Here is a striking instance of the changeableness of men's feelings and judgments; and it causes a shock even when it is natural and almost allowable. Guibert of Nogent, the contemporary historian, who was but lately loud in his blame of the bishop of Laon's character and conduct, now takes sides with the reaction aroused by popular excesses and vindictiveness, and is indignant with "those execrable institutions of communes," the source of so many disturbances and crimes. The burghers of Laon themselves, "having reflected upon the number and enormity of the crimes they had committed, shrank up with fear," says Guibert, "and dreaded the judgment of the king." To protect themselves against the consequences of his resentment, they added a fresh wound to the old by summoning to their aid Thomas de Marle, son of Lord Enguerrand de Coucy. "This Thomas, from his earliest youth, enriched himself by plundering the poor and the pilgrim, contracted several incestuous marriages, and exhibited a ferocity so unheard of in our age, that certain people, even amongst those who have a reputation for cruelty, appear less lavish of the blood of common sheep than Thomas was of human blood. Such was the man whom the burghers of Laon implored to come and put himself at their head, and whom they welcomed with joy when he entered their town. As for him, when he had heard their request, he consulted his own people to know what he ought to do; and they all replied that his forces were not sufficiently numerous to defend such a city against the king. Thomas then induced the burghers to go out and hold a meeting in a field where he would make known to them his plan. When they were about a mile from the town, he said to them, 'Laon is the head of the kingdom; it is impossible for me to keep the king from making himself master of it. If you dread his arms, follow me to my own land, and you will find in me a protector and a friend.' These words threw them into an excess of consternation; soon, however, the popular party, troubled at the recollection of the crime they had committed, and fancying they already saw the king threatening their lives, fled away to the number of a great many in the wake of Thomas. Teutgaud himself, that murderer of Bishop Gaudri, hastened to put himself under the wing of the Lord of Marie. Before long the rumor spread abroad amongst the population of the country-places near Laon that that town was quite empty of inhabitants; and all the peasants rushed thither and took possession of the houses they found without defenders. Who could tell, or be believed if he were to attempt to tell, how much money, raiment, and provision of all kinds was discovered in this city? Before long there arose between the first and last comers disputes about the partition of their plunder; all that the small folks had taken soon passed into the hands of the powerful; if two men met a third quite alone they stripped him; the state of the town was truly pitiable. The burghers who had quitted it with Thomas de Marle had beforehand destroyed and burned the houses of the clergy and grandees whom they hated; and now the grandees, escaped from the massacre, carried off in their turn from the houses of the fugitives all means of subsistence and all movables to the very hinges and bolts."

The rumor of so many disasters, crimes, and reactions succeeding one another spread rapidly throughout all districts. Thomas de Marle was put under the ban of the kingdom, and visited with excommunication "by a general assembly of the Church of the Gauls," says Guibert of Nogent, "assembled at Beauvais; "and this sentence was read every Sunday after mass in all the metropolitan and parochial churches. Public feeling against Thomas de Marle became so strong that Enguerrand de Bowes, Lord of Coucy, who passed, says Suger, for his father, joined those who declared war against him in the name of Church and King. Louis the Fat took the field in person against him. "Men-at-arms, and in very small numbers, too," says Guibert of Nogent, "were with difficulty induced to second the king, and did not do so heartily; but the light-armed infantry made up a considerable force, and the Archbishop of Rheims and the bishops had summoned all the people to this expedition, whilst offering to all absolution from their sins. Thomas de Marle, though at that time helpless and stretched upon his bed, was not sparing of scoffs and insults towards his assailants; and at first he absolutely refused to listen to the king's summons." But Louis persisted without wavering in his enterprise, exposing himself freely, and in person leading his infantry to the attack when the men-at-arms did not come on or bore themselves slackly. He carried successively the castles of Crecy and Nogent, domains belonging to Thomas de Marle, and at last reduced him to the necessity of buying himself off at a heavy ransom, indemnifying the churches he had spoiled, giving guarantees for future behavior, and earnestly praying for re-admission to the communion of the faithful. As for those folks of Laon, perpetrators of or accomplices in the murder of Bishop Gaudri, who had sought refuge with Thomas de Marle, the king showed them no mercy. "He ordered them," says Suger, "to be strung up to the gibbet, and left for food to the voracity of kites, and crows, and vultures."

There are certain discrepancies between the two accounts, both contemporaneous, which we possess of this incident in the earliest years of the twelfth century, one in the Life of Louis the Fat, by Suger, and the other in the Life of Guibert of Nogent, by himself. They will be easily recognized on comparing what was said, after Suger, in Chapter XVIII. of this history, with what has just been said here after Guibert. But these discrepancies are of no historical importance, for they make no difference in respect of the essential facts characteristic of social condition at the period, and of the behavior and position of the actors.

Louis the Fat, after his victory over Thomas de Marle and the fugitives from Laon, went to Laon with the Archbishop of Rheims; and the presence of the king, whilst restoring power to the foes of the commune, inspired them, no doubt, with a little of the spirit of moderation, for there was an interval of peace, during which no attention was paid to anything but expiatory ceremonies and the restoration of the churches which had been a prey to the flames. The archbishop celebrated a solemn mass for the repose of the souls of those who had perished during the disturbances, and he preached a sermon exhorting serfs to submit themselves to their masters, and warning them on pain of anathema from resisting by force. The burghers of Laon, however, did not consider every sort of resistance forbidden, and the lords had, no doubt, been taught not to provoke it, for in 1128, sixteen years after the murder of Bishop Gaudri, fear of a fresh insurrection determined his successor to consent to the institution of a new commune, the charter of which was ratified by Louis the Fat in an assembly held at Compiegne. Only the name of commune did not recur in this charter; it was replaced by that of Peace-establishment; the territorial boundaries of the commune were called peace-boundaries, and to designate its members recourse was had to the formula, All those who have signed this peace. The preamble of the charter runs, "In the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity, we Louis, by the grace of God king of the French, do make known to all our lieges present and to come that, with the consent of the barons of our kingdom and the inhabitants of the city of Laon, we have set up in the said city a peace-establishment." And after having enumerated the limits, forms, and rules of it, the charter concludes with this declaration of amnesty: "All former trespasses and offences committed before the ratification of the present treaty are wholly pardoned. If any one, banished for having trespassed in past time, desire to return to the town, he shall be admitted and shall recover possession of his property. Excepted from pardon, however, are the thirteen whose names do follow; "and then come the names of the thirteen excepted from the amnesty and still under banishment. "Perhaps," says M. Augustin Thierry, "these thirteen under banishment, shut out forever from their native town at the very moment it became free, had been distinguished amongst all the burghers of Laon by their opposition to the power of the lords; perhaps they had sullied by deeds of violence this patriotic opposition; perhaps they had been taken at haphazard to suffer alone for the crimes of their fellow-citizens." The second hypothesis appears the most probable; for that deeds of violence and cruelty had been committed alternately by the burghers and their foes is an ascertained fact, and that the charter of 1128 was really a work of liberal pacification is proved by its contents and wording. After such struggles and at the moment of their subsidence some of the most violent actors always bear the burden of the past, and amongst the most violent some are often the most sincere.

