History of Civilization in England, Vol. 2 of 3. Henry Buckley
and which regulate us in the conduct of life. The old associations of the French all point in another direction. At the slightest difficulty, they call on the government for support. What with us is competition, with them is monopoly. That which we effect by private companies, they effect by public boards. They cannot cut a canal, or lay down a railroad, without appealing to the government for aid. With them, the people look to the rulers; with us, the rulers look to the people. With them, the executive is the centre from which society radiates;315 with us, society is the instigator, and the executive the organ. The difference in the result has corresponded with the difference in the process. We have been made fit for political power, by the long exercise of civil rights; they, neglecting the exercise, think they can at once begin with the power. We have always shown a determination to uphold our liberties, and, when the times are fitting, to increase them; and this we have done with a decency and a gravity natural to men to whom such subjects have long been familiar. But the French, always treated as children, are, in political matters, children still. And as they have handled the most weighty concerns in that gay and volatile spirit which adorns their lighter literature, it is no wonder that they have failed in matters where the first condition of success is, that men should have been long accustomed to rely upon their own energies, and that before they try their skill in a political struggle, their resources should have been sharpened by that preliminary discipline, which a contest with the difficulties of civil life can never fail to impart.
These are among the considerations by which we must be guided, in estimating the probable destinies of the great countries of Europe. But what we are now rather concerned with is, to notice how the opposite tendencies of France and England long continued to be displayed in the condition and treatment of their aristocracy; and how from this there naturally followed some striking differences between the war conducted by the Fronde, and that waged by the Long Parliament.
When, in the fourteenth century, the authority of the French kings began rapidly to increase, the political influence of the nobility was, of course, correspondingly diminished. What, however, proves the extent to which their power had taken root, is the undoubted fact, that, notwithstanding this to them unfavourable circumstance, the people were never able to emancipate themselves from their control.316 The relation the nobles bore to the throne became entirely changed; that which they bore to the people remained almost the same. In England, slavery, or villenage, as it is mildly termed, quickly diminished, and was extinct by the end of the sixteenth century.317 In France, it lingered on two hundred years later, and was only destroyed in that great Revolution by which the possessors of ill-gotten power were called to so sharp an account.318 Thus, too, until the last seventy years, the nobles were in France exempt from those onerous taxes which oppressed the people. The taille and corvée were heavy and grievous exactions, but they fell solely on men of ignoble birth;319 for the French aristocracy, being a high and chivalrous race, would have deemed it an insult to their illustrious descent, if they had been taxed to the same amount as those whom they despised as their inferiors.320 Indeed, every thing tended to nurture this general contempt. Every thing was contrived to humble one class, and exalt the other. For the nobles there were reserved the best appointments in the church, and also the most important military posts.321 The privilege of entering the army as officers was confined to them;322 and they alone possessed a prescriptive right to belong to the cavalry.323 At the same time, and to avoid the least chance of confusion, an equal vigilance was displayed in the most trifling matters, and care was taken to prevent any similarity, even in the amusements of the two classes. To such a pitch was this brought, that, in many parts of France, the right of having an aviary or a dovecote depended entirely on a man's rank; and no Frenchman, whatever his wealth might be, could keep pigeons, unless he were a noble; it being considered that these recreations were too elevated for persons of plebeian origin.324
Circumstances like these are valuable, as evidence of the state of society to which they belong; and their importance will become peculiarly obvious, when we compare them with the opposite condition of England.
For in England, neither these nor any similar distinctions have ever been known. The spirit of which our yeomanry, copyholders, and free burgesses were the representatives, proved far too strong for those protective and monopolizing principles of which the aristocracy are the guardians in politics, and the clergy in religion. And it is to the successful opposition made by these feelings of individual independence that we owe our two greatest national acts – our Reformation in the sixteenth, and our Rebellion in the seventeenth century. Before, however, tracing the steps taken in these matters, there is one other point of view to which I wish to call attention, as a further illustration of the early and radical difference between France and England.
