Chapter II: The Foundation of the Capetian Dynasty (1)

[Sidenote: [987-1180 A.D.]]

The period of 240 years--from the accession of Hugh Capet to that of St. Louis--is described by Sismondi[i] as “a long interregnum, during which the authority of king was extinct, although the name continued to subsist.” A history of France, during this period, is a history not of its monarch but of its nobles. And as yet these details are neither heroic nor important enough to be interesting. A duke had sprung up in Aquitaine, a king in Provence. The establishment of the Norman princes has already been narrated. Betwixt them and Aquitaine, Anjou obeyed a warlike count. To the north, the first Baldwin possessed the county of Flanders betwixt the Somme and the Maas. The duchy of Burgundy was formed in the east; whilst that of Lorraine was altogether independent of France, and held by tongue as well as régime to the empire of Germany. Taking away these provinces from the map of France, a central portion will be found to remain betwixt the Loire and the Flemish border. Even here, however, the last Carlovingians possessed scarcely a castle which they could call their own. The counts of Paris possessed that city, as well as Orleans. The counts of Vermandois, whose capital was St. Quentin, at this time ruled Champagne also; but soon after that province came to increase the territories of the counts of Blois. The only town that obeyed the last reigning descendants of Charlemagne was Laon, and here they usually resided, unless when obliged to take refuge at Rheims, under the protection of the archbishop, against the attacks of the surrounding nobles.

Charles of Lorraine, the uncle of Louis V and sole heir of the Carlovingians, though thus prevented of his rights, was neither friendless nor vanquished. He soon took forcible possession of Laon and of Rheims, from which Hugh Capet was unable to drive him by force of arms. He adroitly, however, contrived to attach to his interests Ascelin, bishop of Laon, whom Charles, somewhat mistrusting, kept with him at Rheims. A conspiracy, formed by Ascelin, was attended with complete success. Charles was seized in his bed, and, together with his nephew, the archbishop of Rheims, delivered over to Hugh Capet. That monarch placed his prisoners in confinement at Orleans, where the competitor, Charles of Lorraine, soon after died (991).

[Sidenote: [991-996 A.D.]]

These, if we except a long quarrel respecting the archbishopric of Rheims, are the sole events of the reign of Hugh Capet, which is supposed to have occupied nine years. Some modern historians regard the founder of the third dynasty of French monarchs as a hero and a master spirit, whose talents won for him a crown. Others, amongst whom is Sismondi,[i] represent him as a pious sluggard, indebted solely to fortune for his elevation. Both are in extreme. We see no proof of his heroism. But his was an iron age, in which the exertions of individuals had slight power in changing the course of events. Nor does it follow that, because he was pious, he was pusillanimous. He made war on the count of Montreuil, to recover the relics of St. Riquier, which that count had stolen. Hugh Capet compelled him to surrender them, and himself bore the memorable remains on his royal shoulders to the abbey of the saint. Such is the account of the chroniclers. But if we observe that Hugh at the same time built and fortified Abbeville, the monarch will not seem altogether sunk in the superstitious votary.

“Who made thee count?” demanded Hugh Capet of a refractory noble, supposed by some to be Talleyrand, count of Angoulême. “The same right that made thee king,” was the bold reply. Such was the measure of the new monarch’s authority. The great feudatories, in consenting to place the crown on one of their own body, thought less of his elevation than of humbling the throne. Their views were sound, if they considered but themselves--short sighted, if they looked forward to posterity. Feudality ascended the throne with Hugh Capet; and, despite the precautions or intentions of the founders, the head of so powerful a system could not long remain powerless himself. Organised as society now was in regular and successive gradations of inferior and superior, a supreme chief became necessary to complete the whole. There was something wanting to crown the structure. The nobles imagined to adorn it with the lifeless image of royalty. But their statue, like Pygmalion’s, took life as it became the object of veneration, and grew at length to wield its sceptre with a muscular arm.

[Sidenote: [996-1035 A.D.]]

Hugh Capet had taken the precaution to have his son crowned and consecrated during his own lifetime. Thus, on the demise of the former, Robert II found himself the undisputed king of France. The young monarch was one of those soft, domestic tempers which fate so often misplaces on a throne. He had married Bertha, the widow of the count of Blois, and was tenderly attached to her. The spouses had the misfortune to be distantly related, and Robert had been godfather to one of Bertha’s children by her former husband. The pope considered these circumstances sufficient to render the marriage incestuous; and he accordingly issued a command to Robert, desiring him to put away Bertha, under pain of excommunication. The popes had erected themselves into the censors of princes, and they were especially rigid in prohibiting the marriage of cousins. Such unions, they said, drew down divine vengeance, and were to be avoided, lest they should produce national calamities. Nor was this mere superstition on their part: it had its policy. It was chiefly by intermarriages that the great aristocracy at this time increased their territories and influence. Every obstacle thrown in the way of these alliances consequently checked the growth of their exorbitant might; every difficulty or scruple, being in the power of the pontiff alone to remove, brought considerable advantage, both in revenue and respect, to the holy see. Robert struggled for four or five years in behalf of his legitimate wife, against the terrors of excommunication; but he was at length compelled to yield, to chase poor Bertha from his presence, and to take another wife, Constance, the daughter of the count of Toulouse. With her, a woman of more spirit than her predecessor, Robert was less happy. The monarch dreaded her, and was even obliged to do his alms in secret for fear of her reproof. His chief amusement was the singing and composing of psalms, to which the musical taste of that age was confined. In a pilgrimage to Rome, Robert left a sealed paper on the altar of the apostles. The priesthood expected it to contain a magnificent donation, and were not little surprised and disappointed to find it to contain but a hymn of the monarch’s composition. The piety of Robert was most exemplary. He was anxious to save his subjects from the crime of perjury; the means he took were to abstract privately the holy relics from the cases which contained them, and on which people were sworn. He substituted an ostrich’s egg, as an innocent object, incapable of taking vengeance on the false swearer.

