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Feudalism In Europe, Its Frankish Birth And English Development
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Feudalism, A general Overview Author: Stubbs, William Feudalism: Its Frankish Birth And English Development
Part Eleven
It now became manifest that the probabilities of war inclined to the party who could take the field with selected and experienced soldiers. The command of money was the command of armed hirelings, more sure and steady in battle, as we must confess with shame, than the patriot citizen. Though the nobility still composed in a great degree the strength of an army, yet they served in a new character; their animating spirit was that of chivalry rather than of feudal tenure; their connection with a superior was personal rather than territorial. The crusades had probably a material tendency to effectuate this revolution by substituting, what was inevitable in those expeditions, a voluntary stipendiary service for one of absolute obligation. ^x It is the opinion of Daniel that in the thirteenth century all feudal tenants received pay, even during their prescribed term of service. ^y This does not appear consonant to the law of fiefs; yet their poverty may often have rendered it impossible to defray the cost of equipment on distant expeditions. A large proportion of the expense must in all cases have fallen upon the lord; and hence that perpetually increasing taxation, the effects whereof we have lately been investigating.
[Footnote x: Joinville, in several passages, intimates that most of the knights serving in St. Louis' crusade received pay, either for their superior lord, if he were on the expedition, or from some other, into whose service they entered for the time. He set out himself with ten knights, whom he afterwards found it difficult enough to maintain. - Collection des Memoires, t. i. p. 49, and t. ii. p. 53.]
[Footnote y: Hist. de la Milice Francaise, p. 84. The use of mercenary troops prevailed much in Germany during the thirteenth century. Schmidt, t. iv. p. 89. In Italy it was also very common; though its general adoption is to be referred to the commencement of the succeeding age.]
A feudal army, however, composed of all tenants in chief and their vassals, still presented a formidable array. It is very long before the paradox is generally admitted that numbers do not necessarily contribute to the intrinsic efficiency of armies. Philip IV. assembled a great force by publishing the arriere-ban, or feudal summons, for his unhappy expedition against the Flemings. A small and more disciplined body of troops would not, probably, have met with the discomfiture of Courtray. Edward I. and Edward II. frequently called upon those who owed military service, in their invasions of Scotland. ^z But in the French wars of Edward III. the whole, I think, of his army served for pay, and was raised by contract with men of rank and influence, who received wages for every soldier according to his station and the arms he bore. The rate of pay was so remarkably high, that, unless we imagine a vast profit to have been intended for the contractors, the private lancers and even archers must have been chiefly taken from the middling classes, the smaller gentry, or rich yeomanry of England. ^a This part of Edward's military system was probably a leading cause of his superiority over the French, among whom the feudal tenantry were called into the field, and swelled their unwieldy armies at Crecy and Poitiers. Both parties, however, in this war employed mercenary troops. Philip had 15,000 Italian crossbow-men at Crecy. It had for some time before become the trade of soldiers of fortune to enlist under leaders of the same description as themselves in companies of adventure, passing from one service to another, unconcerned as to the cause in which they were retained. These military adventurers played a more remarkable part in Italy than in France, though not a little troublesome to the latter country. The feudal tenures had at least furnished a loyal native militia, whose duties, though much limited in the extent, were defined by usage and enforced by principle. They gave place, in an evil hour for the people and eventually for sovereigns, to contracts with mutinous hirelings, generally strangers, whose valor in the day of battle inadequately redeemed their bad faith and vexatious rapacity. France, in her calamitous period under Charles VI. and Charles VII., experienced the full effects of military licentiousness. At the expulsion of the English, robbery and disorder were substituted for the more specious plundering of war. Perhaps few measures have ever been more popular, as few certain have been more politic, than the establishment of regular companies of troops by an ordinance of Charles VII. in 1444. ^b These may justly pass for the earliest institution of a standing army in Europe, though some Italian princes had retained troops constantly in their pay, but prospectively to hostilities, which were seldom long intermitted. Fifteen companies were composed each of a hundred men at arms, or lancers; and, in the language of that age, the whole body was one thousand five hundred lances. But each lancer had three archers, a coutiller, or soldier armed with a knife, and a page or valet attached to him, all serving on horseback - so that the fifteen companies amounted to nine thousand cavalry. ^c From these small beginnings, as they must appear in modern times, arose the regular army of France, which every succeeding king was solicitous to augment. The ban was sometimes convoked, that is, the possessors of fiefs were called upon for military service in subsequent ages; but with more of ostentation than real efficiency.
