Link to Chronology
England on top
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Eight
The European Crisis
(1300-1450)
The Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the Hundred Years War
Chapter II
The Hundred Years War
1. To the Death of Edward III (1377)
p418 ...A war so long and so bitterly contested was possible only between France and England. They alone had governments disposing of sufficient resources, and peoples endowed with a sufficient national unity, to endure such an ordeal without perishing... After all the shedding of blood, after all the misery and devastation, the two adversaries found themselves still more or less at the point of departure, so that the Hundred Years' War had been merely a futile and terrible calamity... they [the kings of England] had no urgent motive for going to war... For France was not threatening or incommoding England... It is quite comprehensible that France might have attacked England in order to recover... [Guyenne], the last remnant of the Angivin possessions... but it was not France, it was England that provoked the war... In short, from whatever point of view we regard it, the Hundred Years' War is seen to have been a useless war, a needless war... As a matter of fact, it must be regarded merely as a war of prestige. And this, precisely, explains the passion with which the English people followed its kings into this war.
...
p427 Hostilities began in 1337... In the following year... Edward III disembarked at Antwerp, with the intention of doing great things... in order to compel the Count of Flanders to come over to his side, he had... prohibited the export of wool, which was indispensable to the cloth trade of Gand, Bruge, and Ypres... the trade corporations and merchants of the cities had no intention of allowing themselves to be ruined or starved... Gand, where the corporations of the cloth trade had for some years been in power, took over the government of the country, under the direction of a wealthy burgess, Jan van Artevelde... Thus the solidarity of their interests brought about an alliance between Edward's monarchical and dynastic policy and the bourgeois and economic policy of the Flemish cities, an alliance to which Flanders was to show herself unshakably faithful. In this essentially industrial country, where the bourgeoisie was predominant, politics, sooner than anywhere else in the North of Europe, were subordinated to economic considerations.
...
p428 ...In 1346... [Edward III] suddenly landed in Normandy. This was the beginning of a complete change of policy. A new system of tactics, based on the role of the archers on the battlefield, gave the English a series of brilliant victories... The battle of Crecy... proved the quality of his army... The victor profited by this un-hoped-for success to besiege Calais, which was taken after a siege of eleven months, and was not restored to France until 1558... On the Pope's intervention a truce was concluded in September 1347. This, owing to the appearance of the Black Death, was prolonged into the following year, and... was terminated only in 1355.
p429 ...The new King of France, Jean II the Good (1350-1364), had decided to convoke the States-General, which had furnished him with the means of equipping 30,000 men. These he led against the Black Prince, who was ravaging Guyenne. The battle of Maupertuis... [Poitiers] on September 19th, 1356, ended in a catastrophe even more overwhelming than that of Crecy. Jean himself was taken prisoner and sent to England as a captive.
p430 In France this disaster immediately provoked the first of the crises with which the monarchy was repeatedly confronted until the middle of the 15th century. The States-General of 1355, in which the influence of the bourgeoisie was predominant, led by the Provost of the merchants of Paris, Etienne Marcel, had demanded, in return for voting the taxes required by the king, a considerable voice in the government. They had stipulated that they themselves must levy and administer the new taxes, and they demanded guarantees in respect of their right to assemble in the future, and the introduction of administrative reforms... Unassailed and undisputed for a century past, the monarchy was asked to share its power with the nation... [In France] the bourgeoisie -- that is to say, the commercial and industrial class -- headed the movement. Now between this bourgeoisie and the nobles no understanding was possible. [Unlike in England where all the classes had been united against John Lackland.] The privileges of the one class were opposed to those of the other, giving rise to a mutual hostility, which the disasters of Crecy and Poitiers, for which the bourgeoisie held the chivalry responsible, increased to a maximum... If a few grands seigneurs [like Charles the Bad, King of Navarre] supported the efforts of the Third Estate, this was only by reason of personal interest, resentment, or ambition, and on the first opportunity they abandoned the allies whom they despised. The same may be said of the clergy... the States-General, composed of three orders which debated and voted separately, constituted in reality three distinct assemblies of privileged persons, incapable of agreement... Every one of their convocations corresponded with a crisis of the Treasury: they were assembled only that they might be asked for money. And it was precisely this fact that gave the bourgeoisie the preponderant role in the States. For... it was the bourgeoisie above all that was called upon to make payment... And it was precisely this fact that gave the bourgeoisie the preponderant role in the States...