Such are the facts which we have to relate of a reign of nearly thirty-five years. The good king Robert slumbered on his throne, with a want of vigour and capacity that would have caused a monarch of the first two races to totter from his seat, or at least would have transferred his authority to some minister or powerful duke. The Capetians as yet, however, unlike the Carlovingians, had neither power nor prerogative to tempt the ambition of a usurper. The very title of king was unenvied. And whilst the sovereign led the choir at St. Denis, France was not the less vigorously governed by its independent and feudal nobility.[b]

HENRY I (1031-1060 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1031-1060 A.D.]]

Robert’s son and successor, Henry I, had first of all to sustain a family war against his mother, Constance, who put his young brother Robert on the throne. The church declared for Henry, and the famous Robert the Magnificent, more commonly known as Robert le Diable, duke of the Normans, lent him the support of his sword and secured the crown upon Henry’s head. Henry vanquished his brother, pardoned and granted him the duchy of Burgundy, the first house of which was founded by Robert. During this reign a famine made terrible ravage among the French and in several places men ate one another. Following this scourge, troops of wolves devastated the country, and the lords, more terrible than wild beasts, carried on their barbaric wars in the midst of this widespread desolation.

The clergy with difficulty husbanded their anger in calling the vengeance of heaven upon this state of affairs and in affirming a multitude of miracles, and finally, in councils, ordered everyone to lay down his arms. They put forward the “Peace of God” in 1035, and threatened excommunication to those who violated so holy a decree. When the council in each province had formulated this peace deacons made it known to the people assembled in the churches. After the Gospel had been read the deacons mounted the pulpits and launched against infractors of the peace the following malediction: “Cursed be they who aid in doing evil; cursed be their arms and their horses! may they be banished with Cain, the fratricide, with Judas the traitor; with Dathan and Abiram, who descended living into hell. May their joy be extinguished at the sight of the holy angels as are these flames before your eyes.” At these words the priests who were holding lighted tapers threw them down and put them out, while the people, seized with fear, repeated with one voice, “May God thus extinguish the joy of those who will not accept peace and justice.”

(From an old engraving)]

But passions were too rampant and ambitions, too indomitable for evil thus to be rooted out entirely. The Peace of God only multiplied perjurers without diminishing assassins. Five years later another law known as the “Truce of God” was substituted for it. The councils which proclaimed this did not try to stop the flow of all human passions but to control them and regulate war according to laws of honour and humanity. Recourse to force was no longer forbidden to those who could invoke no other law, but the employment of this means was submitted to wise restrictions. All military attack and all shedding of blood was forbidden from sunset Wednesday evening to sunrise Monday morning, as well as on all fast and feast days. A perpetual inviolability was accorded the churches, unarmed clerics, and monks, while the protection of the truce was extended to the peasants, their flocks, and implements of tillage. Promulgated first in Aquitaine, this wise and beneficial law was adopted throughout almost all Gaul, where the lords swore to observe it; and although it was often violated and soon fell into desuetude, it did much good in softening the manners of the nation and was the finest work of the mediæval clergy. Rumour spread that a horrible malady known as the “sacred fire” would punish infractors of the truce. The weakling king Henry, through “unreasonable pride,” was almost the only one to refuse to recognise it within his estates, giving as a pretext that it was an encroachment of the clergy upon his authority.

This king has left no creditable impression upon history.[d] Save for a few expeditions into Normandy, most of which were unfortunate, he did nothing. In 1046 he refused the homage of the duke of Upper and Lower Lorraine, and even allowed the count of Flanders to declare for the emperor of Germany as suzerain.[c]

It is said that from fear of unwittingly marrying a wife who might be allied to him by ties of blood, he sought one at the extremities of Europe, and married for his third wife the princess Anne, daughter of the grand duke Yaroslaff of Russia. Henry had three sons by this marriage, of whom he caused the eldest, Philip, to be made joint king in the last year of his life. He died in 1060 after a reign of twenty-nine years.[d]

_Deeds of the Great Barons_

[Sidenote: [1028-1054 A.D.]]

The king did nothing, but the great lords accomplished much. Three especially filled France with the noise of their ambitions and their wars. Robert, surnamed the Magnificent by the nobles and the Devil by the people, had usurped the ducal crown of Normandy by poisoning his brother Richard III and his chief barons at a feast (1028). By force of energy and courage he crushed the opposition which his crime aroused and, uncontested sovereign of Normandy, interfered with all his neighbours.