For forty-seven years after the charter of Louis the Fat the town of Laon enjoyed the internal peace and the communal liberties it had thus achieved; but in 1175 a new bishop, Roger de Rosoy, a man of high birth, and related to several of the great lords his neighbors, took upon himself to disregard the regimen of freedom established at Laon. The burghers of Laon, taught by experience, applied to the king, Louis the Young, and offered him a sum of money to grant them a charter of commune. Bishop Roger, "by himself and through his friends," says a chronicler, a canon of Laon, "implored the king to have pity on his Church, and abolish the serfs' commune; but the king, clinging to the promise he had received of money, would not listen to the bishop or his friends," and in 1177 gave the burghers of Laon a charter which confirmed their peace- establishment of 1128. Bishop Roger, however, did not hold himself beaten. He claimed the help of the lords his neighbors, and renewed the war against the burghers of Laon, who, on their side, asked and obtained the aid of several communes in the vicinity. In an access of democratic rashness, instead of awaiting within their walls the attack of their enemies, they marched out without cavalry to the encounter, ravaging as they went the lands of the lords whom they suspected of being ill-disposed towards them; but on arriving in front of the bishop's allies, "all this rustic multitude," says the canon-chronicler, "terror- stricken at the bare names of the knights they found assembled, took suddenly to flight, and a great number of the burghers were massacred before reaching their city." Louis the Young then took the field to help them; but Baldwin, Count of Hainault, went to the aid of the Bishop of Laon with seven hundred knights and several thousand infantry. King Louis, after having occupied and for some time held in sequestration the lands of the bishop, thought it advisable to make peace rather than continue so troublesome a war, and at the intercession of the pope and the Count of Hainault he restored to Roger de Rosoy his lands and his bishopric on condition of living in peace with the commune. And so long as Louis VII. lived, the bishop did refrain from attacking the liberties of the burghers of Laon; but at the king's death, in 1180, he applied to his successor, Philip Augustus, and offered to cede to him the lordship of Fere-sur-Oise, of which he was the possessor, provided that Philip by charter abolished the commune of Laon. Philip yielded to the temptation, and in 1190 published an ordinance to the following purport: "Desiring to avoid for our soul every sort of danger, we do entirely quash the commune established in the town of Laon as being contrary to the rights and liberties of the metropolitan church of St. Mary, in regard for justice and for the sake of a happy issue to the pilgrimage which we be bound to make to Jerusalem." But next year, upon entreaty and offers from the burghers of Laon, Philip changed his mind, and without giving back the lordship of Fere-sur-Oise to the bishop, guaranteed and confirmed in perpetuity the peace-establishment granted in 1128 to the town of Laon, "on the condition that every year at the feast of All Saints they shall pay to us and our successors two hundred livres of Paris." For a century all strife of any consequence ceased between the burghers of Laon and their bishop; there was no real accord or good under-standing between them, but the public peace was not troubled, and neither the Kings of France nor the great lords of the neighborhood interfered in its affairs. In 1294 some knights and clergy of the metropolitan chapter of Laon took to quarrelling with some burghers; and on both sides they came to deeds of violence, which caused sanguinary struggles in the streets of the town and even in the precincts of the episcopal palace. The bishop and his chapter applied to the pope, Boniface VIII., who applied to the king, Philip the Handsome, to put an end to these scandalous disturbances. Philip the Handsome, in his turn, applied to the Parliament of Paris, which, after inquiry, "deprived the town of Laon of every right of commune and college, under whatsoever name." The king did not like to execute this decree in all its rigor. He granted the burghers of Laon a charter which maintained them provisionally in the enjoyment of their political rights, but with this destructive clause: "Said commune and said shrievalty shall be in force only so far as it shall be our pleasure." For nearly thirty years, from Philip the Handsome to Philip of Valois, the bishops and burghers of Laon were in litigation before the crown of France, the former for the maintenance of the commune of Laon in its precarious condition and at the king's good pleasure, the latter for the recovery of its independent and durable character. At last, in 1331, Philip of Valois, "considering that the olden commune of Laon, by reason of certain misdeeds and excesses, notorious, enormous, and detestable, had been removed and put down forever by decree of the court of our most clear lord and uncle, King Philip the Handsome, confirmed and approved by our most dear lords, Kings Philip and Charles, whose souls are with God, we, on great deliberation of our council, have ordained that no commune, corporation, college, shrievalty, mayor, jurymen, or any other estate or symbol belonging thereto, be at any time set up or established at Laon." By the same ordinance the municipal administration of Laon was put under the sole authority of the king and his delegates; and to blot out all remembrance of the olden independence of the commune, a later ordinance forbade that the tower from which the two huge communal bells had been removed should thenceforth be called belfry-tower.



The history of the commune of Laon is that of the majority of the towns which, in Northern and Central France, struggled from the eleventh to the fourteenth century to release themselves from feudal oppression and violence. Cambrai, Beauvais, Amiens, Soissons, Rheims, Vezelay, and several other towns displayed at this period a great deal of energy and perseverance in bringing their lords to recognize the most natural and the most necessary rights of every human creature and community. But within their walls dissensions were carried to extremity, and existence was ceaselessly tempestuous and troublous; the burghers were hasty, brutal, and barbaric,—as barbaric as the lords against whom they were defending their liberties. Amongst those mayors, sheriffs, jurats, and magistrates of different degrees and with different titles, set up in the communes, many came before very long to exercise dominion arbitrarily, violently, and in their own personal interests. The lower orders were in an habitual state of jealousy and sedition of a ruffianly kind towards the rich, the heads of the labor market, the controllers of capital and of work. This reciprocal violence, this anarchy, these internal evils and dangers, with their incessant renewals, called incessantly for intervention from without; and when, after releasing themselves from oppression and iniquity coming from above, the burghers fell a prey to pillage and massacre coming from below, they sought for a fresh protector to save them from this fresh evil. Hence that frequent recourse to the king, the great suzerain whose authority could keep down the bad magistrates of the commune or reduce the mob to order; and hence also, before long, the progressive downfall, or, at any rate, the utter enfeeblement of those communal liberties so painfully won. France was at that stage of existence and of civilization at which security can hardly be purchased save at the price of liberty. We have a phenomenon peculiar to modern times in the provident and persistent effort to reconcile security with liberty, and the bold development of individual powers with the regular maintenance of public order. This admirable solution of the social problem, still so imperfect and unstable in our time, was unknown in the middle ages; liberty was then so stormy and so fearful, that people conceived before long, if not a disgust for it, at any rate a horror of it, and sought at any price a political regimen which would give them some security, the essential aim of the social estate. When we arrive at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, we see a host of communes falling into decay or entirely disappearing; they cease really to belong to and govern themselves; some, like Laon, Cambrai, Beauvais, and Rheims, fought a long while against decline, and tried more than once to re-establish themselves in all their independence; but they could not do without the king's support in their resistance to their lords, laic or ecclesiastical; and they were not in a condition to resist the kingship, which had grown whilst they were perishing. Others, Meulan and Soissons, for example (in 1320 and 1335), perceived their weakness early, and themselves requested the kingship to deliver them from their communal organization, and itself assume their administration. And so it is about this period, under St. Louis and Philip the Handsome, that there appear in the collections of acts of the French kingship, those great ordinances which regulate the administration of all communes within the kingly domains. Hitherto the kings had ordinarily dealt with each town severally; and as the majority were almost independent, or invested with privileges of different kiwis and carefully respected, neither the king nor any great suzerain dreamed of prescribing general rules for communal regimen, nor of administering after a uniform fashion all the communes in their domains. It was under St. Louis and Philip the Handsome that general regulations on this subject began. The French communes were associations too small and too weak to suffice for self-maintenance and self-government amidst the disturbances of the great Christian community; and they were too numerous and too little enlightened to organize themselves into one vast confederation, capable of giving them a central government. The communal liberties were not in a condition to found in France a great republican community; to the kingship appertained the power and fell the honor of presiding over the formation and the fortunes of the French nation.

But the kingship did not alone accomplish this great work. At the very time that the communes were perishing and the kingship was growing, a new power, a new social element, the Third Estate, was springing up in France; and it was called to take a far more important place in the history of France, and to exercise far more influence upon the fate of the French father-land, than it had been granted to the communes to acquire during their short and incoherent existence.

It may astonish many who study the records of French history from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, not to find anywhere the words third estate; and a desire may arise to know whether those inquirers of our day who have devoted themselves professedly to this particular study, have been more successful in discovering that grand term at the time when it seems that we ought to expect to meet with it. The question was, therefore, submitted to a learned member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, M. Littre, in fact, whose Dictionnaire etymologique de la Langur Francaise is consulted with respect by the whole literary world, and to a young magistrate, M. Picot, to whom the Acacdemie des Sciences morales et politiques but lately assigned the first prize for his great work on the question it had propounded, as to the history and influence of states-general in France; and here are inserted, textually, the answers given by two gentlemen of so much enlightenment and authority upon such a subject.

M. Littre, writing on the 3d of October, 1871, says, "I do not find, in my account of the word, third estate before the sixteenth century. I quote these two instances of it: 'As to the third order called third estate . . .' (La Noue, Discours, p. 541); and 'clerks and deputies for the third estate, same for the estate of labor (laborers).' (Coustumier general, t. i. p. 335.) In the fifteenth century, or at the end of the fourteenth, in the poems of Eustace Deschamps, I have—

'Prince, dost thou yearn for good old times again? In good old ways the Three Estates restrain.'

