At the period that the Carlovingians supplanted the Merovingians, a return to the barbarian royalty is visible; the system of election reappears. Pepin got himself elected at Soissons. When the first Carlovingians gave kingdoms to their sons, they took care to have them accepted by the great men of the countries which they assigned them; and whenever they made a partition, they were anxious to have it sanctioned in national assemblies. In a word, the elective principle, under the form of a general acceptation, reassumed some reality. It will be borne in mind that this change of dynasty was like a new invasion of Germans into the west of Europe, bringing back a certain portion of their ancient institutions and manners.
In the same period the religious principle was more unequivocally introduced into royalty, and exercised a greater influence upon it. Pepin was acknowledged and crowned by the Pope. He had need of a religious sanction; it was already a tower of strength, and he availed himself of it. Charlemagne took the same precaution; the religious royalty was gaining development. But under Charlemagne that character did not grow predominant, for the imperial royalty was what he attempted to resuscitate. Although he closely allied himself with the clergy, he made use of them, and was not their instrument. The idea of a universal state, of one prodigious political unity—in fact, the resurrection of the Roman Empire—was the favourite contemplation and dream of Charlemagne.
Louis le Debonnaire (the Good-hearted) succeeded him. Every one knows the character the royal power momentarily assumed in his reign. He fell into the hands of the clergy, who censured, deposed, re-established, and governed him. The subordinate religious royalty seemed on the point of organisation.
Thus, from the middle of the eighth to the middle of the ninth century, the variety of the three royal systems was exemplified in considerable, connected, and palpable events.
After the death of Louis le Debonnaire, the three sorts of royalty almost equally disappeared amid the anarchy into which Europe was plunged; everything was jumbled together. After a certain interval, when the feudal system prevailed, a fourth royalty presented itself, different from all those we have hitherto contemplated—namely, the feudal royalty. This species is very confused and difficult to define. It has been said that the king, in the feudal system, was the suzerain of suzerains, the chief of chiefs; that he was held by fixed ties, through the different degrees, to the whole society; and that in calling around him his vassals, then the vassals of his vassals, and so on, he called the whole nation, and showed himself truly a king. I do not deny that this was the theory of the feudal royalty; but it was a mere theory, which never governed facts. That general influence of the king by means of the graduated organisation, those ties which united royalty to the entire feudal society, exist only in the dreams of publicists. In fact, the majority of the feudal lords were at that epoch completely independent of royalty; many of them scarcely knew it by name, and had no, or very trifling, relations with it. All the sovereignties were local and separate. The name of king, borne by one of the feudal chiefs, expressed a thing past rather than present.
This is the state in which royalty presented itself in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. In the twelfth, in the reign of Louis the Fat, things began to change in aspect; the name of the king was more frequently invoked, his influence penetrated into places to which it had previously never approached, and in fact his part in society became decidedly more active. Yet we do not find that this increased sway was owing to any one of the titles by which royalty had been accustomed to make good its claims. It was not as inheritor of the emperors, or under colour of the imperial royalty, that it waxed in strength, and settled into a firmer consistence. Neither was it by virtue of election, or as an emanation of the Divine power; every appearance of an elective nature had vanished, and the principle of hereditary succession to the throne definitively established; and although religion sanctioned the accession of kings, the minds of men were not at all awed by any religious character in the royalty of Louis the Fat. A new element or character, hitherto unknown, came forth in royalty at that period. A new royalty commenced.
It is scarcely necessary to observe that society was at that epoch in a state of deplorable disorder, and a prey to continual violence. Society had in itself no means of successfully grappling with this shocking condition, or of regaining any regularity or unity. The feudal institutions, those baronial parliaments and seignorial courts, all those forms under which feudalism has been portrayed in modern times, as a systematic and well-ordered regime, were absolutely null and powerless, possessing nothing which could at all conduce to the re-establishment of order and justice; so that, in the midst of this social desolation, none knew to whom recourse might be had to get reparation for wrong, or to apply a remedy to crying evils—in a word, to constitute a state to however small an extent. The name of king still remained, borne by one of the chiefs; some addressed themselves to him. The various titles by which royalty had previously been recommended were not quite eradicated from all minds, although they had long ceased to exercise any great sway; yet on some occasions they were adduced. It often happened that recourse was had to the king to repress some scandalous course of violence, or to establish some degree of order, in a locality approximate to his own residence, or to terminate a long-standing dispute, so that he was called upon to interfere in affairs that were not strictly his own; and in these interventions he came forward as the protector of public order, as an arbiter, and as a redresser of wrongs. The moral authority which still lingered around his name gradually drew to him this power.