He upheld King Henry I against his brother, for which he received the French Vexin in return. He set out to oust Canute the Great from the throne of England for the profit of the sons of Ethelred, his cousin; but a storm having driven his fleet from the English coast upon that of Brittany, he invaded this country and forced the duke Alain to do him homage (1033). In 1035 struck with remorse he went to seek peace of conscience at Jerusalem. While returning he died in Asia Minor. Below Rouen, in one of the most beautiful positions in Normandy, you may see a hill covered with shapeless ruins. These are the remains of Robert le Diable’s castle, which, according to tradition, was haunted by evil spirits. The place is not far from the spot where John Lackland is said to have stabbed his nephew.

The son and successor of Robert the Magnificent was William the Bastard, who had much to do to obtain the obedience of his vassals: the battle of Val-des-Dunes, near Caen (1046), finally rid him of his adversaries. King Henry, his suzerain, who fought that day on his side, soon found the young duke too powerful, and formed an alliance of all his enemies. This was the cause of numerous encounters between the Normans and the French (inhabitants of the Île-de-France), the latter in every event sustained by the Angevins and the Bretons. The bloodiest of these combats was that fought at Mortemer in 1054. The king supported by the count of Anjou had entered Normandy through the county of Évreux, while his brother Eudes penetrated the Pays de Caux with horsemen from Picardy, Champagne, and Burgundy.

Duke William met this double invasion with two armies--that which marched against Eudes encountered, near Mortemer, the French, dispersed, and engaged in pillaging. The Normans killed some, took others, and put the rest to flight. Swift messengers bore the good news to the duke. “When night had come he despatched one of his men who climbed a tree near the king’s camp and began to utter loud cries. The sentinels asked why he thus cried aloud at an unseemly hour. ‘My name is Raoul de Ternois,’ he replied, ‘and I bring you bad news. Take your wagons and carts to Mortemer to carry away your friends who are dead, for the French came against us to test the Normans’ chivalry, and they have found it much greater than they liked. Eudes, their standard-bearer, has been put to flight in shame; and Guy, count of Ponthieu, has been taken. All the others have been made prisoners or are dead, or have had great difficulty in saving themselves by rapid flight. Announce at once this news to the king of the French, on the part of the duke of Normandy.’” The frightened king retired in all haste, and Geoffrey Martel was obliged to abandon to William the sovereignty of Maine.

Eudes II, count of Blois, desired to seize the kingdom of Provence and afterwards Lorraine, and to this reconstructed Lorraine he hoped to add the crown of Italy. But a battle in Barrois ended the schemes of the turbulent baron. Eudes was defeated and killed (1037); his wife alone was able to recognise his body among the corpses which strewed the field, and pay the last honours to his remains.

[Sidenote: [987-1066 A.D.]]

A prince against whom Eudes often fought, Fulk (Foulques) Nerra--or the Black--count of Anjou, was even more renowned. Thrice did he make pilgrimages to the Holy Land. On the last he caused himself to be drawn on a sledge, naked, and with rope around the neck, through the streets of Jerusalem, whipped the while with great blows by two valets, and crying with all his might, “Lord have mercy on the traitor, the perjurer Fulk.” Then he attempted to return on foot, but died on the way (1040). Fulk had indeed many crimes to expiate. Queen Constance was his niece. One day she complained to him of one of her husband’s favourites, and Fulk immediately despatched twelve knights with orders to stab the favourite wherever they might find him. Of his two wives, he had one burned to death, or according to other accounts stabbed her himself after she had been rescued from a precipice over which he tried to throw her; the other he compelled by ill treatment to retire to Palestine. His son Geoffrey Martel was also a fighter. He tried by force of arms in 1036 to compel his father to cede him the county of Anjou, but the old Fulk defeated and made him undergo the punishment of the _harnescar_. The rebel son had to travel several miles on all fours, a saddle on his back, to reach the count’s feet and implore his pardon.

Geoffrey Martel, jealous of the duke of Normandy’s power, united with Henry I against him. His successors kept up this policy and the kings of France found the Angevin counts useful allies against the Norman duke--now become kings of England, at least until the moment the counts inherited the English crown themselves. It is related that Geoffrey Martel’s wife was fond of reading, but such was the scarcity of books that she was obliged to give two hundred sheep, five quarters of wheat, and as much rye and millet for a manuscript of the homilies. The beautiful cathedral of Angers was begun under Fulk Nerra.[c]

PHILIP I (1060-1108 A.D.)

Philip I at the age of eight succeeded his father under the regency of Baldwin V, count of Flanders. The most important event of Philip’s minority, and one in which he took no part, was the conquest of England. The Norman knights were distinguished above all others by their immoderate desire for warlike adventure and their brilliant exploits. Some of them, landing sixty years before as pilgrims on the south coast of Italy, had helped the besieged inhabitants of Salerno to drive off a Saracen army. Inspired by the success of their compatriots, the sons of a petty nobleman, Tancred de Hauteville, followed by a band of adventurers, wrested Apulia from the Greeks, Lombards, and Arabs, and sustained with success a most unequal struggle against the German and Byzantine emperors, who joined forces to exterminate them. They made prisoner the German pope Leo IX, devoted to the family of the emperor Henry III; and, humbling themselves before their captive, obtained permission to hold their conquest as a fief of the church. Robert Guiscard completed the subjection of Apulia and Calabria, and his brother Roger conquered Sicily, and it was thus the Normans founded the kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the pope obtained suzerainty over it.