[Footnote z: Rymer, t. iii. p. 173, 189, 199, et alibi saepius.]
[Footnote a: Many proofs of this may be adduced from Rymer's Collection. The following is from Brady's History of England, vol. ii. Appendix, p. 86. The wages allowed by contract in 1346 were, for an earl, 6s. 8d. per day; for barons and bannerets, 4s. for knights, 2s.; for squires, 1s.; for archers and hobelers (light cavalry), 6d.; for archers on foot, 3d.; for Welshmen, 2d. These sums multiplied by about 24, to bring them on a level with the present value of money [1818], will show the pay to have been extremely high. The cavalry of course, furnished themselves with horses and equipments, as well as arms, which were very expensive. See too Book I., p. 62, of this volume.]
[Footnote b: The estates at Orleans in 1439 had advised this measure, as is recited in the preamble of the ordinance. Ordonnances des Rois, t. xii. p. 312. Sismondi observes (vol. xiii. p. 352) that very little is to be found in historians about the establishment of these compagnies d'ordonnance, though the most important event in the reign of Charles VII. The old soldiers of fortune who pillaged the country either entered into these companies or were disbanded, and after their dispersion were readily made amenable to the law. This writer is exceedingly full on the subject.]
[Footnote c: Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Francaise, p. 266; Villaret, Hist. de France, t. xv. p. 394.]
The feudal compact, thus deprived of its original efficacy, soon lost the respect and attachment which had attended it. Homage and investiture became unmeaning ceremonies; the incidents of relief and aid were felt as burdensome exactions. And indeed the rapacity with which these were levied, especially by the Norman sovereigns and their barons, was of itself sufficient to extinguish all the generous feelings of vassalage. Thus galled, as it were, by the armor which he was compelled to wear, but not to use, the military tenant of England looked no longer with contempt upon the owner of lands in socage, who held his estate with almost the immunities of an allodial proprietor. But the profits which the crown reaped from wardships, and perhaps the prejudices of lawyers, prevented the abolition of military tenures till the restoration of Charles II. In France the fiefs of noblemen were very unjustly exempted from all territorial taxation, though the tailles of later times had, strictly speaking, only superseded the aids to which they had been always liable. The distinction, it is well known, was not annihilated till that event which annihilated all distinctions, the French revolution.
It is remarkable that, although the feudal system established in England upon the Conquest broke in very much upon our ancient Saxon liberties - though it was attended with harsher servitudes than in any other country, particularly those two intolerable burdens, wardship and marriage - yet it has in general been treated with more favor by English than French writers. The hardiness with which the ancient barons resisted their sovereign, and the noble struggles which they made for civil liberty, especially in that Great Charter, the basement at least, if not the foundation, of our free constitution, have met with a kindred sympathy in the bosoms of Englishmen; while, from an opposite feeling, the French have been shocked at that aristocratic independence which cramped the prerogatives and obscured the lustre of their crown. Yet it is precisely to this feudal policy that France is indebted for that which is ever dearest to her children, their national splendor and power. That kingdom would have been irretrievably dismembered in the tenth century, if the laws of feudal dependence had not preserved its integrity. Empires of unwieldy bulk, like that of Charlemagne, have several times been dissolved by the usurpation of provincial governors, as is recorded both in ancient history and in that of the Mahometan dynasties in the East. What question can there be that the powerful dukes of Guienne or counts of Toulouse would have thrown off all connection with the crown of France, when usurped by one of their equals, if the slight dependence of vassalage had not been substituted for legitimate subjection to a sovereign?
It is the previous state of society, under the grandchildren of Charlemagne, which we must always keep in mind, if we would appreciate the effects of the feudal system upon the welfare of mankind. The institutions of the eleventh century must be compared with those of the ninth, not with the advanced civilization of modern times. If the view that I have taken of those dark ages is correct, the state of anarchy which we usually term feudal was the natural result of a vast and barbarous empire feebly administered, and the cause rather than effect of the general establishment of feudal tenures. These, by preserving the mutual relations of the whole, kept alive the feeling of a common country and common duties, and settled, after the lapse of ages, into the free constitution of England, the firm monarchy of France, and the federal union of Germany.
