CHAPTER II.

THE EARLIER KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF PARIS.

1. Hugh Capet's Dominions, 987.—When Hugh Capet became king, he gained more in name than in actual power, though the title opened an infinite future to a family of ability. His actual personal lands, consisting of the duchy of France, less by what had been cut off by Normandy and Anjou, with the former royal territory of Laon, were in his own hands as immediate lord. As king he had a right to the homage of all the princes of all the Western kingdom; but he had no power south of the Loire, and not much north of it, except in France itself. In the north his chief vassals were his brother, Henry, Duke of Burgundy, the Karling Herbert, Count of Vermandois, Fulk, Count of Anjou, the head of a fierce and able family which had arisen at the same time as the House of Paris, and Richard, duke of the Normans, who claimed the homage of the Celtic duke of Britanny. In all these lands, except Britanny, was spoken the French form of Romance which is called the Langue-d'-oil, because their form of yes was oil, or oui, while the Romance of the country south of the Loire was called Langue-d'-oc, because they said oc (from the Latin hoc). The princes of these lands, from the Loire to the Ebro, the Dukes of Aquitaine or Guyenne, and of Gascony, and the Counts of Foix, Narbonne, Toulouse, Roussillon, and Barcelona, now and then paid grudging homage to the King of the French. In the north-east, the county of Flanders, where Low-Dutch was the language, was also a fief of the French crown. Lotharingia, which had hitherto fluctuated between the Eastern and Western crowns, was from this time always a fief of Germany.

2. War with Aquitaine, 990.-When Hugh was elected and crowned, he next caused his son Robert to be crowned king also, to secure his succession. This was very commonly done for some generations, and it helped to keep the crown in the family. But Hugh was opposed by the Karling Charles of Lorraine, who set himself up at Laon, and was supported by Duke William of Aquitaine and other

princes. Charles was overthrown at Laon, but when Hugh strove to enforce his claims in Aquitaine, and in 990 laid siege to Poitiers, he was driven back by Duke William Fer-d-bras after a fierce battle on the banks of the Loire, and never mastered that country. When the Count of Perigord had leagued with Fulk Nerra or the Black, Count of Anjou, against the Count of Blois, and was besieging Tours, and he refused to attend to the king's command, he replied to Hugh's demand, "Who made thee a count?" with, "Who made thee a king ?" In effect the only way in which the kingly authority could be enforced was by siding with one set of vassals against another, or by balancing the interests of clergy and burghers against those of the nobles-a policy which prevailed in the long run, but which required a very able man to carry it out. Hugh Capet was a man of much less mark than his uncrowned father. He did nothing to check the lawless warfare between all the counts and barons around him; as indeed he had neither the means nor the ability to form such means. He was devout, and was sometimes called a king of priests. In truth the clergy were almost the only persons with any notions beyond the pettiest ambition and private strife; and a king who had a turn for better things, yet had not force of character to mould and train his nobles, could not but lean chiefly on his clergy.

3. Robert II. 996.-But when Robert II. succeeded his father as sole king, in 996, he was not only a king of priests, but a king of beggars. A mild, gentle, pious, man, hating violence, highly educated in the learning of the time, and of artistic and poetical tastes, his refuge was with the monks of St. Denys, whose guardian he was as Count of Paris. With them he sung in the choir, and for them composed Latin hymns, copies of which he laid on the altar of St. Peter's when he made a pilgrimage to Rome. Some are still in use. He was very charitable, and the poor flocked about him. He fed and clothed them, but knew not how to check the violence that made them beggars, and rendered the shortest journey perilous. In spite of his piety, he fell into trouble with the Pope, by his marriage with Bertha, daughter to Conrad II., king of Arles and widow of the Count of Blois. Her brother, Rodolf, was childless, and was obliged to sell his rights to the Emperor Otho III., lest Robert or his children should assert a claim through her

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(their grandmothers having both been daughters of the Emperor Henry I.). Pope Gregory V. was induced by Otho to pronounce the marriage invalid, on the plea of kindred, and also because Robert had stood godfather to one of the children of Bertha's first marriage. The evidently political object of this separation emboldened Robert to resist it. He even endured excommunication for some time before he yielded and parted with Bertha.

4. The Year 1000.-To this he was probably led by the general belief that the 1000 years for which Satan is said in the Book of Revelation to be bound would end with the world itself in A.D. 1000. Everywhere people were preparing, breaking off with their vices, setting free their captives, making up quarrels, undoing wrongs, thronging the churches, confessing, doing penance, many in an agony of fear which hindered them from transacting business, and even from sowing their crops. Their dis

may was increased by the news that the Khalif Hakem had ruined the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. When the new year dawned, it was like a renewal of life; but the alarm had not been wholly without fruit, for a certain sense of religion began from this time to show itself in the violent penances of the fierce barons, and the greatly increased zeal and strictness of the monastic orders. The king, by the Pope's direction, married Constance, daughter of the Count of Toulouse, a proud, passionate, woman, whose southern gaiety and frivolity were a great scandal to his rude and severe court. Robert had a certain pleasure in tricking her. He sang a hymn beginning "O Constantia martyrum," and she thought it a poem in her praise. When she caught a beggar stripping the gold fringe from his robes, he answered, "He wants it more than I do;" and when she had given him a lance decked with silver, he bade the next man who asked alms of him to fetch a knife, and going into a corner, picked off all the silver and gave it away. But he seems to have been cowed by her, for he allowed the murders which she caused to go unpunished.

