the war. One can, however, still follow the ascending march of royalty under this prince, who, without any new war, and by extinction of several feudal lineages, reunited to his domain Valois, Poitou, and the counties of Toulouse and Venaissin. But Philip gave up to the pope this last fief and half of Avignon. The count of Foix, vanquished and a prisoner in his own capital, was compelled to promise faithful obedience and cede a portion of his territory. The dominion of the king of France thus approached the Pyrenees; and it finally crossed them. Philip made a match between his eldest son and the heiress of Navarre and if he did not succeed in placing on the throne of Castile a prince subservient to his influence, or in setting the crown of Aragon on the head of his second son Charles, at least he showed his arms in Catalonia where he took the stronghold of Gerona. Thus the Capetian dynasty, triumphant at home since the days of Louis VI, tried to become so abroad. But the time for this was not ripe.

The expedition to Catalonia, which turned out badly, had no other motive than that of family interest. Philip wished to punish Don Pedro, king of Aragon, for his support of the rebellious Sicilians against Charles of Anjou after the massacre of all the French citizens in the island, which had taken place during vespers on Easter Monday. (“The Sicilian Vespers,” 1282.)

An ordinance of Philip III, drawn up in 1274, obliged the advocates in the royal courts to take oath each year that they would defend none but just cases. The first example of a commoner made noble by the king will be found in the letters of ennoblement issued by Philip III to his silversmith Raoul, in 1272, if the fact is absolutely certain.

PHILIP (IV) THE FAIR (1285-1314 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1285-1300 A.D.]]

Philip IV, surnamed the Fair, was but seventeen when he succeeded his father in 1285. He ridded himself, as far as possible by treaties, of futile wars, and occupied himself in place of conquest with increasing his domains by acquisitions within his reach. His marriage with the heiress of Navarre and Champagne had only been worth two great provinces to him. A decree of parliament which despoiled the heirs of Hugh de Lusignan secured him La Marche and Angoumois. Then his second son married the heiress of Franche-Comté; thus through marriage, escheat, or conquest all France came little by little into the royal domain. But powerful vassals still remained--the duke of Brittany, the count of Flanders, and especially the duke of Guienne. Philip began by attacking the last. He was a formidable adversary since he was at the same time king of England.

Fortunately Edward I, who had just subdued the Welsh and was now threatening the independence of Scotland, was too much occupied in his own island to come over to the continent, and owing to this the royal army was able to make rapid progress in Guienne. A French fleet went to pillage Dover; and another army led by the king in person made its way into Flanders, where the count had declared for the king of England, and beat the Flemings at Furnes (Veurne) (1297). The intervention of Pope Boniface VIII established a peace between the two kings which was sealed by a marriage. A daughter of Philip the Fair wedded the son of Edward I and gave the English house rights to the throne of France which Edward III in due time asserted (1299). By this peace the two kings gave up their allies, Philip the Scotch, and Edward the count of Flanders. The latter in terror hastened to place himself under the protection of Philip and Flanders was reunited to the domain (1300).

[Sidenote: [1300-1302 A.D.]]

The whole French court went to visit the new acquisition. It was received with great pomp; the Flemings, to do honour to their noble visitors, donned their best attire and displayed all their riches. The entrance into Bruges was especially magnificent. The bourgeois wives showed such gold and jewels in their toilets that the queen felt her woman’s vanity wounded. “I thought,” she said, “there was but one queen of France; now I see six hundred.” Flanders was in truth the richest country in Europe because it was there that the people worked hardest. In that fruitful land men had sprung up like crops, towns were numerous, and the population active and industrious, devoted, like the Guienne towns--especially Bordeaux, because the English bought their wines--to England, whence came the wool necessary to their manufactures. Flemish cloth sold throughout the whole of Christendom as far as Constantinople, and the towns of the Low Countries formed the market where the productions of the north from the Baltic were exchanged for those of the south brought from Venice and the east of Italy down the Rhine.

On a soil which it had taken a thousand canals to rescue from the sea, among the scores of stoutly walled cities, with a population accustomed to hard work, but none the less proud of its numbers, strength, and wealth, chivalry had had small chance to play its game, and there was little feudalism in Flanders. Every town had its privileges and it was not safe to tamper with them.

_New War with Flanders (1302-1304 A.D.)_

Philip had appointed James de Châtillon governor of Flanders--a man who did not know how to treat a conquered people, especially such a rich one. The people, rather intolerant and accustomed to more consideration from their counts, rebelled. In Bruges alone three thousand French were put to death. Philip sent Robert of Artois with a large army to avenge this deed. Twenty thousand Flemings awaited it bravely behind a canal near Courtrai. Before the fight the Flemings confessed their sins, the priest said high mass, and all, bowing down, took some earth and put it in their mouths, swearing thus to fight to the death for their country’s freedom. This gathering of a whole army usually augurs badly for its assailants. The latter advanced in bad order, sure of victory and not giving those common people the credit of believing that they would dare look them in the face. In vain the constable Raoul de Nesle cautioned prudence. He was asked if he was afraid. “Sir,” he replied to Count Robert, “if you come where I go, you will be well in the front,” and he spurred his horse forward at all speed. They did not even take the precaution to reconnoitre the Flemings’ position. The first ranks of the heavy columns of knights, advancing at full speed, had no sooner fallen into the canal that covered the enemy’s lines than those just behind pressed by the rear were precipitated upon them, and then the Flemings had only to plunge their long lances into the confused mass of men and horses to kill with perfect safety to themselves. A sortie which they made from the two ends of the canal completed the rout. Two hundred nobles of high degree and six thousand soldiers perished. And what was most humiliating was that the duke of Burgundy, the counts of Saint-Pol and Clermont, with two thousand hauberts, fled, leaving the constable, count of Artois, and so many noble warriors, beaten, maimed, and killed in the hands of the common people (1302).