"At date of fourteenth century, in Du Cange, we read under the word status, 'Per tres status concilii generalis Praelatorum, Baronum, nobilium et universitatum comitatum.' According to these documents, I think it is in the fourteenth century that they began to call the three orders tres status, and that it was only in the sixteenth century that they began to speak in French of the tiers estat (third estate). But I cannot give this conclusion as final, seeing that it is supported only by the documents I consulted for my dictionary."

M. Picot replied on the 3d of October, 1871, "It is certain that acts contemporary with King John frequently speak of the 'three estates,' but do not utter the word tiers-etat (third estate). The great chronicles and Froissart say nearly always, 'the church-men, the nobles, and the good towns.' The royal ordinances employ the same terms; but sometimes, in order not to limit their enumeration to the deputies of closed cities, they add, the good towns, and the open country (Ord. t. iii p. 221, note). When they apply to the provincial estates of the Oil tongue it is the custom to say, the burghers and inhabitants; when it is a question of the Estates of Languedoc, the commonalties of the seneschalty. Such were, in the middle of the fourteenth century, the only expressions for designating the third order.

"Under Louis XI., Juvenal des Ursins, in his harangue, addresses the deputies of the third by the title of burghers and inhabitants of the good towns. At the States of Tours, the spokesman of the estates, John de Rely, says, the people of the common estate, the estate of the people. The special memorial presented to Charles VIII. by the three orders of Languedoc likewise uses the word people.

"It is in Masselin's report and the memorial of grievances presented in 1485 that I meet for the first time with the expression third estate (tiers-etat). Masselin says, 'It was decided that each section should furnish six commissioners, two ecclesiastics, two nobles, and two of the third estate (duos ecclesiasticos, duos nobiles, et duos tertii status.)' (Documents inedits sur l'Histoire de France; proces-verbal de Masselin, p. 76.) The commencement of the chapter headed Of the Commons (du commun) is, 'For the third and common estate the said folks do represent . . .' and a few lines lower, comparing the kingdom with the human body, the compilers of the memorial say, 'The members are the clergy, the nobles, and the folks of the third estate. (Ibid. after the report of Masselin, memorial of grievances, p. 669.)

"Thus, at the end of the fifteenth century, the expression third estate was constantly employed; but is it not of older date? There are words which spring so from the nature of things that they ought to be contemporaneous with the ideas they express; their appearance in language is inevitable, and is scarcely noticed there. On the day when the deputies of the communes entered an assembly, and seated themselves beside the first two orders, the new comer, by virtue of the situation and rank occupied, took the name of third order; and as our fathers used to speak of the third denier (tiers denier), and the third day (tierce journee), so they must have spoken of the (tiers-etat) third estate. It was only at the end of the fifteenth century that the expression became common; but I am inclined to believe that it existed in the beginning of the fourteenth.

"For an instant I had imagined, in the course of my researches, that, under King John, the ordinances had designated the good towns by the name of third estate. I very soon saw my mistake; but you will see how near I found myself to the expression of which we are seeking the origin. Four times, in the great ordinance of December, 1335, the deputies wrest from the king a promise that in the next assemblies the resolutions shall be taken according to the unanimity of the orders 'without two estates, if they be of one accord, being able to bind the third.' At first sight it might be supposed that the deputies of the towns had an understanding to secure themselves from the dangers of common action on the part of the clergy and noblesse, but a more attentive examination made me fly back to a more correct opinion: it is certain that the three orders had combined for mutual protection against an alliance of any two of them. Besides, the States of 1576 saw how the clergy readopted to their profit, against the two laic orders, the proposition voted in 1355. It is beyond a doubt that this doctrine served to keep the majority from oppressing the minority whatever may have been its name. Only, in point of fact, it was most frequently the third estate that must have profited by the regulation.

"In brief, we may, before the fifteenth century, make suppositions, but they are no more than mere conjectures. It was at the great States of Tours, in 1468, that, for the first time, the third order bore the name which has been given to it by history."

The fact was far before its name. Had the third estate been centred entirely in the communes at strife with their lords, had the fate of burgherdom in France depended on the communal liberties won in that strife, we should see, at the end of the thirteenth century, that element of French society in a state of feebleness and decay. But it was far otherwise. The third estate drew its origin and nourishment from all sorts of sources; and whilst one was within an ace of drying up, the others remained abundant and fruitful. Independently of the commune properly so called and invested with the right of self-government, many towns had privileges, serviceable though limited franchises, and under the administration of the king's officers they grew in population and wealth. These towns did not share, towards the end of the thirteenth century, in the decay of the once warlike and victorious communes. Local political liberty was to seek in them; the spirit of independence and resistance did not prevail in them; but we see growing up in them another spirit which has played a grand part in French history, a spirit of little or no ambition, of little or no enterprise, timid even and scarcely dreaming of actual resistance, but honorable, inclined to order, persevering, attached to its traditional franchises, and quite able to make them respected, sooner or later. It was especially in the towns administered in the king's name and by his provosts that there was a development of this spirit, which has long been the predominant characteristic of French burgherdom. It must not be supposed that, in the absence of real communal independence, these towns lacked all internal security. The kingship was ever fearful lest its local officers should render themselves independent, and remembered what had become in the ninth century of the crown's offices, the duchies and the countships, and of the difficulty it had at that time to recover the scattered remnants of the old imperial authority. And so the Capetian kings with any intelligence, such as Louis VI., Philip Augustus, St. Louis, and Philip the Handsome, were careful to keep a hand over their provosts, sergeants, and officers of all kinds, in order that their power should not grow so great as to become formidable. At this time, besides, Parliament and the whole judicial system was beginning to take form; and many questions relating to the administration of the towns, many disputes between the provosts and burghers, were carried before the Parliament of Paris, and there decided with more independence and equity than they would have been by any other power. A certain measure of impartiality is inherent in judicial power; the habit of delivering judgment according to written texts, of applying laws to facts, produces a natural and almost instinctive respect for old-acquired rights. In Parliament the towns often obtained justice and the maintenance of their franchises against the officers of the king. The collection of kingly ordinances at this time abounds with instances of the kind. These judges, besides, these bailiffs, these provosts, these seneschals, and all these officers of the king or of the great suzerains, formed before long a numerous and powerful class. Now the majority amongst them were burghers, and their number and their power were turned to the advantage of burgherdom, and led day by day to its further extension and importance. Of all the original sources of the third estate, this it is, perhaps, which has contributed most to bring about the social preponderance of that order. Just when burgherdom, but lately formed, was losing in many of the communes a portion of its local liberties, at that same moment it was seizing by the hand of Parliaments, provosts, judges, and administrators of all kinds, a large share of central power. It was through burghers admitted into the king's service and acting as administrators or judges in his name that communal independence and charters were often attacked and abolished; but at the same time they fortified and elevated burgherdom, they caused it to acquire from day to day more wealth, more credit, more importance and power in the internal and external affairs of the state.

Philip the Handsome, that ambitious and despotic prince, was under no delusion when in 1302, 1308, and 1314, on convoking the first states- general of France, he summoned thither "the deputies of the good towns." He did not yet give them the name of third estate; but he was perfectly aware that he was thus summoning to his aid against Boniface VIII. and the Templars and the Flemings a class already invested throughout the country with great influence and ready to lend him efficient support. His son, Philip the Long, was under no delusion when in 1317 and 1321 he summoned to the states-general "the commonalties and good towns of the kingdom "to decide upon the interpretation of the Salle law as to the succession to the throne, "or to advise as to the means of establishing a uniformity of coins, weights, and measures;" he was perfectly aware that the authority of burgherdom would be of great assistance to him in the accomplishment of acts so grave. And the three estates played the prelude to the formation, painful and slow as it was, of constitutional monarchy, when, in 1338, under Philip of Valois, they declared, "in presence of the said king, Philip of Valois, who assented thereto, that there should be no power to impose or levy talliage in France if urgent necessity or evident utility did not require it, and then only by grant of the people of the estates."

In order to properly understand the French third estate and its importance, more is required than to look on at its birth; a glance must be taken at its grand destiny and the results at which it at last arrived. Let us, therefore, anticipate centuries and get a glimpse, now at once, of that upon which the course of events from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century will shed full light.

