WIT CHAPTER VIII THE RISE OF NATIONAL MONARCHIES ITH the exception of the city-states of Italy, it is the The mediaeEmpire and the Papacy which have thus far occupied val kingdoms the centre of the stage in the drama of European diplomacy. Only incidentally has reference been made to those separate kingdoms of the Middle Ages which arose upon the ruins of the Carlovingian Empire, in the Spanish peninsula, or in the more northern and eastern portions of Europe. The reason for the subordinate part played by these monarchies in the general development of Europe is found in their feudal character. "Feudalism does not negotiate, it tramples law under the feet of its horses." Disqualified for a large participation in the great movements of the time, the feudal monarchies had few interests beyond their own borders and little need of international intercourse. Conflicts and alliances with their neighbors were not, indeed, uncommon; but, aside from their interest in the Church and their part in the crusades, no enterprise of European proportions had yet appealed to them, nor were they sufficiently developed as political entities to embark in extensive schemes of foreign policy. Notwithstanding the isolated existence to which feudalism had condemned them, events of vast importance to the history of diplomacy and to the future of Europe had occurred in nearly all of these kingdoms. It was by diplomacy, rather than by war, that the more important of these feudal states were rising to the dignity of national monarchies, and were being prepared for that great career of influence which has rendered them the most potent and the most permanent elements in the modern political system. It is necessary, there A. D. 987-1313 CHAP. VIII fore, before we begin the study of the new problems created by their entrance into the field of international activity, to consider by what means and methods they came into being, and the interests and ambitions which determined their future prominence in the larger European movements. The character of the feudal monarchies I. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF POLITICAL CENTRALIZATION We have seen how the feudal order was made dominant by the necessity of providing means of resistance to invasion in the period of decline preceding the dissolution of the Carlovingian Empire. In every part of Europe, all real authority gradually passed at that time into the hands of the local magnates, the dukes, counts, and bishops, who usurped and appropriated the regalian rights, collecting taxes for their own use, employing contingents of the feudal army in their own private quarrels, dispensing justice in their own name, and treating the land and its population as their own private property. The consequence of this revolution at once social, economic, and political-was the diminution of the royal authority as it had been exercised in the earlier period, and the transfer of power to the hands of the local nobility, lay and ecclesiastic. The kingship had thus become merely titular. Deprived of revenue, of an army, of an administrative organization, and of judicial powers, while surrounded by local magnates, who levied imposts, held courts, coined money, and commanded the armed forces of their feudal domains, the King, outside of his own estates, was reduced to a rôle of comparative unimportance, and was able to claim no higher pre-eminence than that of being the first among equals. The feudal monarchy was, therefore, a monarchy in theory | only; in practice it was anarchy. From the King down to the lowest serf, the series of vassals was unbroken; but it was a hierarchy of private relations. At the head was the King, but between him and the great mass of his subjects stood the intermediary nobles, to whom the people were di A. D. 987-1313 rectly bound by oaths of allegiance and relations of depend- CHAP. VIII ence. The entire social structure thus rested upon territorial rights and a system of land tenure which gave the local magnates complete power over their vassals, while it rendered them practically independent of the King. No form of political organization could be imagined more remote from a strong national monarchy, in which the will of the people could find expression through their national chief, or the head of the state centralize and control the power and resources of his subjects. Between the feudal state and the national monarchy, therefore, lay a long and difficult course of evolution, in which the feudal magnates furnished at the same time the obstacles to be overcome and one of the agencies by which they were to be surmounted. evolution In order to centralize authority in his own hands, Charles The feudal the Great had broken up the duchies into countships; thus destroying the possibility of rivalry within the state, while the royal court was kept in close touch with the whole people by means of the missi dominici. The successive partitions of the Carlovingian Empire and the part played by the local counts in resisting the invasions of the Northmen, the Arabs, and the Magyars, destroyed the system of Charles, dissolved the imperial power, and left Europe in the