notwithstanding its decay.  It was not alone the lustre of that name, and
of the memory of Charlemagne which inspired and prolonged this respect; a
certain instinctive feeling about the worth of hereditary monarchy, as an
element of stability and order, already existed amongst the populations,
and glimpses thereof were visible amongst the rivals of the royal family
in the hour of its dissolution.  It had been consecrated by religion; the
title of anointed of the Most High was united, in its case, to that of
lawful heir.  Why did Hugh the Great, duke of France, in spite of
favorable opportunities and very palpable temptations, abstain
perseveringly from taking the crown, and leave it tottering upon the
heads of Louis the Ultramarine and Lothaire?  Why did his son, Hugh Capet
himself, wait, for his election as king, until Louis the Sluggard was
dead, and the Carlovingian line had only a collateral and discredited
representative?  In these hesitations and lingerings of the great feudal
chieftains, there is a forecast of the authority already vested in the
principle of hereditary monarchy, at the very moment when it was about to
be violated, and of the great part which would be played by that
principle in the history of France.

At last the day of decision arrived for Hugh Capet.  There is nothing to
show that he had conspired to hasten it, but he had foreseen the
probability of it, and, if he had done nothing to pave the way for it, he
had held himself, so far as he was concerned, in readiness for it.
During a trip which he made to Rome in 981, he had entered into kindly
personal relations with the Emperor Otho II., king of Germany, the most
important of France's neighbors, and the most disposed to meddle in her
affairs.  In France, Hugh Capet had formed a close friendship with
Adalberon, archbishop of Rheims, the most notable and most able of the
French prelates.  The event showed the value of such a friend.  On the
21st of May, 987, King Louis V. died without issue; and, after his
obsequies, the grandees of the kingdom met together at Senlis.  We will
here borrow the text of a contemporary witness, Richer, the only one of
the chroniclers of that age who deserves the name of historian, whether
for the authenticity of his testimony or the extent and clearness of his
narrative.  "The bishop," he says, "took his place, together with the
duke, in the midst of the assembly, and said to them, 'I come and sit
down amongst you to treat of the affairs of the state.  Far from me be
any design of saying anything but what has for aim the advantage of the
common weal.  As I do not see here all the princes whose wisdom and
energy might be useful in the government of the kingdom, it seems to me
that the choice of a king should be put off for some time, in order that,
at a period fixed upon, all may be able to meet in assembly, and that
every opinion, having been discussed and set forth in the face of day,
may thus produce its full effect.  May it please you, then, all of ye who
are here assembled to deliberate, to bind yourselves in conjunction with
me by oath to this illustrious duke, and to promise between his hands not
to engage yourselves in any way in the election of a Head, and not to do
anything to this end until we be re-assembled here to deliberate upon
that choice.'  This opinion was well received and approved of by all:
oath was taken between the hands of the duke, and the time was fixed at
which the meeting should assemble again."

Before the day fixed for re-assembling, the last of the descendants of
Charlemagne, Charles, duke of Lower Lorraine, brother of the late King
Lothaire, and paternal uncle of the late King Louis, "went to Rheims in
quest of the archbishop, and thus spake to him about his rights to the
throne: 'All the world knoweth, venerable father, that, by hereditary
right, I ought to succeed my brother and my nephew.  I am wanting in
nought that should be required, before all, from those who ought to
reign, to wit, birth and the courage to dare.  Wherefore am I thrust out
from the territory which all the world knows to have been possessed by my
ancestors?  To whom could I better address myself than to you, when all
the supports of my race have disappeared?  To whom, bereft as I am of
honorable protection, should I have recourse but to you?  By whom, if not
by you, should I be restored to the honors of my fathers?  Please God
things turn out favorably for me and for my fortunes!  Rejected, what,
can become of me save to be exhibited as a spectacle to all who look on
me?  Suffer yourself to be moved by some feeling of humanity: be
compassionate towards a man who has been tried by so many reverses!'"

Such language was more calculated to inspire contempt than compassion.
"The metropolitan, firm in his resolution, gave for answer these few
words: 'Thou hast ever been associated with the perjured, the
sacrilegious, and the wicked of every sort, and now thou art still
unwilling to separate from them: how canst thou, in company with such
men, and by means of such men, seek to attain to the sovereign power?'
And when Charles replied that he must not abandon his friends, but rather
gain over others, the bishop said to himself, 'Now that he possesses no
position of dignity, he hath allied himself with the wicked, whose
companionship he will not, in any way, give up: what misfortune would it
be for the good if he were elected to the throne!'  To Charles, however,
he made answer that he would do nought without the consent of the
princes; and so left him."