Taking the history of France in its entirety and under all its phases, the third estate has been the most active and determining element in the process of Freneh civilization. If we follow it in its relation with the general government of the country, we see it at first allied for six centuries to the kingship, struggling without cessation against the feudal aristocracy and giving predominance in place thereof to a single central power, pure monarchy, closely bordering, though with some frequently repeated but rather useless reservations, on absolute monarchy. But, so soon as it had gained this victory and brought about this revolution, the third estate went in pursuit of a new one, attacking that single power to the foundation of which it had contributed so much and entering upon the task of changing pure monarchy into constitutional monarchy. Under whatever aspect we regard it during these two great enterprises, so different one from the other, whether we study the progressive formation of French society or that of its government, the third estate is the most powerful and the most persistent of the forces which have influenced French civilization.

This fact is unique in the history of the world. We recognize in the career of the chief nations of Asia and ancient Europe nearly all the great facts which have agitated France; we meet in them mixture of different races, conquest of people by people, immense inequality between classes, frequent changes in the forms of government and extent of public power; but nowhere is there any appearance of a class which, starting from the very lowest, from being feeble, despised, and almost imperceptible at its origin, rises by perpetual motion and by labor without respite, strengthens itself from period to period, acquires in succession whatever it lacked, wealth, enlightenment, influence, changes the face of society and the nature of government, and arrives at last at such a pitch of predominance that it may be said to be absolutely the country. More than once in the world's history the external semblances of such and such a society have been the same as those which have just been reviewed here, but it is mere semblance. In India, for example, foreign invasions and the influx and establishment of different races upon the same soil have occurred over and over again; but with what result? The permanence of caste has not been touched; and society has kept its divisions into distinct and almost changeless classes. After India take China. There too history exhibits conquests similar to the conquest of Europe by the Germans; and there too, more than once, the barbaric conquerors settled amidst a population of the conquered. What was the result? The conquered all but absorbed the conquerors, and changelessness was still the predominant characteristic of the social condition. In Western Asia, after the invasions of the Turks, the separation between victors and vanquished remained insurmountable; no ferment in the heart of society, no historical event, could efface this first effect of conquest. In Persia, similar events succeeded one another; different races fought and intermingled; and the end was irremediable social anarchy, which has endured for ages without any change in the social condition of the country, without a shadow of any development of civilization.

So much for Asia. Let us pass to the Europe of the Greeks and Romans. At the first blush we seem to recognize some analogy between the progress of these brilliant societies and that of French society; but the analogy is only apparent; there is, once more, nothing resembling the fact and the history of the French third estate. One thing only has struck sound judgments as being somewhat like the struggle of burgherdom in the middle ages against the feudal aristocracy, and that is the struggle between the plebeians and patricians at Rome. They have often been compared; but it is a baseless comparison. The struggle between the plebeians and patricians commenced from the very cradle of the Roman republic; it was not, as happened in the France of the middle ages, the result of a slow, difficult, incomplete development on the part of a class which, through a long course of great inferiority in strength, wealth, and credit, little by little extended itself and raised itself, and ended by engaging in a real contest with the superior class. It is now acknowledged that the struggle at Rome between the plebeians and patricians was a sequel and a prolongation of the war of conquest, was an effort on the part of the aristocracy of the cities conquered by Rome to share the rights of the conquering aristocracy. The families of plebeians were the chief families of the vanquished peoples; and though placed by defeat in a position of inferiority, they were not any the less aristocratic families, powerful but lately in their own cities, encompassed by clients, and calculated from the very first to dispute with their conquerors the possession of power. There is nothing in all this like that slow, obscure, heart-breaking travail of modern burgherdom escaping, full hardly, from the midst of slavery or a condition approximating to slavery, and spending centuries, not in disputing political power, but in winning its own civil existence. The more closely the French third estate is examined, the more it is recognized as a new fact in the world's history, appertaining exclusively to the civilization of modern, Christian Europe.

Not only is the fact new, but it has for France an entirely special interest, since—to employ an expression much abused in the present day— it is a fact eminently French, essentially national. Nowhere has burgherdom had so wide and so productive a career as that which fell to its lot in France. There have been communes in the whole of Europe, in Italy, Spain, Germany, and England, as well as in France. Not only have there been communes everywhere, but the communes of France are not those which, as communes, under that name and in the middle ages, have played the chiefest part and taken the highest place in history. The Italian communes were the parents of glorious republics. The German communes became free and sovereign towns, which had their own special history, and exercised a great deal of influence upon the general history of Germany. The communes of England made alliance with a portion of the English feudal aristocracy, formed with it the preponderating house in the British government, and thus played, full early, a mighty part in the history of their country. Far were the French communes, under that name and in their day of special activity, from rising to such political importance and to such historical rank. And yet it is in France that the people of the communes, the burgherdom, reached the most complete and most powerful development, and ended by acquiring the most decided preponderance in the general social structure. There have been communes, we say, throughout Europe; but there has not really been a victorious third estate anywhere, save in France. The revolution of 1789, the greatest ever seen, was the culminating point arrived at by the third estate; and France is the only country in which a man of large mind could, in a burst of burgher's pride, exclaim, "What is the third estate? Everything."

Since the explosion, and after all the changes, liberal and illiberal, due to the revolution of 1789, there has been a common-place, ceaselessly repeated, to the effect that there are no more classes in French society —there is only a nation of thirty-seven millions of persons. If it be meant that there are now no more privileges in France, no special laws and private rights for such and such families, proprietorships, and occupations, and that legislation is the same, and there is perfect freedom of movement for all, at all steps of the social ladder, it is true; oneness of laws and similarity of rights, is now the essential and characteristic fact of civil society in France, an immense, an excellent, and a novel fact in the history of human associations. But beneath the dominance of this fact, in the midst of this national unity and this civil equality, there evidently and necessarily exist numerous and important diversities and inequalities, which oneness of laws and similarity of rights neither prevent nor destroy. In point of property, real or personal, land or capital, there are rich and poor; there are the large, the middling, and the small property. Though the great proprietors may be less numerous and less rich, and the middling and the small proprietors more numerous and more powerful than they were of yore, this does not prevent the difference from being real and great enough to create, in the civil body, social positions widely different and unequal. In the professions which are called liberal, and which live by brains and knowledge, amongst barristers, doctors, scholars, and literates of all kinds, some rise to the first rank, attract to themselves practice and success, and win fame, wealth, and influence; others make enough, by hard work, for the necessities of their families and the calls of their position; others vegetate obscurely in a sort of lazy discomfort. In the other vocations, those in which the labor is principally physical and manual, there also it is according to nature that there should be different and unequal positions; some, by brains and good conduct, make capital, and get a footing upon the ways of competence and progress; others, being dull, or idle, or disorderly, remain in the straitened and precarious condition of existence depending solely on wages. Throughout the whole extent of the social structure, in the ranks of labor as well as of property, differences and inequalities of position are produced or kept up and co-exist with oneness of laws and similarity of rights. Examine any human associations, in any place and at any time, and whatever diversity there may be in point of their origin, organization, government, extent, and duration, there will be found in all three types of social position always fundamentally the same, though they may appear under different and differently distributed forms; 1st, men living on income from their properties, real or personal, land or capital, without seeking to increase them by their own personal and assiduous labor; 2d, men devoted to working up and increasing, by their own personal and assiduous labor, the real or personal properties, land or capital they possess; 3d, men living by their daily labor, without land or capital to give them an income. And these differences, these inequalities in the social position of men, are not matters of accident or violence, or peculiar to such and such a time, or such and such a country; they are matters of universal application, produced spontaneously in every human society by virtue of the primitive and general laws of human nature, in the midst of events and under the influence of social systems utterly different.

