The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
tradition of feudal independence was nowhere stronger than in Guyenne. The revolt of the South against the Black Prince was occasioned by the levy of a fauage at a time when France was accepting a far more burdensome system of arbitrary taxation almost without a murmur. The great principalities of the South were Armagnac, Albret, and Foix. The Counts of Armagnac had been associated with the worst traditions of the anarchical period. Jean V carried into private life the lawless instincts of the family. Imprisoned by Charles VII for correspondence with the English government, he was liberated and treated witlfc favour by Louis XI. He requited his benefactor by revolt and treachery in the War of the Public Weal. Pardoned, he continued his game of disobedience and intrigue. The King’s writ could hardly be said to run in Armagnac and its appendant provinces; the King’s taxes were collected with difficulty, if at all; the Count’s men-at-arms owned no restraint. Driven out in 1470, Jean returned under the protection of the King’s brother, the Duke of Guyenne. In 1473 a fresh expedition was sent against him; Lectoure was surrendered; and the Count killed, perhaps murdered. His fate deserves less sympathy than it has found. The independence of Armagnac, Rouergue and La Marche was at an end.
His brother, Jacques, had a similar history. Raised to the duchy of Nemours and the pairie by Louis XI, he became a traitor in 1465, and was implicated in all the treacherous machinations of his brother. His fate was delayed till 1476, when he was arrested. His trial left something to be desired in point of fairness, but there can be little doubt that substantial justice was done, when he was executed in 1477. Charles VIII restored the duchy to his sons, one of whom died in the King’s service at the battle of Cerignola. With him the male line of Armagnac became extinct.
The House of Albret was more fortunate. Though implicated in the League of the Public Weal, and in the Breton rebellion, this House incurred no forfeiture. But the long rule of Alain le Grand (1471-1522) illustrates pathetically the humiliations, vexations, and losses that so great a prince had constantly to endure through the steady pressure of the King’s agents, lawyers, and financiers, and, in some cases, through the ill-will of his own subjects. In spite of his vast domains, his appeal Courts, his more than princely revenue, he was unable to meet his still greater expenses, swelled by the new luxury and by legal costs, without a heavy pension from the King. A man, reckoned to have received from the Crown in his fifty years no less than six millions l.t., cannot, however powerful he was, be regarded as independent. By marriage his House in the next generation acquired Navarre with Foix, and was ultimately merged in Bourbon, and in the Crown.
Other appanages call for little remark. Bourbon, with its ap-pendants, Auvergne, Beaujolais, Forez, and (1477) La Marche, was the most important. It was preserved from reunion to the Crown by the influence of Anne of Beaujeu, who secured it for her daughter and her husband, the Count of Montpensier. The duchy of Orleans with the county of Blois was united to the Crown at the accession of Louis XII. None of these important fiefs were free from the royal taxes or authority, though they enjoyed some administrative independence.
Princes and minor nobles alike were gradually brought into the King’s obedience by the King’s pay. While the poor gentlemen entered the King’s service as guards, as men-at-arms, or even as archers, the great princes drew the King’s pensions, or aspired to the lucrative captainship of a body of ordonnances. If of sufficient dignity and influence they might hope for the still more valuable post of governor in some province. When they had once learnt to rely on the mercenary’s stipend, they could not easily bring themselves to exchange it for the old honourable, though lawless, independence. Gradually the provincial nobility became dependent on the Court, and in large measure resident there. This process begins in early times, but advances more rapidly under Charles VII and his successors, and is nearly completed under Francis I.
The third Order, that of the bourgeois of the bonnes villes, has lost all the political independence that it had ever possessed. The free communes of the North and North-east had succumbed as much by their own financial mismanagement as from any other cause. Throughout the fourteenth century the intervention of the King in the internal affairs of the towns became a normal experience, and Charles V actually suppressed a number of communes. A considerable degree of municipal liberty is left, but the power of political action is gone. The government is as a rule in the hands of a comparatively small number of well-to-do bourgeois, who support the King’s authority, and from whom is drawn the most efficient class of financiers and administrators. In time of need they help the King with loans and exceptional gifts. Many of the towns are exempt from faille, but the aides fall heavily upon them. Louis XI continued on the same lines. He granted abundant privileges to towns-fairs, markets, nobility to their officers, and the right of purchasing noble fiefs. But their intervention in politics was not encouraged. On a slight provocation the King took the town government into his hands, and heavy was the punishment of a town like Reims or Bourges, that ventured to rebel.
The position of the peasants can only be faintly indicated here. Personal servitude still exists, though probably a majority of the serfs have been enfranchised. In either case the rights of the lord have as a rule become fixed. The peasants are for the most part holders at a quit rent or in mktayage, though bound to the corvee, and to the use of the lord’s mill and of his bakehouse. If serfs, they are mainmortables, that is, their personal property belongs to their lords on their decease. Such a right obviously cannot be strictly exercised. Necessary agricultural stock must at least be spared. The lord can no longer tallage his peasants at will. His Courts are rather a symbol of his dignity and a source of petty profit, than a real instrument of arbitrary authority. Everywhere the King’s power makes itself felt.
Thus the peasant was beginning to be more concerned in the character and policy of the King than in those of his lord, though, if the latter was imprudent, his peasants’ crops might be ravaged. The rate of the King’s faille made the difference between plenty and want. The faille cut the sources of wealth at their fountain-head, while the seigneur only diverted a portion of their flow. The faille was liable to more momentous variation than seigniorial dues; as imposed by Louis XI, it was almost, though not quite, as ruinous as the English War. Under Charles VIII and still more under Louis XII, the cessation of internal war, and the remission of faille, made these reigns a golden memory to the French peasant. Seyssel says that one-third of the land of France was restored to cultivation within these thirty years. Moreover, it was not until the reign of Louis XII that the peasant felt the full benefit that he should have received from the establishment of a paid army. Under Louis XI the discipline of the regulars was still imperfect; and the arriere-ban was even worse. For good government and for bad government alike the peasant had to pay; to pay less for better government was a double boon.
But what of that institution, the Estates General, that attempted to bring the three Orders (in which the peasants were not included) into touch with the central government? The representative institutions of France had always been the humble servants of the monarchy. At the utmost for a moment in the time of Etienne Marcel they had ventured to take advantage of the King’s weakness, and to interfere in the work of government. The interesting ordinance of 1413, known as the Cabo-chienne, is not the work of the Estates, but of an alliance between the University, the people of Paris, and the Duke of Burgundy. As a rule, the Estates approach the King upon their knees. They supplicate, they cannot command. Legislation is not their concern; even if a great ordinance, as that of 1439, is associated with a meeting of Estates, it cannot be regarded as their work. Their single important function, that of assenting to the faille, is taken from them almost unobserved in 1439. The provincial Estates of central France continue to grant the tattle till 1451, when their cooperation also ceases. Normandy, and more definitely Languedoc and the later acquisitions, retain a shadow of this liberty. But with the power of the purse the power of the people passes slowly and surely to the King.
Parliamentarism was doomed. Louis XI only summoned the Estates once, in 1468, to confirm the revocation of the grant of Normandy which he had made to Charles. The Treaty of 1482, which required the consent of the Estates, was sanctioned by not less than 47 separate local assemblies of Estates. On his death an assembly was summoned to Tours (1484), which was perhaps the most important meeting of Estates General previous to 1789. Each Estate was here represented by elected members. Thus the freedom of the assembly was not swamped by the preponderance of princes and prelates. The persons who took the lead were distinctly of the middle class, gentlemen, bourgeois, clerks. Three deputies