The battle of Mansurah had already shown the undisciplined impetuosity and military incapacity of the knights, but this occurred in the Orient and distance had helped to preserve the reputation of the vanquished; but the battle of Courtrai, lost by the flower of French chivalry to the common people, made a great sensation without, however, curing the nobility of their mad presumption. The defeats of Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt came from the same causes. Stripped by royalty of its privileges, the feudal nobility lost on the battle-field the prestige with which it had long been surrounded and saw, to complete its own ruin, arise at its very side another army--that of the king and the people.

Philip the Fair took energetic measures to repair the disaster of Courtrai. He forced nobles and bourgeois to bring to the royal mint their gold and silver plate, for which he paid in debased coinage. He ordered each property yielding 100 livres of rent to provide one horseman, every one hundred villein families to provide six foot-sergeants, and every commoner having 25 livres income to serve in person. He sold many serfs their freedom and many commoners titles of nobility. By this means he collected in two months ten thousand mounted and sixty thousand men on foot. It was a royal effort and it was a great one, but that of the people was greater still. From the Flemish towns there issued this time eighty thousand fighters. With two such opposing armies the contest must be terrible and decisive; they felt this and not wishing to take any risks, the year 1302 was spent in trying to get thoroughly acquainted with the situation. Philip was then at the height of his quarrel with Boniface VIII and a new defeat would be fatal to him; he even let the Flemings take the offensive the following year (1303). But the pope died the same year and Philip attacked Flanders by land and sea. His fleet defeated the Flemish at Zieriksee and he himself avenged at Mons-en-Pévêlle, or Mons-en-Puelle, the defeat of Courtrai. He thought the enemy exterminated, but in a few days they were back as numerous as ever, asking a new battle. “But it rains Flemings,” cried the king. He preferred to treat rather than fight again. They promised him money and ceded Douai, Lille, Béthune, Orchies with all Walloon--that is to say French-speaking Flanders between the Lys and the Schelde. To this the king gave them back their count, who promised nothing more than feudal homage.

Thus French royalty receded before Flemish democracy as did German royalty almost at the same period before Swiss democracy. The communes of France remained isolated, and succumbed; in Flanders and in Switzerland they united and triumphed.[b]

_The Quarrel between Philip and Boniface VIII_

[Sidenote: [1296-1304 A.D.]]

The complaints made by a certain section of the French clergy to the holy see in 1296, against what they designated as the exactions of Philip the Fair, met with a far better reception than did similar complaints from England, where Edward was employing much more vigorous methods than those of his rival to obtain subsidies from the clergy.

It was a great opportunity for Pope Boniface VIII, and he did not let it slip. The bull, _Clericis laïcos_ (1296), was familiar throughout Christendom. This bull, forbidding the clergy to pay taxes to temporal rulers, was too sweeping to be enforced. Boniface realised that, and forestalled the objections that it could not fail to raise. All that was too peremptory in the preceding bull was corrected in the one beginning _Ineffabilis amor_. The king might raise subsidies among the clergy, with the pope’s consent, who, if the kingdom were menaced, would order them to contribute to its defence even unto the selling of the sacred vessels. In the same bull Boniface demanded an explanation of the prohibition recently made by the king against exporting gold, silver, and merchandise out of the kingdom, a prohibition which threatened to dry up one of the principal sources of revenue of Rome.

The edict which is universally regarded as Philip’s retort to the bull _Clericis laïcos_, was not aimed at the pope, for it was issued in the month of April, a few days after the drawing up of the bull and before its contents could possibly have become known to the king of France. It did not apply solely to money, but forbade also the exportation of arms, horses, and other things, its object being to damage England and Flanders with which Philip was at war. Similar edicts were issued on several occasions during this reign. In this same bull Boniface threatened Philip with excommunication. The king and his councillors were furious at this liberty.

In 1297, came a fresh prohibition to export gold and silver, fresh fears on the part of the pope, fresh explanations from Philip. In the midst of all this the French bishops wrote to Boniface praying him to grant the king a tithe on all the churches. The clergy began to realise that they could not abstain from contributing to the defence of the country. Abandoned by a portion of the French clergy, Boniface made fresh concessions. In the bull beginning _Romana mater ecclesia_ he even granted permission to raise, in cases of necessity, ecclesiastical tithes, with the consent of the clergy but without consulting the holy see. The bull _Noveritis nos_ went still farther: it handed over to the king, if he had attained his majority, and to his council if he were still a minor, the responsibility of deciding as to which were cases of necessity, and the right of taxing the clergy even though the pope had not first been consulted. It concluded by declaring that the holy see had never had any intention of making an attempt upon the rights, liberties, freedoms, and customs of the kingdom, the king, or the barons. This compliance on the part of Boniface VIII, his sudden sweetness, must not be attributed altogether to feelings of benevolence towards Philip the Fair; they are explained principally by the difficult position in which the pope found himself in his own states.