Such was the character that royalty began to assume under Louis the Fat, and under the administration of Suger. Then, for the first time, we perceive arising in the minds of men an idea, although still imperfect, confused, and feeble, of a public power superior to the local powers which had possession of society, invested with authority to render justice to those who could not obtain it by ordinary means, and capable of establishing, or at least of commanding, order; the idea of a great magistracy, whose essential province was to maintain peace, to protect the weak, and to decide differences which none other could terminate. This was the perfectly new character under which royalty presented itself in Europe, and especially France, dating from the twelfth century. It was not in the light either of a barbarian, religious, or imperial royalty, that it exercised its empire; the power it possessed was very limited, imperfect, and occasional; the power, in some degree (I know not any expression more exact), of a great justice of the peace for the whole country.
This is the veritable origin of modern royalty, its vital principle, so to speak; that which has been developed in the course of its career, and which, I do not hesitate to affirm, has been the cause of its prosperity. In the different eras of history we perceive the various characters of royalty, the distinct orders that I have described, endeavouring by turns to reassume preponderance. Thus the clergy have always preached up the religious royalty; jurisconsults have laboured to resuscitate the imperial royalty; and the nobles have sometimes been inclined to renew the elective royalty, or to assert its feudal character. And not only have the clergy, the publicists, and the nobility, striven to make predominant in royalty such or such a character, but it has itself rendered them all subservient to the aggrandisement of its power. Kings have asserted themselves sometimes the delegates of the Almighty, sometimes the successors of the emperors, or the first nobles of the land, according to the exigency or the whim of the moment; they have illegitimately availed themselves of these different titles, but not one of them has been the true title of modern royalty, or the source of its preponderating influence. It is, I once again assert, as the depositary and protector of the public order, of general justice, and of the common interests—under the features of a great magistracy, the centre and nucleus of society—that it has exhibited itself to the eyes of nations, and has monopolised their force by obtaining their adhesion.
As we proceed onwards, we shall see this character of modern European royalty, which commenced with the reign of Louis the Fat in the twelfth century, gain strength, develop itself, and finally become, so to speak, its political physiognomy. It is through it that royalty has contributed to the great result which characterises European societies, the reduction of all the social elements to two—the government and the nation.
Thus, then, Europe, after the termination of the crusades, entered upon the track which was to lead it to its actual state, and we have now seen that royalty took its appropriate part in that great transition. We shall next survey the different attempts at political organisation that were made, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, with the object of maintaining, by rendering it more regular, the order of things then in vogue, but ready to crumble. We shall inquire into the efforts of feudalism, the church, and even the boroughs, to constitute society after its ancient principles, and under its primitive forms, and thus defend themselves against the general metamorphosis which was in preparation.
I think it proper preliminarily to determine the precise object of this lecture.
It will be recollected that one of the most striking facts in the elements of the ancient European society is their diversity, separation, and independence. The feudal nobility, the clergy, and the boroughs, had each a position, laws, and manners, entirely distinct; they were so many separate societies, each governing itself for its own behoof, and by its individual rules and power. They were in mutual relation and contact, but not in a veritable union, nor did they form a nation or state, properly so called.
The fusion of all these societies into one has been accomplished; this is distinctly, as has been seen, the distinguishing fact, the essential character, of modern society. The old social elements have been reduced to two—the government and the nation—that is to say, diversity having ceased, similarity produced union. But before this result was consummated, and indeed to avert it, numerous efforts were tried to render it possible for all these particular societies to live and act in common, without destroying their diversity or independence. Their object was not to make any attack of moment on their individual position, their privileges, or their special nature, and yet to unite them into one single state, to form from them the substance of a nation, and to rally them under one and the same government.
All these attempts failed. The result which I have just mentioned, the unity of modern society, attests their bad success. Even in those countries of Europe where there still subsist some traces of the ancient diversity in the social elements—in Germany, for example, where there are yet a true feudal nobility and a true burgher order, and in England, where a national church is in possession of special revenues and a peculiar jurisdiction—it is clear that this distinct existence is but a semblance and pretence, and that these particular societies are politically confounded in the general society, absorbed in the nation, governed by the public recognised powers, in subjection to one system, and drawn along in the current of the prevailing ideas and manners. Therefore, I repeat, the separation and independence of the old social elements have no sort of reality, even where they are formally sustained.
Nevertheless, these attempts to make them co-ordinate without changing them, to link them to a national unity without abolishing their variety, hold an important place in the history of Europe. They partly fill the epoch upon which we are now engaged, that epoch which divides primitive from modern Europe, and in which was accomplished the metamorphosis of European society. They have, furthermore, had a vast influence upon posterior events, upon the manner in which the reduction of all the social elements to two, government and nation, has been effected. It is therefore of great consequence to investigate and thoroughly understand all the essays at political organisation, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, designed to create nations and governments, without rooting out the diversity in character of the secondary societies placed side by side. Such is our present task.