Norman valour was the talk of Europe, when William the Bastard, son of Robert the Magnificent, began to assemble an army for the conquest of England. Warriors, full of confidence in his destiny, rushed from all directions to his standard.[4] It was several hundred years since Britain had been conquered by the Saxons, and the country was now under the rule of King Harold, whom a storm had once wrecked, before he was king, upon the coast of Normandy. As William’s prisoner, Harold was compelled to cede the Norman his rights to the throne; and when free at this price no longer considered himself bound by an oath extracted under compulsion. It was the custom in those days to consider shipwrecked persons as delivered by the judgment of God to the lord of the shore on which the storm had cast them. They could be held captive and even put to torture for the sake of ransom. William recalled to Harold his promise, especially invoked the will of Edward the Confessor, the last king of England, and declared his willingness to abide by the decision of the church. The consistory, assembled at the Lateran, pronounced in William’s favour, and at the instigation of the monk Hildebrand awarded him the kingdom of England and sent him, together with a blessed standard, a diploma as sovereign of the country. A great battle fought between the two rivals near Hastings in 1066 decided the issue. Harold lost his life; and England, after a desperate struggle, became the conquest of the Normans. William divided the country into fiefs for his barons and knights, and thenceforth feudalism spread over England the network it had already fastened upon France, Germany, and Italy.

(From an old French print)]

This great event inflamed people’s spirits and disposed them to adventurous expeditions in distant lands. It was the forerunner of the Crusades; although the latter had a nobler motive than the others, springing, as they did, from the enthusiasm of exalted piety.

[Sidenote: [1066-1073 A.D.]]

A great revolution was taking place at this time in the church. Nicholas II occupied the pontifical chair at this moment. He had for counsellor a monk who deplored the vices of the clergy and the degradation of the church as much as the encroachments of the temporal upon spiritual authority. This monk, this man so celebrated in ecclesiastical history, was Hildebrand. He resolved to deprive the princes and lords of every source of influence over the clergy, to strengthen the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and to raise the pope above the kings of the earth, hoping thus to regain for the church her virtue, her splendour, and all her power. Such a project of universal domination, which would seem like madness to-day, was in Hildebrand’s age a conception of genius. It was Hildebrand’s glory to have wished to free the church’s spiritual authority from all temporal bonds; it was his mistake to have listened too much to his own ambition in trying to enslave the political government of the princes to ecclesiastical authority. In 1073 Hildebrand was chosen by the people and clergy of Rome as successor to Pope Alexander II. He took the name of Gregory VII.

[Sidenote: [1071-1099 A.D.]]

Philip of France was leading a life filled with scandal and violence. To satisfy his unbridled desires he, like Henry IV of Germany, was carrying on, in contempt of Gregory’s prohibition, the most shameful traffic in clerical benefices. The angered pontiff threatened Philip with excommunication. The colossal structure raised by the pontiff did not perish with him; his successors bound it together. He founded the universal monarchy of the popes upon a durable basis and on the ruling spirit of the time, and this domination reached a century after him, its highest point. The Crusades contributed powerfully to hold it together. Gregory conceived the plan of these, but it was not given to him to carry it out. The first of these memorable events took place in the time of Philip I and in the pontificate of Urban II. Philip was not associated with the First Crusade; he took no part in any of the great enterprises which marked the age in which he lived, and his reign offers nothing worthy of remembrance.

In 1071 the widow of his guardian, Count Baldwin of Flanders, was robbed by the latter’s brother, Robert the Frisian, and she had recourse to Philip. The king took up arms in her behalf and marched against Robert, but suffered a shameful defeat at Cassel.[5] He also fought a twelve years’ war with William the Conqueror, but it was a war marked by no memorable event. William seduced Philip’s counsellors and partisans by offering them great domains in England. Philip on his side promised protection to the discontented element among the Normans and took the part of William’s eldest son Robert, in revolt against his father. After a truce and during an illness of the duke, the king made fun of the former’s extreme fatness by inquiring when he expected to be brought to bed. William heard of this and, furious, swore to bring the king the candles for the churching. He assembled a formidable army and was setting out to ravage Philip’s estates when he fell ill at Rouen and died there in 1087. When he was scarcely cold the lords who were with him departed in haste for their castles; his servants pillaged his effects, taking everything but the bed he lay on, and left the body of the conqueror naked on the mattress. A poor knight found it in this state and moved to pity covered it, at his own expense, with mourning robes and prepared to bury it. He had spoken the funeral service and the body was in the grave when a Norman named Asselin came forward and said, “This ground belongs to me; the man whose eulogy you have just pronounced robbed me of it. On this spot stood my father’s house, this man seized it against all justice and without paying a price for it. In God’s name I forbid you to cover the robber’s body with earth that is mine.” This is a memorable example of the vanity of an existence full of greatness and iniquity--a striking sign of the forerunner of the judgment which threatened, on the threshold of the other life, him who had founded his power on rapine and the extermination and misery of a people. This William, conqueror of a great realm and ravisher of immense domains in a foreign land, only obtained a resting-place in his native soil through pity; those who assisted at his funeral had to lay the price of it upon his coffin.