possession of the feudal monarchies. The disorganized condition in which these were left by the conflicts of the last Carlovingians furnished the opportunity for the formation of the great fiefs; and these in turn, at a later time, for the reconstitution of the royal supremacy. By war, purchase, marriage, and negotiation, powerful duchies were established, a wider extension of vassalage was enforced, and this process of centralization finally resulted in concentrating the feudal power in the hands of a relatively small number of persons. In this course of development, the kings were active par- : ticipants. Their private estates were thus enlarged, though not at first more rapidly or more securely than those of their greatest vassals; but the problem of reconstituting the royal power was not only thus made more clear and definite, the A. D. 987-1313 CHAP. VIII means of its solution became thereby more simple and more available. The feudal theory, upon which these larger aggregations of territorial control were built up, gave to the King one distinct advantage in this process, all his competitors in this struggle for power were, by this theory, his vassals. Every right of jurisdiction which the feudal lords exercised over their vassals they were obliged, in turn, to concede to him. When feudalism passed into a system of jurisprudence, the King became the chief beneficiary; for every increment of advantage won by the feudal lords over their vassals was, by law and logic, an increase of the royal rights. The influence of the crusades By a process of necessity, therefore, the work of centralizing authority in the hands of the great feudatories only prepared the way for placing the entire control of the state in the King's hands, when he should be able to grasp it from them. Thus, unconsciously, feudality passed through a course of development which tended constantly toward the concen- 1 tration of power. When, by the arts of royal diplomacy, the great fiefs were gathered in as ripened fruits, the union of landed proprietorship with political authority, which feudalism had accomplished, was to render the national monarchs the sole proprietors of their kingdoms. Several causes conspired to promote this result. Among them none was more influential than the crusades, which during two centuries never ceased to affect the social and political organization of Europe. In the period from 1096 to 1291, probably not less than six millions of human beings were put in motion by this cause.1 Inspired by a great variety of motives, the nobles to satisfy honor and find adventure, the serfs to acquire personal freedom, debtors to absolve themselves from their obligations, the fanatical to obtain a martyr's crown, and all influenced by a sense of religious duty or enthusiasm, this multitude, which a 1 Certain provinces were so depopulated that, according to the Abbé of Clairvaux, there remained hardly one man to seven women, who disputed for possession of him. See Herder, Essai sur l'influence des Croisades, p. 263, who cites a contemporary authority. A. D. 987-1313 Byzantine princess compared in number to "the sands of CHAP. VIII the seashore, the leaves of the forest, and the stars in the firmament," broke up the stagnation of feudal existence and opened new routes across Europe. Whatever their fate might be, the faithful were taken completely under the protection of the Church, to whose service they were committed. Their persons, their wives, their children, and their possessions all passed under its watchcare from the moment they took the cross. Their suzerains might object to their departure, but in vain; for excommunication, then so deeply dreaded, awaited all who disturbed the crusaders in their war against the Infidel. Exempted by papal decree from the jurisdiction of the secular courts, as soldiers of Christ they were subject only to the ecclesiastical judges, except in respect to fiefs. During his absence in the holy war, no crusader could be divested of an object which he had possessed in peace at the time he took the cross. tion from servitude The effect of such an influence upon the social state of EmancipaChristendom was far-reaching. Not only were many feudal relations terminated by abandonment, but the status of the serf was changed the moment he became enrolled as a soldier of the Cross. As, by the Code of Justinian, a slave became a freeman after a period of service in the army, so also the crusading serf, by virtue of his enrolment under the banner of Christ, left his servitude behind him. The state of public feeling loosened all bonds and rendered opposition powerless. "The father," writes a contemporary, "dared not oppose the departure of his son, nor the wife to hold back her husband, nor the lord to arrest his serf; for the road to Jerusalem was free to all, by the love or the fear of God."2 The example and contagion of free movement, operating through so long a period, could not fail to produce a social 1 See the General Summons of Innocent III in Henderson, Select Documents of the Middle Ages, pp. 340, 341. 2 Belli Sacri Historia, in Mabillon, Musaeum Italicum, Paris, 1687I. 1689, 24 |