At the time fixed, probably the 29th or 30th of June, 987, the grandees
of Frankish Gaul who had bound themselves by oath re-assembled at Senlis.
Hugh Capet was present with his brother Henry of Burgundy, and his
brother-in-law Richard the Fearless, duke of Normandy.  The majority of
the direct vassals of the crown were also there--Foulques Nerra (the
Black), count of Anjou; Eudes, count of Blois, Chartres, and Tours;
Bouchard, count of Vent-Mine and Corbeil; Gautier, count of Vexin; and
Hugh, count of Maine.  Few counts came from beyond the Loire; and some of
the lords in the North, amongst others Arnulf II., count of Flanders, and
the lords of Vermandois were likewise missing.  "When those present were
in regular assembly, Archbishop Adalheron, with the assent of Duke Hugh,
thus spake unto them: 'Louis, of blessed memory, having been taken from
us without leaving issue, it hath become necessary to engage seriously in
seeking who may take his place upon the throne, to the end that the
common weal remain not in peril, neglected and without a head.  That is
why on the last occasion we deemed it useful to put off this matter, in
order that each of ye might come hither and submit to the assembly the
opinion with which God should have inspired him, and that from all those
sentiments might be drawn what is the general will.  Here be we
assembled: let us, then, be guided by our wisdom and our good faith to
act in such sort that hatred stifle not reason, and affection distort not
truth.  We be not ignorant that Charles hath his partisans, who maintain
that he ought to come to the throne transmitted to him by his relatives.
But if we examine this question, the throne is not acquired by hereditary
right, and we be bound to place at the head of the kingdom none but him
who not only hath the distinction of corporeal nobility, but hath also
honor to recommend him and magnanimity to rest upon.  We read in the
annals that to emperors of illustrious race, whom their own laches caused
to fall from power, succeeded others, at one time similar, at another
different; but what dignity could we confer on Charles, who hath not
honor for his guide, who is enfeebled by lethargy, and who, finally, hath
lost head so far that he hath no shame in serving a foreign king, and in
misuniting himself to a woman taken from the rank of the knights his
vassals?  How could the puissant duke brook that a woman issuing from a
family of his vassals should become queen, and have dominion over him?
How could he walk behind her whose equals and even superiors bend the
knee before him and place their hands beneath his feet?  Examine
carefully into the matter, and consider that Charles hath been rejected
more through his own fault than that of others.  Decide ye rather for the
good than the ill of the common weal.  If ye wish it ill, make Charles
sovereign; if ye hold to its prosperity, crown Hugh, the illustrious
duke.  Let attachment to Charles seduce nobody, and let hatred towards
the duke distract nobody, from the common interest.  .  .  .  Give us
then, for our head, the duke, who has deeds, nobility, and troops to
recommend him; the duke, in whom ye will find a defender not only of
the common weal, but also of your private interests.  Thanks to his
benevolence, ye will have in him a father.  Who hath had recourse to him
and hath not found protection?  Who, that hath been torn from the care of
home, hath not been restored thereto by him?'

"This opinion having been proclaimed and well received, Duke Hugh was
unanimously raised to the throne, crowned on the 1st of July by the
metropolitan and the other bishops, and recognized as king by the Gauls,
the Britons, the Normans, the Aquitanians, the Goths, the Spaniards, and
the Gascons.  Surrounded by the grandees of the kingdom, he passed
decrees and promulgated laws according to royal custom, regulating
successfully and disposing of all matters.  That he might deserve so
much good fortune, and under the inspiration of so many prosperous
circumstances, he gave himself up to deep piety.  Wishing to have a
certainty of leaving, after his death, an heir to the throne, he
conferred with his grandees, and after holding council with them he first
sent a deputation to the metropolitan of Rheims, who was then at Orleans,
and subsequently went himself to see him touching the association of his
son Robert with himself upon the throne.  The archbishop having told him
that two kings could not be, regularly, created in one and the same year,
he immediately showed a letter sent by Borel, duke of inner Spain,
proving that that duke requested help against the barbarians.  .  .  .
The metropolitan, seeing advantage was likely to result, ultimately
yielded to the king's reasons; and when the grandees were assembled, at
the festival of our Lord's nativity, to celebrate the coronation, Hugh
assumed the purple, and he crowned solemnly, in the basilica of Sainte-
Croix, his son Robert, amidst the acclamations of the French."

[Illustration: Hugh Capet elected King----300]

Thus was founded the dynasty of the Capetians, under the double influence
of German manners and feudal connections.  Amongst the ancient Germans
royal heirship was generally confined to one and the same family; but
election was often joined with heirship, and had more than once thrust
the latter aside.  Hugh Capet was head of the family which was the most
illustrious in his time and closest to the throne, on which the personal
merits of Counts Eudes and Robert had already twice seated it.  He was
also one of the greatest chieftains of feudal society, duke of the
country which was already called France, and count of Paris--of that city
which Clovis, after his victories, had chosen as the centre of his
dominions.  In view of the Roman rather than Germanic pretensions of the
Carlovingian heirs and of their admitted decay, the rise of Hugh Capet
was the natural consequence of the principal facts as well as of the
manners of the period, and the crowning manifestation of the new social
condition in France, that is, feudalism.  Accordingly the event reached
completion and confirmation without any great obstacle.  The
Carlovingian, Charles of Lorraine, vainly attempted to assert his rights;
but after some gleams of success, he died in 992, and his descendants
fell, if not into obscurity, at least into political insignificance.  In
vain, again, did certain feudal lords, especially in Southern France,
refuse for some time their adhesion to Hugh Capet.  One of them,
Adalbert, count of Perigord, has remained almost famous for having made
to Hugh Capet's question, "Who made thee count?" the proud answer, "Who
made thee king?"  The pride, however, of Count Adalbert had more bark
than bite.  Hugh possessed that intelligent and patient moderation,
which, when a position is once acquired, is the best pledge of
continuance.  Several facts indicate that he did not underestimate the
worth and range of his title of king.  At the same time that by getting
his son Robert crowned with him he secured for his line the next
succession, he also performed several acts which went beyond the limits
of his feudal domains, and proclaimed to all the kingdom the presence of
the king.  But those acts were temperate and wise; and they paved the way
for the future without anticipating it.  Hugh Capet confined himself
carefully to the sphere of his recognized rights as well as of his
effective strength, and his government remained faithful to the character
of the revolution which had raised him to the throne, at the same time
that it gave warning of the future progress of royalty independently of
and over the head of feudalism.  When he died, on the 24th of October,
996, the crown, which he hesitated, they say, to wear on his own head,
passed without obstacle to his son Robert, and the course which was to be
followed for eight centuries, under the government of his descendants, by
civilization in France, began to develop itself.