[Sidenote: [1087-1108 A.D.]]

None of his three sons paid him his last duties, but waged fierce war for his heritage.[d] William Rufus succeeded to the throne in England, and his brother Robert Courte-Heuse (Court-Hose or Short-Hose) in Normandy. But William was not content with his portion. He invaded Normandy in 1090, and also disturbed the peace of the French monarchy by a vigorous claim on the French Vexin and a war on the count of Maine. When Robert joined the First Crusade he mortgaged his duchy to his brother, who occupied it. But William’s tenure was short. An arrow in the New Forest ended his life (1100). Robert Courte-Heuse hastened home and resumed his rule, but Henry I, the Conqueror’s youngest son who succeeded William Rufus in England, thirsted likewise for the paternal dominions. In 1104 he appeared in Normandy and two years later the struggle was over. At the battle of Tinchebray Robert lost his lands and his liberty. Normandy passed to the English crown.[a]

The death of the Conqueror was a great cause of joy to Philip and enabled him to continue his indolent and scandalous career. He had married Bertha, daughter of Count Florent of Holland, but tired of her and shut her up while he eloped with Bertrade, wife of Fulk le Réchin, count of Anjou, and married her. Pope Urban ordered the dissolution of this marriage, and on the refusal to obey a council assembled at Autun in 1094 excommunicated the king. Philip no longer wished to wear the external marks of royalty; he was afflicted with grievous infirmities, which he recognised as the chastisement of God; so in 1100 he associated his son Louis with the crown, and thenceforth reigned only in name. A terrible fear of hell seized upon him. In humility he renounced burial in the sepulchre of the kings at St. Denis, and died in 1108 in the habit of a Benedictine monk.[d]

LOUIS THE FAT AND LOUIS THE YOUNG (1108-1180 A.D.)

Feebleness and inertness mark the reign of the first four Capetians. In the successor of Philip the race began to partake in the general activity of the age.

The reign of Louis VI, better known as Louis le Gros, or the Fat, began in the lifetime of his predecessor. He was the first French monarch that entertained any settled maxim of government, or whose ideas reached a system of policy. His predecessors had been the creatures, the followers, of events. Louis knew how to control these. The whole effort and aim of his reign was to reduce the barons of the duchy of France to obedience. His views did not extend to the kingdom. He prudently limited his exertions to the counties within or bordering upon his power. History may disdain to recount minutely the wars carried on by Louis against the barons of Montmorency, whose castle rose within view of his capital, or against the lords of Puiset, of Montlhéry, or of Coucy, possessors of strongholds within a few leagues of Paris, from whence they were wont to sally forth to the plunder of travellers and merchants. And yet, of all the wars that adorn or sully the French annals, none was more wise in aim, more useful or important in consequences, than these petty enterprises of Louis.

His first attempt was against the Burchards, lords of Montmorency, who were continually in quarrel with the abbaye of St. Denis; and, if we are to believe the chronicles of the day, written for the most part in that famous convent, the Montmorencys were impious spoliators and enemies of the church. Louis stood forth the champion of the clergy, and brought the Burchards to reason. His next efforts were directed against the château of Montlhéry and its rapacious owners, who interrupted all communication betwixt the royal towns of Paris and Orleans, greatly to the detriment of commerce and the annoyance of the townsfolk. Louis here took care to have a pretext also. He did not assert his royal authority and arm to avenge it. It was as the ally of the clergy that he subdued the Montmorencys; it was as the friend of commerce, and the avenger of the plundered burgesses, that he besieged Montlhéry. Louis XI did not use more policy and feint in his undermining of the aristocracy than did Louis VI; the latter, unfortunately for his own fame, having only the smaller sphere of action (1101).

(From an old engraving)]

[Sidenote: [1101-1119 A.D.]]

Nevertheless, the name of Louis the Fat stands connected with one of the most important revolutions in the civil history of France, _viz._, the enfranchisement of the _communes_ or commons, as the early municipalities were called. From him towns received their first charters; from his reign their first liberties date. In some towns the bishops favoured, in some they opposed, the enfranchisement of the commons. The barons were, in general, averse. The king was obliged to wage a tedious war against the family of Coucy, which, by means of a fortress, kept possession of the town of Amiens. He at length took and razed it; and the seigniory of the De Coucys merged in the township of Amiens.

It was not merely by military exploits, and by the elevation of the _tiers état_ or third estate, that the royal authority progressed during the reign of Louis VI. The judicial authority attributed to the monarch by the feudal system, and exercised by him in his court or council of peers, made him the arbiter of disputed successions. It was thus that Philip I had extended his influence over the province of Berri. His son Louis interfered in the quarrels of the house of Bourbon, where a minor struggled against the usurpation of his uncle. Louis entered the Bourbonnais with an army in 1115, took Germigny, the principal fortress of Aymon de Bourbon, and compelled him to submit. Not since the early Carlovingians had the banners of a king of France been seen so far from his capital.

[Sidenote: [1119-1127 A.D.]]

The continued rivalry betwixt the Normans, or English, and the French excited and kept alive the warlike spirit of both nations. Henry I reigned in England, and also in Normandy, which he had usurped from his brother Robert. Louis took the part of the latter, as well as of his son William Clito; and mutual wars, or rather ravages, were frequent, with intervals of peace, betwixt the nations.[b] The principal feud between Henry and Louis was produced by accident.