Peace of Bretigny May 9th, 1360 gives Gascony, Guyenne, Poitou, Calais and the County of Guines to Edward III.
p434 Charles V (1364-1380), who succeeded his father Jean II in 1364 could not hope to break the peace which had barely been concluded. The kingdom was exhausted... The Count of Flanders, Louis de Maele... consented to the marriage of his daughter (June 29th, 1369) with the King's brother, Philip the Bold, who in 1361 had received the Duchy of Burgundy as his appanage. It seemed that the "Flemish question" which had so greatly preoccupied the Crown since the reign of Philip Augustus was on the point of being solved, since the succession of the powerful County was assured to a royal prince.
This period ends with the deaths, in 1377, of both Edward III and new French King, Charles V, with children inheriting both crowns leasing to periods of Regency.
Merovingian to Carolingian
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Two
The Carolingian Epoch
Chapter II
The Frankish Kingdom
p67 There's a bunch here about the formation of the Merovingian State by Clovis and his descendants.
p69 The enfeeblement of the old Roman administration, which had now lost touch with Rome, and of which the king, with some difficulty, was preserving the last vestiges, allowed the aristocracy of great landowners to assume a position of increasing strength with regard to the king and to society. In the north, especially in Austrasia, [Includes Metz, Reims, Trier, Cologne, Verdun, and Worms.] where the Roman influence was almost entirely effaced, it assumed, from the 7th century, an almost absolute preponderance.
This aristocracy, whose influence was continually increasing, was not in any real sense a nobility. It was distinguished from the rest of the nation, not by its juridical status, but only by its social position. Its members, in the language of their contemporaries, were grandees (majores), magnates (magnates) and potentates (potentes), and their power was derived from their fortune. All were great landed proprietors; some were descended from rich Gallo-Roman families, who were wealthy before the Frankish conquest; others were favorites, whom the kings had generously endowed with estates, or counts who had profited by their position to create spacious domains for themselves. For that matter, whether they were of Roman or Germanic birth, the members of this aristocracy formed a group which was held together by community of interests, and in which differences of origin soon disappeared and were merged in an identity of manners. [Twas ever thus.] ...as the State which they provided with its most important agents became more incapable of fulfilling its essential and primordial task -- that is, of safeguarding the persons and the property of its subjects -- their preponderance grew more marked...
p70 ...The "contract of recommendation" which made its appearance from the 6th century onward gave the protected man the name of vassal (vassus) or servitor, and the protector the name of ancient or seigneur (senior). The seigneur was pledged not only to provide for the subsistence of his vassal, but also at all times to grant him his succor and aid, and to represent him before the law. The freeman who sought protection might preserve the appearance of liberty, but in actual fact he had become a client, a sperans, of the senior. [How does this differ from the classical Roman Patrician and his clients?]
p71 The protectorate which the seigneur exercised over freemen... was naturally exercised with greater strictness over the individuals belonging to his domain -- old Roman colonists, attached to the soil (adscripti glebae), or serfs, the descendants of Roman or German slaves, whose very persons, by virtue of their birth, were the lord's private property. Over all this dependent population the seigneur exerted an authority which was at once patriarchal and patrimonial, like that of a magistrate and judge combined... ...the privileged landowner took the place of the officers of the State on his own territory... the State capitulated to him. And as this immunity became more widely diffused, the kingdom was covered with an increasing number of domains in which the king could not intervene, so that in the end there was nothing under his immediate control save the few inconsiderable regions which the great landowners had not yet absorbed...
...
p72 ...Hitherto, in the midst of a society that was tending to become a regime of seigneurial landowners, the towns, and with them a free bourgeoisie, had been kept alive by commerce.
