SECTION II

 

Decline of the Feudal Aristocracy

The wealth and property of the nobility were greatly impaired during the long wars which the kingdom was obliged to maintain with the English. The extraordinary zeal with which they exerted themselves in defence of their country against its ancient enemies, exhausted entirely the fortunes of some great families. As almost every province in the kingdom was, in its turn, the seat of war, the lands of others were exposed to the depredations of the enemy, were ravaged by the mercenary troops which their sovereigns hired occasionally, but could not pay, or were desolated with rage still more destructive, by the peasants, in different insurrections. At the same time, the necessities of government having forced their kings upon the desperate expedient of making great and sudden alterations in the current coin of the kingdom, the fines, quit-rents, and other payments fixed by ancient custom, sunk much in value, and the revenues of a fief were reduced far below the sum which it had once yielded. During their contests with the English, in which a generous nobility courted every station where danger appeared, or honor could be gained, many families of note became extinct, and their fiefs were reunited to the crown. Other fiefs, in a long course of years, fell to female heirs, and were divided among them; were diminished by profuse donations to the church, or were broken and split by the succession of remote collateral heirs.

Encouraged by these manifest symptoms of decline in that body which he wished to depress, Charles VII during the first interval of peace with England, made several efforts towards establishing the regal prerogative on the ruins of the aristocracy. But his obligations to the nobles were so many, as well as recent, and their services in recovering the kingdom so splendid, as rendered it necessary for him to proceed with moderation and caution. Such, however, was the authority which the crown had acquired by the progress of its arms against the English, and so much was the power of the nobility diminished, that, without any opposition, he soon made innovations of great consequence in the constitution. He not only established that formidable body of regular troops, which has been mentioned, but he was the first monarch of France, who, by his royal edict [AD 1440], without the concurrence of the States-general of the kingdom, levied an extraordinary subsidy on his people. He prevailed likewise with his subjects, to render several taxes perpetual, which had formerly been imposed occasionally and exacted during a short time. By means of all these innovations, he acquired such an increase of power, and extended his prerogative so far beyond its ancient limits, that, from being the most dependent prince who had ever sat upon the throne of France, he came to possess, during the latter years of his reign, a degree of authority which none of his predecessors had enjoyed for several ages.

The plan of humbling the nobility which Charles began to execute, his son Louis XI carried on with a bolder spirit, and with greater success. Louis was formed by nature to be a tyrant; and at whatever period he had been called to ascend the throne, his reign must have abounded with schemes to oppress his people, and to render his own power absolute. Subtle, unfeeling, cruel; a stranger to every principle of integrity, and regardless of decency, he scorned all the restraints which a sense of honor, or the desire of fame, impose even upon ambitious men. Sagacious, at the same time, to discern what he deemed his true interest, and influenced by that alone, he was capable of pursuing it with a persevering industry, and of adhering to it with a systematic spirit, from which no object could divert, and no danger could deter him.

The maxims of his administration were as profound as they were fatal to the privileges of the nobility. He filled all the departments of government with new men, and often with persons whom he called from the lowest as well as most despised functions of life, and raised at pleasure to stations of great power or trust. These were his only confidents, whom he consulted in forming his plans, and to whom he committed the execution of them: while the nobles, accustomed to be the companions, the favorites, and the ministers of their sovereigns, were treated with such studied and mortifying neglect, that if they would not submit to follow a court in which they appeared without any shadow of their ancient power, they were obliged to retire to their castles, where they remained unemployed and forgotten.

Not satisfied with having rendered the nobles of less consideration, by taking out of their hands the sole direction of affairs, Louis added insult to neglect; and by violating their most valuable privileges, endeavored to degrade the order, and to reduce the members of it to the same level with other subjects. Persons of the highest rank among them, if so bold as to oppose his schemes, or so unfortunate as to awaken the jealousy of his capricious temper, were persecuted with rigor, from which all who belonged to the order of nobility had hitherto been exempted; they were tried by judges who had no right to take cognizance of their actions; and were subject to torture, or condemned to an ignominious death, without regard to their birth or condition. The people, accustomed to see the blood of the most illustrious personages shed by the hands of the common executioner, to behold them shut up in dungeons, and carried about in cages of iron, began to view the nobility with less reverence than formerly, and looked up with terror to the royal authority, which seemed to have humbled or annihilated every other power in the kingdom.

At the same time, Louis, being afraid that oppression might rouse the nobles, whom the rigor of his government had intimidated, or that self-preservation might at last teach them to unite, dexterously scattered among them the seeds of discord; and industriously fomented those ancient animosities between the great families, which the spirit of jealousy and emulation, natural to the feudal government, had originally kindled and still kept alive. To accomplish this, all the arts of intrigue, all the mysteries and refinements of his fraudulent policy were employed, and with such success, that at a juncture which required the most strenuous efforts, as well as the most perfect union, the nobles never acted, except during one short sally of resentment at the beginning of his reign, either with vigor or in concert.

As he stripped the nobility of their privileges, he added to the power and prerogative of the crown. In order to have at command such a body of soldiers as might be sufficient to crush any force that his disaffected subjects could draw together, he not only kept on foot the regular troops which his father had raised, but, besides augmenting their number considerably, he took into his pay six thousand Swiss, at that time the best disciplined and most formidable infantry in Europe. From the jealousy natural to tyrants, he confided in these foreign mercenaries, as the most devoted instruments of oppression, and the most faithful guardians of the power which he had usurped. That they might be ready to act on the shortest warning, he, during the latter years of his reign, kept a considerable body of them encamped in one place.