It is a difficult and even a painful task. All these attempts at political organisation were assuredly not conceived and framed with good intentions; several were instigated by views of selfishness and tyranny. More than one, however, was pure and disinterested; more than one had really for its object the moral and social wellbeing of mankind. The state of incohesiveness, violence, and injustice in which society was then plunged, was disgusting to great and elevated minds, and they were incessantly devising means to emancipate it. Yet the very best of those noble efforts failed; all that amount of courage, sacrifices, energy, and virtue, was utterly thrown away. Is not this a mournful consideration? And there is upon this point something still more painful, ground for still deeper sadness, when we reflect that not only did these experiments for social amelioration miscarry, but an enormous mass of errors and of evil accompanied them. In spite of good intentions, the greater part were absurd, and avouch a profound ignorance of what reason and justice required, of the rights of humanity, and the conditions upon which the social state is founded; so that not only did the men fail in success, but they deserved their discomfiture. We have here, therefore, the spectacle both of the hard fate of humanity, and of its weakness. And we have also placed in striking light how the smallest portion of truth suffices so completely to dazzle the greatest minds, that they lose sight of all the rest, and become blind to what is not comprised within the narrow scope of their ideas; and so that there be a particle of justice in their cause, to what extent men may overlook all the injustice which that cause involves and sanctions. The contemplation of such a display of the faults and imperfection of human nature is, in my opinion, still more sad than the evil of its condition, for its errors are more afflictive to me than its sufferings. The efforts of which I have to speak will present us with both spectacles. It behoves us, however, to encounter them, and at the same time to be just towards those men and those times that have so often mistaken the right course, and been so signally worsted, but have nevertheless displayed many great virtues, made many noble struggles, and have merited well of fame.
The attempts at political organisation formed between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries were of two sorts. The first, those that had for their object the giving predominance to some one of the social elements, making all the others subordinate to it, and producing unity at that sacrifice; the clergy, the feudal nobility, and the boroughs, each in turn attempted this. The next, those that were designed to make all the particular societies harmonise and act together, leaving to each its independence, and securing to it an adequate share of influence.
The first description of efforts is, much more than the second, open to the suspicion of selfishness and tyranny. They were, in fact, more frequently tainted with those vices; indeed, from their very nature, they were essentially tyrannical in their modes of action. Some of them, nevertheless, might be, and in truth were, conceived in the pure spirit of promoting the good and the advancement of humanity.
The first which offers itself to our notice was the attempt at theocratic organisation—that is to say, the design of subjecting the different societies to the principles and empire of the ecclesiastical society.
What I said upon the history of the church will be recollected. I there endeavoured to demonstrate what principles had gained development within its own pale, what share of legitimacy each of those principles possessed, how naturally they flowed from the course of events, and what services they rendered, and what evil they perpetrated. I there characterised also the different states through which the church had passed from the eighth to the twelfth century, under its various aspects, as the imperial, the barbarian, the feudal, and finally the theocratic church. Those circumstances must be borne in mind whilst I am on the topic of what the clergy did to monopolise power in Europe, and the causes of their miscarriage.
The theocratic organisation was very early attempted, as is evinced both in the acts of the court of Rome and in those of the general body of the clergy. It resulted naturally from the political and moral superiority of the church; but from the commencement of its efforts, it encountered obstacles which it never succeeded in breaking through, even in its greatest vigour.
The principal opposition arose from the nature of Christianity itself. Very different from the majority of religious creeds, Christianity was established by persuasion alone, simply by moral influences. From its earliest stages it was never armed with force; it prevailed in the first ages by the Word alone, and it prevailed only over minds. Hence it happened that even after its triumph, when the church was in possession of great wealth and consideration, it never found itself invested with the direct government of society. The purely moral origin of the church, and the merely persuasive character of its action, pervaded its condition at all times. It had considerable influence, but did not wield power. It insinuated itself into the municipal magistracies, and exercised great sway over the emperors and all their agents; but the actual administration of public affairs, the government, properly so called, was never possessed by the church. Now, a system of government, theocracy or any other, cannot be established in an indirect manner, or by means of mere influence; it must perform the functions of judge, administrator, and commander, gather taxes, disburse revenues; in a word, govern and take positive possession of society. When action is limited to persuasion, much certainly may be effected, and great control exercised, both over nations and governments; but a system of rule or political supremacy is not thereby founded, nor future stability sufficiently provided for. This was the position of the Christian church on account of its very origin; it was always on a level with the actual government of society, but it never could thrust it aside and take its place. This great obstacle to its attempts at theocratic organisation it never was able to surmount.
