whilst in political importance the struggles between Pope and Emperor threw the events and annals of France into comparative insignificance. The French race, indeed, redeemed this nullity of their sovereign by the lead which they took in the crusades. The Godfreys and the Baldwins made up by their heroism and their valour for the nullity of Louis the Seventh and for the secondary part played by Philip Augustus in the Holy Land. And this superiority of French chivalry, though eclipsed in Palestine, shone forth in the foundation of an empire as ephemeral indeed, but still brilliant for the time the conquest of Constantinople by the Latins.

Both Louis the Seventh and Philip Augustus thought to redeem the weakness of their crown and place themselves on a par with other sovereigns by entering into the lists of chivalry and setting forth for the crusades. In this their aim was altogether disappointed. And Philip Augustus turned his talents and his efforts, both great, towards obtaining the same object by policy pursued from Paris, rather than by feats of arms in Palestine. The accession to the throne of England of so mean a wretch as John facilitated the task.

Philip Augustus accomplished this with great ability. It was not merely by activity, skill, and courage in the field, but by good and equitable government, by institutions, by the establishment and exercise of law. The great source of strength at this time to the monarch of France lay, no doubt, in the civic and industrious classes, which had taken large development, as attested by the chroniclers. The origin of the communes or of municipal freedom, sought and won by those classes, was the desire to have fairness of jurisdiction and fixity of fiscal dues, instead of being subject to the caprice of feudal or ecclesiastical lords. Philip Augustus sanctioned the charters of his predecessors to towns not under his immediate rule; whilst to those in which his own officers had authority, the policy of Philip was to secure all

CHAP.

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CHAP. the results and advantages of municipal freedom to the citizens without the form. Thus, whilst the monarch confirmed the charters of Laon or of Beauvais, he abolished that of Etampes, and secured to the citizens of Orleans and Paris, not the fact of municipal rights, but the results which the citizens aimed at in establishing them. He was the more confirmed in this conciliatory and popular policy when he came to be the conqueror of Normandy and other French provinces. For the maintenance of these he could far more depend upon the civic classes than upon the barons; and he soon made it apparent to the former, and indeed to both, that their position under the equable and legal administration of a king of France was far preferable to the eternal worry and extortion of such a sovereign as John.

His great conquests and acquisitions imposed upon Philip Augustus the more difficult and important task of bringing completely under his royal jurisdiction the powerful aristocracy of those distant provinces. His predecessors and himself had reduced and organised the duchy of France, and the ancient territories of the crown in a system highly favourable to royalty. Municipal independence within that region had not been allowed. The power of counts and nobles in towns had also been abrogated, and in those places the king's provosts became the chief local authority. The provosts, however, as we see from the Testament, as it is called, of Philip Augustus, took no important step without consulting the Prudhommes or notable citizens elected for that purpose. For suits or offences too important for the decision of the provosts, there was the royal court, which at first presided over by the monarch, had for its assessors the nobles of his duchy, who were also his officers and courtiers. The difficulty of making the great feudatories, such as the Duke of Normandy

* See in Laferrière (Histoire du Droit Français), a list of the fifty

*

Prevots and Prevotés of Philip
Augustus' time.

or Count of Champagne, attend or be amenable to such
a court has been explained as making the great dif-
ference between the French and the Anglo-Norman
monarchies. But Philip Augustus, aided by the ideas
of the age, overcame this difficulty. One effect of
the crusades was, by placing kings, their courts and
their pretensions, in juxtaposition, to enhance the
ambition of asserting superiority. The imaginative and
poetic spirit, which the crusades gave birth to, also
came in aid of this. Charlemagne was the great ideal
hero of the time. The arrangements and the dignities
of his court, borrowed in the ninth century from the
Byzantine Empire, were again resuscitated for the coro-
nation of Philip Augustus. As Charlemagne was re-
corded to have appointed twelve great dignitaries or
paladins, this was fixed upon as the mystic number of
the peers of France.* There were not more than three
great French feudatories, indeed, at the accession of
Philip Augustus: these were the Duke of Burgundy,
the Count of Champagne, and the Count of Flanders;
the latter of whom, moreover, looked to the emperor as
suzerain of a portion of his territories. As to the Dukes
of Normandy and Aquitaine, united to the crown of
England, and paying nominal homage to the King of
France, they could scarcely be considered peers.
peers. As
little could the Count of Toulouse. Six lay peers were,
however, supposed to exist. Six ecclesiastical ones
were adjoined to them. And as these found themselves
very often the sole assessors of the court, the support of
the Church was secured to the establishment of an insti-
tution, which placed princes and monarchs at the judicial
mercy of a few French prelates, and they not even
eminent ones. Such were the personages who affected

