Capetian France
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Three
Feudal Europe
Chapter II
The Division of Europe
2. The New States
p143 On the death of Louis V, and in the absence of a possible Carolingian heir... the election of Hugh Capet (June 1st, 987) followed, in accordance with the traditions of his family... With his accession to the throne [of France] a new dynasty began, which was to endure for eight centuries, and achieve hegemony in Europe.
There was nothing to suggest this... Nothing was changed [by his accession]... There had already been Capetian kings: so his election was not a novelty. The conception of royalty was not in any way modified by it.
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The Capetians accepted the situation. They were not by any means feudal kings in the sense of considering that their power was legally restricted by that of the aristocracy. They were simply opportunists... they were careful to give the magnates no cause of discontent which might excite their mistrust. They kept out of difficulties at home and abroad... They were content to live, and to leave behind them... an heir whom they had elected in their own lifetime.
p144 The first Capetians dug themselves in... The kings were sustained only by their own domains of Paris, Amiens, Orleans and Bourges. They could not create prince-bishops, like the Ottos: the great lay nobles had absorbed all the territory... They were so modest that they have no history... Henri I (1031-1060) allowed the Emperor Conrad to take possession of the kingdom of Burgundy. Philip I (1060-1108) did nothing to make his reign remarkable. But the Capets endured, and they stuck roots in the soil. At the same time their residence, Paris, which they rarely left, was gradually becoming a capital. [This seems to be an exaggeration if the account of Paris in Wiki is to be believed.] It was the first capital that Europe had known. Hitherto the kings had moved about: the Capets, territorial princes, settled down and provided the country with a center. There was no reason why Paris should become the capital of France. It became the capital because it was the residence of the Capets.
...And when, under Louis VI, the son of Philip I, an age of peril began with the conquest of England by William the Conqueror (1066), the monarchy showed that it was already sufficiently established to enter upon the conflict which was henceforth to shape the history of France.
Who knew I was interested in the story of the House of Capet?
Chapter III
The Feudality
1. The Disintegration of the State
p146 We are accustomed to give the name of "feudal" to the political system which prevailed in Europe after the disappearance of the Carolingian dynasty. This habit of ours goes back to the French Revolution, which indiscriminately attributed to the feudal system all the rights, privileges, usages and traditions which were inconsistent with the constitution of the modern State and modern society. Yet if we accept the words in their exact sense, we ought to understand, by the terms "feudal" and "feudal system," only the juridical relations arising from the fief or the bond of vassalage, [Footnote: The old feudal seigneurs, down to the close of the 18th century, were under no illusion in this respect. It was generally admitted by all that "fief and justice have nothing in common." In reality, feudal law was a special kind of law, like commercial law.] and it is an abuse of language to stretch the sense of these terms to include a whole political order, in which the feudal element was, after all, only of secondary importance, and... formal rather than substantial. We shall follow the common usage, but we shall also call attention to the fact that the most significant feature of the so-called feudal system was the disintegration of the State.
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p148 It [the monarchy] might have disappeared. [by the close of the 9th century] It did not disappear, and this was characteristic of the age. [Footnote: The election of the king was a mark of progress in the sense that it assured the unity of the monarchy: there would be no more partitions of kingdoms.] It did not occur to the magnates that they could dispense with the king. They still had a lingering sense of the unity of the State. Here, above all, the Church had to intervene, for it did not acknowledge the magnates; for the Church the king was the guardian of the providential order of the world. And he, for his part, protected the Church and guaranteed its property. And the magnates themselves needed a king as judge and arbiter: just as in the law-courts there must be a judge or magistrate who presides over the proceedings and pronounces sentence. The king was indispensable to the social order, to the "public peace." But it was clearly understood that the king reigned and did not govern.
... The kings continued to employ all the old formulae, to receive... all the marks of respect. But they had allowed the reality of power to pass into the hands of the aristocracy... After Charles the Bald there are no more capitularies, and not until the 12th century do we find the king acting again in a legislative capacity.
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p149 ...The 10th century, like the 15th, was an epoch of political assassination. The territorial power of the feudal princes was no more scrupulous in the choice of means than that of the absolutist monarchs or the tyrants of the Renaissance; it was merely more brutal. Each sought to increase his power to the detriment of his neighbor, and any weapon was permissible. The passion for land ruled the actions of all these feudal magnates, and as there was no one to stop them, they struck at each other with all the brutality of their instincts...
p150 ...For the time being the king gave way to the seigneurs, and recognized the ursurpations which he could not prevent. The hereditary principle was in force among the feudal magnates. The son succeeded to the father, and from the 11th century onwards the hereditary principle was extended to women.
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p151 Thus, from the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century the State was reduced to an empty form. The provinces had become principalities, and the functionaries princes. The king, except on his own territory, was merely the "enfeoffed sovereign" of his kingdom... The protection of human beings is not merely the primordial function of the State: it is also the origin of the State. Now, the king no longer protected his subjects; the magnates protected them. It was therefore necessary and beneficial that they should dismember the State to their own advantage...
Details of the organization of the principalities follows, and is interesting enough, though I'm going to skip most of it.
p153 From every point of view, then, his [the prince's] power was greater than that of the king. For while the king was elective, the principality was hereditary, and at an early period -- as early as the 10th century -- the right of sole succession was established, so that the principalities were not divided. It is interesting to note how unchanged they continued until the end of the ancien regime, which preserved them as provinces. The prince, from the 10th century... had a court, modeled on that of the king: chancellor, marshal, seneschal, cup-bearer. He had his vassals, who were more loyal to him than he was to the king...He was the advowee of all the monasteries within his territory, and he exacted dues or services from them. The documents call him princeps, monarcha, advocatus patriae, post Deum princeps.