Very early in its career, also, the church encountered a second. When the Roman Empire fell, and the barbarian states were founded, the church was composed of the vanquished race. Its first object was to emerge from this position by converting the conquerors, and thus raising itself to their rank. When this labour was accomplished, and when the church aspired to dominion, it encountered the disdain and resistance of the feudal nobility. This was a prodigious service which lay-feudalism rendered to Europe. In the eleventh century, the people were almost completely subjugated by the church, and the sovereigns were scarcely able to stand up against it. The feudal nobility alone scorned the yoke of the clergy, and refused to bow before them. It is sufficient to recall the general features of the middle age, to be convinced of the singular mixture of pride and submissiveness, of blind belief and freedom of spirit, that prevailed in the relations of the lay lords with the priests. In this we discern some remnants of their relative primitive situation. It will recur to the mind of the reader that I have previously endeavoured to describe the origin of feudalism, its first elements, and the manner in which the earliest feudal society was formed around the abode of the fief-holder. I then remarked upon the fact of the priest being at that period under the lord. Now there always remained in the minds of the feudal nobility a remembrance or fueling of that position, and they always regarded themselves not only as independent of the church, but as superior to it, and as alone entitled to possess and actually govern the country. They were always disposed to live on good terms with the church, but not to abandon their own claims, or give in to those set up by it. Thus, during many ages, it was the lay aristocracy which maintained the independence of society with regard to the church; it proudly defended itself, when monarchs and people were tamely crouching. It was the first to enter an opposition, and it contributed more perhaps than any other force to render the attempt to give society a theocratic organisation abortive.
A third obstacle stood equally opposed to it, one upon which, in general, very little stress has been laid, and even its effects erroneously judged.
Wherever a body of priests has seized upon society, and subjected it to a theocratical organisation, we find that this empire has devolved upon a married clergy, recruiting itself within its own folds, and rearing children from their infancy in, and for, the same profession. Look at Asia and Egypt: all the great theocracies were the work of a clergy forming of itself a complete society, sufficing for all its own purposes, and dependent for nothing from without.
The Christian clergy were placed in a totally different situation, owing to the celibacy of the priests. In order to perpetuate their own body, they were obliged to have perpetual recourse to the lay society, and to seek their means of durability from out all the social positions and callings. Doubtless great pains were taken to assimilate these foreign elements, by infusing into them the spirit of the institution, but not with full success: something of the origin of the new-comers always remained: whether burghers or nobles, they invariably preserved some trace of their ancient spirit and primitive condition. There is no question but that this celibacy, by giving to the Catholic clergy a situation altogether peculiar, and divested of participation with the interests and general life of mankind, was a powerful promoter of their isolation; but it has also forced them into constant and close connection with the lay society, to recruit and renew their members, and thus exposed them to receive and undergo some portion of the moral revolutions which were accomplished in that society. Therefore I do not hesitate to aver that this ever-recurring necessity has infinitely more impeded the success of the attempt at theocratical organisation, than the spirit engendered by the institution, and strongly maintained by celibacy, has been able to promote it.
The church finally encountered, within its own bosom, powerful adversaries to its attempt. The unity of the church is a thing perpetually talked of, and it is true enough that it has diligently laboured to attain it, and has done so in certain respects. But let us not be led away by imposing words, or a few partial facts. What society has been torn by more civil dissensions, or suffered more disruptions, than the clerical? What nation has been more divided, broken up, or varied, than the ecclesiastical nation? The national churches, in the majority of the countries of Europe, have been in almost constant strife with the court of Rome; councils have risen against popes; heresies have been innumerable and inextinguishable; and schisms have incessantly prevailed: nowhere has there been so much diversity in opinion, so much bitterness and fury in contest, or so much splitting up of power. The internal existence of the church, the dissensions which have broken loose within it, and the revolutions which have shaken it, have been perhaps the greatest obstacle to the triumph of that theocratical organisation which it has striven to impose on society.