In the second half of the 7th century all trade ceased on the shores of the Western Mediterranean. [Due to the rise of Islam.] Marseilles, deprived of her ships, was dying of asphyxia, and in less than half a century all the cities of the south of France had lapsed into a state of utter decadence. Trade, no longer fed by sea-borne traffic, came to a standstill throughout the country; the middle class disappeared: there were no longer merchants by profession; there was no circulation of goods, and as a natural result the market dues no longer fed the royal treasury, which was henceforth unable to defray the expenses of government.
Henceforth the landed aristocracy represented the only social force. The king was ruined, but the aristocracy, with its land, possessed wealth and authority. It only remained for it to seize political power.
2. The Mayors of the Palace
...After the middle of the 7th century, although they [the Merovingian kings] still reigned, it was the magnates who governed... In each of the three portions into which the monarchy was divided -- Neustria, Austrasia and Burgundy -- as king succeeded to king, the mayor of the palace became metamorphosed into the minister of the king, the representative, at his court, of the aristocracy. In actual fact it was henceforth the mayor of the palace, supported by the aristocracy, who governed the country. Of the mayors of the palace one -- the Burgundian -- disappeared before long... The landowners of Austrasia, more powerful... won the upper hand in a State exclusively based on territorial wealth.
p73 ...Thereafter there was only one mayor of the palace for the whole of the monarchy, and it was the Carolingian family that provided him. [Starting with Pippin.]
...Its domains were many, above all in that semi-Roman, semi-Germanic region of which Liege, then a mere village, was the center, and were distributed on either side of the linguistic frontier, in Hesbaye, Condroz and Ardenne; Andenne and Herstal were its favorite residences...
...
Some of these place names sent me to Google Map and, not surprisingly, many of them are in Belgium. Whenever I see a map of Belgium I'm struck by the layers of history. It seems like half the place names are also battle names. I wonder how anyone can grow up in Belgium and not become a student of history. The problem would be choosing a period to study. You have everything from Caesar and the Roman conquest to the ebb and flow of WW2.
p74 ...After Poitiers [Charles Martel defeats the Arabs] Charles decided to create a cavalry -- following the example of the Arabs -- which could rapidly confront the enemy and replace the advantage of numbers by that of mobility. Such a novelty called for a radical transformation of traditional usages. It was out of the question to expect freemen to maintain a warhorse and acquire the costly equipment of the horse-soldier, or to undergo the long and difficult apprenticeship that would qualify them to fight on horseback.
...A generous distribution of land was made to the strongest vassals of the mayor of the palace, who did not hesitate, for this purpose, to secularize a good number of ecclesiastical holdings. Each man-at-arms thus provided with a tenure -- or... a benefice -- was required to rear a warhorse and to do military service whenever required... The vassal, who originally was only a servant, thus became a soldier whose livelihood was assured by the possession of landed property... The immense domains of the aristocracy enabled each of its members to form a troop of horse... The original name of the benefice was presently replaced by that of fief. But the feudal organization itself... was comprised in the measures taken by Charles Martel. This was the greatest military reform that Europe was to experience before the appearance of permanent armies; but... its repercussions on society and the State were even more profound than those of permanent armies... it resulted in giving the landed aristocracy both military and political power. The old army of freemen did not disappear, but it was now merely a reserve to which less and less recourse was made....
Reading about this, I can't help thinking about the slave powered Roman latifundia that undermined the best aspects of the Republic starting around the time of the 2nd Punic War. The large domains of the Middle Ages are just a subsistence version of the latifundia. And the original version (producing crops for trade) was revived later and brought to the Americas -- in particular for the sugar and cotton industries. America is proud of never having had an aristocracy, but the plantation system created a new aristocracy here, just as Pirenne is showing us it did in the Middle Ages. A wonderful way to see this is by considering the character Colonel Thomas Sutpen in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! His position in society, which is eventually reflected by his position in the CSA Army, is simply based on his ownership of land.
I've always seen the USA and Republican Rome as being similar, with the 2nd World War (and the consequent corporate takeover of both agriculture and the economy in general) standing in for the 2nd Punic War. That this was the point where both republics became great powers but lost their souls. Now I see I thought this because I'm white. The USA was built upon the plantation equivalent of the latifundia. Maybe the modern corporation is the newest equivalent of the latifundia (or maybe not), but the USA was as compromised from the beginning as Athens.