_Battle of Brenneville_

On the 20th of August, 1119, Louis and Henry found themselves unexpectedly face to face on the plain of Brenmule or Brenneville, three leagues from Les Andelys. Henry descended from the height of Verclive with his sons Richard and Robert, five hundred men-at-arms, and some infantry. Louis, seeing that what he had long desired was now approaching, marched straight at the enemy at the head of four hundred knights, accompanied by William Clito, who had taken arms to deliver his father from a long captivity and to win back the heritage of his ancestors. William de Crespigny, a Norman knight on Clito’s side, charged first with eighty men-at-arms, penetrated as far as King Henry himself, and smote him such a blow on the head as, but for his cap of mail, must have split his skull; but Crespigny was instantly thrown from his horse and made prisoner with most of his followers. The knights of the Vexin and the rest of the French then fell impetuously on the Anglo-Normans, and at first caused them to give way, but Henry’s soldiers, closing up their ranks, pressed between them and overthrew the assailants, who were thrown into disorder by the sheer force of their charge. King Louis, seeing his followers in disarray and anxious to effect a retreat in order to avoid an irreparable loss, fled at full gallop, leaving his royal banner and 140 of his knights in the hands of the conquerors.

“Of nine hundred knights who were present at this battle,” says Ordericus Vitalis,[g] “there were only three killed; for they were completely cased in iron and, moreover, mutually sparing one another as much from the fear of God as for the sake of brotherhood in arms. They concerned themselves less to kill the flying than to take them prisoners.”

The king of the French, divided from his companions in his fright, lost his way in a forest (that of Lyons) where a peasant, who did not know him, guided him to Les Andelys in the hope of a large reward. King Henry bought the silver standard of Louis for forty marks from a man-at-arms, who had seized it and kept it as a witness of his victory; but the next day he sent back to King Louis his horse with its saddle, its rein, and all the royal trappings (Louis had apparently changed horses that he might fly without being recognised). And William Ætheling had sent back to his cousin, William Clito, the palfrey which the latter had lost in the battle, with other presents which King Henry had thought needful for an exile.[e] After this defeat Louis had to abandon William Clito’s cause. Pope Calixtus II arranged a peace and Henry I embarked for England with his family and his court. The journey is memorable for the loss of the “White Ship” (_Blanche Nef_) in which the most renowned knights and the heirs of the most illustrious house of the Norman race, including the two sons and a daughter of the king, perished. One child alone remained to the bereaved monarch, Matilda or Maud, the wife of the emperor Henry V but afterwards married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou.[a]

[Sidenote: [1127-1149 A.D.]]

Another enterprise of Louis, in the year 1121, marks the rapid increase of the king’s influence. A few years since he had established his authority in the Bourbonnais: now he extended it to Auvergne. In a quarrel betwixt the count and the bishop of Clermont, the latter appealed to Louis, who summoned the count to his supreme court, and, on his refusal to appear, marched with an army and subdued him, as he had previously the lord of Bourbon. The counts of Anjou and of Nevers aided him in the expedition. They felt no reluctance in carrying into effect the decrees of that court of peers of which they formed a part. Louis was not so fortunate in his treatment of Flanders as in his subjugation of Aquitaine. The Flemings, indeed, proved always intractable to French treatment whether of amity or hostility. The count of that province, perplexed and curbed by the frowardness of the townsfolk and the middle class, sought to taunt the family of Van der Straten by asserting they were serfs. One of them replied by cleaving the young count’s skull as he knelt at prayers. There being no heir to the family of Flanders, Louis sought to give the county to William Clito (1127). This unfortunate prince soon after fell in an engagement; and Flanders passed to Theodoric of Alsace, a descendant of Robert the Frisian (1129). Louis VI died in 1137. It is strange that history could find for this monarch no epithet save that of the Fat, at the same time that it records innumerable proofs of a talented mind, of an active and enterprising spirit.

Towards the conclusion of this monarch’s reign, fortune came to reward and crown his efforts for the extension of the royal authority. William, count of Poitiers, about to undertake a pilgrimage, from which he had the presentiment that he never should return, offered his daughter Eleanor in marriage to Louis the Young, son of Louis the Fat. She was the heiress of her father’s possessions, which surpassed in extent and importance those of the king of France himself, comprising Guienne and Poitou--all the country, in fact, betwixt the Loire and the Adour. The marriage was celebrated at Bordeaux; and soon after it arrived tidings of the deaths both of the king and of the count of Poitiers. Thus Louis VII, or the Young, succeeded to dominions and authority infinitely more ample than those which his father had inherited. But the want of talent in the son did away with all these advantages. Nevertheless he commenced his reign with spirit. He chastised several refractory nobles, and resolved to support the queen’s rights to the county of Toulouse. Louis besieged that town. He failed in taking it, indeed; but the king of France, at the head of an army, made his name and power known for the first time to the inhabitants of the south. During a war carried on about the same time against Thibaut, count of Champagne, an accident occurred which had a marked effect upon the future conduct and character of Louis the Young. He had taken by storm the castle of Vitry, and set fire to it. The flames chanced to catch the neighbouring church, into which the population had crowded, to preserve themselves from the fury of the soldiery. It appears that they had no means of escape. Thirteen hundred men, women, and children perished in the conflagration. Louis was horror-struck on beholding the mass of half consumed bodies, and the weight of the remorse hung ever after upon him, and weighed down his spirit. It was the chief cause that induced him to receive the cross, and to lead that expedition to Jerusalem which is known in history as the Second Crusade.