[Illustration: "Who made thee King?"----302]

It has already been pointed out, in the case of Adalberon, archbishop of
Rheims, what part was taken by the clergy in this second change of
dynasty; but the part played by it was so important and novel that we
must make a somewhat more detailed acquaintance with the real character
of it and the principal actor in it.  When, in 751, Pepin the Short
became king in the place of the last Merovingian, it was, as we have
seen, Pope Zachary who decided that "it was better to give the title of
king to him who really exercised the sovereign power than to him who bore
only its name."  Three years later, in 754, it was Pope Stephen II. who
came over to France to anoint King Pepin, and, forty-six years
afterwards, in 800, it was Pope Leo III.  who proclaimed Charlemagne
emperor of the West.  From the Papacy, then, on the accession of the
Carlovingians, came the principal decisions and steps.  The reciprocal
services rendered one to the other by the two powers, and still more,
perhaps, the similarity of their maxims as to the unity of the empire,
established between the Papacy and the Carlovingians strong ties of
gratitude and policy; and, accordingly, when the Carlovingian dynasty was
in danger, the court of Rome was grieved and troubled; it was hard for
her to see the fall of a dynasty for which she had done so much and which
had done so much for her.  Far, then, from aiding the accession of the
new dynasty, she showed herself favorable to the old, and tried to save
it without herself becoming too deeply compromised.  Such was, from 985
to 996, the attitude of Pope John XVI., at the crisis which placed Hugh
Capet upon the throne.  In spite of this policy on the part of the
Papacy, the French Church took the initiative in the event, and supported
the new king; the Archbishop of Rheims affirmed the right of the people
to accomplish a change of dynasty, and anointed Hugh Capet and his son
Robert.  The accession of the Capetians was a work independent of all
foreign influence, and strictly national, in Church as well as in State.

The authority of Adalberon was of great weight in the matter.  As
archbishop he was full of zeal, and at the same time of wisdom in
ecclesiastical administration.  Engaging in politics, he showed boldness
in attempting a great change in the state, and ability in carrying it out
without precipitation as well as without hesitation.  He had for his
secretary and teacher a simple priest of Auvergne, who exercised over
this enterprise an influence more continuous and still more effectual
than that of his archbishop.  Gerbert, born at Aurillac, and brought up
in the monastery of St. Geraud, had, when he was summoned to the
directorate of the school of Rheims, already made a trip to Spain,
visited Rome, and won the esteem of Pope John XIII. and of the Emperor
Otho II., and had thus had a close view of the great personages and great
questions, ecclesiastical and secular, of his time.  On his establishment
at Rheims, he pursued a double course with a double end: he was fond of
study, science, and the investigation of truth, but he had also a taste
for the sphere of politics and of the world; he excelled in the art of
instructing, but also in the art of pleasing; and the address of the
courtier was in him united with the learning of the doctor.  His was a
mind lofty, broad, searching, prolific, open to conviction, and yet
inclined to give way, either from calculation or attraction, to contrary
ideas, but certain to recur, under favorable circumstances, to its
original purpose.  There was in him almost as much changeableness as zeal
for the cause he embraced.  He espoused and energetically supported the
elevation of a new dynasty and the independence of the Roman Church.  He
was very active in the cause of Hugh Capet; but he was more than once on
the point of going over to King Lothaire or to the pretender Charles of
Lorraine.  He was in his time, even more resolutely than Bossuet in the
seventeenth century, the defender and practiser of what have since been
called the liberties of the Gallican Church, and in 992 he became, on
this ground, Archbishop of Rheims; but, after having been interdicted, in
995, by Pope John XVI., from the exercise of his episcopal functions in
France, he obtained, in 998, from Pope Gregory V., the archbishopric of
Ravenna in Italy, and the favor of Otho III.  was not unconnected, in
999, with his elevation to the Holy See, which he occupied for four
years, with the title of Sylvester II., whilst putting in practice, but
with moderation and dignity, maxims very different from those which he
had supported, fifteen years before, as a French bishop.  He became, at
this later period of his life, so much the more estranged from France in
that he was embroiled with Hugh Capet's son and successor, King Robert,
whose quondam preceptor he had been and of whose marriage with Queen
Bertha, widow of Eudes, count of Blois, he had honestly disapproved.

[Illustration: Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II----304]

In 995, just when he had been interdicted by Pope John X VI. from his
functions as Archbishop of Rheims, Gerbert wrote to the abbot and
brethren of the monastery of St. Geraud, where he had been brought up,
"And now farewell to your holy community; farewell to those whom I knew
in old times, or who were connected with me by blood, if there still
survive any whose names, if not their features, have remained upon my
memory.  Not that I have forgotten them through pride; but I am broken
down, and--if it must be said--changed by the ferocity of barbarians;
what I learned in my boyhood I forgot in my youth; what I desired in my
youth, I despised in my old age.  Such are the fruits thou hast borne for
me, O pleasure!  Such are the joys afforded by the honors of the world!
Believe my experience of it: the higher the great are outwardly raised by
glory, the more cruel is their inward anguish!"

