that were in the town; and two holy men that served God, leading the life of anachorets, were burned therein *" Our Norman kings were indeed terrible. Peter of Blois knew them well. "Oh, God!” he exclaims, "Deliver me from the necessity of returning to the odious and troublesome court which lies in the shadow of death, and where order and peace are unknown†."

When the English deserted their fortress of Bernardieres in Limousin, they set fire to it; and when Duguesclin and the French arrived, "they found a priest burnt, and he still held a chalice in his hand; at which spectacle the chivalry of France had pity t." The monk of Croyland, after describing the horrors of the civil wars which terminated with the death of Richard III., contrasts the misery of life with the happiness of dying; for, speaking of his abbot, Richard, he says, "thus did he exchange the troubled life of this world for eternal quiet." His conclusion is affecting: "Qui legis hæc hominum tot mutatoria rerum magnorum, cur non mundi mutabilitatem totam contemnis? Cur vanæ gloriæ pompa te mentemve tangit §?" The wars between France and England when the family of Valois came to the throne of the former kingdom on the extinction of the eldest branch of the Capetian line, and the wars of the two roses during fifty years in England, and those of the English kings in Ireland, must certainly be considered as indicating a cruel abuse of power by those who sought to preserve or to extend it.

The wars of the English kings in France, indeed, were regarded by the invaded country as a divine judgment in vengeance of the policy of Charles V., who may be said to have ordered the great schism by siding with the antipope. As a consequence of these wars must be reckoned the ravages caused by the companies of their disbanded troops, who continued to desolate countries, even after the original contest had ceased. Traces of them perhaps occur in the laws of the Visigoths, one of which is directed against those who assemble troops to commit murders: so fresh was still the barbaric element ||. Mu

* P. 293.

† Epist. 14. Chroniq. de Duguesclin, 437. § Hist. Croyland. Rer. Anglic. Script. i. viii. 51. 3.

ratori describes "the societies" which, in the fourteenth century, infested Italy. They used to plunder lands, seize solitary castles, take prisoners for ransom, and carry devastation wherever they went. So one ancient author exclaims, "O grief and shame of Italy! The holy name of society is now assumed by traitors and plunderers, who are not ashamed to prostitute that sacred and venerable name." These were not alone Italians, but Germans, French, and English *. In the fourteenth century the grand companies; in the fifteenth, the brigands and the écorcheurs; in the sixteenth, the adventurers, who were also styled devils, having no more pay to expect from belligerent parties, ravaged France, and verified what Pagans had experienced :

"Nulla fides pietasque viris, qui castra sequuntur:
Venales manus: ibi fas ubi maxima merces."

"Sir knight," says a stranger to Gyron le Courtois, who conversed with him, "I am Brehus the pitiless." "St. Mary," exclaims Gyron, "what say you? If, indeed, you be Brehus, I know that you hold faith neither with God nor man, neither with the world nor with chivalry +." Such were the antichivalrous mercenaries. Then was it the maxim not to travel in winter after the angelus had tolled; then, at one's gate one had to speak with men at whose hands, and not at whose countenances, one should look the while .

Few abodes of peace could wholly escape the influence of disorders in the world. In an ancient dialogue between an old man and a boy, the former speaks as follows: "Henry, duke of Bavaria, and Lewis were ravaging the country with their wars when I was a student at Vienna, when scholars of both countries used to defend their respective princes in tedious combats of words." The boy then interrupts him: "Strange that Bavaria should have been so desolated, which was so shortly before at peace. Perchance, the demon who goes about the earth perambulating it, as he says in Job, caused these evils." The old man replies, "I do think that the demons provoke discords, as is related in the lives of the Fathers,

Antiq. Italicæ, Dissert. 16.

Cardan. Præceptorum ad Filios Libell.

† ccxxxi.

where the demon, by extinguishing a light, wished to cause a quarrel between two brothers, but was prevented by the humility of one of them, who instantly prostrated himself before the other and appeased him. However, the occasion of this war was given at Constance, when Duke Lewis insulted his brother Henry, who, in revenge, wounded him with his sword, and then fled to Austria, where, with his nobles, he made war against Louis, and defeated him. How many battles do I remember taking place in different countries in my time! The first was in 1410 between the King of Poland and the Teutonic order, in which there fell more than a hundred thousand men. In 1446 the Hungarians invaded Austria, and ravaged it with fire and sword. I omit to speak of the other bank of the Danube, about Markfeld, which has seldom peace. Pangratius, a Hungarian, long disturbed it; but I have seen the end of all consummation. This man, sitting at table in Buda, cried out, 'Lo, they come!' and dropped dead. Perhaps he saw the demons coming. He was refused burial. Thus evil was his end, as often happens to the oppressors of others. In our country there was another oppressor, who at length used to be seen wandering from town to town, to whom scarcely, as to a beggar for God's sake, would any one give bread. In Hungary, after the death of Lord Albert, King and Duke of Austria, of happy memory, many battles were fought which I pass over; as also those between the Venetians and Milanese, the French and English *.* Thus the experience of each man's life could entitle him to the praise bestowed on Bayard, that "he was a true register of battles +."