Not a single feat of arms marked the stay of Louis in Palestine, where he lingered till 1149, ashamed to return. The ignominy of this ill success, and the desertion of his followers, fell upon King Louis; and he felt it, not to rally and redeem his character, but to sink under the shame. He abandoned the feelings of the monarch and the warrior for those of the pilgrim; refused at first to undertake any enterprise against the infidels, and stole from Antioch to Jerusalem like a craven. If his subjects were discontented with such weakness in their sovereign, Eleanor of Aquitaine was still more disgusted with such a husband: she refused longer to remain on any friendly terms with him.[b] On his return the king repudiated his wife, who had so displeased him during the crusade. [Queen Eleanor at once petitioned the pope for a divorce. In 1152 the pope granted her wish.] Shortly afterwards a new marriage transferred her duchy of Guienne to Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou, duke of Normandy and heir to the English crown. When, two years later, Henry entered into possession of his heritage, and afterwards added Brittany, through the marriage of one of his sons with the only daughter of the count of that country, he found himself master of almost the whole of western France.[c]

[Sidenote: [1103-1180 A.D.]]

Hence dates the rivalry betwixt the kings which fills up the rest of their reigns. But in that age war tended more to mutual annoyance than to conquest: it was a livelihood to the needy, a portion to the powerful; and neither were very serious or bent upon the destruction of an enemy. Feudal rights and supremacy were also held in high respect; and the name of suzerain, though but a name, often supplied to Louis the place of the armies of his vassal Henry. In time the church came to fling itself into the scale. The persecution and murder of Thomas à Becket roused all the clergy in enmity to Henry, and Louis took advantage of their aid. Later still, the French monarch used the more unworthy expedient of exciting the sons of Henry to rebel against their parent; and throughout he contrived to supply by intrigue what he wanted in martial spirit, activity, and power. Louis VII married Alix of Champagne, after the divorce; he was long without a son, and at length, so the story goes, he obtained one by dint of prayer. When the life of the prince was threatened by a fever, the anxious parent undertook a pilgrimage to Canterbury, to the tomb of Thomas à Becket, for his recovery. The young Philip recovered; but Louis, on his return, was struck with a palsy, under which he lingered for the space of a year, and died in 1180.[b]

_The Abbot Suger_

[Sidenote: [1081-1149 A.D.]]

On his return from the crusade, Louis found his country in a most peaceful and flourishing condition owing to the skilful administration of his preceptor the abbot Suger, whom he had left in charge of affairs.[a] Suger is indubitably the most illustrious, perhaps, even, the only historian who has a place in the general history of France, and who really influenced her destinies. Such a fame cannot be usurped; whoso possesses it merits it.

No great and lasting memorials were raised in France by Suger and his master, Louis the Fat; they made no great conquests, established no memorable laws; it is even a mistake to ascribe to them the honour of being the first to enfranchise the communes. This enfranchisement had preceded them; it arose from causes beyond their control, fulfilled its destiny without their aid, and was as often opposed as seconded by them. But Louis the Fat and Suger, the one as king, the other as minister, were the first since Charlemagne to have a true and just perception of their position and mission, and to bind themselves to act upon it. This great idea, without which there can be nothing of state or king, the idea of a public authority, devoted to the maintenance of public order, called to something higher than ministration to the interests and personal caprices of its temporary holder, had been conceived by the giant mind of Charlemagne, but, despite his genius and a long reign, it was not for him to put it into action, to found a throne and a nation. Certain customs of unity, of regularity, of government, in short, existed indeed in the earlier years of Louis le Débonnaire’s reign, but they soon vanished, society and authority alike fell into decay, and for two centuries there was neither king, kingdom, nor nation, Frank nor French.

Hugh Capet, in taking the title of king, laid the first stone of a new monarchy in the very heart of feudalism. But it was no more than a title of vague meaning and no import under him. He had not the force of character, nor is there anything to indicate that he had the design, to raise the sovereignty above suzerainty and reunite in one body the scattered members of the nation. Under his immediate successors the power of the throne drooped more and more. In the reigns of Robert, Henry I, and Philip I, one can scarcely discern any traces of national and monarchical unity. Isolation and independence waxed stronger, not only in the case of powerful or distant feudatories, but also among the nearest and humblest vassals of the crown. Only the feudal tie continued in force, a real and precious tie since it still maintained a show of confederation under a leader and prevented the utter dismemberment of the government and the country; but its influence, always more moral than political, yielded at the least shock and seemed even on the point of disappearance. With Louis the Fat a new era begins; the extent of his power, even the sphere of his activities, is still very restricted; the results of his endeavours are, for the present at least, of little value. It is almost always in the outskirts of Paris, against the simple squires, for the securing of a route, for the protection of merchants, that his courage and wisdom are exercised. Nevertheless in these small undertakings, and in certain others more remote, we can see a definite design of central and regular government; sovereignty separates itself from suzerainty, and in its own name claims, though timidly, rights of another sort. It presents itself to us as a power general and superior, called to maintain justice and order, to the advantage of all, and against all comers--a power all too weak for such a task, but awake to a perception of its dignity and its mission, and to a dawning of the same in the mind of its subjects. Such is the true character of the reign of Louis the Fat; he did little for the liberties of the public, much for the forming of the state and national government. He guided sovereignty in its first steps out of a feudal régime, gave to it other principles, placed it in a different attitude; and it is in this work, the development of which decided the lot of France, that Suger rendered powerful assistance during twenty five years’ administration.