The utility of any form of polity may be estimated by its effect upon national greatness and security, upon civil liberty and private rights, upon the tranquillity and order of society, upon the increase and diffusion of wealth, or upon the general tone of moral sentiment and energy. The feudal constitution was certainly, as has been observed already, little adapted for the defence of a mighty kingdom, far less for schemes of conquest. But as it prevailed alike in several adjacent countries, none had anything to fear from the military superiority of its neighbors. It was this inefficiency of the feudal militia, perhaps, that saved Europe during the middle ages from the danger of universal monarchy. In times when princes had little notion of confederacies for mutual protection, it is hard to say what might not have been the successes of an Otho the Great, a Frederic Barbarossa, or a Philip Augustus, if they could have wielded the whole force of their subjects whenever their ambition required. If an empire equally extensive with that of Charlemagne, and supported by military despotism, had been formed about the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, the seeds of commerce and liberty, just then beginning to shoot, would have perished, and Europe, reduced to a barbarous servitude, might have fallen before the free barbarians of Tartary.
If we look at the feudal polity as a scheme of civil freedom, it bears a noble countenance. To the feudal law it is owing that the very names of right and privilege were not swept away, as in Asia, by the desolating hand of power. The tyranny which, on every favorable moment, was breaking through all barriers, would have rioted without control, if, when the people were poor and disunited, the nobility had not been brave and free. So far as the sphere of feudality extended, it diffused the spirit of liberty and the notions of private right. Everyone I think will acknowledge this who considers the limitations of the services of vassalage, so cautiously marked in those law-books which are the records of customs, the reciprocity of obligation between the lord and his tenant, the consent required in every measure of a legislative or a general nature, the security, above all, which every vassal found in the administration of justice by his peers, and even (we may in this sense say) in the trial by combat. The bulk of the people, it is true, were degraded by servitude; but this had no connection with the feudal tenures.
The peace and good order of society were not promoted by this system. Though private wars did not originate in the feudal customs, it is impossible to doubt that they were perpetuated by so convenient an institution, which indeed owed its universal establishment to no other cause. And as predominant habits of warfare are totally irreconcilable with those of industry, not merely by the immediate works of destruction which render its efforts unavailing, but through that contempt of peaceful occupations which they produce, the feudal system must have been intrinsically adverse to the accumulation of wealth and the improvement of those arts which mitigate the evils or abridge the labors of mankind.
But as a school of moral discipline the feudal institutions were perhaps most to be valued. Society had sunk, for several centuries after the dissolution of the Roman empire, into a condition of utter depravity, where, if any vices could be selected as more eminently characteristic than others, they were falsehood, treachery, and ingratitude. In slowly purging off the lees of this extreme corruption, the feudal spirit exerted its ameliorating influence. Violation of faith stood first in the catalogue of crimes, most repugnant to the very essence of a feudal tenure, most severely and promptly avenged, most branded by general infamy. The feudal law-books breathe throughout a spirit of honorable obligation. The feudal course of jurisdiction promoted, what trial by peers is peculiarly calculated to promote, a keener feeling and readier perception of moral as well as of legal distinctions. And as the judgment and sympathy of mankind are seldom mistaken, in these great points of veracity and justice, except through the temporary success of crimes, or the want of a definite standard of right, they gradually recovered themselves when law precluded the one and supplied the other. In the reciprocal services of lord and vassal there was ample scope for every magnanimous and disinterested energy. The heart of man, when placed in circumstances which have a tendency to excite them, will seldom be deficient in such sentiments. No occasions could be more favorable than the protection of a faithful supporter, or the defence of a beneficent suzerain, against such powerful aggression as left little prospect except of sharing in his ruin.
From these feelings engendered by the feudal relation has sprung up the peculiar sentiment of personal reverence and attachment towards a sovereign which we denominate loyalty; alike distinguishable from the stupid devotion of Eastern slaves, and from the abstract respect with which free citizens regard their chief magistrate. Men who had been used to swear fealty, to profess subjection, to follow, at home and in the field, a feudal superior and his family, easily transferred the same allegiance to the monarch. It was a very powerful feeling which could make the bravest men put up with slights and ill-treatment at the hands of their sovereign; or call forth all the energies of disinterested exertion for one whom they never saw, and in whose character there was nothing to esteem. In ages when the rights of the community were unfelt this sentiment was one great preservative of society; and, though collateral or even subservient to more enlarged principles, it is still indispensable to the tranquillity and permanence of every monarchy. In a moral view loyalty has scarcely perhaps less tendency to refine and elevate the heart than patriotism itself; and holds a middle place in the scale of human motives, as they ascend from the grosser inducements of self-interest to the furtherance of general happiness and conformity to the purposes of Infinite Wisdom.
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