These matters exist now and in France as they did of old and elsewhere. Whether you do or do not use the name of classes, the new French social fabric contains, and will not cease to contain, social positions widely different and unequal. What constitutes its blessing and its glory is, that privilege and fixity no longer cling to this difference of positions; that there are no more special rights and advantages legally assigned to some and inacessible to others; that all roads are free and open to all to rise to everything; that personal merit and toil have an infinitely greater share than was ever formerly allowed to them in the fortunes of men. The third estate of the old regimen exists no more; it disappeared in its victory over privilege and absolute power; it has for heirs the middle classes, as they are now called; but these classes, whilst inheriting the conquests of the old third estate, hold them on new conditions also, as legitimate as binding. To secure their own interests, as well as to discharge their public duty, they are bound to be at once conservative and liberal; they must, on the one hand, enlist and rally beneath their flag the old, once privileged superioritics, which have survived the fall of the old regimen, and, on the other hand, fully recognize the continual upward movement which is fermenting in the whole body of the nation. That, in its relations with the aristocratic classes, the third estate of the old regimen should have been and for a long time remained uneasy, disposed to take umbrage, jealous and even envious, is no more than natural; it had its rights to urge and its conquests to gain; nowadays its conquests have been won, the rights are recognized, proclaimed, and exercised; the middle classes have no longer any legitimate ground for uneasiness or envy; they can rest with full confidence in their own dignity and their own strength; they have undergone all the necessary trials, and passed all the necessary tests. In respect of the lower orders, and the democracy properly so called, the position of the middle classes is no less favorable; they have no fixed line of separation; for who can say where the middle classes begin and where they end? In the name of the principles of common rights and general liberty they were formed; and by the working of the same principles they are being constantly recruited, and are incessantly drawing new vigor from the sources whence they sprang. To maintain common rights and free movement upwards against the retrograde tendencies of privilege and absolute power, on the one hand, and on the other against the insensate and destructive pretensions of levellers and anarchists, is now the double business of the middle classes; and it is at the same time, for themselves, the sure way of preserving preponderance in the state, in the name of general interests, of which those classes are the most real and most efficient representatives.

On reaching, in our history, the period at which Philip the Handsome, by giving admission amongst the states-general to the "burghers of the good towns," substituted the third estate for the communes, and the united action of the three great classes of Frenchmen for their local struggles, we did well to halt a while, in order clearly to mark the position and part of the new actor in the great drama of national life. We will now return to the real business of the drama, that is, to the history of France, which became, in the fourteenth century, more complex, more tragic, and more grand than it had ever yet been.



CHAPTER XX.——THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR.—PHILIP VI. AND JOHN II.

We have just been spectators at the labor of formation of the French kingship and the French nation. We have seen monarchical unity and national unity rising, little by little, out of and above the feudal system, which had been the first result of barbarians settling upon the ruins of the Roman empire. In the fourteenth century, a new and a vital question arose: Will the French dominion preserve its nationality? Will the kingship remain French, or pass to the foreigner? This question brought ravages upon France, and kept her fortunes in suspense for a hundred years of war with England, from the reign of Philip of Valois to that of Charles VII.; and a young girl of Lorraine, called Joan of Arc, had the glory of communicating to France that decisive impulse which brought to a triumphant issue the independence of the French nation and kingship.

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the elevation of Philip of Valois to the throne, as representative of the male line amongst the descendants of Hugh Capet, took place by virtue, not of any old written law, but of a traditional right, recognized and confirmed by two recent resolutions taken at the death of the two eldest sons of Philip the Handsome. The right thus promulgated became at once a fact accepted by the whole of France; Philip of Valois had for rival none but a foreign prince, and "there was no mind in France," say contemporary chroniclers, "to be subjects of the King of England." Some weeks after his accession, on the 29th of May, 1328, Philip was crowned at Rheims, in presence of a brilliant assemblage of princes and lords, French and foreign; and next year, on the 6th of June, Edward III., King of England, being summoned to fulfil a vassal's duties by doing homage to the King of France for the duchy of Aquitaine, which he held, appeared in the cathedral of Amiens, with his crown on his head, his sword at his side, and his gilded spurs on his heels. When he drew near to the throne, the Viscount de Melun, king's chamberlain, invited him to lay aside his crown, his sword, and his spurs, and go down on his knees before Philip. Not without a murmur, Edward obeyed; but when the chamberlain said to him, "Sir, you, as Duke of Aquitaine, became liegeman of my lord the king who is here, and do promise to keep towards him faith and loyalty," Edward protested, saying that he owed only simple homage, and not liege-homage—a closer bond, imposing on the vassal more stringent obligations [to serve and defend his suzerain against every enemy whatsoever]. "Cousin," said Philip to him, "we would not deceive you, and what you have now done contenteth us well until you have returned to your own country, and seen from the acts of your predecessors what you ought to do."



"Gramercy, dear sir," answered the King of England; and with the reservation he had just made, and which was added to the formula of homage, he placed his hands between the hands of the King of France, who kissed him on the mouth, and accepted his homage, confiding in Edward's promise to certify himself by reference to the archives of England of the extent to which his ancestors had been bound. The certification took place, and on the 30th of March, 1331, about two years after his visit to Amiens, Edward III. recognized, by letters express, "that the said homage which we did at Amiens to the King of France in general terms, is and must be understood as liege; and that we are bound, as Duke of Aquitaine and peer of France, to show him faith and loyalty."

The relations between the two kings were not destined to be for long so courteous and so pacific. Even before the question of the succession to the throne of France arose between them they had adopted contrary policies. When Philip was crowned at Rheims, Louis de Nevers, Count of Flanders, repaired thither with a following of eighty-six knights, and he it was to whom the right belonged of carrying the sword of the kingdom. The heralds-at-arms repeated three times, "Count of Flanders, if you are here, come and do your duty." He made no answer. The king was astounded, and bade him explain himself. "My lord," answered the count, "may it please you not to be astounded; they called the Count of Flanders, and not Louis de Nevers." "What then!" replied the king; "are you not the Count of Flanders?" "It is true, sir," rejoined the other, "that I bear the name, but I do not possess the authority; the burghers of Bruges, Ypres, and Cassel have driven me from my land, and there scarce remains but the town of Ghent where I dare show myself." "Fair cousin," said Philip, we will swear to you by the holy oil which hath this day trickled over our brow that we will not enter Paris again before seeing you reinstated in peaceable possession of the countship of Flanders." Some of the French barons who happened to be present represented to the king that the Flemish burghers were powerful; that autumn was a bad season for a war in their country; and that Louis the Quarreller, in 1315, had been obliged to come to a stand-still in a similar expedition. Philip consulted his constable, Walter de Chatillon, who had served the kings his predecessors in their wars against Flanders. "Whoso hath good stomach for fight," answered the constable, "findeth all times seasonable." "Well, then," said the king, embracing him, "whoso loveth me will follow me." The war thus resolved upon was forthwith begun. Philip, on arriving with his army before Cassel, found the place defended by sixteen thousand Flemings under the command of Nicholas Zannequin, the richest of the burghers of Furnes, and already renowned for his zeal in the insurrection against the count. For several days the French remained inactive around the mountain on which Cassel is built, and which the knights, mounted on iron-clad horses, were unable to scale. The Flemings had planted on a tower of Cassel a flag carrying a cock, with this inscription:—

"When the cock that is hereon shall crow, The foundling king herein shall go."

They called Philip the foundling king because he had no business to expect to be king. Philip in his wrath gave up to fire and pillage the outskirts of the place. The Flemings marshalled at the top of the mountain made no movement. On the 24th of August, 1328, about three in the afternoon, the French knights had disarmed. Some were playing at chess; others "strolled from tent to tent in their fine robes, in search of amusement; "and the king was asleep in his tent after a long carouse, when all on a sudden his confessor, a Dominican friar, shouted out that the Flemings were attacking the camp. Zannequin, indeed, "came out full softly and without a bit of noise," says Froissart, with his troops in three divisions, to surprise the French camp at three points. He was quite close to the king's tent, and some chroniclers say that he was already lifting his mace over the head of Philip, who had armed in hot haste, and was defended only by a few knights, of whom one was waving the oriflamme round him, when others hurried up, and Zannequiii was forced to stay his hand. At two other points of the camp the attack had failed. The French gathered about the king and the Flemings about Zannequin; and there took place so stubborn a fight, that "of sixteen thousand Flemings who were there not one recoiled," says Froissart, "and all were left there dead and slain in three heaps one upon another, without budging from the spot where the battle had begun." The same evening Philip entered Cassel, which he set on fire, and, in a few days afterwards, on leaving for France, he said to Count Louis, before the French barons, Count, I have worked for you at my own and my barons' expense; I give you back your land, recovered and in peace; so take care that justice be kept up in it, and that I have not, through your fault, to return; for if I do, it will be to my own profit and to your hurt."

