So the great Mediaeval Church System was broken through, and North Europe started on her modern career of freedom and independence of belief. The Hapsburg emperors remained Catholic, but were usually tolerant by nature. Lutheran Germany went her own way, Bavaria and Catholic Germany dropped a little behind.
And so we see, step by step, great powers are broken down, and step by step individual men and women advance into freedom, freedom to believe as their soul prompts them, freedom to think as their mind sees well, freedom to act as their heart desires: beautiful, flexible freedom of human men and women.
Chapter XV. The Grand Monarch
The early history of France is a history of battles and wars, a history of the struggles of the French king with his great barons, with the English, and with the emperors. Hugh Capet was the first real king of France — the Franks had been kings of the Frankish people. Hugh Capet became Duke of France in 956, and was elected King of France in 987; and was war-lord of the central region round Paris.
In Hugh Capet’s time Gaul could still be divided roughly into three great divisions. From the Rhine running east and south was the great belt of territory, Eastern France, which was sometimes called Lotharingia. It was the strange strip of land which had fallen to the share of Lothaire, one of the three grandsons of Charlemagne. In Lotharingia lay Luxemburg, Lorraine (which is Lotharingia proper), Lesser Burgundy, Aries, and Provence. In this long region the people were chiefly of true German origin, they spoke the Frankish or Allemannish or Burgundian languages, all German, and they despised the people to the west, particularly those of the great central province, calling them effeminate Galli, or Walli as they pronounced it.
The central region, France proper, occupied Champagne, Normandy, and Anjou on the Loire. The chief towns were Paris, Rheims, Orleans. In this region lived the Normans, and the people who called themselves Francin- genae or French. These French were a mixed race of Franks and Gallo-Romans. They spoke the Northern French called the Langue d’Oil. And these were the people governed by the Capetian kings of France.
South of the Loire lay the great province of Aquitaine, Gascony lay on the Bay of Biscay and next the Pyrenees, whilst towards the Mediterranean spread the broad county of Toulouse. Aquitaine, Gascony, and Toulouse occupied the old Visigothic kingdom in Gaul. Here the people were much more Roman, much older in civilisation than in France proper. They spoke the delightful old Romance language, called the Langue d’Oc. Hence all this region was often called Languedoc. The Langue d’Oc was the sweet old speech of poets and minstrels, the language of our own Richard Coeur de Lion. Just as the Germanic Lotharingians despised the Francingenae or French, so the French of the Capetian Court despised the southerners, despised particularly the bishops of Aquitaine and Toulouse, calling them women and corrupt weaklings, because they were delicate in dress and speech and manner.
So we see that France was not just one State, it was a collection of States with a little kingdom in the middle. The great dukes of Brittany and Normandy, and the counts of Vermandois and Flanders in the north were independent princes, as were the dukes of Aquitaine and Gascony and Burgundy, the counts of Toulouse and Anjou, towards the south and east. In England the king soon mastered his great barons, and a law was established for the whole land. But for centuries the French king struggled with the great lords of Aquitaine, Burgundy, Brittany, Flanders; and there was no real France, no realm governed by one whole Law until after the Reformation. If the King of France was the chief man among all these lords and princes, it is only that he was principal war-lord.
By 1328 the kings of France had come to rule the greater part of the lands we now call France. All Lotharingia, that great eastern belt stretching up from Marseilles to Antwerp, belonged to the Germanic Empire; England held Aquitaine and Gascony in the south-west; Brittany and the diminished Duchy of Burgundy and the County of Flanders were still free from the French rule. And then the terrible Hundred Years War broke out. The French kings must fight his vassal, the English king. In 1453, when the English were driven out, the French kings ruled all France, save Brittany and the Burgundian possessions, Flanders and the Duchy of Burgundy. But Luxemburg and Lorraine lay outside France altogether.