Great funds were requisite, not only to defray the expense of this additional establishment, but to supply the sums employed in the various enterprises which the restless activity of his genius prompted him to undertake. But the prerogative that his father had assumed, of levying taxes without the concurrence of the States-general, which he was careful not only to retain but to extend, enabled him to provide in some measure for the increasing charges of government.

What his prerogative, enlarged as it was, could not furnish, his address procured. He was the first monarch in Europe who discovered the method of managing those great assemblies, in which the feudal policy had vested the power of granting subsidies and of imposing taxes. He first taught other princes the fatal art of beginning their attack on public liberty, by corrupting the source from which it should flow. By exerting all his power and address in influencing the election of representatives, by bribing or overawing the members, and by various changes which he artfully made in the form of their deliberations, Louis acquired such entire direction of these assemblies, that, from being the vigilant guardians of the privilege and property of the people, he rendered them tamely subservient towards promoting the most odious measures of his reign. As no power remained to set bounds to his exactions, he not only continued all the taxes imposed by his father, but made great additions to them, which amounted to a sum that appeared astonishing to his contemporaries.

Nor was it the power alone or wealth of the crown that Louis increased; he extended its territories by acquisitions of various kinds. He got possession of Roussillon by purchase; Provence was conveyed to him by the will of Charles d'Anjou; and upon the death of Charles the Bold, he seized with a strong hand Burgundy and Artois, which had belonged to that prince. Thus, during the course of a single reign, France was formed into one compact kingdom, and the steady unrelenting policy of Louis Xl not only subdued the haughty spirit of the feudal nobles, but established a species of government, scarcely less absolute, or less terrible than eastern despotism.

But fatal as his administration was to the liberties of his subjects, the authority which he had acquired, the resources of which he became master, and his freedom from restraint in concerting his plans as well as in executing them, rendered his reign active and enterprising. Louis negotiated in all the courts of Europe; he observed the motions of all his neighbors; he engaged, either as principal, or as an auxiliary, in every great transaction; his resolutions were prompt, his operations vigorous; and upon every emergence he could call forth into action the whole force of his kingdom. From the era of his reign, the kings of France, no longer fettered and circumscribed at home by a jealous nobility, have exerted themselves more abroad, have formed more extensive schemes of foreign conquests, and have carried on war with a spirit and vigour long unknown in Europe.

The example which Louis set was too inviting not to be imitated by other princes. Henry VII, as soon as he was seated on the throne of England, formed the plan of enlarging his own prerogative, by breaking the power of the nobility. The circumstances under which he undertook to execute it, were less favorable than those which induced Charles VII to make the same attempt; and the spirit with which he conducted it, was very different from that of Louis XI.

Charles, by the success of his arms against the English, by the merit of having expelled them out of so many provinces, had established himself so firmly in the confidence of his people, as encouraged him to make bold encroachments on the ancient constitution. The daring genius of Louis broke through every barrier, and endeavored to surmount or to remove every obstacle that stood in his way. But Henry held the scepter by a disputed title; a popular faction was ready every moment to take arms against him; and after long civil wars, during which the nobility had often displayed their power in creating and deposing kings, he felt that the legal authority had been so much relaxed, and that he entered into possession of a prerogative so much abridged, as rendered it necessary to carry on his measures deliberately, and without any violent exertion. He endeavored to undermine that formidable structure, which he durst not attack  by open force. His schemes, though cautious and slow in their operation, were well concerted, and productive in the end of great effects. By his laws, permitting the barons to break the entails of their estates, and expose them to sale; by his regulations to prevent the nobility from keeping in their service those numerous bands of retainers, which rendered them formidable and turbulent; by favoring the rising power of the commons; by encouraging population, agriculture, and commerce; by securing to his subjects, during a long reign, the enjoyment of the blessings which flow from the arts of peace; by accustoming them to an administration of government, under which the laws were executed with steadiness and vigor; he made imperceptibly considerable alterations in the English constitution, and transmitted to his successor authority so extensive, as rendered him one of the most absolute monarchs in Europe, and capable of the greatest and most vigorous efforts.

In Spain, the union of all its crowns by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella; the glory that they acquired by the conquest of Granada, which brought the odious dominion of the Moors to a period; the command of the great armies which it had been necessary to keep long on foot, in order to accomplish this; the wisdom and steadiness of their administration; and the address with which they availed themselves of every incident that occurred to humble the nobility, and to extend their own prerogative, conspired in raising these monarchs to such eminence and authority, as none of their predecessors had ever enjoyed. Though several causes, which shall be explained in another place, prevented their attaining the same powers with the kings of France and England, and preserved the feudal constitution longer entire in Spain, their great abilities supplied the defects of their prerogative, and improved with such dexterity all the advantages which they possessed, that Ferdinand carried on his foreign operations, which were very extensive, with extraordinary vigour and effect.

While these princes were thus enlarging the boundaries of prerogative, and taking such steps towards rendering their kingdoms capable of acting with union and force, events occurred, which called them forth to exert the new powers which they had acquired. These engaged them in such a series of enterprises and negotiations, that the affairs of all the considerable nations in Europe came to be insensibly interwoven with each other; and a great political system was gradually formed, which grew to be an object or universal attention.

 

The Craddle of the Haupsburgs