Turning now to questions of economic development, one is impressed by the small part played by city life in the Empire, and by the industrial importance of the manor. The landed proprietor depended on his country seat for his support in the most real sense of the word. We find Einhard, while residing at the court at Aix, bidding his tenants send him flour, malt, wine, cheese, and other products, and he orders 360 bricks to be made in the country. Even the workmen, who are engaged in building work in the town, are to be sent from the “villa.” Small estates had completely disappeared and agricultural communities were the exception. The villas were often placed near together, a tendency which led to the multiplication of country churches, whose existence up to this time is only infrequently mentioned in legal documents. It was this evolution from a union of “villas,” or the country seats on great estates, which led to the creation of the villages. The growth of large estates may have been due to the impoverishment of the small landed proprietor, but other important factors in the change were the wide extent of frontier land and the growing importance of the monasteries. The monastic estates were of imposing size, as it was the custom for the small land owners to cede their property to the monastic communities, sometimes to escape taxation, but also from motives of ecclesiastical loyalty to those whom they looked up to as models of Christian virtue, and whose prayers they coveted as efficacious in healing all spiritual distress.
The importance of these institutions is revealed in the figures given for St. Wandrile, which had on its rolls 1727 manses, inhabited by a population numbering 10,000 souls. Luxeuil had 15,000 manses, and Alcuin, the abbot of St. Martin at Tours, is reported to have had on his domain no less than 20,000 serfs.
The celebrated Polypticon of Irminion, the abbot of St. Germain-des-Près, drawn up between 800 and 826, records the administration of one of these great monastic estates. The acreage belonging to the abbey was 26,613 hectares, and was spread over seven existing French departments. The parcels of ground numbered 1646; over 10,000 persons were employed, among them only eight freedmen, the rest being either serfs or “coloni.”
Of the land, about two-thirds was arable and one-third wooded. The dues from the tenants were collected in money, cattle, poultry, wine, wheat, pitch, linen, mustard, woolen stuff, and thread, honey, wax, oil, and soap, instruments of wood and iron, firewood, torches. The annual revenue of the abbey was nearly $600,000, a sum which amounted to more than $20 per household.
But the largest landed proprietor was the King; and food, drink, and articles of clothing were supplied to the court by the villa system. The royal capitularies give the exact details as to the industrial administration of an estate. There were many outbuildings included in the royal villa, such as kitchens, bakeries, stables, dairies, etc. Fisheries, too, were encouraged. There were vegetable gardens and flower gardens, in which seventy-four kinds of plants were cultivated, among them many of the vegetables in common use at the present time, and sixteen species of trees, including fig, pear, apple, peach, and cherry trees. In the villa were found various kinds of artisans, smiths, workers in precious metals, cobblers, saddlers, carpenters, turners, rope makers. The women’s apartments were provided with rooms artificially heated, and in them women wove wool and linen goods, and also prepared them for use by dyeing, although it must be noted that the range of coloring matters was limited. The staff was organized into a kind of industrial hierarchy under special officers, who supervised the work or kept the accounts. Over all stood the “mayor,” who had the supervision of as much land in his district as he could visit in a day.
Care was exercised by the Emperor that these dependents should receive enough to live on; no one was to be reduced to poverty, and provision was made to protect all from unjust treatment at the hands of their superiors. The maximum price of staple articles, such as wheat and wine, was fixed; cornering the market was forbidden, likewise exportation from a given locality when crops were poor. The bishops and counts were charged to see that the owners of estates looked after the indigent, whether slave or free, lest any should die of hunger.
Economically the monasteries were really productive centers. Their artisans at first supplied only the needs of the monastic community itself; then, as there was a surplus, the abbots established industrial centers for wider distribution outside the monastic precincts. The oldest of such Carolingian factories, so far as we know, was St. Riquier, which contained special quarters for each trade. Indeed, many continental cities owe their origin to this industrial movement. The workingmen were organized in unions, guilds, or confraternities, whose purpose was primarily charity, resembling mutual aid societies, with features providing for insurance in case of loss by fire or shipwreck.
As villa manufacture was confined to articles of common need, more elaborate tastes had to be gratified by importation from places beyond the limits of the northern countries of Europe. The Emperor gave great attention to guarding the frontiers, so that foreign commerce could be carried on in security. The great trade routes followed the rivers. There was a regularly developed system of markets and fairs held near the cities and the monasteries, as in the case of St. Denis, near Paris, where for a space of four weeks goods were exposed for sale by traders from Spain, Southern France, and Lombardy.
In Germany and in the more remote portions of the Empire, near the Slavic frontiers, the government established shelters and exchange offices for the convenience of merchants, and strict care was taken that arms were not sold to the enemy. Chief among the entrepots of commerce was the city of Mainz, famous for its cloth manufacture. Charles planned to make of it the great imperial economic center, and in pursuance of this program provided for the construction of a wooden bridge over the Rhine. He proposed also to build a canal to connect the Danube with the Rhine. But the bridge was destroyed by fire, and the canal offered too serious difficulties for the engineers of his age to surmount.