Through all these centuries there had been one continual struggle in France. Until the Hundred Years War the French lords had lived in their castles and ruled their territories very much as they pleased, caring only for their own splendours as knights, triumphs in the fights of chivalry, and their glittering showy festivals. They were very much like the Gallic chieftains at the coming of the Romans, except that they lived in feudal castles, not in wooden halls, and fought in heavy armour on horseback, instead of in chariots. The mass of the people were peasants, serfs, nearly slaves, just as before, trampled down to the greatest misery when the Hundred Years War began. Then in 1358 broke out the fearful peasant rising called the Jacquerie. Nobles and rich people were massacred. The burghers or citizens joined with the peasants, all nobles and knights united against the people. It is said that twenty thousand peasants were slain between the Seine and Marne alone: and in those days the population of Europe was small.
By the close of the Hundred Years War, however, all Europe was changing. France found she must have regular soldiers to defeat the regular soldiers of Edward in. The knights of chivalry, with their feudal armies, were a failure. And to support regular armies there must be regular production at home, there must be supplies raised and money found. Thus industry, agriculture, and commerce became the first interest of man. War merely depended on the great productive activities of a nation. And so gradually the States became occupied with industry and commerce, the force of the new Europe grew quietly strong in France as in Italy. The nobles and princes were all-powerful apparently; but underneath their martial power merchants, manufacturers, artisans, peasants, a great silent host of producers, were gradually, unnoticeably becoming important.
The Reformation spread from Germany and Switzerland into France. But there it only touched the middle classes. The great nobles would have nothing to do with the teachings of Luther or Calvin, and the mass of the peasants cared not at all for independent religion. They clung to the strange, superstitious Gallic Catholicism. Only the burghers, merchants, lesser nobility, men who were struggling for independence, listened to the new teachings, and were converted. It was not till later that noblemen joined them. These Calvinistic Protestants of France were called Huguenots.
When Protestantism was really established in Northern Europe, the south turned against it in fury. Italy, and particularly Spain, was filled with tremendous hatred of the new religion. The Spanish Inquisition became the terror of Europe, and did cruel work in the Spanish Netherlands. This passion of hatred of the Protestants, which caused the movement called the Counter-Reformation, spread now into France. Some great nobles sided with the Huguenots, some were against them. Such a state was bound to be. France lies mid-way between the north and the south of Europe: she is the centre where the passions of the two halves fuse. So now half the great nobles, headed by the Guise family, were violent Catholics, Spanish in sympathy, whilst the other half were staunch for the Huguenots.
So the religious war in France became a devastating civil war. Nobles fought nobles with intense fury. It was the old battle: the northern Germanic influence fighting the southern Latin influence in the Gallic race. In this last great fight many nobles fell, many ruined themselves, much wealth and power passed into the hands of merchants and smaller gentry. When Henry of Navarre won the Battle of Ivry in 1590 the war was ended. Henry iv. was really Protestant in sympathy. The Huguenots were allowed a fair amount of religious freedom, and they established their headquarters in the great fortress-town of La Rochelle.
Henry iv. was an important king. He ruled whilst Elizabeth and James i. were on the throne of England. He began at last to get France ordered, settled, and prosperous. For this purpose he had to depend a good deal on merchants, rich citizens, and the gentry. For the great nobles sti
ll imagined they were the King’s equals; they laughed with him and chaffed him and showed him they did not intend him to imagine himself their superior. But Henry was of a generous nature. He cared nothing for their pretensions, hut went his own way, straightforward and plain in manner and dress, not caring for show, but getting his own way all the same, doing very much as he liked, and improving the land. In the richness of the middle classes lay the power of the King, and the consequent weakening of the great nobles. Henry iv. did all he could to encourage merchants and manufacturers. He had the land drained and cultivated. He helped on colonisation, assisting Champlain to found Quebec in 1608, extending his dominions. If he was going to be really powerful, he must be more than a mere war-lord, high chieftain of the chieftains, as the Frankish kings had been. He must destroy the chieftains who were more or less his equals, and rule in the name of the people — that is, of the well-to-do merchants and citizens. He must be very much like a Tyrant of an Italian city, ruling his country for the sake of the prosperity of the numerous merchants and smaller gentry and manufacturers, those who supported the body of the nation. Great nobles must go. A king must have no equals. He must have only subjects. But they must be willing subjects. A king was now no longer a war-lord. He was head of a great productive community.