Length of life brings, in the soul of the ambitious, days of hearty
undeception; but it does not discourage them from their course of
ambition.  Gerbert was, amongst the ambitious, at the same time one of
the most exalted in point of intellect and one of the most persistent as
well as restless in attachment to the affairs of the world.




CHAPTER XIV.----THE CAPETIANS TO THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES.

From 996 to 1108, the first three successors of Hugh Capet, his son
Robert, his grandson Henry I., and his great-grandson Philip I., sat upon
the throne of France; and during this long space of one hundred and
twelve years the kingdom of France had not, sooth to say, any history.
Parcelled out, by virtue of the feudal system, between a multitude of
princes, independent, isolated, and scarcely sovereigns in their own
dominions, keeping up anything like frequent intercourse only with their
neighbors, and loosely united, by certain rules or customs of vassalage,
to him amongst them who bore the title of king, the France of the
eleventh century existed in little more than name: Normandy, Brittany,
Burgundy, Aquitaine, Poitou, Anjou, Flanders, and Nivernais were the real
states and peoples, each with its own distinct life and history.  One
single event, the Crusade, united, towards the end of the century, those
scattered sovereigns and peoples in one common idea and one combined
action.  Up to that point, then, let us conform to the real state of the
case, and faithfully trace out the features of the epoch, without
attempting to introduce a connection and a combination which did not
exist; and let us pass briefly in review the isolated events and
personages which are still worthy of remembrance, and which have remained
historic without having belonged exactly to a national history.  Amongst
events of this kind, one, the conquest of England, in 1066, by William
the Bastard, duke of Normandy, was so striking, and exercised so much
influence over the destinies of France, that, in the incoherent and
disconnected picture of this eleventh century, particular attention must
first be drawn to the consequences, as regarded France, of that great
Norman enterprise.

After the sagacious Hugh Capet, the first three Capetians, Robert,
Henry I., and Philip I., were very mediocre individuals, in character
as well as intellect; and their personal insignificance was one of the
causes that produced the emptiness of French history under their sway.
Robert lacked neither physical advantages nor moral virtues: "He had a
lofty figure," says his biographer Helgaud, archbishop of Bourgcs, "hair
smooth and well arranged, a modest eye, a pleasant and gentle mouth, a
tolerably furnished beard, and high shoulders.  He was versed in all the
sciences, philosopher enough and an excellent musician, and so devoted to
sacred literature that he never passed a day without reading the Psalter
and praying to the Most High God together with St. David."  He composed
several hymns which were adopted by the Church, and, during a pilgrimage
he made to Rome, he deposited upon the altar of St. Peter his own Latin
poems set to music.  "He often went to the church of St. Denis, clad in
his royal robes and with his crown on his head; and he there conducted
the singing at matins, mass, and vespers, chanting with the monks and
himself calling upon them to sing.  When he sat in the consistory, he
voluntarily styled himself the bishops' client."  Two centuries later,
St. Louis proved that the virtues of the saint are not incompatible with
the qualities of the king; but the former cannot form a substitute for
the latter, and the qualities of king were to seek in Robert.  He was
neither warrior nor politician; there is no sign that he ever gathered
about him, to discuss affairs of state, the laic barons together with the
bishops, and when he interfered in the wars of the great feudal lords,
notably in Burgundy and Flanders, it was with but little energy and to
but little purpose.  He was hardly more potent in his family than in his
kingdom.  It has already been mentioned that, in spite of his preceptor
Gerbert's advice, he had espoused Bertha, widow of Eudes, count of Blois,
and he loved her dearly; but the marriage was assailed by the Church, on
the ground of kinship.  Robert offered resistance, but afterwards gave
way before the excommunication pronounced by Pope Gregory V., and then
espoused Constance daughter of William Taillefer, count of Toulouse; and
forth-with, says the chronicler Raoul Glaber, "were seen pouring into
France and Burgundy, because of this queen, the most vain and most
frivolous of all men, coming from Aquitaine and Auvergne.  They were
outlandish and outrageous equally in their manners and their dress, in
their arms and the appointments of their horses; their hair came only
half way down their head; they shaved their beards like actors; they wore
boots and shoes that were not decent; and, lastly, neither fidelity nor
security was to be looked for in any of their ties.  Alack! that nation
of Franks, which was wont to be the most virtuous, and even the people of
Burgundy, too, were eager to follow these criminal examples, and before
long they reflected only too faithfully the depravity and infamy of their
models."  The evil amounted to something graver than a disturbance of
court-fashions.  Robert had by Constance three sons, Hugh, Henry, and
Robert.  First the eldest, and afterwards his two brothers, maddened by
the bad character and tyrannical exactions of their mother, left the
palace, and withdrew to Dreux and Burgundy, abandoning themselves, in the
royal domains and the neighborhood, to all kinds of depredations and
excesses.  Reconciliation was not without great difficulty effected; and,
indeed, peace was never really restored in the royal family.  Peace was
everywhere the wish and study of King Robert; but he succeeded better in
maintaining it with his neighbors than with his children.  In 1006, he
was on the point of having a quarrel with Henry II., emperor of Germany,
who was more active and enterprising, but fortunately not less pious,
than himself.  The two sovereigns resolved to have an interview at the
Meuse, the boundary of their dominions.  "The question amongst their
respective followings was, which of the two should cross the river to
seek audience on the other bank, that is, in the other's dominions; this
would be a humiliation, it was said.  The two learned princes remembered
this saying of Eclesiasticus: 'The greater thou art, the humbler be thou
in all things.'  The emperor, therefore, rose up early in the morning,
and crossed, with some of his people, into the French king's territory.
They embraced with cordiality; the bishops, as was proper, celebrated the
sacrament of the mass, and they afterwards sat down to dinner.  When the
meal was over, King Robert offered Henry immense presents of gold and
silver and precious stones, and a hundred horses richly caparisoned, each
carrying a cuirass and a helmet; and he added that all that the emperor
did not accept of these gifts would be so much deducted from their
friendship.  Henry, seeing the generosity of his friend, took of the
whole only a book containing the Holy Gospel, set with gold and precious
stones, and a golden amulet, wherein was a tooth of St. Vincent, priest
and martyr.  The empress, likewise, accepted only two golden cups.  Next
day, King Robert crossed with his bishops into the territories of the
emperor, who received him magnificently, and, after dinner, offered him a
hundred pounds of pure gold.  The king, in his turn, accepted only two
golden cups; and, after having ratified their pact of friendship, they
returned each to his own dominions."