Harmonious relations continued between the king and the pope; nevertheless certain incidents occurred to mar them. Boniface had summoned the bishop of Laon to Rome to give account of his administration; the king thereupon affected to consider his benefice as vacant and proceeded to appropriate to himself the revenues according to the royal prerogative. A fresh cause for reciprocal discontent was found in the complaints made by the bishops against the collection of the first-fruits granted to the king.

One event to which no one attached any importance took place about that time, changing the already unsettled feelings of Boniface into hostility. This was the alliance formed at Vaucouleurs in 1299 between Philip and Albert, king of the Romans, who had been excommunicated for having dethroned Adolphus of Nassau--a very threatening alliance for the papacy. The news of the negotiations between Philip and Albert spread consternation in Rome; a false rumour announcing a rupture between them was received with joy. Boniface conceived the idea of holding a conference with the kings of France and England and the count of Flanders--the only means, in his eyes, by which to establish peace on a solid basis. He did not dream of summoning them to Rome. He knew Philip and Edward well enough to be aware that they would regard it simply as officious interference on his part. So he determined to go himself to some neutral territory. He had even got so far as to make overtures to Philip the Fair under these conditions when a serious malady, which caused him excessive pain, coupled with his great age, compelled him to renounce the scheme.

The Flemish ambassadors judged this moment to be a favourable one for making themselves heard, by flattering the pope’s notions of supremacy and exciting his suspicions against Philip the Fair. They forwarded to Boniface a memorial in which they prayed his support and intervention, and sought to reassure him as to the mightiness of this sovereign power which they attributed to him by appeals to the holy Scriptures. Boniface was only too ready to listen to insinuations which fell in with his own hopes and ambitions.

[Sidenote: [1301-1303 A.D.]]

However, causes of complaint against Philip continued to accumulate, among others being his usurpation of the county of Melgueil, which belonged to the bishop of Maguelonne, and the refusal of the viscount of Narbonne to do homage to the archbishop who was his over-lord. The pope let drop some severe remarks, and despatched Bernard de Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, to invite the king to restore the consecrated land. Philip, exasperated by the bishop of Pamiers, allowed him to return to his diocese; but he instituted a secret inquiry about him to which evidence was contributed by the bishops and barons of the south. He was accused of having purloined Languedoc from the crown for the purpose of re-uniting it to Aragon; his real offence was his hatred of the king. Bernard was arrested at Pamiers by the vidame of Amiens, and arraigned before the king and an assembly of barons at Senlis, October 14th, 1301. So haughty was his defence that the whole assembly rose to its feet and clamoured for his death. Within an ace of being massacred, he flung himself on the compassion of the archbishop of Narbonne, his metropolitan, who was present, as well as the bishops of Béziers and Maguelonne. The archbishop took him under his protection and made himself answerable for him. This proceeding of Philip was contrary to the laws of the church: a bishop cannot be brought up for judgment before a lay court; in the same way, the councils have not the right to judge him without the intervention of the pope, who must authorise the proceedings.

Philip despatched Peter de Flotte to Rome to demand the punishment of Saisset. The ambassador declared that his master did not wish to avail himself of his right to punish a man whose crimes rendered him unworthy of the priesthood and of the protection accorded to the clergy; but that he desired to show the pope a token of deference and respect by handing over to him the charge of avenging the insult offered to God as the author of all legitimate authority, to the king as a son of the church, and to the kingdom as a very considerable portion of Christendom. He further requested Boniface to declare Bernard stripped of his episcopal dignity and of all clerical privileges. It was in vain that Flotte urged and demanded a reply; he received none, and returned raging to France.

Boniface suspended the privileges accorded by himself and his predecessors to the crown of France, and convoked, for November 1st, 1302, a general council at Rome, in order to put an end to the oppressions endured by the French clergy. The king was invited either to attend in person or to send someone to defend him. The bull _Ausculta fili_ indicated the superiority claimed by Boniface over Philip. “God, in laying upon us the yoke of apostolic servitude, has placed us above kings and empires, to uproot, destroy, annihilate, disperse, build and plant in his name; dearly beloved son, do not allow yourself to be persuaded that you are not subject to the supreme head of the church, for such an opinion would be folly.” He further accused the king of tyrannising over his subjects, oppressing the church, and offending the nobles. In conclusion he invites him to turn his attention to the deplorable condition of the Holy Land and to prepare a crusade. Another bull, _Secundum divina_, enjoined Philip to set Saisset at liberty and let him return to Rome. The king drove him out of France, and prepared to obtain a great demonstration in his own favour, in opposition to the pretensions of Boniface, by summoning the first states-general. By acting in this manner Philip was only defending his crown: his right was obvious, he needed but to claim it and exercise it with dignity. His cause was good, but he had the misfortune to sully it by falsehood and violence; in this, doubtless, following the advice of the lawyers who surrounded him.