All these impediments were in action, and are discernible from the fifth century, at the very commencement of the great attempt which now occupies our attention. They did not, however, prevent it continuing its course, or being in progress for several centuries. Its most glorious moment, its critical day, so to speak, was the reign of Gregory VII., at the end of the eleventh century. It has been already remarked that the predominant idea of Gregory VII. was to subject the world to the clergy, and the clergy to the Papacy—Europe to one vast and regular theocracy. In working out this design, that great man committed, in my opinion, as far as it is permitted us to judge at such a distance from the events, two capital faults, the one in his speculative, the other in his revolutionary character. The first consisted in pompously proclaiming his plan, and systematically parading his principles upon the nature and the rights of the spiritual power, and deducing from them beforehand, as an unbending logician, the most remote consequences. He thus menaced and attacked all the lay sovereignties of Europe, before he had made sure of his means to subdue them. Success in human affairs is not obtained by such a dictatorial process, or by the sanction of a mere philosophical argument. In the next place, Gregory fell into the common error of revolutionists, which is, to attempt more than they can execute, and not to take the possible as the measure and limit of their efforts. To hasten the dominion of his ideas, he engaged in contest with the Empire, with all sovereigns, and with the clergy themselves. He insisted upon consequences being immediate, scorning all regard for existing interests, haughtily proclaiming that he would reign over all kingdoms as well as over all minds, and thus rousing against himself not only the temporal powers, which perceived themselves in imminent peril, but also the freethinkers, who were beginning to come out, and already felt apprehensive of tyranny on thought. On the whole, therefore, Gregory VII. perhaps compromised more than he advanced the cause he was wishful to serve.
Nevertheless, it continued to prosper during the whole course of the twelfth, and up to the middle of the thirteenth century. This was the period in which the church possessed its greatest power and splendour. Yet I do not think it can be strictly said to have made at that epoch any very great progress. To the end of the reign of Innocent III., it had rather been parading than extending its glory and power. It was at the moment of its greatest apparent success that a popular reaction arose against it in a considerable portion of Europe. In the south of France, the heresy of the Albigenses exploded, which carried off a numerous and powerful society. About the same period, ideas and desires of a similar nature were broached in the north and in Flanders. A little later, Wickliffe, in England, made a talented attack upon the power of the church, and founded a sect which is not yet extinct. The sovereigns were not long in entering upon the same course as the people. It was at the commencement of the thirteenth century that the most powerful and able monarchs of Europe, the emperors of the house of Hohenstaufen, succumbed in their contest with the Papacy. Before that century was over, Saint Louis, the most pious of kings, proclaimed the independence of the temporal power, and promulgated the first pragmatic sanction, which became the base of all the succeeding ones. At the opening of the fourteenth century, the quarrel between Philip the Handsome and Boniface VIII. began to rage, whilst the king of England, Edward I., was not more docile towards Rome. It is clear, therefore, that at this epoch the attempt at theocratic organisation had failed, that the church was thenceforth put upon the defensive, and had so much difficulty in preserving what it had conquered, as to stop all further endeavour to impose its system on Europe. Hence the true date of the emancipation of the lay European society is from the end of the thirteenth century; it was then that the church ceased its pretensions to monopolise it.
For a long time previously, it had renounced that attempt in the very sphere in which it seemed to have the best chance of success. At the very threshold of the church, around its throne in Italy, theocracy had been completely discomfited, and given place to a very different system, to that attempt at democratic organisation of which the Italian republics are the type, and which played so distinguished a part in Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century.
What I have already stated upon the history of the boroughs, and the manner in which they were formed, will be recollected. Their establishment was more precocious and powerful in Italy than anywhere else; the towns there were much more numerous and wealthy than in Gaul, Britain, or Spain, and the Roman municipal system had remained there in greater force and regularity. The districts of Italy, besides, were much less suited for the habitation of its new masters than those of the rest of Europe. They had been all cleared, drained, and cultivated, and were no longer covered by forests, so that the barbarians were unable to follow the exciting hazards of the chase, or to lead a life at all analogous to that of their old Germany. Furthermore, a part of that territory did not belong to them. The south of Italy, the Campagna di Romagna, and Ravenna, continued to depend upon the Greek emperors. In this portion of the country the republican system very early gained strength and development, favoured as it was by the distance of the sovereign, and by the vicissitudes of almost constant war. But in addition to the circumstance of Italy not being wholly in the power of the barbarians, those hordes that overran it never remained its undisturbed and definitive possessors. The Ostrogoths were hunted down and destroyed by Belisarius and Narses. The Lombards had little better success with regard to their kingdom: the Franks destroyed it; and at the period of their overthrow, Pepin and Charlemagne judged it expedient, instead of exterminating the Lombard population, to form an alliance with the old Italian population to keep down the recently-subdued Lombards. Therefore the barbarians never were exclusive and tranquil masters of the territory and society of Italy, as they were elsewhere. For this reason, only a very feeble, thin, and scattered feudalism was established beyond the Alps. The preponderance, instead of passing to the inhabitants of the country districts, as had happened in Gaul, for example, continued to adhere to the towns. When this fact unequivocally declared itself, a considerable proportion of the fief-holders, either of their own accord, or impelled by necessity, forsook the country, and settled within the walls of the cities. The barbarian nobles then became burghers. It may be easily imagined how great was the strength and superiority which the towns of Italy gained by this single circumstance, in comparison with the other boroughs in Europe. What was chiefly remarkable in the latter, as has been observed, was the inferior condition and the timidity of their inhabitants. Those burghers, we have seen, were like desperate freedmen, courageously but painfully struggling against a master always at their gates. Very different was the lot of the Italian burghers; the conquering and the conquered populations were mingled together within the same walls; they had no neighbouring master to defend themselves against; and the majority of the citizens were men free from all time, who asserted their independence and their rights against distant and foreign sovereigns, sometimes against the Frank kings, and sometimes against the emperors of Germany. From these causes sprang the great and precocious superiority of the Italian towns; and whilst miserable boroughs were formed elsewhere with much difficulty, they at once emerged into important republics and states.