In the eleventh century there arose the celebrated institution of chivalry,325 which was to manners what feudalism was to politics. This connexion is clear, not only from the testimony of contemporaries, but also from two general considerations. In the first place, chivalry was so highly aristocratic, that no one could even receive knighthood unless he were of noble birth;326 and the preliminary education which was held to be necessary was carried on either in schools appointed by the nobles, or else in their own baronial castles.327 In the second place, it was essentially a protective, and not at all a reforming institution. It was contrived with a view to remedy certain oppressions as they successively arose; opposed in this respect to the reforming spirit, which, being remedial rather than palliative, strikes at the root of an evil by humbling the class from which the evil proceeds, passing over individual cases in order to direct its attention to general causes. But chivalry, so far from doing this, was in fact a fusion of the aristocratic and the ecclesiastical forms of the protective spirit.328 For, by introducing among the nobles the principle of knighthood, which, being personal, could never be bequeathed, it presented a point at which the ecclesiastical doctrine of celibacy could coalesce with the aristocratic doctrine of hereditary descent.329 Out of this coalition sprung results of great moment. It is to this that Europe owes those orders, half aristocratic half religious,330 the Knights Templars, the Knights of St. James, the Knights of St. John, the Knights of St. Michael: establishments which inflicted the greatest evils on society; and whose members, combining analogous vices, enlivened the superstition of monks with the debauchery of soldiers. As a natural consequence, an immense number of noble knights were solemnly pledged to ‘defend the church;’ an ominous expression, the meaning of which is too well known to the readers of ecclesiastical history.331 Thus it was that chivalry, uniting the hostile principles of celibacy and noble birth, became the incarnation of the spirit of the two classes to which those principles belonged. Whatever benefit, therefore, this institution may have conferred upon manners,332 there can be no doubt that it actively contributed to keep men in a state of pupilage, and stopped the march of society by prolonging the term of its infancy.333
On this account, it is evident that, whether we look at the immediate or at the remote tendency of chivalry, its strength and duration become a measure of the predominance of the protective spirit. If, with this view, we compare France and England, we shall find fresh proof of the early divergence of those countries. Tournaments, the first open expression of chivalry, are of French origin.334 The greatest and, indeed, the only two great describers of chivalry are Joinville and Froissart, both of whom were Frenchmen. Bayard, that famous chevalier, who is always considered as the last representative of chivalry, was a Frenchman, and was killed when fighting for Francis
It is to the activity of this protective and centralizing spirit that we must ascribe, what a very great authority noticed thirty years ago, as ‘le défaut de spontanéité, qui caractérise les institutions de la France moderne.’
Mably (
Mr. Eccleston (
M. Cassagnac (
Further information respecting the amount and nature of these vexatious impositions will be found in
So deeply rooted were these feelings, that, even in 1789, the very year the Revolution broke out, it was deemed a great concession that the nobles ‘will consent, indeed, to equal taxation.’ See a letter from Jefferson to Jay, dated Paris, May 9th, 1789, in
‘Les nobles, qui avaient le privilége exclusif des grandes dignités et des gros bénéfices.’
‘L'ancien régime n'avait admis que des nobles pour officiers.’
Thus, De Thou says of Henry III., ‘il remet sous l'ancien pied la cavalerie ordinaire, qui n'étoit composée que de la noblesse.’
M. Tocqueville (
‘Dès la fin du onzième siècle, à l'époque même où commencèrent les croisades, on trouve la chevalerie établie.’
‘L'ordre de chevalerie n'étoit accordé qu'aux hommes d'un sang noble.’
‘In some places there were schools appointed by the nobles of the country, but most frequently their own castles served.’
This combination of knighthood and religious rites is often ascribed to the crusades; but there is good evidence that it took place a little earlier, and must be referred to the latter half of the eleventh century. Compare
The influence of this on the nobles is rather exaggerated by Mr. Mills; who, on the other hand, has not noticed how the unhereditary element was favourable to the ecclesiastical spirit.
‘In their origin all the military orders, and most of the religious ones, were entirely aristocratic.’
Several writers ascribe to chivalry the merit of softening manners, and of increasing the influence of women.
Mr. Hallam (