[Illustration: NOTRE DAME----310]

Let us add to this summary of Robert's reign some facts which are
characteristic of the epoch.  In A.D. 1000, in consequence of the sense
attached to certain words in the Sacred Books, many Christians expected
the end of the world.  The time of expectation was full of anxieties;
plagues, famines, and divers accidents which then took place in divers
quarters, were an additional aggravation; the churches were crowded;
penances, offerings, absolutions, all the forms of invocation and
repentance multiplied rapidly; a multitude of souls, in submission or
terror, prepared to appear before their Judge.  And after what
catastrophes?  In the midst of what gloom or of what light?  These were
fearful questions, of which men's imaginations were exhausted in
forestalling the solution.  When the last day of the tenth and the first
of the eleventh centuries were past, it was like a general regeneration;
it might have been said that time was beginning over again; and the work
was commenced of rendering the Christian world worthy of the future.
"Especially in Italy and in Gaul," says the chronicler Raoul Glaber, "men
took in hand the reconstruction of the basilicas, although the greater
part had no need thereof.  Christian peoples seemed to vie one with
another which should erect the most beautiful.  It was as if the world,
shaking itself together and casting off its old garments, would have
decked itself with the white robes of Christ."  Christian art, in its
earliest form of the Gothic style, dates from this epoch; the power and
riches of the Christian Church, in its different institutions, received,
at this crisis of the human imagination, a fresh impulse.

Other facts, some lamentable and some salutary, began, about this epoch,
to assume in French history a place which was destined before long to
become an important one.  Piles of fagots were set up, first at Orleans
and then at Toulouse, for the punishment of heretics.  The heretics of
the day were Manicheans.  King Robert and Queen Constance sanctioned by
their presence this return to human sacrifices offered to God as a
penalty inflicted on mental offenders against His word.  At the same time
a double portion of ire blazed forth against the Jews.  "What have we to
do," it was said, "with going abroad to make war on Mussulmans?  Have we
not in the very midst of us the greatest enemies of Jesus Christ?"
Amongst Christians acts of oppression and violence on the part of the
great against the small became so excessive and so frequent that they
excited in country parts, particularly in Normandy, insurrections which
the insurgents tried to organize into permanent resistance.  "In several
counties of Normandy," says William of Jumieges, "all the peasants,
meeting in conventicles, resolved to live according to their own wills
and their own laws, not only in the heart of the forests, but also on the
borders of the rivers, and without care for any established rights.  To
accomplish this design, these mobs of madmen elected each two deputies,
who were to form, at the central point, an assembly charged with the
execution of their decrees.  So soon as the duke (Richard II.) was
informed thereof, he sent a large body of armed men to suppress this
audacity in the country parts, and to disperse this rustic assembly.
In execution of his orders, the deputies of the peasantry and many other
rebels were forthwith arrested; their feet and hands were cut off, and
they were sent home thus mutilated to deter their fellows from such
enterprises, and to render them more prudent, for fear of worse.  After
this experience, the peasants gave up their meetings and returned to
their ploughs."

[Illustration: Knights returning from Foray----311]