Thus the success of the attempt at republican organisation in this part of Europe is explained. It early swamped the feudal element, and became the predominant form of the society. But it was little calculated to extend, or be perpetuated, for it contained but very few seeds of amelioration, a condition necessary to extension and durability.
When we contemplate the history of the Italian republics from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, we are struck with two facts apparently contradictory, and yet incontestable. We perceive an admirable development of courage, activity, and genius, and, as its consequence, great prosperity. A movement and a liberty were there in operation, which were utterly wanting to the rest of Europe. Now, let us ask, what was the real lot of the inhabitants, how were their lives passed, and what was their share of happiness? In this respect the aspect of things is instantly changed. No history, perhaps, is more mournful and gloomy, nor has there ever been an epoch, or a country, in which the destiny of man appears to have been more beset with alarms and disorder, more liable to deplorable hazards, or more afflicted by dissensions, crimes, and calamities. At the same time, there is another fact equally striking. In the political system of the major part of those republics liberty was always diminishing. The deficiency of security was such, that the community was driven to seek for refuge in some system less boisterous and popular than that with which the state commenced. Take the history of Florence, Venice, Genoa, Milan, or Pisa; it is everywhere clear that the general course of events, instead of developing liberty, and enlarging the circle of the institutions, tended to coop up and concentrate power in the hands of a decreasing number of men. In a word, two things were wanting in those republics, so energetic, brilliant, and wealthy, in their outward aspect—namely, security for life, the first condition of the social state, and progressive action in the institutions.
Thence sprang a new evil, which served as an effectual barrier to the farther spread of the attempt at republican organisation. It brought down interference from without, and thenceforth the greatest danger incurred by Italy arose from foreign sovereigns. Yet this peril never succeeded in reconciling the different republics, and making them act in common. Thus several of the most enlightened and patriotic Italians of the present time, deplore the republican system of Italy in the middle ages as the true cause of hindrance to its becoming a nation. It was parcelled out, say they, into a multitude of petty states, so bent on the gratification of their several momentary designs, as to be incapable of confederating together and constituting a united people. It is to them a subject of regret that their country has not passed, like the rest of Europe, through a despotic centralisation, which would have formed it into one nation, and rendered it independent of the stranger. It therefore appears that the republican organisation, even in the most favourable circumstances, did not contain at that era the principle of advancement, of durability, or of extension, and that it was deficient in what regarded futurity. The organisation of Italy in the middle ages may be compared to a certain extent with that of ancient Greece. Greece was likewise a country strewed with small republics, always rivals, often enemies, and occasionally uniting in a common object. The advantage of the comparison rests entirely with Greece. There was undoubtedly much more order, security, and justice in the interior of Athens, Sparta, or Thebes, although history presents us with many instances of iniquity, than in the republics of Italy. Yet we see how short was the political existence of Greece, and how surely weakness followed its minute subdivisions of territory and power. Whenever Greece came in contact with powerful neighbours—Macedonia and Rome, for instance—she yielded at once. Those small republics, so glorious, and still so flourishing, were unable to coalesce for a common resistance. How much more, then, was the same result sure to happen in Italy, where society and intellect were far less developed, and infinitely weaker, than amongst the Greeks!
If the attempt at republican organisation had so few chances of stability in Italy, where it had originally triumphed, and where the feudal system had been vanquished, it may be readily conceived that in other parts of Europe it was destined to meet a yet more speedy overthrow.
I will take a rapid glance at its fate in various places.