The Sunday after Candlemas (February, 1302) the king solemnly burned the bull _Ausculta fili_. The defeat of the French army at Courtrai, in the month of July, gave confidence to Boniface without disheartening Philip. In the month of December Philip sent the bishop of Auxerre to Rome to signify to Boniface that, in conjunction with the king of England, he had renounced his arbitration. Outwardly Philip was most deferential towards the pope. While all this was going on grave news came from Rome. The council summoned by Boniface had met on All Saints’ Day, 1302, several French bishops having responded to the pope’s summons, despite the king’s prohibitions. Philip had seized all their worldly goods, and a decree issued November 18th, doubtless at the instigation of the council, ratified the doctrine of the papal superiority.

Boniface directed those French bishops who had not taken part in the council to present themselves at Rome within three months’ time. Philip forbade them to leave the kingdom, and set guards at all the passes into Germany and Italy. By the king’s wish Cardinal de Saint-Marcellin (the pope’s legate) summoned a council in France. Boniface recapitulated all his grievances against Philip, and called upon him to clear himself. He accused him among other things of coining false money and of burning the bull _Ausculta fili_. Philip’s answer was moderate and conciliatory. He expressed his wish to maintain, as his ancestors had done, the union between France and the holy see, and concluded by entreating Boniface not to meddle with him in the legitimate exercise of his rights; he offered to refer the matter to the decision of the duke of Brittany or of the duke of Burgundy, who were particularly agreeable to him. The pope declared this answer to be insufficient, and complained bitterly of it to the bishop of Auxerre and to the king’s brother, Charles of Valois, who for nearly two years had lived in Italy with the title “champion of the holy see,” and whom Philip had lately recalled.

On the 12th of March, 1303, an assembly of barons, prelates, and lawyers was held at the Louvre in the presence of the king. William de Plasian (or, according to Dareste[k] and Martin,[c] the chancellor, William de Nogaret) read aloud a document in which were set forth accusations against Boniface:

“He is a heretic; he does not believe in the immortality of the soul or in the life everlasting: he has said that he would sooner be a dog than a Frenchman; he does not believe in the real presence in the Eucharist. He has approved of a book by Armand de Villeneuve, which book has been condemned and burned; he has set up images of himself in the churches to the end that he may be worshipped; he has a familiar spirit who advises him; he consults sorcerers; he has openly preached that the pope cannot be guilty of simony; he traffics in benefices; he sows strifes everywhere; he has said that the French are of the Patarins (Albigenses); he has ordered murders; he has forced priests to reveal confessions; he has nourished a bitter hatred of the king of France. Before his election he was heard to say that if he did become pope he would destroy Christianity or lower the French pride; he has prevented peace between England and France; he has urged the king of Sicily to massacre all French; he strengthened the king of Germany on condition of his humbling the arrogance of the French, who, he pretended, boasted that they recognised no superior in temporal matters, in which they lied in their throats; that if an angel from heaven were to tell him that France was not subject to him, he would shriek curses against both him and the emperor. He has brought about the ruin of the Holy Land, having confiscated all the money intended for its aid, that he might give it to his relatives, of whom he has made marquises, counts, and barons, and for whom he has built castles; he has driven out the nobility of Rome; he has broken up marriages; he has made a cardinal of one of his nephews who is but an ignorant fellow and who was married, and has forced the wife to take the veil in a convent; he has done Celestine, his predecessor, to death in prison.”

On the 13th of April Boniface declared Philip to be excommunicate if he persisted in not submitting himself to the holy see. He commissioned Nicholas de Bienfaite, archdeacon of Coutances, to bear to Cardinal de Saint-Marcellin the bull which cut off the king from communion with the church. But the king, warned of the archdeacon’s mission, had him arrested at Troyes and thrown into prison. His bull was taken from him; in point of fact it was not to have been fulminated except in the case of Philip’s remaining deaf to a final summons. In vain the legate protested; no one listened to him; the goods of all prelates absent from the kingdom were sequestrated. Realising that he compromised himself uselessly by remaining any longer, he quitted France.

On the 31st of May Boniface, who had pardoned Albert of Austria and had recognised him as king of the Romans, launched a bull in which the nobles, churches, and _communes_ of the metropolises of Lyons, Tarantaise, Embrun, Besançon, Aix, Arles, and Vienne, of Burgundy, Barrois, Dauphiné, Provence, of the county of Forcalquier, the principality of Orange, and the kingdom of Arles, provinces held of the kingdom, were ordered to break such ties of vassalage and obedience as they had been able to contract prejudicial to the emperor, and to release themselves from such oaths of obedience as they had sworn.

It was almost equivalent to dismembering France. On the 13th of June a great assembly took place at the Louvre at which the king was present. The counts of Évreux, Saint-Pol, and Dreux, and William de Plasian, demanded that the church should be governed by a legitimate pope. Boniface was charged anew with all the old crimes and infamies. The king was entreated, in his capacity as “defender of the faith,” to work for the convoking of a general council. To this he consented. On the 24th of June, St. John Baptist’s Day, an immense crowd of people gathered in the palace gardens; there the king’s challenge to the future council was read.