The Count of Flanders was far from following the advice of the King of France, and the King of France was far from foreseeing whither he would be led by the road upon which he had just set foot. It has already been pointed out to what a position of wealth, population, and power, industrial and commercial activity had in the thirteenth century raised the towns of Flanders, Bruges, Ghent, Lille, Ypres, Fumes, Courtrai, and Douai, and with what energy they had defended against their lords their prosperity and their liberties. It was the struggle, sometimes sullen, sometimes violent, of feudal lordship against municipal burgherdom. The able and imperious Philip the Handsome had tested the strength of the Flemish cities, and had not cared to push them to extremity. When, in 1322, Count Louis de Nevers, scarcely eighteen years of age, inherited from his grandfather Robert III. the countship of Flanders, he gave himself up, in respect of the majority of towns in the countship, to the same course of oppression and injustice as had been familiar to his predecessors; the burghers resisted him with the same, often ruffianly, energy; and when, after a six years' struggle amongst Flemings, the Count of Flanders, who had been conquered by the burghers, owed his return as master of his countship to the King of the French, he troubled himself about nothing but avenging himself and enjoying his victory at the expense of the vanquished. He chastised, despoiled, proscribed, and inflicted atrocious punishments; and, not content with striking at individuals, he attacked the cities themselves. Nearly all of them, save Ghent, which had been favorable to the count, saw their privileges annulled or curtailed of their most essential guarantees. The burghers of Bruges were obliged to meet the count half way to his castle of Vale, and on their knees implore his pity. At Ypres the bell in the tower was broken up. Philip of Valois made himself a partner in these severities; he ordered the fortifications of Bruges, Ypres, and Courtrai to be destroyed, and he charged French agents to see to their demolition. Absolute power is often led into mistakes by its insolence; but when it is in the hands of rash and reckless mediocrity, there is no knowing how clumsy and blind it can be. Neither the King of France nor the Count of Flanders seemed to remember that the Flemish communes had at their door a natural and powerful ally who could not do without them any more than they could do without him. Woollen stuffs, cloths, carpets, warm coverings of every sort were the chief articles of the manufactures and commerce of Flanders; there chiefly was to be found all that the active and enterprising merchants of the time exported to Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Russia, and even Asia; and it was from England that they chiefly imported their wool, the primary staple of their handiwork. "All Flanders," says Froissart, "was based upon cloth and no wool, no cloth." On the other hand it was to Flanders that England, her land-owners and farmers, sold the fleeces of their flocks; and the two countries were thus united by the bond of their mutual prosperity. The Count of Flanders forgot or defied this fact so far as in 1336, at the instigation, it is said, of the King of France, to have all the English in Flanders arrested and kept in prison. Reprisals were not long deferred. On the 5th of October in the same year the King of England ordered the arrest of all Flemish merchants in his kingdom and the seizure of their goods; and he at the same time prohibited the exportation of wool. "Flanders was given over," says her principal historian, "to desolation; nearly all her looms ceased rattling on one and the same day, and the streets of her cities, but lately filled with rich and busy workmen, were overrun with beggars who asked in vain for work to escape from misery and hunger." The English land-owners and farmers did not suffer so much, but were scarcely less angered; only it was to the King of France and the Count of Flanders rather than their own king that they held themselves indebted for the stagnation of their affairs, and their discontent sought vent only in execration of the foreigner.

When great national interests are to such a point misconceived and injured, there crop up, before long, clear-sighted and bold men who undertake the championship of them, and foment the quarrel to explosion-heat, either from personal views or patriotic feeling. The question of succession to the throne of France seemed settled by the inaction of the King of England, and the formal homage he had come and paid to the King of France at Amiens; but it was merely in abeyance. Many people both in England and in France still thought of it and spoke of it; and many intrigues bred of hope or fear were kept up with reference to it at the courts of the two kings. When the rumblings of anger were loud on both sides in consequence of affairs in Flanders, two men of note, a Frenchman and a Fleming, considering that the hour had come, determined to revive the question, and turn the great struggle which could not fail to be excited thereby to the profit of their own and their countries' cause, for it is singular how ambition and devotion, selfishness and patriotism, combine and mingle in the human soul, and even in great souls.

Philip VI. had embroiled himself with a prince of his line, Robert of Artois, great-grandson of Robert the first Count of Artois, who was a brother of St. Louis, and was killed during the crusade in Egypt, at the battle of Mansourah. As early as the reign of Philip the Handsome Robert claimed the count-ship of Artois as his heritage; but having had his pretensions rejected by a decision of the peers of the kingdom, he had hoped for more success under Philip of Valois, whose sister he had married. Philip tried to satisfy him with another domain raised to a peerage; but Robert, more and more discontented, got involved in a series of intrigues, plots, falsehoods, forgeries, and even, according to public report, imprisonments and crimes, which, in 1332, led to his being condemned by the court of peers to banishment and the confiscation of his property. He fled for refuge first to Brabant, and then to England, to the court of Edward III., who received him graciously, and whom he forthwith commenced inciting to claim the crown of France, "his inheritance," as he said, "which King Philip holds most wrongfully." Edward III., who was naturally prudent, and had been involved, almost ever since his accession, in a stubborn war with Scotland, cared but little for rushing into a fresh and far more serious enterprise. But of all human passions hatred is perhaps the most determined in the prosecution of its designs. Robert accompanied the King of England in his campaigns northward; and "Sir," said he, whilst they were marching together over the heaths of Scotland, "leave this poor country, and give your thoughts to the noble crown of France." When Edward, on returning to London, was self-complacently rejoicing at his successes over his neighbors, Robert took pains to pique his self-respect, by expressing astonishment that he did not seek more practical and more brilliant successes. Poetry sometimes reveals sentiments and processes about which history is silent. We read in a poem of the fourteenth century, entitled The vow on the heron, "In the season when summer is verging upon its decline, and the gay birds are forgetting their sweet converse on the trees, now despoiled of their verdure, Robert seeks for consolation in the pleasures of fowling, for he cannot forget the gentle land of France, the glorious country whence he is an exile. He carries a falcon, which goes flying over the waters till a heron falls its prey; then he calls two young damsels to take the bird to the king's palace, singing the while in sweet discourse: 'Fly, fly, ye honorless knights; give place to gallants on whom love smiles; here is the dish for gallants who are faithful to their mistresses. The heron is the most timid of birds, for it fears its own shadow; it is for the heron to receive the vows of King Edward, who, though lawful King of France, dares not claim that noble heritage.' At these words the king flushed, his heart was wroth, and he cried aloud, 'Since coward is thrown in my teeth, I make vow [on this heron] to the God of Paradise that ere a single year rolls by I will defy the King of Paris.' Count Robert hears and smiles; and low to his own heart he says, 'Now have I won: and my heron will cause a great war.'"

Robert's confidence in this tempter's work of his was well founded, but a little premature. Edward III. did not repel him; complained loudly of the assistance rendered by the King of France to the Scots; gave an absolute refusal to Philip's demands for the extradition of the rebel Robert, and retorted by protesting, in his turn, against the reception accorded in France to David Bruce, the rival of his own favorite Baliol for the throne of Scotland. In Aquitaine he claimed as of his own domain some places still occupied by Philip. Philip, on his side, neglected no chance of causing Edward embarrassment, and more or less overtly assisting his foes. The two kings were profoundly distrustful one of the other, foresaw, both of them, that they would one day come to blows, and prepared for it by mutually working to entangle and enfeeble one another. But neither durst as yet proclaim his wishes or his fears, and take the initiative in those unknown events which war must bring about to the great peril of their people and perhaps of themselves. From 1334 to 1337, as they continued to advance towards the issue, foreseen and at the same time deferred, of this situation, they were both of them seeking allies in Europe for their approaching struggle. Philip had a notable one under his thumb, the pope at that time settled at Avignon; and he made use of him for the purpose of proposing a new crusade, in which Edward III. should be called upon to join with him. If Edward complied, any enterprise on his part against France would become impossible; and if he declined, Christendom would cry fie upon him. Two successive popes, John XXII. and Benedict XII., preached the crusade, and offered their mediation to settle the differences between the two kings; but they were unsuccessful in both their attempts. The two kings strained every nerve to form laic alliances. Philip did all he could to secure to himself the fidelity of Count Louis of Flanders, whom the King of England several times attempted, but in vain, to win over. Philip drew into close relations with himself the Kings of Bohemia and Navarre, the Dukes of Lorraine and Burgundy, the Count of Foix, the Genoese, the Grand Prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and many other lords. The two principal neighbors of Flanders, the Count of Hainault and the Duke of Brabant, received the solicitations of both kings at one and the same time. The former had to wife Joan of Valois, sister of the King of France, but he had married his daughter Philippa to the King of England; and when Edward's envoys came and asked for his support in "the great business "which their master had in view." "If the king can succeed in it," said the count, "I shall be right glad. It may well be supposed that my heart is with him, him who hath my daughter, rather than with King Philip, though I have married his sister; for he hath filched from me the hand of the young Duke of Brabant, who should have wedded my daughter Isabel, and hath kept him for a daughter of his own. So help will I my dear and beloved son the King of England to the best of my power. But he must get far stronger aid than mine, for Hainault is but a little place in comparison with the kingdom of France, and England is too far off to succor us." "Dear sir," said the envoys, "advise us of what lords our master might best seek aid, and in what he might best put his trust." "By my soul," said the count, "I could not point to lord so powerful to aid him in this business as would be the Duke of Brabant, who is his cousin-german, the Duke of Gueldres, who hath his sister to wife, and Sire de Fauquemont. They are those who would have most men-at-arms in the least time, and they are right good soldiers; provided that money be given them in proportion, for they are lords and men who are glad of pay." Edward III. went for powerful allies even beyond the Rhine; he treated with Louis V. of Bavaria, Emperor of Germany; he even had a solemn interview with him at a diet assembled at Coblenz, and Louis named Edward vicar imperial throughout all the empire situated on the left bank of the Rhine, with orders to all the princes of the Low Countries to follow and obey him, for a space of seven years, in the field. But Louis of Bavaria was a tottering emperor, excommunicated by the pope, and with a formidable competitor in Frederick of Austria. When the time for action arrived, King John of Bohemia, a zealous ally of the French king, persuaded the Emperor of Germany that his dignity would be compromised if he were to go and join the army of the English king, in whose pay he would appear to have enlisted; and Louis of Bavaria withdrew from his alliance with Edward III., sending back the subsidies he had received from him.