This is a literal translation of the monkish chronicler, who was far from
favorable to the insurgent peasants, and was more for applauding the
suppression than justifying the insurrection.  The suppression, though
undoubtedly effectual for the moment, and in the particular spots it
reached, produced no general or lasting effect.  About a century after
the cold recital of William of Jumieges, a poet-chronicler, Robert Wace,
in his _Romance of Rou_, a history in verse of Rollo and the first dukes
of Normandy, related the same facts with far more sympathetic feeling and
poetical coloring.  "The lords do us nought but ill," he makes the Norman
peasants say; "with them we have nor gain nor profit from our labors;
every day is, for us, a day of suffering, toil, and weariness; every day
we have our cattle taken from us for road-work and forced service.  We
have plaints and grievances, old and new exactions, pleas and processes
without end, money-pleas, market-pleas, road-pleas, forest-pleas,
mill-pleas, black-mail-pleas, watch-and-ward-pleas.  There are so many
provosts, bailiffs, and sergeants, that we have not one hour's peace; day
by day they run us down, seize our movables, and drive us from our lands.
There is no security for us against the lords; and no pact is binding
with them.  Why suffer all this evil to be done to us and not get out of
our plight?  Are we not men even as they are?  Have we not the same
stature, the same limbs, the same strength--for suffering?  All we need
is courage.  Let us, then, bind ourselves together by an oath: let us
swear to support one another; and if they will make war on us, have we
not, for one knight, thirty or forty young peasants, nimble and ready to
fight with club, with boar-spear, with arrow, with axe, and even with
stones if they have not weapons?  Let us learn to resist the knights, and
we shall be free to cut down trees, to hunt and fish after our fashion,
and we shall work our will in flood and field and wood."

[Illustration: Knights and Peasants----312]

Here we have no longer the short account and severe estimate of an
indifferent spectator; it is the cry of popular rage and vengeance
reproduced by the lively imagination of an angered poet.  Undoubtedly the
Norman peasants of the twelfth century did not speak of their miseries
with such descriptive ability and philosophical feeling as were lent to
them by Robert Wace; they did not meditate the democratic revolution of
which he attributes to them the idea and almost the plan; but the deeds
of violence and oppression against which they rose were very real, and
they exerted themselves to escape by reciprocal violence from intolerable
suffering.  Thence date those alternations of demagogic revolt and
tyrannical suppression which have so often ensanguined the land and put
in peril the very foundations of social order.  Insurrections became of
so atrocious a kind that the atrocious chastisements with which they were
visited seemed equally natural and necessary.  It needed long ages, a
repetition of civil wars and terrible political shocks, to put an end to
this brutal chaos which gave birth to so many evils and reciprocal
crimes, and to bring about, amongst the different classes of the French
population, equitable and truly human relations.

So quick-spreading and contagious is evil amongst men, and so difficult
to extirpate in the name of justice and truth!

However, even in the midst of this cruel egotism and this gross unreason
of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the necessity, from a moral and
social point of view, of struggling against such disgusting
irregularities, made itself felt, and found zealous advocates.  From this
epoch are to be dated the first efforts to establish, in different parts
of France, what was called God's peace, God's truce.  The words were well
chosen for prohibiting at the same time oppression and revolt, for it
needed nothing less than law and the voice of God to put some restraint
upon the barbarous manners and passions of men, great or small, lord or
peasant.  It is the peculiar and glorious characteristic of Christianity
to have so well understood the primitive and permanent evil in human
nature that it fought against all the great iniquities of mankind and
exposed them in principle, even when, in point of general practice, it
neither hoped nor attempted to sweep them away.  Bishops, priests, and
monks were, in their personal lives and in the councils of the Church,
the first propagators of God's peace or truce, and in more than one
locality they induced the laic lords to follow their lead.  In 1164, Hugh
II., count of Rodez, in concert with his brother Hugh, bishop of Rodez,
and the notables of the district, established the peace in the diocese of
Rodez; "and this it is," said the learned Benedictines of the eighteenth
century, in the Art of Verifying Dates, "which gave rise to the toll of
_commune paix_ or _pesade,_ which is still collected in Rouergue."  King
Robert always showed himself favorable to this pacific work; and he is
the first amongst the five kings of France, in other respects very
different,--himself, St. Louis, Louis XII, Henry IV., and Louis XVI.,--
who were particularly distinguished for sympathetic kindness and anxiety
for the popular welfare.  Robert had a kindly feeling for the weak and
poor; not only did he protect them, on occasion, against the powerful,
but he took pains to conceal their defaults, and, in his church and at
his table, he suffered himself to be robbed without complaint, that he
might not have to denounce and punish the robbers.  "Wherefore at his
death," says his biographer Helgaud, "there were great mourning and
intolerable grief; a countless number of widows and orphans sorrowed for
the many benefits received from him; they did beat their breasts and went
to and from his tomb, crying, 'Whilst Robert was king and ordered all, we
lived in peace, we had nought to fear.  May the soul of that pious
father, that father of the senate, that father of all good, be blest and
saved!  May it mount up and dwell forever with Jesus Christ, the King of
kings!"

[Illustration: Robert had a Kindly Feeling for the Weak and Poor----313]