At last, on September 8th, Boniface, in the bull _Petri solio excelso_, pronounced against Philip the excommunication he had courted. All the world knows how, in defiance of public liberties, Boniface was arrested at Anagni, on the evening before the very day on which the excommunication of the French king was to have been publicly posted.[d]

One of Philip’s agents, William (Guillaume) de Nogaret whose grandfather had been burned as an Albigensian, had been sent to Italy. He came to an understanding with Sciarra Colonna, a Roman noble and the pope’s mortal enemy. Boniface was at that time in his native city of Anagni. By dint of money Nogaret won over the chief of the military forces of Anagni, and one morning entered the place with four hundred mounted armed men and some hundreds of foot-soldiers. At the noise they made in the town and the cries of “Death to the pope!” “Long live the king of France!” Boniface believed his last hour had come. But showing in spite of his age (he was eighty-six years old) an uncommon degree of agility, he got into his pontifical robes, and seated himself on his throne, the tiara on his head, the cross in one hand and the keys of St. Peter in the other. Thus he awaited his assassins. The latter called upon him to abdicate. “Here is my neck and here is my head,” he replied; “betrayed like Jesus Christ, if I must die like him at least I shall die a pope.” A story ran that Sciarra Colonna dragged him from his throne, struck him across the face with his gauntlet, and would have killed him had not Nogaret interfered, saying: “Oh thou wretched pope, witness and consider the goodness of my lord, the king of France, who, far from thee as is his kingdom, guards and defends thee through me.” [But the story of Colonna’s violence seems quite unfounded.[13]]

[Sidenote: [1303-1308 A.D.]]

Nogaret hesitated, however, about dragging the old man out of Anagni. The people had time to recover from their astonishment. The townspeople armed themselves, the peasants rushed in, and the French were driven from the town. The pope, fearing they had put poison in his food, remained three days without eating. A short time after, he died of shame and anger, at the humiliating insults he had received. His successor, Benedict XI, tried to avenge him by excommunicating Nogaret, Colonna, and all those who had helped them. The excommunication reached up to the king. A month after the publication of the bull, Benedict died, perhaps poisoned. This time Philip took measures to make himself master of the election of the new pontiff. Bertrand d’Agoust (de Goth), archbishop of Bordeaux, was elected after he had promised the king to comply with the royal wishes. The new pope, who took the name of Clement V, caused himself to be consecrated at Lyons, and abandoning Rome, fixed his residence in 1308 at Avignon, a possession of the holy see beyond the Alps, where he soon found himself under the hand and will of the king of France. His successors remained there until 1376. The sojourn of the popes at Avignon, which so upset the church, has been called the Babylonish Captivity. This sojourn was memorable in connection with the history of Philip IV.

_Sentence of the Templars (1307 A.D.)_

[Sidenote: [1307 A.D.]]

Villani relates a mournful scene--the ominous interview between pope and king in the forest of St. Jean d’Angély where one sold his tiara and the other bought it. This meeting did not take place, but conditions were certainly proposed and accepted. One of them was nothing less than the destruction of the military order of the Templars. The wealth of these warrior monks, now of no use to them since it was no longer expended in armament against the infidel, had tempted the king’s greed, always keen-scented for money, and their powers stood in the way of his despotism. There were 15,500 knights with a great multitude of servant knights, brothers and their dependents, so that if gathered together they could defy all the royal armies of Europe; and their strong organisation, under the hand of the grand-master, made them seem more formidable than did their numbers and their wealth.

They possessed throughout Christendom more than ten thousand establishments, and a number of fortresses, among them the temple at Paris where Philip had once found a safe asylum from a riot which stormed and raged in vain around its thick walls. In the treasury of the order there were 150,000 gold florins not counting silver or precious vessels. The world never knew what went on in their houses. Everything was secret, but there were vague rumours of orgies, scandals, and impieties, and no profane eye had ever penetrated the mysteries. Knights had disappeared, because, it was said, they had threatened compromising revelations. The pride of the order irritated the people, who charged it with the most odious crimes; but they were guilty only of great laxity of morals, and their religious ceremonies were perhaps mingled in the East with some impure alloy and strange customs.

The 14th of September, 1307, the seneschals and bailiffs were given notice to hold themselves in arms for the 12th of October, and they received at the same time sealed letters not to be opened until the night of the 12th and 13th of October. The surprised knights had no time to resist or gather together. Torture drew from them such statements as torture always draws. It was Philip’s desire to associate the whole nation with this great trial, as he had associated it with his dispute with Boniface VIII. The states-general assembled at Tours; the accusations and statements were put before it and the deputies pronounced the knights deserving of death. Provincial councils likewise condemned them. That of Paris consigned to the flames in one day, in the faubourg St. Antoine, fifty-four Templars, who retracted what they had avowed under torture. Nine were burned at Senlis and there certainly were other executions. The pope pronounced at the Council of Vienne the dissolution of the order throughout all Christendom, and ordered their great wealth turned over to the Hospitallers (knights of Rhodes). But the royal fist did not readily release what it held. All the money found in the temples, two-thirds of the personal property, credits, and a considerable amount of lands remained in the hands of the king. In Italy, England, Spain, and Germany, the order of the Temple was abolished and its wealth in part confiscated by the princes. But there were no executions except in France. The memory of Philip IV must alone bear the burden of these atrocities.

[Sidenote: [1307-1312 A.D.]]