Which side were the Flemings themselves to take in a conflict of such importance, and already so hot even before it had reached bursting point? It was clearly in Flanders that each king was likely to find his most efficient allies; and so it was there that they made the most strenuous applications. Edward III. hastened to restore between England and the Flemish communes the commercial relations which had been for a while disturbed by the arrest of the traders in both countries. He sent into Flanders, even to Ghent, ambassadors charged to enter into negotiations with the burghers; and one of the most considerable amongst these burghers, Solver of Courtrai, who had but lately supported Count Louis in his quarrels with the people of Bruges, loudly declared that the alliance of the King of England was the first requirement of Flanders, and gave apartments in his own house to one of the English envoys. Edward proposed the establishment in Flanders of a magazine for English wools; and he gave assurance to such Flemish weavers as would settle in England of all the securities they could desire. He even offered to give his daughter Joan in marriage to the son of the Count of Flanders. Philip, on his side, tried hard to reconcile the communes of Flanders to their count, and so make them faithful to himself; he let them off two years' payment of a rent due to him of forty thousand livres of Paris per annum; he promised them the monopoly of exporting wools from France; he authorized the Brugesmen to widen the moats of their city, and even to repair its ramparts. The King of England's envoys met in most of the Flemish cities with a favor which was real, but intermingled with prudent reservations, and Count Louis of Flanders remained ever closely allied with the King of France, "for he was right French and loyal," says Froissart, "and with good reason, for he had the King of France almost alone to thank for restoring him to his country by force."

Whilst, by both sides, preparations were thus being made on the Continent for war, the question which was to make it burst forth was being decided in England. In the soul of Edward temptation overcame indecision. As early as the month of June, 1336, in a Parliament assembled at Northampton, he had complained of the assistance given by the King of France to the Scots, and he had expressed a hope that if the French and the Scots were to join, they would at last offer him battle, which the latter had always carefully avoided." In September of the same year he employed similar language in a Parliament held at Nottingham, and he obtained therefrom subsidies for the war going on not only in Scotland, but also in Aquitaine, against the French king's lieutenants. In April and May of the following year, 1337, he granted to Robert of Artois, his tempter for three years past, court favors which proved his resolution to have been already taken. On the 21st of August following he formally declared war against the King of France, and addressed to all the sheriffs, archbishops, and bishops of his kingdom a circular in which he attributed the initiative to Philip; on the 26th of August he gave his ally, the Emperor of Germany, notice of what he had just done, whilst, for the first time, insultingly describing Philip as "setting himself up for King of France." At last, on the 7th of October, 1337, he proclaimed himself King of France, as his lawful inheritance, designating as representatives and supporters of his right the Duke of Brabant, the Marquis of Juliers, the Count of Haiiiault, and William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton.

The enterprise had no foundation in right, and seemed to have few chances of success. If the succession to the crown of France had not been regulated beforehand by a special and positive law, Philip of Valois had on his side the traditional right of nearly three centuries past and actual possession without any disputes having arisen in France upon the subject. His title had been expressly declared by the peers of the kingdom, sanctioned by the Church, and recognized by Edward himself, who had come to pay him homage. He had the general and free assent of his people: to repeat the words of the chroniclers of the time, "There was no mind in France to be subjects of the King of England." Philip VI. was regarded in Europe as a greater and more powerful sovereign than Edward III. He had the pope settled in the midst of his kingdom; and he often traversed it with an array of valiant nobility whom he knew how to support and serve on occasion as faithfully as he was served by them. "He was highly prized and honored," says Froissart, "for the victory he had won (at Cassel) over the Flemings, and also for the handsome service he had done his cousin Count Louis. He did thereby abide in great prosperity and honor, and he greatly increased the royal state; never had there been king in France, it was said, who had kept state like King Philip, and he provided tourneys and jousts and diversions in great abundance." No national interest, no public ground, was provocative of war between the two peoples; it was a war of personal ambition, like that which in the eleventh century William the Conqueror had carried into England. The memory of that great event was still, in the fourteenth century, so fresh in France, that when the pretensions of Edward were declared, and the struggle was begun, an assemblage of Normans, barons and knights, or, according to others, the Estates of Normandy themselves, came and proposed to Philip to undertake once more, and at their own expense, the conquest of England, if he would put at their head his eldest son, John, their own duke. The king received their deputation at Vincennes, on the 23d of March, 1339, and accepted their offer. They bound themselves to supply for the expedition four thousand men-at-arms and twenty thousand foot, whom they promised to maintain for ten weeks, and even a fortnight beyond, if, when the Duke of Normandy had crossed to England, his council should consider the prolongation necessary. The conditions in detail and the subsequent course of the enterprise thus projected were minutely regulated and settled in a treaty published by Dutillet in 1588, from a copy found at Caen when Edward III. became master of that city in 1346. The events of the war, the long fits of hesitation on the part of both kings, and the repeated alternations from hostilities to truces and truces to hostilities, prevented anything from coming of this proposal, the authenticity of which has been questioned by M. Michelet amongst others, but the genuineness of which has been demonstrated by M. Adolph Despont, member of the appeal-court of Caen, in his learned Histoire du Cotentin.

Edward III., though he had proclaimed himself King of France, did not at the outset of his claim adopt the policy of a man firmly resolved and burning to succeed. From 1337 to 1340 he behaved as if he were at strife with the Count of Flanders rather than with the King of France. He was incessantly to and fro, either by embassy or in person, between England, Flanders, Hainault, Brabant, and even Germany, for the purpose of bringing the princes and people to actively co-operate with him against his rival; and during this diplomatic movement such was the hostility between the King of England and the Count of Flanders that Edward's ambassadors thought it impossible for them to pass through Flanders in safety, and went to Holland for a ship in which to return to England. Nor were their fears groundless; for the Count of Flanders had caused to be arrested, and was still detaining in prison at the castle of Rupelmonde, the Fleming Sohier of Courtrai, who had received into his house at Ghent one of the English envoys, and had shown himself favorable to their cause. Edward keenly resented these outrages, demanded, but did not obtain, the release of Sohier of Courtrai, and by way of revenge gave orders in November, 1337, to two of his bravest captains, the Earl of Derby and Walter de Manny, to go and attack the fort of Cadsand, situated between the Island of Walcheren and the town of Ecluse (or Sluys), a post of consequence to the Count of Flanders, who had confided the keeping of it to his bastard brother Guy, with five thousand of his most faithful subjects. It was a sanguinary affair. The besieged were surprised, but defended themselves bravely; the landing cost the English dear; the Earl of Derby was wounded and hurled to the ground, but his comrade, Walter de Manny, raised him up with a shout to his men of "Lancaster, for the Earl of Derby; "and at last the English prevailed. The Bastard of Flanders was made prisoner; the town was pillaged and burned; and the English returned to England, and "told their adventure," says Froissart, "to the king, who was right joyous when he saw them and learned how they had sped."

