is full of these happy inconsistencies; when a moral and just principle is implanted in the soul, absolute power itself does not completely escape from its healthy influence, and the good makes its way athwart the evil, just as a source of fresh and pure water ceases not to flow through and spread over a land wasted by the crimes or follies of men.
It is desirable to give an idea and an example of the conduct which was already beginning to be adopted and of the authority which was already beginning to be exercised in France, amidst the feudal reaction that set in against Philip the Handsome and amidst the feeble government of his sons, by that magistracy, of such recent and petty origin, which was called upon to defend, in the king’s name, order and justice against the count-less anarchical tyrannies scattered over the national territory. During the early years of the fifteenth century, a lord of Gascony, Jordan de Lisle, “of most noble origin, but most ignoble deeds,” says a contemporary chronicler, “abandoned himself to all manner of irregularities and crimes.” Confident in his strength and his connections—for Pope John XXII. had given his niece to him in marriage—“he committed homicides, entertained evil-doers and murderers, countenanced robbers, and rose against the king. He killed, with the man’s own truncheon, one of the king’s servants who was wearing the royal livery according to the custom of the royal servants. When his misdeeds were known, he was summoned for trial to Paris; and he went thither surrounded by a stately retinue of counts, nobles, and barons of Aquitaine. He was confined, at first, in the prison of Chatelet; and when a hearing had been accorded to his reply and to what he alleged in his defence against the crimes of which he was accused, he was finally pronounced worthy of death by the doctors of the parliament, and on Trinity-eve he was dragged at the tail of horses and hanged, as he deserved, on the public gallows at Paris.” It was, assuredly, a difficult and a dangerous task for the obscure members of this parliament, scarcely organized as it was and quite lately established for a permanence in Paris, to put down such disorders and such men. In the course of its long career the French magistracy has committed many faults; it has more than once either aspired to overstep its proper limits or failed to fulfil all its duties; but history would be ungrateful and untruthful not to bring into the light the virtues this body has displayed from its humble cradle, and the services it has rendered to France, to her security at home, to her moral dignity, to her intellectual glory, and to the progress of her civilization with all its brilliancy and productiveness, though it is still so imperfect and so thwarted.
Another fact which has held an important place in the history of France, and exercised a great influence over her destinies, likewise dates from this period; and that is the exclusion of women from the succession to the throne, by virtue of an article, ill understood, of the Salic law. The ancient law of the Salian Franks, drawn up, probably, in the seventh century, had no statute at all touching this grave question; the article relied upon was merely a regulation of civil law prescribing that “no portion of really Salic land (that is to say, in the full territorial ownership of the head of the family) should pass into the possession of women, but it should belong altogether to the virile sex.” From the time of Hugh Capet heirs male had never been wanting to the crown, and the succession in the male line had been a fact uninterrupted indeed, but not due to prescription or law. Louis the Quarreller, at his death, on the 5th of June, 1316, left only a daughter, but his second wife, Queen Clemence, was pregnant. As soon as Philip the Long, then Count of Poitiers, heard of his brother’s death, he hurried to Paris, assembled a certain number of barons, and got them to decide that he, if the queen should be delivered of a son, should be regent of the kingdom for eighteen years; but that if she should bear a daughter he should immediately take possession of the crown. On the 15th of November, 1316, the queen gave birth to a son, who was named John, and who figures as John I. in the series of French kings; but the child died at the end of five days, and on the 6th of January, 1317, Philip the Long was crowned king at Rheims. He forthwith summoned—there is no knowing exactly where and in what numbers—the clergy, barons, and third estate, who declared, on the 2d of February, that “the laws and customs, inviolably observed among the Franks, excluded daughters from the crown.” There was no doubt about the fact; but the law was not established, nor even in conformity with the entire feudal system or with general opinion. And “thus the kingdom went,” says Froissart, “as seemeth to many folks, out of the right line.” But the measure was evidently wise and salutary for France as well as for the king-ship; and it was renewed, after Philip the Long died on the 3d of January, 1322, and left daughters only, in favor of his brother Charles the Handsome, who died, in his turn, on the 1st of January, 1328, and likewise left daughters only. The question as to the succession to the throne then lay between the male line represented by Philip, Count of Valois, grandson of Philip the Bold through Charles of Valois, his father, and the female line represented by Edward III., King of England, grandson, through his mother, Isabel, sister of the late King Charles the Handsome, of Philip the Handsome. A war of more than a century’s duration between France and England was the result of this lamentable rivalry, which all but put the kingdom of France under an English king; but France was saved by the stubborn resistance of the national spirit and by Joan of Arc, inspired by God. One hundred and twenty-eight years after the triumph of the national cause, and four years after the accession of Henry IV., which was still disputed by the League, a decree of the parliament of Paris, dated the 28th of June, 1593, maintained, against the pretensions of Spain, the authority of the Salic law, and on the 1st of October, 1789, a decree of the National Assembly, in conformity with the formal and unanimous wish of the memorials drawn up by the states-general, gave a fresh sanction to that principle, which, confining the heredity of the crown to the male line, had been salvation to the unity and nationality of the monarchy in France.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE COMMUNES AND THE THIRD ESTATE.
The history of the Merovingians is that of barbarians invading Gaul and settling upon the ruins of the Roman empire. The history of the Carlovingians is that of the greatest of the barbarians taking upon himself to resuscitate the Roman empire, and of Charlemagne’s descendants disputing amongst themselves for the fragments of his fabric, as fragile as it was grand. Amidst this vast chaos and upon this double ruin was formed the feudal system, which by transformation after transformation became ultimately France. Hugh Capet, one of its chieftains, made himself its king. The Capetians achieved the French kingship. We have traced its character and progressive development from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, through the reigns of Louis the Fat, of Philip Augustus, of St. Louis, and of Philip the Handsome, princes very diverse and very unequal in merit, but all of them able and energetic. This period was likewise the cradle of the French nation. That was the time when it began to exhibit itself in its different elements, and to arise under monarchical rule from the midst of the feudal system. Its earliest features and its earliest efforts in the long and laborious work of its development are now to be set before the reader’s eyes.
The two words inscribed at the head of this chapter, the Communes and the Third-Estate, are verbal expressions for the two great facts at that time revealing that the French nation was in labor of formation. Closely connected one with the other and tending towards the same end, these two facts are, nevertheless, very diverse, and even when they have not been confounded, they have not been with sufficient clearness distinguished and characterized, each of them apart. They are diverse both in their chronological date and their social importance. The Communes are the first to appear in history. They appear there as local facts, isolated one from another, often very different in point of origin, though analogous in their aim, and in every case neither assuming nor pretending to assume any place in the government of the state. Local interests and rights, the special affairs of certain populations agglomerated in certain spots, are the only objects, the only province of the communes. With this purely municipal and individual character they come to their birth, their confirmation, and their development from the eleventh to the fourteenth century; and at the end of two centuries they enter upon their decline, they occupy far less room and make far less noise in history. It is exactly then that the Third Estate comes to