Though not so pious or so good as Robert, his son, Henry I., and his
grandson, Philip I., were neither more energetic nor more glorious kings.
During their long reigns (the former from 1031 to 1060, and the latter
from 1060 to 1108) no important and well-prosecuted design distinguished
their government.  Their public life was passed at one time in petty
warfare, without decisive results, against such and such vassals; at
another in acts of capricious intervention in the quarrels of their
vassals amongst themselves.  Their home-life was neither less irregular
nor conducted with more wisdom and regard for the public interest.  King
Robert had not succeeded in keeping his first wife, Bertha of Burgundy;
and his second, Constance of Aquitaine, with her imperious, malevolent,
avaricious, meddlesome disposition, reduced him to so abject a state that
he never gave a gratuity to any of his servants without saying, "Take
care that Constance know nought of it."  After Robert's death, Constance,
having become regent for her eldest son, Henry I., forthwith conspired to
dethrone him, and to put in his place her second son, Robert, who was her
favorite.  Henry, on being delivered by his mother's death from her
tyranny and intrigues, was thrice married; but his first two marriages
with two German princesses, one the daughter of the Emperor Conrad the
Salic, the other of the Emperor Henry III., were so far from happy that
in 1051 he sent into Russia, to Kieff, in search of his third wife, Anne,
daughter of the Czar Yaroslaff the Halt.  She was a modest creature who
lived quietly up to the death of her husband in 1060, and, two years
afterwards, in the reign of her son Philip I., rather than return to her
own country, married Raoul, count of Valois, who put away, to marry her,
his second wife, Haqueney, called Eleonore.  The divorce was opposed at
Rome before Pope Alexander II., to whom the archbishop of Rheims wrote
upon the subject, "Our kingdom is the scene of great troubles.  The
queen-mother has espoused Count Raoul, which has mightily displeased the
king.  As for the lady whom Raoul has put away, we have recognized the
justice of the complaints she has preferred before you, and the falsity
of the pre-texts on which he put her away."  The Pope ordered the count
to take back his wife; Raoul would not obey, and was excommunicated; but
he made light of it, and the Princess Anne of Russia, actually
reconciled, apparently, to Philip I., lived tranquilly in France, where,
in 1075, shortly after the death of her second husband, Count Raoul her
signature was still attached to a charter side by side with that of the
king her son.

The marriages of Philip I. brought even more trouble and scandal than
those of his father and grandfather.  At nineteen years of age, in 1072,
he had espoused Bertha, daughter of Florent I., count of Holland, and in
1078 he had by her the son who was destined to succeed him with the title
of Louis the Fat.  But twenty years later, 1092, Philip took a dislike to
his wife, put her away and banished her to Montreuil-sur-Mer, on the
ground of prohibited consanguinity.  He had conceived, there is no
knowing when, a violent passion for a woman celebrated for her beauty,
Bertrade, the fourth wife, for three years past, of Foulques le Roehin
(the brawler), count of Anjou.  Philip, having thus packed off Bertha,
set out for Tours, where Bertrade happened to be with her husband.
There, in the church of St. John, during the benediction of the baptismal
fonts, they entered into mutual engagements.  Philip went away again;
and, a few days afterwards, Bertrade was carried off by some people he
had left in the neighborhood of Tours, and joined him at Orleans.  Nearly
all the bishops of France, and amongst others the most learned and
respected of them, Yves, bishop of Chartres, refused their benediction to
this shocking marriage; and the king had great difficulty in finding a
priest to render him that service.  Then commenced between Philip and the
heads of the Catholic Church, Pope and bishops, a struggle which, with
negotiation upon negotiation and excommunication upon excommunication,
lasted twelve years, without the king's being able to get his marriage
canonically recognized; and, though he promised to send away Bertrade, he
was not content with merely keeping her with him, but he openly jeered at
excommunication and interdicts.  "It was the custom," says William of
Malmesbury, "at the places where the king sojourned, for divine service
to be stopped; and, as soon as he was moving away, all the bells began to
peal.  And then Philip would cry, as he laughed like one beside himself,
'Dost hear, my love, how they are ringing us out?'"  At last, in 1104,
the Bishop of Chartres himself, wearied by the persistency of the king
and by sight of the trouble in which the prolongation of the interdict
was plunging the kingdom, wrote to the Pope, Pascal II., "I do not
presume to offer you advice; I only desire to warn you that it were well
to show for a while some condescension towards the weaknesses of the man,
so far as consideration for his salvation may permit, and to rescue the
country from the critical state to which it is reduced by the
excommunication of this prince."  The Pope, consequently, sent
instructions to the bishops of the realm; and they, at the king's
summons, met at Paris on the 1st of December, 1104.  One of them,
Lambert, bishop of Arras, wrote to the Pope, "We sent as a deputation
to the king the bishops John of Orleans and Galon of Paris, charged to
demand of him whether he would conform to the clauses and conditions set
forth in your letters, and whether he were determined to give up the
unlawful intercourse which had made him guilty before God.  The king,
having answered, without being disconcerted, that he was ready to make
atonement to God and the holy Roman Church, was introduced to the
assembly.  He came barefooted, in a posture of devotion and humility,
confessing his sin and promising to purge him of his excommunication by
expiatory deeds.  And thus, by your authority, he earned absolution.
Then laying his hand on the book of the holy Gospels, he took an oath,
in the following terms, to renounce his guilty and unlawful marriage:
'Hearken, thou Lambert, bishop of Arras, who art here in place of the
Apostolic Pontiff; and let the archbishops and bishops here present
hearken unto me.  I, Philip, king of the French, do promise not to go
back to my sin, and to break off wholly the criminal intercourse I have
heretofore kept up with Bertrade.  I do promise that henceforth I will
have with her no intercourse or companionship, save in the presence of
persons beyond suspicion.  I will observe, faithfully and without turning
aside, these promises, in the sense set forth in the letters of the Pope,
and as ye understand.  So help me God and these holy Gospels!'  Bertrade,
at the moment of her release from excommunication, took in person the
same oath on the holy Gospels."