There was a portion of Europe which greatly resembled Italy; namely, the south of France, and the provinces of Spain adjoining it—Catalonia, Navarre, and Biscay. The towns had there likewise gained considerable development, importance, and wealth. Several petty feudal chiefs had allied themselves with the burghers, and a part of the clergy had also embraced their cause, so that the country was actually in a situation very analogous to that of Italy. We therefore find that in the course of the eleventh, and at the commencement of the twelfth century, the towns of Provence, Languedoc, and Aquitaine were disposed to try a political essay, and form themselves into independent republics, upon the model of those beyond the Alps. But the south of France was in contact with a very powerful feudalism, predominant in the north. And upon the occasion of the heresy of the Albigenses, war broke out between feudal and municipal France. The history of the crusade against the Albigenses, commanded by Simon do Montfort, is well known. It was an attack by northern feudalism upon the southern attempt at democratic organisation. In spite of the heroism of southern patriotism, the north carried the victory. It was promoted by the want of political unity, and civilisation was not sufficiently advanced for men to be aware that the deficiency might be remedied by skilful concert. The experiment at republican organisation was therefore put down, and a crusade re-established the feudal system in the south of France.
At a later date, the republican movement succeeded better on the mountains of Switzerland. There the theatre was very contracted, and it had to struggle only against a foreign sovereign who, although possessing superior strength to the Swiss, was not one of the most formidable monarchs of Europe. The contest was maintained with infinite courage. The Swiss feudal nobility also joined in a great measure with the towns; bringing certainly powerful aid, but altering the nature of the revolution which they supported, and imparting to it a more aristocratical and stationary character than it seemed destined to bear. [Footnote 14]
[Footnote 14: M. Guizot has allowed himself to be carried away by his speculative deduction from history in this description of the early attempts of the Swiss to establish their independence. The movement began in the most rural part of Switzerland, in the three forest cantons of Schweiz, Uri, and Underwalden, and not in towns, and was almost throughout conducted by peasants. It was only in a portion of Switzerland that feudalism prevailed. Besides, the Swiss cantons are only partially aristocratic—See Muller's Hist. de la Suisse.]
I pass to the north of France, to the boroughs of Flanders, to those on the banks of the Rhine, and to the Hanseatic League. There the democratic organisation completely triumphed within the walls of the town; but we can discern from its commencement that it was not destined to extend or to take possession of all society. The boroughs of the north were surrounded and hemmed in by feudalism, by chiefs and sovereigns, so that they were constantly put upon the defensive. They were not calculated to make conquests; their great object was to protect themselves. In this they succeeded; they maintained their privileges, but they were confined to their own precincts. Thus the democratic organisation was shut up and stopped; it never spread over the face of the country.
Such, then, was the state of the republican experiment; triumphant in Italy, but with few chances of durability and expansion; suppressed in the south of France; victorious, on a small stage, in the Swiss mountains; and restricted to the walls of the towns in the north, in Flanders, on the Rhine, and in the Hanseatic League. Nevertheless, whilst in this state, so palpably inferior in strength to the other elements of society, it inspired the feudal nobility with prodigious alarm. The barons were not only envious of the wealth of the boroughs, but they were afraid of their power; the democratic spirit penetrated into the rural districts, and insurrections among the peasants became more frequent and stubborn. Hence a great coalition was formed by the feudal nobility, throughout almost all Europe, against the boroughs. The contest was not at all equal, for the boroughs were isolated, and had no understanding or intercourse amongst themselves. Doubtless there existed a certain sympathy between the burghers of different countries; the successes or the reverses of the Flemish towns, at war with the Dukes of Burgundy, excited a lively sensation in the French towns, but it was an emotion transitory, and without result; no veritable bond or union was established amongst the different boroughs, nor did they lend any strength to each other. Feudalism, therefore, had an immense advantage over them; but it was itself divided and irreflective, and was far from succeeding in destroying them. When the contest had lasted a certain time, and it had become clear that a complete victory was impossible, there arose a necessity for consenting to recognise these small burgher republics, to negotiate with them, and to receive them as members of the state. Then commenced a new order of things, and a new attempt at political organisation—to wit, the attempt at a mixed organisation, which had for its object the reconciling the different elements of society, the feudal nobility, the boroughs, the clergy, and the sovereigns, and, notwithstanding their mutual deep-rooted antipathy, bringing them to live and act together. This branch of the subject remains to be investigated.
The purposes of the states-general in France, the cortes in Spain and Portugal, the parliament in England, and the diets in Germany, are sufficiently well known. The elements of these different assemblies were the feudal nobility, the clergy, and the burghers, who collected together with the view of uniting themselves into one single society, into one and the same state, and under an identical law and power. This was the tendency and design of them all, under different names.