For the multitude of instances in which twelve was considered the fittest, or indeed the sacred number for all purposes of judgment or council, see Palgrave's Rise and Progress of the Eng. Commonwealth,

†The ecclesiastical peers were the Archbishop of Rheims, the Bishops of Laon, Beauvais, Chalons, Noyon, and Langres. The Archbishop of Tours and of Sens were considered too independent.

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CHAP.

V.

to treat King John as a peer, to condemn him for the
murder of Arthur, and to confiscate his possessions.
The Duke of Burgundy was the only lay peer who was
present at a judgment of 1216, relative to the succession
of Champagne. It was the bishops who judged. In
1224, the fiction of a Court of Peers, consisting chiefly
of the absent, was considered too absurd; and the
officers of the court, such as constables, chamberlains
and chancellors, were empowered to take part in the
trial and judgment. The decrees of such a tribunal
could only be made valid or respected by the armies
which supported them. But Philip Augustus made it
the interest of his nobles to enforce them, and that with
all their power.
So that the Court of Peers, or the
Parliament, as it came to be called, flourished and grew
in spirit to differ widely from its feudal origin. At
first, under the colour of being a council of noblesse,
it was made a tribunal of ecclesiastics. Afterwards the
power of the Crown to compose or complete such a
council by its officers and courtiers, enabled it to intro-
duce legists, men of a new class, which had risen up
with the revival of study of the Roman law. And
these rendered the Crown far other services than courtier
nobles or ecclesiastics.

One of the great strides of the Parliament and, in association with it, of the Crown to power, was made by its being considered a court of appeal from the sentences of seignorial jurisdiction. In addition to the prevots or magistrates, which the Crown appointed to govern towns, it also named baillis or royal governors of districts, who superseded in a great measure feudal administration. These were extended by degrees and under different titles to the conquered provinces. They referred all doubtful or important questions to the Court of Paris, and commenced that system of administrative and judicial centralisation, which combated and neutralised feudalism, without destroying it, and

laid the foundation of a monarchy as despotic as any of CHAP. even Oriental origin.

In

To this consummation Philip largely contributed. The supremacy of his crown, which up to his time was but a feudal name, he rendered a reality, sanctioned by forms, and supported by institutions, which flattered the aristocracy with an apparent share of power, conciliated the citizens by a semblance of freedom, and kindled generally a spirit of patriotism and pride in the new country of France, which few other monarchs could incite or instil. In a word, it was only in France that the great experiment of Monarchy fully succeeded. Germany it failed altogether for a time. The English began to found a system peculiar to themselves, — a monarchy controlled by the other classes of society, and more or less responsible to them. Centuries were required to develope, to fashion, to regulate such a principle, and to arrive at representative government. The consultative monarchy of France, on the contrary, started from the first very much what it continued to be to the last. It was a deification of the sovereign, an assumption of prerogative and supremacy, resembling those which the Pope claimed in spiritual matters, and in fact rivalling them. Whilst the Pope summoned monarchs before his consistory, deposed them, and granted their kingdoms to others by virtue of his spiritual authority, the kings of France affected to do the same by right of their feudal supremacy. The language of the early French jurisprudents and chroniclers was, in fact, modelled upon that of the churchmen. So pretentious a power could not long remain in amity with that of the Roman pontiffs. The antagonism betweem them was, however, for some time adjourned. They were nigh quarrelling later, as to which of them should dispose of the crown of England, which had in a manner fallen from John's head. But previous to John's prostration, the French King and the Roman Pope had a

V.