According to the statement of the learned Benedictines who studiously
examined into this incident, it is doubtful whether Philip I. broke off
all intercourse with Bertrade.  "Two years after his absolution, on the
10th of October, 1106, he arrived at Angers, on a Wednesday," says a
contemporary chronicler, "accompanied by the queen named Bertrade, and
was there received by Count Foulques and by all the Angevines, cleric and
laic, with great honors.  The day after his arrival, on Thursday, the
monks of St. Nicholas, introduced by the queen, presented themselves
before the king, and humbly prayed him, in concert with the queen, to
countenance, for the salvation of his soul and of the queen and his
relatives and friends, all acquisitions made by them in his dominions, or
that they might hereafter make, by gift or purchase, and to be pleased to
place his seal on their titles to property.  And the king granted their
request."

The most complete amongst the chroniclers of the time, Orderic Vital,
says, touching this meeting at Angers of Bertrade's two husbands, "This
clever woman had, by her skilful management, so perfectly reconciled
these two rivals, that she made them a splendid feast, got them both to
sit at the same table, had their beds prepared, the ensuing night, in the
same chamber, and ministered to them according to their pleasure."  The
most judicious of the historians and statesmen of the twelfth century,
the Abby Suger, that faithful minister of Louis the Fat, who cannot be
suspected of favoring Bertrade, expresses himself about her in these
terms: "This sprightly and rarely accomplished woman, well versed in the
art, familiar to her sex, of holding captive the husbands they have
outraged, had acquired such an empire over her first husband, the count
of Anjou, in spite of the affront she had put upon him by deserting him,
that he treated her with homage as his sovereign, often sat upon a stool
at her feet, and obeyed her wishes by a sort of enchantment."

These details are textually given as the best representation of the place
occupied, in the history of that time, by the morals and private life of
the kings.  It would not be right, however, to draw therefrom conclusions
as to the abasement of Capetian royalty in the eleventh century, with too
great severity.  There are irregularities and scandals which the great
qualities and the personal glory of princes may cause to be not only
excused but even forgotten, though certainly the three Capetians who
immediately succeeded the founder of the dynasty offered their people no
such compensation; but it must not be supposed that they had fallen into
the plight of the sluggard Merovingians or the last Carlovingians,
wandering almost without a refuge.  A profound change had come over
society and royalty in France.  In spite of their political mediocrity
and their indolent licentiousness, Robert, Henry I., and Philip I., were
not, in the eleventh century, insignificant personages, without authority
or practical influence, whom their contemporaries could leave out of the
account; they were great lords, proprietors of vast domains wherein they
exercised over the population an almost absolute power; they had, it is
true, about them, rivals, large proprietors and almost absolute
sovereigns, like themselves, sometimes stronger even, materially, than
themselves and more energetic or more intellectually able, whose
superiors, however, they remained on two grounds--as suzerains and as
kings: their court was always the most honored and their alliance always
very much sought after.  They occupied the first rank in feudal society
and a rank unique in the body politic such as it was slowly becoming in
the midst of reminiscences and traditions of the Jewish monarchy, of
barbaric kingship, and of the Roman empire for a while resuscitated by
Charlemagne.  French kingship in the eleventh century was sole power
invested with a triple character--Germanic, Roman, and religious; its
possessors were at the same time the chieftains of the conquerors of the
soil, the successors of the Roman emperors and of Charlemagne, and the
laic delegates and representatives of the God of the Christians.
Whatever were their weaknesses and their personal short-comings, they
were not the mere titularies of a power in decay, and the kingly post was
strong and full of blossoms, as events were not slow to demonstrate.

And as with the kingship, so with the community of France in the eleventh
century.  In spite of its dislocation into petty incoherent and turbulent
associations, it was by no means in decay.  Irregularities of ambition,
hatreds and quarrels amongst neighbors and relatives, outrages on the
part of princes and peoples were incessantly renewed; but energy of
character, activity of mind, indomitable will and zeal for the liberty of
the individual were not wanting, and they exhibited themselves
passionately and at any risk, at one time by brutal and cynical outbursts
which were followed occasionally by fervent repentance and expiation, at
another by acts of courageous wisdom and disinterested piety.  At the
commencement of the eleventh century, William III., count of Poitiers and
duke of Aquitaine, was one of the most honored and most potent princes of
his time; all the sovereigns of Europe sent embassies to him as to their
peer; he every year made, by way of devotion, a trip to Rome, and was
received there with the same honors as the emperor.  He was fond of
literature, and gave up to reading the early hours of the night; and
scholars called him another Maecenas.  Unaffected by these worldly
successes intermingled with so much toil and so many miscalculations, he
refused the crown of Italy, when it was offered him at the death of the
Emperor Henry II., and he finished, like Charles V. some centuries later,
by going and seeking in a monastery isolation from the world and repose.
But, in the same domains and at the end of the same century, his grandson
William VII.  was the most vagabondish, dissolute, and violent of
princes; and his morals were so scandalous that the bishop of Poitiers,
after having warned him to no purpose, considered himself forced to
excommunicate him.  The duke suddenly burst into the church, made his way
through the congregation, sword in hand, and seized the prelate by the
hair, saying, "Thou shalt give me absolution or die."  The bishop
demanded a moment for reflection, profited by it to pronounce the form of
excommunication, and forthwith bowing his head before the duke, said,
"And now strike!"  "I love thee not well enough to send thee to
paradise," answered the duke; and he confined himself to depriving him of
his see.  For fury the duke of Aquitaine sometimes substituted insolent
mockery.  Another bishop, of Angouleme, who was quite bald, likewise