I will take as the type of this attempt at organisation the states-general of France, as being the most familiarly known. I say familiarly known, and yet the name of the states-general calls up none but vague and imperfect ideas. There is no one who can state with any precision what was fixed or regular in the states-general of France, what was the number of their members, what the subjects of deliberation, or what the periods of convocation, and the duration of their sessions. We know nothing of all these things; it is impossible to draw from history any clear and general results on tins subject. When we inquire into the character of these assemblies in the history of France, they appear to have been purely accidental, a sort of political shift, on the part of the people as well as on that of the kings: a last shift to the kings when they had no money, and were at their wits' ends for expedients; and a last shift to the people, when evil became so intolerable, that the usual remedies for alleviation were exhausted in vain. The nobility and the clergy each took part in the states-general, but they came there with reluctance, and distrustfully, as they were well aware that it was not in them their best means of action lay, or that they could thereby promote their real participation in the government. The burghers themselves were not more eager for the sitting; it was not a right which they exercised with alacrity, but rather a necessity to which they submitted. We find these facts exemplified in the character of the political actions of those assemblies. They were sometimes perfectly insignificant, and sometimes vastly terrible. If the king was the strongest, their humility and docility were extreme; if the situation of the crown was disastrous, if it had an absolute occasion for the assistance of the states, they fell into factious opposition, and became the instruments either of some aristocratic intrigue, or of some ambitious schemers. In a word, they were sometimes mere assemblies of notables, and sometimes veritable conventions. Thus their labours seldom or ever survived them; they promised and attempted much, but did nothing. Not one of the great measures which have really acted on society in France, not one important reform in government, legislation, or administration, has emanated from the states-general. We must not, however, too rashly conclude that they have been without utility or effect. They have served a moral purpose, which has been generally overlooked, by operating, from time to time, as a protestation against political servitude, and distinctly proclaiming certain tutelary principles; such, for example, as that the country has the right to impose taxes, to interfere in affairs, and to make the agents of power responsible. That these maxims have never perished in France, is chiefly owing to the states-general; and it is certainly not a small service to render to a nation, the keeping up in its manners, and reviving in its recollection, the name and dues of liberty. The states-general effected that good, but they never were a means of government, nor ever entered into a political organisation. They never attained the object for which they were formed—namely, the fusion into one single body of the different societies which subdivided the country.
The cortes of Spain and Portugal present the same result. There are, however, a thousand different attendant circumstances. The importance of the cortes varied according to the kingdoms and the times; in Arragon and Biscay, and amid the contests for the succession to the crown, or the struggles against the Moors, they were more frequently convoked, and more powerful than in other places and periods. In certain cortes—for example, in those of Castile in 1370 and in 1373—the nobles and the clergy were not summoned. There is a multitude of circumstances to be taken into account, if we were to look more narrowly into the events; but in the generalising system, to which I am forced to restrict myself, it is sufficient to affirm that the cortes, like the states-general of France, were but an accident in history, and never a system, a political organisation, or a regular means of government.
The destiny of England was different. I will not enter upon the subject of England at any great length now, as it is my purpose to devote a lecture specially to an inquiry into its political career. I shall only say a few words upon the causes which imparted to it a direction so completely different from that of the continent.
In the first place, there were no great vassals, no subjects in a state individually to oppose royalty, in England. The barons, the great lords, were obliged, at a very early date, to coalesce together, in order to form a common resistance. Thus the principle of association, and manners essentially political, prevailed in the high aristocracy. In the next place, English feudalism, or the possessors of small fiefs, were led be a series of events to which I cannot do more than allude at the present moment, to unite themselves to the burghers, and to sit with them in the House of Commons, which thus possessed a strength far superior to that enjoyed by the continental boroughs, a strength capable of really influencing the government of the country. Now, in the fourteenth century, the state of the British parliament was as follows:—The House of Lords was the king's great council, and effectively associated with the exercise of power; the House of Commons, composed of the deputies of the possessors of small fiefs, and the burgesses, took scarcely any part in the government, properly so called, but it conduced to the establishment of rights, and energetically defended private and local interests. The parliament, considered as a whole, did not yet govern, but it was already a regular institution, adopted in principle as a means of government, and in fact often indispensable. Thus the attempt to reconcile and ally together the different elements of society, in order to form a single political body and veritable state, succeeded in England, whilst it miscarried on the continent.
I will say but one word upon Germany, merely to point out the predominant character of its history. There the attempts to promote a general fusion, unity, and a common political organisation, were followed up with little ardour. The various social elements remained much more distinct and independent than in the rest of Europe. If any proof of this were required, it will be found even in modern times. Germany is the only country of Europe in which the feudal election long prevailed in the creation of royalty. I do not include Poland or the Slavonian nations, which entered at so late a period into the system of European civilisation. Germany is likewise the only country in Europe in which ecclesiastical sovereignties remained, and which preserved free towns having a political and really independent existence. It is therefore clear that the attempt to mould into a single society the elements of the primitive European world, was there much less active and effective than elsewhere.