Trade between the Empire and Great Britain and Ireland was encouraged. There was a lighthouse at Boulogne, and at Quentovia, now Étaples, a customs-house was established and placed under the supervision of Gerrold, a shrewd man of affairs, abbot of St. Wandrile. The constant stream of pilgrims passing from the islands was protected by the Emperor, and they proved useful in drawing closer the commercial ties with these remoter portions of the civilized world. Naturally the Mediterranean commerce was the more important, and the Emperor was careful to keep up good relations with Eastern princes, both Christian and Moslem.
Imports consisted of purple stuffs, silk cloaks of various colors, worked leather, perfumes, unguents, and medicinal plants, spices, Indian pearls, Egyptian papyrus, and even exotic animals, such as monkeys and elephants. The cities in Southern France were especially frequented for trade, many of them having a cosmopolitan population. The Jews were valued for their business capacity, and also for their knowledge of languages and medical science. They were not allowed to own landed property, but no restrictions were placed on their loan operations, or on their commercial ventures.
A marked improvement is noted in the coinage. After 800 the bust of the Emperor appears with an indication of the Roman military cloak and the words “Carolus Imperator”; on the reverse is a temple with a cross and the inscription “Religio Christiana.”
The financial administration of the government offered few complications, because the obligations on the state in the way of expenses were most limited. The chief item in the imperial budget, which preserved the personal and household character of the Merovingian period, was for the maintenance of the royal palaces, for the presents made by the king to churches, to foreign princes, or to the great officers of the Empire. Direct taxes were of the capitation type, graded according to the position of the individual taxed. The ordinary fiscal resources were made up from the income of the King from his own estates, from tributes paid by vassal nations, from war booty, obligatory annual gifts, and indirect taxes. The revenue from the royal estates, which were excellently managed, was considerable, and there must have been a large sum credited to the account of booty from the various successful wars.
The “benevolences,” to use a term familiar in the constitutional and financial history of England, were not fixed, and the records speak in an indefinite way of the contribution offered by faithful subjects of the Empire in the annual assemblies. But it is plain that these so-called gifts included precious stones and valuable fabrics, as well as gold and silver.
The principal indirect taxes were in the form of personal service, rather than in money payments. Local taxation meant special work on roads, bridges, and making dikes. For the great bridge at Mainz, labor was called for from many localities, because it was an imperial work, intended for the common benefit of the whole Empire. Transportation dues are frequently mentioned in the Carolingian laws, as well as the right of “lodging,” by which the inhabitants of a community were obliged to lodge and entertain the King and his officials on their travels, and to receive the representatives of foreign powers and others, to whom the royal privilege was given. A bishop, for example, had the right to receive forty loaves a day, three lambs, three measures of ale, a gallon of milk, three chickens, fifteen eggs, and four measures of feed for his horses.
The greatest difficulties of the government were not financial, but military, for the state of warfare was almost continuous, especially along the Alps, the Pyrenees, and from the Eider to the lower Danube. The summons for calling together the units of the military forces was either carried by means of direct envoys or by letters sent to the counts, bishops, and abbots, and sometimes by the “missi.” These officials had to see that all those who were liable to service should be prepared to take their places when the call to arms was given. One of the “missi” writes: “let all be so prepared that, if the order to leave comes in the evening, they will leave without delay for Italy on the morning of the next day, but if it comes in the morning, in the evening of the same day.”
The following letter, addressed to Fulrad, abbot of Saint Quentin, gives the full text of one of these summonses: “Know, that we have fixed this year our meeting place in the country of the Saxons, in the Eastern part on the River Bota, at a place called Storosfurt. For this reason we direct you to be at the said place on the 15th of June accompanied by all your men, well armed and well equipped, so that you may go under arms, wherever it seems good to us to direct you to march. We expressly recommend you, in order that you may see that the rest follow our directions, to proceed to the designated place, without disturbance, by the shortest road, without taking anything from the inhabitants but the grass, wood, and water you require. Let the men of your company march constantly with the chariots and the horsemen, and let them never leave them until they reach the meeting place, in order that in the absence of their master they may not be tempted to do evil.” Late comers were punished by being deprived of rations for the time they were absent, if the period was short. They who failed to appear altogether were exposed to pay a heavy fine proportionate to their fortune. While on the march the troops, as we see by the terms of Fulrad’s letter, were to receive from the inhabitants of the country through which they passed fire, water, wood, and lodging, but nothing else. They brought with them enough provisions to last three months, and arms and clothing for six months. Each warrior was expected to have a buckler, a lance or a sword, a bow with ten cords, and twelve arrows. Those who were better off brought with them a better type of shield, while the counts and those who served as substitutes for bishops and abbots, wore a breastplate and a helmet. Some of the soldiers carried slings, and, apparently, there were mounted divisions in the army. For certain necessary parts of war-material the counts were personally responsible, such as three kinds of battle-axe, skins, battering rams, also for the transportation of these, and for all things required to keep the various weapons in good condition, and for engineering tools.