This same Council of Vienne condemned several errors, born within the Franciscan order--the heresy of the “Spirituels” who regarded St. Francis almost as a new reincarnation of Jesus; that of the “Beguins” or “Beghards,” who exempted mankind, perfect according to their ideas, from any judgment by human standards. And finally that of the Fraticelli who [inquisitors tell us] abolished property and declared that everything should be in common, family as well as property. We see these wild doctrines are very old.[b]

_Philip’s Fiscal Policy_

Nothing satiated the royal exchequer, neither the spoils of the Templars, nor the tithes collected under pretext of the “holy war,” nor the taxes levied for the knighting of the king’s sons and the marriage of his daughter--that fatal marriage, from which sprang Edward III. Even the _maltôtes_ did not suffice.

The maltôte, an illegal exaction, which, to a certain extent placed all subjects in the position of serfs taxable at their owner’s will and pleasure, was at least openly arbitrary and illegal; but the “mutable currencies” were treacherously sprung upon the citizens in the midst of their transactions and money exchanges, and brought dismay upon society at every turn, doing his subjects a wrong out of all proportion to the benefit gained by their ruler. In all of this there was as much ignorance as perversity, and one has difficulty in conceiving the ineptitude shown in the government financial business by legal men, ordinarily so clever. Philip the Fair’s statutes regarding the currency are a genuine chaos: sometimes the king takes the paternal tone, and pretends to so contrive the rate of exchange that his subjects shall suffer as little as possible; sometimes he throws off the mask, and prohibits the testing and weighing of the royal moneys issued, on pain of forfeiting the coins submitted to the test and of “being both body and goods at the king’s disposal.” No one could obtain either silver or copper but at the royal mints. The importation of the Florentine golden florin and other foreign coins was forbidden under the same penalty (for fear of comparison). Next Philip withdrew from circulation half of his own current coins, under the pretext of their having been counterfeited and tampered with by others--coiners, Lombards, etc. The Jews and the Lombards were always convenient scapegoats for the royal iniquities. They were again expelled in 1311-1312, with the usual confiscations. In 1310 there was a grand re-coining of all the moneys; everyone was forced to give in all he possessed to the directors of the royal mints, who gave out in exchange new money, much inferior in weight and purchasing power to the value attributed to it. The king was anxious to gain popularity at the expense of the money-lenders, and issued orders that all liabilities should be discharged in the new money, in spite of every previous stipulation to the contrary. To the same end, after having fixed a maximum (15 to 20 per cent. per annum!) for the exorbitant interest charged on silver, he ended by prohibiting all usury, which is to say all interest. If the rates of usury were scandalous, one must lay the blame of them on the king’s persecution of capitalists, Jews, and Italian bankers: naturally the rate of interest increased in proportion to the chances of loss incurred by the lender. By these means Philip raised fresh barriers to trade and swelled the public discontent.

[Sidenote: [1312-1314 A.D.]]

A statute enacted in June, 1313, surpassed in audacity all others that had preceded it. The king was no longer satisfied with managing his own money as he would; he wished to handle that of the barons also, and asserted himself to be the only coiner of the realm. By friendly transactions, by usurpations, by every possible means, he had already reduced by more than half their number the nobles who minted money. In the preamble to his statute he now announced his intention of restoring all French moneys “to their ancient currency and status” (of the time of St. Louis, apparently), and forbade all prelates and barons to mint fresh money until further orders. He was acting, he said, under the advice of “the whole caboodle of decent people in every decent town in his kingdom,” and he looked to the _bourgeoisie_ to uphold him against the resentment of the nobles. As a matter of fact, at another time the bourgeoisie would have been only too pleased to see the nobles deprived of the right of coining money, a right which they grossly abused; but under Philip the Fair, would they gain much by it? This very statute of June, 1313, introduced mutations more disastrous than any heretofore. It hit all classes of society, and all were equally irritated, with the exception of the lawyers and certain large tradesmen who constituted themselves overseers, farmers, or coiners on the king’s account.

_Execution of Jacques de Molay (1314 A.D.)_

Philip defied public discontent by redoubling his brutalities. The smallest murmur was reported to the king’s spies, and punished by his tyrants. One saw everywhere people flogged and pilloried; every lay and ecclesiastical court robed itself in pitiless severity. In the Place de Grève they burned, in 1313, a nun of Hainault, Marguerite de la Porette, the Mystic. Shortly after a more celebrated execution startled Paris and the whole of France. For more than six years the foremost members of the order of the Temple, the grand-master, the “visitor” of France, and the masters of Aquitaine and Normandy, had languished in the king’s dungeons; they could not be left to die unjudged in darksome cells. At last the pope, who had reserved the decision of their fate to himself, appointed a commission consisting of the cardinal D’Albano and two other cardinals. The archbishop of Sens and various doctors of divinity and of canonical law joined them. Brought before their judges, the four captives reiterated, it is said, the confessions made by themselves and their comrades. It was wished to mark their arrest with great solemnity and to “read a lesson” to the public, as the saying is. The court therefore held its sitting in the open space before Notre Dame de Paris, upon a scaffold draped in scarlet. The four accused were led to the foot of the scaffold, where they repeated their confession before all the people. Their sentence was then pronounced--they were to be immured for life. “But just when,” says the continuator of Nangis,[g] “the cardinals believed they had ended the affair, the grand-master, Jacques de Molay, and the master from Normandy, Guy, brother of the dauphin of Auvergne, suddenly retracted their confession, denying it in toto, and stubbornly defended themselves against the cardinal who had ‘pointed the moral’ and the archbishop of Sens, to the immense surprise of everybody.”