He did not seem marked out by birth for so great things, his father, Hélinand, being only a man of the people, living, according to the most probable supposition, at St. Omer, where Suger was born in 1081. But even at that date the church busied herself in searching out and welcoming, even from among the lowest ranks, men capable of serving and honouring her. Everywhere present and active, in touch with all the social conditions, associating alike with poor and rich, dwelling with the humble as with the great, she went forward to meet even childhood on its way, studying its varying dispositions, surrounding its earliest days, unfolding to it a brilliant career, the only one which invited development of its intellectual faculties, in which every reward was accessible to merit, and, finally, in which principles of equality and co-operation reigned. The monastery of St. Denis received and brought up the young Suger; he passed ten years in the dependent priory of Lettrée, and when, in 1095, Philip intrusted the education of his son, Louis the Fat, to the monks of St. Denis, Abbot Adam recalled Suger into the abbey itself that he might become the companion of the young prince. Thus sprang up between the children the intimacy which was to bind them together all their lives. In 1098, Louis returned to his father’s house, and Suger went to complete his studies in the monastery of Florent-de-Saumur, where the sciences of the day flourished under Abbot William. In returning to St. Denis in 1103 he speedily became the confidant of Abbot Adam, who, not content with employing him in all matters relating to the monastery, frequently took him to court where Prince Louis, who now for four years had had a share in the throne, knit yet more closely the bonds that had bound him to his childhood’s friend. From this date there is no further need to trace the life of Suger; it is part of history and nearly all the details that have come down to us are to be found either in his _Vie de Louis VI_[k] or in the _Panegyric_ written upon him by the monk William, his secretary.

Before his elevation to the dignity of abbot of St. Denis, when charged with diverse missions either to ecclesiastical gatherings or to the court at Rome, or even called upon to defend with mailed fist certain domains belonging to St. Denis against the brigand nobles who ravaged them, he displayed in turn the tact of the ecclesiastic and the courage of the knight. Later on, when Louis had constituted him his most intimate adviser, it seems that so much power temporarily dazzled Suger. St. Bernard speaks of his pomp and pride, and of the disorder introduced into his abbey. “The interior of the monastery,” he says, “is filled with knights, sometimes it is even open to women; one hears business of all sorts being transacted there; there quarrels break out; lastly it is there that that which is Cæsar’s is rendered unto Cæsar, without deduction or delay, but never unto God that which is God’s.” Whether it be that St. Bernard’s warnings aroused Suger from this first intoxication of power, or whether he perceived of himself the harm the scandal would do him, he did not delay putting an end to it. In 1127 he introduced drastic reforms into his abbey, compelled his monks to submit to them, and scrupulously conformed himself, and very shortly his power in the court was but more firmly established by this episode. Proud of the austerity of his morals, whilst at the same time profiting by his influence, the church cried him up on all occasions, and bishops and abbots of the most celebrated monasteries contemplated with equal pride the gorgeous church rebuilt by him at St. Denis, and the humble cell, barely fifteen feet long by ten feet wide, where he applied himself in solitude to religious exercises. After the death of Louis the Fat his power increased yet more; the indolent and incompetent Louis the Young shifting to his shoulders the whole weight of the government.

[Sidenote: [1147-1149 A.D.]]

Suger’s regency during this king’s crusade, from the year 1147 to the year 1149, is the most brilliant period of his career. He firmly upheld the royal authority, rebuked the usurpations of the vassals, established some degree of order wherever his influence attained to, met the king’s expenses in Palestine by his excellent administration of the crown revenues, and the advancement of his domains, and, finally, won such fame throughout the length and breadth of Europe that persons from Italy and England came to study the salutary results of his government, and the title of “the Solomon of the century” was bestowed upon him by foreigners contemporary with him. Hitherto only illustrious bishops, or learned and subtle theologians had attained this European distinction by their authority in the church or by their writings; no other man had ever won it on the sole merit of his political conduct, and from the ninth to the twelfth century Suger remains the first example of a minister who won admiration for his skill and wisdom from beyond the mountains and over the seas. He did not show any anxiety to retain this absolute power which the king’s absence conferred on him, and, by a rare unselfishness, the interests of the state preoccupied him more than his personal ambitions. He was himself opposed to a crusade from which he foresaw dangers, and had only yielded at the instance of St. Bernard’s ardent entreaties, the pope’s orders, and the prevailing opinion of the day. When certain of the nobles, Robert de Dreux, his brother, among them, who had accompanied Louis, abandoned him in Palestine and returned without him to France, Suger never ceased from urging his immediate return to his dominions.