Henry iv. was murdered in 1610. His son Louis XIII. was an infant, and therefore Maria de’ Mediei, mother of the baby King, became regent, assisted by various advisers. There was a good deal of confusion. At last, in 1624, Richelieu, the Cardinal-Duke, became adviser of the boy King and of the Queen Mother.
Richelieu was a wonderful man, with a terribly strong will, and a great, subtle intellect. He saw what he had to do. And he soon had complete influence over the young Louis and the Queen Mother. Richelieu’s work was to continue what Henry of Navarre had begun: that is, to make the King supreme in France, and to weaken all the great nobles; to encourage prosperity in the country; and to keep in check the great Spanish-German power of the Hapsburgs. His work, really, was to convert France into a land of productive unity, to destroy the old war-spirit.
The first thing, however, was to reduce the Huguenots, who had become almost a little nation in themselves. The Cardinal-Duke himself besieged the great stronghold of La Rochelle. The city yielded to starvation. Richelieu made peace with the Huguenots, and gave them a good deal of liberty. He was not at all their religious enemy. He only wanted to make them submissive to the royal power.
The nobles hated the great Cardinal. They plotted against him continually, and he had many seized and beheaded or kept in the Bastille. He forbade all war between nobles, and even duelling, that last remnant of private warfare between gentlemen, was suppressed. Many of the enormous castles which were scattered over France were blown up by gunpowder at the Cardinal’s orders, and the unruly nobles deprived for ever of their strongholds.
Then the government of provinces was taken away from the great lords. Noblemen now became merely courtiers. The land was governed by a little body of men, chosen by the King himself, or the King’s ministers, and called the King’s Council. The King’s Council appointed governors called Intendants. These Intendants were usually rich citizens or smaller gentry, and these now ruled in the provinces. They bore the titles of Superintendents of Finance and Superintendents of Police. It was they who, as royal officers, raised armies and taxes in their provinces, and superintended the courts of justice.
And so the machinery of monarchy was established. It was the supreme rule of a king, by means of rich and submissive merchants, burghers, cultivators. The King was Tyrant, or Absolute Citizen, rather than First Chieftain. The difference between France and England was that the French allowed their king to be a real Tyrant, whilst the English beheaded Charles i. and forced the succeeding kings to be mere presidents of the rich men.
Richelieu died in 1642, Louis XIII. in 1643. Louis xiv. at this time was only five years old. The new minister was Cardinal Mazarin, a subtle Italian, a pupil of Richelieu.
During Mazarin’s rule the Parlement of Paris became insubordinate. The Parlement of Paris was not a parliament in our sense of the word, but a court of justice which had this further right of registering the edicts or orders of the King. If the Parlement refused to register the King’s orders, then these orders could not be carried out. At the very time the English Parliament was becoming so bold, the Parlement of Paris took bold steps. It refused to register the edicts of finance for 1648, demanded the reduction of taxes, and the abolition of imprisonment by royal warrant without trial.
The royal soldiers seized the leaders of the Parlement. But then came the news of the execution of Charles I. in England, and the French Court was afraid. Mazarin gave way for a moment. But only for a moment. He summoned forces under the great Prince Conde, the most famous general of the day. Paris was blockaded. The nobles would not stir to help the rich burghers and lawyers of the Parlement: and thus Parlement was almost wiped out., defeated completely.
Then the nobles rose against the royal minister. Conde was arrested in time, but the nobles were in great force. Mazarin had to flee. But he soon returned. With all his skill he gathered the royal forces. The last great struggle between the French Crown and the French nobility took place. The nobles were defeated in 1652, aristocracy was broken for ever. King and merchants ruled France. The Parlement of Paris was forbidden to interfere in public affairs. The system of Richelieu was complete, the monarchic power was perfected. But a monarch was now supreme head of a civil, producing people, his realm was no longer martial.