The commission, struck dumb with astonishment and a sort of fear by this unlooked-for incident, did not know how to decide. They adjourned till the morrow to deliberate at their leisure, and handed over the grand-master and his companions to the guardianship of the royal warder of Paris till the next day. The news of what had taken place outside Notre Dame was promptly carried to the king, who was at that time at the Palais de la Cité. Philip, seized with a dread only equalled by his anger, sent in haste for his most trusty advisers, “without summoning the scholars” (_i.e._, the commission). The determination he had arrived at was the boldest and most atrocious that can be imagined. At night-fall he had the two Templars conveyed to a small island in the Seine, “between the garden of the Palais de la Cité and the church of the Frères-Hermites,” and there had them burned together. “They helped,” says the continuator of Nangis,[g] “to prepare the fagots with so stout and resolute a heart, persisting to the end in their denials with so great steadfastness, that they left those who witnessed their torment filled with admiration and stupefaction.” (March 11th, 1314.)

The ecclesiastical powers swallowed this outrage as many another, demanding from the king no account for the double murder of two offenders who did not come within his jurisdiction, and whose backsliding he had dealt with on his own authority alone. Indeed Clement V was already failing, and did not long survive the unfortunates whom he had sold to their persecutor. He died on April 20th. An Italian historian, Ferretus or Fereti of Vicenza, asserts that Jacques de Molay, from the midst of his fagots, cited the king and the pope to appear before the tribunal of God, Clement within forty days and Philip within a year.

Philip was in truth nearing the end of his sinister career. The last year of his reign will be seen to be the most bloody. France was horrified by more hideous scenes than any she had hitherto witnessed, more hideous even than the murder of the Templars, and this time the tragedy was enacted at the foot of the throne among the royal family. Philip’s three sons, Louis Hutin, king of Navarre, and count of Champagne and of Brie, Philip, count of Poitiers, and Charles, count of La Marche, had married--the first Marguerite, sister of Hugh V, duke of Burgundy; and the other two Joan and Blanche, daughters of Otto or Othelin, count of Burgundy or of Franche-Comté. In the spring of 1314 the young wives of the king’s three sons were suddenly arrested on a charge of scandalous conduct. Marguerite, queen of Navarre, and Blanche, countess of La Marche, were accused of frequent acts of adultery, “even on the most holy days,” with Philip and Walter d’Aulnai, young Norman knights in their service. The Aulnai brothers were not allowed to challenge to a duel in defence of their innocence and that of their mistresses; confession of guilt was wrung from them by torture, and the princesses, “stripped,” says the continuator of Nangis,[g] “of all temporal honours, after receiving the tonsure, were imprisoned, Marguerite in Château Gaillard d’Andely, and Blanche in the abbey of Maubuisson, where, after strict seclusion, and deprived of all human consolation, they ended their days in despair.”

The fate of their lovers was even more terrible. They were conducted to the place du Martroi St. Jean, in Paris, and there flayed alive and mutilated; they were not beheaded until every means had been exhausted that an infernal science could devise to prolong the victim’s sufferings without actually killing him.

Joan of Burgundy, countess of Poitiers, more fortunate than her sisters Blanche and Marguerite of Navarre, was declared chaste and not guilty by a parliament in which sat the king’s brothers and the great nobles: she was “reconciled to her husband.” Joan of Burgundy was heiress to Franche-Comté: it was not possible to condemn her as an adulteress and annul her marriage without renouncing the wealth she had brought to the royal house; perhaps her riches had something to say as to her innocence.[c]

The general oppression nearly caused an insurrection when Philip ordered a new tax on the sale of all merchandise. There was, from the first, a union between the nobles and the bourgeoisie similar to the league which in England laid the foundations of the people’s liberty and imposed the Magna Charta on John Lackland. Philip, this time, withdrew, and cancelling the obnoxious tax he summoned representatives of forty of the largest towns to a conference at Paris at which he promised to coin henceforth nothing but honest money.

But this ill-starred man, this king, the harshest France had had up to this time, although but forty-six years of age, had already reached the end of his days. He expired November 29th, 1314.[b] The exact cause of Philip’s early demise has never been perfectly understood. The commonly accepted account is that it resulted from an accident that occurred during a stag hunt. “He saw the stag coming and drew his sword, and clapped spurs to his horse and thought to strike the stag; but his horse carried him so violently against a tree that the good king fell to the ground, and was very severely hurt in the heart, and was carried to Corbeil. There his malady grew very sore.”[f] But this narrative bears the date 1572. “The contemporary French historian” [the continuator of William de Nangis[g]] says Michelet[e] “does not speak of this accident. He says that Philip sank without fever or visible malady, to the great astonishment of the physicians.” Nevertheless there was a contemporary rumour of an accident during a hunt of the wild boar, for Dante[h] writing exactly at the time of Philip’s death speaks contemptuously of him as “The false coiner who died of a blow from a pig’s skin” (_i.e._, a boar).[a]

_Political Progress in Philip’s Reign_

[Sidenote: [1285-1314 A.D.]]

Whether or not Philip the Fair was a wicked man or a bad king, there is no denying that his reign is the grand era from which we date civil order in France and the foundation of the modern monarchy.[e] Under this reign the royal domain made important acquisitions, some of which, unfortunately, were not lasting; the counties of La Marche, Angoumois, Champagne, Franche-Comté, Lectoure, a portion of Flanders (Lille, Douai, and Orchies), Quercy, the great city of Lyons and a part of Montpellier. The count of Bar had been compelled to do homage to the French crown for all his land situated west of the Maas.