Thus began that war which was to be so cruel and so long. The Flemings bore the first brunt of it. It was a lamentable position for them; their industrial and commercial prosperity was being ruined; their security at home was going from them; their communal liberties were compromised; divisions set in amongst them; by interest and habitual intercourse they were drawn towards England, but the count, their lord, did all he could to turn them away from her, and many amongst them were loath to separate themselves entirely from France. "Burghers of Ghent, as they chatted in the thoroughfares and at the cross-roads, said one to another, that they had heard much wisdom, to their mind, from a burgher who was called James Van Artevelde, and who was a brewer of beer. They had heard him say that, if he could obtain a hearing and credit, he would in a little while restore Flanders to good estate, and they would recover all their gains without standing ill with the King of France or the King of England. These sayings began to get spread abroad, insomuch that a quarter or half the city was informed thereof, especially the small folks of the commonalty, whom the evil touched most nearly. They began to assemble in the streets, and it came to pass that one day, after dinner, several went from house to house calling for their comrades, and saying, 'Come and hear the wise man's counsel.' On the 26th of December, 1337, they came to the house of the said James Van Artevelde, and found him leaning against his door.



Far off as they were when they first perceived him, they made him a deep obeisance, and 'Dear sir,' they said, 'we are come to you for counsel; for we are told that by your great and good sense you will restore the country of Flanders to good case. So tell us how.' Then James Van Artevelde came forward, and said, 'Sirs comrades, I am a native and burgher of this city, and here I have my means. Know that I would gladly aid you with all my power, you and all the country; if there were here a man who would be willing to take the lead, I would be willing to risk body and means at his side; and if the rest of ye be willing to be brethren, friends and comrades to me, to abide in all matters at my side, notwithstanding that I am not worthy of it, I will undertake it willingly.' Then said all with one voice, 'We promise you faithfully to abide at your side in all matters and to therewith adventure body and means, for we know well that in the whole countship of Flanders there is not a man but you worthy so to do.'" Then Van Artevelde bound them to assemble on the next day but one in the grounds of the monastery of Biloke, which had received numerous benefits from the ancestors of Sohier of Courtrai, whose son-in-law Van Artevelde was.

This bold burgher of Ghent, who was born about 1285, was sprung from a family the name of which had been for a long while inscribed in their city upon the register of industrial corporations. His father, John Van Artevelde, a cloth-worker, had been several times over sheriff of Ghent, and his mother, Mary Van Groete, was great aunt to the grandfather of the illustrious publicist called in history Grotius. James Van Artevelde in his youth accompanied Count Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Handsome, upon his adventurous expeditions in Italy, Sicily, and Greece, and to the Island of Rhodes; and it had been close by the spots where the soldiers of Marathon and Salamis had beaten the armies of Darius and Xerxes that he had heard of the victory of the Flemish burghers and workmen attacked in 1302, at Courtrai, by the splendid army of Philip the Handsome. James Van Artevelde, on returning to his country, had been busy with his manufactures, his fields, the education of his children, and Flemish affairs up to the day when, at his invitation, the burghers of Ghent thronged to the meeting on the 28th of December, 1337, in the grounds of the monastery of Biloke. There he delivered an eloquent speech, pointing out, unhesitatingly but temperately, the policy which he considered good for the country. "Forget not," he said, "the might and the glory of Flanders. Who, pray, shall forbid that we defend our interests by using our rights? Can the King of France prevent us from treating with the King of England? And may we not be certain that if we were to treat with the King of England, the King of France would not be the less urgent in seeking our alliance? Besides, have we not with us all the communes of Brabant, of Hainault, of Holland, and of Zealand?" The audience cheered these words; the commune of Ghent forthwith assembled, and on the 3d of January, 1337 [according to the old style, which made the year begin at the 25th of March], re-established the offices of captains of parishes according to olden usage, when the city was exposed to any pressing danger. It was carried that one of these captains should have the chief government of the city; and James Van Artevelde was at once invested with it. From that moment the conduct of Van Artevelde was ruled by one predominant idea: to secure free and fair commercial intercourse for Flanders with England, whilst observing a general neutrality in the war between the Kings of England and France, and to combine so far all the communes of Flanders in one and the same policy. And he succeeded in this twofold purpose. "On the 29th of April, 1338, the representatives of all the communes of Flanders (the city of Bruges numbering amongst them a hundred and eight deputies) repaired to the castle of Male, a residence of Count Louis, and then James Van Artevelde set before the count what had been resolved upon amongst them. The count submitted, and swore that he would thenceforth maintain the liberties of Flanders in the state in which they had existed since the treaty of Athies. In the month of May following a deputation, consisting of James Van Artevelde and other burghers appointed by the cities of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres scoured the whole of Flanders, from Bailleul to Termonde, and from Ninove to Dunkerque, "to reconcile the good folks of the communes to the Count of Flanders, as well for the count's honor as for the peace of the country." Lastly, on the 10th of June, 1338, a treaty was signed at Anvers between the deputies of the Flemish communes and the English ambassadors, the latter declaring: "We do all to wit that we have negotiated way and substance of friendship with the good folks of the communes of Flanders, in form and manner herein-after following:—

"First, they shall be able to go and buy the wools and other merchandise which have been exported from England to Holland, Zealand, or any other place whatsoever; and all traders of Flanders who shall repair to the ports of England shall there be safe and free in their persons and their goods, just as in any other place where their ventures might bring them together.

"Item, we have agreed with the good folks and with all the common country of Flanders that they must not mix nor inter-meddle in any way, by assistance of men or arms, in the wars of our lord the king and the noble Sir Philip of Valois (who holdeth himself for King of France)."

Three articles following regulated in detail the principles laid down in the first two, and, by another charter, Edward III. ordained that "all stuffs marked with the seal of the city of Ghent might travel freely in England without being subject according to ellage and quality to the control to which all foreign merchandise was subject." (Histoire de Flandre, by M, le Baron Kerwyn de Lettenhove, t. iii. pp. 199-203.)

Van Artevelde was right in telling the Flemings that, if they treated with the King of England, the King of France would be only the more anxious for their alliance. Philip of Valois, and even Count Louis of Flanders, when they got to know of the negotiations entered into between the Flemish communes and King Edward, redoubled their offers and promises to them. But when the passions of men have taken full possession of their souls, words of concession and attempts at accommodation are nothing more than postponements or lies. Philip, when he heard about the conclusion of a treaty between the Flemish communes and the King of England, sent word to Count Louis "that this James Van Artevelde must not, on any account, be allowed to rule, or even live, for, if it were so for long, the count would lose his land." The count, very much disposed to accept such advice, repaired to Ghent and sent for Van Artevelde to come and see him at his hotel. He went, but with so large a following that the count was not at the time at all in a position to resist him. He tried to persuade the Flemish burgher that "if he would keep a hand on the people so as to keep them to their love for the King of France, he having more authority than any one else for such a purpose, much good would result to him: mingling, besides, with this address, some words of threatening import." Van Artevelde, who was not the least afraid of the threat, and who at heart was fond of the English, told the count that he would do as he had promised the communes. "Hereupon he left the count, who consulted his confidants as to what he was to do in this business, and they counselled him to let them go and assemble their people, saying that they would kill Van Artevelde secretly or otherwise. And indeed, they did lay many traps and made many attempts against the captain; but it was of no avail, since all the commonalty was for him." When the rumor of these projects and these attempts was spread abroad in the city, the excitement was extreme, and all the burghers assumed white hoods, which was the mark peculiar to the members of the commune when they assembled under their flags; so that the count found himself reduced to assuming one, for he was afraid of being kept captive at Ghent, and, on the pretext of a hunting party, he lost no time in gaining his castle of Male.

The burghers of Ghent had their minds still filled with their late alarm when they heard that, by order, it was said, of the King of France, Count Louis had sent and beheaded at the castle of Rupehuonde, in the very bed in which he was confined by his infirmities, their fellow-citizen Solver of Courtrai, Van Artevelde's father-in-law, who had been kept for many months in prison for his intimacy with the English. On the same day the Bishop of Senlis and the Abbot of St. Denis had arrived at Tournay, and had superintended the reading out in the market-place of a sentence of excommunication against the Ghentese.