It is interesting to note how these warlike preparations were arranged for. Ownership in land was the basis selected for apportioning the expense. But as the man who had only a small estate could not bear such an outlay, inequality of fortune had to be considered, and also the distance to be traversed to the place of meeting. These points were all kept in view by the legislation of the Emperor, but there was no systematic attempt made to meet these difficulties. There were special provisions intended to govern special cases. In the first place, the call to arms was rarely made general. This was only done on exceptional occasions, as in 773, for the Lombard war; in 775, in the war against the Saxons, and in 792, in that against the Avars. In 807 account was taken of the distance. The Saxons, for example, only sent one man out of six against the Spaniards and the Avars; one out of three was demanded against the Slavs; but in case of conflict with their neighbors, the Suabi, all Saxon warriors had to take up arms. There was also an apportionment according to race: the Franks were called upon to confront the Saxons, the Lombards and Bavarians marched against the Avars; while, in case of war with the Spanish Arabs, the Aquitanians, the Southern Goths, the Provençals, and the Burgundians had to make up the imperial army. In the war against the Slavs, the Emperor called upon the Eastern Franks, the Saxons, the Alemanni, and the Thuringians.
In 807 the Emperor made the following arrangement as to military service: Every man who owned three manses had to appear under arms; of two landowners, each one of whom had two manses, one was to provide the equipment for the other, and he who could go earliest had to appear for military duty. Of three landowners, who had but one manse apiece, one must go, while the other two were to provide the equipment, and so on, the same arrangement being applied to owners of smaller parcels of ground. Another year, the duty of serving in the army began with the owners of four manses. The working of this graduated system of service was left in the hands of the “missus,” who made his arrangements in view of the prospective campaign.
It was evidently the Emperor’s purpose to make the burden as light as possible for the small landholder, and at the same time the obligation to serve was extended to those who had no landed property. So we find it declared in 806 that “if there are six landless men who own each as much as the value of six silver pennies, i.e., a pound and a half of the metal, one has to serve and be equipped by the other five.” But the freemen alone were not sufficient to fill up the ranks; for, under the strict application of this system, no one was obliged to serve who held land in dependence, or as a “beneficium” from a wealthy landowner, nor did the obligation rest on those who had surrendered their lands to the Church, or to a powerful layman, in order to receive it back again under the conditions of a “beneficium.” This class were not wholly free, nor were they actually landowners.
The problem of keeping up the war strength without oppressing the small landowner was solved in the following way: Charles called together, under the following conditions, those who were his own tenants. “Let every freeman,” he directed, “who owns absolutely four manses, or who holds them from another in the relation of a ‘beneficium,’ undertake to furnish his own equipment and join the army, either with his lord, if his lord is going there, or with the count.” These distributions enabled the Emperor to get recruits who otherwise would have escaped service; the other more remote result was that the “beneficium” system received legal recognition, and in this way the Emperor himself coöperated in the disintegrating tendencies by which the feudalized state finally destroyed the imperial system.
The lot of the small landowner was made hard and unendurable under the terms of the imperial military regulations, despite the compromises intended by Charles to protect him. There was every inducement to the owner of a small holding to give it up. We find, for example, an imperial order forbidding freemen without permission from the Emperor to enter the clerical profession, “for we have heard,” he says, “that certain of them are not so much actuated by devotion as by a desire to escape service in the army, and other public duties to the sovereign.” The fact, too, that rules regulating this subject were extremely complicated, led to all kinds of abuses on the part of those who were intrusted with their execution. In a report made to the Emperor, we read that “the poor people claim that, if one of them is not willing to abandon his property to the bishop or abbot, or count, or ‘master of a hundred,’ these officials find occasion to have him condemned and compel him to go to the place where the army is mobilized, so that being reduced to misery he is forced, whether he wants to or not, to give up his property or sell it.” It was added that those who had made this sacrifice were not disturbed.
The recriminations of the poor were directed against clerical and lay officers without distinction; and we hear of their grievances against bishops, abbots, and their legal representatives, as well as against the counts and other laymen. The Emperor’s efforts proved futile, and he not only could not resist the movement of his age, but he found himself promoting the evolution he criticised. He actually gave exemptions under his own seal to a certain number of religious houses. The counts, on their side, made a practice of giving exemptions and dispensations from military service. The landlord was allowed a kind of authority over the tenant in questions in which the holding of land was not involved. The rule that each landowner must be conducted to the place of mobilization by the count was broken, and the landed proprietors were allowed to appear ready for service, at the head of their tenants and dependents, a distinct anticipation of the later feudal custom.
The mass of the people did not fail to let their sentiments be known when the Emperor proceeded to extend the privilege of quartering his functionaries on private individuals. The imperial officers were assaulted and their baggage stolen. There was much complaint, too, of the incessant calls to military service. Many sacrificed, therefore, their free status, which simply meant to them the constant obligation to be under arms, and they entered the ecclesiastical profession or became dependents of those who were more powerful. Carolingian legislation permitted the freeman to “commend” himself to whomsoever he would “after the death of his lord,” and so that process began by which the central authority was robbed of its own subjects, the small, free landowners. Thus it was that the medieval régime took definite shape as a governmental hierarchy based on the possession of landed estates, great and small, worked either by serfs or by tenants, related to their overlord by various kinds of dependent tenures.