Vassals were bound to serve their sovereign, in his court, by their advice and justice. The king’s feudal court had a double character, for in it the king called upon his barons for advice and sentences. With the further evolution of royalty the functions of the king’s court developed, and a division became necessary; there was the political court or grand council, and the judiciary court or parliament. Under St. Louis the functions of the parliament were not yet clearly defined. Philip the Fair perfected its organisation. He caused this court to be held at Paris twice a year for two months in the Palais de la Cité, which later bore the name of the Palais de Justice (1303). This sovereign court of justice which claimed to exercise its jurisdiction over the entire kingdom was destined to be the great instrument employed by future kings to bring the whole of France under their absolute authority. Philip also established two _échiquiers_[14] at Rouen and two _grands jours_ at Troyes and placed these provincial courts under the control of the parliament. The office of public prosecutor (_ministère public_) charged with defending in all causes the rights of the king and society, seems to date from the time of Philip the Fair.

As the king had formed the parliament from the grand council, so he formed the chamber of accounts (_chambre des comptes_) from the parliament of which it first was a part but later became a separate institution. Thus there were three great divisions in the high administrative department of the country--the judiciary parliament; the financial, chamber of accounts; and the political, the grand council.

The many ordinances of Philip which have been preserved prove his activity in organising the new administration, which was the debt of royalty to the country, since it had substituted its own powers for those of the feudal lords. If these laws often bear the stamp of a despotic and taxing spirit, they sometimes show a knowledge of the true principles of government. One of them prohibited private war and judicial duels during wars of the crown. This was done to disarm feudalism.

A most important event of Philip’s administration was the convocation in 1302 of the first states-general. Brought by his violences face to face with a great peril, and ruined by his constant disastrous undertakings, the most despotic of the French kings was compelled [as we have seen] to call around him the deputies of the nation, in order to obtain the assistance of which he stood in need and to fortify himself in his quarrel with the pope, with the assent of France. But in discussing before them the prerogatives of his crown and of the tiara, he recognised by implication the ancient right of national sovereignty so deeply obscured for centuries. Philip doubtless asked nothing but what he was sure of obtaining, but the men who, in 1302, fought for the king against the pope and in 1326 disposed of the crown, would later on be emboldened to the attempt to lay hands on the crown itself.[b]

The states-general consisted of a strictly national assembly which the barons, bishops, abbeys, provosts, and deans of chapters were invited to attend in person, and to which each city of the realm was invited to send two or three deputies or representatives. This was not the first time that the crown had consulted the nobles and the prelates; but it does not appear that until now the deputies of the third estate had taken part in such a council. If they had been previously consulted on rare occasions, it was in regard to special matters such as the regulation of the currency, and even then certain determinate cities were represented.

The states-general thus called together by Philip the Fair, and which assembled the 12th of April, 1302, in the church of Notre Dame at Paris, was convoked, to be sure, with a specific aim and under extraordinary circumstances. Its unique object was to show the pope that the country upheld the king (see p. 80). But none the less does this meeting stamp the year 1302 as an important date in French history.[15] Through this representative assembly France, as such, takes part for the first time in its own government; an intervention already necessary, and which is destined soon to become consistent and regular.[k]

LOUIS (X) THE QUARRELSOME (1314-1316 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1314-1316 A.D.]]

Philip the Fair had mingled little with the chivalry of his time. He forbade tournaments, and, after the fashion of oriental despots, kept his sons secluded. The eldest, known as Louis X, called Hutin or the Quarrelsome, was fond of rude pastimes. In 1305 he had been crowned king of Navarre at Pamplona, and succeeded at the same time to the county of Champagne. His uncle Charles, count of Valois, had much influence over him, a prince who had shown eagerness, but not perseverance, to tread in the adventurous and ambitious path of Charles of Anjou.

(From an old French print)]

Charles entertained an aversion for all his brother’s councillors. He accused his chancellor Latilly, bishop of Châlons, with having caused the death of the king by means of sorcery. Latilly’s obvious interest had been to keep Philip alive; but Charles caused him, nevertheless, to be imprisoned and tortured under the accusation. Raoul de Presle, another of Philip’s legists, was implicated in the same crime, and underwent similar persecution.

But Enguerrand de Marigny, Philip’s prime minister, was the chief object of hatred to the king’s uncle. Charles blamed Marigny for the depreciation of the coin; but for this crime, even if considered guilty, Louis Hutin thought him not worthy of punishment more severe than banishment to the isle of Cyprus. Charles seemed unable to bring against Marigny himself the accusation of sorcery; he however accused his wife of employing others to make the terrible images of wax. All of those thus implicated were brought, not before parliament, but in the presence of the king, of Charles, and of some barons at Vincennes. The councillors of Philip had set the example of creating courts of justice in whatever way suited their convenience. It was now the turn of the barons, and they condemned Marigny to be hanged on a gibbet; the king, on hearing of sorcery, abandoning his previous efforts to save him (1315).

Another murder was that of Marguerite, wife of Louis, who had been sent to seclusion in the château Gaillard.