CHAPTER XIX.

HE history of the Merovingians is that of barbarians

invading Gaul and settling upon the ruins of the Roman

empire. The history of the Carlovingians is that of the greatest of the barbarians taking upon himself to resuscitate the Roman empire, and of Charlemagne's descendants disputing amongst themselves for the fragments of his fabric, as fragile as it was grand. Amidst this vast chaos and upon this double ruin was formed the feudal system, which by transformation after transformation became ultimately France. Hugh Capet, one of its chieftains, made himself its King. The Capetians achieved the French kingship. We have traced its character and progressive development from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, through the reigns of Louis the Fat, of Philip Augustus, of St. Louis and of Philip the Handsome, princes very diverse and very unequal in merit but all of them able and energetic. This period was likewise the cradle of the French nation. That was the time when it began to exhibit itself in its different elements, and to arise under

VOL II.

B

monarchical rule from the midst of the feudal system. Its earliest features and its earliest efforts in the long and laborious work of its development are now to be set before the reader's eyes.

The two words inscribed at the head of this chapter, the Communes and the Third-Estate, are verbal expressions for the two great facts at that time revealing that the French nation was in labour of formation. Closely connected one with the other and tending towards the same end, these two facts are, nevertheless, very diverse, and even when they have not been confounded, they have not been with sufficient clearness distinguished and characterized, each of them apart. They are diverse both in their chronological date and their social importance. The Communes are the first to appear in history. They appear there as local facts, isolated one from another, often very different in point of origin though analogous in their aim, and in every case neither assuming nor pretending to assume any place in the government of the State. Local interests and rights, the special affairs of certain populations agglomerated in certain spots, are the only objects, the only province of the communes. With this purely municipal and individual character they come to their birth, their confirmation and their development from the eleventh to the fourteenth century;` and at the end of two centuries they enter upon their decline, they occupy far less room and make far less noise in history. It is exactly then that the Third Estate comes to the front, and uplifts itself as a general fact, a national element, a political power. It is the successor, not the contemporary, of the Communes; they contributed much towards, but did not suffice for its formation; it drew upon other resources, and was developed under other influences than those which gave existence to the communes. has subsisted, it has gone on growing throughout the whole course of French history; and at the end of five centuries, in 1789, when the Communes had for a long while sunk into languishment and political insignificance, at the moment at which France was electing her Constituent Assembly, the Abbé Sièyes, a man of powerful rather than scrupulous mind, could say, "What is the Third Estate? Every thing. What has it hitherto been in the body politic? Nothing. What does it demand? To be something."

It

These words contained three grave errors. In the course of government anterior to 1789, so far was the third estate from being nothing, that it had been every day becoming greater and stronger. What was demanded for it in 1789 by M. Sièyes and his friends was not that it might become something but that it should be every thing. That was a desire beyond its right and its strength; and the very Revolution, which was its own victory, proved this. Whatever may have been the weaknesses and faults of its foes, the third estate had a terrible struggle to conquer them; and the struggle was so violent and so obstinate that the third estate was broken up therein, and had to pay dearly for its triumph. At first it obtained thereby despotism instead of liberty; and when liberty returned, the third estate found itself confronted by twofold hostility, that of its foes under the old regimen and that of the absolute democracy which claimed in its turn to be every thing. Outrageous claims bring about intractable opposition and excite unbridled ambition. What there was in the words of the Abbé Sièyes in 1789 was not the verity of history; it was a lying programme of revolution.

We have anticipated dates in order to properly characterize and explain the facts as they present themselves, by giving a glimpse of their scope and their attainment. Now that we have clearly marked the profound difference between the third estate and the communes, we will return to the communes alone, which had the priority in respect of time. We will trace the origin and the composition of the third estate, when we reach the period at which it became one of the great performers in the history of France by reason of the place it assumed and the part it played in the Statesgeneral of the kingdom.

In dealing with the formation of the communes from the eleventh to the fourteenth century the majority of the French historians, even M. Thierry, the most original and clearsighted of them all, often entitle this event the communal revolution. This expression hardly gives a correct idea of the fact to which it is applied. The word revolution, in the sense or at least the aspect given to it amongst us by contemporary events, points to the overthrow of a certain regimen and of the ideas and authority predominant

thereunder, and the systematic elevation in their stead of a regimen essentially different in principle and in fact. The revolutions of our day substitute or would fain substitute a republic for a monarchy, democracy for aristocracy, political liberty for absolute power. The struggles which from the eleventh to the fourteenth century gave existence to so many communes had no such profound character; the populations did not pretend to any fundamental overthrow of the regimen they attacked; they conspired together, they swore together, as the phrase is according to the documents of the time-they rose to extricate themselves from the outrageous oppression and misery they were enduring, but not to abolish feudal sovereignty and to change the personality of their masters. When they succeeded they obtained those treaties of peace called charters, which brought about in the condition of the insurgents salutary changes accompanied by more or less effectual guarantees. When they failed or when the charters were violated, the result was violent reactions, mutual excesses; the relations between the populations and their lords were tempestuous and full of vicissitude; but at bottom neither the political regimen nor the social system of the communes were altered. And so there were, at many spots without any connexion between them, local revolts and civil wars, but no communal revolution.

One of the earliest facts of this kind which have been set forth with some detail in history clearly shows their primitive character: a fact the more remarkable in that the revolt described by the chroniclers originated and ran its course in the country among peasants with a view of recovering complete independence and not amongst an urban population with a view of resulting in the erection of a commune. Towards the end of the tenth century, under Richard II., duke of Normandy, called the Good, and whilst the good King Robert was reigning in France, "In several countships of Normandy," says William of Jumiège, "all the peasants, assembling in their conventicles, resolved to live according to their inclinations and their own laws, as well in the interior of the forests as along the rivers, and to reck naught of any established right. To carry out this purpose these mobs of madmen chose each two deputies, who were to form at some central point an assembly