The decline of the feudal powers before the centralizations of the later monarchal governments did not put an end to the worst evils of war. The French poet, who rather pedantically boasts of having read the wars of Alexander and of Troy the great, of King Arthur and Charlemagne, of Bleopatois of Spain and of the Round Table, declares that in no history has he found mention of such calamities as in his time afflicted the world ‡.

* Senatorium Dialog. Historic. Martini Abbatis Scotorum Viennæ ap. Pez Script. Rer. Aust. tom. ii.

La Très Joyeuse Hist. du bon Chev.

Regnier in Goujet Biblioth. Franc. ix. 332.

The sufferings of the pacific in disordered times are conspicuous in all the contemporary monuments. The whole lives of some were thus embittered. Behold, for instance, the troubles of Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II.! He was at Rheims when that city was laid waste by the sword. His house was plundered, and his life sought for by his enemies *. In Bobbio, as at Rheims, at the emperor's court, as in his active career at Ravenna, and at Rome, he is seen as one whose life, though blameless, had incurred perpetual strife. Alluding to his three years' residence in France he says, in a letter to Raimund, Abbot of Aurillac, "There, while I endured the anger of kings, the tumults of the people, and the fury of adversaries, I was seized with such disgust that I almost repented having undertaken the pastoral care." At that moment, he says, such are the distractions even of Italy, that he cannot say anything for certain respecting his organs, or the mode of using them t. "Bear assistance to me, Father," he says to Romulf, Abbot of Sens, "that the Divinity, who is excluded by the multitude of sins, may be bent by your prayers to return to visit us and to remain with us for ever t."

The peaceful race may seem now to have drained to the dregs the bitter cup, and yet we have not yet reached all that they had to taste, for in still worse desolation we shall hear them cry-" We seek not peace, O heavens ! Excite against us the nations."

Reddite nos populis; civile avertite bellum §."

"Contention, sister and companion of homicidal Mars," as Homer says ||, "" sooner or later arose in most states," not without that shame which indicates, to use Pindar's words, "the departure of divine protection, when enmity arises between those who are of the same blood ¶." O ye sons of meekness and desire, what was your country then? "No more your country, but an impious crew of men conspiring to uphold their state by worse than hostile deeds, violating the ends for which our country is a name so dear, not therefore to be obeyed. Such were

Hock Gerbert und sein Jahrhundert, 82.

† Ep. 91.

§ Lucan. ii.

|| iv.

Ep. 13.
¶ Pyth. Od. iv.

the intervals which beheld the long civil wars previous to the reign of Rodolph of Habsburgh, the disorders of the great schism, the wars of the two factions of Guelf and Gibeline, the wars between the seigniors of Germany, and the free towns during the miserable reign of Wenceslaus of Bohemia, the rivalities of Burgundy and Orleans in France, of Habsburgh and of Luxembourg in Germany."

In Italy in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the wars of private men were multiplied to the disturbance of all states. Peter Damian describes these enmities thus, "a man kills another more powerful than himself, from whose son, after the manner of the age, not after the laws of the Gospel, he has to sustain war, the avenger breathing slaughter and rapine *. In France, these petty wars and dissensions commenced about the year 1031 t. In the twelfth centuries, the factions of Guelfs and Gibeline began to disturb Italy; but it was not until the time of the heretical emperor, Frederic II., that these first became serious . Then after long striving, the divided citizens came to blood, and one party chased the other with much injury forth. This was the great moral plague which devastated that noble land during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and part of the fifteenth centuries. The name of Gibeline was first used to designate those who followed the family of the emperor Frederic I., and desired its domination in Italy. The Guelfs on the contrary were those who disliked that domination. "These latter," as Muratori remarks, "did not hate the empire, or refuse to obey the emperor; but they detested the race of that Frederic I., who had destroyed so many Italian cities, and therefore, when it was a question of choosing between a Frederic II., or an Otho IV., of the race of the Welphs of Este, they immediately declared for the latter. Moreover, whenever there was a collision between the empire and the Church, they stood by the Church, knowing that not even the emperor himself was exempt from its jurisdiction. These factions divided not only states, but cities, and even families and single

Lib. iv. Epist. 17.

Murat. Antiq. Italicæ, xxiii.

Jac. Malveccii Chronic. Brix. vii. 103, ap. id. Rer. It. Script. xiv.