5. The First Execution for Heresy, 1022.-The religious ferment awoke discussion, and two priests of Orleans, one of whom had been the queen's confessor, were tried before a synod, and found guilty of denying the Manhood of our Blessed Lord. The king condemned them to be burned, and this was the first execution for heresy on

record. Constance added brutality to the cruelty of the act by striking out the eye of her old confessor with her iron-tipped staff as he passed her on his way to the hut in which he and his companion were shut up while it was burned over their heads. The last years of Robert's reign were darkened by the dissensions of his sons. The eldest was imbecile, and when he wished to crown Henry, the next brother, Constance set up her favourite, Robert, in opposition, but Henry prevailed, and was crowned in 1027.

6. Henry I., 1031.-When, in 1031, Henry I. succeeded to the throne, his mother and brother made war on him, and he only prevailed by the aid of Robert, Duke of the Normans, called the Magnificent. He bought off his brother Robert with the Duchy of Burgundy, which had returned to the crown on the death of his uncle in 1003. Three bad harvests caused, in 1032, such a famine all over the continent as had seldom been known. Multitudes died, all sorts of carrion were eaten, and a man was even seized in the market-place of Tonnerre selling human flesh. Wolves prowled about, devouring the unburied corpses and attacking the living who were too weak to defend themselves from them, and though the bishops sold the church plate to gain supplies for the poor, the scarcity was such that money hardly was of use, until, in 1033, a wonderful crop, equal to five ordinary harvests, put an end to the general distress.

7. The Truce of God.-While the remembrance of the famine was fresh, Richard, bishop of Verdun, together with many of the other bishops, abbots, and other clergy throughout Aquitaine, Burgundy, and France began to preach peace on earth and to denounce the horrible violences that were continually being committed. Synods were convoked, at which rules were drawn up which were enforced on the nobles under pain of excommunication. They were made to swear to strike no blow in a private quarrel, to attack no unarmed, person, to permit no robbery or violence. Thus the Church tried to make up for the weakness of the law, and her threats were so much dreaded that, when Hugh, Count of Rodez, first set the example, few refused to swear to this Peace of God. But five years trial showed that ferocity could not be entirely repressed, and that a broken oath only made recklessness worse. So for it was substituted the Truce of God, which forbade all fighting from Thursday

evening till Monday morning, as well as in Lent, Advent, and the greater festivals, nor might fortifications be worked at in the meantime, unless they had been begun a fortnight before. The bounds of sanctuary around churches, convents, and burying-grounds were marked, and all injury to ecclesiastics, women, or peasants was forbidden. A sort of police was established by the clergy to enforce these rules, which were proclaimed everywhere but in the county of Paris, where Henry chose to think them an interference with his rights. Of course the truce was often broken; but it did something towards lessening the atrocities which the law had no power to prevent. At the same time there was growing up among the warriors a belief in a certain standard of honour in warfare, which came to be known as chivalry. This in the course of the next three centuries came to bind the knight by a code of rules of courtesy and honour towards all of his own degree, but unfortunately took no heed to those outside it, so that a man might call himself a true knight and yet be a brutal ruffian towards burghers and peasants. A feudal army was made up of counts, barons, and their sons, who, if without inheritance, swelled the train of some noble, and there was also a certain number of menat-arms, consisting of the stronger men of the baron's villeinage and the warlike of the burgher class.

8. Minority of William the Conqueror, 1035.-In 1035 the Norman duke Robert set off on a pilgrimage, after causing his barons to do homage to his son William, the child of a woman of low station, who could have been set aside for a bride of higher rank. Dying at Nicæa, Robert left the boy at eight years old beset with danger from every kinsman who could lay claim to his duchy, till his whole character was welded into a wonderful compound of daring, shrewdness, and resolution. The old

friendship between Normandy and France had died out; the French hated the Normans, and the French kings began to remember that the Norman settlement had cut them off from the sea. The undefended state of Normandy tempted King Henry to play the part of Lewis IV. by Richard the Fearless, but he could only waste the country of Hiesmes, and take possession of the castle of Tillières. The loyal Normans were too strong for him, so that he knighted the young duke and received his homage; and when, in 1047, Neal, Viscount of the Côtentin, revolted, Henry joined his forces with those of