He was... the territorial chieftain, the head of the patria... In... [these little local "counties"] was formed, for the first time, the patriotism which in modern society has replaced the civic sentiment of antiquity... Modern patriotism, born of the dynastic sentiment, was in the first place nurtured in the principalities.
I think of patriotism as being a product of nationalism, but I guess that really doesn't make as much sense as this. Ignoring France, even if you think of Germany (and Hegel), nationalism was tied to the dynasty. The 2nd Reich was not a "nation" but a collection of nations serving one dynasty. And you could say the same for the UK.
He [the prince] was the supreme justiciary on his own territory, the guardian and guarantor of public order... When one speaks of the "bloodthirsty" feudal magnates one should make reservations. The feudal seigneur was bloodthirsty when abroad, in his enemy's country, but not in his own...
2. Nobility and Chivalry
p154 In the 10th century a new juridical class had sprung up in the European States: the nobility. Its importance is sufficiently shown by the fact that in lay society the nobles alone had political rights. Later on the bourgeoisie would take its place beside the nobility. This place would become more and more considerable, but down to the end of the ancien regime it would still be regarded as a secondary place. In the history of Europe the nobles have played -- though under different conditions -- almost the same part as the patricians in Roman history, while the bourgeoisie may be compared with the plebians. It is only in the modern State that they have become merged in the mass of the citizens, much as in the Empire the general bestowal of civic rights effaced the old difference between the patriciate and the plebs.
p155 The noblesse exercised so great and so general an influence over the history of Europe that it is not easy to realize that it constituted an original phenomenon, and one peculiar to the Christian society of Western Europe. Neither the Roman nor the Byzantine Empire, nor the Musulman world, had ever known a similar institution...
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...Those who had retained their liberty were in a privileged situation, and from the 10th century the word liber took on the meaning of nobilis. The old juridical usages relating to the family and inheritance now applied only to these privileged persons. The common law of freemen was modified into a special law. The connubium was enlarged in Roman law: at the beginning of the Middle Ages it was reduced. Family right was finally the apanage only of the few; and the same was true of free hereditary property (allodium).
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p156 ...As a general rule, the son of a knight would himself become a knight. He was therefore counted, from birth, as belonging to the military caste; and the daughters of a knight would be regarded as belonging to the same social class. And as soon as this state of affairs was reached -- which in France... was by the close of the 10th century -- the nobility was born: that is, a hereditary class, conferring a particular rank in the State, independent of social position. All those who belonged to the milicia, or whose ancestors had belonged to it, were nobiles. It was not absolutely essential that the "noble" should be free; for in the end the ministeriales came to be regarded as nobles. [Footnote: But this was not definitely the case until the 14th century.]
p157 Thus the class of vassals was practically merged in the nobility. However, nobility did not depend upon the possession of a fief... it was... not until the 13th century -- that the plebian was debarred from the possession of a fief... The nobility was really the army... The noble did not pay the count an impost on account of his land, because he furnished him with military service. This was the sole privilege, so-called, of the nobility: it had no others. His special juridical situation, his special status in respect of his family, and the special procedure by which he benefited in the law-courts, were merely the survival of the common law of freemen, which had been modified for villeins.
The importance of the nobility resided in its social role. Uplifted by its military functions above the rest of the population, in constant touch with the princes, it was the nobility and the nobility alone that furnished the administrative personnel, just as it was the nobility alone that constituted the army. It was from the nobility that the chatelaines were chosen, the mayors, and all the other agents of the territorial administration. It was therefore regarded not only as a military but also as a political caste... Below the nobility and the clergy was the mass of plebeians, by whose labor they lived...
p158 ...In France and the Low Countries one could count on finding a number of knights in every country town, and we certainly shall not be far out if we estimate that in these countries they represented at least one tenth of the population.
...they were the most turbulent of men, furiously destroying one another in the private wars and family vendettas in which they were continually involved. In vain did the Church, from the close of the 10th century... restrict the days of battle by the "peace of God"; custom proved to be too strong for it...
p159 Naturally, in such an environment there was no intellectual culture. Only in the wealthiest families would a clerk teach the daughters to read. As for the sons, who were in the saddle as soon as they could mount a horse, they had no knowledge of anything but fighting... They were violent, gross, and superstitious, but excellent soldiers...
At the close of the 11th century chivalry was extremely widespread. But "chivalrous" manners -- by which I mean the code of courtesy and loyalty which distinguished the gentlemen after the age of the Crusades -- has as yet no existence.
...To the very last the great majority of the nobility would retain the traces of their descent from a class of men to whom all notions of profit and productive labor were alien [I get the productive labor part of this, but weren't the nobility keen to gain a profit from other peoples labor from fairly early on? I'm thinking of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, but weren't there similarly greedy noblemen in France in the 18th century?]. To a certain extent the ancient idea that labor is unworthy of the freeman was revived by the chivalry of Europe. But the freeman of antiquity devoted his leisure, which he owned to the labor of his slaves, to public affairs [like our "Founding Fathers"]: the knights of the Middle Ages profited by the gift of land which he received to devote himself to the calling of arms and the service of his lord [like the Spartans]. When centuries had passed, and when the nobility had gradually been ousted from the rank which it held of old, the expression "to live like a nobleman" finally came to mean, "to live without doing anything."
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