Mazarin died in 1661. France was now already the greatest, most solid power in Europe. The young King Louis xiv. was determined to govern. His Court was astonished when he told them he would be his own first minister. But he kept his word.
Louis xiv. is perhaps the most splendid example of modern monarchy. The French, like the old Gauls, have always loved splendour, magnificence, and showy power: they admired great and resplendent chieftains. Their greatest and most resplendent countryman was the Grand Monarch. Louis was tall and handsome, with those fine manners of his nation, and with a majestic yet graceful, courtly bearing that all men admired. He was patient in his attention, and did not give way to anger. But he was extremely vain; he loved to be flattered and could not bear to be advised.
Like Charles i. of England, he believed himself king by divine right. He was responsible to God for his kingdom, and to God only. ‘ I am the State,’ is supposed to have been his maxim- — ’ L’Etat, c’est moi.’ He ruled through the King’s Council, and the smaller councils chosen from this. Louis selected the men for his Councils from the middle class, his great inferiors, not from the aristocracy, who were most nearly his equals. ‘ I wanted to let the public know,’ he wrote, ‘ by the rank from which I chose my ministers, that I had no intention of sharing power with them.’ He looked down on them all, they all had to flatter him continually. And they .all admired him immensely, loved to admire him, in the true Gallic spirit.
The great nobles now became courtiers. Disliking the memories of insurrectionary Paris, Louis established his Court twelve miles out, at the city of Versailles, where he built an enormous and gorgeous palace. This was erected between 1676 and 1688, chiefly by the royal architect Mansart. The Court occupied it in 1682. When completed it could house 10,000 persons.
The naturally barren soil was enriched, an aqueduct brought water which was led into lakes and canals, whilst skilful landscape gardeners transformed the wilderness into a succession of lovely, broad, terraced gardens, in succeeding levels, with wide alleys and paths of geometrical form. Trees were clipped into shape — cubes, balls, peacocks — fountains rose out of marble basins where statues seemed to play with the water, flowers were grouped in masses. Beyond the gardens were cool forest glades and open spaces, with grottoes, caves, small lodges — all artificial.
Here in Versailles Louis xiv. kept his vast and splendid Court, a whole army of people living in extravagance and luxury. The highest men in the la
nd struggled with each other as to who should hold the King’s boots, or present him with a napkin. In the royal presence the King’s own brother might only sit on a low stool placed behind the King’s chair. The rest stood. Then there were dances, banquets, endless shows and pageants of great gorgeous- ness.
Many brilliant painters, sculptors, architects, were kept busy at Versailles. Louis was very friendly to all artists and works of art. During this time lived the greatest French writers — Corneille, Racine, Moliere, the dramatists; Descartes and Pascal, the philosophers; Bossuet and Fenelon, the religious writers. The plays of Moliere were performed at Court, and the King was a personal friend of the author. This was the greatest day of France. Yet all the time the King’s police superintended all the productions of literature, there was no freedom of speech.
At the same time, in Louis’ reign, two of France’s greatest generals were at the height of their powers: the impetuous Prince of Conde, and the great strategist, the Marquis of Turenne. In Europe were no generals like these, whilst Vauban, the famous military engineer, so fortified the frontiers of the kingdom that they became almost impenetrable.
In civil life, Colbert, the minister who had the management of finance, was one of the most capable and remarkable men France has produced. He was of middle-class origin, and not handsome in appearance, but his energy and activity were enormous. He relentlessly punished fraud in the government, and thus greatly reduced the burden of taxation, while the King’s income was greater than before. He introduced workmen from England, Holland, and Italy, to start factories for stocking-making, weaving, lace-making, glass-making, and he protected his new industries by a high tariff. He established companies to trade with the Baltic, the Mediterranean, the East, and with America, in rivalry of England and Holland. He made splendid roads and famous canals, and he urged on the building of ships. If Louis ruled in splendour, it was the burgher Colbert who ruled for prosperity. War became an expensive luxury, not a life-activity.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 913